Friday Cat Blogging from the Left Paw Society

Deux chats endormis.

Wall Street Loves America

Well, actually, it doesn't. I can't blog much, but I had to put this in here for future reference:

http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2006/07/post911_option_.html

Here's the story. I hope to be back to blogginsville soon.

The WSJ continues its recent habit of burying killer stories in the under read Saturday edition. This week's bombshell has to do with post 9/11 earnings grants:

"On Sept. 21, 2001, rescuers dug through the smoldering remains of the World Trade Center. Across town, families buried two firefighters found a week earlier. At Fort Drum, on the edge of New York's Adirondacks, soldiers readied for deployment halfway across the world.

Boards of directors of scores of American companies were also busy that day. They handed out millions of bargain-priced stock options to their top executives.

The terrorist attack shut the U.S. stock market for days. When it reopened Sept. 17, stocks skidded more than 14% over five days, in the worst full week for the Dow Jones Industrial Average since Germany invaded France in May 1940. But for recipients of options, the lower their company's stock price when options are awarded the better, since the options grant a right to buy shares at that price for years to come. The grants set recipients up for millions of dollars in profit if the shares recovered.

A Wall Street Journal analysis shows how some companies rushed, amid the post-9/11 stock-market decline, to give executives especially valuable options. A review of Standard & Poor's ExecuComp data for 1,800 leading companies indicates that from Sept. 17, 2001, through the end of the month, 511 top executives at 186 of these companies got stock-option grants. The number who received grants was 2.6 times as many as in the same stretch of September in 2000, and more than twice as many as in the like period in any other year between 1999 and 2003.

Ninety-one companies that didn't regularly grant stock options in September did so in the first two weeks of trading after the terror attack. Their grants were concentrated around Sept. 21, when the market reached its post-attack low. They were worth about $325 million when granted, based on a standard method of valuing stock options."

What makes this so pathetic is that corporate executives could have stepped up AND BOUGHT STOCKS IN THE OPEN MARKET if they believed they were so cheap. It would have been reassuring to a nation to see the leaders of industry voting with their own dollars. It might have made the subsequent economic slow down and period of tense aftermath less painful.>

Instead, these weasels decided to loot the treasury at the first opportunity. America was smouldering, the WTC lay in ruins, and this group of classless pigs decided it was time to pocket some cash.

I'm going to take it a step further: These assclown executives are unAmerican. They are not Patriots, they are not model citizens -- they are merely a pathetic group of opportunistic whores who might as well hang outside the Holland Tunnel looking for a quick buck (although that would involve risk and work, something they have shown a distinct aversion to).

In 1929, when the stock market crashed, JP Morgan (and others) stepped in. They bought stock with their own dollars, they saved Wall Street. Oh, and they were rewarded for it -- both monetarily, and in the history books.

What the more recent group of execs did is probably legal. It certainly isn't ethical, and it reveals them to be "lacking in moral turpitude rectitude." I wonder if there's a morals clause in any of their employment contracts.

What a pathetic group of weasels. Brain cancer is too good for these shitheads. They -- and their lapdog Boards of Directors -- should all be fired.

Friday Night Ladybug Blogging

We took a hike up Icehouse Canyon last week. It was hot, humid and the bugs were hungry. It was also ladybug mating season. By the time I could get a few shots, I was covered in them. I like ladybugs, but, well, that's about as far as it goes. No great pictures, but it made for some fun photoshopping as in the second picture.

Friday Cat Blogging from the Left Paw Society

Geoportail / Geoportal

The French government just rolled out it's new geo-portal similar to Google Earth. The servers are getting hit hard right now, so I can't comment on the service yet, but I'm going to go ahead and link to it. (IGN, je t'aime moi non plus.)

Le voilà: http://www.geoportail.fr/index.php?event=DisplayAccueilVisu

And my predictions...

France 2-Brésil 1

Resource Nationalism

The Financial Times reports today on a document received from the U.S. Military:

Future supplies of oil from Latin America are at risk because of the spread of resource nationalism, a study by the US military that reflects growing concerns in the US administration over energy security has found.

An internal report prepared by the US military’s Southern Command and obtained by the Financial Times follows a recent US congressional investigation that warned of the US’s vulnerability to Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s repeated threats to “cut off” oil shipments to the US.

The report itself notes that "A re-emergence of state control in the energy sector will likely increase inefficiencies and, beyond an increase in short-term profits, will hamper efforts to increase long-term supplies and production..."

Ah, those darn increased inefficiencies. I'm assuming this means that Venezuela is increasing its taxes from next to nothing to twice next to nothing. I'm assuming that democratic politics which place local needs above those of Barbies and Commando-Wannabes tooling around in SUVs is also an inefficiency.

Question to readers: Has anybody been to the Moonie Ranch in Paraguay? 1.5 Million acres. Maybe Neil Bush is there working on his lobbying skills.

Racism

The Economist has its new edition out with this on the cover:









As Jérôme à Paris says, "...now that they are giving it the legitimacy of their front page, with the usual French bashing (calling the young rioters of last November "Muslims" is simply plain false, and the image of the Eiffel tower is anything but subtle), expect more hand-wringing about Europe's seeming unability to deal with its own problems"

Indeed, the article is full of what can only be called propaganda. To starting with, as Jérôme notes, the not so subtle cover. What exactly are they trying to imply? Is France too Muslim? Are the Muslims taking over?

The article has a telling graphic:
(thanks to eurotrib.com for the image)

Really, now, "Where they are"! That's right. You can't be European and Muslim. I'm glad that's all cleared up.

Friday Cat Blogging from the LPS (Left Paw Society)

Yes, Master. Yes.

As you've probably noticed during your daily scroll through the headlines, the House failed to renew the Voting Rights Act yesterday because a few Republicans objected to the act's "singling out" Southern states who have a history of racism. No doubt, these Republicans feel the South does not have a history of racism but rather a heritage:

"The amendment's backers say the requirement unfairly singles out and holds accountable nine states that practiced racist voting policies decades ago, based on 1964 voter turnout data: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia." [Source]

A Republican, either oblivious or opposed to history added,

"I don't think we have racial bias in Texas anymore." [Rep. John Carter, R-Round Rock.]

That's right. It's the "End of History." Those things aren't happening anymore.

Well, actually, they are. Take for example Georgia's on-going push to get a voter ID for which the courts handslapped them last year (from the WaPo: "Voter ID law overturned, Georgia can no longer charge for access to Nov. 8 election..."). Everyone knows about the inaccurate list of "felons" that prevented many people without any previous convictions from voting in 2000. Similarly, in 2004, the RNC came up with a brilliant plan to keep African American votes from counting in the last election. Greg Palast explains:

"Here’s how the scheme worked: The RNC mailed these voters letters in envelopes marked, “Do not forward”, to be returned to the sender. These letters were mailed to servicemen and women, some stationed overseas, to their US home addresses. The letters then returned to the Bush-Cheney campaign as “undeliverable.”

The lists of soldiers of “undeliverable” letters were transmitted from state headquarters, in this case Florida, to the RNC in Washington. The party could then challenge the voters’ registration and thereby prevent their absentee ballots being counted." [Source]

And, of course, I'm not even going into Ohio.

This should be our national shame. We should be outraged. Yet the VRA, like affirmative action, like good public schools, like tax breaks for the wealthy--like so many things--is one of America's many blind spots to its own racial and classist history. Here's a picture I took at the Atlanta airport a few weeks ago (yes, June 2006). What do you think?


Is it racist? Think it's funny? I think it is sad, and, well, it pretty much sums up where we are to me: we have this system, it's racist, yet we stare at it with a sense of irony which allow us to process it and move on. That's too bad, because it goes much deeper than all of this, back to the core of our "national character." And this brings me to something Digby wrote (and I responded to) a few months ago.

Digby

We seem to have a little glitch in our national psyche that won't go away. It isn't just southern anymore. The misadventure of the last five years has been run by a southern dominant political party, but its architects were elite, cosmopolitan intellectuals. This is an American problem and we are going to have to get rid of it if this country is going to survive.

I responded to Digby's post this way:

I couldn't agree more. We are still paying the price for the Missouri Compromise and for the failed Reconstruction period after the Civil War. This is true for race relations, as Katrina and its aftermath amply prove, and, just as importantly, it is true for class relations.

I am not a Civil War historian, but I am from the South and lived in the South for a long time before coming to L.A. One thing I know about red states is that they are a model of colonialism and extraction, seeking to suck out the fruits of natural resources and human labor where they can.

If the most efficient means of labor/resource extraction means classifying a group of people as sub-human, then that is the obvious path. If that becomes socially or politically unacceptable, then other means become necessary. The South's loss in the civil war was as much a social conversion as it was a resource failure. In fact, it is a myth to think that the South lost because it did not have industry. The South lost because people gave up. If the average Southerner in 1864 really believed in slavery and that the slave-owner society was really helping the average citizen, then the South, in 1866 or 1867, would have resembled Iraq in 2006--there would have been widespread rebellion, uprising, guerilla war. This did not happen. Why? The answer if of course complicated, but, in part, it is because many, many white people were oppressed by the upper-class land owners. These whites, while having many more benefits than slaves, obviously, understood that the system was working against them. It was not their war to begin with. How else does one explain the huge desertion rates in the Southern army? (I know, I'm generalizing.)

To get back to my point, and perhaps yours, something changed during reconstruction. As soon as Blacks had "equal" status, they could become the boogeyman for Whites. White Elites exploited this to their full advantage and began to mythologize racism and the "Golden Age of the Old South" through groups such as the KKK --and the Southern Democrats.

The racist mythology allowed poor Whites and rich Whites to find a common ground at the beginning of the 20th century, and at the present. The Republican party, as everyone knows, constantly summons this racist mythology through hint and allusion by nominating racist judges on MLK's birthday, by avoiding speaking to the NAACP, through talk radio and TV pundits. And this is where it gets dangerous, as D. Dneiwert, among others in the blogosphere, points out. The racist myth is so pervasive, so easy to tap into, and so powerful (because its fallacies seem to explain so many things), that a word here, an image there, and our Mass Media has fed into and propagated a racist creed. It is a creed that is false, but powerful because it imbues the believer with power, with an impression of superiority, and this "superiority" crosses class lines, and that is the ultimate scam.

So it isn't just Southern (it never was, it was just more so), and it isn't just race. I have lived abroad, and I will say that America is one of the most racist places I know. Racsim is a huge, huge problem. That said, I feel that it is the ability of the myth, through racism, to elide over class issues that is causing us problems today. It isn't that the "South" has taken over; it is that the extractors, those adept at mining the land and its humans, have come into power. Their belief system in 1860, like now, was exploitation (of blacks and whites), elitism, and expansion. The extractors, now as then, are constantly seeking new territories and peoples at the lowest cost. It is their way of hiding the true cost of their (and our) wealth.

They know that the weath of the here and now almost always comes at the price of people and land. They just don't care.

Look at how the Republican leadership frolics in New York and L.A., supposedly speaking for the "common man", while, in reality, the red-states they represent are among the poorest regions of the country. Though to a lesser degree, Kansas and South Dakota are to America what Africa and South America are to the "developed" world.

This is the Brand America they have created; its purveyors are Fox News and Malkin and Bush. They are all racists, they are all elitists, and they just don't care. The only hope is not it some PC version of eliminating racism, but in re-forming the instutions that purvey the racism and exploitation of Americans, namely government, big business and the media.

Whoever the next president may be, the only real hope is in "demolishing" large swaths of the federal government, and by that, I don't mean getting rid of it, but re-doing it. The Republican party has infiltrated every nook and cranny of government and will hold on to those positions no matter what. The only way to get rid of them is to litterally re-invent the departments from the ground up, removing, where possible, the revolving doors, promoting career officers, etc. Re-organize is perhaps the best term, but there will need to be some creative destruction before the demons of the Republican party, which are overwhelmingly the demons of the Civil War and the Reconstruction, are sufficiently reduced, removed, or whatever.

I do not want to absolve the Democrats in this. They carry a huge blame historically in promoting racsim and exploitation, but, presently, they are simply a weak, rudderless party. The Republicans are, and they know it, up to something far more dangerous and corrupt. It will take an earnest Reconstruction of government to repair what the Republicans have done and continue to do and to make progress in alleviating the burdens of our national demons.

So ended my diatribe and I apologize for quoting myself at such length, but, until there is some sort of reconstruction of government and the social order so as to actually understand and create solidarity with people rather than the interchangeable poles of disdain and pity, then we should be taking note. The VRA is about understanding that voting is not as easy for some as it is for others. Yet even the Voting Rights Act is only a palliative, an advil offered in lieu of real medical intervention: Heck, in most countries people vote on a Saturday or a Sunday, or they make it a national holiday. Now that would be fair to working people of every race and class. That would be an attempt to put all citizens on a more equal footing.

For good and bad (mostly bad), part of the American dream is a dream of isolation. Isolation from religious persecution, isolation in our cars, isolation in our suburbs. Part of us has thrived on being separate and our economy has grown out of this, our physical and social space has grown out of this. We're partially blind to it, and, yes, Southerners can be even more blind, as the above picture shows. And if Southerners are not somewhat blinded by their own history, why do they continue to portray themselves (oops--ourselves--I am from Georgia) as heroes rather than insurrectionists? Take a look at this tribute to American Insurgents below:

I suppose it is OK to dedicate a plaque to the POW of the Civil War, but perhaps they should mention all those other millions of prisoners that tilled the fields, picked the cotten, ironed the clothes, washed the dishes, and got whipped because they said they thought they were as good as Whites.

So it is racist to say "Blacks" are inferior or "Mexicans are inferior." And it is just as racist to say that racism is over and done with because it purposefully removes the debate about race and class in the U.S. Until there are no more memorials like this then I will assume that the South still has a few "issues."

Friday cat blogging from the LPS

Marathon and Biscuit, the latter was shot on some old Polaroid 3000ISO film I have lying around. Hard to use that stuff except for some very specific purposes, but I thought I'd give it a try here even though it's no match for slower films.

Friday cat blogging from the Left Paw Society

Friday Cat Blogging from the Left Paw Society

Tuna

On silent thought

Great little editorial here by Ignacio Ramonet on the role of intellectuals. He mentions, in passing, that Bernard Henri-Levy is "indulg[ing] in exhibitionist self-destructiveness." Yeah, no kidding. The man who is often quoted as France's most important philosopher (and who is therefore understood to be a "French Leftist"), actually writes for a conservative magazine and is often nothing more than an apologist for conservative ideology. Also, his road trip last year, meant to cast him as some kind of new de Toqueville, produced one of the most boring series of articles I've recently read. (It was in the Atlantic Monthly, another stealth conservative magazine, IMHO).

Like so many on the right, BHL fights so hard to un-explain (philosophically distort) the obvious truth that his writing becomes tedious. As Lloyd Benson would say, I knew de Toqueville, and BHL, you're no de Toqueville. Anway, read Ramonet's little piece on public intellectuals and you'll see why we are where we are.

Silent thought

By Ignacio Ramonet

Once again, during the recent revolt against the First Employment Contract, the enthusiasm and dynamism evident on French streets were in marked contrast with the disconcerting silence of French thinkers and writers. The same was true during the November riots in the banlieues. There was a lot of chattering, but few, other than such rare figures as Jean Baudrillard and John Berger, were able to read the events, uncover their deeper significance and suggest what they might portend. With no relevant or encouraging diagnosis forthcoming, society was left in the dark about its symptoms and in danger of succumbing to further crises.

In France an intellectuel is defined as someone who uses a reputation in science, the arts or culture to mobilise public opinion in support of causes that he or she regards as just. In modern states, it has been the role of the intellectual for two centuries to make sense of social trends, illuminating the path towards greater liberty and less alienation.

What the recent crises have demonstrated is how much we miss the analytical intelligence of Pierre Bourdieu, Cornelius Castoriadis and Jacques Derrida, to name three great thinkers no longer with us. A sense of loss has inspired us to examine the current war of ideas. Are there any real thinkers left, or has the media explosion shattered their authority? Why (as if the hatred of fascists and the aversion of the American right were not enough) do such writers as Bernard-Henri Lévy indulge in exhibitionist self-destructiveness? There is a central issue here - the way in which, in publishing and the universities, private interests are enlisting prestigious thinkers as allies in an ideological struggle.

Here are a few thoughts on the subject from some major thinkers in the past. First, Michel Foucault (1): “For a long time, ‘leftwing’ intellectuals spoke out as masters of truth and justice . . . They were heard, or claimed the right to be heard, as representatives of the universal. To be an intellectual was to be, to a degree, the conscience of all. But it is many years since intellectuals were called upon to fulfil this role. Intellectuals became used to operating, not within the universal, the exemplary, the just-and-true-for-all, but in given sectors, in the specific contexts where their own working or living conditions situated them . . . Working in such situations undoubtedly gave them a far more concrete and immediate awareness of struggle. And there they encountered problems that were specific, not universal, and often different from those of the proletariat. I would argue that this brought them closer to the masses, since these were real, material, everyday struggles in the course of which they often encountered, albeit in a different form, the same enemy (the multinationals, the police and legal machines, property speculation) as the urban and rural proletariat. That is what I mean by ‘specific’, as opposed to the ‘universal’, intellectual.”

Then there is Gilles Deleuze on what to do with ideas (2): “A theory is exactly like a toolbox. It must serve some purpose. It must work, and not just for its own sake. If there is no one to use it, starting with the theorist, who thus becomes a practitioner, it is either worthless or its time has not yet come. You do not go back to a theory, you make others and there are always more to be made.”

Pierre Bourdieu (3) proposes a new and radical thinktank: “Many historians have highlighted the role played by thinktanks in the production and imposition of the neoliberal ideology that now rules the world. To counter the work of these expert groups, appointed by our rulers, we need the help of critical networks . . . They should form autonomous intellectual collectives, capable of defining their own objectives and the limits to their agenda and action.

“Groups should start with negative criticism, producing and disseminating tools to defend us against symbolic domination, increasingly backed by the authority of science. Drawing on the strength afforded by their collective skills and authority, such groups can subject the dominant message to logical criticism, targeting its vocabulary, also its arguments. They may subject it to sociological criticism by highlighting the factors influencing the people who produce the dominant message, starting with journalists. They may counter the supposedly scientific claims of experts, particularly in the field of economics.

“The whole structure of critical thought for political purposes needs rebuilding. This cannot be the work of just one great thinker, locked in solitary thought, or the appointed spokesperson of some body, speaking on behalf of all those deprived of the means to speak. On the contrary, intellectual collectives can play an essential role, helping to lay the foundations in society for the collective production of realistic utopias.”

Right: reality-based utopias (i.e., hope and striving for a better future, not some crazy-scheme like gated communities, Disneyland, or Celebration Florida).

I have to say, though, that I've read all of these folks, and, frankly, I also find them tedious (but undeniably pithy). For our think-tanks to work, we have to get back to simpler language and direct engagement rather than engagement filtered through theory. Simple does not mean simplistic. When theorists opt for too much academic language, they opt for disengagement--hence my problems with much of this. Baudrillard, for one, took off his academic masks after 9/11 and wrote some of his most probing works, which also happened to be a culmination of his cultural intuitions of the last 40 years.

We do not need the supposed "authority" of obscure language to inform a progressive future; reality itself provides us with plenty of examples of the failures of the right (and left) to allow us to move ahead. Public polls on heath-care, on clean air and water are the models for this.

Friday Cat Blogging from the Left Paw Society

Staring at a puddle, or the sky in the puddle, or something. Besides the NSA, of course, who really knows what cats think?

Independent Women

As I was perusing Wikipedia last night, I came upon Norman Podhoretz's wife's name, Midge Decter. It turns out that Decter created something called the Independent Women's Forum. I was curious and scooted over to their site. It didn't take long to see that the IWF seems more about Right-Wing propaganda than helping women. A quick look at the blog and you know you're in Michelle Malkin territory:

Some choice quotes from the blog

On Human Rights:
Aren’t you sick of all the propaganda about awful it is for the "tortured" Al Qaeda and Taliban suspects detained down at the U.S. Naval base at Guananamo Bay?

On Iraq:
Michael Barone blows the lid off a story that the mainstream media is covering up:

“Things are better than you think. Yes, I know, most Americans are in a sour mood these days, convinced that the struggle in Iraq is an endless cycle of bloodshed, certain that our economy is in dismal shape, lamenting that the nation and the world are off on the wrong track. That’s what polls tell us. But if we look at some other numbers, we’ll find that we are living not in the worst of times but in something much closer to the best. What do I mean?”

On Grief:
Another tragic automobile accident claimed the lives of two promising high-school girls over the weekend. Quite predictably, grief counselors are descending vulture-like on their school this morning.

It’s a safe bet than none of the youths will be told to suck it up and be dignified.

Ok, you get the drift: things are GREAT in Iraq; torture is good; counselors undermine the American culture of "personal responsibility." They sound like one of those outfits that the Bush administration could get along with...Hey, wait a minute! Look what I found: The IWF was given a grant to "to focus on the immediate promotion of women’s full political and economic participation in Iraq."

Obviously, the IWF is a culturally sensitive organization that is uniquely qualified to bring their brand of "feminism" to Iraq and I'm sure that they got their grant fair and square. No matter that Lynn Cheney, Midge Decter, Kate O'Beirne are among its former directors.

Yes, they got their grant because

IWF is the essential, informed, articulate voice of thoughtful and caring mainstream women in the policy and media battles that shape our nation's future. While showing that we have both a head and heart, we promote voluntary, cooperative approaches to life's challenges that can brighten the future.

I love these people.

"William! William! Get your hands...

off my cash!" Tom cried.

"You'll have to pry it from my cold, dead fingers, Delay. This money's mine and I'm going to put it, uh, in my freezer," William shouted back, never once diverting his gaze from the former exterminator's black, devious eyes.

But William Jefferson felt a pang of fear run down his spine. Delay was "The Man." He ran The System. He knew how to cause pain, how to get Homeland Security on your ass, how to humiliate you, how to put you on life support and piously, mockingly pray for you on TV. Delay was a monster and a machine.

Finally, swallowing hard and hoping that Delay hadn't noticed the expression of doubt that had crept across his face, William spoke again:

"No way, man. I'm not giving you a dime. You never let me in on your game, why should I give you a cut? No. No fucking way. Look at you. Your wife, your kid--they've earned 500K just from working for your PACs. You can walk into Citronelle, smoking a Cuban, and a free table just appears. You see, I don't have friends named Bush, Cheney, Abramoff, Scanlon, Ralph Reed or Terry Schiavo--I'm just one man."

Delay looked down at the William's briefcase. His nostrils flared as the scent of money filled the room, then a look of calm came over the man from Sugarland's pock-marked countenance as he spoke:

"That's right, William. You're just one man, and that's why you'll go down in flames. That's the number one rule of America: failure, like success, is only individual. Do you think the news programs are going to take the time to explain a system? Does anybody remember the Keating Five and John McCain? How about Neil Bush and the S&L scandal? Nope. Question the individual, not the racket... "

"Sir!" an aide said, busting in, "there's a vote in five minutes."

Delay turned around and headed out the door. Pausing a moment, he turned to William and said:

"Too bad, William, you could have been a Republican."

Little did he know, but Delay was right. You never question the system and you never operate outside of it. Furthermore, you never--never--go into public life with any combination of the names "William" and "Jefferson."
****

Excerpts from "Conversations Overheard in a Capitol Hill Restroom."

Police State Porn

The NSA story seems like old news now, having come out last week, but I can't seem to get it off my mind. For a while, I was merely indignant, but then I realized that this latest revelation was echoing in my mind because it was also a reverberation of so many other moments in this administration's history. The story also reminded me of the state of our country, not only politically, but also socially. What kind of community allows this to happen? I am not--I don't think--a naive fool who thinks we should be one happy family, but I do believe that our nation has the possibility of better communicating a few national aspirations to each other and perhaps even fulfilling them.

Currently, we Americans have the illusion that watching our neighbors is the same thing as living with and taking care of them. We seem to think that keeping an eye on each other leads to protection, that surveillance is the same as guardianship, that knowing ourselves through voyeurism can somehow replace real community. This is tragic--but not necessarily inevitable as some historians would have us believe.

A real community watches out for itself, but it does not cast narcisisstic, domineering glares. Its members know each other and not merely of them. A community has institutions that reflect it such as health care and schools and libraries. Of course, not only do Americans often lack this sense of civic community, the Bush administration is actively undermining our ability to create such a thing. And that is perverse.

The current administration's obsession with controlling, gathering (and possibly abusing) surveillance is nothing more than a form of voyeuristic pornography for an elite for whom even the illusion of domination, of total information (and sensory) knowledge brings pleasure--and certainly gathering it all, all the information, all the records brings merely over-stimulation, not true understanding, interaction or follow-through. And perhaps follow-through and arrests are not really the intent.

Indeed, today on CNN when Bill Frist refused to say (citing secrecy) whether the NSA's culling had delivered even a single arrest, it is highly likely that he didn't name an arrest because there haven't been many, if any at all. In fact, the program probably does not deter terrorism or catch terrorists. But this lack of anti-crime effectiveness in no way diminishes the effect such a program has on the American psyche as an intimidating information-gathering practice. Nor does it diminish the feeling of power it confers upon those who control it. And that is why I call it pornographic and voyeuristic, because consummation (in this case, criminal convictions) need only be a distant dream as long as the power feeds those who find use in this technology. Our leaders seem addicted to this feeling and, for them, dealing with the FISA court is like looking the adult store clerk in the eye. It diminishes power. It ruins the effect.

Of course, all of this parallels (in form and sometimes function) the "legalization" of torture, the previous NSA wiretapping revelations, the perverse use of language in things like the Clear Skies Act (Initiative?) and Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL), the strangeness (cruelty) of appointing a racist judge on MLK's birthday, and the countless acts of disrespect and imposed indignity documented over Bush's already interminably long tenure in the White House. As Lambert at Corrente noted (according to FDL), Bush explained the NSA program right in front of a large graphic detailing the NSA's "choke points" where they do their information gleaning. That is called rubbing your nose in it. It is a form of humiliation that brings pleasure to some.

So forget for a moment, if you will, that we have laws in the form of a constitution. Forget that we have a congress. Forget that we have a FISA court. Instead, think of community and all of the above as iterations of a form of community that protects itself from outside threats, from inside threats, and all the while protects the weakest members within that community from its predators. It is from that sense of community that the laws, the constitution and the courts originally arose. Now, regardless of their implementations and interpretations through history, we should strive for that sense of natural law and common good. And that is why the predation and voyeurism are dangerous: they are not merely prone to abuse, they abuse, demean, demoralize and eventually weaken the very community they supposedly serve.

So when the cries of incompetence, stupidity, hubris and greed are more or less forgotten, one defining description of the the GW Bush presidency will remain, must remain: that of the predator, of overwhelming and inexorable predation that gets off on power, that gets off on peeking, prying and on the effect such acts have. Predation of labor. Predation of markets. Predation of public lands. Predation of foreign lands. Predation of public discourse. Predation of our "unalienable" rights to privacy in our bodies, our homes and in our communities. We have been violated.

Sorry

for lack of posts. I hope to find a minute in the next few days.

Illogical and Inane at "The Nation"

This week The Nation has a particularly inane article (behind its firewall) that simultaneously channels Joe Klein and the DLC. In "Help Wanted: GOP Managers (With Pay Scales Soaring, Only Bumblers Are Willing to Work for the Government," Thomas Geoghegan succeeds at what so many Washington pundits are good at: speaking from a purportedly Democratic point of view while consistently undermining Democratic and democratic ideals. To say that Geoghegan's article is silly is to give it too much credit. Moreover that implies that the progressive left should laugh it off. We shouldn't, and here's why.

The article starts off by making a few correct points:

It seems that the Republican Party, the business party, the party of management, has a lot of difficulty managing. Our government cannot execute the basic plays. Let's look past Katrina, and FEMA, and Michael Brown. Let's look past the mismanagement of the oil and gas leases out West, the FDA's bungling over Guidant and its appointment (subsequently retracted) of a veterinarian to head the Office of Women's Health. Let's just consider the new Medicare drug program. The Bush Administration can't even perform a simple thing like getting people off the state Medicaid computer list and onto the Medicare computer list. In 2004 there was a serious shortage of flu vaccine. John Kerry failed to make an issue of it, but the voters should have been alarmed. It was an omen of the bungling to come in New Orleans. This is a government that cannot do even simple things.

Ok. Clear enough. But, starting with his second paragraph, Geoghegan goes seriously astray: "It appears that the Republicans when in power have no good managers. In an economy of superstars who make millions, the GOP can't afford to hire them, especially the ones who are indifferent to public service and gravitate to the Republicans in the first place--or to no party at all." [Emphasis mine]

Let's put aside for a moment some of Geoghegan's assumptions that business superstars are necessarily better managers than promotions from the ranks; that anyone making less than a "superstar" salary must be less competent; that someone who is indifferent to public service is going to enter government (at any salary) and act in its (and the people's) best interest.

Geoghegan goes on to write:

What may be more crippling to Bush's efforts to recruit people is not the CEO pay but the pay of the vice presidents just below them. That's where the government might look for talent to manage at the assistant secretary level. But it is questionable how many of these managers can afford public service--for a year perhaps, but not for three or four, much less two presidential terms. A friend of mine in a top-rank job at a huge global firm told me of a colleague of his in a rising American company. The colleague was now head of personnel, or human relations. "And do you know what his salary is?" my friend told me. "It's $5 million a year." Five million dollars a year--for a personnel director. It is unlikely this man is going to go home and tell his wife, "I'm ready to work for $120,000 a year because I want to help George Bush reogranize the Census Bureau."

[snip]

Now what's most distinctive about Bush is that he's floundering to find managers.

[snip]

There should be some sympathy for George Bush's attempts to persuade a talented human relations manager to give up $5 million a year to take a job writing regulations for the Federal Register. It seems unfair to question the patriotism of such people...It's hard to take in the scale of sacrifice.

You know, I do question the patriotism of anyone who puts money above public service. Sacrifice? How is that people who preach all day about the sacrifices of soldiers can't subsist on over 100K per year? But let's assume government jobs are too big of a "sacrifice" for people on Wall Street and K street. Are there any real Americans left to do the job?

Well, millions of firefighters, school teachers, soldiers and others live happy lives in this country without being solely motivated by money. Perhaps they couldn't manage FEMA, you say. Fine. Yet there are governors and state-level managers around the country who have spent their lives in dedicated public service who could easily manage FEMA, Census or any other government branch. Even George Bush hired a competent, rich Secretary of Treasury, Paul O'Neill. O'Neill did a good job, he was honest, reliable, concerned--and therefore he was forced to retire. And therein lies the problem with Geoghegan's assumptions about our president. Is it not possible that what normal citizens see as mismanagement (by Brown, by Chertoff, by Rumsfeld) is actually precisely the result that George Bush and corrupt Republicans want? Is is not possible that many right-wing people want to manage government towards implosion and failure because their goal is to eliminate or severely reduce public programs like Social Security, Medicare, FEMA, HUD, or HHS? I would argue that Republican rhetoric of the last twenty years has embraced the anti-democratic and oftentimes racist values of those who opposed FDR and of the John Birsh Society. I would argue that structural failure at, say, FEMA, is actually considered a sucess by some people like Grover Norquist, who wish strangle government until it dies. I would argue that George Bush agrees with Grover Norquist, as his tax program proves, and that George Bush is doing his part to hasten the collapse of the Great Society and the New Deal. Given this, no one should have sympathy for George Bush.

We should fear our president for his ability to do harm, and we should fear his pseudo-critics (who are actually apologists) like Geoghegan, who fail to understand the connections between our government's failures and the underlying "conservative" philosophy that seeks their doom.

Furthermore, pointing out the exorbitant salaries of corporate America does little to convince me that paying government managers more is necessary, nor does it convince me that "only bumblers" are willing to work for government. Perhaps I am one of those "Liberals [who] tend to sneer about the revolving door and how so many in the GOP cash in on public service via lobbying on K street." Well, since all that GOP cashing in is proving to be highly felonious, well, allow me a sneer or two. Also allow me to believe that K street is not good for America regardless of its reality.

Geoghegan doesn't convince me either that our government is naturally full of "bumblers" and that we need corporate assistance. Is Geohegan saying that Richard Clarke is a bumbler? Are all of our generals? The FAA? The National Park Service? These agencies have, without a doubt, numerous mid- to upper-level managers more than capable and more than willing to the job. Likewise, there is more than ample evidence that Bush and the Repbulicans want to gut government programs. In other words, Bush did not promote internally because, as I said, he has neither the American people's nor its government's interest in mind.

Bush does not deserve our sympathy, he deserves our scorn--as do Geoghegan and the Nation's editors for publishing this article that sounds like it emanated from the fingers of Joe Klein. Really. There are more problems with Geoghegan's argument that I won't go into, and this article should have been sent back as a first draft with the words "Rewrite after checking with reality and an exorcist specializing in DLC possessions" written on the first page. With so many good journalists like Jeremy Scahill and Naomi Klein to call, The Nation could have filled these pages with an opionion worthy of its reader's time. They didn't and in so doing they hurt the Democratic and democratic causes they normally serve.

It's Mayday...

Today should be the day when all but the most essential workers in the U.S. get the day off. Alas, today is Law Day. And, you know, sometimes symbolism is important, and today should be a symbolic day. It is a date that commemorates the weekend, the 8-hour workday, child-labor laws, etc. Instead, our governmen t calls it Law Day, as if worker activism and the law were contradictory. I wonder how many high-school teachers are using today as a teaching moment about anti-labor forces in the U.S.? I wonder how many of them feel comfortable doing so?