Author Archives: deanwebb

The Statistics of Propaganda

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There are 400 Americans that have $1.57 trillion between them, which is as much as 50% of the US population. That’s one group of 400 with $1,570,000,000,000, or $3.92500 billion apiece and 153,503,275 Americans with $0.00001 billion apiece. Somehow, the PR firms hired by the top 400 and their ilk have managed to make this fact seem to be a justification for taxing the people with $0.00001 billion more and the ones with $3.92500 billion less. That’s not right.

In the game of divide and rule, the minority at the top must fracture the majority in as many ways as possible, so that it does not unite and topple the minority. With wealth, this is easily done. The pattern is repeatable: mercenary security forces provide muscle and a few of the majority are invited to partake of a crumb or two so that they become boosters for the supposed prosperity afforded by going easy on the people with wealth and power. Meanwhile, racial, religious, and gender divides are exploited with opportunistic propaganda fomented by agents provocateurs in the pay of the rich. They just have to start the ball rolling. They don’t have to go along for the ride.

When I see emails that try and make it sound that the rich are victims, I become angry. It’s a lie. How can a person that buys and sells congressmen and judges and regulatory agencies be a victim? These guys will avoid taxes however possible just so they can keep a bigger pile of goodies for themselves. They probably don’t know what people who have to have a pan card seva go through to earn money and did they earn their pile on their own? Not likely. Inheritance is the number one way to make money in the USA, followed by interest earnings. Of course, for every dollar collected in interest, a dollar is paid in interest, and the poor pay those dollars. Even when a rich man borrows from another rich man, his interest payments are passed on to the poor as part of the prices of the goods and services he provides. A poor man with zero debt will still be paying interest. Interest is money made off of someone else’s labor. Kinda like what a vampire does, only with money and only in real life.

For every “Top x% of earners pay y% of our taxes” I see, I want to shout that that x% is earning more than y% of the national income. They’re not paying their fair share in a straight proportional scale and when you consider how much tax is already claimed in the form of widow’s mites, it’s revolting to see people try to paint the rich as victims.

Cherry-picked statistics are some of the most effective propaganda out there. Watch out.

Classic Bugs Bunny Cartoons

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I don’t want to talk about the economy right now. I want to talk about the great old Warner Brothers cartoons from the 1940s and 1950s – the Golden Age of Cartoons.

These animations were awesome. They beat tons of the CGI garbage foisted on us by profit-seeking media conglomerates. Warner Bros. wanted profits back in the day, sure, but the only way they knew how to get them was by hiring the best talent available and giving them free run of their animation department, Termite Terrace.

The names of the animators are legendary, at least to me. Chuck Jones, Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, Robert McKimson… the music department under Carl Stalling and Milt Franklyn… the genius voices of guys like Mel Blanc and Stan Freberg… I loved all their work. When lesser lights were brought in during the late 1950s and early 1960s, I noticed the drop in quality and wanted to go back to the good stuff. Even as a little kid, I knew my shinola from the stinky alternative.

I loved the zany anvils plummeting down from the heavens, the twists in Romantic compositions, the line of Acme products, the Raymond Scott-inspired manic anthems, the massive explosions, the earth-shattering kabooms, and the blasted-back faces of those that held a bomb too closely at the bingo moment.

And the quotes! “Sody pop! Watch it fizz!” “Kill the wabbit!” “Duck season! FIRE!” “Nice lady, but she’s about as sharp as a sack of wet mice!” “Hoboken? OOOOH I’M DYIN’!” “Elvis? Why for did you shoot yo’ pappy in the head with a shootin-iron?” “A bee! I will bash it!” “Hee hee hee! I haven’t had this much fun since the boys got back from Gettysburg!” “I want hasenpfeffer!” Good times here at best bluetooth motorcycle helmet.

Check out the classics of the 1940s and the 1950s. and look them up on YouTube. Here, watch one now:

This Time *IS* Different

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Kenneth Rogoff wrote a book with Carmen Reinhardt, titled This Time Is Different. The book chronicled economic crises around the world over the last 300 years and came to the conclusion that in the run-up to a big crash, everyone says “This time is different!” and that a crash can’t happen.

Then the crash happens.

Ironically, after the crash, governments and big financial institutions try to assure us that this time isn’t different, that this is a common-or-garden variety recession. Sadly, Rogoff informs us all that this time is different. We’re in the midst of an asset-devaluation recession, which lasts longer and deeper than the normal sort of recession. We know it’s different because, three years after the big drop, we still see unemployment at high rates and have had no return to pre-crash GDP. The debts run up by governments that should now be reckoned as insolvent is coming down hard on them and we need to own up to the fact that there are lots of toxic assets still on those bank balance sheets.

Crises don’t happen all at once. They are drawn-out affairs, especially the sorts of crises as the world is experiencing right now. Nobody in 1929 or 1930 thought they were in a depression: most folks started 1931 thinking things would be all right that year. Instead, it was the start of a long slide to the real bottom of the Great Depression, which hit the USA in 1932. The situation in the world is reminiscent of the way things were in 1931, so maybe that’s where we’re headed.

So Who’s Behind the Tea Party?

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Koch Industries, that’s who. The company’s management, the Koch (rhymes with Coke) brothers, use huge sums of money to lobby on behalf of their interests as heads of a massive oil, chemical, and timber firm – as well as issues of interest to billionaires from sea to shining sea. Koch Industries are also heavily involved in derivatives trading… guess how their lobbying dollars fall on that issue.

Koch Industries and its leadership is also against regulations against dioxin, asbestos, and formaldehyde. Nice to know they’ve got loads of say in Congress with their $20 million or so per year spent on lobbying.

I can scrape up enough time in my busy day to email or call my Congressman and Senators: these guys flat-out buy them. I can’t compete with that. You can’t compete with that. Even as a we, we can’t compete with that.

Worse, these guys have tapped into the anger felt by many people in the Tea Party and used it to further their own ends. The Tea Party was hijacked from day one, when the Koch-backed Americans For Prosperity opened up a Facebook page for the Tea Party and got into organizing stuff for them.

It shouldn’t be any surprise that Rupert Murdoch has been the Tea Party’s biggest supporter in the media. He’s another billionaire in favor of less regulation of shady dealings when they’re perpetrated by the very rich.

Want more on the Tea Party backers? Her’s a report from OpenSecrets.org. Go to the “Bills” tab and take a look at some of the things these guys have influenced: clean water standards, exempting greenhouse gases from the Clean Air Act, price gouging standards, oil spill accountability, and the Over-the-Counter Derivatives Markets Act of 2009, among others. My guess is that Koch Industries is in favor of dirty water, filthy air, price gouging, not cleaning up oil spills, and continued abuse of the wide-open derivatives market – as these issues suit their bottom line.

Need more? Here’s another report from The Center for Public Integrity. Their work shows that Koch is all about getting rid of government influence when it helps them, and gets as much government regulation, subsidy, and involvement when it aids their cause. Not my cause, your cause, or our cause. THEIR cause.

These guys handle 10% of all the ethanol in the USA. They forget their Libertarianism language when it comes to ethanol subsidies. The Koch brothers are tied at 18th place on Forbes’ list of ungodly rich people, and you bet your sweet bippy that they’re going to fight any measure that threatens to touch their piles of cash.

So now you know the real reason why the Tea Party people don’t want to end tax breaks for big oil, ethanol subsidies, or billionaires: their movement is funded by and guided by the very people that benefit from the biggest of governments.

Monster Truck Rolls Royce

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I dreamt about a Rolls Royce monster truck last night. It looked very much like this car I found this morning on the Internet, but the catch was that this particular Rolls was featured on Top Gear.

The lads had added a PA system that blared out “Rule Britannia” on a constant loop and, of course, added the monster truck get-up as part of a test to make the Rolls as loud as possible on the outside to see if they could not hear any of it on the inside. An ultimate test of the cabin soundproofing, if you will.

I would love to see this as an actual episode. Therefore, I am posting this idea on my Facebook page and I hope it generates a fair enough share of interest to warrant a segment on some future programme.

Continuity of Government Debt

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National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive 51/20 does what the Democrats claim the 14th Amendment can do, namely, give the President the power to raise the debt limit on his own and keep the government rolling. It’s all part of the “Enduring Constitutional Government” clause. So, thanks to George the Second, we are guaranteed continuity of government debt. Ain’t that just something?

Not that it makes me happy… it’s just that it takes a lot more than a recalcitrant Congress to exercise a check or a balance on the executive branch, these days. Congress passed that darn PATRIOT Act, and now we see it can effectively give the President dictatorial powers any time there looks to be a crisis, real or engineered.

Goodnight and good luck, everyone.

The 14th Amendment and the Debt

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The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void. – Clause Four of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America

Sorry, Obama fans. This amendment does not empower the president to raise the debt limit unilaterally. Maybe it would if there was a different makeup of the Supreme Court. Given the current state of the court, it would rule 5-4 against the president – or anyone – raising the debt limit unilaterally.

It’s one thing for Congress to act childishly, but quite another for someone in government to act unconstitutionally. I’d hope that people would stop trying to encourage a constitutional crisis over the debt situation.

What, Again?

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Boehner couldn’t even get his own party to vote for his bill, yet he’s trying to run it through the House today. To get his party together, he had to hand over concessions to the Tea Party that would guarantee that the bill would not stand a chance of passing any other house. Sure, you could pass it, Mr. Speaker, but that’s very passive-aggressive of you to insist that if it doesn’t pass the Senate that it’s not your fault.

The GOP has lost its party discipline, it’s plain to see. The radicals in the Tea Party are a party within the GOP: they are a coalition partner, an an unreliable one, at that. In a parliamentary system, Boehner would be up for a vote of no confidence and a snap election would have to be called to try and deliver a new makeup of the House – or he’d have to form a unity government with the Democrats and rule with them, having their votes replace those of the dissenting Tea Party votes.

Boehner has not sought unity, and that is why we’re seeing this wretched drama drag on another day. I have a feeling that some of those “red” politicians are holding their breath for so long, they’ll turn their constituencies “blue.”

This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

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I know things have to be bad when I turn on C-SPAN to watch the House of Representatives. I did it to watch the debate on the Boehner budget proposal. One representative hit the nail on the head: this bill enshrines the mistakes of the Bush II era. The giveaways that administration made possible for big oil, big finance, big incomes, probably also big hair for all I know… If it was big, Bush’s policies benefited it. If it was too big to fail, Bush’s policies were a dream come true. And now that 21% of hardcore Bushites are doing the equivalent of a temper tantrum to make sure their Dear Leader remains an albatross around the necks of Americans forever.

The US Government created $16 trillion out of thin air to bail out big automobiles and too big to fail finance. Yet, it can’t find a nickel, it seems, to aid the poor. Citibank could have failed and AIG could have been blown away and the FDIC had the money necessary to make sure that no depositor would lose his or her money: the former head of the FDIC revealed that Greenspan, Paulson, and Geithner all told her, basically, to rescue the gamblers. The richest of the rich, in other words.

America has the wherewithal to run its affairs fairly and properly. The problem is that the richest of the rich are greedy and that they own enough politicians to keep the laws in their favor. Boehner’s budget is awful. Reid’s is laughable. All of these budgets, in some way or another, ensure the rich keep their goodies. Boehner’s benefits them the most, while Reid’s is essentially no real change, so it’s no loss to them.

The Republicans aren’t good for America. The Democrats aren’t as bad, but they’re still not good. The Tea Party is suicide. The richest of the rich have had their grip on the nation since the crisis of 1861, when the US plunged into war with itself. To finance that war, the bankers did not pledge their money as grants: they loaned it to the government on condition that the debt be perpetual.

We live in a plutocracy, with trimmings of a republic. There are charades enacted by the plutocrats to appease the masses, but the true power is in the hands of the richest of the rich. Every political faction with organization is manipulated with the money of the richest of the rich. Not every person: just enough in order to mess everything up.

As a nation, we are governed by a class that has no compassion for the poor. This is why we can’t have nice things.

Save the Gamblers?

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Democracy Now! ran a story about the debt crisis and who will stand to benefit most from its resolution. Hint: it’s the same group of people that benefited from the bailouts. All these benefits, of course, come off of the backs of people that don’t sit on a bank’s board of directors.

This morning, the talking heads on Face the Nation were saying that if we don’t get a debt solution in place, interest rates will go up, and that’s going to be bad for the average American.

So let me get this straight: interest rates are bad when they go up.

Well, that’s what I’ve been saying for a while, with the addendum that interest rates are just plain bad. The only thing they do is move money from the poor to the rich, with concomitant social ills following in the wake of increasing income and wealth disparity.

And what we have now are the ratings agencies telling us that if the banks don’t get what they want, we’ll lose our national credit rating and we all suffer terribly for that. The Greeks are being told to sell off their nation so that foreign banks won’t have to sustain losses. Are we in a similar position? Or at least heading that way?

We are governed by our financial institutions. The Constitution exists now as a framework within which financial institutions must operate if they wish to increase profits. The Constitution has some brilliant ideas in it, but it has been perverted in its current application. This is not a sudden thing: it is a long process that has generated calls for alarm and attention for over two centuries.