THE OBAMA DOCTRINE: THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

A JAZZMAN CHRONICLE By Jack Random. DISSEMINATE FREELY.


“It is time to become what American principles and values insist that we must become. It is time to be what our leaders have always claimed that we were: a beacon of justice, human rights and democracy. It is time to fulfill the promise of our forefathers. Our destiny cannot and must not be to dominate the world but rather to improve the lot of human kind.”

The Jazzman Chronicles, Volume One, Principles of Foreign Policy.


I believe in democracy. I believe in the right of the people to self-determination. I believe in civil liberties and fundamental human rights. I believe that unjustified war is the ultimate violation of human rights and, therefore, the use of arms to settle conflicts must be a last option.

I am not a pacifist. I believe there are circumstances that justify war. For a war to be truly justified, these circumstances cannot be defined ad hoc. They cannot be adopted impromptu to fit the circumstance of a crisis. They must be defined as a matter of policy and principle.

Clearly, a war is justified if a nation or its allies is attacked by another nation. By this essential and fundamental standard, no major military action since World War II has been justified. The Korean War was avoidable. The Vietnam War was a crime against civilization. The Iraq Wars were strategic. The Afghan-Pakistan War was unwise and unnecessary. The people who misled us into that war belittled those who called for a police action but that is exactly what our response should have been. A nation does not respond to a terrorist attack with the blunt instrument of war unless it wants to elevate the terrorist group to the status of sovereignty.

Politicos and politicians of all stripes can say that Afghanistan is now Obama’s war but that rings hollow. Libya is in fact the only military action instigated by the Obama administration. Thus far it remains uncertain and vague as a statement of policy. The administration may have its own reasons for this obscuration of purpose but if we want to determine fairly and objectively whether this war meets the standard of a justified action we must apply principles and policies already established.

Toward that end I have consulted my own prior writings for the principles that apply to the current action in Libya.

Principle: The United States will not engage in interventions that support non-democratic governments or governments that violate the inalienable rights of its citizens.

While it would seem that this principle would argue against Muammar Gaddafi it does not argue for intervention. Gaddafi is a despot and his government is tyrannical but we know very little about the opposition and what kind of government they would in fact bring. Moreover, we have neither the right nor the capacity to depose every despot in the world. Therefore the justification for this war must originate elsewhere.

Principle: Our nation will take appropriate action to prevent, inhibit or halt genocide.

This was the rationale Bill Clinton used for intervention in Kosovo where we were told genocide was under way. While there is evidence that massacres occurred on both sides of that conflict, the definition of genocide likely relies more on massive dislocation than on an attempt to exterminate the Muslim population. There is strong evidence that the US led NATO intervention may have enabled a reverse genocide (see “The Truth About Bosnia and Kosovo” by David Icke). By any objective account, the case for intervention in Kosovo is far more complex and less compelling than we have been led to believe.

Leaving an analysis of Kosovo aside, is there compelling evidence that genocide was about to occur in Libya? After the bombing began Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was quick to claim that a massacre was prevented in Benghazi. Maybe so. Maybe not. Any number of scenarios could have played out. A genuine truce might have been negotiated in lieu of a NATO attack or stiff sanctions. The western world could have seized the accounts of all mercenaries engaged in Libya unless they withdrew immediately. The opposition could have laid down their arms.

What we do know is that the Libyan opposition is political. It is not representative of any ethnic divide. Therefore, neither the extent of violence nor the nature of the conflict allows any consideration of genocide in Libya. This is not a cause for war.

Principle: We will not act as the police force of the world.

This principle argues strongly against unilateral intervention. President Obama was right to seek international agreement and the consent of the United Nations Security Council. Unlike his predecessor he did not defy the United Nations and he did not build a coalition by bribery and coercion. As long as we remain within the mandate of the Security Council resolution we have the sanction of international law. The instant we go beyond that mandate we lose moral and legal grounding.

When the president states that his standard for success in Libya is the removal of Gaddafi from power, he signals that he is prepared to go beyond the mandate. He promises that we will not take the lead in this operation and we will not commit troops to yet another ground war in the region. This is the very definition of a mixed message. Reminiscent of the promises made by the Clinton administration in Kosovo (promises that were not kept), we have run headlong into a zone of duplicity where we can neither move forward nor backward. If in fact the bombing campaign is insufficient to remove the dictator from power, we will have placed ourselves in a dilemma: Escalate our involvement or admit that we have failed and placed the civilians we were charged to protect at even greater risk than before.

This is precisely why policies of intervention should not be left to impromptu actions. We cannot afford to be entangled in yet another civil war while our nation is facing a prolonged economic crisis, while our own people are suffering and while the other more pressing needs of the world and the nation are neglected.

We have neither the right nor the resources to act as the police force of the world.

Principle: We will practice a policy of restraint in civil wars and civil conflicts.

A careful consideration of this principle would have prevented our disastrous entanglements in both Iraq and Afghanistan. It would have precluded us from a protracted engagement in Kosovo with at best mixed results.

How does it apply in Libya? Is this a civil war or is it an unpopular dictator imposing his will through mercenary forces and arms supplied by many of the same powers now aligned against him?

I have said so before and I will say so again: There is no place in a civilized world for mercenary armies. The first lesson of this conflict like so many others is that we can no longer permit mercenary armies and weapons traders to act with no more restraint than the free market allows. Mercenaries should be banned outright. Weapons traders should operate under strict international guidelines. No civilized nation should be supplying arms to dictators, tyrants and kings who operate independent of the will of their people.

What do we expect to happen when the people rise up against despotic leaders, as they inevitably will?

It is not yet clear whether the conflict in Libya can best be defined as a civil war or a popular uprising. If it is a civil war or becomes one, our best policy is restraint. If it is a popular uprising, our justification for war remains uncertain.

I can only conclude that either the principles guiding the Obama administration are substantially different than my own or this was an emotion-charged response to a crisis situation. Like the Bush administration in Afghanistan and Iraq, it appears to lack foresight. Like the ill-fated Supreme Court decision in 2000 that installed Bush in the White House, the administration may wish to discount precedent value but it cannot be done.

Are we prepared to act in kind when similar circumstances arise in other countries? How do we justify failure to act in Yemen, Bahrain, the Emirates, Saudi Arabia or anywhere else a popular uprising is suppressed by a non-democratic government?

Discounting the expansion of the Afghan War into Pakistan, the bombing of Libya was the first military intervention instigated by the Obama administration. What does it say about the Obama Doctrine of foreign policy?

It seems clear that the president is far less restrained in committing the force of arms than I can condone. The hope now is that events in Libya do not veer out of control as they have in Afghanistan and as they did in Iraq. The hope now is that the president will be able to keep his promise of a limited intervention.

Murphy’s Law holds that anything that can go wrong will go wrong. That is precisely why we should never engage in actions on the scale of war without a clear objective and an equally clear path to its fulfillment.

We are asking for trouble in Libya. We are asking for trouble with a policy that cannot be sustained elsewhere in the world. We are taking a gamble in an arena where the risks are far too great.

I genuinely hope the opposition seizes control in Libya and under the pressure of an international coalition fulfills the promise of a democratic government. If it does not and events spin out of control, entangling us in yet another quagmire of indefinite length, then this decision may well prove catastrophic.

For now we can only ask the president to remember his promise. The people do not want another war in a faraway land. We cannot afford it and we do not wish to sacrifice any more lives to foreign misadventures.

Jazz.

JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS). THE CHRONICLES HAVE BEEN POSTED ON NUMEROUS CITES OF THE WORLDWIDE WEB, INCLUDING THE ALBION MONITOR, BELLACIAO, BUZZLE, COUNTERPUNCH, DISSIDENT VOICE, THE NATIONAL FREE PRESS AND PACIFIC FREE PRESS. SEE WWW.JAZZMANCHRONICLES.BLOGSPOT.COM.

Remembering Joe: Grief and Recovery

Subject: Two months ago
Date: Mar 24, 2011 7:47 AM

It is almost incomprehensible to me that Joe has been dead two months now. Up here in Santa Fe, alone in this empty house, I have had to confront my grief in ways I never did in the hustle and bustle of Albuquerque. Yesterday was the first day I got through without crying. Three tears while on the phone with my sister offering to send me the photos of Joe’s last birthday party, when I’m strong enough. I’m not strong enough yet but she’ll save them for me.

I do look forward to the Border Book Festival on April 8 and my plane flight out of the country on the 27th. Everything is new now, the van remodeled for one, new dishes, new cups, I just can’t look at the old stuff. I even bought new underwear. Most of the time I have spent up here crying and shopping.

I was invited into a women’s writers group in Santa Fe, we meet on Mondays. I sob as I read. Joe’s friend Mona came down from Taos, she has lost a son at 23, she and I both sobbed at the table at Whole Foods as we tried to eat our lunch. I cry when I get up, cry when I go to bed and try to fill the hours productively in between.

But I’m not asking for pity. Grief is simply work that must be done. I have had so much support from all of you. The pace will really pick up in April. I’ll go back to Las Cruces for April, got a place to stay. My van will be painted while I’m gone, so I am ecstatic about that. After three years of restoration this will be the final thing to do. When I get back from Mexico I see myself driving around the Southwest hitting all the open mics and selling Joe’s book out of the back of my van, just like so many others I have known.

I’ll get there, I will be happy again, I know it, Joe would want it for me. I believe I have dwelt too long on remembering him there at the last. I made some more chapbooks of poetry taken from the book and working on a project always makes me feel better. I get so much satisfaction from my artistic endeavors. I went to a bead shop and restrung my pearls. It’s a long necklace, then I added a giant cross to the pearls and now I look like a nun with a pearl rosary. All these images comfort me. I’ll get there.


Happy Trails

Beatlick Pamela

Editor's Note: Beatlick Joe Speer's book Backpack Trekker: A 60's Flashback is available at Amazon.com.

Buy American: Check the Can

By Joan Stellrecht


Did y’all see that Diane Sawyer has a special report coming up this week. They removed ALL items from a typical, middle class family's home that were not made in the USA . There was hardly anything left besides the kitchen sink. Literally. During the special they are going to show truckloads of items - USA made - being brought in to replace everything and will be talking about how to find these items and the difference in price etc..

It was interesting that Diane said that if every American spent just $64 more than normal on USA made items this year, it would create something like 200,000 new jobs!

I WAS BUYING FOOD THE OTHER DAY AT WALMART and ON THE LABEL OF SOME PRODUCTS IT SAID 'FROM CHINA’

FOR EXAMPLE THE "OUR FAMILY" BRAND OF THE MANDARIN ORANGES SAYS RIGHT ON THE CAN 'FROM CHINA '

I WAS SHOCKED SO FOR A FEW MORE CENTS I BOUGHT THE LIBERTY GOLD BRAND OR THE DOLE SINCE IT'S FROM CALIF.

Are we Americans as dumb as we appear --- or --- is it that we just do not think while the Chinese, knowingly and intentionally, export inferior and even toxic products and dangerous toys and goods to be sold in American markets?

70% of Americans believe that the trading privileges afforded to the Chinese should be suspended.

Why do you need the government to suspend trading privileges? DO IT YOURSELF, AMERICA!!

Simply look on the bottom of every product you buy, and if it says 'Made in China ' or 'PRC' (and that now includes Hong Kong ), simply choose another product, or none at all. You will be amazed at how dependent you are on Chinese products, and you will be equally amazed at what you can do without.

Who needs plastic eggs to celebrate Easter? If you must have eggs, use real ones and benefit some American farmer. Easter is just an example. The point is do not wait for the government to act. Just go ahead and assume control on your own.

THINK ABOUT THIS: If 200 million Americans refuse to buy just $20 each of Chinese goods, that's a billion dollar trade imbalance resolved in our favor...fast!!

Most of the people who have been reading about this matter are planning on implementing this on March. 4th and continue it until April 4th. That is only one month of trading losses, but it will hit the Chinese for 1/12th of the total, or 8%, of their American exports. Then they might have to ask themselves if the benefits of their arrogance and lawlessness were worth it.

Remember, March 4th to April 4th

START NOW.


Send this to everybody you know. Let's show them that we are Americans and NOBODY can take us for granted.

If we can't live without cheap Chinese goods for one month out of our lives, WE DESERVE WHAT WE GET!

Pass it on, America.

THE JACK RANDOM PROBLEM

I am Jack Random.

I published my first short story under the name of Jack Random in 1997. I have since published several stories, a novel and hundreds if not thousands of commentaries or works of fiction under the name of Jack Random on the worldwide web. I believe I have some measure of ownership of that name and feel responsible for the words associated with it.

Much to my amazement I have learned that there are characters by the name of Jack Random in at least two works of fiction, including the Deathstalker series by British SciFi writer Simon Green and the obscure 1918 movie Somebody’s Widow. There are to my knowledge, however, no writers by the name of Jack Random predating my work in 1997.

In recent years I have become aware of a proliferation of individuals operating under the name of Jack Random. Most of them I can abide but some I would like to distance myself from, the most recent being a Facebook edition of Mr. Random. There is also a Yahoo Jack Random and a MySpace Jack Random.

On this occasion I would like to point out that they are not me and I am not associated with their words or music or thoughts in any way.

I am the jazzman Jack Random, author of Dark Underground, Ghost Dance Insurrection, The Killing Spirit, Hard Times, and the Jazzman Chronicles as well as many other works of fiction.

I am a progressive independent and believe strongly in tolerance. If any writer or personality expresses thoughts contrary to that philosophy they are not me. Anyone who rants from the right is not worthy of the name.

Jazz.

BEATLICK JOE: The Last Goodbye.

When you come of a certain age as I have, death becomes a part of life. No longer an abstraction, a mystery of time and space, but a reality of everyday life. We grow numb to death as a means of survival.

But every so often death moves too close. It taps our shoulder and inhabits our conscious lives. The death of a child, whose innocence offends our sense of justice, or a promising youth who never reached fulfillment, or the death of a brethren spirit, someone who exemplified the kind of person we always admired and strove to be.

Beatlick Joe Speer has waved his last goodbye on this journey through life on the planet earth. He has gone to a place where only memories and spiritual messaging can reach him. He was an artist in the purest sense, a master carpenter in the medium of words, a fellow traveler in search of wisdom and inspiration and possessing more than his share of both. Along with his longtime wife and partner, Beatlick Pamela Hirst, he cultivated art and artists, provided a forum for voices longing to be heard, and transformed the world he encountered into a more interesting and better place.

It was my pleasure to share the stage in a recorded production of perhaps my most inspired and least understood work: Dark Underground. I can still hear his Ornette Coleman riffs, rising, falling, punctuated pauses and elongated phonemes, hammering a beat only he could feel. Not only words, which he possessed in abundance, but a master of sound as well.

No one will ever take the place of Beatlick Joe Speer. He leaves behind friends, family, a legacy of prose and poetry, and his masterwork: Backpack Trekker: A Sixties Flashback. It is a work that stakes a place in history, literature, sociology and psychology. It is an exploration of the soul of an artist and stands alone as a chronicle of both the sixties and human evolution. It is a work that will live forever.

“Books are like angels that move between the living and the dead.” Joe Speer.

Adios, my friend, you will be missed.

See you on the next run.

Jazz.

Beatlicks: Fighting off Death

I fought off death last night‏

Actually night before last. I suppose this was an hallucination. I have been working on editing Joe's book proof, setting up his new facebook page and reediting the website with the latest newsletter. I was working on the website all day and night and was shocked to see it was almost three o'clock in the morning. I went to bed. As I lay in bed, very sad and crying, I looked up in the dark at the ceiling. There was a faint glimmer of light. I began to see spinning and whirling entities fill the top of the room. Everything was rotating, smoky like giant white moths. These little whirls began to come towards me and Joe. I had no doubt that this was death, horrible furries, swirling around and trying to suck up Joe's soul. Evil horrible things. I stared at them and they flew close to my face taunting me, but I just kept my eyes wide open challenging them and leaned over Joe as he lay in the bed so they couldn't get at him. This went on for quite a few minutes. Finally they began to come together up in the ceiling and reshape into something more like clouds. It seemed I had been able to repel them but they were not leaving by any means.

I thought to myself this is working but I don't know how long I can keep my eyes wide open like this for the whole night. And then I realized they would never tolerate the light. So I merely got out of bed and turned on the light. Problem solved. But I tell you with ever fiber of my heart I believe I fought off death last night as it came to take Joe.

The next day new medication to help his nausea worked and he was able to eat just a little bit but at least something. He has been literally starving to death for two weeks. So I can get some food in him, he has rallied enough to sit in on the editing sessions and I do believe he will make it to The Source on Thursday here in Albuquerque for a little tribute celebration in his honor. It's at 1111 Carlisle SE here in Albuquerque.

This is the only good thing that has happened in such a long time. Joe won't have long for this world, but at least I hope he will live to hold the final edition of his book. The editing is going on fast and furious, six of us at a time sitting around the table editing the proofs.

Love and peace
Beatlick Pamela

Realist Re: The Clinton Pivot

Date: Sat, 1 Jan 2011 08:41:20 -0800
From: writerealist@earthlink.net

I have to begin with praise for this article, for it is the best rebuttal to those who defend Obama's sorry performance that I have yet seen. I do not, however, place all of the blame for his disaster upon him.

As the nominal leader of his party, Obama certainly deserves denunciation. But there was another -Harry Reid- who could have done much to alter the present outcome of the 111th Congress. Many times he telegraphed the strategy of the Democratic caucus, as if to provide early warning to their opponents on how to prepare a counterattack. He also didn't enforce party discipline as well as the Republicans did, or the Blue Dogs like Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu and Blanche Lincoln couldn't have held so much control in their corporatist hands. I'm glad we don't have Sharron Angle to deal with, but I sure wish Reid had gone down to defeat. I feel he should be challenged for the Majority Leader spot in the 112th Congress.

In contrast, Nancy Pelosi -who received far more abuse from the right-wingers than Reid did- managed to keep a fractious House under control and produced 400 bills that never saw the light of the Senatorial day. She is the exception to the inept Democratic leadership of the 111th Congress period. Had Obama and Reid done their jobs, life would be so much better in America today.

In your comment thread on Dissident Voice, you are attacked for promoting Hillary as being no different from Bill. Frankly, I have to agree, but not for the reasons presented. I expect that Hillary -having served as a corporate lawyer as Bill did not- is even more in tune with the corporatist coup going on today. She shares its roots in her own life, only becoming liberalized in college. I believe that she would have been worse than Bill or Obama. Her Senate record supporting the Iraq War when her constituents opposed it is alone a sufficient difference to promote in your defense. It certainly convinced me that she was not the horse to back in the race.

Moving back to Obama, once he had defeated Hillary for the nomination, his dramatic rightward shift should have been a siren in the night for Democrats. As your Dissident Voice commenter Max Shields said on December 14th, 2010 at 5:16pm, "I could not bare (sic) to vote for the man; he was just far too transparent." I have to agree with this assessment (I could not bring myself to vote for him either), and yet too many Democrats did not seem to notice.

The simple conclusion is that collectively we were fooled. The next issue we face is how to avoid being fooled again.

As I see it, somehow we have to convince the Democratic Party leadership that Obama cannot run again in 2012. One would think that the midterm avalanche would awaken them, but I see no sign of any awareness. I don't see that we are going to have much time to alter the nation's course if the next election goes corporatist. 2012 could be our last chance. So we have to make the best of what we have and look ahead to plan what to do, and to stop looking back for things to happen that might never have happened anyway. It's down to our own welfare. We have to look out for ourselves now. If somehow we win, then we can take care of our friends. we can help no one if we don't help ourselves. and the first thing we need to do is change the Democratic Party if we can. Otherwise, we might as well get used to corporate rule.

Realist
http://blogcritics.org/writers/realist

PS: Best wishes to Joe Speer for a speedy recovery.

Reader response: The Clinton Pivot

Date: Sat, 1 Jan 2011 09:03:23 -0600
Subject: Thanks for "The Clinton Pivot: Obama Sells the Farm" and...

...what can we do to get out of the mess we are in now? Population in 1910 was 1.9 billion people on earth and now it is around 7 billion in 2011. Which resources will we run out of first which will cause the civilizations currently existing to implode? Help!!! Is anyone listening, that is, enough of us to affect the change we need or are people going willingly to their death, not having heard of Alan Harrington's "The Immortalist" and Robert Heinlein's Methuselah's Children ideas. Oh well, where is the nearest cave. This summer I will gather wood for the winter...just in case.

KHB, Platteville area, WI, USA

Prayers for Beatlick Joe

[Editor Note: Those of you who have from time to time checked the contents of this web log are familiar with the adventures of the Beatlicks (Joe Speer & Pamela Hirst). Along with my friend wZ they are artists of the first order (art for art's sake) and members of a vanishing tribe: The Troubadours. I recently learned (see below) that on their latest adventure Beatlick Joe was diagnosed with cancer. At last word they were in Texas on their way back to New Mexico from Florida. Our prayers go out to them both. They are one of a kind. I will always remember my days in Nashville where the Beatlicks were King and Queen of the poetry scene. It was my pleasure to stand beside him in a recorded production of my radio play: Darc Underground. Joe would begin his usual readings with "Page#..." from his work in progress. What followed was a day in the life, an anecdote, or a recounting of literature and history, and was always compelling. In my various encounters with him, I would always ask him if he finished the book, perhaps knowing that he had no intention of doing so. Now, as the sunset may be nearing, it may be time to finish it up and post it as a legacy to a singular life worth living. A blessing on you both. You will have a lasting place in the hearts, minds and souls of all you have touched. Peace.]

From: Pamela Hirst
Subject: Pray for Beatlick Joe
Date: Nov 19, 2010 3:47 PM

As most of you know Beatlick Joe and I have been traveling cross country visiting old haunts. He has been having some indistinct pains on his left side and when his leg swelled up alarmingly this morning I took him to an emergency room in Panama City, or near there.

Joe has deep vein thrombosis, blood clots in his lungs and legs, and lesions on his liver. He also has a mass on his pancreas about half the size of my thumb. He was hospitalized and will be given blood thinners in the morning. We will see a cancer specialist on Monday.

Joe has insurance in New Mexico. We have to get back as quickly as possible but Joe will not be able to sit for long stretches at a time so it will take some time. I will be injecting him with blood thinners once a day.

He does have insurance in New Mexico, thank god.

We will have to find some kind of affordable housing in Las Cruces. We have to find a cancer doctor to decide whether to cut out the growth on his pancreas or use radiation. I have asked his doctor in Las Cruces to recommend a cancer doctor, I think they are called oncologists.

In Las Cruces we will have to find a cancer doctor who will decide whether to treat the mass in his pancreas with radiation or surgery.

If you know others who have gone through this, hopefully successfully, please let me know, suggest some websites for me.

Pray pray

Beatlick Pamela

The Giants Win the Series!

By Jack Random


Prosperity for the prosperous
Austerity for the poor

Less for those with the least
For those with the most more

College for the rich
War for the poor

Fortunes for the fortunate
Debt for the working stiffs
Bailouts for the bankers
Foreclosures for the dreamers
Bonuses for the corporate masters
Bankruptcy for the shopkeepers

The wars drone on in silence
The warriors and wounded cast aside
Pick up the pieces and get in line
There's enough bread for all

Global meltdown nuclear winter...

Who cares?

The Giants won the Series!

Peace,
Random

Hunter S. Thompson: Ignorance & Morality

RE: HUNTER S THOMPSON

BY JAKE BERRY

An except from an email to my brother Jon regarding Hunter Thompson and morality:

Thanks for the latest HST info. I know about Steadman's book, but I didn't know about Breakfast with Hunter. I think you're right on target about him. He was not only a visionary in his approach to the art, an innovator in it's practice, but also he was at heart a moralist. Many, even the elite and literati, refuse to acknowledge this because to do so would be to cede ground to someone that was definitely not one of them. It would also expose their hypocrisy. Western culture, the U.S. especially, is incredibly puritanical and doctrinaire. They talk about freedom and liberal democracy and thump their chests while they spout their "values" just like fundamentalists thump their Bibles or Korans. They make more interesting conversation and are less likely to justify their violence in the name of God, but they're just as narrow minded, intolerant and dangerous. Hunter saw straight through all kinds of hypocrisy because it was so alien to him. When he lied he lied straight in your face, did it well and laughed at you when you fell for it. He was aware that he was lying and knew the advantages of a well made lie over a steaming pile of facts that pass for truth. He gets knocked from all sides for his drug abuse, but look at the people who are criticizing him. How many of them are or are long dead as a result of bad diet and / or officially sanctioned drug abuse (i.e. their doctor was their pusher). Like all puritans they hide anything that doesn't conform to the doctrine. Hunter called their bluff. He openly confessed and enjoyed his sins. In other words he admitted to being a flawed human, just like every other human and made it an integral part of his work. So with HST you get the full creature, not the primed and coifed human ready for his or her moment - playing out the charade of progressivism. We make progress in technology. That makes sense. You keep trying to improve your tools for more efficiency, a quicker route to a better result. But we're just plain lying to ourselves if we think we've made moral progress. We've just learned how to hide the beast behind a cloak of civility. We have that leisure because we're at the top of the heap. Most humans have to get what they can get any way they can get it or die. Those are the people we hire to do the dirty work of keeping the gears turning. They take the risks and we buy the product of that risk. The only difference between cold blooded murder and murder by proxy is that the latter doesn't have to hide the corpse and clean the blood out of his clothes. We're all guilty of almost every form of atrocity - even if we don't know we're doing it. Ignorance is no excuse. Hunter refused to be ignorant, but he didn't go soft either. He knew that survival for one often meant death for another, freedom for a few meant slavery for most. That's why people like him and William Burroughs will remain relevant long after the majority of the pulitzer prize winner class have become quaint curiosities.

We do what we must to survive. If we can be kind enough to treat one another the way we want to be treated we're far ahead of the devouring pack. That's the most you can expect from humans and that's the most any truly wise human and / or savior ever asked of us. We all fail even to reach that low mark, but the least we can do is admit it and keep trying. Things like religion, politics and what we consume are mere side effects of what is actually happening. Why get tangled up in the side show when you can walk right into the full light of reality and drink your fill - and then some?

Election Day 2010 (A Voter's Guide)

By Jake Berry



Choose a thick cut - 


preferably a fat ham. 




Drill a small hole through it. 


Insert a spark plug into the wound.


Wrap a live wire around its tip. 




Insert a tube

into the opposite end of the wound.

Pour gasoline down the tube. 




Observe how the flesh leaps.


Keep the gasoline coming.



The flesh is twitching now,

moving across the floor.

Call it a meat engine.



Clothe the entire apparatus

in a large flag.



Toss it out into the yard.



Keep the gasoline coming.



When it rains

observe how the convulsions surrender

and reignite

and thick smoke rises.




Inhale the stench. 




Keep the gasoline coming.

Arundhati Roy: Oppressing Dissent

In an update of events in India regarding Arundhati Roy, the author relates that while the charges of sedition have been dropped, the attempt to oppress her dissenting view continues with the media... (courtesy of Z Net).

Statement on Media and Mobs

By Arundhati Roy

Monday, November 01, 2010


New Delhi, October 31: A mob of about a hundred people arrived at my house at 11 this morning (Sunday October 31st 2010.) They broke through the gate and vandalized property. They shouted slogans against me for my views on Kashmir, and threatened to teach me a lesson.

The OB Vans of NDTV, Times Now and News 24 were already in place ostensibly to cover the event live. TV reports say that the mob consisted largely of members of the BJP’s Mahila Morcha (Women’s wing).

After they left, the police advised us to let them know if in future we saw any OB vans hanging around the neighborhood because they said that was an indication that a mob was on its way. In June this year, after a false report in the papers by Press Trust of India (PTI) two men on motorcycles tried to stone the windows of my home. They too were accompanied by TV cameramen.

What is the nature of the agreement between these sections of the media and mobs and criminals in search of spectacle? Does the media which positions itself at the ‘scene’ in advance have a guarantee that the attacks and demonstrations will be non-violent? What happens if there is criminal trespass (as there was today) or even something worse? Does the media then become accessory to the crime?

This question is important, given that some TV channels and newspapers are in the process of brazenly inciting mob anger against me.

In the race for sensationalism the line between reporting news and manufacturing news is becoming blurred. So what if a few people have to be sacrificed at the altar of TRP ratings?

The Government has indicated that it does not intend to go ahead with the charges of sedition against me and the other speakers at a recent seminar on Azadi for Kashmir. So the task of punishing me for my views seems to have been taken on by right wing storm troopers.

The Bajrang Dal and the RSS have openly announced that they are going to “fix” me with all the means at their disposal including filing cases against me all over the country. The whole country has seen what they are capable of doing, the extent to which they are capable of going.

So, while the Government is showing a degree of maturity, are sections of the media and the infrastructure of democracy being rented out to those who believe in mob justice?

I can understand that the BJP's Mahila Morcha is using me to distract attention from the senior RSS activist Indresh Kumar who has recently been named in the CBI charge-sheet for the bomb blast in Ajmer Sharif in which several people were killed and many injured.

But why are sections of the mainstream media doing the same?

Is a writer with unpopular views more dangerous than a suspect in a bomb blast? Or is it a question of ideological alignment?


Arundhati Roy

October 31st 2010

Pity the Nation that Jails Dissent

As we wrestle with the issues of an election in America, the world continues to remind us that we are fortunate to live in a nation that allows dissent. One of the world's great political writers and novelists is currently threatened by the oppressive sedition laws of her nation. Here is her statement (courtesy of Z Net):

I Pity The Nation That Needs To Jail Those Who Ask For Justice

By Arundhati Roy

Wednesday, October 26, 2010


I write this from Srinagar, Kashmir. This morning's papers say that I may be arrested on charges of sedition for what I have said at recent public meetings on Kashmir. I said what millions of people here say every day. I said what I, as well as other commentators have written and said for years. Anybody who cares to read the transcripts of my speeches will see that they were fundamentally a call for justice. I spoke about justice for the people of Kashmir who live under one of the most brutal military occupations in the world; for Kashmiri Pandits who live out the tragedy of having been driven out of their homeland; for Dalit soldiers killed in Kashmir whose graves I visited on garbage heaps in their villages in Cuddalore; for the Indian poor who pay the price of this occupation in material ways and who are now learning to live in the terror of what is becoming a police state.

Yesterday I traveled to Shopian, the apple-town in South Kashmir which had remained closed for 47 days last year in protest against the brutal rape and murder of Asiya and Nilofer, the young women whose bodies were found in a shallow stream near their homes and whose murderers have still not been brought to justice. I met Shakeel, who is Nilofer's husband and Asiya's brother. We sat in a circle of people crazed with grief and anger who had lost hope that they would ever get 'insaf'—justice—from India, and now believed that Azadi—freedom— was their only hope. I met young stone pelters who had been shot through their eyes. I traveled with a young man who told me how three of his friends, teenagers in Anantnag district, had been taken into custody and had their finger-nails pulled out as punishment for throwing stones.

In the papers some have accused me of giving 'hate-speeches', of wanting India to break up. On the contrary, what I say comes from love and pride. It comes from not wanting people to be killed, raped, imprisoned or have their finger-nails pulled out in order to force them to say they are Indians. It comes from wanting to live in a society that is striving to be a just one. Pity the nation that has to silence its writers for speaking their minds. Pity the nation that needs to jail those who ask for justice, while communal killers, mass murderers, corporate scamsters, looters, rapists, and those who prey on the poorest of the poor, roam free.

Arundhati Roy
October 26 2010

RANDOM GUIDE TO THE CALIFORNIA ELECTION

NOVEMBER 2, 2010



This is intended as a general guide to voting in the upcoming California election for like-minded progressive independents. The further right you are on the political spectrum the more you should consider this a guide on how not to vote.

STATEWIDE OFFICES:

GOVERNOR: Jerry Brown, Democrat.

Is this the year of the CEO? I think not. We are less than two years removed from the Wall Street meltdown that nearly landed the nation in a second Great Depression. Make no mistake: The politics of Meg Whitman and her wealthy Wall Street cohorts are what landed us in this protracted recession. I think it generous of Whitman to boost California’s economy by spending a large chunk of her fortune to become Governor but the jobs she’s created will disappear in a few weeks and the only jobs she’s likely to create if elected will be in China, India or anywhere that labor is cheap.

The sky will not fall if Whitman is elected because she’s unlikely to get anything passed in the California legislature but why should we reward the arrogance of a candidate who never voted in her adult life yet believes she can buy the governor’s palace?

Jerry Brown is not the same man who was christened Moonbeam back in the day. He’s a hardnosed pragmatist and may be just the man to lead us out of the deep hole we’re in.

SENATOR: Barbara Boxer, Democrat.

Is this the year of the CEO? I think not. Carly Fiorina is the poster candidate of corporate America: Tax breaks for the elite, cheap labor, union busting, free trade, job exportation, de-regulation and corporate rule. She represents everything that is wrong with government in America and she has the audacity to call Barbara Boxer arrogant. That’s the pot calling the kettle black.

Boxer may not be the most dynamic Senator in Washington but she stands with the working people most of the time. She will vote to end our involvement in both wars and will push hard for the kinds of jobs California needs most: Rebuilding our infrastructure and laying the groundwork for an emerging Green Economy.

LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR: Weber, King or Castillo.

This is an office without power or authority. It is a stepping stone for politicians seeking to further their careers and an opportunity to prove they can win a statewide election. I see no compelling reason to vote for either major party candidate. This is an opportunity for the voter to assert his or her independence without fear of the consequences. Vote Peace and Freedom, Libertarian or Green. Who cares?

SECRETARY OF STATE: Tobin or Menasche.

As we have seen in the states of Ohio and Florida, there are times when a Secretary of State can wield enormous power. This office should be nonpartisan and the best we can do in this election is a civil rights attorney (Menasche) from the Green Party or a voting rights advocate (Tobin) from the Libertarians.

ATTORNEY GENERAL: Kamala Harris, Democrat.

In an increasingly important role, setting law enforcement priorities with dwindling resources, we can be reasonably certain Harris will bring a progressive view to the state attorney general’s office. She has done well in San Francisco.

CONTROLLER: John Chiang, Democrat.

There are times when we should support an incumbent for a job done well. It appears that this is the case with John Chiang. In these hard times he has saved taxpayers millions of dollars by exposing fraud and misappropriation of funds. Bravo!

TREASURER/INSURANCE COMMISSIONER/BOARD OF EQUALIZATION: Go Independent. As a rule of thumb, unless you have a compelling reason to vote mainstream, vote independent.

UNITED STATES REPRESENTATIVE: Democrat.

The balance of power in the US Congress is at stake in this election. It is a shame independents have not found the candidates or resources to make a run in this election. In my district there are no independent alternatives. With the Supreme Court’s ruling on corporate funding of campaigns (Citizens United) it can only get worse. Nevertheless, hold your nose and vote for these feckless Democrats. There are bigger issues at stake than the individual candidates represent.

STATE SENATOR AND ASSEMBLY: Independent. It is unlikely the Republicans will take control of the state assembly or senate. The voter should therefore feel free to vote for the independent or third party candidate of your preference. If however there is no independent alternative on the ballot, hold your nose and vote Democrat.

PROPOSITION 19: Legalization of Marijuana.

Yes. Take away the morality play (one group seeking to impose their morality on their fellow citizens) and the arguments against legalization have no bite. The same folks who said the sky would fall with medical marijuana swear that it is a gateway drug. No, it is not but alcohol is. One paper claims it is poorly written because it doesn’t spell out the details but that is exactly how it should be written. End prohibition and figure out the details as we go along. One study says it won’t shut down the cartels but it certainly won’t do them any good, will it? It is no secret that the fiercest opponents of 19 are the drug dealers. Another says it won’t raise nearly as much money as we might think. Maybe so but it will open a vast revenue stream while freeing our law enforcement officers to address more pressing issues of law and order. But the feds won’t honor it. Really? Do they have nothing better to do than to bust people growing, selling and distributing relatively small amounts of marijuana that would otherwise come from more nefarious sources? Do they intend to go after everyone or have they never heard of discriminatory law enforcement? Like medical marijuana, let California lead and the nation will eventually follow.

PROPOSITION 20: Redistricting.

Yes. Anything would be better than partisan gerrymandering. Who knows if the 14-member commission will truly be independent but lets give it a chance.

PROPOSITION 21: Vehicle fee for state parks.

Yes. As a result of Proposition 13, the single most potent reason for California’s perpetual budget shortfall, the state can no longer raise revenues through tax increase. Therefore, California’s legislators have turned to fees to escape the two-thirds vote required for taxes. State parks desperately need funds and this provides them. Too bad its prospects are so dismal.

PROPOSITION 22: Protects State Funds for Transportation, Redevelopment and Local Government Projects.

No. Borrowing from Peter to pay Paul is another way the state has adapted to its financial restraints. If you think these particular expenditures are more important than education, fire and police then vote yes. I don’t.

PROPOSITION 23: Repeal of the Green Initiative.

No. Two Texas oil companies have conspired to undo California’s Green initiative, a critical incentive to the development of a new economy. This is far and away the most important proposition on the ballot. Say No to Texas and Yes to Green.

PROPOSITION 24: Repeal of a Corporate Tax Exemption.

Yes. The corporate elite managed to get tax exemptions in the last budget compromise. Almost all of the tax breaks would go to the largest corporations while the state in all its need would sacrifice billions in lost revenues.

PROPOSITION 25: Majority Rule on Budget Passage.

Yes. The two-thirds vote is the primary weapon of all “Don’t Tax Us!” interests and it is grossly anti-democratic. It’s too bad this proposal doesn’t target the two-thirds requirement on tax increases as well but you take what you can get.

PROPOSITION 26: Two-thirds Vote for Fees.

No. If you don’t believe in majority rule you don’t believe in democracy. Allowing a majority in one election to require two-thirds in perpetuity is irresponsible, immoral and it is one major reason for the decline of the great state of California.

PROPOSITION 27: Repeals Districting Commission (Proposition 20).

No. With 20 and 27 on the ballot it is possible to create a commission and eliminate with one vote. Go figure.

VOTE TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 2ND, 7 AM TO 8 PM.


SUMMARY

GOVERNOR: BROWN
US SENATOR: BOXER
LT. GOVERNOR: CASTILLO
CONTROLLER: CHIANG
ATTORNEY GENERAL: HARRIS
SECRETARY OF STATE: MENASCHE
TREASURER: CRITTENDEN
INSURANCE COMISH: PADILLA
BD OF EQUALIZATION: MICHLIN

US REPRESENTATIVE: DEMOCRAT
STATE SENATOR: INDEPENDENT
STATE ASSEMBLY: INDEPENDENT

PROPOSITION 19: YES
PROPOSITION 20: YES
PROPOSITION 21: YES
PROPOSITION 22: NO
PROPOSITION 23: NO
PROPOSITION 24: YES
PROPOSITION 25: YES
PROPOSITION 26: NO
PROPOSITION 27: NO

Jake's Word: In Response to "The Long View of American History" by Jack Random.

In response to "The Long View of American History: The Fall before the Rise" by Jack Random (reprinted below).

"But we do know that the laws of economics will not be suspended by public sentiment."

Yes! Why does the public not understand this? Do we have to be reduced to a third world economic structure before people realize they've been had?

It does seem that real change can only be realized in the wake of great catastrophe - usually catastrophes that could have been avoided. Is rationality so alien to the majority of humans most of the time?

To add to the confusion, the 10:10 campaign releases a video in which people that disagree with them are blown up. This was supposed to be funny. It isn't. When the the result was overwhelmingly negative, they pulled the video, but too late. It has gone viral. Is this really the work of an environmental group concerned about the future, or right-wing propaganda out of left field?

Obviously the polemic is out of control from all sides. Before the U.S. presidential election of 2004 people were asking if a nation of people could collectively lose their minds. It seems that they can. Germany in the 1930s leaps to mind. Worse yet, the problem has gone global as corporatism, under the name of austerity campaigns, deprives people of the services their taxes pay for while the rich get tax breaks and corporations are allowed to do as they please beyond any real legal restraint.

Does it all have to fall apart before we wake up? I hope not. Waking up in a new dark ages would be like waking up in a cave. How many centuries, how many generations, would have to pass before we recovered?

Sadly, no matter what we say, or how we vote, and I will be voting, it seems to be out of our hands.

Take care,
Jake


JAZZMAN CHRONICLES. DISSEMINATE FREELY.

THE LONG VIEW OF AMERICAN HISTORY: THE FALL BEFORE THE RISE


By Jack Random


It seems to me that anyone who has a vision of real and systemic change in government must inevitably come to terms with the reality that change is a long-term proposition. It is improbable that we are the change we’ve been looking for or that the change we seek will come in our lifetimes.

Historic change requires a convergence of events far beyond our collective ability to control or create it.

History instructs us that change often requires a catalyst in the form of a catastrophe, a disaster or a tragedy so profound it touches the heart and invades the psyche of every man, woman and child who bears witness.

At a time when news was carried primarily by word of mouth from tavern to tavern, from church to public hall, on the wings of an emerging independent press, the Boston Massacre was such an event. Analogous in some ways to Kent State and Jackson State in 1970 it was widely perceived as the first occasion where those charged with protecting us, turned on us and killed our fellow beings for merely asserting their rights of citizenship. It struck a deep chord with the American colonists and propelled us forward toward the war for independence.

The great upheaval of the Civil War ended the scourge of state sanctioned slavery in America.

The Great Depression of the 1930’s combined with the rise of unions and the rights of the working class gave rise to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, ending forever this nation’s philosophic indifference to the poor, the infirm and the elderly under the guise of “rugged individualism.”

The attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 hurled us into global politics and the great upheaval of World War II. It unleashed America’s industrial might (now all but vanished) and eventually altered the balance of powers, setting the stage for over four decades of the Cold War.

The change from cataclysmic events is not always positive. In our own lifetimes we experienced such an event with the attack on the towers of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and an unknown third target. It precipitated a policy of aggressive war and a bold attempt by a brash and all too eager administration to dominate the world by capturing its key supply of oil. We can only imagine how many lives and how much damage to the economy, to civil liberties and to the nation’s reputation in world politics resulted from the Neocon reign of terror.

We have not even begun to glimpse the end of the costs attributable to the Bush administration and foreign policy is only half the story. We very nearly experienced a second cataclysmic event during our lifetime and it came to fruition only seven years after the September 11 attack.

As a direct result of the Bush administration policies (an overextended military, a burgeoning debt, tax cuts favoring the wealthy, deregulation, job exportation, on and on), an out of control financial system pushed us to the brink of global economic collapse.

Owing largely to a massive injection of capital from the public coffers to the private sector we narrowly escaped the cataclysm of an implosion that would surely have led to a second Great Depression. We were left with the lingering effects of a great recession: long-term unemployment, depressed wages, diminished home values, depreciating benefits and an ever-increasing gap between the elite and the working class. But we were spared the cataclysm that would have triggered systemic change.

As one who believes in change, who believes that the democratic form of government requires constant change to curtail the growing power of international corporations, I am reluctant to conclude that total economic collapse might have been the better long-term option but that is the possibility that now presents itself.

For it appears that we as a people have learned little to nothing of the hard lessons delivered by a near collapse. Indeed, those who seem to dominate our political discourse today either refuse to believe it happened or refuse to connect the dots between the economic pain we are currently suffering and the policies that created it.

As we continue down this path of blind denial it seems probable that we will soon elect a sufficient number of unknowing, irresponsible, corporate sponsored politicians, so blind to our economic realities that they will paralyze government indefinitely.

We are asking for trouble.

We will continue marching like lemmings to the sea toward the next economic breakdown only this time congress will be sworn against a government bailout and the chief executive will be disinclined to ask.

There will be no comfort in being among those who warned the general public of pending disaster.

Will there be another Great Depression? No one knows. But we do know that the laws of economics will not be suspended by public sentiment.

We are living in times when historical events are accelerating and the government’s ability to keep pace is dramatically diminished. With the power of corporations growing like the weeds of an untended garden it is hardly the time to rip the heart out of the only counterforce that can hold it in check.

In the long term, perhaps a second Great Depression is inevitable and maybe it is needed to deliver the lessons that should have been learned from lesser disasters.

If this is our destiny, it is my hope that like the Phoenix we will rise from the ruins greater, wiser, more democratic and more humane.


Jazz.


JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS). THE CHRONICLES HAVE BEEN POSTED ON NUMEROUS CITES OF THE WORLDWIDE WEB, INCLUDING THE ALBION MONITOR, BELLACIAO, BUZZLE, COUNTERPUNCH, DISSIDENT VOICE, THE NATIONAL FREE PRESS AND PACIFIC FREE PRESS. SEE WWW.JAZZMANCHRONICLES.BLOGSPOT.COM.

THE GREAT CON OF THE FINANCIAL ELITE

The Financial Con of the Decade Explained So Simply Even A Congressman Will Get It
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/financial-con-decade-explained-so-simply-even-congressman-will-get-it

(Submitted by Tyler Durden 7/10/10. Forwarded by DakotaNomad 8/6/10.)

Sometimes, when chasing the bouncing ball of fraud and corruption on a daily basis, it is easy to lose sight of the forest for the millions of trees.

Luckily, Charles Hugh Smith of oftwominds.com has taken the time to put it all into such simple and compelling terms even [a] corrupt congressmen will not have the chance to plead stupidity after reading this.

Of course, to those familiar with the work of Austrian economists, none of this will come as a surprise.

1. Enable trillions of dollars in mortgages guaranteed to default by packaging unlimited quantities of them into mortgage-backed securities (MBS), creating unlimited demand for fraudulently originated loans.

2. Sell these MBS as "safe" to credulous investors, institutions, town councils in Norway, etc., i.e. "the bezzle" on a global scale.

3. Make huge "side bets" against these doomed mortgages so when they default then the short-side bets generate billions in profits.

4. Leverage each $1 of actual capital into $100 of high-risk bets.

5. Hide the utterly fraudulent bets offshore and/or off-balance sheet (not that the regulators you had muzzled would have noticed anyway).

6. When the long-side bets go bad, transfer hundreds of billions of dollars in Federal guarantees, bailouts and backstops into the private hands which made the risky bets, either via direct payments or via proxies like AIG. Enable these private Power Elites to borrow hundreds of billions more from the Treasury/Fed at zero interest.

7. Deposit these funds at the Federal Reserve, where they earn 3-4%. Reap billions in guaranteed income by borrowing Federal money for free and getting paid interest by the Fed.

8. As profits pile up, start buying boatloads of short-term U.S. Treasuries. Now the taxpayers who absorbed the trillions in private losses and who transferred trillions in subsidies, backstops, guarantees, bailouts and loans to private banks and corporations, are now paying interest on the Treasuries their own money purchased for the banks/corporations.

9. Slowly acquire trillions of dollars in Treasuries--not difficult to do as the Federal government is borrowing $1.5 trillion a year.

10. Stop buying Treasuries and dump a boatload onto the market, forcing interest rates to rise as supply of new T-Bills exceeds demand (at least temporarily). Repeat as necessary to double and then triple interest rates paid on Treasuries.

11. Buy hundreds of billions in long-term Treasuries at high rates of interest. As interest rates rise, interest payments dwarf all other Federal spending, forcing extreme cuts in all other government spending.

12. Enjoy the hundreds of billions of dollars in interest payments being paid by taxpayers on Treasuries that were purchased with their money but which are safely in private hands.

Since the Federal government could potentially inflate away these trillions in Treasuries, buy enough elected officials to force austerity so inflation remains tame. In essence, these private banks and corporations now own the revenue stream of the Federal government and its taxpayers. Neat con, and the marks will never understand how "saving our financial system" led to their servitude to the very interests they bailed out.

The circle is now complete: in "saving our financial system," the public borrowed trillions and transferred the money to private Power Elites, who then buy the public debt with the money swindled out of the taxpayer. Then the taxpayers transfer more wealth every year to the Power Elites/Plutocracy in the form of interest on the Treasury debt. The Power Elites will own the debt that was taken on to bail them out of bad private bets: this is the culmination of privatized gains, socialized risk.

In effect, it's a Third World/colonial scam on a gigantic scale: plunder the public treasury, then buy the debt which was borrowed and transferred to your pockets. You are buying the country with money you borrowed from its taxpayers. No despot could do better.
As for part two of this epic con we are all living through:

The Con of the Decade (Part II) meshes neatly with the first Con of the Decade. Yesterday I described how the financial Plutocracy can transfer ownership of the Federal government's income stream via using the taxpayer's money to buy the debt that the taxpayers borrowed to bail out the Plutocracy.

In order for the con to work, however, the Power Elites and their politico toadies in Congress, the Treasury and the Fed must convince the peasantry that low tax rates on unearned income are not just "free market capitalism at its best" but that they are also "what the country needs to get moving again."

The first step of the con was successfully fobbed off on the peasantry in 2001: lower the taxes paid by the most productive peasants marginally while massively lowering the effective taxes paid by the financial Plutocracy.

One Year Later, No Sign of Improvement in America's Income Inequality Problem:
Income inequality has grown massively since 2000. According to Harvard Magazine, 66% of 2001-2007's income growth went to the top 1% of Americans, while the other 99% of the population got a measly 6% increase. How is this possible? One thing to consider is that in 2001, George W. Bush cut $1.3 trillion in taxes, and 32.6% of the cut went to the top 1%. Another factor is Bush's decision to increase the national debt from $5 trillion to $11 trillion. The combination of increased government spending and lower taxes helped the top 1% considerably.
The second part of the con is to mask much of the Power Elites' income streams behind tax shelters and other gaming-of-the-system so the advertised rate appears high to the peasantry but the effective rate paid on total income is much much lower.

The tax shelters are so numerous and so effective that it takes thousands of pages of tax codes and armies of toadies to pursue them all: family trusts, oil depletion allowances, tax-free bonds and of course special one-off tax breaks arranged by "captured" elected officials.

Step three is to convince the peasantry that $600 in unearned income (capital gains) should be taxed in the same way as $600 million. The entire key to the U.S. tax code is to tax earned income heavily but tax unearned income (the majority of the Plutocracy's income is of course unearned) not at all or very lightly.

In a system which rewarded productive work and provided disincentives to rampant speculation and fraud, the opposite would hold: unearned income would be taxed at much higher rates than earned income, which would be taxed lightly, especially at household incomes below $100,000.

If the goal were to encourage "investing" while reining in the sort of speculations which "earn" hedge fund managers $600 million each (no typo, that was the average of the top 10 hedgies' personal take of their funds gains), then all unearned income (interest, dividends, capital gains, rents from property, oil wells, etc.) up to $6,000 a year would be free--no tax. Unearned income between $6,000 and $60,000 would be taxed at 20%, roughly half the top rate for earned income. This would leave 95% of U.S. households properly encouraged to invest via low tax rates.

Above $60,000, then unearned income would be taxed the same as earned income, and above $1 million (the top 1/10 of 1% of households) then it would be taxed at 50%. Above $10 million, it would be taxed at 60%. Such a system would offer disincentives to the speculative hauls made by the top 1/10 of 1% while encouraging investing in the lower 99%.

Could such a system actually be passed into law and enforced by a captured, toady bureaucracy and Congress? Of course not. But it is still a worthy exercise to take apart the rationalizations being offered to justify rampant speculative looting, collusion, corruption and fraud.

The last step of the con is to raise taxes on the productive peasantry to provide the revenues needed to pay the Plutocracy its interest on Treasuries. If the "Bush tax cuts" are repealed, the actual effective rates paid on unearned income will remain half (20%) of the rates on earned income (wages, salaries, profits earned from small business, etc.) which are roughly 40% at higher income levels.

The financial Plutocracy will champion the need to rein in Federal debt, now that they have raised the debt via plundering the public coffers and extended ownership over that debt.

Now the con boils down to insuring the peasantry pay enough taxes to pay the interest on the Federal debt--interest which is sure to rise considerably. The 1% T-Bill rates were just part of the con to convince the peasantry that trillions of dollars could be borrowed "with no consequences." Those rates will steadily rise once the financial Power Elites own enough of the Treasury debt. Then the game plan will be to lock in handsome returns on long-term Treasuries, and command the toady politicos to support "austerity."

The austerity will not extend to the financial Elites, of course. That's the whole purpose of the con. "Some are more equal than others," indeed.

KING JAMES AND THE NEW ECONOMY: THE RICH GET RICHER

RANDOM JACK: SPORTSLAND ESOTERICA.

With the rest of the world focused on the World Cup finals, America’s latest obsession was the decision of free agent NBA star LeBron James. Who would he choose to bless with his awesome talent and inspiring humility? After seven years of service, would he really turn his back on his hometown team? How much would he command?

In the most highly anticipated sporting event since the superb debut of Stephen Strasburg or the horrendous first post-trauma “press conference” of Tiger Woods, King James answered all questions with one word: Miami.

The Miami Heat had already signed superstar Chris Bosh and resigned superstar Dwyane Wade. With the addition of LeBron, Miami becomes the odds on favorite to win the NBA title and more importantly the team with the greatest star-driven marketability (unless you count Jack Nicholson with the Lakers). He reportedly will receive less than the Cleveland Cavaliers would have paid but if it translates into a string of championships the money will be astronomical.

Then there’s the glory. Let’s face it: You can’t be the King if your team is not a champion. The problem is: You can have three wise men but you can’t have three kings. No one knows how it will play out but if King James is reduced to Prince LeBron the dream may begin to unravel.

As a fan whose inclination is to root for the underdog (when my dog is not the hunt) this may be the first season since the days of Magic and Kareem when I root for the Lakers.

On a grander scale, if sport is a microcosm for the world at large, this is just the latest symptom of a disturbing economic trend: the rich get richer and richer and richer…

Fact: In 1970 the ratio of CEO (Chief Executive Officer) to average worker pay was 25:1. By 2000 it rose to 90:1. When stock options and other benefits are factored in the equation the latest estimate is 500:1.

Fact: The top one percent of the national population tripled its after tax income between 1980 and 2006 while the bottom 90% of the population declined by 20%. That elite one percent now owns 70% of the nation’s financial assets.

Fact: In 2009 while the nation’s workforce was suffering layoffs, reduced pay and benefits in the wake of the financial crisis, Wall Street doled out $150 billion in bonus checks: enough to pay five million people a salary of $30,000.

Fact: We now have the greatest inequality of wealth in the industrialized world.

[Memo to the Tea Party: Income inequality is antithesis to socialism. Our system is therefore so far removed from socialist you would be wiser and more credible to refer to the current administration as fascist though you would be hard pressed to distinguish it from prior administrations.]

What can we do? We are ostensibly a democracy. We could refuse to empower candidates who accept corporate contributions but we don’t. We could refuse to reward corporate crooks like Meg Whitman or Carly Fiorina. We could insist on candidates who pledge to close the gap, to restore the goal of full employment, who value wages and worker rights over corporate favoritism (deregulation and tax breaks) but we don’t.

In the Sportsland analogy we could boycott the Miami Heat. We could refuse to tune in for that championship season. We could refuse to buy the King James jersey. We could confine the fan base to Miami. But we won’t.

Like a train wreck we have to watch – even if we are watching our own demise.


See: “The Rise of the Economic Elite” by David DeGraw, Dissident Voice, February 17, 2010.

RE: Gulf: "We are all guilty"

[Note: Jimmi wZ is a resident of northern Florida, Gulf side. I asked him for his thoughts...]

Its a travesty.

All profit oriented, even the clean up process is ruled by the dollar. People are not even allowed to talk about it in certain communities because of the fear it bring to the tourist.

I heard that they could have stopped the thing at the start except they were afraid of losing the billion plus they spent on drilling the thing. I go to the beach three or four times a day thanking and offering apologies to the mother earth that we have abused.

We are getting what we deserve. Myself amongst all others for being so gutless to not fight for alternative ways of transport. Even now I am preparing to drive my mother across the country in a gas guzzling Motorhome... We are all guilty.

I truly hope that this is the wake up call to america and the rest of the world. It has to be terrible beyond means to make us wake up. The planet is screaming at us ... spewing her blood in to our life giving gulf. How else could she react?

Meanwhile they pour zillions of gallons of chemicals in to cover their tracks and try to hide the problem. Its going to get really bad down here.

It hasnt quite reached my shores yet... though it is only a matter of time.

Each little tiny creature will be effected. I caught whiff of some of the fumes a week ago. Burnt my eyes and closed up my throat. That was from a random cloud that snuck its way in on a windy night.

I heard that the ruskies used nukes to close up wells before... the oil industry is still more worried about profits then saving the gulf.

....

some thoughts


we are all desperate and angry down here... with little that we can do except complain and talk.



thanks for asking


wz

Beatlick TR: Grand Canyon 2 & 3

Date: May 23, 2010 3:09 PM

Our first full day here in Tusayan we popped for an expensive IMAX movie about the Grand Canyon. After that we were pumped. It is so much fun to wander in the Visitor’s Center and listen to all the languages spoken. I heard Germans, British, a few other Western European accents I can’t identify and a swirl of Orientals. I can’t tell the Japanese from the Chinese, I’m ashamed to admit, but a line of about 30 folks, let’s say they were from Japan, were in a double line along with Beatlick Joe and I heading into the IMAX theater. I really go out of my way to smile big at people and give them eye contact. So I shot off a few smiles.

All of the folks I did give a friendly grin to looked beyond me with their shy eyes as if not to notice me at all. Oh well. As we all entered the theater, with ample seating I want to emphasize, all the people therein filtered out past the front seats to access the aisles on the left and right of the theater. There was no middle aisles.

In the upper rows there were about five more Oriental people waving to their friends below. At this point two of their lady friends in the lower level decided to make a beeline up to them and commenced climbing over the seats through the middle of the theater. It was over a dozen rows to the top. I don’t know if they were afraid other people would sit by their friends and leave them out, or what, as I said there were plenty of seats. Everyone else was using the aisles.

But at that moment when the two ladies started climbing over those seats like they were scaling Mount Fugi, their entire contingency of friends followed them. Every single one of them put the seat down, stood on it and hoisted a leg up and over the top to the next level, a dozen times each until they were all recongregated as a single unit at the top of the theater. It was the darnedest thing I’ve ever seen.

Happy Trails
Beatlick Pamela


Date: May 26, 2010 11:23 AM

You see so many people at the Grand Canyon, it’s a game to try and figure what language is being spoken, what country someone is from.

Our young British friend Sam just fell into step with us and we enjoyed his company so much. He’s lucky, too, and extremely observant, as any good traveler should be. When he moved to our campground and wanted to heed the call of nature, Beatlick Joe handed him our Boy Scout shovel, some toilet paper and pointed him up the hillside. Up there he found a huge stash of beer and other flavored alcoholic beverages – almost a hundred dollars worth of drinks – all stashed behind this big log. We split the cache up between the three of us and me being “Miss Know It All” speculated “Somebody stole all this and then got caught after stealing something else and never got to come back for their stash.”

After Sam had left, on Saturday night and well after dark, a string of about five cars circled our campsite and formed a circle like a wagon train. Half a dozen teenagers started up the hill in the dark and I knew immediately what they were doing there. They had come for that stash of alcohol. Well, of course, they came back empty handed. Everybody just jumped back into their vehicles and peeled out of the camp. Thanks kids! Honor your elders!

The wind is really beginning to pick up and it’s harder to enjoy the Canyon trails. We walked down the South Kaibab Trail about one mile just to soak up the trail experience. One woman passed us with those hiking poles, dressed in little more than a swim suit. She said she had hiked from the North Rim, about 20 miles. She was obviously an accomplished athlete by the appearance of her body, but she was breathing hard.

“Oh come on,” she gasped, when she saw the last tiers of switchbacks still ahead of her. “You’re only five more minutes away,” I encouraged her.

“Finally!” she exclaimed.

We spent about an hour on the trail and then headed up to the Yavapai Observation Station for a lecture from one of the rangers. The wind got so cold and strong that I opted out and waited for Joe at the observation point there. That’s when I learned that someone jumped off of Mather Point yesterday. Apparently it’s becoming a popular place to commit suicide, like Niagara Falls, I assume. A park worker also fell to his death this week also and the flags are flying at half mast this week. The ranger had a black ribbon on her badge as well to honor a fallen park worker.

Such a pity, but the hustle and bustle of the park never stops and apparently the park never closes. We hope we have our definitive shot of the van by the Canyon. I sneaked in a restricted road early on Sunday morning to get the best shot and skedaddled out quick before we got caught.

It’s truly a dream come true for many to get here and at $500 a pop the helicopter are constantly competing with the condors for air space. On the tarmac over at the airport about five out of seven keep their rotor blades going as the passengers shuffle in and out.

The huge old log hotel, El Tavor, seems packed and the buses are certainly packed bringing in large group tours. Mostly I have seen Orientals and Germans; I guess they have the most money these days to travel. East Indians pull a close third, Brits, Mid-Easterners next and I haven’t really heard any French spoken or seen many Africans, but a small percentage of African Americans.

The lodges inside the park by the rim seem to attract some really dead-serious athletes. A number of hikers crash around us on the ancient leather seats in the lobby of the El Tovar Hotel along with a wedding party. All manner of taxidermed animal trophies line the upper reaches of the big lobby, their glassy eyes rest upon us all.

Happy Trails,
Beatlick Pamela

Beatlick TR: On the way to the Grand Canyon

Date: May 21, 2010 9:17 PM

Well we sped out of Organ, NM, with the most power I guess I have ever had in this engine. I blew a valve, whatever that means, right in Michael’s driveway. Convenient. So he broke down the whole engine and things are up and running again.

We made a stop in San Rafael to visit Andrew again. He is an old friend from my days in Alaska. Old friends are such luxuries. He took one look at my hair and put me in his chair and gave me a much needed haircut. We wined and dined each other and laughed unceasingly for two days. Then it was time to head out to the Grand Canyon.

We retraced I40 and saw big changes as soon as we crossed the state line to Arizona. Back in 2003 we came this way and visited a new state park for the Homolovi Ruins. Now it is already closed down. Plus all the rest areas on the interstate are closed and barricaded. What a mess.

We drove straight to Flagstaff and pulled off some awesome “urban camping.” It was a Sunday afternoon and we wound up parking high on the hill downtown by the courthouse. We ignored the 2-hour parking signs because it was Sunday and left the van parked right there on the corner all day.

Later that night we backed up a few spaces to get out of the glare of the street lamps so we would blend in a little better in the shadows. Then we pulled all the curtains and settled in for the night. Joe’s clairvoyance woke him up about 2:30 am. He punched me and said, “Look.”

Through the curtains we could red lights flashing outside. I got up to step outside and volunteer to move along, but Joe said, “Wait, maybe it’s not us they are looking at.” So still as little church mice we waited and sure enough the cops passed us on by. So we went back to sleep but I was wide awake at 6 am so went on and found another spot for a few hours more.

Flagstaff is a great little town reminding me of those other picturesque small Arizona mining towns like Jerome, Globe and Bisbee, which harken back to another era. It was especially fun to see an AmTrac train station too, see all the passengers disembarking, scurrying off to the loud clanging of the signals.

We went to the old Monte Vista Hotel for internet access and again somebody asked Joe if he was Willy Nelson. I guess it’s that headband he’s been wearing. This guy was really drunk and soon after the bartender rescinded his drinking privileges.

On Monday we headed to Williams to stock up for the Canyon. Lord knows I still have plenty of beans from that 20 pound bag I bought back in Fort Stockton. We drove to the town of Tusayan where the Grand Canyon bus stops are located and found an awesome place to park in the forest nearby. We can walk to the bus stop and into town.

Happy Trails

Beatlick Pamela

[Note: The Beatlicks are Pamela Hirst & Joe Speers.]

DAMNABLE LIES & DECEPTIONS: THE CALIFORNIA INITIATIVE PROCESS 2010

RANDOM JACK. DISSEMINATE FREELY.

By Jack Random


When one considers statewide initiatives to amend the constitution, the fallback position and natural predisposition should be skeptical. It costs a great deal to put a proposition on the ballot in the great state of California. The people gathering signatures outside your local grocery or drug store are not volunteers. It costs real money to gather enough legitimate signatures to cover five percent of the latest gubernatorial election.

If someone goes to the trouble and expense of putting a proposition on the ballot through the initiative process it is rarely for the public good. It is rather for the benefit of the sponsor. There may be exceptions but they are rare.

On the June 8, 2010 ballot we have five statewide propositions. Three are the work of the legislature. Of these three, one is uncontested and of minimal consequence and two are worthy of passage. The remaining two, whose true sponsors and intent are cleverly disguised, are clear examples of what is wrong with the initiative process. Reminiscent of the infamous Prop 13 of 1978 that more than any other single act or event set the stage for California’s eventual financial collapse, they are the work of con artists. In plain language, they are lies and deceptions.

The following is a voting guide for those of similar political and policy views.

Legislative Initiatives:

Proposition 13: Elimination of Seismic Retrofitting Disincentive. As the ballot guide states, passage would enable property owners to upgrade buildings for earthquakes without incurring property tax penalties. Vote Yes.

PROPOSITION 14: Relatively Open Primaries. Enables voters to vote for any candidate in primary elections regardless of party. The top two face a runoff in the general election.

Any measure that lessens the major party stranglehold on the electoral process is a step in the right direction. The opposition is disingenuous in its objection that the candidates would no longer be required to state their party affiliation. They protest that candidates will charade as “independents.” Is that really a problem? I have no problem with a candidate “pretending” to be independent as long he or she votes as he or she pretends. Is that the best the opponents can do?

Mark it: If the polls show this one is close, the big money from the major party machines will come in to knock it down.

VOTE YES.

PROPOSITION 15: FAIR ELECTIONS, PUBLIC FINANCING. Repeals the ban on public funding of political campaigns. Provides equal financing for qualified candidates who refuse to take corporate or private contributions.

When did we ban public funding of elections? Whose brilliant idea was that? Were we insane or did we like having our politicians sold to the highest contributor? Repeal the ban and restore some semblance of sanity and fair play. The opposition is obviously the same lobbyists who are required to pay the cost of public funding under this initiative. How’s that for justice? The opposition says it “raises taxes” but the voter’s guide says it actually increases revenues by imposing fees on lobbyists. That’s the kind of “tax” we can all live with.

VOTE YES.

Voter Initiatives:

PROPOSITION 16: PROTECTING THE PG&E MONOPOLY. This one is the biggest lie and deception of all. Does anyone out there still remember the energy crisis of 2000-2001? It effectively transferred $50 billion from the California economy to Texas oil and energy corporations through fraudulent manipulation of energy prices. The only localities protected from the manipulations of traders were those who contracted their own energy supply. This proposition would be an open invitation to do again what they did in 2000-2001. The California corporations that hold near monopoly control now and want to secure their dominance through this initiative are Pacific Gas and Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas and Electric. They are not public entities. They are private corporations out for a buck. The claim that they represent the people’s right to vote is laughable. I would actually consider voting for such a proposition if they called for a vote of the majority. That would be democratic. That they call for a two thirds vote to overrule their dominance is a clear giveaway. This is a hustle and a scam.

VOTE NO.

PROPOSITION 17: THE MERCURY INSURANCE STING. This is a proposition with one sponsor: Mercury Insurance. Not known for their ethical or generous practices, they have connived to offer some of us a discount maybe under certain circumstances as long as we allow them to punish our friends and neighbors with outrageous surcharges for allowing our car insurance to lapse at some time in the past five years. Read the fine print and figure it out. It’s a hustle. When was the last time an insurance company put a measure on the ballot so it could lower rates?

VOTE NO AND BOYCOTT MERCURY INSURANCE.


Jazz.


Funding Data according to “Politics and Society” (University of Southern California):

Primary Sponsor of Proposition 15: California Nurses Association.

Primary Sponsor of Proposition 16: PG&E $35 million.

Primary Sponsor of Proposition 17: Mercury Insurance $10 million.


JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES, HARD TIMES, GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION, THE KILLING SPIRIT AND NUMBER NINE: THE ADVENTURES OF JAKE JONES AND RUBY DAULTON.

And the Oil Flows...like a river rising

A JAZZMAN CHRONICLE. DISSEMINATE FREELY.




BEYOND IMPATIENT
(And the Oil Flows on Like a River Rising)

By Jack Random



It is not just the Gulf of Mexico.

I hoped but never really expected this president to be the architect of a second New Deal. I hoped but never expected Obama to pull our troops out of foreign wars in Iraq and Afghanistan before the end of his first term. I hoped but never expected this administration to champion the universal right to healthcare. I hoped but never expected the Obama White House to turn its back on the elite of Wall Street and the financial aristocracy. I hoped but never expected Obama to christen the age of clean energy and universal mass transit.

I realized long before the election that Obama was not an ideologue and if he fell on the left of the political spectrum it was more rhetorical than real. Barack Obama was and is a pragmatist in the Clinton mold of triangulation and compromise.

What I did expect was bureaucratic competence and efficiency. I expected every do nothing administrator from the Bush era, those who never believed in the jobs they were assigned to do, to be replaced post haste with serious and experienced individuals intent on fulfilling the mandates of their positions.

It should be obvious by now that nothing of the sort took place in the Department of Interior where the fox guarding the henhouse principle was in play for the Minerals Management Service. Nothing of the sort took place at the Mine Safety and Health Administration under a Department of Labor that failed to hold Massey Energy to code prior to the latest coal mining disaster (another 29 miners died).

It has become clear that the Obama administration rather than working to reform government has merely responded to crises. The lesson of the ongoing gulf catastrophe is that the stakes are far too high to simply wait for the inevitable. In that sense, the Deepwater Horizon disaster is comparable to both the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and the wizardry on Wall Street that nearly toppled the towers of the financial empire.

In all three cases, the convergence of events that resulted in catastrophe and/or near catastrophe was absolutely predictable. The Army Corps of Engineers knew with absolute certainty that at some point a storm would topple the compromised levees protecting New Orleans. They either didn’t care because the likely victims were poor or the folks in charge gambled it would not happen on their watch. The same gamble took place on Wall Street where the CEO’s and high-stake rollers built their paper fortunes on fraud and deception knowing they were as phony as an accountant’s sympathy. They gambled it would not happen on their watch and even if it did they hedged their bets by investing in the same politicians that would consent to bail them out.

The experts in both government and the petroleum industry knew full well that a disaster was coming. A similar event happened off the shores of Australia as recently as last summer. Then as now there was no failsafe and no effective means of capping the leak (a euphemism for an open gash) or effectively mitigating the damage.

(Even now as the oil spews into the gulf in untold quantities a report from Esquire suggests that the Saudis effectively employed super tankers as vacuums to clean up a massive spill in the Gulf of Arabia circa 1994. If the Obama administration has not thoroughly investigated this report and applied its lessons as warranted, then it is guilty of negligence. If it has failed to act because of the economic costs then it is guilty of complicity in one of the most horrendous crimes against the environment in modern history.)

This administration may or may not have reacted quickly and decisively to this latest catastrophe. On that I will not stand in judgment. I do not have access to all relevant information but the fact is: They should have acted long before the crisis. There were numerous reports about the suspect agency collaborating with the very personnel they were supposed to hold accountable. In the Bush tradition, they were not regulators at all. They were in the pocket of the industry. They were cheerleaders skimming profits while they polished their resumes for jobs in the industry when their terms in government finally expired.

How many other agencies remain unchanged since the days of the anti-regulators? How many more Deepwater Horizons will we witness before the Obama administration decides it can move forward and clean house before a crisis hits?

Disappointed? Yes. I fear that this administration cares more about losing the friendship and loyal contributions of the industries and corporate institutions engaged in unlawful and egregious practices than it does about the working, tax paying, public-school-attending people that invested their hopes in him. I fear that Obama more resembles Lyndon Johnson in his fear of being blamed for losing a war than he does for the real interests of the nation. I fear he cares more about electoral politics than the long-term consequences of inaction.

We should have left Iraq lock stock and barrel years ago. The civil war between the Shiites and the Sunni (with the Kurds in the middle) awaits the day of our departure and nothing we can do will change that. The situation in Afghanistan is untenable. The Afghans like the Iraqis will ultimately hold sway with the Pakistanis serving as power brokers and us on the outside hoping for the best. We can debate what should have been done years ago until we’re exhausted from the exertion but the truth will remain it is far too late to salvage anything in the national interest.

We recently learned that the number of soldiers in Afghanistan for the first time exceeded the number in Iraq. We also passed a milestone in casualties: One thousand American soldiers have died in the Afghan War. (Number one thousand on the casualty list was Corporal Jacob Leicht. He was twenty-four years old and he was born on the fourth of July.) As in Iraq we have only a vague notion of how many Afghans have died in the war but we can be assured the number far exceeds any estimate the military will provide.

We elected Obama in part to clean up the mess that Bush left. We have a right to expect that much. We are growing impatient. We are beyond impatient. The damage to the Gulf of Mexico and indeed the vast interconnected ecosystem of the seven seas far exceeds a legacy any president might have earned.

We have only one expectation now: Stop the spill. Stop it now or spend every penny and every waking hour trying to stop it. Do not tell me the best minds in the world would allow this open gash in the gulf floor to spew oil without restraint for over six weeks no less another four months!

If that is the case and this is the very best we can do then this gamble was so completely reckless and ill-advised that everyone with a hand in it should be held criminally accountable. Let the dopers, dealers and swindlers out and put these corporate and bureaucratic crooks in jail for as long as the oil remains in Gulf waters and on Gulf shores.

Think that might speed up the process? You betcha!

Jazz.

JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS). THE CHRONICLES HAVE BEEN POSTED ON THE ALBION MONITOR, BELLACIAO, BUZZLE, COUNTERPUNCH, DISSIDENT VOICE, THE NATIONAL FREE PRESS AND PACIFIC FREE PRESS.

THOUGHTS ON SPORTLAND ESOTERICA: Golf, Baseball, Drugs and the Long Putter.

Now that South African Tim Clark has won the Players Championship, the unofficial fifth major in professional golf, it is time to revisit the legality of the long putter. For the uninitiated, the user of the long putter grounds the club to his body placing his top hand over the hub of the club so it does not directly touch his chest or stomach as the case may be. As any golfer knows the long putter is the last resort for a player who has lost his putting touch. In an age when performance-enhancing drugs are the ultimate stain on an athlete’s reputation this performance enhancing technique is merely frowned upon.

Golf should save itself the embarrassment of a player winning one of the real majors using the grounded putter before it happens. It is as much an affront to the game of golf as the aluminum bat is to the game of baseball. Like the square grooved wedge it should be banned. No exceptions.

Speaking of golf, the demise of Tiger Woods has been dramatic. A year ago Tiger’s march to overtake the record of the Golden Bear Jack Nicklaus seemed certain. Now it is anything but. Given back-to-back poor showings and his withdrawal during the final round of the Players Championship with what may be a spinal injury, a host of new questions suddenly come into play.

Tiger Woods is beginning to fit the profile of an athlete who has used performance-enhancing drugs (steroids or human growth hormones). Typically, the user of these substances has an explosion in performance followed by a sudden and dramatic decline. They tend to have egos the size of Kilimanjaro, confidence bordering on megalomania, extreme difficulty controlling their emotions and their private lives are often prone to train wrecks. Typically, after several years of exceptional performance, their bodies begin to break down. Witness Ken Caminiti, Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, Mark McGuire, Roger Clemens, on and on.

It is fair to say that the enhancing portion of these drugs is short term and the long term is debilitating.

As a fan of the game I bear no ill will toward any of its players – certainly not the exceptional athletes that have fallen to the temptation of drug enhancement. The corporate sponsors of the game love and reward them as they rise and blame them as they fall. No one can doubt the exceptional talents of these athletes or the tremendous pressures they are under to boost their production.

The thing is: In the long run, the payback is far too severe.

Keep the game pure. If it seems unfair or offends the senses it should be banned. No penalties. No condemnations. No prosecutions or incriminations.

Just protect the game and keep it real.

One additional thought: For those still looking for role models in sports (a dubious practice) look no further than Steve Nash and Los Suns of Phoenix. Staging a protest of their state's unconscionably discriminatory anti-immigrant law was not only appropriate but socially responsible.

Random.

Beatlick Travel Report: Astor Park Survival Camp

Subject: Astor Park, Beatlick Survival Camp
Date: Mar 18, 2010 12:59 PM

Another hot dusty day out here at Astor Park. Neil showed up with his four teens and a friend. So we had a population explosion. I am learning how to work with cement as we are all trying to help Neil get his first shelter set up. You know I call this survivor camp but truly we could never survive out here if it wasn't for Henry, Neil's brother, bringing us water almost every day, plus all those rides into town for beer and ice.

One policy I have initiated here is to cut Joe some slack. He is so serious about his reading and writing and I want to be supportive so we have set up days or parts of days where I cannot ask him to do something for me. I have to do it myself. He has me so spoiled that it is a real revelation to realize how much easier he makes the day go by with his constant help and attention. So as I say I am cutting him some slack.

The coyotes are getting more numerous and louder. I don't think they are coming into the camp but their yipping keeps me on my toes. Haven't seen any snakes or spiders but I imagine the season is coming upon us soon. We take the arroyos and trails to town. We named them streets from Nashville and the old neighborhood: Kipling Dr., Briley Parkway, 440. We get a real kick out of that.

The spring break really loaded up the RV parks around here. As much neglect and off business as we have seen in so many other places, there is nothing like that going on around here. The place is hopping all around Terlingua and Study Butte. We headed down to the little ghost town of Terlingua and sat out on the porch. It is loaded with tourists. Neil started playing somebody's new guitar and a crowd gathered around him in no time. His kids stood by in admiration as well. He is quite the character.

People were coming in from all over and taking pictures of Neil as the crowd grew around him. It was a hot day and the beer was cold, before I knew what was happening I had gone into the store with a big buzz on and mailed my sister a very expensive birthday present. I will have to learn to check my enthusiasum when I head into the big city of Terlingua.

Everytime we go to the RV park to use the Wi-fi I look a little worse. Today I have dirt, dust and cement all over me. Haven't had a bath in two days and didn't even attempt to comb my hair. My, my: attractive.

Happy Trails
Beatlick Pamela

RE: Blame the Teachers

APOLOGIES TO LOUISIANA AND MISSISSIPPI:

In my commentary on education (Blame the Teacher Syndrome, Dissident Voice, 15 March 2010) I made some inaccurate and/or misleading statements. My statement regarding California's ranking among the states in "per capita" funding should have stated "per student" funding (Education Week, California Teachers Association). The rankings are adjusted for cost of living. The new ranking includes projected cuts in the coming school year. I also implied that Louisiana and Mississippi had been ranked lower than California. In fact Louisiana was ranked 27th and Mississippi 39th. The states previously ranked lower than California were Texas, Nevada, Arizona and Utah.

Apologies are due to Louisiana and Mississippi.

Jazz

RE: Blame the Teachers

Sad but so true! I see this played out on a weekly basis when I teach chess at Dr. George Washington Carver Elementary School. They are centrally located in the notorious San Francisco neighborhood called Bayview Hunter’s Point. I have been teaching chess there for over nine years, and each year the struggle continues for the dedicated Teachers and staff that are committed to these wonderful children who are directly impacted by poverty, gang violence, and drugs in the community. The neighborhoods are blighted, and the threat of gentrification and closing down the school is always looming large. The Principal and I, Mrs. Emily Wade-Thompson, have become good friends over the years. She is an amazing African-American woman who runs her school like an African Village, instilling pride in her students by teaching them their history and heritage. The students are called “Achievers”, and taught a list of core values based on the Swahili language, for example Umoja, which means Unity in the community. Her plight, and that of her fellow educators, and those of each and every “Achiever” around this country is given nothing but lip service and chicanery by our elected officials, corporations, and parents, whom all want to blame the teachers. It takes a village to raise a child.

Wakiza McQueen

[Note: "Blame the Teacher Syndrome: A Misguided Education Policy" by Jack Random posted on Dissident Voice, March 15, 2010.]