Jon Jones: Lyoto Machida's Puzzle Has Already Been Solved

[johnnynoname]

Unemployment Dips, but That Hardly Makes Up for a Lost Year
Mike Konczal
December 2, 2011 

In fact, over the past year, employment-to-population has stayed consistently depressed. Every indicator we look at—job openings, the rate at which people quit their jobs for new opportunities, the number of hours worked in the economy—has stayed weak during 2011. With job growth failing to exceed population growth each month, and with no serious increase in the percent of Americans working, 2011 was a lost year for the economy.

Lost years for the economy have major consequences. Beyond the human misery that results, they put the entire project of liberal governance at risk. Choices made early by this administration resulted in no advancement on three fronts that could bolster the struggling economy: fiscal policy (increasing the deficit through spending on investment and temporary tax cuts), monetary policy (increasing the money supply to stimulate growth), and dealing with the problems in the housing market.

Starting in late 2009, the Obama administration started framing our economic crisis as a “dual deficit problem.” In other words, the administration wouldn’t push for a larger short-term deficit—spending more money to stimulate the weak economy, a key tenet of Keynesian economics—without also cutting the long-term deficit. Treasury officials told a reporter at The New Republic that the administration needed to show “some signal to US bondholders that it takes the deficit seriously” and that “spending more money now [on stimulus] could actually raise long-term [government] rates, thereby offsetting its stimulative effect.”

This was a victory for the network of elites that The Nation’s Ari Berman refers to as the “austerity class.” By buying into the now-conventional wisdom that it was economically unsound to grow short-term deficits without simultaneously decreasing long-term deficits, long-term deficit reduction was turned into a co-equal problem of economic woes. This is like a doctor telling a patient suffering from multiple gunshot wounds that he should have a healthier diet—it might be true, but there’s a much more pressing problem.

Want an example? In the 2010 State of the Union address, President Obama stated that he would freeze 2011 discretionary spending even though unemployment was projected to be above 8 percent, because, he said, if “we don’t take meaningful steps to rein in our debt, it could damage our markets, increase the cost of borrowing, and jeopardize our recovery,” which “would have an even worse effect on our job growth and family incomes.” This conventional wisdom gave the Republicans the leverage they needed to destroy any pro-active economic agenda.

So the administration spent much of 2011 engaging in the wrong analysis of the economy, one that looked like that of the far right. Early in the year the administration brought in new advisers, notably Bill Daley as chief of staff, in order to repair relationships with business in the wake of financial reform. This incorrectly diagnosed the problem as a liberal government beating up on unappreciated job creators, instead of weak income and mass unemployment among workers. In his 2011 State of the Union address, Obama argued that we needed to “win the future” by investing in education and bringing “discretionary spending to the lowest share of our economy since Dwight Eisenhower was president.” Recent college graduates are suffering from high unemployment and there’s no real reason to worry about government debt levels, but you wouldn’t understand that from that speech.

During the debt ceiling showdown this past summer, when the administration was trying to drum up support for long-term deficit reduction, economic advisors like Gene Sperling argued that new confidence in deficit reduction itself would help the economy, ignoring the fact that the markets, with negative real interest rates, were screaming for the government to run a bigger deficit. Meanwhile, President Obama made references to “structural” issues in the labor market, as if the pain of unemployment wasn’t shared broadly across all occupations, industries and types of workers.

Thus the Democrats spent 2011—which could have been a crucial year for the recovery—in a futile debate with the Republicans over the budget. From the original government shutdown in April to the debt ceiling fights in July, Republicans showed that they were capable of making even the most trivial changes to the budget costly to the Democrats. As time went on the administration became ever more willing to make huge concessions to get a deal and restart the economy, and each time was left at the table. When a ratings agency downgraded federal government debt, it wasn’t because of the long-term deficit but instead over this political gridlock.

If these two goals, short-term deficit spending and long-term deficit reduction, had been separated early, with maximal energy put towards job creation until unemployment was much lower, then the economy would be in a much healthier place. The GOP would have had less disruptive leverage and threats like using the Constitution to avoid the debt ceiling fight would have been more credible. The administration pivoted back to jobs in the fall after the disaster of the debt ceiling fight. Time will tell if it was too late, and if they are willing to fight hard to bring unemployment down.

Monetary policy is another avenue that spent 2011 in limbo. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has signaled that he won’t let the economy get worse, but he’s skittish about taking the potential risks that would be required to push the economy to full employment more quickly, regardless of how bad the situation is now. The Federal Reserve is generally hesitant to print more money because of fears of inflation, even though injecting money into the economy would likely stimulate jobs—is it willing to tolerate temporary higher inflation in order to bring unemployment down? If it did, this month’s jobs report, and last month’s, might have looked a little better.

In the midst of collapsing prices, President Franklin Roosevelt in a fireside chat in 1933 announced that “it is the Government’s policy to restore the price level first”—a signal to the markets that the New Deal was going to take monetary policy very seriously. President Obama has shown less interest in monetary policy, reappointing the moderate Republican Ben Bernanke to office and leaving seats open for years. Leaving vacant seats across the judiciary and in key regulatory agencies such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Obama’s lack of movement on recess appointments has left the Fed tilted to the right. Since the other people that sit on the Federal Reserve are hardline conservatives appointed by banks, getting people concerned about unemployment there is even more important.

At the end of 2011, key liberals like Christina Romer and Paul Krugman started talking about a new way of doing Federal Reserve policy based on “nominal GDP targeting,” which would allow for higher inflation in weak economic times. Meanwhile, Chicago Federal Reserve President Charles Evans put out a plan to allow 3 percent inflation while unemployment is above 7 percent. These are good ideas; the administration could put them into practice by filling vacancies with appointees who understand their value.

The third important element of the recovery is restoring the housing sector. The burst of the housing bubble has left a quarter of all mortgages underwater and millions of foreclosures hitting every part of the country. Foreclosures are a lose-lose-lose, devastating homeowners and neighborhoods, ravaging municipality budgets and hitting the creditors themselves. Empirical evidence shows a link between foreclosures and decreased economic activity in this recession. The most obvious way to deal with this is to allow courts to write down mortgage debt in bankruptcy, but the Obama administration passed on requiring bankruptcy modification, or “cramdown,” as part of the bailout.

Ever since then, abuses in the mortgage payment “servicing” system—ranging from robo-signing to phantom foreclosure referrals to illegal foreclosures on servicemen overseas—have been reported by both community activists and financial analysts. In late 2010, the largest banks voluntarily halted foreclosures to investigate before going back to business as normal.

The administration could have pushed hard on investigating the foreclosure market. Instead they pushed for quick settlement with the largest banks engineered by several attorneys general, putting pressure on attorneys general like Eric Schneiderman who want to investigate further. A full investigation would have given the administration more leverage in pushing banks to stem the foreclosure crisis.

In 1938, shortly after premature fiscal and monetary tightening triggered a recession, the economist John Manyard Keynes wrote a worried letter to President Roosevelt. He was, he wrote, “terrified lest progressive causes in all the democratic countries should suffer injury, because you have taken too lightly the risk to their prestige which would result from a failure measured in terms of immediate prosperity. There need be no failure. But the maintenance of prosperity in the modern world is extremely difficult; and it is so easy to lose precious time.”

Jonathan Chait is only the most recent pundit to wonder why liberals are so upset about the administration and the state of the economy. But the answer is obvious. Everything progressives have fought for—from the policy advancements of the Obama administration like healthcare and financial reform to the New Deal and Great Society programs that remain, like Social Security and Medicare—has been at risk as a result of this Great Recession. A longer period of sustained joblessness will wreck the working class and devastate the budget, leaving our economy even weaker. Important advancements that will actually win the future—from pricing carbon to emptying out our prisons—are virtually impossible with the country experiencing so high a level of unemployment. There are ways forward; it is just a question of whether the administration is prepared to take them. It is easy to lose precious time, and we’ve just lost a full year with nothing to show for it.

[johnnynoname]

Turnout High in Egypt's Elections, but Questions About Transition Remain
Sharif Abdel Kouddous
November 29, 2011 

 
Cairo, Egypt
 
Hundreds of voters waited patiently outside the Faculty of Fine Arts in Cairo’s upscale neighborhood of Zamalek early Monday morning for a chance to cast their ballot in Egypt’s first election following the ouster of autocrat Hosni Mubarak last February. Many read newspapers or conversed quietly in pairs as the line inched forward. The faces of parliamentary candidates beamed out at them from campaign posters plastered outside the school walls with the thoughtful, mid-distance stare practiced by politicians seeking office the world over. Voters emerged from the polling booths holding up ink-stained fingers to prove their participation on the first day of Egypt’s nationwide parliamentary elections.
About the Author
Sharif Abdel Kouddous
Sharif Abdel Kouddous is an independent journalist and Democracy Now! correspondent based in Cairo, Egypt. His...
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Across the street, a young man stood alone, his hands in his pockets as he stared ruefully at the queue slowly shuffling by. “I don’t feel pride at all, I feel broken” says Hussein, a 29-year-old working in digital advertising who had not yet decided whether to vote. “This is not in the revolutionary spirit, this is compliance. This is bowing your head down.”

The scene reflects the broader complexities of Egypt’s first post-revolutionary elections: an eagerness to participate in the democratic process soured by the realities of a deeply flawed transition plan and the heavy yoke of military rule.

Over the past nine months, the Supreme Council of Armed Forces that assumed power following Mubarak’s ouster, along with a political elite largely looking out for its own interests, have created a deeply confusing electoral system designed to elect a parliament that has no clear mandate or authority and one that, many fear, will serve to further entrench the military’s power.

Monday’s elections are the first in a parliamentary poll that will take three months to complete. Nine of Egypt’s twenty-seven governorates will vote in three separate rounds for the People’s Assembly (lower house) and will repeat again for the Shura Council (upper house). Both house are scheduled to convene in March, though under the current constitutional declaration that serves as Egypt’s interim constitution, the parliament will be largely toothless. The Supreme Council is granted the authority to issue laws by decree, appoint the government (including the prime minister) and sign international treaties.

Voters that went to the polls for the People’s Assembly elections had to make three selections: one list and two individual candidates. The lists are drawn up by parties or alliances and two-thirds of the house seats are allocated this way on a proportional representation system. The remaining third of the seats are open to individual candidates, half of which must be workers or farmers, categories that date back to the era of Gamal Abdel Nasser. The vote calculation process is extremely complicated, baffling even political scientists and election law experts.

While the primary mandate of the incoming parliament is the drafting of Egypt’s post-revolutionary constitution, the process by which a constituent assembly would be chosen has not been finalized. Under guidelines proposed by the interim government in October, the Supreme Council would appoint eighty of the 100-member body while the parliament would select just twenty. The guidelines would also deny parliament the right to review the military budget and allow the army to interfere in political life. The proposal sparked an uproar but an alternative plan has yet to be agreed upon.

More importantly, the elections come in the wake of a new uprising in Egypt, one that reignited in Tahrir Square last week and quickly spread to Alexandria, Suez and several other cities. The clarion call of the renewed revolt is clear: an end to military rule.

The uprising first erupted on November 19 when Central Security Forces stormed a small sit-in of a few dozen protesters in Tahrir. Riot police beat and arrested those who had set up camp. In response, hundreds of protesters descended to Tahrir in solidarity. They clashed with security forces and forced them to retreat back towards the headquarters of the Minister of Interior. The fighting quickly escalated into some of the fiercest street battles in Egypt since the revolution began.

For five days—nearly 120 continuous hours—thousands of protesters, most of them young men and women, did battle with security forces. Police used live ammunition, rubber bullets, shotgun cartridges and an astonishing amount of tear gas. Protesters fought back with rocks and the occasional Molotov cocktail. What began as a minor street clash had turned into a war of attrition. Downtown Cairo was transformed into a battle zone with a constant white fog of poisonous tear gas wafting in the air. At least forty-two people were killed and more than 3,000 wounded.

In a matter of days, the protests grew from a few dozen to hundreds of thousands filling Tahrir Square in what was perhaps the biggest challenge to military rule in Egypt in sixty years. “The more they kill us, the more we multiply. And that has always been the story of this revolution,” says actor and activist Khalid Abdulla.

Noticeably absent from the demonstrations was the Muslim Brotherhood, the largest and best-organized political group in Egypt. Through its Freedom and Justice Party, the group is expected to gain a large number of seats in the parliamentary elections and pushed heavily for the vote to go ahead on schedule. Their members were out in full force on Monday, clearly visible at every polling station, offering to help voters find their registration numbers and distributing campaign flyers to any passersby.

“The Muslim Brotherhood have a political interest which they are declaring now above demands of this revolution to get rid of the Supreme Council of Armed Forces,” Abdulla observes. “I say shame on them.”

Thousands of protesters are continuing their sit-in in Tahrir, and many of them are boycotting the elections. They have instead called for the military council to grant full authorities to a national salvation government that could lead the country through its transition. Mohamed El Baradei, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, is favored by many protesters to lead the group alongside other prominent politicians and young revolutionaries.

Instead, the Supreme Council on Friday named Kamal al-Ganzouri—a 78-year-old who served as prime minister under Mubarak—to replace interim prime minister Essam Sharaf, who had resigned earlier in the week amidst the violent clashes. In response, several hundred protesters marched to the street that houses parliament and the cabinet of ministers to stage an open-ended sit-in.

On Monday, people in Tahrir stood gathered in groups, engaging in vigorous debates about the legitimacy of the parliamentary poll. “Democracy means elections, the question is do we believe in democracy or not? The elections are the only way to get rid of the Supreme Council,” argues an old man with the long beard and shorn mustache favored by Islamists. As others debated with him over the authority of the incoming parliament a young man strode in the middle and faced the old man. “Where were you last week while we were here dying? The Brotherhood and the Salafis have sold out the country,” he says before storming away.

The calls for a boycott are minimal, however, and the turnout across Egypt of the first day of elections has been reported to be high. A few hundred yards from Tahrir Square, hundreds of women lined up inside the Kasr El Dobara Experimental Language School, a women’s-only polling station on Kasr Al Aini street. Standing in the courtyard speaking to voters was Gamila Ismail, an independent parliamentary candidate favored by many protesters in Tahrir square. The week before, she had suspended her electoral campaign in protest of the brutal police crackdown. Ismail is also the ex-wife of Ayman Nour, who ran for president against Mubarak and was subsequently jailed for four years.

“This election is flavored with Tahrir, with the revolution,” Ismail says. She had a failed run for parliament in November 2010, the infamous elections that were heavily rigged by Mubarak’s National Democratic Party and helped spark the revolution on January 25. “Stepping through this gate in the same place and having a completely different experience is a dream.”

When asked about the call for a boycott from Tahrir square, Ismail says, “I think boycotting and staying in Tahrir and the parliament are two parallel routes to the revolution. They serve each other. Without the square you can never maintain the freedom and the free space in politics.”

Standing beside Ismail in the school courtyard was 28-year-old Nazly Hussein, an activist with the No to Military Trials campaign. Hussein had been badly injured in her left leg while on the front lines during clashes with police and was walking with a crutch. She had also suffered from slightly blurred vision due to an inflamed optic nerve, the result of being exposed to excessive amounts of tear gas.

“I’ve never voted before under Mubarak and I see no reason to vote now, nothing has changed,” Hussein says simply. “This parliament has no real authority. The Supreme Council just wants to avoid a real handover of power and I will not be a part of this sham to give them legitimacy.”

Dusk fell and the Supreme Judicial Committee for Elections announced that voting would be extended for two extra hours in all constituencies to accommodate for the heavy turnout. For now, it seems, the majority of Egyptians appear willing to take part in the political process laid out by the military council. Others, in Tahrir and elsewhere around the country, are firm in their belief that real change can only come in the streets.

[johnnynoname]

10 Fun Facts About the Top 1 Percent

by Joshua Holland | December 7, 2011 - 9:42am

— from AlterNet

As the Occupy Movement has spread like wildfire, we've heard a lot about the top 1 percent of American households and how the “other 99 percent” want a fair share of the fruits of our economic output.

In 2009, there were about 1.4 million households in the top 1 percent. But just who are they? What do they do? Where do they live?

We tried to answer some of those questions with ten fun facts about the top 1 percent.

1. Majority Are Corporate Big-Wigs, Doctors, Lawyers, and Wall Streeters

Mother Jones offers this handy chart that shows the sectors in which most of the 1% work — note that 4 percent of them are either not working or dead.

2. You Won't Find Many in Indiana

Gallup compiled the results of 61 of its surveys to create a sample of the top 1 percent — and the other 99 percent — and found that the wealthiest among us skew toward the coasts. Whereas 22 percent of the rest of us live in the Midwest, you'll find only 14 percent of the those households at the top living in “America's Heartland.”

3. They're More Republican

Interestingly, those at the top are no more likely to identify themselves as conservatives, or less likely to see themselves as liberals, than the other 99 percent. They aren't more likely to favor forced childbirth or worry about the War on Christmas — social issues — but they know where their bread is buttered (or buttered more heavily), so despite the fact that they don't differ much ideologically, they're significantly more likely to support Republicans.

When you include independents who lean towards one party or another, the top 1 percent skews towards the GOP by a 57–36 margin, compared to the other 99 percent, which leans Democratic, 47–44.

4. They Make More Than $500K per Year

As Suzy Khimm notes in the Washington Post, the income cut-off for those households in the top 1 percent was $516,633 last year, down from $646,195 before the crash. But that's the floor — the average income for those in the top 1 percent this year is $1,530,773. (A "household" in this sense can be a single person or a family — it's also known as a "tax unit.")

5. And Have Plenty of Accumulated Wealth

Accumulated wealth is even more skewed towards the top than income, and in 2009, the top 1 percent of households were sitting on an average net worth of almost $14 million, according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute. Here's another chart from Mother Jones:

What's more, the other 99 percent have been falling behind. In 2009, the ratio of net worth between those in the top 1 percent and a household right in the middle of the pack was 225-to-1 – the highest on record. In 1962, that figure stood at 125-to-1. Here's a chart showing the shift, courtesy of EPI:

6. They've Taken an Ever-Bigger Piece of the Pie

Between 1949 and 1979, those at the top 1 percent took in 10 percent of our pretax income. In Reagan's final year in office, they grabbed 15.5 percent of the nation's income.

By the time George W. Bush was elected, they were taking in 21.5 percent. And in 2007, the year before the crash, they were pulling in 23.5 percent of our pretax income, leaving the other 99 percent to share just 76.5 percent of the fruits of America's economic output.

7. But Have Half the Federal Income Tax Rate Compared to 1980

I have written before that federal income taxes only account for a bout a fifth of the taxes paid in this country, so we shouldn't confuse them with “taxes” in general. Federal income taxes are among the most progressive, meaning that the more you earn, the more you pay.

Nevertheless, because of years of tax cuts targeted at the top — notably the Bush cuts for high earners — the top 1 percent of American households are paying about half the rate that they had to pay in 1980.

8. It's the Top of the Top 1 Percent Making the Real Killing

"We are the 99 percent" fits nicely on bumpersticker — far better than "We are the 99.9 percent." But while the top 1 percent has doubled its share of income over the last 30 years, the top tenth of the top 1 percent have made a real killing. In 1980, this rarified bunch took in 3.4 percent of the nation's income. By 2007, the year before the crash, they were grabbing over 12 percent. Their average incomes, adjusted for inflation to 2008 dollars, had risen from $1.4 million to $7.4 million during the same period.

Then there's a tiny group of households in the top 100th of the top 1 percent — just a few hundred families. Their share of the nation's income increased from 1.3 percent in 1980 (an average of $5.4 million in 2008 dollars) to 6 percent in 2007 ($36.4 million).

To put that in perspective, the average income of the bottom 90 percent had barely budged. In 1980, they earned $30,941, and in 2007 — almost 30 years later — they took in $33,666.

9. They Don't Have Crushing Debt Loads

Unfortunately, the data on households with high debt-loads — defined as debt equalling at least 40 percent of income — isn't available for the top 1 percent. But according to EPI, in 2007 fewer than one in 25 of households in the top 10 percent of the distribution had a high debt load, compared to more than one in six households in the bottom 90 percent.

10. Education Is the Big Divide

According to Gallup, educational attainment is “the greatest difference between the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans and everyone else. The Gallup analysis reveals that 72 percent of the wealthiest Americans have a college degree, compared with 31 percent of those in the lower 99 percentiles. Furthermore, nearly half of those in the wealthiest group have postgraduate education, versus 16 percent of all others.” (It's likely that those in the upper reaches of the "99 percent also tend to be educated, but Gallup doesn't break this down further.)

[johnnynoname]

Ron Paul is Excluded from Debate Sponsored by Jewish Republicans. You May Agree or Not Agree With Him, But This Is a Democracy.

by Bill Berkowitz | December 7, 2011 - 9:17am

The Republican Jewish Coalition is hosting a presidential-candidates forum on Wednesday, December 7 at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, D.C.

Guess which candidate isn't being invited to participate.

Michelle Bachmann and her apocalyptic religious views that leaves Jews stranded in a desert wasteland? Wrong, she'll be there. Mitt Romney and John Huntsman of the Mormon crew that has fancied converting to Mormonism Jews that were killed in the Holocaust in order to swell their numbers in Heaven? Wrong, they'll be there. The uninhibited-unexpurgated Herman Cain? He was invited and he accepted, but since he has suspended his campaign it is unlikely he will appear. Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum? Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

The only GOP presidential candidate not being invited to participate in the daylong festivities is Texas Congressman Ron Paul.

Why Ron Paul? He won't stop noshing? He'll kibbitz (joke) inappropriately? He brings too much mishegas (insanity/craziness)? He'll make the audience plotz (explode with aggravation)? He's not schmaltzy (sentimental) enough? He's too big a schmuck (self-made fool) for mainstream conservative Jewish Republicans.?

Paul was not invited because of his "misguided and extreme views," said RJC Executive Director Matt Brooks. "He's just so far outside of the mainstream of the Republican party and this organization," Brooks said. Inviting Paul to attend would be "like inviting Barack Obama to speak."

As Reason.com's Matt Welch recently pointed out, "Brooks gave a more detailed critique of Ron Paul back in May":

"As Americans who are committed to a strong and vigorous foreign policy, we are deeply concerned about the prospective presidential campaign of Congressman Ron Paul. While Rep. Paul plans to run as a Republican, his views and past record place him far outside of the Republican mainstream. His candidacy, as we've seen in his past presidential campaigns, will appeal to a very narrow constituency in the U.S. electorate. Throughout his public service, Paul has espoused a dangerous isolationist vision for the U.S. and our role in the world. He has been a virulent and harsh critic of Israel during his tenure in Congress. Most recently Paul gave an interview in which he voiced his objection to the recent killing of Osama Bin Laden.

Brooks added, "We certainly respect Congressman Paul's right to run, but we strongly reject his misguided and extreme views, which are not representative of the Republican Party."

The Huffington Post reported that "At a recent debate, Paul suggested that Israel could take care of itself in the event that it attacked Iran, claiming its undeclared nuclear arsenal made it self-sufficient. 'Why does Israel need our help? We need to get out of their way,' he said when asked whether he would support an Israeli attack against Iran. If it did happen, 'that's their business, but they should suffer the consequences,' he added."

In addition, the Huffington Post piece pointed out that "Paul supported an amendment that would have ended all U.S. aid to Israel, along with Egypt, Jordan and Pakistan. The U.S. sends about $3 billion per year to Israel in military aid alone.

"Paul criticized U.S. military aid to Israel in an Oct. 18 debate. "That foreign aid makes Israel dependent on us," he said. 'It softens them for their own economy. And they should have their sovereignty back, they should be able to deal with their neighbors at their own will.'"

For more on Congressman Paul and the Jews, see Steve Rabin's report in The Philadelphia Jewish Voice entitled "Congressman Ron Paul and the Jews."

According to the JTA News Service, Paul supporters "deluged the Republican Jewish Coalition's phone lines with complaints " about Paul's exclusion.

Even if we were to stipulate that Ron Paul is no friend of Israel, no friend of the Jews, no friend to anyone in need (remember his answer about a dying man in need of health care at one of the early debates?) those aren't reasons to exclude him from the RJC forum. He is, after all, a legitimate voice in Republican Party politics and he's still outpolling much of the remaining field.

One doesn't need to like Paul's foreign policy perspective to have him invited to a debate. After all, this is a democracy.

[johnnynoname]

"By Imbeciles Who Really Mean It": Lost Verities and Dirty Hippies

by Phil Rockstroh | December 7, 2011 - 4:09pm

Regardless of the dissembling of corporate-state propagandists, free-market capitalism has always been a government-subsidized, bubble-inflating, swindlers’ game, in which, psychopathic personalities (not “job creators” but con-job perpetrators) thrive.

By the exploitation of the many, a ruthless few have amassed large amounts of capital by which they dominate mainstream narratives and compromise elected and governmental officials, thereby gaming the system for their benefit.

'Occupy Everything' sign (Photo by Angela Tyler-Rockstroh)

Historically, the system has proven so demeaning to the majority of the population that the elite, from time to time, have, as a last resort, due to fear of a popular uprising, introduced a bit of socialism into the system, allowing a modicum of swag to funnel downward, and, as a result, the ranks of the middle-class have been expanded.

For a time, the bourgeoisie are bamboozled by the sales pitch that one day they will be affluent enough to be freed from the taxing obligations of a dismal, debt-beholden existence, when, in fact, they sowed their fate (like those swindled by opening their bank accounts after receiving email from parties claiming to be momentarily cash-strapped Nigerian royalty) by their own greed, i.e. by their self-imprisonment within their own narrow, self-serving view of existence.

These stultifying circumstances will level an atmosphere of restiveness and nebulous rage. In general, the middle-class can be counted on to detest the poor … blaming those born devoid of societal advantage and political influence for the impoverished circumstances that were in place long before the happenstance of their birth.

Moreover, in a bit of noxious casuistry, as despicable as it is delusional, all too many members of the middle-class have been induced by grift artists, employed by the ruling elite, to blame their own declining social status and attendant beleaguered existence on the poor.

“Be thine own palace, or the world’s thy jail.”–John Donne

This has proven to be an effective, time-tested grift: Because as long as the animus of the middle class remains fixated on the poor, the criminal cartels known as the economic elite can continue to ply their trade. Of course, in reality, by their greed and complicity, what the middle-class has gained is this: trustee status in the capitalist workhouse.

Although, there is no need to fret: The run of neoliberal capitalism is about over. Don’t mourn: This late-stage, rapacious, mutant economic strain has leveled destruction on community and the planet itself as well as the hearts and souls of too many of those imprisoned within its paradigm.

At this point, the situation comes down to this: paradigm shift or perish. The hour is amenable to reevaluate, reorganize and re-occupy. Doing so will prove helpful in withstanding false narratives.

Apropos: As of late, in my hours spent at Liberty Park, I’ve been witness to increasing numbers of tourists wandering in and repeating derisive, right-wing distortions regarding the OWS movement and its participants.

For example, the distortions allege that the OWS participants are a collection of whiny college students who want taxpayers to be responsible for picking up the tab for their student loans because they are too lazy and spoiled to work off their debt.

These tales are variations of the old canards involving welfare queens, mouths gleaming with taxpayer financed gold teeth, arriving at grocery stores lounging behind the steering wheels of late-model Cadillacs, and proceeding to purchase steaks and fifths of gin with food stamps.

Ronald Reagan spoke of this mythical figure often, affording her near supernatural powers: She, through indolence, guile and a welfare-state-bestowed sense of limitless entitlement, was the near singular cause of the nation’s economic woes; her very existence, not only depleted the U.S. Treasury of dollars, but drained the U.S. free enterprise system of vitality and the very will to compete. She was a succubus who arrived in the socialist haunted night to feed on and zap the very virility of capitalism.

Because of the wealth inequities inherent to capitalism, in order to prevent social unrest, the system is reliant on creating false narratives that foster misplaced and displaced class resentment. These tales are very potent, because they serve as palliatives for the enervating states of shame inflicted on the population at large by their enslavement to the free market.

Accordingly, because the vast majority of the populace are deemed “losers,” due to how the system is rigged, techniques must be created and maintained to displace the rage, born of a sense of powerlessness, that grips the system’s exploited underlings.

OWS is beginning to change the narrative … align it with reality – and that is an alarming development for the 1 percent; hence, the retooled, amped-up propaganda campaign we’re seeing signs of at present.

This is the reality the 1 percent endeavor to obscure: Capitalism is a pyramid scheme; by its very structure, only a few will ever receive its bounty … that is wrung out of the exhausted hides of the vast majority. Fact is, capitalism, the neoliberal variety or otherwise, has never worked as promised; its innate structure ensures exploitation and inequity.

Therefore, time and time again, adding aspects of socialism (e.g., New Deal-era programs and reforms) have saved capitalism from itself. But, after a time, the plutocrats regroup and begin anew to launch a big money-financed, slow-motion coup d’état of government (e.g., the Reagan Revolution).

A vast disparity of wealth within a nation will all but ensure this societal trajectory. But that isn’t going to happen, this time. The planet cannot endure the assaults wrought by a system that requires exponential growth to be maintained.

The run of capitalism is nearly over. A more sustainable economic system, based on horizontal rule, is being developed, globally (e.g., the Icelandic model).

The vertical structure inherent to capitalism brings about the self-perpetuating reign of an insular elite who choose to go the route of empire and, by doing so, overreach and bring themselves down, but only after much unnecessary suffering, exploitation and death – the calling card and ground-level criteria of imperium.

Yet, often within a declining empire, even as the quality of life grows increasingly degraded for the majority of the populace, questioning sacrosanct beliefs, such as, the myth that capitalism promotes societal progress and personal advancement, by means of the possibility of upward class migration, proves to be a difficult endeavor for many.

The reason: Even given the degraded nature of life as lived under late capitalism, the act of taking stock of one’s situation – beginning to question how one arrived at one’s present station in life – will engender anxiety, anger and regret.

Apropos to the shame-based Calvinism of the capitalist state: If I was duped in a rigged game, what does that say about me? The narrative of capitalism insists that if I work hard, applying savvy and diligence, at fulfilling my aspirations then I would, at some point, arrive in the rarified realm of life’s winners.

But if success proves elusive, then my flawed character must be the problem – not the dishonest economic setup – and miasmic shame descends upon me. Yet I can count on right-wing media to provide the type of provisional solace proffered by demagogues, i.e., imparting the reason that folks like me can’t get ahead is because scheming socialists have hijacked my parcel of the American Dream and delivered it to the undeserving thereby transforming my shame into displaced outrage.

And that must be the case; otherwise, it would behoove me to make the painful admission that I have been conned … have co-signed the crimes committed against me. Worse, I would be compelled to question all my verities and beliefs – all the convictions I clutch, regarding, not only the notions that I possess about myself and the methods I’ve adopted in approaching life, but also, the social structure that influenced my character.

Imagine: If you had to re-imagine your life. Imagine, how the act would unnerve your loved ones, threaten friendships, even endanger your livelihood.

What an unnerving task that would prove to be … an ordeal certain to deliver heart-shaking anxiety, devastating regret and nettling dread directly into the besieged sanctuary of what is suppose to be the inviolable precincts of my comfort zone.

“At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.”–Albert Camus

Accordingly, I might turn to Fox News and other well-rewarded, professional dissemblers of the political Right, imploring them to dissolve my doubts and dread.

To escort and ensconce my troubled form back into my comfort zone by telling me the problem is not the iron boot of the corporate state upon my neck; rather, my oppression stems from the barefoot hippie lefties of OWS “who need a bath and a job”; it is their odious presence in our lives that has subdued my happy capitalist destiny by the pernicious act of laying down an effluvia (more demobilizing than pepper spray) of patchouli musk and has caused capitalism itself to weaken into an enervated swoon.

Yes, this has to be the case: The cause of my oppression. Those America-hating Occupy Wall Street hippies are actually the hidden hand that controls the global order and who possess a craven desire to smelt down the gleaming steel of the humming engines of U.S. capitalism into creepy, Burning Man statuary, who want to hold 24/7 Nuremberg-style rallies in the form of annoying drum circles.

In reality, it is those dirty hippies who are actually “The Man.” Withal, hippies crashed the global economy and pinned the blame on the selfless souls who ply their benign trade on Wall Street.

Now, you know why conservatives harbor such animus towards hippies. Don’t claim that Fox News et al – those selfless souls – who only desire to protect the glories of the present order, and who only have your best interest in mind, didn’t try to warn you.

“I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it.” –Mark Twain

Phil Rockstroh is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. He may be contacted at:

[johnnynoname]

Balancing the Black Energy in Our Culture

by John Grant | December 6, 2011 - 9:19am

Following a decade of military invasion and occupation in the Middle East and Southwest Asia, the United States is becoming the Rodney Dangerfield of empires: "We get no respect!"

The undisputed post-World War Two top dog in the world, on virtually every front the United States is more and more playing catch-up with two-faced, Clintonian shuttle diplomacy around the world and a well-entrenched regime of secrecy and sophisticated public relations aimed at keeping the dismal story of decline out of the domestic mind-space.

Economic realities dictate that the US government ratchet down its exorbitant military from the strutting days of Colin Powell's two-front shock-and-awe doctrine to a leaner doctrine centered on highly mobile, focused assassinations. Instead of bombing cities and structures like a boxer who batters the body, we now go for quick, well-placed head shots, especially to the key, sensitive areas of the brain that provide inspiration and leadership to the movements we deem threatening to our declining future.

US citizens are absorbing this accelerating imperial decline without being informed that's what's going on. The myth of exceptionalism must be kept alive and the donut hole of our global empire -- the American homeland where we all work and raise our families -- must carry the burden of sacrifice.

The imperial system isn't working like it used to; and much of it is being held together by political fantasy. What else can explain the incredible degree of unreality and nonsense more and more at the core of American politics? As the secrecy rises, formal bullshit, as defined by Harry Frankfurt, has become an American language.

Democrats are accomplished with it, but for the masters of bullshit you have to witness the current preposterous level of argument and thinking among the presidential candidates in the Republican Party. There's no presumption of even a grip on reality; it's a struggle for power and nothing else -- with the mainstream media keeping score.

As part of a personal study, I recently watched two classic RKO noir films from 1947 - Out Of The Past and Born To Kill, the former very famous and the latter more obscure. The sensibility of these black and white films seems perfectly in synch for the incredibly corrupt times we live in. Noir means black in French...

[johnnynoname]

Class Warfare in Canada Orchestrated By Right-Wing Prime Minister Harper

by Bill Berkowitz | December 6, 2011 - 9:12am

In 1960, the Master Plan for Higher Education in California, affirmed a nearly half-century-old policy that tuition-free higher education was in the best interests of the state of California. After a recent demonstration at the University of California, Berkeley, in which one of the grievances raised by students was the rapidly rising costs of a university education, a UC spokesperson suggested that members of the Board of Regents who are well-connected and have the ability to raise large sums of money from well-heeled donors, could raise donations to benefit low-income students.

Charity, the UC spokesperson seemed to suggest, was the way to help low-income students.

What has any of this to do with developments in Canada?

A series of moves being advocated by Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper could spell the beginning of the end for Canada's much-vaunted social safety net. "The Conservative government, libertarian to its core, intends to create the appearance of an increasingly volunteer society as it systematically guts the social and cultural role of government," The Tyee's Murray Dobbin recently reported. "Harper hopes to justify massive cuts to programs (and in general the role of the federal government period) by shifting responsibility to charities and foundations."

According to Dobbin, "This is the Americanization of Canada -- remaking the country in the image of the minimalist government that the U.S. has experienced for decades. The problem is that there is very weak tradition of foundations and corporate giving in this country, so it has to be engineered, too."

Dobbin calls Harper's plan "right-wing social engineering." While Harper has taken on "the status of junior partner in an increasingly aggressive and desperate American empire," he is also launching an "assault on the political culture." In an effort to re-make the country, Dobbin pointed out, there have been "concerted attacks on science, cultural organizations, human rights and women's groups and now the collective bargaining rights for public service workers."

Now, with little apparent support from the people of Canada (a la Ohio Governor John Kasich's attempt - rebuffed on Election Day -- to destroy public unions' collective bargaining rights), Harper seems bound and determined to destroy, or rejigger, many social programs including unemployment insurance, Medicare, subsidized university education, Family Allowance, public pensions, old age security as he can.

According to Dobbin, "All of these elements of Canadian political culture were the result of a democratic imperative. All the polling on these government programs and the social equality they promote suggests at least three quarters of Canadians still support an activist role for government in the interests of community, not to mention the viability of families."

Just as the Bush tax cuts and the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan led to massive deficits in the U.S. and cuts in an already tattered social safety net, it appears that the first stage in dismantling Canada's social programs was to reduce the amount of money available to the federal government.

"[T]hat stage," Dobbin noted, "was implemented early on with the huge, five-year, $60 billion tax cut plan implemented by Jim Flaherty in 2007, the year following Harper's first election victory." By creating the deficit, Harper has created the crisis, and as Naomi Klein has pointed out in her book The Shock Doctrine, it is in those times of "crisis" that political leaders are able to accomplish what has been previously thought of as unthinkable. In this case, the shattering of Canada's social contract.

The Frank Luntz Factor

For Harper, the politics of all this has to be a major consideration. It is unclear how many times Harper and his acolytes have met with Frank Luntz, the vaunted Republican Party pollster, political consultant and message manipulator, but there have been meetings.

In 2006, Julie Mason, a longtime political consultant, reported that Luntz, "A long-time adviser to Preston Manning, ... is no stranger to politics in Canada. Recently he dropped by Ottawa for a quick chat with Stephen Harper, and a speaking engagement on 'Massaging the Conservative Message for Voters' for Civitas, a group of Canadian conservatives that includes Harper's Chief of Staff Ian Brodie, Campaign Manager Tom Flanagan, and National Citizens Coalition Vice-President Gerry Nicholls.

"In his speech," Mason wrote, "Luntz advised Conservatives to look for embarrassing details on Liberals that would 'discredit the Liberals so thoroughly that it will be years before they make it back into power,' ..."

In a long article, the blog "Pushed to the Left and Loving It" pointed out that "According to Lloyd Mackey, in The Pilgrimage of Stephen Harper, our PM was 'saved' after being introduced to the writings of C.S. Lewis. This claim is made by many in the New Right movement."

And it is that claim that often leads to monumental excesses.

"Pushed to the Left..." cited a passage from David Kuo, the disillusioned former George W. Bush faith-based initiative staffer, who wrote in his book Tempting Faith: An inside Story of Political Seduction of a passage from Lewis' the Screwtape Letters, that frightened him:

"Let him begin by treating patriotism ... as a part of his religion. Then let him, under the influence of partisan spirit, come to regard it as the most important part. Then quietly and gradually nurse him on to the stage at which the religion becomes merely a part of the "cause," in which Christianity is valued chiefly because of the excellent arguments it can produce ... Once he's made the world an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing."

Herbert Pimlott, who teaches and researches communication, media and culture at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, recently wrote that Harper intends (much like Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker) "to use 'wedge' issues to drive clear and potentially volatile divisions between Canadians, but not necessarily overtly socio-economic (i.e. class) divisions (since it is likely that many millions more Canadians would end up on the opposing side, although he does have the advantage of corporate media chains!). He is attempting to repeat Republican success in the USA by adopting their tactics for his 'war' on Canadian traditions, values, beliefs and attitudes: to push Canada - or to remake it - in Conservative ideology.

[Board_SHERIF]

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[johnnynoname]

How Obama's Embrace Turned Teddy Roosevelt Into a Socialist
John Nichols on December 7, 2011 - 10:24am ET

What was Fox News to do when Barack Obama went to Kansas and delivered a speech that echoed the “New Nationalism” address Teddy Roosevelt used to renew and redefine his political prospects? Obama’s oratory was not quite as radical as that of the former Republican president, but it was close enough is spirit and content to create concerns on the part of Fox commentators that the current president might be tapping into the rich vein of American progressive populism that actually moves the masses.

So the network of economic royalism did the only thing it could.

Fox broke away from Tuesday’s speech right at the point where Obama was most closely following TR’s line, with references to how the former president had declared: “Our country…means nothing unless it means the triumph of a real democracy…of an economic system under which each man shall be guaranteed the opportunity to show the best that there is in him.” And the recognition by Obama that “today, we are a richer nation and a stronger democracy because of what [Roosevelt] fought for in his last campaign: an eight-hour work day and a minimum wage for women, insurance for the unemployed and for the elderly, and those with disabilities; political reform and a progressive income tax.”

Obama had the quote right. And he had the history right.

What was Fox to do?

No problem. They dismissed Teddy Roosevelt as a socialist.

Once the details of Obama’s speech—one of the most effective and well-received of his presidency—were made available, Fox News political editor Chris Stirewelt explained: “What Teddy Roosevelt was calling for was a sort of a socialistic nationalism, in which the government would take things away from people who got things that he didn’t think they should have [and] give it to the working man. They talk about ‘the square deal,’ ‘fairness,’ all of these new mandates for government—something the Republican Party has walked away from in very decided fashion certainly since the Reagan era in terms of what the role and purpose of government is. This is Obama embracing a Republican icon of a bygone era.”

Fox host Megyn Kelly picked up on the theme: “Teddy Roosevelt was calling for something akin to a socialist nationalism. Why would President Obama want to do anything that would associate himself with that word ‘socialist’ which has been used against him by so many of the Republican presidential candidates, among others.”

Yes, Stirewelt responded, “I think the biggest thing [Obama] is trying to do is shame the Republicans. He’s trying to say: ‘Look, one of your own, a great hero of yours that’s on Mount Rushmore, he was a socialist. He called for this sort of socialist nationalism. Why are you people not being like him? Why are you not following in his footsteps?’ ”

“Obviously,” continued Stirewelt, “this is not an unalloyed good thing for the president to line up with this sort of progressivism, and this sort of liberalism and socialism that has become so much maligned and so much disliked in the modern American political discourse.”

On Fox Business News, the discussion turned to a claim that “we’re seeing the return of socialism combined with nationalsm.”

Wow.

So Roosevelt was socialistic, and Obama is adopting “socialist nationalism” by borrowing a page from the Republican commander-in-chief whom the most recent Republican presidential nominee, John McCain, hailed as his hero—as have Republican nominees in every election since the former president’s passing in 1920.

The notion that the Republican Roosevelt was a socialist would have come as news to the old Rough Rider—and to the socialist stalwarts of his time.

When Roosevelt ran for the presidency in 1904 (as a Republican incumbent) and again in 1912 (as the leader of the renegade Republicans who formed the Progressive “Bull Moose” Party), he faced determined opposition from Socialist Party nominees. Indeed, the 1912 campaign saw Eugene Victor Debs win the highest portion of the vote ever accorded to a Socialist candidate: 6 percent.

Roosevelt, in his “New Nationalism” speech at  Osawatomie, Kansas, did outline an agenda that supported the establishment of programs like Social Security and Medicare, protections against discrimination, union rights and expanded democracy. In effect, he was arguing for what, under his fifth cousin, Franklin, would come to be known as “the New Deal.”

Some of those proposals were promoted by the Socialist Party in the early years of the twentieth century, which certainly made arguments in its platforms for safety-net programs. But so, too, did moderate Republicans and Democrats. After the “Gilded Age” of robber barons and corporate monopolies, there was mainstream support for tempering the excesses of laissez faire capitalism. They weren’t proposing socialism in any form that Karl Marx might recognize but they were arguing for fairness and responsibility.

“We grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well used,” Roosevelt said in 1910. However, recalling the language of the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, Roosevelt added, “It is not even enough that it should have gained without doing damage to the community. We should permit it to be gained only so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community.”

That’s hardly a radical notion. It simply says that the accumulation of great wealth ought not come at the expense of society. Or, as Obama explained in Osawatomie, “Now, just as there was in Teddy Roosevelt’s time, there’s been a certain crowd in Washington for the last few decades who respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. “The market will take care of everything,” they tell us. If only we cut more regulations and cut more taxes—especially for the wealthy—our economy will grow stronger. Sure, there will be winners and losers. But if the winners do really well, jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everyone else. And even if prosperity doesn’t trickle down, they argue, that’s the price of liberty. It’s a simple theory—one that speaks to our rugged individualism and healthy skepticism of too much government. It fits well on a bumper sticker. Here’s the problem: it doesn’t work. It’s never worked.”

This is not some grand redistributionist scheme. It is economic realism. It is the vision of responsible wealth that was broadly accepted by Main Street Republicans until the advocates for a new Gilded Age bought themselves a Tea Party movement.

Roosevelt spoke for Main Street when he said 111 years ago: “The essence of any struggle for healthy liberty has always been, and must always be, to take from some one man or class of men the right to enjoy power, or wealth, or position, or immunity, which has not been earned by service to his or their fellows. That is what you fought for in the Civil War, and that is what we strive for now.”

Barack Obama is echoing that line, speaking a bit more softly and carrying a bit less of a big stick than Teddy Roosevelt. He is coming down on the side of the same basic premise that TR reached in Osawatomie: fairness.

Of course, according to Fox News, fairness is “something the Republican Party has walked away from…”

[Benny B]

Lyoto Machida admits he was surprised when he got the call to face Jon Jones at UFC 140, but he happily accepted.

After defeating Randy Couture at UFC 129, Machida was asked to step in and face Rashad Evans at UFC 133 on short notice, but turned the fight down. So it was a bit of a surprise when the UFC called and asked him to step up and fight for the belt at UFC 140.

Now that the opportunity is here, he's ready to face Jon Jones and get back the light heavyweight title he lost not so long ago.

"That's why I'm here (to get the belt," said Machida. "I'm very motivated."

Check out this interview with UFC 140 main event fighter Lyoto Machida:

[Royalty]

Jones will win.... But Machida is the ONLY guy that stands a chance to beat him. Jones wont lose a fight for at least 2 years (probably 3 or 4)