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Ryan & Rand

July 13, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Dude, did you listen to a single word I said?

Returning to the theme of Paul Ryan’s infatuation with Ayn Rand and his supposed adherence to her ideology there are in actuality considerable gaps between them. Even as Ryan calls for drastic cuts to balance the budget and the privatization of Medicare he supports increased military spending. Rand opposed the Vietnam War vociferously and like Ron Paul considered aggressive war incompatible with capitalism. She never would have supported increased military spending and would no doubt have denounced Ryan for his position.

 

Rand supported Civil Rights and Women’s Rights and said her favorite president was Gerald Ford because of his policy of deregulation. And whilst she said that her basic philosophy could be found in “Atlas Shrugged,” she insisted that she never expected it to be adopted as a practical matter. The most important philosophers she argued were Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. Is it possible that Ryan has read them? Not likely.

 

It was Aristotle who maintained that what he called distributive justice was essential to

Share the wealth and the burden or the shit will hit the fan.

the stability of the state. He defined it as the ”equitable distribution of the benefits and burdens of society.” Without this he insisted there would be social unrest that would threaten the well-being of the well-off. Don’t expect to find anything like this in Paul Ryan’s thinking.

 

Rand was foremost a notorious atheist who ridiculed religion unlike the Ryanites who use religion as a cover for their ideology as though they had never read the Gospels or the Acts of the Apostles which call for the sharing of the wealth. When Rand met William Buckley she told him that he “was too intelligent to believe in God.” Instead of parrying by saying that she was too intelligent not to he cut her off, became permanently hostile to her and drove her from the conservative ranks.

 

Ryan will never balance the budget by increasing military spending and keeping the tax cuts for the wealthy. His and the Republican position is essentially a hoax. It is worth remembering that Ronald Reagan campaigned on “cutting the Gordian Knot” by balancing the budget. He drastically increased military spending and produced a gigantic deficit whilst increasing the size of the government substantially. Under Bush Clinton’s surplus quickly vanished and here was a new gigantic deficit owing in good part to the war in Iraq and his tax cuts. Under Clinton and Gore the government was at its smallest since Eisenhower. Under Bush the government grew substantially with the Republicans going along with it. Where was Paul Ryan then? Ryan is peddling snake oil and is not to be trusted. Ayn Rand would have been flattered that he makes his staff read “Atlas Shrugged” but would otherwise have considered him a bad joke.

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1972 And Now

June 4, 2012 By Leave a Comment

This Convention is for the dogs.

It was the summer of 1972 (incredible to accept) and I had been elected as a delegate supporting George McGovern for president at the Democratic National Convention to be held in Miami. There was a party going on in East Hampton to celebrate our slate’s victory over the Muskie candidates who were backed by the regular organization. Suddenly, someone rushed in and called the festivities to a halt. There was an emergency. The AFL-CIO and the other Humphrey supporters were packing the credentials committee in Washington in order to overturn the results of the California primary in which, in a winner-take-all contest, McGovern had narrowly won all the delegates. Now, the pro-war unions wanted to change the rules after the fact and divide the California delegates proportionally. Were they to succeed, they would be able to stop McGovern from winning the nomination on the first ballot and would be in a position to nominate Humphrey.

The crowd nominated me to fly down to Washington to fill a vacant seat on the credentials committee from New York. Another seat was taken by Tom Bernstein, son of the publisher of Random House. But our two votes were meaningless. After a lengthy and heated debate, the unions prevailed and were able to split the California delegation. The only hope was that this might be reversed at the convention.

On the day that Lawrence O’Brien, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, was to rule on the credential committee’s resolution, the atmosphere was tense. The Establishment had told the kids to play by the rules and they had but now that Establishment didn’t like the results. They had changed the rules to create a different result and deny McGovern the nomination. The question on which O’Brien had to rule was whether the original all-McGovern California delegation could vote on whether to overturn the credentials committee resolution.

To this day, I don’t know what got into me but I rose from my front row seat, shook my fist at the podium and started shouting  “Give us back the delegation!” in a very loud and angry voice. Before I knew it, I was not alone and more and more McGovern delegates began to do the same thing. Suddenly, they began to surge toward the podium where O’Brien was standing with a look of horror on his face. He banged the gavel and ruled in favor of the McGovern California delegation and they joined in the vote that gave the delegation in its entirety back to McGovern. It put him over the top and he won the nomination.

His choice for vice president,Thomas Eagleton, turned out to have had shock treatments for depression and the campaign collapsed, with Sargent Shriver replacing him on the ticket. Nixon won in a landslide. But during the convention, a small article in the Miami Herald caught my eye–five men had been arrested breaking into Lawrence O’Brien’s headquarters in the Watergate. I don’t know why but I felt that it was going to be Nixon’s downfall, which it was. The war ended ignominiously and the last Americans flew out on helicopters from the roof of the American embassy as the Vietnamese stormed it.

As I write this, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, is visiting Vietnam to announce that the United States plans to dock its fleet at Cam

We're back, Baby.

Ranh Bay, which had been an American navy base during the Vietnam War–a sign of support for Vietnam against the threat of Chinese aggression in the South China Sea. Not long after America had withdrawn from Vietnam, Vietnam fought a bloody war against China in which thousands were killed. After all those years, a united Vietnam is now an American ally in containing China and a major trading partner.

What was that all about? Can someone possibly explain it?

I think I can. It was about stupidity, ignorance and arrogance, of which there is never a shortage. The American journalist Angus Mackenzie wrote a book called “Secrets,” published before his death, in which he revealed how CIA disrupted and suppressed anti-war publications as it violated the basic constitutional rights of American people. When one thinks of the damage imposed by these jerks, it is hard not to still be furious

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The Curse Of West Texas

September 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment

West Texas Cowboy, just like "W", but without the brains.

When some people lament the possibility of yet another Texan as president, they need to consider another aspect of this provenance. The problem is not Texas. Ron Paul is a member of the House of Representatives from Texas. The great Barbara Jordon was from Texas. No, the problem is West Texas. Lyndon Johnson was from West Texas and George W. Bush invented himself as a West Texan. And Rick Perry is from West Texas.

West Texas is notorious for producing recalcitrant and bellicose men. They have that swagger that Bush so exemplified, the cowboy walk that makes them look as through they are headed for a shootout. They are uncompromising and stubborn and brook no criticism. When their minds are made up, they are made up. Around the rest of Texas, they are both loathed and admired because of their combination of strength and recalcitrance.

Lyndon Johnson, whose strength enabled him to get the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, Medicare and Medicaid through Congress, also got America deep into the Vietnam War. He dressed down military officers who came to see him in the White House if he didn’t like what they had to say, making them stand throughout the meeting and then summarily dismissing them. For all his greatness, he could be mean, vindictive and petty. He liked to be seen riding his horse, high in the saddle. The result of this West Texas mentality was that there was no criticizing him for what he was doing in Vietnam. The CIA so feared him that they doctored the body count so he wouldn’t come down on them. In a once famous incident, when Johnson was touring Vietnam, an officer said to him, “Mr. President, this is your helicopter,” indicating the one Johnson was to board. Johnson’s reply was, “Son, they are all my helicopters.” And Johnson, much as Bush won the presidency by a few votes because of what was fundamentally a hoax, won election to the Senate from Texas by a handful of votes in what most regard as a fixed election, leading Texans to call him “Landslide Lyndon.” Johnson’s lawyer in that episode was Abe Fortas, whom Johnson later appointed to the Supreme Court and was his choice for Chief Justice until Fortas had to resign because of ethics problems

Pete Seegers’s famous song performed at Woodstock, “The Big Muddy” summed up Johnson’s incredible stubbornness, even when reality was staring him in the face. He kept leading the country in a disastrous war that could not be won unless he nuked North Vietnam. All his bombing raids in the north came to nothing.

Next, there was George W. Bush, who was so determined to be seen as a West Texan that he began speaking

I say, I say, I say, vote fer me!!!

like one and wearing cowboy boots to erase his Andover, Yale and Harvard Business School patina as the scion of a wealthy and powerful New England family. George H. W. Bush, who settled in Texas, was forever the New England patrician and Bush wanted none of it. He managed to become president after a fraudulent election that he “won” by some three hundred-and-something votes in Florida, giving him a victory in the Electoral College while he lost the popular vote. When his “win” was confirmed by a weird Supreme Court decision that went entirely along party line affiliation (except for Stevens who went with the Democrats because he thought Gore would win and name him Chief Justice) Bush morphed into Johnson and got America into the war in Iraq, dismissing General Shinseki for telling him he was going in with too few troops. Like Johnson, there was no talking to “mission accomplished” Bush. George Tenet, the Director of CIA, was so terrified of him that he made his famous “slam dunk” response when Bush asked him whether or not Saddam Hussein had WMDs. And Bush was every bit as arrogant as Johnson, ordering Carl Rove to hang up his jacket at cabinet meetings. The argument that Cheney was really the boss was untrue. Bush was like Henry V, determined to invade France, a project that while successful in the short run, proved to be a disaster in the long run. He ordered the disbanding of the Iraqi army, guaranteeing armed resistance, arranged for Iraq to be governed like a colony, with Americans holding key government positions and George Bremer functioning as a Viceroy. Only when the Iraqis themselves demanded elections did he make democracy the objective of the invasion, after it was clear there really were no WMDs after all.

Which brings us to Rick Perry, the West Texan par excellence. Even in a well-tailored suit, he still wears

Nuke Iran, Yeee Haaawww!!!!

cowboy boots and a gigantic cowboy belt buckle. You have to know exactly where this dude is coming from. And this one has a chip on his shoulder every bit as big as Johnson’s or Bush’s. Johnson’s chip was that the eastern elite looked down on his as a yokel. He knew full well that Jacqueline Kennedy referred to him as “Colonel Cornpone” behind his back. He went to South West Texas State Teachers College and he believed all the Ivy League liberals looked down on him no matter what he achieved. The anger in him was palpable and it exacerbated his aggressiveness.

W has an anger that cannot be assuaged. He knows full well that his parents’ hopes rested with older brother Jeb, but only when Jeb failed to win election to the United States Senate from Texas, did W emerge as the second choice. After he became president, he never consulted with his father and remained distant from him. That rage, like Johnson’s, led him to adopt a bellicose foreign policy in which he offended most of the world and launched a war because of made-up reasons, much as Johnson made up the Tonkin attack on American vessels that led to the resolution justifying military force in Vietnam.

Rick Perry is a true West Texas Aggie, a product of Texas A& M, a university that bears the brunt of “Aggie’ jokes based on the presumed stupidity of its undergraduates, many from, you guessed it, West Texas. When Perry said that if the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, were to come to Texas, “We would treat him real ugly,” that was Perry in a nutshell. It must be remembered that when Johnson was Majority Leader of the Senate, he proclaimed in a speech that “American boys should not fight Asian boys’ wars.” But as president, he filed that away somewhere in the limbo of a desk drawer and sent five hundred thousand American troops to Vietnam. Perry will behave in like manner. And much like Johnson, he will appoint his cronies and contributors to high positions.  Perry knows the elites in Texas look down on him because he grew up dirt poor and is an Aggie. The Yalie Bushes have nothing but contempt for him and he knows it.

Rick Perry says America should never intervene militarily unless it is “absolutely in America’s national interest.” Already, the old Bush neo-cons are attaching themselves to him, plotting a war with Iran. Perry will really get off on that. He will use the threat of Iran’s nukes as a justification. Bill Keller and Thomas Friedman, the elites of the New York Times, supported the war in Iraq, calling for the invasion from their roosts at the top of the elitist tower. Now, they say how sorry they are that they ever did that. Keller uses his reluctance to look like a Latte drinking liberal defeatist as his justification. But once the reasons for the war include not only those Iranian nukes, but also the existential threat to Israel, they will be egging Perry on. And he will lap it up, his six shooters in each hand blazing away. If America elects another West Texan, it will get what  it deserves.

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Why the Democrats Lost

January 6, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Peace, love and tax cuts for the rich? That wasn't the deal, Dude.

Pundits keep giving all kinds of explanations for why the Democrats took a shellacking in the most recent election.  Most of them also predict that they will take a bath again in 2012, asserting that Obama will lose. But the fact remains that it was the Democrats who shot themselves in the foot as new polls on the issues reveal.  They surrendered before the election took place, allowing themselves to be put on the defensive, caving before attacks by Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck instead of going after them the way Roosevelt would have.  But maybe – just maybe – that was because they never believed in what they were doing in the first place.

Over sixty percent of Americans think that taxing the wealthy is the best way to balance the budget.  A plurality thinks the best place to cut spending is the defense budget.  Yet Democrats snuck out of Washington before the elections without forcing a vote on extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy.  Under Obama they have supported substantial increases in defense spending.  How can such obliviousness to the will of the majority of the American electorate be explained?

First of all, it is cowardice.  The reason for this is quite simple. While the Republicans only pretend to have principles, the Democrats don’t have the courage of theirs.  They live in fear. They cower and take the easy way out.  They are terrified that they will be accused of raising taxes and so they duck instead of giving a simple explanation as to why abolishing the tax cuts for the wealthy makes sense.

They also fear being called soft on defense and soft on terrorism, the kind of attacks in which the Republicans specialize.  This was Lyndon Johnson’s ultimate explanation for why he escalated the Vietnam War.  He said that he feared being called “soft on communism” by the Republicans (think Richard Nixon) and being unable to continue his “Great Society” programs.  It ended in disaster anyway, so what was the point?  Because they allowed themselves to be put on the defensive in 2010, the Democrats allowed the hysteria the Republicans deliberately engendered to sweep the country, even taking down someone like Russ Feingold, who stood his ground but got lost in the flood.

'Least they can't say I's soft on the commies.

Now Biden has pledged that the Democrats will campaign against renewing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy in two years. But by failing to stand up for this principle during the election, the Democrats alienated their base.   A great many voters who gave the Democrats control of the presidency, the House and the Senate in ’08 stayed home and allowed the highly motivated Republicans to win.  The liberals proved to be soft, their candidates for Congress lame.  Suddenly they all looked old and tired. The Republicans managed to recruit many young candidates who had lots of energy while the Democrats started to look like a collection of old hacks.  That has always been the problem with the Democrats.  The liberals who run it are an elite, a Mandarin society that expects everyone in the party to bow and ask their blessing.  This discourages talented people who might go into politics.  It is no wonder that young people are moving away from the Democrats.  They are stale.

Obama generated high hopes that could not be fulfilled because he allowed himself to be pushed into orthodoxy by the party leadership.  He surrounded himself with the same team that caused the collapse of the economy and has only appointed Goolsbee after the fact.   It was as though the Democrats, including Obama, started to believe that the positions they had previously taken had become a liability so that the Democrats in Congress became convinced that if they ran on the issues they would lose.  In a number of races they resorted to ugly personal attacks, making them look spiteful and resentful. This was the case in Florida where a conservative black Republican won in spite of the vile and false attacks by the Democratic liberal incumbent.

Shallacked.

In the past the Democrats took the same money as the Republicans, which often determined how they voted. Now only the militant liberal Democrats remain in the House so corporate America has written them off as their perpetual enemies. There are a few Democrats in the Senate still on the take but it won’t be long before they are gone as well.  Right now the future belongs to the Republicans, a startling turnabout two years after the Democratic sweep.  Never let it be said of the Democrats that they have not known how to nab defeat from the jaws of victory.

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1/36 – 85/16

December 16, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Who does Obama think he is, calling me a 'fat cat'?

1/36-85/16 represents the current state of wealth distribution in the United States.  The top one percent owns thirty-six percent of the wealth, whilst eighty-five percent owns sixteen percent of the wealth.  With such disparity, it is no wonder the economy is in shambles.  America’s most prosperous era, when there was a solid and growing middle class, was from the early fifties until about 1972 when there was considerable balance in the distribution of wealth.   Working people, such as the autoworkers, were moving into the middle class, buying homes and sending their children to college.  New suburbs sprang up and commerce blossomed largely because more people had more money to spend.

That all began to change after Richard Nixon’s reelection when the long slide of the middle class began. Until then executive pay was not excessive in relation to the pay of the workers. This was a time when the unions had clout and all Democratic candidates for president launched their campaigns at Cadillac Square in Detroit.  Wall Street represented a modest percent of the GDP with manufacturing and agriculture making up most of the country’s wealth.

Part of what happened can be attributed to the Vietnam War.  Up until then Lyndon Johnson functioned as the legitimate heir to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, finally fulfilling the promise of Civil Rights and creating Medicare and Medicaid.  It looked as if Conservatism was beginning to be a fringe element led by Barry Goldwater whose campaign was a disaster.  Johnson was determined to wipe out poverty and his administration organized town meetings around the country to promote the Guaranteed Annual Income.  The liberal Democrats were in the ascendancy and the conservative Republicans who were staunchly opposed to the government playing any role in the redistribution of wealth seemed to be irrelevant.

But the impossible happened. Johnson got Congress to adopt the Tonkin Resolution and escalated the Vietnam War, dividing the Democratic Party, which proceeded to tear itself apart.  The assassination of Robert Kennedy engendered a sense of despair amongst the divided liberals. The 1968 Democratic convention that was accompanied by riots in Chicago gave the nation the impression that the Democrats were no longer fit to govern.  In the end they nominated Hubert Humphrey who was probably the most liberal candidate in America’s history. But Humphrey had been a supporter of the Vietnam War and many liberals could not find it in themselves to support him. He rallied towards the end but lost by a slim margin to Nixon whose comeback defied conventional thinking.

What Nixon had done during his exile was to speak to right-wing groups all over the country.  If one looks at the clips of some of those speeches, not a few before racist audiences, Nixon appears almost Hitlerian in his demagoguery.  To get the nomination and defeat Nelson Rockefeller at the convention he went around telling the Southern delegations that he would not enforce the Civil Rights laws.  He assured the wealthy that things were going to change and they did.  After his election he gutted the anti-poverty program and pandered to the alienated white blue-collar Democrats who resented Civil Rights and the Anti-War Movement, effectively destroying the old New Deal coalition.

The New Deal's dead! Whoopee!

Nixon went down in flames but the Democrats nominated and elected a conservative Southerner, Jimmy Carter, who had no social justice agenda whatsoever.  With Reagan’s election the transformation of American politics was complete.   Conservatism triumphed with the revision of the tax code that dramatically lowered the tax rates for the wealthy.  At the same time American manufacturers started moving their factories to poor counties to capitalize on the cheap labor.  Reagan then granted amnesty to twelve million illegal immigrants, all of whom were prepared to work for less that the union workers.  This cycle destroyed the power of the unions, the backbone of the liberal coalition.  Theodore Lowi, a professor of political science at Cornell, wrote a book called THE END OF LIBERALISM that came out during the Carter administration and became a kind of gospel.

But as powerful as Reagan’s pro-rich conservatism was, the defining statement was made by Nixon when he inverted Kennedy’s rhetoric by saying, “Ask not what you can do for your country, ask what you can do for yourself.”  In the end it was this ethos that came to dominate America and we all became “Nixon’s Children.”  Idealism was out, cynicism was in.  After Bush and the financial and economic collapse that led to the election of Barack Obama and the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, many believed this signaled the return of liberalism.  But with the battle over health care that illusion quickly shattered and the pro-rich Republicans were swept back into power. The best the Democrats can do is to return to  Clintonian triangulation thus ending what was left of the progressive movement. Obama caved on the tax cuts for the rich and the disparity of wealth goes on.  And as long as it does the chances for an economic recovery will remain slim. With no middle class there is no purchasing power.  All that can happen is that Americans will go further into debt, creating an illusion of recovery.  What happens after that is anyone’s guess.

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Ron Paul – Enfin Un Homme

December 14, 2010 By Leave a Comment

When Andre Malraux first met Charles DeGaulle during the Resistance in the Second World War, his words were, “Enfin un

Un homme: Ron Paul.

homme.”  That translates, “Finally, a man.”  Such is the case with Texas Congressman Ron Paul, who in five minutes on the floor of the House of Representatives spoke in defense of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.  Not since Emile Zola wrote “J’Accuse” has any pubic figurer risked so much to speak the truth.

Dr. Paul, in precise language and in a methodical manner utterly devoid of histrionics, explained that both the Vietnam and Iraq Wars were based on lies, the first on the lie that North Vietnam had fired on American ships in the Gulf of Tonkin and the second on the lie that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.  He does not accept the excuse that George Tenet of the CIA, Bush, Cheney or Colin Powell sincerely believed that the WMDs were there. Both the Tonkin Resolution and the resolution of Congress giving Bush authority to take military action against Iraq led to disastrous wars, the deaths of many of our troops and the plundering of our national treasure.  Over fifty thousand Americans died in Vietnam for no reason and thousands have died in Iraq, a country that is still in disarray and now largely in the hands of Iranian sympathizers.

Paul argues that had there been a WikiLeaks at the time the decisions were being made to launch those wars of aggression, the people would have known the truth and the wars could have been stopped.   Assange, Paul insists, is a working journalist protected by the First Amendment. Even if his vehicle of publication is the Internet, he does the kind of work the mainstream press does not.  Quite right.

The New York Times pressed for the overthrow of President Diem of South Vietnam at a time when he was negotiating with the North Vietnamese to create a federated republic. Anyone who wants to know the truth about this can read an amazing but sadly neglected book, THE YEAR OF THE HARE by Francis X. Winters.  The cables and memoranda surrounding that decision reveal a casual disregard for the consequences of that action, a failure to recognize that there was no one else capable of leading South Vietnam at the time and that the ensuing chaos would undermine the entire American effort.

As for Iraq, The New York Times was complicit in propagating the lie that Saddam Hussein had WMDs through the specious articles of its top reporter, Judith Miller, and through the pro-war position of Bill Keller, the Times Executive Editor and son of former Chairman and CEO of Chevron, George M. Keller.  The Washington Post took identical positions with regard to both the Vietnam and Iraq Wars.

I hate to tell you, but I told you so.

Paul described the four wars in which America is currently involved–Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen–as wasteful and pointless.  The real reason for the wars, he insists, as well as for the thousands of U.S. troops stationed around the world, is what he bluntly describes as America’s “empire.”  The determination to maintain this empire, Paul laments, is behind the tragic and disastrous foreign policy that has burdened America for decades. It is an empire that has brought virtually no benefits to the people but only to what Eisenhower referred to as the “Military-Industrial Complex.” He left out another major component of America’s militarism at that time, the unions, for whom the defense industry provided countless jobs.  As Ted Morgan revealed in A COVERT LIFE, his biography of AFL-CIO ‘s head of its international division Jay Lovestone, Lovestone was a CIA operative under the supervision of CIA’s head of counter-intelligence, James Jesus Angleton.

The myth of America’s independent press is just that, a myth, and the essence of Ron Paul’s message is that only through the efforts of Assange and people like him can Americans learn what is really going on.  Of course, The Times, in its arrogant attempt to margnalize him as some sort of quack, did not give space to his address in the House. Well, that “quack” is now about to become chairman of the House sub-committee on financial services in which position he will be in charge of oversight of the Federal Reserve and will seek transparency of the Fed’s activities.  Only recently has it come out that during the financial crisis, the Fed handed out trillions of dollars to the banks and other corporate entities, some of them foreign.  Benjamin Bernanke says most of the loans have been repaid, but if Assange had been able to get the truth about the Fed, the full reality of its activities might have come to light by now.

For his efforts, Paul’s detractors on the right have called him “Al Qaeda’s best friend in Congress.”  The pro-war liberals call him an unrealistic “isolationist.”  But he is neither.  As one listens carefully to what Ron Paul says, the only proper reaction is, “Enfin un homme.”

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