Spanish society in freefall...

Spain currently has a mass unemployment rate of 24.1% and youth unemployment rate (15-24 y/o) that exceeds 50%, up from 18.2% in 2007.  In comparison Italy's youth unemployment is 29%; Portugal is 30%; and 24% of young people in France are without employment.  The Spanish economy has been contracting each of the past two quarters and is officially back in recession.  As the financial sector attempts to wade through the morass of over-development, massive consolidation of the banks and the crippling of credit has occurred.

The root cause of much of this disaster lies in the corrupt nexus between local bankers and regional politicians, which happen in many instances to be one and the same.  Lax lending standards, cheap foreign labor, and easy inflows of European capital all lead to a massive over-development.  The days of cheap credit ended with the financial crash of 2008.  Private debt was absorbed by the balance sheets of the state and ultimately the collective nations of the Eurozone.

Whereas the chicanery that lead to this bloody mess is a story that needs to be told, I'm interested today in discussing the impact on real people and the current generation of people who will have to pay for this economic catastrophe for the rest of their lives.  The decline and hopelessness felt across Spain has been chronicled in a number of newspapers and journals.  Here are some of the highlights.

In the Spanish daily La Pais, a 9-March article titled Generation Nimileuristra described the lives of young people who see opportunities denied and their lives stagnating with either low or no paying jobs.  

In 2005 youth unemployment was about 20%. Now [reaching] 50% while doubling the European average (22.4%) . The best educated generation has the worst outlook since the transition and feels a victim of the excesses of others...

In Spain there are 10,423,798 people between 18 and 34... Their average net income (including the unemployed), is 824 euros per month. And those who are working earn on average 1,318 euros a month (data from the Youth Council of Spain)...  Professions that seemed safe... are not. The Polytechnic University of Valencia followed the first steps in the process of engineers and architects who graduated in 2008: one in four did not reach [jobs with salaries over 1000 euros/month]. And what is worse: the [educated with jobs with salaries under 1000 euros/month] had advanced by 8% compared to graduates a year earlier.

In many cases youth are forced to abandon independence and relocate into their family's homes.

It has been established that even small levels of protracted unemployment in developed countries can have serious implications for the unemployed.  Those include reduced lifetime wages, reduced employment opportunities, and higher mental health issues.  With respect to society at large, depressed wages will promote educated youth emigrate to other jurisdictions, resulting in a brain-drain to the nation.  Undereducated and unemployed male youth on the other hand are statistically more likely to participate in criminal activity.

In many OECD countries the unemployment rate is substantially higher than the general population. An Economist article from Sept-11, 2011 discusses the various disadvantages and impacts under-employment and unemployment will have on these people.

Unemployment of all sorts is linked with a level of unhappiness that cannot simply be explained by low income. It is also linked to lower life expectancy, higher chances of a heart attack in later life, and suicide. A study of Pennsylvania workers who lost jobs in the 1970s and 1980s found that the effect of unemployment on life expectancy is greater for young workers than for old. Workers who joined the American labour force during the Great Depression suffered from a persistent lack of confidence and ambition for decades.

The implications of this situation are severe.  Not only will youth not be entering the work force, they will not be participating in the economy and doing normal things, such as buying cars, homes, furniture. So there is a negative cascade felt across the nation on all levels. Secondly, since they will not be paying taxes, who will bear the burden of maintaining the welfare state that Europeans are so proud of?   As fewer people are contributing to these pay-as-you-go programs, older generations will see a reduction in benefits.

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The financial crisis has lead to governments across Spain to drastically cut programs, services, and cash transfers to lower levels.  A New York Times article elaborates:

Just as Spain’s national and regional governments are struggling with the collapse of the construction industry, overspending on huge capital projects and a pileup of unpaid bills, the same problems afflict many of its small towns.

One town's mayor discusses his small community's problems:

“We lived beyond our means,” Mr. García said. “We invested in public works that weren’t sensible. We are in technical bankruptcy.” Even some money from the European Union that was supposed to be used for routine operating expenses and last until 2013 has already been spent, he said.

The banking upheavals have brought similar troubles to small and medium scale businesses, which represent "60 percent of the economy, and 80 percent of the jobs".  The vicious cycle has resulted in the shuttering of more than 500,000 small business according to the NY Times.  

“The cuts in credit have been so abrupt that some businesses not only lost specific projects they were working on,” said Carlos Ruiz Fonseca, the director of economy and innovation at Cepyme, Spain’s association of small and medium-size companies. “Some companies have just gone out of business.” 

How is any of this supposed to engender confidence in the international markets?  The same banks which are cutting credit lines, reducing exposure to risk, and contracting their businesses are simultaneously being downgraded by the various credit agencies.  Billions of Euros are being requested by the financial sector to keep these debt ridden entities from further collapsing and imploding the entire Spanish economy.

The net result of all these events is a society that is in freefall.  If these trends continue, not only will Europe have generated legions of angry, unemployed persons, they will have created the same foundations that gave rise to the extremists of the last century.

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Update: video link about squatters taking over an vacant apartment complex, built during the construction boom, in Seville

Third world America: Highland Park, Michigan

Is America the richest country in the world?

Ostensibly the claim is made that America is the greatest country in the world.  A continental nation with global commercial centers, successful manufacturing sectors, a productive workforce, and over 8.4 million households with assets greater than 1-Million dollars (excluding their primary residence). According to Bloomberg News, more than 600,000 persons became millionaires in America in 2010.

However, the rest of the country has not been so lucky and many areas remain mired in debt and socio-economic decline.  The state most exemplifying changes in America's fortunes has been Michigan.  Due to the state's dependence on the automotive industry, Michigan never recovered from the initial dot-com recession of 2001.  For the totality of the decade of the zeroes, the state shed jobs, businesses, and people.  Middle class union jobs that were the backbone of the economy were slashed.  The net result was depression level cut-backs in government spending at the municipal and state level.  With decreased taxes, municipalities cut services; including essential services like police, fire-fighters, and ambulances.

An example of this freefall into urban dystopia is the current city of Highland Park.  The small city of eleven thousand lies encapsulated by Detroit and has witnessed a population decline of 33% since 2000.  Until 1995 it was the former home of Chrysler Automotives, which contributed to nearly 50% of the city's tax base at the time. The decade of the zeroes was particularly harsh to metropolitan Detroit and cities like Highland Park.

In a recent Detroit News article, DTE energy was removing street lights, of which 1,400 have already been extracted, as part of "of a settlement that allowed the city to avoid paying $4 million in unpaid bills going back several years."

Residents of the city are unhappy that basic utilities and services, such as luminating city streets and the front of business locations will not be available.  The Detroit News elaborates:

"After they took the street light from in front of my business, someone climbed onto my roof and stole an air conditioning unit," said Bobby Hargrove, owner of Hargrove Machinery Sales on Oakland Avenue, who also claims a police officer asked him for money to beef up his protection. "I feel like I'm being punished — I've always paid my bills on time, but they took the street light anyway."

So this is where America stands.  Broken urban landscapes bereft of basic amenities and services that people had a century ago.  Welcome to third world America.

Stiglitz on stimulating the US economy

Joseph Stiglitz, professor of economics at Columbia University, former Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank, and recipient of the 2001 Nobel Memorial Award in Economic Sciences, offers some sound advice to the American political system in how to stimulate the US economy.

He points out the obvious:

First, we must dispose two myths. One is that reducing the deficit will restore the economy. You don’t create jobs and growth by firing workers and cutting spending. The reason that firms with access to capital are not investing and hiring is that there is insufficient demand for their products. Weakening demand — what austerity means — only discourages investment and hiring.

He asks, "How do we  get America back to work now?"

The best way is to use this opportunity — with remarkably low long-term interest rates — to make long-term investments that America so badly needs in infrastructure, technology and education.

We should focus on investments that both yield high returns and are labor intensive. These complement private investments — they increase private returns and so simultaneously encourage the private sector.

Helping states pay for education would also quickly save thousands of jobs. It makes no sense for a rich country, which recognizes education’s importance, to be laying off teachers — especially when global competition is so fierce. Countries with a better educated labor force will do better. Moreover, education and job training are essential if we are to restructure our economy for the 21st century.

The advantage of having underinvested in the public sector for so long is that we have many high-return opportunities. The increased output in the short run and increased growth in the long run can generate more than enough tax revenues to pay the low interest on the debt. The result is that our debt will decrease, our GDP will increase and the debt to GDP ratio will improve.

He also considers the possibility of raising taxes and using that income to invest in the country to stimulate the economy.

Increasing taxes at the top, for example, and lowering taxes at the bottom will lead to more consumption spending. Increasing taxes on corporations that don’t invest in America and lowering them on those that do would encourage more investment. The multiplier — the amount GDP increases per dollar spent — for spending on foreign wars, for example, is far lower than education, so shifting money here stimulates the economy.

There are things we can do beyond the budget. The government should have some influence over the banks, particularly given the enormous debt they owe us for their rescue. Carrots and sticks can encourage more lending to small- and medium-sized businesses and to restructure more mortgages. It is inexcusable that we have done so little to help homeowners, and as long as the foreclosures continue apace, the real estate market will continue to be weak.

The banks’ anti-competitive credit card practices also essentially impose a tax on every transaction — but it is a tax with revenues that go to fill the banks’ coffers, not for any public purpose — including lowering the national debt. Stronger enforcement of antitrust laws against the banks would also be a boon to many small businesses.

Quote of the Day: On the deluded masses

When people hold certain ideological beliefs strongly enough, no amount of facts will get in their way. If you believe that the current deficit is the result of excessive government spending (passed by Democrats, even though they only controlled Congress and the White House for four out of the past thirty years*), no pile of charts will be big enough to convince you otherwise — just like if you believe that tax cuts increase tax revenues, that the deficit has produced high interest rates, or that Barack Obama was born on Mars, no amount of evidence will convince you otherwise.

- James Kwak, "Who Created this Mess"

I've been struggling with this matter in the past few weeks.

Personal growth and development necessitates that each of us occasionally review and validate the overarching ideas that govern our worldview.  When dealing with religion, politics, and cultural issues, we are dependant on our limited educational and personal experiences and not hard empirical fact.  However, one would assume that most people when presented with facts that contradict prevailing opinions about the world, they would then tact and reassess their stances.  All too often though in this age of modern stupidity -as in the example on the right with regard to global warming and taxes or on the left with regard to the utility of the welfare state- people not only reject legitimate criticism and facts, but engage in buttressing their own faltering delusions.

The above quote, highlights the issue in America surrounding some of the more pedestrian claptrap that manifests itself as serious discussion in the media.  It seems despite the ease with which people can look up facts on the internet and access knowledge, the less some people are interested in thinking.

Sen. Sanders on the Greed of the Plutocrats

Arizona's indulgence with the banality of evil

I have been for some years awed by the grotesque indecency and outright evil that presents itself as the norm in the low-tax geezer-vista that is the state of Arizona.  Many will recognize the ongoing battle between locals and illegal immigrants.  My disgust does not entail this well discussed legal tussle and the underlying racial animus prevalent across the state.  Instead, I'd like to draw attention to the mindset and legislative behavior of the state's Republicans, who with their tax-free and minimalist government ideology have created a perfect example of the banality of evil.

I came across this example in the NY Times of the lengths many of the well-heeled denizens of the state will go to, in order to protect their personal fortunes from the local taxman.  Consider the following:

“Arizona is seeing more of the traditional battle of the generations...between some retirees who want taxes — including school taxes — kept low, and most parents who want better support for the schools their kids attend.”

Patrick Flynn, the president of a homeowners group in Troon, AZ in 2007, states that he has no qualms about education, he "just does not like the idea of paying for it."  In this particular exhibition of generational greed and malice, the residents of the district created a bogus local school district with no schools, teachers, or students to prevent their property taxes from being raised.  Families with children must pay adjacent districts to have their children participate in schooling.  As a state senator explains, “The whole purpose of this was to avoid taxes on their million-dollar homes.”

In an earlier post titled "The young must die so Geezers can pay low taxes" I explained how the Governor of Arizona planned to eliminate health coverage for 47,000 low-income children.  In the name of fiscal austerity the legislators gladly abandoned their most vulnerable citizens so that these modern day Merchants of Venice wouldn't have to worry about wasting their well earned shekels on youthful vermin.  The fact that the elderly receive federally subsidized Medicare and have no worries about paying for health care costs is an irrelevance to these hypocrites.  Racial bigotry is used by the citizens of the state to claim that most of the children were the offspring of illegals, who shouldn't be receiving benefits regardless.

What has drawn my particular ire today though is another instance of greed masquerading as fiscal rectitude.  The NY Times has a horrible story of how Arizona legislators have stripped citizens belonging to the state Medicaid program from having life-saving transplants.  Persons who for whatever reason that were waiting for a liver, lung, or other tissue were told to drop dead by their own representatives.

When Alan Grayson, the former congressman for Florida, said in 2009 that the Republican plan for health care reform was, "Don't get sick. That's right, don't get sick."  The MSM and Republicans bemoaned his rhetoric and yet evidence is abundant that he was absolutely correct.  On the floor of the House of Representatives, Grayson offered this scathing critique of the Republican party's program for health care

According to this study, “Health Insurance and Mortality in U.S. Adults” which was published two weeks ago, 44,789 Americans die every year because they have no health insurance. That’s right, 44,789 Americans die every year, according to this Harvard study called “Health Insurance and Mortality in U.S. Adults.” You can see it by going to our website, grayson.house.gov. That is more than ten times the number of Americans who have died in the war in Iraq.

It’s more than ten times the number of Americans who died in 9/11. But that was just once: this is every single year. That’s right: every single year. Take a look at this. Read it and weep. And I mean that – read it and weep because of all these Americans who are dying because they don’t have health insurance.

The state of Arizona offered this pathetic rational for why the government was serving poor and sick citizens a death sentence:

State Medicaid officials said they recommended discontinuing some transplants only after assessing the success rates for previous patients. Among the discontinued procedures are lung transplants, liver transplants for hepatitis C patients and some bone marrow and pancreas transplants, which altogether would save the state about $4.5 million a year.

While many states in the union have reduced or eliminated aspects of health coverage during the Great Recession, Arizona once again goes the extra distance to condemn their citizens to the vagaries of market-based health care; i.e. pay or you fucking die!  The cruelty and lack of any resemblance of ethics of these people is mind-boggling.

The behavior of all levels of government in Arizona is one of maximizing short term financial gains for their most well off citizens, while brutally undermining the health, education, and well-being of large portions of their population.  How is it that the richest country in the world has a health care system that is on par with second-rate industrial nations?  The justifications of the proponents of this lot are always anchored to some bizarre notion of moral indignation that others are getting a free ride, while they -the greediest generation, who never sacrificed, never went to war in the name of democracy and freedom, and who had their entire lives subsidized from birth- continuously demand others do without, what they loudly proclaim is their deserved entitlement.

Quote of the Day: Now the Rich are Victims!

We don't hate rich people, but have a little humility about how you got it and stop complaining. Maybe the worst whiner of all: Stephen Schwarzman, #69 on Forbes' list of richest Americans, compared Obama's tax hike to "when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939." Wow. If Obama were Hitler, Mr. Schwarzman, I think your tax rate would be the least of your worries.

- Bill Maher on "New Rule: Rich People Who Complain About Being Vilified Should Be Vilified "

On the whole, who should pay for the Bush tax cuts, two failed and utterly unpaid for Middle Eastern wars, Medicare Part-D, more tax cuts, increasing the already bloated military-industrial-surveillance state, and failing to invest in America's infrastructure for the past decade?  Well if you're making top-dollar and are part of the top 0.1 percentile, you apparently don't care as long as it's not you or any of your friends who you go with to golf games in the Hamptons or ski with in Vale.  The problem is that unless Americans as a whole are going to embrace cutting defense spending and hacking Medicare and Social Security to its bare bones, then someone is going to have to pay more.  If you're really pissed off that you had a ten-year tax vacation and now have to pay 3% more on your top earnings, then let's face it: you're just a greedy motherfucker.

Bruce Bartlett Calls Dubya's Tax Cuts Virtually Useless

Bruce Bartlett, a former Republican who served in both the Reagan and George H.W. Bush Administrations, has put forward a critique of the tax cuts implemented under Dubya (aka. George W. Bush)

To summarize, the original Bush tax cuts, although widely stated as a stimulative supply side tax-break, were in fact designed to offset the revenues the federal state was obtaining during the final years of the Clinton administration in the 1990's. A conceit articulated most prominently by Alan Greenspan, who at the time claimed that fiscal surpluses had grown too large.  Instead of creating sound fiscal policies, Mr. Bush's first term tax-cuts, rebates, and tax code "reforms" were determined by the Republican party to create, according to Bartlett, constituencies that would be grateful to the Great Leader's leadership. He outlines:

Bush proposed a doubling of the child credit to $1,000; higher limits on education savings accounts; a new deduction for two-earner couples; allowing a deduction for charitable contributions by those that don’t file itemized returns; a $400 deduction for teachers who buy unreimbursed school supplies; Individual Development Accounts to allow people to save tax-free for retraining; a refundable tax credit for health insurance; and a tax credit for financial institutions that matched savings by those with low incomes. The only supply-side element was a modest reduction in the top statutory income tax rate from 39.6 percent to 33 percent — higher than it had been during Bush’s father’s administration — that would be phased-in over a number of years.

However, in reviewing the actual impact of those tax cuts, Bartlett concludes that it is clear that:

there is virtually no evidence in support of the Bush tax cuts as an economic elixir. To the extent that they had any positive effect on growth, it was very, very modest. Their main effect was simply to reduce the government’s revenue, thereby increasing the budget deficit, which all Republicans claim to abhor.

As my previous post explains, everything the Bush-bots claimed that they were doing and predicted about the country's fiscal situation turned out to be incorrect.  Despite the hysterical reporting by the toadies of the Republican party and Wall Street in the MSM, the tax cuts provided limited or no economic value.  It is therefore complete nonsense that if America's wealthiest and most affluent aren't given even more perks through the extension of the tax breaks, that the entire country will disintegrate.  The plutocrats are the one's who have destroyed the American middle class through their low tax, militaristic, pro-China globalization trade policies.  In the wake of their recklessness, they have increased poverty, diminished social mobility, and promoted a culture of debt that will retard US economic growth for another decade.  Since they are the one's who have felt the least pain in an economic collapse caused by their antics, they should at least bear some of the burden in returning the nation to solvency.

Dan Gross on Tax Cuts

Daniel Gross over at Slate, has a few key words for those on the kool-aid about retaining the Bush junta's tax cuts.  He makes a number of points on why the entire "discussion" is but an election gimmick executed by Republicans, who have no interest in either fiscal solvency or reasonable management of the federal government.

Barry Ritholtz points out on his blog, The Big Picture, how ridiculous the whole debate has become and highlight's Gross' most salient point:

The bold and confident assertions made about the links between tax rates and economic growth, market performance, and prosperity are almost certainly wrong. Turn on CNBC or look at the Wall Street Journal op-ed page these days, and you'll learn that we must keep tax rates on capital gains, dividends, and income precisely where they are because shifting them to different levels will retard economic growth. Keep this in mind: The people who designed the current, unsustainable tax system promised us that lower marginal rates, and lower taxes on capital and dividends, would boost the economy, promote investment, create jobs, spur market performance, and raise everybody's income. They were wrong. (It's no coincidence that these same people also warned us that raising taxes in 1993 would kill market returns and the economy. They were wrong then, too. They're pretty much always wrong.) As I've pointed out, the years under the current tax regime have been a lost decade. Pick your metric—median income, employment, stock market returns, economic growth—the low-tax '00s sucked. Yet proponents of keeping the tax cuts persist in making the argument: To avoid a repeat of the past decade, we must have the exact same tax policies as we did for the past decade.

In other words, the economic svengali's of the Bush junta and the dimwits of the Republican Party didn't know what they were doing when Clinton was in office, they didn't know what they were talking about when their man Dubya was hectoring us on the benefits of supply-side economics, and they certainly don't have any meaningful insights into the economy now that their very policies and lack of regulation have thrown the entire financial world off kilter.

Unfunded Liabilities: A Cost Profile of the Iraq War

Joseph E. Stiglitz (Columbia University) and Linda J. Bilmes (Harvard University) wrote in 2008, "The Three Trillion Dollar War."  It was an attempt to examine and describe the full costs of the Iraq war to the general public and contextualize the implications of the American public's decision to allow the Bush junta unfettered war making authority.  Although the original figures were met with usual hostility from cultural managers and propagandists on the right,  additional studies completed by the Joint Economic Committee of Congress and the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, concluded that the war would cost American taxpayers at least $3.5 trillion or between $1.4 and $2.2 trillion respectively.

Today they update the assumptions and cost profile of the cost of the Iraq war in a Washington Post opinion piece labelled, "The true cost of the Iraq war: $3 trillion and beyond." They briefly expand on four areas that have developed over the past two years: Afghanistan, the Oil market, the Federal debt, and the financial crisis. I've highlighted the most illuminating sections of the article below.

Afghanistan

The Iraq invasion diverted our attention from the Afghan war, now entering its 10th year... It is hard to believe that we would be embroiled in a bloody conflict in Afghanistan today if we had devoted the resources there that we instead deployed in Iraq. A troop surge in 2003 -- before the warlords and the Taliban reestablished control -- would have been much more effective than a surge in 2010.

Oil

We now believe that a more realistic (if still conservative) estimate of the war's impact on prices works out to at least $10 per barrel. That would add at least $250 billion in direct costs to our original assessment of the war's price tag. But the cost of this increase doesn't stop there: Higher oil prices had a devastating effect on the economy.

Federal Debt

There is no question that the Iraq war added substantially to the federal debt. This was the first time in American history that the government cut taxes as it went to war. The result: a war completely funded by borrowing. U.S. debt soared from $6.4 trillion in March 2003 to $10 trillion in 2008 (before the financial crisis); at least a quarter of that increase is directly attributable to the war. And that doesn't include future health care and disability payments for veterans, which will add another half-trillion dollars to the debt.

Financial Crisis

Saying what might have been is always difficult, especially with something as complex as the global financial crisis, which had many contributing factors. Perhaps the crisis would have happened in any case. But almost surely, with more spending at home, and without the need for such low interest rates and such soft regulation to keep the economy going in its absence, the bubble would have been smaller, and the consequences of its breaking therefore less severe. To put it more bluntly: The war contributed indirectly to disastrous monetary policy and regulations.

The young must die so Geezers can pay low taxes!

It never ceases to amaze me at how greedy and un-Christian Southerners are. The latest volley of cruelty originates in the state of Arizona, where the possibility of raising taxes and forcing the wretched Geezer-polis of this desert wasteland to invest in their fellow Americans, communities, and infrastructure not linked to killing foreigners is verboten.

Gov. Jan Brewer signed an austere budget that will eliminate health coverage for 47,000 low-income children by eliminating the state's Children’s Health Insurance Program.   The only state in the union willing to do so.  The NY Times states that Arizona, not content to bulldozer over its future citizens, will "roll back Medicaid coverage for childless adults in a move that is expected to eventually drop 310,000 people from the rolls."

The Republican-controlled Legislature furthermore passed a budget that includes deep cuts to both health care and education.

The Medicaid reduction for childless adults rolls back an expansion approved by voters in 2000 and cuts enrollment about 25 percent. The expansion was to be paid for with tobacco settlement dollars, a revenue source that quickly proved inadequate.

No doubt the anti-tax armada of self-made Geezers will relish the thought that their precious money won't go to the superfluous requirement of having decent health care coverage or education for children.  After all, these people are clearly either just freeloading Mexicans or un-Godly creatures that the Lord himself is endeavouring to punish.

At what point do we stop calling America a civilized country and call it out as an intemperate international hooligan and wastrel. This recession was made, sealed, and delivered by the very people who are now lying in the Arizona sun, casually dispensing with their retirement days. These nabobs of consumerism, who to this day remain contemptuous of anyone who dares to challenge their pseudo-religious doctrine of low-taxes, unregulated capital, and maximum warfare, are to blame for this economic disaster.  The children of Saint Ronnie and his revolution of personal irresponsibility have had their gluttonous feast and are now more than happy to have someone else's children pay the bill.

Becoming More Stupid: Climate Change Disbelievers

Once again, the forces of human ignorance and absolute stupidity are on the march. According to:

The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Sept. 30-Oct. 4 among 1,500 adults reached on cell phones and landlines, finds that 57% think there is solid evidence that the average temperature on earth has been getting warmer over the past few decades. In April 2008, 71% said there was solid evidence of rising global temperatures. Over the same period, there has been a comparable decline in the proportion of Americans who say global temperatures are rising as a result of human activity, such as burning fossil fuels. Just 36% say that currently, down from 47% last year.

That is a startling drop of common sense. It means that 14% of the US population, despite thirty years of research, innumerable scientific studies, irrefutable empirical evidence, and the Nobel Prize for Peace being given to the IPCC (Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change), have in the period of a year changed their minds. The only possible answer to this disturbing regression is that the forces of corporate propaganda coupled with the mainstream media's indifference to articulating facts about the subject and the persistent aloofness of the general population to basic science have given ample opportunity to dissuade the ignorant masses that it is once again acceptable to pollute their way to prosperity.

I've exhausted all patience with these evolutionary dead-enders who shriek at the slightest increase in taxes and the cost of beer, yet are incapable of rationalizing the simplest of scientifically determinable facts. I expect nothing of substance to come out of the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference in December and furthermore expect that those who prevented change, impeded consensus, and disseminated propaganda will once again be amongst the first to demand that government save them and their businesses when the full effects of climate change occur.

Carter on the Republican Noise Machine

The attempt of these right-wing zombies to portray their angst with this administration as having to do with reducing taxes, increasing liberty, or even reforming government based on firm conservative beliefs is farcical. If it were so, where were they when their Republican leaders were manufacturing consent for the Iraq war; doubling the federal debt; conducting a massive and illegal searches of Americans telephone conversations, emails, and sent mail; eliminating habeas corpus rights; and instituting torture as the first and last resort to any national security issue? No, their objective is nothing less than having this administration and equally America fail. Unable to articulate or even fiend a cogent argument based on facts and reason (not that they ever have) they reach deep into their primeval brains and vomit out voluminous buckets of venomous bile. To them Barrack Obama is considered a foreign agent who is hell-bent on destroying "their" America. To them he is simultaneously a socialist, a fascist, a Muslim, a Marxist, a communist, the Anti-Christ, and all things un-American.

Doublethink, the acceptance of two contradictory ideas or beliefs at the same time, has become the basis of the tea-baggers/Republican base's political ideology. As such, they are free to espouse the most ridiculous conceits without ever having to accept their inherent ignorance or bigotry.

When James Earl Carter, America's 39th president and Nobel prize winner, called a spade a spade, it was the mandarins of the mainstream media, too embarrassed by their own intellectual shallowness and outright pandering to those ignoble elements of American society, who first went to defend and then obfuscate the debate on the indecency of these tea-baggers and their right-wing accomplices. Despite the fact that the Republicans have been a party whose public philosophy, since Richard Nixon, has been that of ginning up white-alienation, race-baiting, persistent religious zealotry, and overt bigotry to win elections, we are told by the MSM and Republicans that their objections with Mr. Obama are honest. That and not the act of racism is the real news here.

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Follow Up: McClatchy Press has a good article on this subject in, "There's no denying Obama's race plays a role in protests." The article gives a broad outline of the increase of racial taunts emitted by the standard culprits and also to the growing extremism in right-wing circles that have resulted, in what author Ron Kessler describes in his forthoming book on the US Secret Service, "that racists and white supremacists probably account for more than a third of the estimated 30 death threats that Obama allegedly receives every day, about four times as many as were directed at former President George W. Bush."

Corporate Socialism: Agribusiness Subsidies

Despite the loud and perennial denunciations of creeping socialism by right-wing protesters, for decades American agribusinesses have been receiving prodigious and what some would call obscene levels of subsidisation through legislative machinations. This is a bi-partisan effort, pursued by both Democrats and Republicans and executed across all regions of the nation, and meant to insure excess revenue for already large and very profitable corporations. In fact, agribusiness, after the military-industrial complex and most recently the bailed out banking industry, is the nation's largest recipient of corporate welfare. The implications are not trivial for they entail not just the gross misuse of public money, but result in excessive taxes levied on individual citizens, unfair competition for small farmers, and the nation's food supply and production being placed under the control of multi-national companies seeking less regulation, cheap labor, and ever larger annual profits.

These bills are sold to the public under labels like the "Farm Security Act" and the "Agriculture Conservation and Rural Enhancement Act" and are subject to heavy lobbing efforts. Despite the claim that these bills are meant to improve the status of rural family farmers, the reality is much different. According to the conservative Heritage Foundation,

two-thirds of all farm subsidies go to the top 10 percent of subsidy recipients while the bottom 80 percent of recipients receive less than one-sixth of farm subsidies. A full 60 percent of America's farmers do not qualify for any assistance. In 2000 alone, more than 57,500 farms received subsidies totaling over $100,000, and subsidies of at least 154 farms topped $1 million. Among these beneficiaries are fifteen Fortune 500 companies, including Westvaco, Chevron, and John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance, which receive as much as 58 times as much as the median annual subsidy of $935.

In what is described as a "plantation effect," family farms across the country are being bought out by corporations, which are converted into tenant farms. According to available statistics, 75% of the nation's rice farms are tenant farms and the ownership of other monoculture based farms is trending in the same direction.

The US is not alone in its trade protectionist and 'free trade' charade. The video above by Nobel Prize winning economist Joesph Stiglitz, provides a sliver of the hypocrisy conducted by all the major economic powers relating to farm subsidies. The EU as an example, provides "13 billion euros, about a quarter of the £47.5 billion spent under the EU's Common Agriculture Policy (CAP)... to big business and industry, not farmers." The Economist magazine evaluates the overall situation in the industrial world as of 2008:

The OECD estimates that its member countries spent $265 billion on farm subsidies in 2008. This was slightly more than a fifth of their farmers’ total earnings. Last year’s increase in food prices ensured that such payments were at their lowest level since records began in the mid-1980s. But handouts still made up more than three-fifths of farmers’ gross incomes in Norway and South Korea between 2006 and 2008. In contrast, they were less than 1% of farm incomes in New Zealand and under 10% in both Australia and America. But the size of America’s farm sector meant that it spent $23.3 billion on subsidies last year. The European Union was by far the biggest subsidiser, forking out $150.4 billion.

Agricultural practices conducted by corporate plantations and food conglomerates as portrayed in the recent documentary Food Inc., "are endangering health, allowing appalling cruelty to livestock and putting the food supply in a dangerously vulnerable position." For example, the number one subsidised crop in America is corn. In particular,

Corn syrup... is an ingredient in high-calorie, low-nutrition junk foods that have created the obesity epidemic. Corn is stuffed into animals that were not evolved to eat it, promoting the evolution of E. coli bacteria and requiring antibiotics that are passed on to unwitting consumers. Given that one fast-food hamburger may involve meat from literally thousands of cattle, the effects are inescapable.

Under the guise of providing supplemental income to family farmers, the US government has allowed corporatized feudalism to become the 'norm' in the agricultural industry and permitted the domestic population to become subservient to the rapacity of these multi-nationals, without a single bullet or invasion occurring. As always, beneficial socialism for the wealthy and fuck-you-very-much capitalism and for the rest of us.

Tweedledee versus Tweedledum: Democrats vs. Republicans

Does anyone remember why Bill "aka Bubba" Clinton got elected in 1992 the first place?

It could have been the twelve disastrous years under Reagan-Bush that left the country with the largest debt since the Second World War, three recessions, the stock market crash of 1987, $160 Billion spent rescuing the Saving & Loan industry, the post cold-war peace dividend spent invading Panama and Iraq (the first time), or the looming threat of seeing more American jobs being shipped overseas through NAFTA during a harsh economic turn-down. My opinion is that the primary reason, if you exclude that Ross Perot received 18.9% of the vote, was affordable health care for all American citizens.

Americans did not want another free-market dogmatist, they wanted a fresh face to run the affairs of state and provide them with minimal health care coverage, that other great superpowers like Denmark and Australia were able to provide to their own. During his candidacy Clinton heavily promoted and invested in the theme of health care reform. However, after loosing the lower house in '94 to Newt (who names their child after an amphibian?) Gingrich, Clinton switched teams and told everyone, "Don't ask and Don't tell!"

Sixteen years later the Obama administration and USA are in the same conundrum that 'Bubba' was facing in 1993, but worst. Bill Maher states what has been obvious for years, that the Democrats and Republicans who hold power are merely two heads of the same mutant jackass, that has long been ridden by the rapacious lobbyists of K-Street. When the actions of Nicholas Sarkozy, the conservative president of France, is demonstrably more liberal than the policies of Barack Obama, what really then is the most appropriate label for the current American president?

Maher with his classic sarcasm tells:

Every time Obama takes on a major 'progressive' cause there is a major party standing in his way; the Democrats...

When you go to the polls your choice is for the guy who voted for the first bailout or the guy who voted for the next ten...

Shouldn't there be one party that unambiguously supports cutting the military budget, a party that is straight up in favor of gun control, gay marriage, higher taxes on the rich, universal health care, legalizing pot, and steep direct taxing of polluters?

...What we need is an actual progressive party to represent the millions of Americans who aren't being served by the Democrats, because bottom line: Democrats are the new Republicans.