No surprise really

As Obama takes heavy flack from all sides for the malfunctioning website healthcare.gov I can't help but be reminded of my years (and tears) at Centers of Medicare/Medicaid Service (CMS) trying to implement all the bug-ridden, oversold/under designed apps that came our way. They were provided courtesy of a pack of  opportunistic, parasitic, inept software application development companies that proliferate around the Maryland and DC area, also known as "beltway bandits."

Over the years we had to watch as all Federal government agencies in in every possible way, under both the Dems and the Repubs, assiduously contracted out as much of our work as possible. This was especially true of information technology (IT). Somehow it became an article of faith under both Democratic and Republican administrations that the "private sector" could do everything better. This notion, of course, can  be traced back to of one Ronald Reagan.  By the time I left we as the regional office level IT support staff did not even have the authority to work on our own staff's PCs let alone manage the larger operation. Our IT contractor at the time, the Lockheed Martin Corp, was tasked to handle virtually everything. We were left to simply passively preside over the process.

Privatizing all IT operations at CMS in time would become a recipe for disaster as people with little or no real world technical  experience (but identifiable "management skills") eventually migrated into key  executive level positions. So it is no surprise to see CMS management deeply implicated in the Obamacare website roll-out debacle - see today's NY Times article.  It is also no surprise that an outfit like CGI-Federal weaseled its way into being the lead contractor on the most important technical project of Barack Obama's presidency, and then did such an abysmally poor job. Obviously the Obamanista's in concert with DHHS/CMS upper echelon supergrades let themselves be bamboozled into signing off on a grand plan, and then as things started to head southward were rendered helpless when the circular blame game set in among the multitude of contractors.

Yet the two most populous states, NY and Calif which set up their own "health care exchanges", were able to set up functioning websites for the Affordable Care Act (ACA.)  Of course the Federal level website was many times more complex because it had many more private insurance companies to link to (35 vs 11 in Calif.)   Interestingly it turns out that the State of Maryland, a Demo-run state with their own health care exchange is also  having problems with their website.  Maryland  probably got lured into using the same 'beltway bandits' that CMS got stuck with. Inexplicably a "go your own way ethos" seems to be part of the problem.  Why did the designers of the big Federal one-size-fits-all website for multiple states not compare their initial design with ones already further along at the State level - like California's?  It seems like a scaled up version of a working site might have been easier that building a whopper from scratch.   Also why not look to Massachusetts which had years of experience with their RomniCare?  From the accounts in the news it sounds as if they went their own way.

Part of the problem is the basic concept of ACA. It is quite a rickety Rube Goldberg contraption.  It will probably be problem ridden for a long time because it is inherently an unwieldy concept. Apparently Obama felt like he could not take on the powerful health insurance industry and their deadly effective lobbying and propaganda apparatus. Recall they successfully deep-sixed Clinton's health care plan back in the 1990s. Of course private health insurance plans are  useless "middlemen" in terms of delivering health care. Their primary objective is not providing  health care but selling insurance - and for a profit.  In fact the primary concept of insurance as a business is betting that the insured will not need it, and then if they do the hoping lawyer-concocted small print will allow the insurer to escape paying.   Wasn't it these packs of heartless bastards that caused all the grief in the first place: denying claims for (suddenly uncovered) per-existing conditions, capping claims therefore driving millions into bankruptcy as they are struggling with ungodly expensive treatment for life threatening conditions, and having administrative costs that far exceeded those of government-run Medicare/Medicaid?  Including the insurance companies in any "reform" of the US health care system has the Republican Party ideology (courtesy of Heritage Institute) stamped all over. It still  baffles many why Obama would not take a more straight forward approach - like simply expanding Medicare. At least he could have started there as an initial bargaining position.

Nevertheless, for better or worse Obamacare/ACA is the law of the land and was found Constitutional even by our right-leaning Supreme Court.   Obamacare would have had hit heavy headwinds once it hit the streets even if its website had worked like a well oiled clock.  It inherently has  a soft underbelly very vulnerable to the long knives of the GOP and their right wing media.  It is a major social program and the GOP have opposed 'em all from FDR's New Deal to LBJ's Medicare. They hate social change in general (unless it harkens backwards to some glorified imaginary past.)   But what a monumental blunder to unveil a signature program through a kludgy, bug-ridden joke of a website.

The real irony is that the one thing everybody still agrees on is that the US is still at the forefront of information technology. With all the talent at their beck and call and all of Obama's donor friends in Silicon Valley, it really is a wonder how they let this happen. The answer is that years of privatization of IT operations and the atrophy of in-house IT expertise at the highest levels of CMS  have led to an agency inadequately prepared for projects of this magnitude.  Add to this to a bureaucratic culture that is  too inflexibly tethered to a Pentagon-like contracting process to consider reaching out beyond the Beltway for help. 

That said, since the administration is so deeply fused and identified with it's Affordable Care Act and its basically just nuts and bolts technical issues that need to be resolved (and despite Republican gloating and a campaign of sabotage), in time I believe it will work. And as crappy as ACA is, it will be a definite improvement over what we presently have.

Red Shift - liberals redefined as the extreme left

The entire political spectrum is shifting before our very eyes. The old "extreme left" is gone, chopped off and replaced by some imaginary false entity. Barack Obama's cautious center-right reformist position has now become the new “extreme left" - at least in the fevered imagination of the new Republican Party.  In the past the Communist Party, the old CP, was the extreme left and the boogie man. When the Soviet Union imploded in 1989, the Red Menace and home grown"Commies" as scary subversives ceased to exist. The world historical task of supplanting  capitalism with "something better" was put on a back burner.  Furthermore, as time passed Communist China morphed into instead of a "workers paradise"something akin to a "capitalist's paradise."

On the other pole is the "extreme right." The ultra right abhors the idea  that capitalism is anything but a godsend. Their ideal is a  pure unfettered market economy conveniently ignoring all historical experience to the contrary - depressions/recessions, worker exploitation, environmental destruction, extreme concentration of wealth, monopolies/oligopolies, etc.  The "extreme right" in the past was associated with fascism. Under fascism a nationalistic and dictatorial leadership allows privately owned corporations and the government to become absolutely fused. And then through propaganda and brutality a grudging  acquiescence from the population is created. We know where that led - Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany. Now it has a more benign name: "corporatocracy" and a different allure - a tax free state with little or no pesky government interference with corporate operations - "the market" (and law suits) determine everything.  This is called libertarianism.  Fascism's support in the past was gained by exploiting patriotic sentiments  and economic discontent mixed with all sorts of malicious human inclinations including ethnicism, rabid nationalism, antisemitism, racism - and greed; the libertarian's allure is simply greed.

After the world experienced the horrors of a second world war and and horrendous incidents of genocide (committed by both the "extreme right" and the "extreme left"), the countries not run by the "extreme left" decided to accept capitalism but to work out some accommodations - known (pejoratively) as the "Welfare State."  The "extreme left" calling themselves "Communists"  continued to run the Soviet Union, which had been a temporary ally with the capitalist West during the war against the "extreme right", fascism.  In the decade after the war the Soviet Union under Nikita Khrushchev tried to mend its totalitarian ways after their brutal leader, Joesph Stalin, died. But it was too late. The center right and McCarthyist extreme right in the US made sure that any alternative to capitalism was blocked at ever step of the way - hence we had a muted or Cold War for 40 years.  Internally in the Europe and the US  the center-right as “conservatives” and center-left as “liberals” (terms used in the US) each created there own political parties and coalesced around an acceptance of capitalism.  This accord for the most part has worked at least in the industrialized West. The rest of the world is another story.

In this arrangement there is an agreed upon understanding of  "loyal opposition" on both sides. One side advocates an extensive governmental social support apparatus and the restraint of capitalism worst tendencies through regulation. The other side works to resist and tone down that position believing  the less government interference with the 'magic of the market' the better.  All successful industrialized democracies are characterized by this accommodation, and are essentially run by centrist parties. Each side take turns running things.  Communists parties on the left and quasi-fascist parties on the right are tolerated (at least in Europe) but never seem to really acquire real power for very long.

However here in the US of A this is accord is unraveling.  We seem to be entering a disturbing new era in which this consensus on “loyal opposition” has broken down. The abiding toleration for a government that provides for the citizenry and a dulls the sharper edges of capitalism through regulation is now being called into question. That position is now dishonestly defined as the "extreme left." The tried and proven programs (Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, FDA, EPA, etc.) have become anathema to the formerly center-right party.. No longer does the political right wing of the establishment, the Republican Party, want to play by rules of ordinary majority rule.   Every gimmick, every loophole, every irrational idiosyncratic rule is exploited to the max – negative dishonest ads, voter suppression, gerrymandering, filibustering; and now the routine use of political extortion. The new extreme right is building on (and going far beyond) former President Reagan's ground breaking success at undermining public support for governmental social programs and regulatory authority.  And to make matters worse  a  pack of ideologues going even beyond the already extreme right wing Republican Party leadership threatens to take us over the brink and possibly crash the entire economy by refusing to allow the government to pay it's bills and fulfill it's obligations. Even former GOP henchmen like Karl Rove are alarmed by their ruthlessness.  This is not democracy this is an attempted at a coup d'état by non-military means.

Middle East - a color coded graphic badly needed

This is a strange situation. The US is now rushing off to 'punish' an evil dictator for something another evil dictator 'walked" on. As we know Saddam Hussein blatantly gassed several hundred Kurds before he became  an 'official enemy' - and nobody did jackshit. Yet ironically we want to 'punish' but not remove from power this chin-less wonder, Bashir Assad. It's only harassment and "degradation of his military capability" but not defeat because if he were actually defeated, it might mean our currently 'official enemy', the (ever multiplying) "El Qaeda 'affiliates," might take over.

It is alarming (to me) that when the leadership of the Republican and Democratic parties finally agree on something, it's something bad - that it's a good idea to again stick our arm into a hornet's nest.  Recall that most of the recent bad decisions by Congress (Iraq War, NDAA, Patriot Act) came with this kind of coalescence of Demo and GOP 'opponents. '

One almost needs a color-coded interactive graphic to begin to make sense out this complex geo-political mosaic mess. The Muslim religion is engaged in a internecine four-way war with moderates Muslims vs. reactionary Muslims vs. reactionary Shia vs reactionary jihadist Sunnis, and both vs. the "infidels in the West." And the Mid East states (along with Pakistan and Afghanistan) is the main battlefield.

 First you have the Syria involved in a bloody civil war with a brutal regime that may or may not have used nerve gas as a weapon. Then you have Iran, one of our current 'official enemies' which is actively pro Assad, Next you have Iraq (now almost a failed state courtesy of a US invasion a decade ago) with its besieged Shia government presumably pro-Assad while its bellicose terrorism-prone Sunni opposition actively anti-Assad (and sending fighters to Syria.) ,  Lebanon is the home of the Shia Hezbollah and the bane of the Israelis and who successfully forced the Israel Defense Force out of Lebanon.  Hezbollah, is now actively and effectively helping Assad militarily. Then there is the oil-rich Gulf States including Saudia Arabia all Sunni and actively supporting the anti-Assad forces including the Al Qaeda factions. Ah yes, and then there is the big bear, Russia, a long time ally of Syria going back to the Cold War days, who is also actively supporting the Assad regime with modern weapons (and along with China blocking any UN sanctions against Syria.) Turkey, now run by Sunni Islamists, is actively supporting anti-Assad forces and is constantly cajoling the US to become more involved. On the sidelines is the post Arab Spring Egypt, that volitile "ex-democracy” now army-run, presumably  on the side of secular anti-Assad forces but their now persecuted democratically elected opposition, the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood one would assume would also be supportive of Sunni anti-Assad forces.  Into this caldron of doom the US under Barack Obama now wants to jump in feet first and prior to any proper independent UN investigation of the facts.  And, of course, Israel, perennial enemy of Syria and now Iran (and everybody else in the neighborhood), quietly cheering on the US as it wades into another dismal swamp without a compass. 

As horrible a precedent as using sarin gas is (if that's what really happened) as a new way to 'drain the swamp' of insurgent supporters, its use should still is not be used as an excuse for the US to get involved in yet another regional war – or worse. It could become an assassination of Archduke Ferdinand kind of moment. There are too may power players, too may hot headed Jihadists, too many unknowns. Even the US military advised against getting involved (until ordered to cooperate by their Commander and Chief) who hemmed himself in with loose talk about crossing red lines.

Moreover the US assuming the role as global enforcer of 'proper' warfare standards seems a bit hypocritical to say the least what with our use of drones, cluster bombs, land mines, depleted uranium shells, white phosphorus, napalm, Agent Orange and nuclear weapons. Just because a given horrific weapon has not been formally designated 'illegal' does not mean its use is not cruelly effective and as grimly horrible as other 'legal' ones. 

I wish Obama would could wriggle out of this but he's committed now.

Discontent goes to Rio (and everywhere else)

For me the incoming daily news is mostly an unpleasant mix of confusion and disappointment. Yet one thing seems to be increasingly apparent, a new generation of discontents is coming on the scene. They are out in the streets everywhere most recently in Turkey, Brazil and now again in Egypt. Moreover there seems to be, simmering beneath surface, discontent everywhere. In Europe the attempts of the Eurozoners to placate the bankers further immiserates the hapless citizens - especially those of the southern European countries like Greece, Portugal and Spain. In China thousands of small protests occur every year but are ignored by those outside the country.

Here in Obamaland as his second term settles in, the discontent is mounting. His weak centrist program of trying to placate the right has only served to emboldened it. If he really had wanted to take on the post Reagan energized hard right with his so-called “Audacity of Hope” and confront its reactionary agenda, he would not have continued it by filling his cabinet with establishment neoliberal Wall Street hacks like Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner. Yet the worse was mitigated. A relatively successful (but unacknowledged by many) Keynesian fiscal stimulus did arrest the plummeting GDP and prevent a rerun of the 1930s. Beyond that it's difficult to discern what might have been possible. Suffice to say so far the legislative accomplishments have been minimal – zero real progress on confronting global warming (the real crisis of our time) and a complex, controversial health care reform package that addresses some of the problems. But the jury is still on its actual success. The Repubs of course want it to fail and are trying their damnedest to make that happen, and only because he's not one of them. The template for Obamacare came straight from a conservative think tank. And of course the "war on terror" continues, having morphed into an amorphous, pointless war no longer on Al Queda but mainly on the Pakistan/Afghan Taliban and their warlord allies.

The new pisser is this perchance for a seamless airtight security states sanctioned by Obama & Co as well as Congressional leadership in both parties. So now, surprise surprise, we find that the post 9/11 4^th Amendment negating "national security state" embodied int the so called Patriot Act engineered by Bush/Cheney was not only kept in place by Obama & Co but further fortified. The military-industrial complex  now has for-profit contractors joining with the already existing 14 government intelligence agencies, most notably the shadowy National Security Agency (NSA), into a huge Orwellian surveillance state. The idea apparently is to use all available technology to lock the place down. Since the technology now allows it, let's do it! Let's save every banal, routine, personal piece of verbal bullshit that anyone types or utters and save in a massive, ever growing petabyte scale database out on some giant server farm in the Utah desert. The US government apparently intends to collect and save every blurt, blab or giggle, every dumb joke, every careless stupid comment, every racist or politically incorrect aside, every personal confidential disclosure, every insurrectionist fantasy. every fucking thing that goes into any phone or over any Internet connection over much of the planet is save in perpetuity just in case it might be needed later in a some future "terrorism investigation." 

 

But, alas, one person out of the one million or so of loyal acolytes with top secret clearance went rogue and blew the whistle on this whole monstrosity (not that many didn't expect it existed.)  Now all hell has broken lose. Even the Germans, control freaks as they are, are up in arms. The seamless link between the two US political parties has finally been exposed. They may disagree on how much they should tweak and fuss with a capitalist economy that is running on less than eight cylinders, or what should be done for those left out for whatever reason, the old “widows, orphans and poor” question, but they are absolutely in synch when comes to keeping track of miscreants who can now conveniently be called “terrorists” or “would be terrorists.” This while always making sure the definition of terrorist is conveniently open-ended. Edward Snowden like others before him, most recently Bradley Manning and most notably Daniel Ellsberg, is an America hero. The truth will make you free..

Is NY Times' columnist David Brooks a stealth Obamanista?

I started this as a comment to a recent a David Brooks column in the NY Times. But it was too late and the Comments were closed. So I expanded it 'a little.'

David Brooks' NY Times column of 3/19/13 with his reasonable style, amiable manner and beguiling title (The Progressive Shift)  hid a devious purpose. By castigating the Democratic party's Congressional Progressive Caucus's budget (a plan that if ever presented to the American public by Democratic Party officially would go over quite well), is by default giving credibility to the Paul Ryan and Republican Party's brutal, reactionary and economically unsound budget proposal. The Republicans as usual would like nothing better than the weak recovery to falter and collapse. What they offer is counter to sound economic policy. They(as usual) want to attack, undermine and if possible eliminate all social spending programs while pretending to be concerned about the Deficit (which is now going down) and at the same make sure the recession kicks back in - right in time for the midterms. It's all so transparent.

What most people don't realize is that Keynesian ('pump priming' by the government spending to initiate consumer spending and hence more investment, jobs, etc.) has been used effectively by both parties since the FDR days. But we use a variation of its original version, 'Military Keynesianism', but for better or worse it works. While Europeans were able to use it properly, mainly on social spending (as John Maynard Keynes intended), here in the US we have to add our Keynesian social spending on top of our military (over) spending. And it is a medicine abused by both parties. It is intended as a counter cyclical response by a government to a business cycle downturn – restoring demand for goods and services. But it has become like an antibiotic ever less effective due to overuse. Yet it still works somewhat. What do you think got us out of the plummeting GDP numbers in 2009?

Republicans in their heart of hearts know it works it, too. That's why when they get in the Deficit is suddenly not a problem, and they spend like there is no tomorrow. Obama inherited the worse economic downturn in 80 years (and debts from Bush's II's  criminal irresponsibility) and suddenly the Deficit mattered again. Of course it always mattered but it supposed to be paid down in good times. Clinton in the 1990s at least moved in that direction. The very worse thing to do now is go into an austerity mode – exactly what we seem to be headed for what with the sequestration idiocy and Obama's move towards 'splitting the difference' with Repubs. Always keep in mind the Repubs love  hard times with a Demo is in the White House. The Progressive Caucus's budget has zero chance of passage but it should have been used to be define Obama's starting point in the bargaining process. Yet only 84 Democrats in the House voted for it. Instead Obama is talking bout 'chained CPI' and other initial concessions – typical of Obama.  David Brooks appears to be a is a closet Obama supporter. His column blasting the Progressive Caucus's budget proposal effectively is a roundabout way of supporting Obama's caving into the premises that feed Republicans' position on the economy.

But on a deeper level, that is globally, we are in more serious trouble than most people realize. While Keynesian counter-cyclical spending worked to pull us of the nosedive of our recent Great Recession and is still indicated with lingering high unemployment, globally there are troubling currents at play. Deficit spending can forestall a single developed capitalist economy from its main internal contradictions – over overcapacity. But what if we are approaching global overcapacity? How can you have Keynesian deficit spending globally? There will never be an inadequate demand for the necessities (food, water, housing,medical care) not with a large portion of the world's population living in abject poverty. But how much discretionary income driven consumption can there be on (planned perpetually obsolescent) electronic devices, consumer durables like cars and washer/dryers, etc. or the real biggie, housing, if the global oligopolies continue to keep driving down wages battering the only socio-economic class that both wishes to and can afford to buy beyond there absolute need? Besides possible overcapacity in China, globally we are still reeling from the banker/middle class real estate speculation that pumped up the huge housing bubble in southern Europe and the US. But now we discover the Peoples Republic of China, the poster child state-capitalism, cheap labor and skyrocketing growth rates in fact has been pumping up a huge real estate bubble themselves. It appears to be all a house of cards!

Could it be that very rich have given up on capitalism, too? And their dysfunctional policy nostrums (government austerity in midst of recessions, insistence on tax cuts that further drain the already depleted government coffers leading to further infrastructure decay, destruction of the middle class through anti union and labor outsourcing) are only a means accumulate enough wealth to survive some coming apocalypse. This as the oligarch sponsored US Republican Party stands firmly in the way of dealing with catastrophic fossil fuel related climate change. Could be that they only pretend to believe their naive libertarian laissie faire nonsense that they incessantly spout, and they really are just trying to amass enough wealth to build fortresses to survive the coming global environmental, social and economiccollapse they see (and are helping bring about) coming?

SF Climate Rally - and so it goes

Climate scientists believe the 'next generation' oil sources, such shale and tar sands, must not become the new standard.  Therefore the planned XL Keystone pipeline, which will deliver tar sand oil from Alberta Canada all the way down to Texas, must be stopped. Otherwise it will be nearly impossible to ever hope to bend downward  the rising curve of polluting greenhouse gases. If this engineering monstrosity goes in as planned, it will signal that it is acceptable everywhere to use high carbon content tar sands and shale as a new energy sources – and as leading climate scientists James Hansen says “ If the pipeline goes in, it's games over.”  So all of the environmental groups are pulling out all stops to oppose it -  hence the big 'Climate Rallies' February 17th.

Last Sunday (2/17) I trooped into the city to attend a rally held in conjunction with the big February 17^th Climate Change event in DC.   As we arrived expensively produced heavy card stock signs were available (although if you didn't bring a stick to mount it on, you had to awkwardly hold it up by hand.) The signs said things like “Stop the Keystone XL Pipeline” and “It's Time to Cut Carbons”(of course the real activists brought their own homemade signs.) The people flooding out of the BART station for the rally were predominately gray haired, middle class Sierra Club types, or ex hippies who had settled into responsible professional lives (like me) and gotten old and gray in the process. There was a sprinkling of college kids but virtually no blacks, few if any Latinos or Asians or any of the hodgepodge of other non-white whatevers who more and more make up the Bay Area demographic. And where were all the high voltage scruffy radical Occupy movement types? Where were the rancorous pierced and tattooed X Generation skateboarders and punksters? No militant unruly Black Bloc types were in evidence, and I saw only one smiling Anonymous Guy Fawkes mask. It was mostly the upper middle class people who fund the eco groups - the organizations that send me emails every day at almost a spam volume with petitions to sign, donations to make and environmental bad news to report.  In most of the big anti-war marches I have been to the SF Tac Squad is all lined up along the way with their 2 ft long truncheons ready and waiting for an excuse to wade in and bust a few heads. This was not one the case yesterday. Only sprinkling of regular beat cops stood along the way looking bored with little to do.

So as we all arrived we were directed to parade around the the block and then funneled into the big concrete area that makes up north side of the Embarcadero Plaza. There we listened to some well meaning but  boring boiler plate and uninspiring speeches and the usual Greenesque rigmarole like Native American chanting and such. A couple of high school kids spoke as well as a SF Supervisor. There was talk about next time  calling on people to let themselves be arrested.  Unfortunately if there is no police action, it never makes the news in any meaningful way. Maybe 5000-6000 people were there, a good turnout but NOT NEARLY ENOUGH!! Hey, this isn't just another liberal/left   identity politics, anti-war, anti-US imperialism, anti Reagan/Bush/Obama lost cause campaign against the status quo. This it it!  If this issue is not taken very seriously very soon, we are all toast.

Bill McKibben of 350.ORG is behind this full court press to get across the board cooperation from the full spectrum of the environmental movement (and he has) and the hopefully eventually the entire 'the liberal/ left', and to develop something approaching a critical mass. Time is running out. Barack Obama is a Democratic Party politician but not an environmentalist. He is juggler of left center issues. Yet an important component of his base are the 'Greens.' So he can't ignore them but he can disappoint them – and has in the past.  Left to his own devices re: Keystone he would probably would have already let it sail through. The august opinion makers in the NY Times for instance have noted that even if the US doesn't let that shale oil pipeline run through the continental US, Canada will just pipe it over to their West coast and send it to China w/o the US getting a cut of the profits or the oil, and the high carbon content gases will wind up in the atmosphere anyway. So their advise: let it be built. And of course the Repubs will skewer Obama if he blocks it. Oh, the jobs lost! Oh the “energy independence'' we might have had! And besides the whole climate crisis is a monumental hoax, just a rich source of fat government grants for academic liberal Greenies! Besides most Americans above all else want cheap plentiful gasoline. Note all of this is coming to a head just as gas at the pump again is hitting in the $4.00 a gallon range. So again  the oil companies have conveniently discovered they need to shut down refinery operations “for maintenance.” And/or the oil speculators are at again it. So between the global banks and global energy companies we are totally screwed. All we have on our side are the wimpy and bought off (many are from coal dependent states) Democrats. Yet Obama must know it is now or never on addressing Climate Change. He even brought it up in his State of the Union speech. He is well enough informed to know a slow boiling crisis when he sees one. Yet nearly half the country is against him on this – remember 47% voted for anti-action on the climate Mitt Romney. The US is the only industrialized democracy in which their major conservative party is totally opposed to confronting global warming. But all are controlled in the final analysis by global capital. That's why Kyota and Copenhagen never led to anything but changes around the edges. Only the US, the leading (gluttonous) per capita consumer of fossil fuels as well as a major producer, can set the right example. Forget about China they are separate dimension to the problem. The US must lead.  And it must happen while the Demos are in or we are literally cooked.  Rejecting the siren call of shale oil is only the first step but it is crucial.

The underlying problem is the never ending riveting array of short term yet acute crisis's: economic imbroglios (brought on by the deepening crisis of global capitalism with its stranglehold on the entire planet), wars, political upheavals, the ongoing reactionary Muslim jihad with the West (and each other),  plus hurricanes, floods, tornadoes and mass shootings, and on and on. All of this drama is brought to us 24/7 by our friendly corporate media that feels it needs to entertain rather than inform. So nothing is ever put in context just a series of disconnected provocative random events. This noise distracts and blinds us to the coming doomsday scenario of an overheating planet moving inexorably into crisis mode.

A case in point. Today (Feb 18) in the two key leading US media newspapers the DC Climate Rally was not even mentioned. No pictures, no articles, no editorials, nuthin!. The only indirect reference was a Washington Post story about a hedge fund billionaire who spoke at the DC rally and who 'could be' the new Sec. of the Interior. Sure, after Harry Reid allowed the phony-baloney closure vote- filibuster process to survive intact. Get real! The Repubs know well how to say no.

Since the liberal media is downplaying the anti-XL pipeline movement I am guessing they are setting for Obama letting it happen. I hope I'm wrong!

 Obama letting it happen. I hope I'm wrong!

"Fiscal Cliff," Fall off or Stumble over

How can the people we elect to to the three branches of government do such a supremely shitty job? Or more to the point how did it get this bad? This whole 'fiscal cliff' is total bullshit. That we are in these desperate straits now at the cusp of a new year is the direct result of a last ditch bargain to get out of the entirely manufactured crisis of a refusal to raise the Debt Ceiling. Recall centrist Democrats led by Barack Obama and the crazed Tea Party ultra right nut case infiltrated political party that calls itself “Republicans” decided to getting into a pissing contest over doing something they had to do anyway – raise the debt ceiling so the previously run-up bills could be paid.  In what any objective observer would consider sedition the US House of Representatives, which is supposed to originate all spending measures, suddenly decided to hold the entire nation hostage to their deluded demand that Obama begin dissolving all the elements of the government that they don't like: social services, the regulatory apparatus and so-called entitlement programs. Of course this meant keeping their beloved bloated waste-a-thon Defense (read Offense) Dept intact. This position on "Defense" is an article of faith with this pack of chicken hawks. While ideologically demonizing Keynesian counter cycling spending on our bedraggled infrastructure, they are all for 'Warfare Keynesian' spending especially since a lions share of the defense industry is now located in their Republican controlled Sunbelt and Old Dixie States but it is also strategically spread out elsewhere.

So to reiterate this Fiscal Cliff debacle is a direct result of the GOP refusing to do what they did routinely annually for George W. Bush as he was running the national debt through the roof with unpaid for wars, expanding the size of the government (Homeland Security) and Part D Medicare. It was Obama's last ditch deal with the devil that created this “Fiscal Cliff” mess. The idea was that they create a outcome so dire that both parties would be forced to compromise, something so disastrous and over-the-top that both political parties' bases would be livid with rage. And furthermore the entire (nascent and  weak) recession recovery would be kicked in the nuts. The thinking was that the new Prez and a 'lame duck' Congress would be forced to put together a spending package that could pass the reactionary ideologue controlled House.

This agreement passed because each side was counting on winning the 2012 Presidential election. Now the Demos have won, the Repubs still want to demand their pound of flesh. The Repubs, whose bargaining position should have plummeted, somehow think they still weasel out a deal from Obama who they believe in his is his 'heart of hearts' is a closet moderate Republican (as was Bill Clinton.). No such animal as a "moderate Republican" now exists in the extant Repub Party. They call 'em RINOs and excommunicate them.  Their ploy as always is to maneuver the Demos into doing their dirty work – remember it was Clinton who finally cashiered AFDC.It was under Clinton that Glass Steagle was jettisoned. It was Clinton who balanced the budget by reigning in the social sector side of the government accounts.

As I write this a stopgap deal has passed the Democratic Party controlled Senate w/o the  Republicans  filibustering it, and is now awaiting a vote in the House. It delays the worst elements of Fiscal Cliff, the recessionary tax hike for the middle class while it levies a modest tax increase on the top tier Richie Richs (annual incomes over 450K) of 4.5%., and it keeps the Fed unemployment extension going. But  allows the big spending cuts to be postponed. In short it kicks the can down the road. The deal was cooked up with Republican participation (Repub Senate leader Mitch McConnell) so it will probably pass with enough bipartisan votes as John Boehner, the Speaker of the House, was probably in on it by phone. All he has to do is allow it to be voted on.  

We shall see ...

What will happen today? Quite a soap opera.