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WOULD TOM PAINE AND EMMA GOLDMAN BEEN DIAGNOSED AS ODD AND GIVEN RITALIN? BRUCE LEVINE, ALTERNET - For a generation now, disruptive young Americans who rebel against authority figures have been increasingly diagnosed with mental illnesses and medicated with psychiatric (psychotropic) drugs. Disruptive young people who are medicated with Ritalin, Adderall and other amphetamines routinely report that these drugs make them "care less" about their boredom, resentments and other negative emotions, thus making them more compliant and manageable. And so-called atypical antipsychotics such as Risperdal and Zyprexa -- powerful tranquilizing drugs -- are increasingly prescribed to disruptive young Americans, even though in most cases they are not displaying any psychotic symptoms. . . In 1980, the American Psychiatric Association created oppositional defiant disorder, defining it as "a pattern of negativistic, hostile and defiant behavior." The official symptoms of ODD include "often actively defies or refuses to comply with adult requests or rules" and "often argues with adults." While ODD-diagnosed young people are obnoxious with adults they don't respect, these kids can be a delight with adults they do respect; yet many of them are medicated with psychotropic drugs. An even more common reaction to oppressive authorities than overt defiance is some type of passive defiance. John Holt, the late school critic, described passive-aggressive strategies employed by prisoners in concentration camps and slaves on plantations, as well as some children in classrooms. Holt pointed out that subjects may attempt to appease their rulers while still satisfying some part of their own desire for dignity "by putting on a mask, by acting much more stupid and incompetent than they really are, by denying their rulers the full use of their intelligence and ability, by declaring their minds and spirits free of their enslaved bodies." Holt observed that by "going stupid" in a classroom, children frustrate authorities through withdrawing the most intelligent and creative parts of their minds from the scene, thus achieving some sense of potency. Going stupid -- or passive aggression -- is one of many non-disease explanations for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Studies show that virtually all ADHD-diagnosed children will pay attention to activities that they enjoy or that they have chosen. In other words, when ADHD-labeled kids are having a good time and in control, the "disease" goes away. . . It would certainly be a dream of Big Pharma and those who favor an authoritarian society if every would-be Tom Paine -- or Crazy Horse, Tecumseh, Emma Goldman or Malcolm X -- were diagnosed as a youngster with mental illness and quieted with a lifelong regimen of chill pills. The question is: Has this dream become reality? DON'T CRY FOR ME, ARKANSAS [We have already chronicled the major misdeeds of the Clintons. But since we may be looking forward to a Clinton co-presidency, we thought it might be instructive to recall some of the lighter moments in their past, since these - like the more serious matters - were and remain largely concealed by the major media] CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS, SLATE - I never quite understand how the Clintons' initial exploitation of racism was overlooked the first time around and has been airbrushed from the record since. After falling behind in the New Hampshire primary in 1992, and after being caught lying about the affair with Gennifer Flowers to which he later confessed under oath, Clinton left the campaign trail and flew home to Arkansas to give the maximum publicity to his decision to sign a death warrant for Ricky Ray Rector. Rector was a black inmate on death row who had shot himself in the head after committing a double murder and, instead of dying as a result, had achieved the same effect as a lobotomy would have done. He never understood the charge against him or the sentence. After being served his last meal, he left the pecan pie on the side of the tray, as he told the guards who came to take him to the execution chamber, "for later." . . . I just ask you to imagine what would have been said if a Republican governor, falling in the polls, had gone out of his way to execute a mentally incompetent African-American prisoner. Or leaf back, if you will,
to the New York Times of March 23, 1992, and the jolly headline,
"Club Where Clinton Has Golfed Retains Ways of Old South."
Yes indeedy, the Country Club of Little Rock had 500 members,
all of them white, and the aspirant candidate had himself photographed
there more than once until Jerry Brown made an issue of it. It
was then announced by Clinton's people that "the staff and
facilities" at the club were "integrated" - a
pretty way of stating that the toilets were cleaned by black
Arkansans. Yet all this was forgiven by credulous liberals who
were sure that they had discovered a New Democrat who was a Southerner
to boot. PROGRESS IN THE MID EAST HAARETZ - More than four decades after Israeli officials banned the Beatles from appearing at a scheduled 1965 concert, Israel extended an olive branch to the band, with an eye to having the two surviving members - Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr - perform at the 60th anniversary of the state's creation in May. Army Radio reported that Israeli Ambassador to Britain Ron Prosor visited the band's hometown of Liverpool, where he met with John Lennon's sister Julia Bairdat at the Beatles museum. Letters of reconciliation are to be sent to McCartney and Starr as well as relatives of late band member George Harrison, the radio said. The Israeli embassy in London on Monday night told Haaretz that the letters represented an opportunity for "a second chance." The Beatles had been booked to appear in Israel in 1965, but government officials refused to grant the necessary permits, citing concerns that the tousled-haired British band and its strident, amplified music could corrupt the morals of Israeli youth. The never-used tickets for the concert have long been a prized souvenir among Israeli fans of the group. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/948893.html NATION - Only Obama has not called for a moratorium and interest-rate freeze. Though he has been a proponent of mortgage fraud legislation in the Senate, he has remained silent on further financial regulations. And much like his broader economic stimulus package, Obama's foreclosure plan mostly avoids direct government spending in favor of a tax credit for homeowners, which amounts to about $500 on average, beyond which only certain borrowers would be eligible for help from an additional fund. . . Obama's disappointing foreclosure plan stems from the centrist politics of his three chief economic advisers and his campaign's ties to Wall Street institutions opposed to increased financial regulation. David Cutler and Jeffrey Liebman are both Harvard economists who served in the Clinton Administration, and they work on market-oriented solutions to social welfare issues. Cutler advocates improving healthcare through financial incentives; Liebman, the partial privatization of Social Security. Austan Goolsbee, an economist at the University of Chicago who calls himself a "centrist market economist," has been most directly involved with crafting Obama's subprime agenda. In a column last March in the New York Times, Goolsbee disputed whether "subprime lending was the leading cause of foreclosure problems," touted its benefits for credit-poor minority borrowers and warned that "regulators should be mindful of the potential downside in tightening [the mortgage market] too much." . . . Robert Pollin, an economist
at the University of Massachussets, believes "these three
advisers generally reflect Obama's very moderate economic program,
similar to Clintonism." Wall Street apparently has come
to a similar conclusion. Obama had received nearly $10 million
in contributions from the finance, insurance and real estate
sector through October, and he's second among presidential candidates
of either party in money raised from commercial banks, trailing
only Clinton. Goldman Sachs, which made $6 billion from devalued
mortgage securities in the first nine months of 2007, is Obama's
top contributor. When asked if Obama would hold these financial
institutions accountable for losses incurred by homeowners and
investors, his campaign refused to comment. A FEW FACTS ABOUT THE CLINTON YEARS RALPH NADER - A brainy White House assistant to Mr. Clinton told me in 1997 that the only real achievement his boss could take credit for was passage of legislation allowing 12 weeks family leave, without pay. He pushed through Congress the NAFTA and the World Trade Organization agreements that represented the greatest surrender in our history of local, state and national sovereignty to an autocratic, secretive system of transnational governance. This system subordinated workers, consumers and the environment to the supremacy of globalized commerce. That was just for starters. Between 1996 and 2000, he drove legislation through Congress that concentrated more power in the hands of giant agribusiness, large telecommunications companies and the biggest jackpot - opening the doors to gigantic mergers in the financial industry. The latter so-called "financial modernization law" sowed the permissive seeds for taking vast financial risks with other peoples' money (ie. pensioners and investors) that is now shaking the economy to recession. The man who pulled off this demolition of regulatory experience from the lessons of the Great Depression was Clinton's Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin, who went to work for Citigroup - the main pusher of this oligopolistic coup -just before the bill passed and made himself $40 million for a few months of consulting in that same year. Bill Clinton's presidential resume was full of favors for the rich and powerful. Corporate welfare subsidies, handouts and giveaways flourished, including subsidizing the Big Three Auto companies for a phony research partnership while indicating there would be no new fuel efficiency regulations while he was President. His regulatory agencies were anesthetized. The veteran watchdog for Public Citizen of the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Sidney Wolfe, said that safety was the worst under Clinton in his twenty nine years of oversight. The auto safety agency abandoned its regulatory oath of office and became a consulting firm to the auto industry. Other agencies were similarly asleep - in job safety railroads, household product safety, antitrust, and corporate crime law enforcement. . . WHY MINIVANS ARE COUNTER CULTURAL [Full disclosure: Your editor has driven two minivans for the past 23 years without a single regret] CHRIS HAFNER, CAR LUST BLOG - The minivan gets a bad rap in this country--it is almost universally reviled as a symbol of dweebish parenthood and mindless suburbia, a scarlet letter attached to soccer moms' chests. Of course, soccer moms now have embraced large SUVs, which are similar to minivans yet inferior in every way that is relevant to family transport. . . What are the minivan's crimes? The only crime I can see is that it's too good at its job. The minivan's job is to haul people and cargo in as comfortable and efficient a manner as possible, and it fulfills that mission admirably. Forget about three-row SUVs. Minivans can carry more people more comfortably than even large SUVs; and with the extraordinary flexibility of seat placement/folding/removal, minivans are unparalleled at virtually everything you'd need it to do. Need to carry a bunch of kids and their stuff on a road trip? There's no better vehicle than a minivan. Want to haul as bulky a load of cargo as you could in a pickup, but you'd prefer to keep it dry, clean, and secure? Fold down or remove the seats, and the minivan becomes a cargo hauler par excellence. Want to take your buddies on a week-long backpacking trip? You can fit everybody, their backpacks, the food, AND a few cases of beer. As a group, SUVs' sole advantages over minivans are style and sheer off-road capability. . . The other day, I posed a question to a few of my co-workers--if you needed the people- and cargo-carrying capacity of a large vehicle, would you really penalize yourself by selecting something less useful than a minivan just to save your ego? . . . A surprising number said they would never drive a minivan, no matter what. Popular culture is so anti-minivan today that driving one is so counter-culture, so in the face of popular biases, so keeping-it-real, that it's almost punk rock. In a utilitarian way, anyway. TIME: CLINTONS LOSING THE ESTABLISHMENT TIME - With the Obama endorsement of Ted Kennedy following in the footsteps of endorsements from party luminaries such as Claire McCaskill, Janet Napolitano, and Kent Conrad, it's clear that Hillary Clinton is not getting the support of some of the establishment Democrats she might have been counting on. This is an important development that is not just about campaign momentum. "Party luminaries" comprise about 800 of the delegates to the Democratic convention -- approximately 20% of the total. Up until now, it has been widely assumed that the party establishment would rally heavily to the establishment candidate, namely Clinton, providing her a necessary boost of delegates should the race remain close. With a general revulsion to the Clinton's campaign tactics now settling in, that assumption is now questionable. Moreover, even if Clinton should ultimately prevail in a close contest, she and her husband have so alienated a significant number of Democrats that there is likely to be a significant swath of delegates on the floor in Denver who are going to need a lot of persuading to keep them from embarrassing Clinton in her moment of triumph. VOTING CHAOS AS MORE PLACES ADMIT FLAWS IN ELECTRONIC MACHINES LA TIMES - Uncertainty, legal challenges and, in some cases, chaos are gripping voting offices as they contend with allegations that the electronic machines are ridden with defects and vulnerable to manipulation. Local and state administrators are switching systems or trying to patch up problems at the last minute, even as they contend with new laws, earlier primaries, complex ballots and, in some places, shortages of poll workers. Registrars and secretaries of state are hoping to avert a disaster, but they warn that vote counts will be late and that winners of contests may not be known until the morning after elections. They also are bracing for an onslaught of legal challenges to the outcomes. . . At least four states -- California, Ohio, Colorado and Florida -- are moving to severely limit or eliminate electronic voting machines, which were rushed into service with $3 billion of federal funding over the last eight years. - Poverty rates, though still much higher for blacks and Hispanics, dropped much more for them than for whites from 1985 to 2004. The rate fell 2.5 percentage points for whites to 10.8%, but 11.3 percentage points to 24.7% for blacks and 10.2 percentage points to 21.9% for Hispanics. - The rate of serious crimes committed by black youths ages 12-17 fell 80% to 10.9 per 1,000; the Hispanic rate was down 65% to 4.8 per 1,000. The white rate fell 53% to 8.6 per 1,000. STUDY FINDS FOOD SUPPLEMENTS CURB VIOLENT BEHAVIOR INDEPENDENT, UK - Some of Britain's most challenging young prisoners are to be given food supplements in a study aimed at curbing violent behavior. Scientists from Oxford University say the effect of nutrition on behavior has been underestimated. They say increases in consumption of "junk" food over the past 50 years have contributed to a rise in violence. . . In a pilot study of 231 prisoners by the same researchers, published in 2002, violent incidents while in custody were cut by a more than a third among those given the supplements. Overall, offences recorded by the prison authorities fell by a quarter. . . The theory behind the trial is that when the brain is starved of essential nutrients, especially omega-3 fatty acids, which are a central building block of brain neurons, it loses "flexibility". This shortens attention spans and undermines self-control. Even though prison food is nutritious, prisoners tend to make unhealthy choices and need supplements, the researchers say. FEMA COVERED UP HEALTH HAZARD OF ITS TRAILERS CBS - CBS News has learned that the Centers for Disease Control, the nation's top public health agency, suppressed repeated warnings from one of its top scientists, raising questions about whether the CDC bowed to pressure from FEMA to conceal the long-term health risks of formaldehyde in the trailers it distributed to hurricane victims - health risks like cancer and birth defects. . . A string of internal documents . . . reveal that Dr. Christopher De Rosa, director of the CDC's Division of Toxicology and Environmental Medicine, told his superiors "there is no safe level of exposure" to formaldehyde in trailers. That warning never made its way into any public report about the trailers. In addition, Dr. De Rosa wrote in an email that two of his staff members had been directed by FEMA officials to not "address longer term health effects" of formaldehyde in this February 2007 report. http://cbs13.com/national/FEMA.CDC.trailers.2.640033.html NY NOW TRASHES KENNEDY FOR BACKING A BLACK GUY OVER A WOMAN POLITICO - The New York State chapter of the National Organization for Women attacked Ted Kennedy for his endorsement with some real heat: "Women have just experienced the ultimate betrayal. Senator Kennedy's endorsement of Hillary Clinton's opponent in the Democratic presidential primary campaign has really hit women hard. Women have forgiven Kennedy, stuck up for him, stood by him, hushed the fact that he was late in his support of Title IX, the ERA, the Family Leave and Medical Act to name a few. Women have buried their anger that his support for the compromises in No Child Left Behind and the Medicare bogus drug benefit brought us the passage of these flawed bills. We have thanked him for his ardent support of many civil rights bills, BUT women are always waiting in the wings. "And now the greatest betrayal! We are repaid with his abandonment! He's picked the new guy over us. He's joined the list of progressive white men who can't or won't handle the prospect of a woman president who is Hillary Clinton (they will of course say they support a woman president, just not "this" one). 'They' are Howard Dean . . . Alternet, Progressive Democrats of America, democrats.com, Kucinich lovers and all the other groups that take women's money, say they'll do feminist and women's rights issues one of these days, and conveniently forget to mention women and children when they talk about poverty or human needs or America's future or whatever. "This latest move by Kennedy, is so telling about the status of and respect for women's rights, women's voices, women's equality, women's authority and our ability - indeed, our obligation - to promote and earn and deserve and elect, unabashedly, a President that is the first woman after centuries of men who 'know what's best for us.'" http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0108/NY_NOW_Betrayal.html Sam Smith Bill Clinton was right for a change. He used the phrase "fairy tale" to describe something Barack Obama had said. He should know. The Clinton story was one of the great fairy tales of our time, created by a pair of the most cynical politicians in American history assisted by a gullible press. Clinton even tried the JF Kennedy shtick. Remember the photos of Clinton shaking Kennedy's hand at the White House as a kid at Boy's Nation? It didn't work and perhaps part of Clinton's resentment against Obama is that the latter has made the shtick stick. In fact, contrary to the fable, during the Clinton years life got worse for many blacks and women, a stunning number of Democratic offices were lost at the state and national level, the country's social welfare program began being dismantled and a social democratic tradition of the Democratic Party going back to FDR was tossed aside for a GOP Lite philosophy that still dominates the party's thinking. Of course, Kennedy was a fairy tale, too. Aside from the Peace Corps and getting people excited about serving the public good he was a pretty run of the mill. And he made some crummy decisions including the Bay of Pigs and starting the Vietnam conflict. In fact, the only presidents to get really excited about in modern times were Johnson (and only on the domestic side) and Roosevelt. And both are hardly mentioned by the fairy tale tellers. There are two big problems with political fairy tales: First, they usually turn out to be false and dangerously so. If the media fails to warn you of the insecure machismo of the Harvard types who surrounded JFK, you can find yourself in Vietnam. If it doesn't tell you the easily available evidence of Clinton's corrupt and drug trade connected politics in Arkansas, you can end up with the Whitewater scandal. And if all it tells you about Barack Obama is that he's for hope and is a JFK clone, you may end up with. . . . Stay tuned. Second, these fairy tales reduce the supporting constituency to the role of rock star groupies rather than active participants. These groupies are used for the candidate's ends rather than the constituency using the candidate for their ends. This is what happened in the Clinton years. The liberal wing of the Democratic Party, even before the primaries were over, had reduced itself to a servile sycophant of Clinton and never recovered. There was no greater betrayal of the liberal tradition than how its professed observers caved to the destructive Clinton machine. In fact, Obama's greatest service to date is that he has already started to replace the rotten Clinton fairy tale with a new one. The criticism of the Clintons that has started to crop up recently from formerly obeisant liberal quarters is something that hasn't been seen in 16 years. We can't underestimate the importance of closing the dismal chapter of the Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush years with something, even if it isn't everything we would like. At no time in American history has so much damage been done to our reputation, Constitution and economy as during the RBCB era. It is long past time to say good riddance. That said, there is absolutely nothing to be gained by turning a fairly ordinary Chicago politician into a saint. For one thing, he isn't. And for another, groveling at the feet of any politician is the worse course for a constituency. It is far better to keep politicians humble, to know their faults, and to know how to work around them when you need to. A good place to start is to stop talking about hope. Obama talking about the audacity of hope is like a musician telling an audience that we need the audacity of applause. . . before he plays anything worth applauding. Besides, Obama has no copyright on hope and, even if he did, as has been pointed out, hope don't pay the rent. For Obama to put so much emphasis on hope suggests that he is either a con artist or deeply policy deficient. It is fine for a politician to offer us hope, but for it to be real it has to be the byproduct of proposed policies or past actions and not the beginning and end of one's platform. There are two good reasons for voting for a candidate. One: the candidate has done something for you. Two: the candidate promises to do something for you. No candidate meets the first criteria and only John Edwards meets the second. But Edwards is up against two competing fairy tales, which the media much prefers to reality politics. Besides, if Edwards were to win, the rules of the game would change and neither Washington nor the media would like that very much. That's why they've been so hard on Edwards from the start. Far better to feel like something's going to happen because the candidate is black or a woman. And so much easier. In fact, if you want change in policies, including toward those that would better favor the average black or women, you support Edwards. If you want to change the gender or ethnicity of the person in the White House without much change in policy, you support Obama or Clinton. It's sort of like buying a car. Some people read Consumer Reports; others think all they need is the hip brand. Is there a definable difference between Obama and the Clintons? Absolutely. Obama is more honest, decent and thoughtful as well as less hypocritical by far. If you disagree with Obama, you'll get a parsimonious argument and be mad. If you disagree with a Clinton, you better watch your back. Besides, there's the Mae West principle: when faced with a choice of two evils, she always picked the one she hadn't tried before. But that doesn't mean there is anything to be gained by wagging your tail every time Obama says the word "hope." In the end, those little treats he gives you for your obsequiousness may be all you get for lunch. OBAMA REALITY CHECK GLEN FORD, BLACK AGENDA REPORT – [The Congressional Black Caucus] split between Obama and Clinton supporters, has also abandoned all hope that the next administration will move in the slightest direction toward the goals near-universally supported by black America: single-payer health care, affordable housing, revitalization of the cities, and massive federal aid to public education. None of this is remotely possible while the military sucks up ever-larger proportions of the national treasury - and every CBC member knows it. Yet they form lines behind Hillary and Barack, both of whom have repeatedly announced their intentions to keep feeding the voracious war-profit machine MARGARET KIMBERLEY, BLACK AGENDA REPORT - Sadly, too many black people with a lifelong history of supporting a progressive agenda suddenly become tongue tied or verbal but nonsensical when they attempt to justify their Obama love. Obama tells outright lies such as, "what ails working- and middle-class blacks and Latinos is not fundamentally different from what ails their white counterparts," yet the love fest goes on without question. Obama supporters want him to be their man, so they continue in denial and conclude that he is, even when he tells them that he isn't. . . Citizens should identify with politicians who believe as they do. Acting otherwise is to be in a constant state of bamboozlement. Neither the nonsense spread by hack pundits nor the grotesque smears of politicians should play a role in our decision making. Simply put, voting for someone who acts in opposition to our interests makes us dupes, chumps to be quickly disposed of after the inaugural ball. They are already prepared to send us to the political garbage dump. We shouldn't make it easier for them. BLACK AGENDA REPORT - Bush invaded Iraq in March 2003, and by late May declared "mission accomplished" and victory in "the battle of Iraq" from the deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln. With the president riding high in national polls, this reporter checked Obama's campaign web site and noted that all the evidence of and references to candidate Obama's prior opposition to the invasion of Iraq had been deleted. The visionary Barack Obama appeared to be leaning rightward with the prevailing wind, distancing himself from his prior opposition to the war. BARACK OBAMA'S RESPONSE: The only reason that my original anti-war speech was removed from my website was a judgment that the speech was dated once the formal phase of the war was over, and my staff's desire to continually provide fresh news clips. OBAMA ON REAGAN - I do think that for example the 1980 election was different. I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing. MARGARET KIMBERLEY, BLACK AGENDA REPORT - Not only did Obama praise Reagan, but he used racist, conservative code words from the GOP play book to do it. Obama's supporters should be the first to ask him what he believes to be the "excesses of the 60s and 70s." Does he think the Voting Rights Act was an excess? What about the Civil Rights Act? Were the protests against the Vietnam War excessive? What about Fair Housing legislation, was it all too much for the Republic to handle? Was abortion legalization an excess? SAM SMITH - What is the bipartisan solution for. . . The Iraq war, which was started and continued with full support of both the Republican and Democratic parties? The destruction of the Constitution through such means as runaway wiretapping and the Patriot Act, both of which have received strong bipartisan support including from major Democratic presidential candidates? The harm done by the cynical No Child Left Behind Act, which received broad bipartisan support? The growing use of torture by the US government, support for which is so bipartisan it hasn't hardly been mentioned during the current campaign? Global warming, around which Republicans and Democrats have reached a consensus to keep as much below the surface as possible? If we have much more bipartisanship, it may prove fatal. Candidates proposing bipartisanship or "post-partisanship" are really arguing for merging two dangerous mobs even more than at present. Bipartisanship does not end conflict, it simply strengthens the conflict by those in power against the rest of us. As Harry Truman noted, "Whenever a fellow tells me he is bipartisan, I know he is going to vote against me." PAUL KRUGMAN, NY TIMES - Lately, Barack Obama has been saying that major action is needed to avert what he keeps calling a "crisis" in Social Security - most recently in an interview with The National Journal. Progressives who fought hard and successfully against the Bush administration's attempt to panic America into privatizing the New Deal's crown jewel are outraged, and rightly so. But Mr. Obama's Social Security mistake was, in fact, exactly what you'd expect from a candidate who promises to transcend partisanship in an age when that's neither possible nor desirable. . . Inside the Beltway, doomsaying about Social Security - declaring that the program as we know it can't survive the onslaught of retiring baby boomers - is regarded as a sort of badge of seriousness, a way of showing how statesmanlike and tough-minded you are. Consider, for example, this exchange about Social Security between Chris Matthews of MSNBC and Tim Russert of NBC, on a recent edition of Mr. Matthews's program "Hardball." Mr. Russert: "Everyone knows Social Security, as it's constructed, is not going to be in the same place it's going to be for the next generation, Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives." Mr. Matthews: "It's a bad Ponzi scheme, at this point." Mr. Russert: "Yes." But the "everyone" who knows that Social Security is doomed doesn't include anyone who actually understands the numbers. In fact, the whole Beltway obsession with the fiscal burden of an aging population is misguided. As Peter Orszag, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, put it in a recent article co-authored with senior analyst Philip Ellis: "The long-term fiscal condition of the United States has been largely misdiagnosed. Despite all the attention paid to demographic challenges, such as the coming retirement of the baby-boom generation, our country's financial health will in fact be determined primarily by the growth rate of per capita health care costs.". . . I don't believe Mr. Obama is a closet privatizer. He is, however, someone who keeps insisting that he can transcend the partisanship of our times - and in this case, that turned him into a sucker. . . DERRICK Z. JACKSON, BOSTON GLOBE - It is unclear if Barack Obama's caution precedes consensus or cave-in. Asked if he would eliminate discriminatory laws that punish crack cocaine possession so heavily that it would take 100 times more in powder cocaine for the same sentence, Obama started off by saying the law was a mistake. . . Vacillation became evident as he kept talking about crack-vs.-powder sentencing, which has come to symbolize racial injustice in criminal justice. He said that if he were to become president, he would support a commission to issue a report "that allows me to say that based on the expert evidence, this is not working and it's unfair and unjust. Then I would move legislation forward." That was a puzzling statement because the US Sentencing Commission, created by Congress in 1984, has long said the system is not working and reaffirmed in April that the 100-to-1 ratio "significantly undermines" sentencing reform. NEDRA PICKLER, ASSOCIATED PRESS - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said that he would possibly send troops into Pakistan to hunt down terrorists, an attempt to show strength when his chief rival has described his foreign policy skills as naive. . . "Let me make this clear," Obama said in a speech prepared for delivery at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. "There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al-Qaida leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will." AP- Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama laid out list of political shortcomings he sees in the Bush administration but said he opposes impeachment for either President George W. Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney. . . "I think you reserve impeachment for grave, grave breeches, and intentional breeches of the president's authority," he said. FRED HIATT, WASHINGTON POST - [Barack Obama and Mitt Romney] have laid out their foreign policy visions in parallel articles, released prior to publication in the July/August issue of Foreign Affairs. And after you cut through some of their campaign rhetoric, here's what you find: (1) The two candidates' programs are strikingly similar to each other. (2) Both are strikingly similar to Bush administration policy. (3) And both, far from retreating to isolationism in the face of Iraq and other challenges, set forth their own wildly ambitious calls for American leadership and the promotion of American values. "Boldness" is an operative word for both of them. . . In both cases, the criticism is not that Bush took on too much but that he accomplished too little. "We are a unique nation, and there is no substitute for our leadership," says Romney. Agrees Obama: "We can be this America again. . . . [A]n America that battles immediate evils, promotes an ultimate good, and leads the world once more." If Iraq-weary voters are looking for someone who will call on America to "come home," they won't find that candidate here. GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS - You've also said that with Social Security, everything should be on the table. OBAMA: Yes. STEPHANOPOULOS: Raising the retirement age? OBAMA: Everything should be on the table. STEPHANOPOULOS: Raising payroll taxes? OBAMA: Everything should be on the table. I think we should approach it the same way Tip O'Neill and Ronald Reagan did back in 1983. They came together. I don't want to lay out my preferences beforehand, but what I know is that Social Security is solvable. It is not as difficult a problem as we're going to have with Medicaid and Medicare. STEPHANOPOULOS: Partial privatization? OBAMA: Privatization is not something that I would consider . . . PROGRESSIVE REVIEW - A 10,000 word piece in the New Yorker - purveyor of the appropriate to the liberal elite - features Obama as the "conciliator" with hardly a solid program or policy mentioned. The message of the article - like Obama's - is that we don't need a president, just a therapist. Take healthcare for example: "'We've got to put more money in prevention,' he said. "It makes no sense for children to be going to the emergency room for treatable ailments like asthma. Twenty per cent of our patients who have chronic illnesses account for eighty per cent of the costs, so it's absolutely critical that we invest in managing those with chronic illnesses like diabetes. If we hire a case manager to work with them to insure that they're taking the proper treatments, then potentially we're not going to have to spend thirty thousand dollars on a leg amputation.' A young man asked about health care for minorities. 'Obesity and diabetes in minority communities are more severe,' Obama said, "so I think we need targeted programs, particularly to children in those communities, to make sure that they've got sound nutrition, that they have access to fruits and vegetables and not just Popeyes, and that they have decent spaces to play in instead of being cooped up in the house all day.'" So just eat your vegetables and stay away from Popeyes and all will be fine. Pressed on the matter, Obama does go a little deeper: "'If you're starting from scratch," he says, 'then a single-payer system' -a government-managed system like Canada's, which disconnects health insurance from employment- 'would probably make sense. But we've got all these legacy systems in place, and managing the transition, as well as adjusting the culture to a different system, would be difficult to pull off. So we may need a system that's not so disruptive that people feel like suddenly what they've known for most of their lives is thrown by the wayside.'" Since ordinary people could adapt, say, to the expansion of the Medicare system in a matter of days, who are these people of whom Obama speaks who might "feel like suddenly what they've known for most of their lives is thrown by the wayside?" Well, the insurance companies would be the ones most affected, and Obama has just sent a clear if covert signal that he won't be messing with them. The right understands the centrist myth far better than liberals. They know that the center is homeland security for inaction in public, lots of action behind the scenes, and power staying where it should: with the powerful. It's not surprising that some of them see Obama as their man, the "black Reagan" as he has been called. Yet he is also the liberals' Pat Robertson, and while the right can see where they can cut deals with him, the liberal evangelicals are all misty eyed by his talk of hope and faith. But Harry Truman was right: that guy serving you the happy meals of centrism in the campaign is likely going to be on the other side after election day. PAUL STREET, Z MAG - Never mind that Obama was recently hailed as a "Hamiltonian" believer in "limited government" and "free trade" by Republican New York Times columnist David Brooks, who praises Obama for having "a mentality formed by globalization, not the SDS." Or that he had to be shamed off the "New Democrat Directory" of the corporate-right Democratic Leadership Council by the popular left black Internet magazine Black Commentator . . . Never mind that Obama has lent his support to the aptly named Hamilton Project, formed by corporate-neo-liberal Citigroup chair Robert Rubin and "other Wall Street Democrats" to counter populist rebellion against corporatist tendencies within the Democratic Party. . . Or that he lent his politically influential and financially rewarding assistance to neoconservative pro-war Senator Joe Lieberman's ("D"-CT) struggle against the Democratic antiwar insurgent Ned Lamont. Or that Obama has supported other "mainstream Democrats" fighting antiwar progressives in primary races . . . Or that he criticized efforts to enact filibuster proceedings against reactionary Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. Never mind that Obama "dismissively" referred - in a "tone laced with contempt" - to the late progressive and populist U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone as "something of a gadfly." . . . Or that "he posted a long article on the liberal blog Daily Kos criticizing attacks against lawmakers who voted for right-wing Supreme Court nominee John Roberts." Or that he opposed an amendment to the Bankruptcy Act that would have capped credit card interest rates at 30 percent. Or that he told Time magazine's Joe Klein last year that he'd never given any thought to Al Gore's widely discussed proposal to link a "carbon tax" on fossil fuels to targeted tax relief for the nation's millions of working poor . . . Never mind that Obama voted for a business-friendly "tort reform" bill that rolls back working peoples' ability to obtain reasonable redress and compensation from misbehaving corporations. . . Or that Obama claims to oppose the introduction of single-payer national health insurance on the grounds that such a widely supported social-democratic change would lead to employment difficulties for workers in the private insurance . . . Never mind that Obama voted to re-authorize the repressive PATRIOT Act. Or that he voted for the appointment of the war criminal Condaleeza Rice to (of all things) Secretary of State. Or that he opposed Senator Russ Feingold's (D-WI) move to censure the Bush administration after the president was found to have illegally wiretapped U.S. citizens. Or that he shamefully distanced himself from fellow Illinois Democratic Senator Dick Durbin's forthright criticism of U.S. torture practices at Guantanamo. Or that he refuses to foreswear the use of first-strike nuclear weapons against Iran. . . Never mind that Obama's famous 2004 Democratic Convention Keynote Address - widely credited for catapulting him to national prominence - expressed numerous reactionary and incorrect notions that make the praise it received from the far right National Review (who called Obama's oration "simple and powerful") less than mysterious on close examination. . . ROBERT KAGAN, WASHINGTON POST - Obama's speech at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs last week was pure John Kennedy, without a trace of John Mearsheimer. . . No one speaks of the "free world" these days, and Obama's insistence that we not "cede our claim of leadership in world affairs" will sound like an anachronistic conceit to many Europeans, who even in the 1990s complained about the bullying "hyperpower." In Moscow and Beijing it will confirm suspicions about America's inherent hegemonism. But Obama believes the world yearns to follow us, if only we restore our worthiness to lead. . . His critique is not that we've meddled too much but that we haven't meddled enough. There is more to building democracy than "deposing a dictator and setting up a ballot box." We must build societies with "a strong legislature, an independent judiciary, the rule of law, a vibrant civil society, a free press, and an honest police force." . . . He wants the American military to "stay on the offense, from Djibouti to Kandahar," and he believes that "the ability to put boots on the ground will be critical in eliminating the shadowy terrorist networks we now face." He wants to ensure that we continue to have "the strongest, best-equipped military in the world." Obama never once says that military force should be used only as a last resort. Rather, he insists that "no president should ever hesitate to use force -- unilaterally if necessary," not only "to protect ourselves . . . when we are attacked," but also to protect "our vital interests" when they are "imminently threatened." That's known as preemptive military action. It won't reassure those around the world who worry about letting an American president decide what a "vital interest" is and when it is "imminently threatened." Nor will they be comforted to hear that "when we use force in situations other than self-defense, we should make every effort to garner the clear support and participation of others." Make every effort? Conspicuously absent from Obama's discussion of the use of force are four words: United Nations Security Council. Obama talks about "rogue nations," "hostile dictators," "muscular alliances" and maintaining "a strong nuclear deterrent." He talks about how we need to "seize" the "American moment." We must "begin the world anew." . . . ABC - ABC's Sunlen Miller Reports: Barack Obama has often said he'd consider putting Republicans in his cabinet and even bandied about names like Sens. Dick Lugar and Chuck Hagel. He's a added a new name to the list of possible Republicans cabinet members - Arnold Schwarzenegger. . . Sen. Dick Lugar: "He's a Republicans who I worked with on issues of arms control, wonderful guy. He is somebody I think embodies the tradition of a bipartisan foreign policy that is sensible, that is not ideological, that is based on the idea that we have to have some humility and restraint in terms of our ability to project power around the world,” Obama said about his Senate colleague." Sen. Chuck Hagel: "A Vietnam vet, similar approach and somebody I respect in a similar fashion" Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger: "What (he's) doing on climate change in California is very important and significant. There are things I don't agree with him on, but he's taken leadership on a very difficult issue and we haven't seen that kind of leadership in Washington," Obama said of the California governor." PRIMING THE SUBPRIME CRISIS JAMES MCCUSKER, EVERETT HERALD, WA - In the wake of the 1929 stock market crash and the subsequent global economic depression, Congress, among other actions, passed the Glass-Steagall Act which prohibited banks from engaging in securities underwriting. There was money to be made in securities, though, and after a suitable period of penance for their contributions to the crash and depression banks began to agitate for relief from this restrictive law. The banking
industry's whining about Glass-Steagall eventually paid off.
. . Banks eagerly bought up low-quality mortgage loans, packaged them up and sold them as securities -- all the while using "three-card Monte" accounting constructs to keep the transactions off their balance sheets. . . The Federal Reserve, the president and Congress have their hands full at this time. Their first priority is damage control, and that is as it should be. Eventually, though, the economy will right itself, with or without Washington's help, and the president, the Federal Reserve and Congress will have time to consider what got us into this fix in the first place. If we had to pick a single event that set off this economic stink bomb, it would have to be Alan Greenspan's decision to support the expansion of bank activities into securities underwriting. While the Congress has a mind of its own, it is extremely doubtful that they would have approved this expansion in the face of his objections. He was at the height of his powers then, and his support for the idea made it bullet-proof, politically. As soon as possible, Congress should extend its damage control operations to put banking back on solid ground, and reconstruct the wall between banking and stock-market gaming. BUSINESS AS MORE THAN PROFITS IRVING WLADAWSKY-BERGER -[Dr. Muhammad] Yunus is a Bangladeshi economist and the founder of the Grameen Bank, which he created in 1974 to help impoverished borrowers start small businesses and obtain an education. He first loaned $27 to a small group of very poor Bangladeshi women, and gradually increased the number of loans. He pioneered the revolutionary concept of micro-loans to help the poor in developing countries. With these micro-loans, the poor are able to start very small businesses, and they can gradually improve their economic situations and start moving out of poverty. Grameen Bank now has more than 7.5 million borrowers, and about 2/3 of the families receiving loans have risen above the poverty line. The banking system pioneered by Muhammad Yunus is now being used in more than 100 countries. . . He does not view the Grameen bank and related activities as charity. He truly views them as businesses, albeit a somewhat different kind of business from the classic ones based on maximizing profits. . . He writes, "Many of the problems in the world remain unresolved because we continue to interpret capitalism too narrowly. In this narrow interpretation we create a one-dimensional human being to play the role of entrepreneur. We insulate him from other dimensions of life, such as religious, emotional, political dimensions. He is dedicated to one mission in his business life - to maximize profit. He is supported by masses of one-dimensional human beings who back him up with their investment money to achieve the same mission." But, he later adds, "everyday human beings are not one-dimensional entities, they are excitingly multi-dimensional and indeed very colourful. Their emotions, beliefs, priorities, behavior patterns can be more aptly described by drawing analogy with the basic colors and millions of colors and shades they produce." He wants to create a new type of entrepreneur, who is not just interested in profit-maximization but who is also totally committed to make a difference in the world and give a better chance in life to other people, not just through charity, but by creating social businesses. These businesses may or may not earn a profit, but like other businesses, they must not incur a loss. They must become self-sustaining. Grameen Bank is such a social business. NY TIMES MISLEADS ON BUSH'S ECONOMIC RECORD DEAN BAKER, PROSPECT - The NYT had a piece on President Bush's economic legacy. In the second sentence it tells readers that: "Mr. Bush has spent years presiding over an economic climate of growth that would be the envy of most presidents." adding that "Yet much to the consternation of his political advisers, he has had trouble getting credit for it, in large part because Americans were consumed by the war in Iraq." Is that right? Let's check the numbers. Here the ranking of the presidential terms since 1960 by average annual GDP growth: Kennedy-Johnson
-- 5.2% President Bush's growth record is better than his father's, but it is worse than the record of every other president in the last half century. It's not clear why they would be envious. HEDGE FUNDS BULLY NEW YORK TIMES NY TIMES - One of two hedge funds seeking to name directors at The New York Times Company sought on Sunday to clarify its intentions for the newspaper publisher, saying it wanted the company to sell some assets and focus on digital publishing. The head of the fund, Firebrand Partners, whose role in the nomination of new directors had not been disclosed previously, wrote in a letter to the Times Company's chairman, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., and its chief executive, Janet L. Robinson, that it also would not seek to change the company's ownership structure. "The New York Times is a great institution controlled by the Sulzberger family, and we have no illusion about, or desire to change, that fact," Scott Galloway, Firebrand's chief executive, wrote in the letter. The letter is expected to be made public in a regulatory filing on Monday. A Firebrand spokesman declined to comment. A Times Company spokeswoman, Catherine J. Mathis, said in a statement on Sunday night: "We regularly have detailed discussions on these kinds of strategic issues with our investors." She added, "As always, we remain open to ideas from and dialogue with our investors." Firebrand is working with Harbinger Capital Partners, an Alabama hedge fund that on Friday declared its intent to name four new directors to the Times Company. Together, the two funds own a 4.9 percent stake, Mr. Galloway wrote in his letter. Firebrand and Harbinger have teamed up before, having installed Mr. Galloway on the board of Gateway, the computer maker, in 2006. In his letter, Mr. Galloway wrote that the Times Company should focus on its core publishing business. That should include selling assets to finance deals for digital media, he wrote. By declaring that they seek no change to the Times Company's stock structure, the funds are hoping to avoid the hostile reaction a senior Morgan Stanley portfolio manager received last year when he asked the publisher to merge its two stock classes. Members of the Ochs-Sulzberger family, who own the majority of the company's Class B shares, control nine of 13 board seats. The family has rebuffed calls to change that system THE REAL STORY BEHIND OBAMA'S 'PRESENT VOTES STATELINE - In most legislatures, lawmakers vote either "yes" or "no" on bills, but in Illinois, senators and representatives can hit a third button for a "present" vote. Now that quirk — not unique to Illinois — has sparked heated exchanges among Democrats vying for president. . . The "present" vote in Illinois is sometimes cast by state lawmakers with a conflict of interest who would rather not weigh in on an issue. Other times, members use the option to object to certain parts of a bill, even though they may agree with its overall purpose. . . . The Land of Lincoln isn't the only state where lawmakers can register their displeasure without actually voting against a bill. Colorado, Delaware, Massachusetts, Missouri and Texas also allow "present" votes or similar options in at least one chamber, according to a recent review of chamber rules by the National Conference of State Legislatures. In Hawaii, where Obama grew up, legislators can cast a "kanalua" (a Hawaiian word meaning "doubt") vote during roll calls, essentially a pass. But after going through the roll call two or three times, depending on the chamber, the "kanalua" vote eventually counts as a "yes." In Illinois, the "present" vote works as a vote against a measure during final action. State Sen. John Cullerton (D) calls the "present" vote "a no vote with an explanation." Legally, there's not much difference between the two votes, but practically, it can let the sponsors or other legislators know of problems with the bill that should be corrected. That's not how U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) characterized it in a debate in Myrtle Beach, S.C., this week. "In the Illinois state Senate, Senator Obama voted 130 times ‘present.' That's not ‘yes,' that's not ‘no.' That's ‘maybe,'" she said. BILL CLINTON FIBBED AGAIN BALLOT ACCESS - On January 26, 2008, former President Bill Clinton said, "Jesse Jackson won South Carolina in 1984 and 1988." Clinton's statement has caused most people to believe that Jesse Jackson won presidential primaries in South Carolina in those years. Actually there were no Democratic presidential primaries in South Carolina in either of those years. Jackson's success in that state was in caucuses. SALES OF NEW HOMES FELL BY 26% LAST YEAR NY TIMES - Sales of new homes fell last year by 26 percent, the steepest drop since records began in 1963, the Commerce Department said . . . Prices have also fallen sharply. In December, the median price of a new home fell to $219,200, down 10 percent from December 2006. For the year, the median price of new homes rose just 0.2 percent, to $246,900. But the median price of a previously owned single-family home fell for the first time in at least four decades, the National Association of Realtors said. Last month alone, sales of new homes tumbled 4.7 percent, to a 604,000 annual rate, the smallest monthly sales figure since February 1995. ETHANOL PLANTS SUCK UP WATER STAR TRIBUNE, MN - With a flood of ethanol plants headed toward Minnesota, there's growing concern about whether there will be enough groundwater to satisfy the booming industry's thirst. The issue was brought into focus last year in Granite Falls, where an ethanol plant in its first year of operations depleted the groundwater so much that it had to begin pumping water from the Minnesota River. It takes between four and five gallons of water to produce a gallon of ethanol at a biofuel plant, and with 17 ethanol plants now operating in the state, six under construction and 10 more proposed or in the planning stages, the threat of more drains on underground water are rising. . . The industry is consuming about 2 billion gallons of groundwater per year, according to state estimates. That amount could quadruple by 2011 if the state's ethanol production more than doubles, as expected. . . WORST FOOD PRICE INFLATION IN HISTORY LESTER BROWN, ENS - The world is facing the most severe food price inflation in history as grain and soybean prices climb to all-time highs. Wheat trading on the Chicago Board of Trade on December 17th breached the $10 per bushel level for the first time ever. In mid-January, corn was trading over $5 per bushel, close to its historic high. And on January 11th, soybeans traded at $13.42 per bushel, the highest price ever recorded. All these prices are double those of a year or two ago. As a result, prices of food products made directly from these commodities such as bread, pasta, and tortillas, and those made indirectly, such as pork, poultry, beef, milk, and eggs, are everywhere on the rise. In Mexico, corn meal prices are up 60 percent. In Pakistan, flour prices have doubled. China is facing rampant food price inflation, some of the worst in decades. . . |
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