The Moral Calculus of the Woolwich Murder, 2013 May 27

You should read a transcript of the Woolwich murderer’s reasons.  It seems that he was offended by the fact that other Muslim civilians were routinely being murdered.  Having been taught, by the state, that murdering is acceptable, he proceeded to do so.

He, however, proved himself superior to the contemporary American and British States by murdering a military man and not a civilian.  He took far more care in choosing his victim than Obama does his.

So spare me the hand-wringing and condemnation.  He’s a bad man, to be sure, but he’s not as bad a man as the men we put in office.

When Tony Blair and George W. Bush are put in front of war crimes trials, along with Rumsfeld and many others, we can talk.  Till then, our “justice’ isn’t, it’s just tribalism dressed up in the name of justice, because it picks and chooses amongst murderers, letting the greatest of them, the ones with the most blood on their hands, walk free.

Ethical Degradation, 2013 May 28

We make distinctions between crimes, even the same crimes.  Unintentional killing is ranked lower than intentional killing, and pre-meditated (planned) killing is ranked higher than crimes of passion (finding your husband in bed with another woman and killing him.)

We also make distinctions between people who kill one person, two people, three people and so on.  A person who has killed more people, gets a longer sentence.

This is known as proportionality. All murders are not the same, nor are all thefts, nor are all acts of fraud.  The amount of harm they cause varies, and the amount of punishment they are due varies by reason: we punish the woman who kills her cheating husband when she finds him in bed with another woman a lot less harshly than we do a cold calculating murder to get the life insurance reward.

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The inability to make these sort of ethical distinctions, to say ‘well Fred killed one man, a military man, and that’s just as bad as Stalin killing millions” is an ethical failure.  It is an abominable ethical failure.  Scale matters and crime and justice are not boolean.  More to the point, it is far more important to stop the mass murderers of this world, whether they are Stalin, Mao or lesser mass murderers (note the distinction!) like George Bush and Barack Obama.

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To use one of the phrases of the day “this is why we can’t have nice things.”  Specifically, this is why we cant have a justice system that works, a just foreign policy, politicians who aren’t monsters and citizens who aren’t complicit in mass murder. If you think what the Woolwich murderer did is anywhere close to as bad as what George Bush or Tony Blair did you are unable to make even gross ethical distinctions, and are unsuited to exercise the responsibilities of citizenship.

Tens of thousands of murders are worse than one murder.  Understand this.  If you can’t, recuse yourself from the public sphere, please.

Ethics 101, Part 3: Forseeable Consequences, 2013 May 28

Since we’re on basic ethics, let’s take another basic ethical principle.  It is impossible to have a good society if you do not punish and reward people for the forseeable consequences of their actions.

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The idea of forseeable consequences is fundamental to reasoning about ethics and morality.  It is especially important in reasoning about public policy.

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Entire countries have gone in to permanent depression as a result of the forseeable consequences of their actions.  Then various countries, especially in Europe, doubled down on austerity. Austerity has never worked to bring an economy out of a financial crisis or depression, and it never will.  It does not work, and this is well known.  Engaging in austerity has forseeable consequences of impoverishing the country, reducing the size of the middle class and grinding the poor even further into misery.  It also has the forseeable consequence of making it possible to privatize parts of the economy the oligarchs want to buy.

It is done, it has been done and it will be done because of those forseeable consequences.  They are all either desirable to your masters or, if not desirable, irrelevant compared to the advantages austerity offers them.

These are, if not criminal acts, then unjust and evil acts, done to enrich a few at the expense of the many, with disregard for the consequences to the many, including death, hunger and violence.

One of the reasons I write so little these days, is that there is so little point.  Basic ethical principles are routinely ignored even on the so-called left.  Basic principles of causation are ignored.  Basic economic reality is ignored.  And virtually everyone in the so-called democracies is scrambling to pretend that they have no responsibility for anything that has happened.

If someone does something with forseeable consequences they are responsible for those forseeable consequences.  Just because an act has bad forseeable consequences doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be taken, the alternatives may be worse, but whether the action should be taken or not, the decision has consequences.

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As a society we have in the last few decades and are today making decisions with entirely forseeable consequences (as with climate change) that will kill a few hundred million people to well over a billion people.  We know it will happen, and we’re doing it.

Ethics 101: The difference between ethics and morals, 2013 May 30

The best short definition I’ve heard, courtesy of my friend Stirling, is that morals are how you treat people you know.  Ethics are how you treat people you don’t know.

Your morality is what makes you a good wife or husband, dad or mother.  A good daughter or son.  A good friend.  Even a good employee or boss to the people you know personally in the company.

Your ethics is what makes you a good politicians.  It is what makes you a statesman.  It is also what makes you a good, humane CEO of any large company (and yes, you can make money and pay your employees well as Costco proves.)

When you’re a politicians or a CEO, most of what you do will effect people you don’t know, people you can’t know, people who are just statistics to you.  You have no personal connection to them, and you never will.  This is at the heart of Stalin’s comment that “a single death is a tragedy, a million deaths a  statistic.”  Change the welfare rules, people will live or die, suffer or prosper.  Change the tax structure, healthcare mandates, trade laws, transit spending-virtually everything you do means someone will will, and someone will lose.  Sometimes fatally.

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We call the family the building block of society, but this is nonsense except in the broadest sense.  The structure of the family is entirely socially based, generally on how we make our living.  A hundred years ago in America and Canada the extended family was the norm, today the nuclear family is, with single parent families coming on strong.  In China this transition, from extended to nuclear family, took place in living memory, many adults still in their prime can remember extended families, and were raised in them.  The wealthy often have their children raised by servants (I was for my first five years), tribal societies often put all male children in to the same tent or tents at puberty, and so on. A hundred and fifty years ago children were taught at home, by the extended family, and not by professional teachers.  They spent much more time with family until they were apprenticed out, if they were.

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For a large society, a society where you can’t know everyone, to work ethics must come before morality, or ethics and morality must have a great deal of overlaps.  By acting morally, you must be able to act ethically.

Our current ethical system requires politicians to act unethically, to do great harm to people they don’t know, while protecting those they do.  This can hardly be denied, and was on display in the 2007/8 financial collapse and the bailout after.  The millions of homeowners and employees politicians and central bankers did not know were not helped, and and the people the politicians and central bankers and treasury officials did know, were bailed out.  Austerity, likewise, has hurt people politicians don’t know, while enriching the corporate officers and rich they do know.

The structure of our economy is designed to impoverish people we don’t know.  For developed nations citizens this means people in undeveloped nations.  For the rich this means cutting the wages of the middle class.  For the middle class it means screwing over the poor (yes, the middle class does the day to day enforcement, don’t pretend otherwise.)  We are obsessed with “lowering costs” and making loans, and both of those are meant to extract maximum value from people while giving them as little as they can in return.

We likewise ignore the future, refusing to build or repair infrastructure, to invest properly in basic science, and refusing to deal with global warming.  These decisions will overwhelmingly effect people we don’t know: any individual infrastructure collapse won’t hit us, odds are, and global warming will kill most of its victims in the future.  The rich and powerful, in particular, believe that they will avoid the consequences of these things.  It will effect people other than them.

To put the needs of the few before the needs of the many, in public life, is to be a monster.  But even in private life if we all act selfishly, as our reigning ideology indicates we should, we destroy ourselves. If we all put only ourselves and those we love first, and damn the cost to everyone else, our societies cannot and will not be prosperous, safe, or kind.

The war of all against all is just as nasty when it is waged by small kin groups as when it is waged by individuals.

New Economic Perspectives continues to produce outstanding work.  This particular piece is a 2 part study (so far) by Michael Hoexter of Neoliberal economic philosophy and its apologia for what is nothing more than rank Class Warfare of the .1% against the 99.9%.

While I am highlighting what I consider the most salient points I strongly urge you to read the original which is not as wonky or hard to grasp as you might expect from an econo-blog.

Like a Wasting Disease, Neoliberals, Libertarians & the Right are Eating Away Society’s "Connective Tissue&quot – Part 1

By Michael Hoexter, New Economic Perspectives

May 29, 2013

In an industrial or post-industrial society, a civilization with a complex division of labor dispersed throughout a network of metropolitan regions connected with each other and with smaller cities and rural areas, a class of connecting goods and services is required to keep the society and economy cohesive and functioning.  Unlike the goods bought and sold on markets, these mediating or connecting goods are not themselves often objects of desire for purchase by those who use or otherwise benefit from them. In the hypotheses of social theorists and politicians influenced by neoclassical economic ideals, these goods, they think, ought to be delivered via markets and people ought to pay directly for them in market-like cash transactions. As it has turned out in reality, without a social and political commitment and social pressure to fund these goods and services, individuals in isolation and businesses as a group tend to want to “free ride” and not pay for connective goods and services that are usually the frame but not the focus of everyday consciousness in a modern society. Despite the lack of consistent private markets for most connective goods and services, these “in-between” goods and services are vital and fundamental to the existence and maintenance of something like a civilization, a livable complex society with a strong economy.

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If such connections were owned and controlled entirely by profit-minded corporations as has been flirted with over the past few decades, they could easily strangle the economy via the exertion of monopoly power and pricing.  The resulting “tollbooth economy” would be a neofeudal outcome, with owners of infrastructure exacting tolls on commerce and on society as a whole as did the feudal lords a millennium ago.  This is why government has been, in the successful mixed economy model that emerged during the 20th Century, the most common supplier, owner and operator of critical portions of the society’s infrastructure, the “in-between” places that connect people’s and corporations’ private properties.  The strong mixed economy model, typified by the European social democracies, Australia, the mid-20th Century US, and Canada, with a government regulating the private sector and providing many vital services, is actually the only successful model of a complex industrial or post-industrial society and economy.  Departures from a strong mixed-economy model are in the developed world necessarily speculative social experiments on a grand scale, even though these departures from what has worked in the past are almost never announced as such.

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Contemporary political disputes about the nature of government and its role in the economy can, in part, be boiled down to whether the parties involved believe that empathy is at all important to the functioning of society and, for that matter, is even worthy of attention.  The traditional Right sees empathy, except in certain extraordinary circumstances, as a sign of weakness or as a phenomenon of the “private sphere”, traditionally organized around the household and considered to be “feminized”, linked to the (misogynistic) notion of the feminine as being inferior in value to the masculine. Movements identified with the Left have tended to fight for the role of a generalized empathy with basic human needs and human solidarity within the public sphere, focusing for the most part on equal rights and “treating others as you would want to be treated”.   By contrast, the Right has often celebrated cruelty as a sign of toughness or loyalty to a cause, making room for empathy only in the context of mystical bonding rituals between for the most part men or between a leader and his followers.

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The Hidden Utopia of Neoliberalism

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There emerged various economic theories, which formed the “business end” of neoliberal policy recommendations that suggested that cutting taxes on the wealthy and loosening regulations would spur economic growth and also, in the wishful thinking of early supply-side theory, paradoxically increase tax collections because of that growth.  The model-individual within neoliberal political and economic theory was the entrepreneur or investor who needed to be given the maximal “freedom” from government intervention or influence to make judicious business or investing decisions.  The institution that should rule society according to neoliberalism was “the market”, the social area in which self-interested economic actors interacted, which should be likewise “freed” from government support or intervention.

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Neoliberalism’s worldview is utopian in this regard because neoliberals, as well as the extreme libertarian version of neoliberalism, have for the most part assumed as “givens” the already-existing benefits (to them) offered by a very substantial government and generated by the complex internetworked society it enables, yet wishing government itself would disappear or diminish, leaving its effects behind.  Thus in a form of magical thinking or “splitting“, neoliberals have come to believe as if it were accomplished fact that they can create a society that  is “purified” of government but leaves what they value from government, its products and services or their positive effects, behind, very much like Lewis Carroll’s Cheshire Cat.  Neoliberals and libertarians do not for the most part want to return to a society that is composed entirely of extended family networks, a tribal society in fact, or at least most of the Right’s mainstream does not have a taste for the likely emergence of  a Mad Max style world.

Neoliberalism, like traditional reactionary conservatism, also shuns the role of empathy in the public sphere, seeing in it a weakness or a trap, from which the “clean” purity of the market and competition would free us.  In the neoliberal worldview, everybody is almost entirely self-interested and no one, including political leaders, is doing anything out of a sense of human solidarity or obligation to humanity as a whole but rather out of a self-interested calculus. The ultimate neoliberal theory of politics, James Buchanan’s public choice theory, marginalizes or rules out the role of altruistic or public-spirited motivation in the actions of political leaders.  One wonders whether or when this theory based on neoclassical economics becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, once the assumption of self-interest as a sole motivation in politics is made.  More altruistically minded people are certainly discouraged from entering government service within the current system of legalized corruption in American government.

Like a Wasting Disease, Neoliberals, Libertarians & the Right are Eating Away Society’s "Connective Tissue&quot – Part 2

By Michael Hoexter, New Economic Perspectives

May 29, 2013

Corporatocracy/Plutocracy:  The Neoliberal Compromise with Reality

While there are a certain number of “true believers” in the neoliberal ideal that tend to congregate around the banner of libertarianism or related concepts, a vast swath of the political class and ruling elite has been pulled to the right by neoliberalism without openly embracing its hidden utopia.  These political and economic “realists” or “pragmatists” tend to see the true believers in neoliberal ideology as either an ideological “fig-leaf” that can provide a more appealing cover for the agenda of existing large private interests or, occasionally, as a fanatical embarrassment if they show too strong a belief in libertarian ideals. The notion of defunding public services and reducing public regulation of the private sector has a powerful appeal to many corporate and wealthy interests.  So powerful is this appeal in fact that the label and concept of “libertarianism,”  which is now adopted by the most other-worldly, some would say “idealistic”, individuals in the neoliberal spectrum, was coined by a US business lobbyist in the late 1940’s.  

The potentially “messy” idealistic part of what now is called “libertarianism”, tends then in practice to be sidelined or filtered out of actual neoliberal politics and policy.  Monopolies and oligopolies are not confronted or broken up.  Government support and favorable treatment for large corporations are not cut but are often increased or rebranded and enhanced.  The neoliberal ideal is realized only insofar as the interests of the more vulnerable and less wealthy are shunted aside within the policies of government while the interests of the powerful and wealthy are promoted under the cover of the neoliberal ideal of a “streamlined” and “fiscally responsible” government. Tax burdens are cut for the wealthiest while the tax burdens of the middle and lower classes are increased.

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The seemingly universalizing philosophy of neoliberalism which bases its intellectual appeal and moral authority on the notion that it is about defending liberty, particularly liberty of the individual, then encounters a substantial inconsistency when confronted with the actions of neoliberals once they achieve political power.  The central raison d’etre of neoliberalism, defense of liberty, then appears to be more of a “belief of convenience” for most neoliberals, as the attractions of using political and military power to further their own personal agendas or the economic agendas of political patrons becomes paramount.  Even libertarians, who decry “coercion” by government, spend an inordinate amount of their energy criticizing taxation while often ignoring or minimizing the use and abuse of military force as well as infringements of human rights and civil liberties at home and abroad.  The primary liberty which concerns both them and more mainstream neoliberals is the freedom to own and exercise private property rights in as expansive a manner as possible.  It can be reasonably asserted that most libertarians are "propertarians", focused primarily on real and imagined threats to the private ownership of property.  “Freedom” becomes an ideological excuse for personal acquisitiveness and greed.

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Neoliberalism has seen some of its greatest triumphs in spreading its ideology throughout society by temporarily peeling away the traditional reactionary-Right envelope from which its original leaders emerged.  The early neoliberal leaders, Reagan, Pinochet, and Thatcher had some or all of the marks of the traditional authoritarian Right in their style of speech and the cultural preferences they expressed and represented.  Entirely different in appearance and mannerisms were the leaders of the more leftward parties that accommodated themselves to or adopted wholesale the neoliberal political-economic ideological framework.  Bill Clinton and Tony Blair in the 1990’s provided a younger “cooler” image, the image of the Baby Boom generation, while at the same time supporting a greater “marketization” of the economy and holding out the private financial and corporate economy as the model for all social organization.  Clinton, but also Blair to some degree, was known for his ability to “feel your pain”, to express a theatrical-seeming empathy for others that did not question the fundamentals of the neoliberal vision of society.

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The current US President, Obama, has functioned almost perfectly as an ersatz “Left” for media and political consumption, despite his for the most part right-of-center neoliberal policy initiatives and political philosophy.  During his tenure the sham conflict between Right and pseudo-Left has reached a fever pitch that obscures the advancing development and entrenchment of the plutocratic-corporatocratic class as the de facto rulers of the United States.  The neoliberal Right in America has become so ideologically extreme that Obama’s timid forays into corporate-friendly reform are treated as if they represent the cutting edge of progressivism by a media focused largely on politics as a series of culture and personality clashes or a “horse-race”.

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Obama’s solid support for corporate- and bank-friendly policy is hidden from the view of many behind his occasional soaring rhetoric and limp efforts at reform which to supporters, so far, have been treated as either progressive or a form of pragmatic progressivism that is the only “realistic” alternative.  A reformer more than Bush his predecessor, Obama is fundamentally a rationalizer of neoliberalism, solidly evincing the belief in the notion that government must remain a handmaiden of corporate interests and beholden to the rich for its supply of money, either for campaigns or via the notion that government acquires its money by taxation.  A generation of progressives that can remember only “identity politics” and neoliberal Presidencies of the Right and pseudo-Left  have been to date adequately fooled or cowed by Obama’s relatively sympathetic personality and cultural identity as the first African-American President to criticize him as openly and roundly as is needed.  The reticence to criticize Obama is as much an expression of racism as is the Right’s tendency to demonize him as a “Kenyan socialist”.

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Fundamentally the movement to create a better world is based on human empathy and caring for each other and for future generations.  “Left” neoliberal leaders like Clinton, Blair and now Obama attempt to consciously or unconsciously siphon off people’s empathic impulses to ends that are harmless to the neoliberal oligarchy, the dominance of the large financial institutions, multinational corporations, and very wealthy individuals.  More than even Clinton before him, Obama is a master of temporarily capturing the impulse to do good and turning it to ends that fundamentally will not change the basis of the current corrupt social-economic order.

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As I am finishing the writing of this long piece, we have had as clear a demonstration as any of the decades long attack on the connective function of government works in the collapse of the fifty year old I-5 bridge over Washington’s Skagit river.  This bridge and Interstate 5 tie the North America’s Pacific Coast more closely together.  That, in an earlier era, government, a government led by the more conservative American political party, the Republicans, bound Americans closer together via the building of the Interstate system and related infrastructure is an achievement that seems alien in the neoliberal era.  That the existing, outdated infrastructure of the US is now in dangerous disrepair is a tribute to the thirty year dominance of neoliberalism in American politics as well as the faulty, dominant ideas about government’s role and government finance that spring from it.

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After toying with climate change as an issue a number of times during his Administration, Obama is now flirting with the issue once again, calling out the extreme Right in Congress on their denial of human-caused global warming.  Obama could attempt to yoke the issue once again to his neoliberal vision of a government and society beholden to large private interests, while suggesting that it is an impossibility that we would have a government that steers independently of, for instance, the economic interests of the fossil fuel industry, as well as other incumbent industries.  He is capable of perverting this issue as he has others or flirting with and exhausting well intentioned people.  We will need to persist in viewing the world as it is, and resist the pull of leaders who attempt to hijack our better impulses for their own or their patrons’ purposes.

We will need in too short an order, to repair much of the damage that has been inflicted by neoliberal political actors upon our societies’ cohesiveness and ability to coordinate action.  All this needs to happen before it is too late for a recognizable human civilization to thrive on this planet.

Perhaps better known as Le Sacre du Printemps or The Rite of Spring it celebrates it’s 100th anniversary today.

At the risk of spoilers, the story revolves around pagan celebrations of the coming of spring with the most memorable part being the choice of a sacrificial victim who dances herself to death.

Yeah, like opera there are no happy endings in ballet.

But what was really controversial was Stravinsky’s Avant Guarde music which has, ironically, turned out to be one of the most influential works of the 20th century as well as one of the most recorded (though I would hold Petrushka or Firebird as being a better introduction to Stravinsky’s work and much more accessible for the average listener).

On the evening of the 29 May the theatre was packed: Gustav Linor reported, “Never…has the hall been so full, or so resplendent; the stairways and the corridors were crowded with spectators eager to see and to hear”. The evening began with Les Sylphides, in which Nijinsky and Karsavina danced the main roles. The Rite followed; there is general agreement among eyewitnesses and commentators that the disturbances in the audience began during the Introduction, and grew into a crescendo when the curtain rose on the stamping dancers in “Augurs of Spring”. Marie Rambert, who was working as an assistant to Nijinsky, recalled later that it was soon impossible to hear the music on the stage. In his autobiography, Stravinsky writes that the derisive laughter that greeted the first bars of the Introduction disgusted him, and that he left the auditorium to watch the rest of the performance from the stage wings. The demonstrations, he says, grew into “a terrific uproar” which, along with the on-stage noises, drowned out the voice of Nijinsky who was shouting the step numbers to the dancers. The journalist and photographer Carl Van Vechten recorded that the person behind him got carried away with excitement, and “began to beat rhythmically on top of my head”, though Van Vechten failed to notice this at first, his own emotion being so great.

Monteux believed that the trouble began when the two factions in the audience began attacking each other, but their mutual anger was soon diverted towards the orchestra: “Everything available was tossed in our direction, but we continued to play on”. Around forty of the worst offenders were ejected-possibly with the intervention of the police, although this is uncorroborated. Through all the disturbances the performance continued without interruption. Things grew noticeably quieter during Part II, and by some accounts Maria Piltz’s rendering of the final “Sacrificial Dance” was watched in reasonable silence. At the end there were several curtain calls for the dancers, for Monteux and the orchestra, and for Stravinsky and Nijinsky before the evening’s programme continued.

This performance is by the Mariinsky Theater Orchestra and Ballet, Valery Gergiev – conductor.  Rodion Tolmachev is the featured bassoonist.

Originally posted by James Hepburn here, and reposted with express permission.

And now re-posted from Voices on the Square– ek hornbeck

Am I the only one who saw the America "being reborn" diary and it immediately conjured up images from some scifi dystopian movie you probably only saw the trailer for? Like, "It Lives II – The Rebirth"

Well, if it didn't, it should have. Let me summarize that diary's main points:

1. America was never all that – there was no heyday.

2. Shit has sucked before and so it will again.

3. Not falling apart – being reborn, into what nobody knows.

4. But it's not that bad because 3D Printers can print solar panels.

5. We're in a great revolution, shift, change – reborn into what even the powerful don't know.

6. Now is the time to steer the direction of history, these are not end times, but interesting times – "Homosexual couples can get married in America. A Black man is President. We are world leaders in a reduction of CO2 emissions."

7 The world is changing, but the powerful will "push back."

8. They will appear insurmountable, until they aren't.

This evoked cries of Yay! from many commenters extolling the virtues of optimism. 'Things aren't as bad as that. And thank you for being positive for a change.'

One commenter even asked what hole all these pessimists crawled out of. "Progressives are supposed to be about progress. Leave the "we-can't" stuff to the other guys," he said.

I have long suspected that some on this site exist in some kind of shell, and when news or information that threatens or challenges their views gets posted, or even makes it to the Rec'd List, they simply ignore it.

And I will say now, I don't blame them. Reality is depressing. Who wants to sit around thinking about how earth is in its 6th mass extinction event, or how, at the current rate, the Amazon Rainforest will be wiped out before the end of the century greatly amplifying and feedbacking the effects of climate change, or how climate change is, according to a report (PDF) sponsored by the World Bank, moving us toward conditions that could be accurately likened to an apocalypse, or how the world is running out of fresh water and our aquifers are drying up,or how, as we speak, the Fukushima reactor in Japan is leaking untold amounts of radioactive water into the Pacific ocean, or how Obama and BP's solution to the Gulf oil spill actually made it much worse, or how the real unemployment rate is actually worse and continues to get worser still, or how the same economic "policies" that have devastated Detroit and other formerly industrial cities will be devastating your city soon enough, or how our schools have become pipelines to prisons, or how our corporate produced foods have become poisonous, etc etc etc.

I get it. This shit, like, totally harshes your buzz. So it's easy to turn away – especially when a lot of it is happening somewhere else or doesn't quite effect you personally yet (except for the tornadoes, hurricanes, droughts, floods, snowpocalypses, epidemics of strange illnesses and other more normal ones like childhood asthma, health care bankruptcy, getting fired from your job, etc etc etc). So as long as we ignore all the things that are wrong, things look pretty fucking good.  As one commenter in said diary said, compared to 2nd world countries, "We're in pretty good shape."

A lot of it depends on one's perspective. My inlaws paid about 1.5 mil. for their house. It's in a gated neighborhood with water sprinklers that keep the vast acres of grass green, even in some winter months. Things look super from there. No crime. Best public schools in the state. Roads perfectly paved.

It helps to put things in perspective. I guess.

Anyway, as for the "Reborn" diary, I just want to make a couple of corrections.

It is true, there was never a heyday when all was well in America. But utopian perfection has never defined what made up the US's heyday. Trajectory does.

1930s-1970s: That was America's heyday. Not because there weren't serious wrongs during that period. But because things were getting better. We were on a progressive trajectory, established by progressives. That trajectory began to change in the early 70s. Not because of some unknowable, great global shift revolution that is "all around us."

It began to change because a few assholes figured out how to rig the system and then went about doing it. It's not a mystery. And it's not a secret. They got together with all their right wing, billionaire buddies and coordinated a campaign to change the trajectory of this country.

Their plan was pretty simple. Work together and form big lobbying groups. Buy the government. Buy up all the mass media and get it away from all those bleeding hearted liberals. And impose their pro business agenda on every major university.

It ain't rocket science.

Muskegon Critic says that America isn't falling apart. He's right. It is being disassembled, piece by piece. The shifts that are occurring aren't a result of an inevitable force. We are not being swept up in some mystical wind of change.

We are simply under attack. And it's an attack that has been ongoing for decades.

The agenda of our attackers is also quite simple, once you get past the distractions. Their agenda is to transform America from the great society vision encapsulated in the New Deal, with a high paid labor class, widespread advanced education, the expectation of a strong social safety net, and tight government controls on big businesses to prevent the exploitation of workers, the pollution of the environment, and ensurance that those who benefit most from our society pay the most to maintain it.

In place of this, they want basically the opposite. They want apeasant labor class to exploit, to weaken government by corrupting andsabotaging our democratic institutions, unfettered access to our naturalresources which, in any sane society would be consider our commonwealth, and no social safety net.

What big business figured out is that they need lots of poor people.The poorer a country is, the more corruptible it is, the moreexploitable it is, the easier it is to pillage.

The kind of society that the New Deal began to create, was unacceptable to the  corrupt parasites of the ruling class. Suddenly you had this emerging labor class, middle class, and academic class that was uber-educated, pretty well informed, and getting smart enough to demand a more just, more equal, and better managed society. Some people call it the 60s. But it wasn't just a trend or an era. And it wasn't limited to hippies or university intellectuals. They were just the cutting edge of something entirely new: the ascendency of a new class in world history. An educated, empowered, financially secure, and politically activated lower class.

The world had really never seen that before, nowhere near on this scale. And all those smart people who used to be too insecure to complain, too ignorant to know what to complain about, and to alienated by the political process to act anyway, were now becoming a big problem. They had expectations of fairness, and the political power, through unions etc, to, to leverage those expectations. They were getting too uppity to be sent off to die in Parasite wars. And they were demanding that the environment be protected. Something had to change.

When all the big business, right wing assholes came together around the Powell Memo, they weren't just acting to advance their business interests. They knew they needed to transform the American public. We needed to become a lot more like a 3rd world country.

That's what's changed. No great tides, or winds or the inevitable replacing of the old with the new. Just some assholes, who own TV networks, radio stations, newspapers, universities, think tanks and countless other little organizations, all designed to make people think what they want us to.

Nothing mysterious about the changes that have transformed our economy either. Over the last 40 years, and in response to New Deal labor laws, and then new environmental regulations passed by LBJ and Nixon, big American businesses basically said fuck America, we'll go to Indonesia, and pollute the fuck out of wherever we want. And labor will be 3 cents on the dollar.

And they and their lobbyists over at the CFR bought up our two parties and, while we were enjoying the sex revolution and Meathead on TV, then quietly began the process of dismantling the entire manufacturing sector of the country. Incredibly, most liberals still don't comprehend what happened there. But that's a huge part of what has changed. The US is now suffering varying degrees of Detroit. And it's going to keep getting worse.

Now is the time to shape history. But unless you have at least some grasp of what that change is, and who's causing it, and how they're causing it, you don't have a chance in hell of changing it.

Yes, America's being reborn alright. But you won't want to see what it's being reborn into. For those of us who have been paying attention, the end result of this re-birthing is no mystery at all. It's exactly what we've seen in other countries, where neoliberalism has been allowed to run unchecked.

And it's not pretty. Liberals generally decry notions of American exceptionalism. But we have our own brand. The "it can't happen here" brand. Are we really so different than the people in Columbia or Chile, where leftists and labor leaders are hunted and murdered?

Is the mass surveillance apparatus, much of which is controlled not by the big brother state, but by private corporations, really immune from abuse by those who wish to defeat American labor and progressive politicians?

Is it really so hard to comprehend why allowing phone calls to recorded and stored by a nameless, faceless, security apparatus is a threat to not just your privacy, but to democracy itself?

Is the trajectory of our country towards increased concentration of wealth and power in the hands of fewer and fewer people, towards greater and greater poverty, towards poorer and poorer education, towards even more manipulation of public perception by corporate mass media, and the threat that poises for all of us, not obvious? Even to those who enjoy good paying jobs?

America has never been perfect. Not even close. But there was a time when its trajectory through history was in alignment with its promise.

Its trajectory now is toward the unthinkable. Unthinkable power, through of technology of weapons and surveillance, combined with an unthinkable absence of democratic governance or accountability.

Well the big Stars Hollow parade is over.  We used to have two, one for the Fireman’s Carnival until they took the muddy ditch they used to stick it in across from the 3 Barbers I use to get my hair cut when Lydia, Emily’s stylist, is off watching her son compete in the Little League World Series and turned it into Condos that totally block the view of our only ‘Clear Channel’ billboard that masks the sight, headed South, of the Citgo Station and what used to be the the office of the best lawyer I know (best because he is the biggest asshole, my two other lawyers are RayRay who’s only flaw is he thinks he’s perfect and Jerry who never does any work himself but knows people).

Where was I?

Oh, the parade.

So anyway I marched since I was a wee Ojibway Indian Guide with hardly any feathers until I was a Euphonium toting second liner (first, they like to put the low brass up front for sonic punch and second, the 76 Trombones lead the big parade so the slides don’t knock you in the back- keep step and walk around the Horse shit).

I could talk about the gal who made the Connecticut Hurricane’s audition and had to race back to the start so she could play with them too (she convinced me my future was not Trumpet but a less stressful and competitive instrument, Leonard Falcone Himself pronouced me hopeless), but instead I’d like to focus your attention on a little prank I like to play.

I am in possesion of a number of Acme Thunderers, artifacts of a youth misspent lifeguarding (which is basically telling people they’re having too much fun and they should stop that).

However they are also used to order Chinese bayonet charges and call rolloff, which is the signal for the drummers to inform the band to get ready to play.  1, 2, 3, 4.

If you want to try this at home I suggest some simple scouting to decode the code.  It’s easy now that you know what to listen for.  Then you race to the block or two before your street and start the show (they have to do the roll off).

To me, in addition to being basically harmless, this has the added benefit of bringing the action home.  Since I live a mere 2 blocks from the reviewing stand the band was always huffing and puffing past my position.  Not anymore.

I wonder if my neighbors even realize.  The Drum Major is constantly surprised, but it’s a new one every year.

Public service in action.

Monaco is the oldest, slowest, and shortest track in Formula One.  The only things that keep it going are greed and tradition.  The drivers hate it because there are no opportunities to pass and plenty of chances to crash.  In fact, about the only time the lead changes is when there’s an accident or on pit stops.

Speaking of, the sole reason to pit now is to change tires and Pirelli is sending them out on the two compounds most prone to failure- Softs and Super Softs.

And by fail I mean huge chunks of rubber lifting off like Semi re-treads littering the sides of the road with the same danger to following traffic while the driver cruises on oblivious because the stress is on the rears which he can’t see and the steel belted core remains intact and pressurized.

There’s a reason they prefer Mediums.

Other than dodging the debris and avoiding the walls there’s not a lot to it.  Because the Mercedes are notably harder on the rubber than the Red Bulls (especially the rears) it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that tomorrow we’ll be reading about their “surprise” victory.  Alonso (the most resourceful driver in contemporary Formula One and who is only starting 6th) says accurately he has no chance for victory.

And so we’re reduced to debating whether Raikkonen’s tribute to James Hunt (an obvious movie plug) is the equivalent of Vettel’s obscene naked bikini girl.

Perhaps it deserves to die.

• Monaco Grand Prix
• Circuit de Monaco
• Guardian Interactive Track
• Formula One Interactive Track

• Formula One Official Site
• NBC Sports Motor Sports

Pretty tables below.

Saturday Morning.  10 am.  No content.  Brain fried from petrol.  Time for Video that makes you think.

Cyndi Lauper lost her voice and was told by at least 3 doctors (that would be Hartnell, Troughton, and Pertwee) she would never sing again.  In all her original work she has been a great champion of LGBT causes though she’s relentlessly ‘tro.

I invite you to populate the comments with your favorite performances, I always liked her more than Louise Ciccone (whom I have developed a certain grudging respect for).  Her current artistic effort is the Broadway Musical Kinky Boots, nominated for 13 Tonys (named after a woman) and summarized thusly-

(A) struggling, family-owned English shoe factory … avoids bankruptcy when its young boss, Charlie, develops a plan to produce custom fetish-type footwear for drag artists rather than the men’s dress shoes that his firm is known for.

Is this the end of Formula One?

Hmm… not quite the headline I thought I’d be posting on Monaco weekend.  Like the Kentucky Derby it’s one of those gluttonous celebrations of the glitterati and ultra rich that appall through mere excessive display at what is an otherwise minor and uninteresting event.

I thought that would be the lede.

Instead there is decay and rot from the top down and the bottom up.

Bottom feeding first- There are only 10 Teams competing in Formula One (Red Bull sponsors 4 cars, 2 Renault Powered Red Bulls and 2 Ferrari Powered Toro Rossos).  What would it be like if there were only 3?

Seven F1 teams face crisis over looming bill for extra £1.32bn

Paul Weaver, The Guardian

Friday 24 May 2013 17.30 EDT

The warning has come from one of the sport’s biggest players, Martin Whitmarsh, the McLaren team principal who is also chairman of the Formula One Teams’ Association, on the eve of the Monaco Grand Prix.

The teams, who are absorbing the terms of the next Concorde Agreement, are already angry that the private equity firm CVC Capital, who hold a controlling stake in F1, take out more than half of the sport’s $1.5bn income.

…

These seven teams are already incensed that most of the money goes to the four biggest operations, Ferrari, Red Bull, Mercedes and McLaren. CVC are scheduled to increase payments to the teams from 47.5% to 60% of the sport’s income – but the extra money will go to the big four. Fernley said: “There should be a more equitable distribution. It’s quite right that Ferrari, McLaren and Mercedes get recognition. I would like to see Red Bull recognised in 20 years’ time but not after five years of pumping money into the sport.”

…

(I)t is the spiralling costs which have focused the teams’ attention. Between them, them will have to find $2bn over the seven years of the three-cornered Concorde Agreement, which will tie them to Formula One chief Bernie Ecclestone and the international racing authority, the FIA. The biggest bill is for engines, as Formula One moves from the 2.4-litre V8s to 1.6-litre V6 units in 2014. It is understood that each team will have to find an extra $15m per season.

…

Whitmarsh said: “In addition, under the new agreement, the teams will to pay Pirelli $105m over the seven years.” Fernley added: “Everything we’re doing at the moment is about increasing costs. There is no initiative at all about reducing costs. If we don’t sit down and address it very carefully we’re going to lose teams.

“I think all teams are struggling. You would be surprised by how high up they are. We should never underestimate the resolve of Formula One teams. But it will be tougher and tougher.

“If we do in-season testing that will be a massive increase. But look at our basic operations. Do we really need to be running wind tunnels 24/7?” He reserved his most scathing remarks for CVC. “I think CVC have done an absolutely awful job. In my view they are the worst thing that has ever happened to Formula One.”

The article keeps referring to 11 teams, but they’re just being lazy and dividing 22 by 2.  There is no indication that Red Bull is scaling back its commitment (click the damn link already would you?).

So- Red Bull, Ferrari, and McLaren (60%, they have no other business) or Mercedes (40%, they actually make cars).  Eight cars in total.  Feel the excitement!  It will be just like watching a winter testing session at Circuit de Catalunya (yawn).

BUT WAIT!  There’s more.

Pirelli still does not have a contract for 2014.  As they put it–

“Apparently on September 1 we are meant to tell them (the teams) everything that they need to know for the tires for next season. We are now mid-May so you can imagine how ludicrous that is when we haven’t even got contracts in place,” he said.

“So maybe we won’t be here anyway…”

Asked how much of a maybe that was, and how seriously Pirelli were considering walking away, the Briton added: “At a certain point somebody has got to make a decision.

This is a big deal, in fairness to Pirelli the challenges next year with the engine switch are already immense-

Formula One is switching to a new 1.6 liter V6 turbocharged engine with energy recovery systems next season and the tires will also have to change to cope with the new unit’s characteristics.

Hembery said the indications were that the power delivery and top speed would be very different, the aerodynamic loads would change and even the size of the tires was to be decided.

Wider tires could be necessary to create grip, due to reduced aero downforce, and there was the risk of having excessive wheelspin.

…

“It’s not a case of maybe putting a harder compound onto this year’s tires,” he said. “The changes are so dramatic that we probably need to do a thorough re-engineering of the tire and that takes time.

“So the longer this goes on, it makes our job impossible and there comes a point where probably you say ‘Well, we don’t have time to do the job anymore.”

So, what about Formula One with only 8 cars racing on rims?

If Pirelli were to pull out, any other supplier – should one be found – would struggle to provide tires from scratch in the time available.

Asked whether there was therefore a danger of no Formula One next year, Hembery replied: “You’d have to ask the teams that. We’ve been trying to say that something needs to happen and quick.”

Exciting huh?  Myself, I like Figure 8 Bus Racing- there’s some excitement, you betcha.

Also.

Let’s get to the Fish Head-

Bernie Ecclestone F1 future under cloud as bribery charges are prepared

Paul Weaver, The Guardian

Wednesday 15 May 2013 09.15 EDT

According to the Munich daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, Ecclestone faces charges in Germany relating to the Gerhard Gribkowsky bribery case. Investigations into the case are complete, according to the newspaper, and a Munich court is preparing to file charges in the case within a month, although there may be a delay as the details need to be translated into English before being delivered to Ecclestone’s lawyers.

…

Ecclestone has maintained his innocence throughout, but has already admitted that he would be forced to resign if charged. He said earlier this year that the sport’s owners, CVC Capital Partners, “will probably be forced to get rid of me if the Germans come after me. It’s pretty obvious, if I’m locked up”.

op. cite

To make matters worse, teams complain that there is a lack of leadership from the FIA while Bernie Ecclestone, the sport’s chief executive and commercial rights holder, faces the possibility of prosecution over allegations that he paid a $44m (£29m) bribe to a German banker. Ecclestone, who will be 83 in October, already faced an uncertain future and CVC are believed to have drawn up a short list of names to succeed him. If he is charged, it could potentially jeopardise the planned $12bn (£7.9bn) flotation on the Singapore stock exchange later this year.

Yah think?  Pobrecito Bernie, his constant cheating and stealing may cost him his Billion dollar payoff.

The only reason Ecclestone is perhaps not the biggest and most corrupt asshole in sports is that the competition is so fierce.

Nineteen hours of coverage, most of which has already happened (except for the ones that got crushed like bugs with NHL Playoffs).  8 am Qualifying (now) NBCSports– no repeats.  7 am tomorrow NBCSports Pre-race.  7:30 am NBC Live.  10:30 am NBCSports Monaco repeat (also 11:30 pm Monday).

GP2 Live @ Midnight on NBCSports, repeat @ 1:30 pm Sunday- if you care.

Enjoy Qualifying.

• Monaco Grand Prix
• Circuit de Monaco
• Guardian Interactive Track
• Formula One Interactive Track

• Formula One Official Site
• NBC Sports Motor Sports

I wish.

Japan the Model

By PAUL KRUGMAN, The New York Times

Published: May 23, 2013

A generation ago, Japan was widely admired – and feared – as an economic paragon. Business best sellers put samurai warriors on their covers, promising to teach you the secrets of Japanese management; thrillers by the likes of Michael Crichton portrayed Japanese corporations as unstoppable juggernauts rapidly consolidating their domination of world markets.

Then Japan fell into a seemingly endless slump, and most of the world lost interest. The main exceptions were a relative handful of economists, a group that happened to include Ben Bernanke, now the chairman of the Federal Reserve, and yours truly. These Japan-obsessed economists viewed the island nation’s economic troubles, not as a demonstration of Japanese incompetence, but as an omen for all of us. If one big, wealthy, politically stable country could stumble so badly, they wondered, couldn’t much the same thing happen to other such countries?

Sure enough, it both could and did. These days we are, in economic terms, all Japanese – which is why the ongoing economic experiment in the country that started it all is so important, not just for Japan, but for the world.

…

It would be easy for Japanese officials to make the same excuses for inaction that we hear all around the North Atlantic: they are hamstrung by a rapidly aging population; the economy is weighed down by structural problems (and Japan’s structural problems, especially its discrimination against women, are legendary); debt is too high (far higher, as a share of the economy, than that of Greece). And in the past, Japanese officials have, indeed, been very fond of making such excuses.

The truth, however – a truth that the Abe government apparently gets – is that all of these problems are made worse by economic stagnation. A short-term boost to growth won’t cure all of Japan’s ills, but, if it can be achieved, it can be the first step toward a much brighter future.

Land of the Rising Sums

By PAUL KRUGMAN, The New York Times

May 10, 2013, 8:58 am

The good news for Abenomics keeps rolling in; of course, it’s not over until the sumo wrestler sings, but there has clearly been a major change in Japanese psychology and expectations, which is what it’s all about.

Why does this seem to be working as well as it is? Long ago I argued that to gain traction in a liquidity trap, the central bank needed to credibly promise to be irresponsible – that is, convince investors that it would not rein in monetary expansion once the economy was at full employment and inflation was starting to rise. And this is a hard thing to do; no matter what central bankers may say, history shows that they often revert to type at the first opportunity. The examples of successful changes in expectations tend to involve drastic regime changes, like FDR taking us off the gold standard.

Monetary Policy In A Liquidity Trap

By PAUL KRUGMAN, The New York Times

April 11, 2013, 7:22 am

I’ve made it clear that I very much approve of Japan’s new monetary aggressiveness. But I gather that some readers are confused – haven’t I been arguing that monetary policy is ineffective in a liquidity trap? The brief answer is that current policy is ineffective, but that you can still get traction if you can change investors’ beliefs about expected future monetary policy – which was the moral of my original Japan paper, lo these 15 years ago. But I thought it might be worthwhile to go over this again.

So, at this point America and Japan (and core Europe) are all in liquidity traps: private demand is so weak that even at a zero short-term interest rate spending falls far short of what would be needed for full employment. And interest rates can’t go below zero (except trivially for very short periods), because investors always have the option of simply holding cash.

…

Under these circumstances, normal monetary policy, which takes the form of open-market operations in which the central bank buys short-term debt with money it creates out of thin air, have no effect. Why?

Well, the reason open-market operations usually work is that people are making a tradeoff between yield and liquidity – they hold money, which offers no interest, for the liquidity but limit their holdings because they pay a price in lost earnings. So if the central bank puts more money out there, people are holding more than they want, try to offload it, and drive rates down in the process.

But if rates are zero, there is no cost to liquidity, and people are basically saturated with it; at the margin, they’re holding money simply as a store of value, essentially equivalent to short-term debt. And a central bank operation that swaps money for debt basically changes nothing. Ordinary monetary policy is ineffective.

…

Here’s the thing, however: the economy won’t always be in a liquidity trap, or at least it might not always be there. And while investors shouldn’t care about what the central bank does now, they should care about what it will do in the future. If investors believe that the central bank will keep the pedal to the metal even as the economy begins to recover, this will imply higher inflation than if it hikes rates at the first hint of good news – and higher expected inflation means a lower real interest rate, and therefore a stronger economy.

So the central bank can still get traction if it can change expectations about future policy.

The trouble is that central bankers have a credibility problem – one that’s the opposite of the traditional concern that they might print too much money. Instead, the concern is that at the first sign of good news they’ll revert to type, snatching away the punch bowl. You can see in the figure above that the Bank of Japan did just that in the 2000s.

The hope now is that things have changed enough at the Bank of Japan that this time it can, as I put it all those years ago, “credibly promise to be irresponsible”.

And that’s why I’m bullish on the Japanese experiment, even though current monetary policy has little effect.

I’m sure my many, many MMT friends will be happy to point out how wrong the theoretical basis for this analysis is, but I’ve always been a pragmatic centrist- ask Armando; and as long as our policy dogs hunt in the same direction, who cares?

Jeremy Scahill & Noam Chomsky on Secret U.S. Dirty Wars From Yemen to Pakistan to Laos

Transcript