Category: Class War

How To Help Egypt, For Americans

~ Natasha ~ 2 Comments

It’s awesome to see people rise against their oppressors, more awesome to see them succeed, as Egyptians have done today. Though since this is far from over, I expect to continue to hear a lot of talk about what Americans’ role, or the role of our government, should be.

Other than being aware of what the people there are doing and cheering them on, I think the best thing any American, or American politician, or group of Americans who aren’t of Egyptian descent could do for people in Egypt and the cause of freedom generally is this:

Mind our own damn business.

Because the business of the American people has long been neglected. Sure, we can pull together a great candlelight vigil for other people, in other countries, or march on their embassies. We can weep for forests and environments destroyed on continents we will probably never visit. All good. All fine steps towards broadening our empathy and expanding our compassion. But mostly, we’re leaving our power on the table when our first concerns are the problems of other countries.

We, US citizens, vote here. We pay taxes here. We live here. There is no country on the planet over whose policies we can have more influence as private citizens than ours. There is also no other country on the planet more broadly influential or more generally impervious to outside pressure.

Want to advance the cause of freedom? Advance it here, for our fellow citizens. Set an example.

In 2009, the 74 top income earners in America made as much as the 19 million lowest paid workers. That is our business.

The US’ poorest residents, and its most historically disadvantaged residents, are forced to live next to our worst polluters and bear the largest share of health and early mortality costs from our fuel and chemical habits. Which is our business.

The mortgage and investment banking industries destroyed our economy by committing epic fraud. Instead of being sent to jail, they were appointed to run the *ing Treasury department and the Federal *ing Reserve. This is our business.

The US government trained Mubarak’s torturers, and torturers for vile regimes all over the world. The US government used that network of torturers, in acts of extraordinary rendition, to brutalize people who were never charged with any crime. The US government tortured people in Iraq, and still in Guantanamo, and still in our domestic prisons, and with high voltage Tasers in broad daylight on our own *ing streets, sometimes to the point of death. That, goddamnit, is Our. Motherf*cking. Business.

Among other things.

You may recall that the Egyptian rallies were inspired in part by the Tunisian rallies. The Egyptians aren’t holding solidarity rallies for the Tunisians. The British aren’t holding solidarity rallies for either of them, they’re demanding that their own corporate crooks pay up.

If we, Americans, would rattle the bars of our own cages, if we would insist that our freeloading billionaires start paying for the fine business climate, security protections, roads and educated workers they enjoy here, I think that would help the people of Egypt. If we, Americans, would stand to protect each other’s interests so that the wealthy couldn’t pay us enough to turn us against each other, I think that would help the people of Egypt. If we, Americans, would sharply limit our country’s exports of both pollution and Mephistophelean misanthropes high as kites on their own unspeakable power, I think that would help the people of Egypt.

That would put fear in the heart of every dictator and plutocrat in the world. That would tell people everywhere who long to be free that, yes, we are with you, we get it. We’re in this sh*t together and sweet Jeebus, we want out, too.

Anyway, if there’s anything we can do to help, I think that would be it. Because sure as anything, no one wants us to ride to their rescue on a desert camo armored personnel carrier wrapped in a fugue of righteous helpfulness.

David Brooks

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

I don’t mean to offend people who like David Brooks, but if you like David Brooks, you’re probably going to be offended when I point out that he’s basically a pundit for people who don’t like to actually do their homework.

He’s not the only one, of course, but he’s a pleasant, genial conservative who’s a little liberal on some issues and that’s how he became a sort of bipartisan fetish toy. And while’s he not an intellectual, he does play one on the op-ed pages of the New York Times, so close enough.

Anyway, it’s always fun when Brooks gets put in his place — like this, when economist Dean Baker takes about Brooks’ new crusade: cutting Social Security and Medicare:

Brooks better hope that the masses march before they think, because if the sequence goes in the other direction, the march will never happen. As everyone knows, there is no story of programs with out of control costs.

The whole story is of out of control health care costs. This is a problem of a broken private sector health care system. This becomes a budget problem because we pay for more than half of our health care through public sector programs like Medicare and Medicaid. If per person health care costs in the United States were the same as in any of the countries with longer life expectancies, we would be looking at huge budget surpluses, not deficits.

The evidence would suggest that Brooks’ mass movement should be directed at reforming our health care cesspool. We pay 10 times what we should for prescription drugs because of our absurd method of financing research through government granted patent monopolies. This government intervention gives an enormous incentive for drug companies to lie about the effectiveness and safety of their drugs, something which they do with considerable frequency. There is a similar story with medical devices.

Our doctors also get paid far more than doctors in other wealthy countries. This is not true for our retail clerks and our steelworkers. The reason is that our doctors enjoy much greater protection from international competition than less politically powerful workers. If Brooks, who fashions himself as a free trader, really wanted to get our deficit under control, he would be revving people up to reduce the barriersthat sustain the high salaries for doctors in the United States.

Brooks could also be trying to motivate people to support a Medicare buy in that could save hundreds of billions in administrative costs over the next decade. Or, in keeping with his “freedom” theme, how about just giving Medicare beneficiaries the option to buy into other countries’ health care systems with the beneficiary and the government splitting the savings. This one is all about freedom — let our beneficiaries go!

So, the basic question is whether we confront the powerful interest groups who profit from our broken and corrupt health care system or whether we beat up the retired and disabled workers who depend on Social Security and Medicare. David Brooks told us where he stands.

Taking it to the streets

~ susie ~ 4 Comments

Our nation could learn a thing or two about independence from these Brits:

Britain’s fastest-growing protest movement is to target scores of high street banks in the next stage of its campaign against government cuts and corporate tax avoidance.

Activists from UK Uncut have, over the past five months, caused the temporary closure of more than 100 branches of high street stores accused of avoiding millions of pounds in tax.

The group will stage its first national day of action against UK banks on 19 February.

“The idea this time is not to shut these places down but to open up high street banks, occupying them and using them for things that may be more useful for the community,” said Daniel Garvin from the group.

He and other protesters have mobilised thousands of activists using the Twitter hashtag #UKuncut since the group was formed in October.
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Dylan Ratigan

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

Talks to Alan Grayson:

DYLAN: Couple of last questions and then I will let you go. One thing that came out in the FCIC report and Bill Greider did a great job of highlighting this — was the explicit introduction of known to be fraudulent mortgages. They have been audited by Clayton Holdings which is one of the bigger auditing firms if not the biggest auditing firms of these documents. They were knowingly and knowingly insofar as they had been reviewed by Clayton Holdings, then installed inside of investments and sold to pension funds, et cetera et cetera, where then the banks would go out and buy insurance on that that obviously paid a lot of money when the government stepped in to bail out AIG who was one of the big insurers.

How is it that after the Great Depression, there were blue sky laws that said it is illegal to sell a worthless piece of paper as if it is stock in the company if its just Alan Grayson and Dylan Ratigan have gone downtown with a piece of paper with their names on it and they are selling it for money even though there is actually no business. We created laws to prevent people from doing that sort of thing. And yet we found here that mortgages that have been deemed by some official authority — an auditor in this case — as nonconforming, will not get paid back, noncompliant with illegal investment standards for you, American pension fund, for you American mortgage buyer, Fannie Freddie etcetera, and then the FCIC comes out, shows that these fraudulent mortgages were being packaged and sold by Goldman, Deutsche, Morgan, the list goes on and yet, we have yet to see a single meaningful fraud investigation. I mean these guys makes Bernie Madoff look like Romper Room.
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Silliness

~ susie

Of course, he’s too polite to point out who’s spreading the silliness. Robert Reich:

The reason we have continued sky-high unemployment has nothing to do with excessive regulation. There was no sudden outpouring of federal regulation in 2007 before the economy tanked and millions lost their jobs.

If anything, the economy unraveled because of too little regulation. Wall Street went on a binge, remember? The Street could get almost free money from the Fed (which had reduced interest rates to near zero) and do just about whatever it wanted with it. Thirty years of deregulation, culminating with the dismantling of Glass-Steagall and the abject failure of regulators at the Fed and the SEC to use the authority they still had, enabled the Street to make bundles of money and expose the rest of the economy to unprecedented levels of risk.

The Fed had slashed interest rates in the early 2000s, by the way, because the corporate looting scandals at Enron, Worldcom, Sunbeam, and other major corporations had sapped investor confidence. Those scandals themselves wouldn’t have happened had securities regulations been stronger and better enforced.
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