Who really benefits from 'government services'?

Radley Balko is one of the best when it comes to detailing the evils of the drug war and the U.S. legal system as a whole. And he's also linked to me a couple times, so it's obvious the guy has good taste. But when he writes outside of his field of specialty, Balko regrettably comes across all too often as your standard right-winger, as in a recent post wherein he complains, as he often has over the years, that poor people aren't paying their fair share of taxes -- an argument that, merits aside, seems a damn fine way to ensure his brand of libertarianism remains politically marginal and, when it is noticed, lampooned as little more than conservatism for pot heads.

As a libertarian, Balko bases his tax-the-poor stance not on a concern over the government's ability to fund programs he'd like to do away with, of course, but out of a fear that because many poor Americans do not pay federal income taxes, "we’ll soon have a majority of people who pay no tax voting for more and more government services they benefit from, but don’t have to pay for." Implicit in this is the apparent belief that the dramatic rise in government spending and the national debt over the past few decades is explained by poor people voting into office politicians who keep giving them more and more of other peoples' money – and voting out those who don't; in other words, the standard conservative narrative of the parasitic, layabout masses bleeding dry the productive, wealth-producing John Galts.

That narrative, however, is what political scientists colloquially refer to as “fucking bullshit.” Contrary to what conservatives love to allege and big government-loving liberals would love to believe, the majority of what the state collects every April 15 goes not to poor, drug-addicted welfare mothers, but to blowing up poor mothers and their children on the other side of the globe with bombs purchased from very wealthy military contractors. While the bulk of state spending is indeed on Medicare and Social Security – the bread to go along with the circus of publicly financed stadiums – those programs are funded, as Balko acknowledges, by direct, regressive taxes that, yes, even poor people pay.

The majority of income taxes, on the other hand, goes directly to the Pentagon and the legion of quasi-private corporations that make up the military-industrial complex, a fact that ought to make someone who has built a career chronicling abuses of state power -- abuses that disproportionately affect the poor -- queasy at the mere thought of expanding the government's tax base. And as you may recall, it was Wall Street bankers, not welfare mothers, who politicians rushed to hand billions in taxpayer dollars – and trillions more after taking into account the Federal Reserve's printing press – when the economy took a nosedive in 2008 following the burst of a housing bubble inflated at the behest of said bankers and at the expense of the foreclosed upon poor.

When it comes to reaping riches from evermore “government services," it's not the poor that people like Balko ought to fear, but the wealthy elite. Beyond just direct handouts in the form of tax credits and bailouts, the capitalist class benefits from state interventions that are often hard to even quantify, from “intellectual property” laws that guarantee big pharmaceutical giants and software companies monopoly profits to corporate personhood and its attendant “limited liability, which shields firms like BP and Chiquita from the full fiscal and legal liability of their actions.

Right-wing libertarians like Balko are useful critics of state power, often being some of the only voices speaking out against the outrages of the racist war on drugs and the latest and greatest “humanitarian” war, liberals typically being too busy denouncing the most recent Outrage! from Glenn Beck. But by perpetuating the notion that the state is beholden to the poor masses rather than, as history suggests, those with the most money, they demonstrate a seriously lacking -- and superficial -- theory of government and for whom its power serves.

As for me, when it comes to casting blame for the growth of state power and the threat of its expansion in the future, I'm going to look to the guy whose finances are in a shelter, not his belongings.

(See the follow-up here.)

It's a drug

After the revolution, only love and camaraderie will be acceptable legal tenders, not the vulgar dollars and pesos of our fallen age. In the meantime, however, the latter are useful for paying the rent and whatnot.

If you are so compelled, I have created a donation page where you, my loyal and not at all ungrateful readers, can send me the money you would have just blown on beer anyway. For just a dollar a day you can support a struggling freelance writer as he works to undermine The System through strongly worded blog postings and carefully calibrated 140 character tweets; in exchange you will receive a lifetime premium subscription to false dichotomy: a journal of discontent, sleep more soundly at night and enjoy closer, more meaningful relations with your friends and family.

Act now.

Juan Cole's war on anarchism

As a liberal supporter of invading Iraq who apparently believed the Bush administration's rhetoric about freedom and democracy, and felt that bombs and military occupations would be the best means of promoting it, Juan Cole sure has a lot of nerve attacking anarchism as philosophy that depends "on a naive reading of social interest." And while I have my own criticisms of right-wing libertarianism, I can't help but note the incongruity of attacking folks like Ron Paul on the basis that their beliefs will lead to privatized, corporate warfare when the wars Cole has supported and continues to support depend on legions of private guns-for-hire and defense contractors like Halliburton and KBR.

Nominally about the recent GOP presidential debate, Cole's attack on anarchy -- from "anarcho-syndicalists like [Noam] Chomsky" to the aforementioned Paul -- is perhaps a sign that liberals like him are fearful the anti-state position is gaining traction, especially given the conspicuous lack of change since liberal savior Barack Obama moved to the White House. Indeed, that would explain why, instead of addressing the world we live in now, where a Nobel laureate is waging war in at least half a dozen countries with the help of an army of private war-profiteering corporations and their mercenaries, Cole focuses our attention on a scary future where, without the state, "warmongering corporations [could] pursue war all on their own."

"The East India Companies of Britain and the Netherlands behaved that way," Cole writes. "[And] India was not conquered by the British government, but by the East India Company. Likewise what is now Indonesia was a project of the Dutch East India Company."

However, while intended as a critique of anarchism, Cole's examples only bolster the critique of the state. The East India Companies, after all, were chartered by the British government, granted trade monopolies by the British government, and had their claim to properties, most of which were looted from poor foreigners, protected by the British government. And while I won't claim to speak for Ron Paul, most anarchists -- and it shows Cole's muddled thinking that he lumps "limited government" advocates like Paul in with Pierre-Joseph Proudhon & Co. -- don't just oppose "the state," they oppose the use of violence and coercion. It just so happens that states with their claims to a "legitimate monopoly on the use of violence" tend to be the greatest purveyors of it.

If in some future anarchotopia a private corporation -- let's not get into the fact that corporations are created by the state -- should wage war, then they would be acting like states and would be opposed just as vigorously. Indeed, to an anarchist the distinction between corporation and state is the same as a Christian's distinction between God and Jesus: though taking different forms, they're one and the same, the difference academic.

While Cole's fixated on a future of corporate war, he seems unaware that a world of Big Bad Corporations waging war on the world exists right now and that, rather than checking this aggression, the state is aiding and abetting it. Liberals can rail against Blackwater/Xe all they want, but in the end its Hillary Clinton's State Department that's giving them millions in tax dollars.

Speaking of oblivious, Cole writes:

Right anarchists seem not to be able to perceive that without government, corporations would reduce us all to living in company towns on bad wages and would constantly be purveying to us bad banking, tainted food, dangerous drugs, etc.

It's almost as if he's unaware we already live in a world where Goldman Sachs exists and where wages have been more or less stagnant since the 1970s. Instead of scaring his readers away from an anarchist world, he likely just left them wondering what the difference would be.

(My Saturday afternoon ruined via BDR)

'Corporations are people,' says every American politician

Out stumping on the campaign trail this week, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney committed the following "gaffe" when confronted by some liberal hecklers:

"Corporations are people, my friend. . . . Of course they are. Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to people."

Like the spectacle of a moderately liberal New England governor campaigning as a true, red-blooded social conservative, Romney's remark is ludicrous and liberal pundits have rightly had a field day with it. Corporations, of course, most certainly are not people; they can't be imprisoned, for one. So yes, let's all enjoy a good chuckle at ol' Mitt's expense and hope he provides many more belly laughs in the coming months -- I have my fingers crossed for more impromptu mingling with minorities.

But here's the thing, and the reason I have "gaffe" in scare quotes: Does any national politician -- does any leading Democrat -- actually disagree with what Romney said? Not the rhetoric, which I think most would be wise enough to avoid, but the substance of what he was defending: corporate personhood.

Some would no doubt point to President Obama's denunciation at last year's State of the Union Address of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, which held that corporations enjoy the same free speech rights as any other person. However, that response is something of a non-sequitur, as Obama's criticism was not of the root problem behind the decision about which I asked, corporate personhood, but of a narrow ruling that merely extended said legal status. And on strictly legal grounds -- which, full disclosure, I don't much care about -- it's hard to disagree with the court's ruling, which is merely the bizarre consequence of the even more bizarre and longstanding practice of the state bestowing the legal status of a person on an inanimate financial venture.

This isn't nitpicking. Conflating criticism of the Citizens United ruling with criticism of corporate personhood itself is like conflating criticism of a politician with sedition and treason. I mean, what's the fear, exactly: that, thanks to the Supreme Court, corporations are now going to corrupt Our Democracy by buying and selling politicians? I'll admit such an outcome is scary, but if we're going to be in the business of constructing doomsday scenarios, we ought to be sure they differ from the status quo.

The truth is, Romney's "gaffe" is much like Sarah Palin's remark in 2008 that, why yes, the U.S. would be legally obliged to attack Russia if it went to war with a member of NATO. Back then, every pundit and politician with a blog or a microphone went to town ridiculing Palin's ill-considered and risible remark, arguing it proved her unfitness for office, all the while obscuring a key fact: that what she said was indisputably true. Then as now, the real controversy ought not to have been the clumsy way something was stated, but the truth of what was said.

Criticize Romney and the Supreme Court all you want, the more troubling issue is that, legally speaking, corporations are people -- and that no one in establishment political circles sees a problem with that. This bipartisan embrace of the corporate state consequently causes problems for the 99.9 percent of us not likely to sit on any corporate boards for, while real-live people do indeed reap the benefit of corporate profits, corporate personhood and its attendant "limited liability" ensure they face almost none of the consequences of their bad, and often criminal, decisions.

For instance, while mere mortal, flesh-and-blood people would face serious prison time for paying right-wing death squads to execute labor activists, corporate executives who personally approved those very payments were able to conceal their identities and get away with a mere fine from the Justice Department, the cost of which was no doubt passed along to costumers and shareholders as a whole, rather than the actual perpetrators. Legally, the executives weren't responsible, some prick named "Chiquita" was.

Because blame for wrongdoing can be passed off on to another person -- another person who, again, can't go to jail -- corporate executives can get away with reckless behavior as a matter of course. The profit when such recklessness pays off is huge and, of course, theirs to keep. When it doesn't, as in the case of Goldman Sachs and the housing bubble and with BP and its destruction of the Gulf, the worst that happens is someone like Tony Hayward has to delay remodeling the kitchen in their 14th house by a few weeks while, in true American socialistic fashion, the rest of us chip in to pay for their mistakes. And every politician from Mitt Romney to Nancy Pelosi is fine with that, even if they disagree on how best to rationalize it to an angry public.

If you're laughing at Mitt Romney because, well, he's Mitt Romney: Fine. By all means. But if you're laughing at his remark under the impression his stance on corporations is fundamentally at odds with, say, Barack Obama, the laugh's on you.

It's not the powerful people, it's the institutions of power

You've heard it before, be it from defenders of corrupt churches or wicked governments: It's not the institutions that are the problem, it's not the tremendous power we grant the people that control them, it's the few bad apples we sometimes allow to be placed in them. Replace the bad reactionary elements with liberal-minded humanitarians and one not need entertain silly talk of institutional reform or, daresay, abolition.

To proponents of this admittedly popular school of thought, allow me to introduce you to a man by the name of Harold Koh.

As dean of the Yale Law School, Koh built up a reputation as one of the fiercest legal critics of the Bush administration and the executive branch's centralization of power. In a 2008 speech on “Repairing Our Human Rights Reputation,” Koh railed against the imperial presidency and the “horror of Abu Ghraib,” “[o]ur tolerance of torture and cruel treatment for detainees” and the Magna Carta-shredding practice of “indefinite detention without trial.”

A fawning profile of Koh published around that time in the Yale Daily News noted his status as a “liberal lion” that would much-missed should he ever leave campus. “Either the Democrats will lose and Yale will keep Harold,” said law professor Kenji Yoshino, “or the Democrats will win and Yale will loan him to the country.”

Once a staunch critic of the imperial presidency, Koh, as the State Department's top legal adviser, now works for an administration that has undeniably expanded the power of the executive and institutionalized the very policies he once forcefully railed against, from the extra-judicial detention and abuse of detainees at CIA black sites in Somalia – and, one can safely assume, elsewhere – to the indefinite imprisonment without trial of dozens of men at Guantanamo Bay.

Rather than take the P.J. Crowley route and resign in protest of policies he once labeled repellent, Koh has soldiered on with an almost admirable enthusiasm, fulfilling the same role John Yoo did for George W. Bush with tortured legal arguments for every presidential whim. While U.S. law forbids extra-judicial assassinations, Koh – the Obama administration's go-to guy for legal justifications for that which it is already doing – maintains the ban does not apply to the firing of hellfire missiles from Predator drones in Pakistan and the use of cluster bombs in Yemen as such strikes are in strict “self-defense” and officials also work to ensure “collateral damage” – dead mothers and father, lifeless sons and daughters – “is kept to a minimum.”

Forty-one innocent Yemeni civilians, including 14 women and 21 children, were killed in but one such targeted strike, according to Amnesty International, which has called for those responsible for the “unlawful killings” to be “brought to justice.” The man who once delivered lectures on restoring America's human rights image in the world may, like Bush officials who signed off on torture, not even be able to travel it once he leaves office.

Most famously, Koh, who used to believe that “nothing” in the War Powers Resolution “authorizes the President to commit armed forces overseas into actual or imminent hostilities” – meaning not just a skirmish, but the mere threat one could break out – now argues that the war in Libya to which the president unilaterally committed his nation does not even rise to the status of said “hostilities.” That argument, should it be afforded the term, would perhaps fly if U.S. involvement in Libya were limited to President Obama drunk-dialing Colonel Ghaddafi at 4am and leaving nasty voicemails, as former partners are wont to do, and not ordering the dropping of heavy munitions on homes containing Ghaddafi's sleeping grandchildren.

Koh's seeming transformation has confounded his former colleagues in academia, though his time in both the Reagan and Clinton administrations hinted at his willingness to be a political action. Many of his friends “are mystified and disheartened to see their hero engaging in legalistic 'word play,'” author Paul Starobin notes in a New York Times Op-Ed published over the weekend. Mary Ellen O'Connel, a law professor at Notre Dame, captured many of their feelings when she bluntly asked, “Where is the Harold Koh I worked with to ensure that international law, human rights and the Constitution were honored during the Bush years?”

For his part, Koh denies there's any metamorphosis. In a defensive speech earlier this summer before the American Constitution Society, Koh rejected claims he had “caved to political pressure” on topics like Libya and extra-judicial killings, attributing suggestions he is a hypocrite to “obsessive” bloggers incapable of coming to terms with the fact that his views on presidential power had merely evolved over time – beginning in earnest, coincidentally, right after he joined the Obama administration.

“[I]f you hear me say something,” said a defiant Koh, “you can be absolutely sure that I believe it.”

There's no reason to doubt him. It's awful hard, after all, to get up every morning thinking what your doing is mere sophistry in the service of power. It's doubtful even Dick Cheney, after dining on the flesh of newborn babies from the developing world, looks in the mirror and says: “Damn, I'm evil.” With a tip of the hat to Upton Sinclair, it's also hard for a man to understand the error of his ways when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

Power and the privileges and prestige it offers have a strange way of changing even the most committed do-gooder.

Thus, we witness the spectacle of Koh, desperately holding the shards of his credibility, opining that word “hostilities” is “ambiguous,” as if there's anything nuanced about firing 112 Tomahawk cruise missiles at a country in a span of 24 hours. Rather than a conscious act of selling out, Koh says those who miss the “Old Harold” – the one that critiqued the expansion of executive power, as opposed to the one that provides legalistic excuses for it – need to understand his position has changed.

“I am changing roles,” he admits. “People's lives have seasons.” Indeed, they do. And this season Koh's playing for a new team where, instead of critiquing the institutions of power, he serves them. And as his friend and president of the Boston Red Sox, Larry Lucchino, notes, “he is exceptionally loyal to institutions.”

And therein lies the problem. Whether you fill the halls of power with people like John Yoo or Harold Koh, the result is the same: the powerful – also known as the people with the most money and, in the case of the military, guns – usually get what they want in the U.S. political system. Folks like Yoo and Koh, while no less culpable for their actions, are as replaceable as George W. Bush and Barack Obama. The problem isn't the people, it's the power we allow them to possess. It doesn't matter if you elect devils or saints, because when it comes to money and power, even saints are corruptible – and the same powerful institutions, from Wall Street to the Pentagon, prosper.

As one observer smartly remarked in the summer of 2008, whichever party holds the reigns of power, “its leaders will have their own reasons why they cannot change course immediately.” They will come up with the excuses as to why Gitmo will have to stay open; why the president will have to continue amassing power; why those accused of actions of terrorism can't be provided due process. That's why, he noted, “we the people cannot leave it to the politicians. For the core concern of politicians is politics, not principle.”

That observer, of course, was Harold Koh.

The problem, as history amply demonstrates, isn't the party affiliation of presidents and their legal enablers, it's the power they possess. The U.S. government is the most powerful political institution in the world, with those who run it given the awesome power to decide who gets a trial and who does not; who lives and who dies; whether we're at war or at peace. Putting anyone in that position is asking too much of someone we must not forget is still a fallible human being like you or I susceptible to the same corrupting influences of power and vanity.

Harold Koh, like many a crusading reformer before him, used to say the same thing. But now he has power.

It's always the year 2000

After two and half years of Barack Obama, you might think partisan Democrats would be a bit hesitant to pull out the whole 2000 election card and, perhaps, would dial back the condescension toward those underwhelmed by the choice offered them by the two major parties. Obama, after all, epitomizes everything those dime's-worth-of-difference curmudgeons, be they Naderites or anarchists or merely observant, have been saying. While he may differ from Bush stylistically, he is substantively the same, committed to the same imperial policy of empire abroad, albeit with more of a liberal internationalist, and corporatism at home.

Surely, you'd think, given the performance of a man who once, and in the more sycophantic sectors, still is, billed as the most progressive president of our lifetime -- a doubling of the troops in Afghanistan, a blatantly illegal war in Libya, billions of taxpayer dollars funneled to an unaccountable Wall Street -- liberals would at least quit pretending we were but an Al Gore presidency away from a worker's paradise.

You would, of course, be wrong:

I remember well the contention that there wasn’t a dime’s worth of difference between George W Bush and Al Gore. And, indeed, there wasn’t. Both wholeheartedly embraced American military hegemony as a foreign policy and the neoliberal “Washington Consensus” approach to international economic policy. Both emphasized improved education as the key to long-term prosperity, both valorized capitalism as an engine of growth, and neither in any meaningful way challenged the various prevailing economic and social dogmas of the era. And yet looking back in concrete terms, it seems to me that the 2000 election turns out to have been one of the most consequential in American history. That’s because while both Bush and Bill Clinton pursued policies from within the paradigm of the elite American ideological consensus of the post-Cold War era they actually pursued very different policies.

I'll say this much about Matt Yglesias, author of the above defense of the U.S. political system: at least, to his credit, he steers clear of the sneering Nader-bashing that characterizes most liberal remembrances of George W. Bush's 5-4 victory over Gore back in 2000. That's something. Progress, maybe.

Instead of bolstering his case with the next logical step of citing specific examples of how Bush "pursued very different policies" from Bill Clinton, though, Yglesias curiously turns to Europe. Spain's Franco and Italy's Mussolini were quite similar, he maintains, but the former didn't involve his country in World War II, evidence that even minor differences between politicians "can be quite large in terms of practical consequences."

While I give the guy props for trying to explain the difference between Republicans and Democrats by turning to two European fascists, I can't help but think Yglesias is engaged in a red herring, shifting from the harder task of detailing the substantive differences between Bush and Clinton/Gore he asserts to the easier task of highlighting differences between leaders of two different countries with their own unique histories and political situations. The issue is whether the U.S.'s two-party system allows the possibility of major substantive differences -- like don't-get-involved-in-a-world-war substantive -- between the two viable, corporate-approved candidates for the presidency or whether in fact the system precludes such a possibility by design.

Insofar as there were substantive differences between Clinton and Bush, I'd argue it's because they served at different times, when the needs of the establishment differed. Had 9/11 happened on Clinton's watch, you can't tell me the guy who enforced an embargo against Iraq that, conservatively, killed hundreds of thousands of civilians -- a price, you'll recall, that was deemed "worth it" -- wouldn't have gotten his Rambo on and exorcised all those liberals-are-pussies demons for good. And Al Gore? You can't tell me the guy who campaigned on the need for a more interventionist U.S. role in the world while his opponent, Bush, spoke of a need for a more "humble foreign policy," wouldn't have done the same. His running mate Joe Lieberman -- allow me to repeat that, his running mate Joe Lieberman -- certainly wouldn't have been a powerful advocate for peace.

The few stylistic and the fewer substantive differences between Democrats and Republicans aside, no matter who wins the result is always the same: more war and corporatism; the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer; and a legion of pundits on both sides arguing we ought to be grateful for the dime's worth of difference we get.

This I believe

We are all still barbarians who resort to force and violence to settle our doubts, difficulties, and troubles. Violence is the method of ignorance, the weapon of the weak. The strong of heart and brain need no violence, for they are irresistible in their consciousness of being right. The further we get away from primitive man and the hatchet age, the less recourse we shall have to force and violence. The more enlightened man will become, the less he will employ compulsion and coercion. The really civilized man will divest himself of all fear and authority. He will rise from the dust and stand erect: he will bow to no tsar either in heaven or on earth. He will become fully human when he will scorn to rule and refuse to be ruled. He will be truly free only when there shall be no more masters.

-- Alexander Berkman, What Is Communist Anarchism?

There's no such thing as an American war criminal

Hark! U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice issued a statement today. The laughably hypocritical parts are in bold:

Today, President Obama directed a thorough review to strengthen our national capacity to prevent mass atrocities. Crucially, the President will establish a new Atrocities Prevention Board with the authority and the policy tools to respond quickly to early warning signs and make recommendations before options narrow and the costs of both action and inaction rise precipitously. The President also expanded grounds to deny visas to serious human rights violators and war criminals and to isolate those who engage in or conspire to commit atrocities.

The United States is deeply committed to ensuring that no individual, now or in the future, sees a path to power in division and death. Moreover, in the enduring fight against mass atrocities, the United States will continue to enlist the contributions of all nations who know that in war, there must be rules; that, in the pursuit of power, there must be limits; that, even in a violent world, there must be rights; and that, when the embers of conflict threaten to ignite, we must be ready.

I'd say there's a 50/50 chance Henry Kissinger gets appointed to that there "Atrocities Prevention Board." And I'm 100 percent sure that irony has died.

At least we're getting 'defense' cuts, right?

Yeah, don't count it, Medea Benjamin and I say in our latest piece. Like Elizabeth Warren, the White House's claimed determination to cut military spending is but liberal catnip that will be dropped at the first predictable sign of resistance.

A new definition

-- While the American left is content to see an Iraqi dictator terrorizing the Iraqi people, the Bushies in D.C. are not.

-- These developments--a Republican administration recognizing that support for dictators in Third World countries is a losing proposition; a commitment to post-WWII-style nation-building in Iraq--are terrific news for people who care about human rights, freedom, and democracy.

-- But wait! Taking out Saddam means dropping bombs, and dropping bombs only creates more terrorists!

That's the lefty argument du jour, and a lot of squish-brains are falling for it, but it's not an argument that the historical record supports. The United States dropped a hell of a lot of bombs on Serbia, Panama, Grenada, Vietnam, Germany, Japan, and Italy. If dropping bombs creates terrorists, where are all the German terrorists? Or the Italian terrorists? Or the Vietnamese terrorists?

-- But wait! Iraq isn't in cahoots with al Qaeda, so why attack Iraq in the war on terrorism?
Because we're not just at war with al Qaeda, stupid. We're at war with a large and growing Islamo-fascist movement that draws its troops and funds from all over the Islamic world. Islamo-fascism is a regional problem, not just an al Qaeda problem or an Afghanistan problem. To stop Islamo-fascism, we're going to have to roll back all of the tyrannous and dictatorial regimes in the Middle East while simultaneously waging war against a militant, deadly religious ideology.

The above quotes are from a 2002 column by Dan -- not Michael -- Savage, the popular sex columnist and, despite his pigheaded bigotry and from-the-safety-of-Seattle warmongering, liberal hero. Lest you think that was a mere aberration, here he is in 2008 mockingly declaring that "Islam is peace" and fretting about the growing threat from Muslim immigration and the imposition of Sharia law, sentiments that would fit right in over at Pam Geller's cesspool. And let's not forget this gem from last year, "They Blow Up Buses, Don't They?"

But hey, when all is said and done, Savage is mean to Republicans. And what kind of purist, holier-than-though prick focuses on a guy's support, as a grown man and popular columnist, for killing hundreds of thousands of civilians in Iraq as part of what would be just the first step in a broader war against Islam, ya know? Nevertheless, taking a cue from America's most progressive bigot, I propose the following definition:

Dan Savage: The frothy mix of smug condescension and warmongering that is sometimes the byproduct of membership in the Democratic Party.

Update: Meanwhile, over at MoveOn.org, Dan Savage is saying mean things about a powerless, washed-up Republican politician. All's forgiven!

Experts: Drone Strike Has the 'Hallmark of al-Qaeda'

A missile from what witnesses described as an unmanned aerial vehicle left dozens of people dead and countless more injured in Pakistan's volatile tribal region this morning, a deadly strike that experts say shows all the classic signs of Islamic terrorism.

Carried out just before dawn, Pakistani officials say the attack killed at least 55 people, including dozens of women and children. According to experts, the obvious ruthlessness and casual disregard for innocent life are clear signs al-Qaeda – or maybe some other Muslims – were behind the strike.

“Killing people is a tried and true tactic of Islamists,” said One Important Expert who picked up the telephone. Indeed, the expert notes al-Qaeda first burst onto the scene with the novel idea of taking the lives of others with the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000 – the first recorded intentional killings since the time of Jesus Christ, renowned savior and author of the Declaration of Independence.

“9/11 was the culmination of their chilling 'kill people' approach to warfare,” the expert said. “That human beings were deliberately blown to bits bears the hallmark of al-Qaeda,” he added. “For sure.”

Another Serious Counter-Terrorism Analyst whose daughter showed him how to use Google Translate said that a previously unknown terror group, “Concerned Islamists of Arabia,” had claimed responsibility for the attack in a posting on an Arabic language forum for fans of the cartoon, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. Or maybe somebody retweeted it or who knows?

“While the facts aren't all in, the posting strongly suggests an Islamic hoof in the attacks,” said the expert, attributing the strike to “lingering and widespread anger in the Muslim world over Twilight Sparkle's pretty implausible dialogue in 'The Cutie Mark Chronicles.'” The expert added that the perpetrators may be a splinter group associated with Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Hamas or the the guy he sat next to on the Megabus to New York who his friends said kind of looked like Osama.

An effort to verify the experts' claims and engage in responsible journalism was not attempted by press time.

Norwegian killer is actually Grover Norquist!

This article from AlterNet -- "Koch-Funded Tea Party Heavyweight Tim Phillips Spoke at Norweigan Killer's Political Party Event" (sic) -- is as dishonest as anything you'd find in Commentary back when tying anti-war protesters to International Communism was all the rage. Reading the actual news stories upon which the piece is based, one finds that the event in question was not personally hosted by a mass murderer, as strongly suggested by the headline, but by Norway's right-wing Progress Party, which has the second most seats in parliament.

Another small problem: though the headline refers toit as the "Killer's Political Party," upon closer reading we learn that he in fact only "claimed to be a disgruntled former member." But hey, if you've already got the "Koch-Funded Tea Party Heavyweight" template ready to go, why let the silly truth screw up a good smear?

Congress slashes military spending; increases Pentagon budget by $17 billion

“Who knows where the needle will end up?” said Thomas Donnelly, director of the Center for Defense Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. “Nobody has defense as a high priority. It’s increasingly looking like everybody wants to toss the military overboard.”

-- "Pentagon braces for much deeper military spending cuts as part of debt deal," The Washington Post, July 20, 2011

Oh no! Before the invading Chinese armies hit U.S. shores, let's consider where Americans' money goes when they pay their income tax:

(War Tax Resisters League, FY 2009)

Meanwhile, from Reuters earlier this month:

A $649 billion defense spending bill for next year easily passed the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday after four days of debate . . . .

The measure, approved 336-87 in the Republican-dominated House, would raise the Pentagon's base budget for the 2012 fiscal year beginning on Oct. 1 by about $17 billion over current levels, despite intense pressure to slash the $1.4 trillion U.S. deficit.

####

Obama asked for about $690 billion for military spending for 2012. This House bill does not include funds for U.S. nuclear weapons programs or military construction, which come in other bills and add about $33 billion to defense spending.

To the 14 million-plus Americans (officially) unemployed: don't you wish you were getting tossed overboard like the military?

'Either way, the problem is Republicans'

The liberal blogosphere is beyond parody at this point. Amanda Marcotte, last seen remarking that when it comes to the war on terror, Obama "has been wisely if quietly winding it down" -- tell that to a Pakistani, Afghan, Somali or Yemeni citizen -- offers two theories regarding the peace president's nature: that he's a benevolent man whose glorious progressive agenda has been blocked by the evil Republicans, in which case those at fault are the evil Republicans; or that he's an evil, vile man, in which case the blames lies at the feet of . . . those evil Republicans.

I'm rather fond of the latter theory:

This theory holds that Obama passed himself off as a moderate Democrat to get elected, but is in fact a secret conservative who has been aching for a chance to destroy Social Security, amongst other programs. I found this theory a little confusing at first, because it seemed to me that his secret plan would have been easier to enact when he had a majority party in Congress, so I asked around on Twitter, and this is the explanation I got: he couldn't destroy Social Security then, because there's enough liberals in the Democratic Party that they could have stopped him. It was only after Republicans got control of the House and went crazy that he had enough cover to do what he always hoped he could do.

The problem: Well, basically the Republicans. If the batshit crazy Republicans weren't there giving secretly conservative Obama cover, none of this would be happening.

So, from my point of view, no matter what evil or non-evil lurks in Obama's heart, the problem is that this country keeps electing frothing-at-the-mouth crazy Republicans, and if voters would stop doing that, we wouldn't be having one politically provoked crisis after another. Sure, if Obama is a secret conservative, that is a problem. But we can't actually know that. But what we do know for a fact is that no matter what lurks in Obama's hearts, none of this would be happening if Republicans didn't win the House. So I think that my priorities are just fine, thank you very much.

The premise is that all Bad, Evil Ideas are the exclusive intellectual property of the GOP. There's not even a throwaway line about the Blue Dogs. More troubling, however, is the idea that -- putting aside their origin -- Democrats like Obama ought not be held accountable when they, in the liberal blogger telling of it, take GOP ideas and run with them. Indeed, it's suggested that to do so would be to engage in the mere adolescent nihilism of a Nader-voting "newly minted leftist," one who fails to recognize that one party in this country is Good, the other Evil

Notice what's missing in all of this: the half-dozen wars the U.S. is openly fighting, including that since-forgotten humanitarian intervention to stop the Next Hitler in Libya, one Obama unilaterally (and illegally) launched and for which he has yet to receive congressional authorization. Marcotte ridicules the notion of Obama as dictator, but as president he of course has massive power and could have, for instance, begun pardoning non-violent drug offenders or prevented the Treasury Department from sticking taxpayers with the bill for bailing out Wall Street. When it comes to foreign policy, he really does have dictatorial power and as commander-in-chief could start bringing the troops home immediately, which you'll recall many liberals calling for from the back bumpers of their Volvos when that other guy was president and the murder of poor foreigners was still seen as an important, moral issue.

But we lefties don't care about that kind of stuff anymore, right? The killing is not being carried out by an evil Republican, so it's explainable: Obama's only killing people because of . . . . the evil Republicans. And that makes it okay, or at least less bad. Sure it's regrettable, if we can be bothered enough to regret it, but don't you say "impeachable" if you still want to get on MSNBC.

Can't we just talk about Eric Cantor?

Just in case you've gotten any ideas about Marcotte, though: "I'm going to be accused of being a partisan shill for Obama," she acknowledges. "I just want to say that I'm really not."

So that's settled.

Cuts in military spending? Don't get your hopes up

"The Pentagon is bracing for spending cuts far deeper than what it was expecting just a few weeks ago," screams the lead of this Washington Post story, bringing tears of joy to anti-American zealots like your humble blogger who would like nothing more than to see the U.S. empire go the way of its Roman predecessor. Alas, as is often the case with articles in the corporate media, the full truth, if its reported at all, is buried at the bottom as an afterthought. What matters to inside-the-Beltway readers is not the facts, but the narrative.

So, before getting to the truth -- which I too am burying, though if you were able to figure out that the circle goes in the round hole I'm sure you've already guessed it -- the Post goes to all the usual, outraged suspects for some choice quotes about how, gosh darn it, no one in Washington is standing up for the military-industrial complex.

“Who knows where the needle will end up?” Thomas Donnelly of the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute tells the paper. “Nobody has defense as a high priority. It’s increasingly looking like everybody wants to toss the military overboard.”

So how 'bout that truth, huh? While some lawmakers are indeed talking of cutting defense spending by hundreds of billions of dollars, if only, as I suspect, to deflect attention from the obvious outrage of slashing the relative pittance spent on social programs to deal with the supposed debt problem, the Post waits until paragraph 16 -- one six -- to inform us that the massive, sky-is-falling cuts talked of in the lede aren't really cuts at all.

Indeed, while the "cuts" discussed in the article may "sound like big numbers, some analysts said they represent a reduction in projected spending only and that the Pentagon’s budget would actually continue to grow slightly, about at the rate of inflation."

That's Washington: not increasing war spending by as much as once projected, but still in fact increasing it, is what constitutes a "cut." Actually cutting programs like Social Security and Medicare, on the other hand, is called shoring them up. Isn't politics fun?

It starts with an 'F' (and the answer's not 'freedom')

In economics, like in war, the best propagandists prefer the language of euphemism to straightforward, ignoble fact, the latest in obfuscatory jargon to the jarring reality of truth. Why, that's not a dead mother whose children are uncontrollably weeping over her corpse as we speak, that's collateral damage; that's not a fraudulent investment that turned out bad for some rich banker who may, god forbid, have to cancel his daughter's private tennis lessons with Steffi Graf, that's a toxic asset.

Like any other illusionist, the better practitioners of the art of literal and economic warfare cloak their actions in mystery – things are never quite as simple as they seem. No, that box doesn't contain two women, just one who I cut in half! No, we're not just stealing your money to give it to rich people, we're restoring systemic confidence! And they do it for the same reason: to deceive.

Larry Summers, former top economic adviser to Barack Obama, is a master when it comes to making theft and exploitation sound banal and almost respectable. In an Op-Ed this week in the Financial Times, “How to save the eurozone,” Summers predictably urges policymakers in Europe to follow the American lead and guarantee one thing and one thing only: Keep the rich, well, rich. And make 'em richer if you can.

To just come out and say that anybody making above a certain six-figure threshold gets to play by different rules than the unwashed masses would be uncouth, albeit true. Summers, faults aside, knows this. But when the purported economic genius speaks of the need for “a clear commitment that, whatever else happens, no big financial institution in any country will be allowed to fail,” there's no getting past the meaning.

And when he condescends that "Teaching investors a lesson is a wish not a policy”? He's being a bit of a dick, yes. But he isn't wrong.

Who, after all, besides those engaged in direct action, is going to hold the likes of Goldman Sachs accountable when the entire ruling establishment is beholden to them? Those with the most power and money in America have long since succeeded in buying the support of that criminal class famous for its fidelity to little more than power and money: politicians. Barack Obama, the much-vaunted community organizer of change, raked in more money from Goldman than John McCain in 2008, and he's gone on to serve the financial elite well since in office, occasional grumbles notwithstanding. Embarrassing perp walks for those who raped the global economy with fraudulent investment schemes financed with cheap government cash is a nice fantasy, but barring an incident with a live boy or a dead girl, it'll remain just that.

Summers, however, expresses some concern over the threat of populism, which has manifested itself in popular protests from Greece to America but not so much in actual policy. The pitchforks are starting to appear, though, and some timid lawmakers could be unserious enough to listen to those wielding them. For that sort Summers has a stern message: “punishing creditors for the sake of teaching lessons or building political support” – there's the allusion to that annoying will of the people again – “is reckless in a system that depends on confidence.”

As a rich man whose own wealth and power has only grown in the face of failure, advocating and helping draft the policies that led to the Internet and housing bubbles chief among them, it's no surprise Summers, who makes tens of thousands of dollars an appearance to make wealthy bankers feel important, believes actual performance should be no obstacle to obscene wealth. And it comes as no shock that he's smugly defensive about it, ridiculing as myopic and driven by emotion attempts to hold the investor class accountable. A lack of personal responsibility and rugged individuality is to be denounced in the lower class, the lazy welfare cheats, not expected from the ruling one.

As other defenders of the bailouts and the accountability-free culture that rules the financial sector, Summers doesn't blame the ongoing economic woes around the world on bankers and the politicians that, listening to folks like him, diverted trillions of dollars in taxpayer money to the very financial interests that helped sink the global economy. No, even as small banks and businesses that were actually responsible are being denied loans because all the money has been redirected to the big boys, Summers maintains the global economic depression is due to the fact that not enough of the lower and middle classes' wealth has been siphoned off by the ultra-wealthy.

Indeed, the problem according to Summers' telling of it is that short-sighted policymakers allowed Lehman Brothers to fail like it were – imagine! – some poor janitor laid-off by his Fortune 500 employer. “The adverse consequences of the shattering effect that had on” – you know what's coming – “confidence are still being felt now,” he says. Employed no less than six times, “confidence” is code-word for “theft,” surpassed in euphemistic quackery only by Summers' appeal to the need for “restoring arithmetic credibility.”

Tom Friedman, hand over your crown.

Thoroughly deserved and unapologetic mockery aside, let's be clear about what Summers is advocating – and the policy his protégé, Barack Obama, is implementing from the White House: the rich, “whatever else happens,” must stay rich, even (nay, especially) at the expense of the poor. If you are deemed rich enough, “big” enough, you and your company will continue to be big and rich for eternity. Financial institutions like Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs – they are all too big to fail, unlike you or I. The financial status quo is perfection, bequeathed to us by a loving, day-trading god. Change is a campaign slogan, not an economic policy.

Unless the change in question is the poor getting poorer. That's cool.

Far from radical reform, the Obama/Summers goal is maintaining things exactly as they were before the economic crash of 2008, with a small but increasingly wealthy class calling the shots and free to make mistakes, often criminal in nature, with impunity. At the same time, an increasingly large impoverished class is asked to go further in debt to the same class it bailed out – someone needs to keep buying the cheap crap our economy runs on – with the gap between the politically connected haves and the politically exploited have-nots ever-expanding.

“Systemic confidence,” in this context, is a nothing but an academic-sounding deception, a fanciful way of conning the masses into believing the theft taking place is something other than just a standard stick-'em-up robbery. In the pursuit of “confidence,” the profits of big business are privatized – we aren't communists! – while their losses are socialized. When it comes to the trials and tribulations of the rich, we're all in this together. When it comes to the perks? Get off my lawn, I'm calling security.

There's an admittedly over-used but entirely appropriate word, starting with an “f,” that describes the form of economic system advocated by the likes of Summers and being imposed by the ruling elite. It isn't “freedom.”

Tool of American imperialism insufficiently pro-American

Like the United Nations, which is supposed to oppose its members attacking each other in wars of aggression but let the United States invade Iraq without so much as a stern non-binding condemnation, the Organization of American States (OAS) is more often than not a tool of American imperialism than a foe. But, like the UN, serving as a tool of its most powerful, wealthy member is not enough for some politicians, who will (grand)stand for nothing less than complete subservience to the goal of U.S. hegemony.

Earlier today, House Republicans lambasted the OAS at a hearing held by the Foreign Affairs Committee, voting to block U.S. payments to the multilateral body. U.S. support for the OAS is "hurting the people of Latin America," Rep. Connie Mack (R-FL) said, according to excerpts posted by the Center for International Policy. "There is a better way to support Latin America, and that is..." -- come on, you know it -- "to pass free trade agreements."

"Let's not continue to fund an organization that's bent on destroying democracy in Latin America," Mack added, noting the case of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, who was overthrown in a military coup. "[I]t was the OAS who was helping Zelaya, who by the way was instigating the real coup in Honduras by trying to take over that country and trying to take away the right of its citizens to elect a president."

"Let's not continue to fund an organization that's bent on destroying democracy in Latin America," Mack added.

Mack could of course be dismissed as a raving idiot -- and he of course is. But he is, unfortunately, a raving idiot who chairs the House subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere. Let's go over that again: he's a chairman. Someone trusts this man with a gavel. And, even more unfortunately, don't kid yourself -- this is the best the U.S. political system can do.

Here's the thing about Honduras, though: while I don't much care about Manuel Zelaya, or any politician for that matter, I do care -- and please don't groan -- about blatant bullshit being passed off as the truth. And the truth is that Zelaya, far from "trying to take away the right of [Honduras'] citizens to elect a president," was seeking to hold a non-binding referendum on whether his country should have a constitutional convention to revise a document crafted by its previous military dictatorship. If the referendum had been approved, Honduras could have, but would not have been legally bound to, hold said convention, where delegates could have -- potentially -- voted to remove the provision that forbids presidents from serving two consecutive terms.

It's all a bit confusing, yes, but a lot more fact-y.

Zelaya, meanwhile, was not running for reelection, as he was legally barred from doing so. Had the referendum gone forward and been passed, and assuming a convention was held that removed the presidential term limits, Zelaya could run again if he wanted at some point in the future. This would not, however, be akin to taking away Hondurans' right to vote, but could in fact be see as expanding their right to vote by allowing them to reelect a former president if they should so choose.

But Mack didn't even utter the stupidest thing that was said at the hearing. That honor was left to fellow Florida Republican David Rivera (it's not secession, I know that, but what do you call it when you forcibly require a state to leave the union?). Courtesy the Center for International Policy are these two nuggets of congressional wisdom:

• “It kind of reminds me of that scene in Animal House where the college pledges, pledging the fraternity, as part of the ceremony to become a member of the fraternity you have to get paddled, and every time he gets paddled he says, ‘Please, sir, may I have another.’"

• “How much longer are we going to say to the OAS, ‘Please, sir, may I have another?’ I understand a little bit about Stockholm Syndrome, where the hostage becomes enamored with their persecutor. And I don’t know if that’s going on with this administration or some who support involvement in the OAS, but maybe it is.”

Animal House, folks. I don't have the transcript, but presumably he worked in a reference to Big Daddy and Old School during questioning.

As Jonathan Schwarz often notes, the hardest part about analyzing members of the political class is figuring out whether they're wicked, evil liars are just really that stupid. Having spent my fair share of time interviewing members of Congress, I wouldn't dismiss out of hand that they are just stupid. But then stupid and evil go together like cookies and milk.

Assassinations are so hot right now

Obama became a great man -- a noble man -- when he released his birth certificate, made some Beltway insiders laugh and ordered an extrajudicial killing. All within the span of a week! Tell us more, Esquire:

Before the fall brings us down, before the election season begins in earnest with all its nastiness and vulgarity, before the next batch of stupid scandals and gaffes, before Sarah Palin tries to convert her movie into reality and Joe Biden resumes his imitation of an embarrassing uncle and Newt and Callista Gingrich creep us all out, can we just enjoy Obama for a moment?

Before the policy choices have to be weighed and the hard decisions have to be made, can we just take a month or two to contemplate him the way we might contemplate a painting by Vermeer or a guitar lick by the early-seventies Rolling Stones or a Peyton Manning pass or any other astounding, ecstatic human achievement? Because twenty years from now, we're going to look back on this time as a glorious idyll in American politics, with a confident, intelligent, fascinating president riding the surge of his prodigious talents from triumph to triumph. Whatever happens this fall or next, the summer of 2011 is the summer of Obama.

Due to the specific nature of his political calculus, possibly not a single person in the United States — not even Obama himself — agrees with all of his policies. But even if you disagree with him, even if you hate him, even if you are his enemy, at this point you must admire him. The turning point came that glorious week in the spring when, in the space of a few days, he released his long-form birth certificate, humiliated Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, and assassinated Osama bin Laden. The effortlessness of that political triptych — three linked masterpieces demonstrating his total command over intellectual argument, low comedy, and the spectacle of political violence — was so overwhelmingly impressive that it made political geniuses of the recent past like Reagan and Clinton seem ham-fisted. Formed in the fire of other people's wars, other people's financial crises, Obama stepped out of Bush's shadow that week, almost three years after taking over the presidency.

The spectacle of grown men fawning over other, albeit more powerful, grown men and elevating them to the status of philosopher-kings is hilariously infuriating in its own right. But think about this: A writer pitched this story. It was accepted, meaning somebody read the proposal and said, "yes, let's put this in our magazine." It was edited, meaning another adult -- perhaps more than one -- read the finished piece and felt the ripped-from-a-13-year-old's-diary tone and the Bieber-like fawning was appropriate for discussing national politics. And then it was published.

Don't worry, though, Ezra Klein: I'm sure the president will still ask you to homecoming.

Are you in?

Liberal politics

An excerpt from Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude:

He sat in a chair between his political advisers and, wrapped in his woolen blanket, he listened in silence to the brief proposals of the emissaries. They asked first that he renounce the revision of property titles in order to get back the support of the Liberal landowners. They asked, secondly, that he renounce the fight against clerical influence in order to obtain the support of the Catholic masses. They asked, finally, that he renounce the aim of equal rights for natural and illegitimate children in order to preserve the integrity of the home.

"That means," Colonel Aureliano Buendía said, smiling when the reading was over, "that all we're fighting for is power."

"They're tactical changes," one of the delegates replied. "Right now the main thing is to broaden the popular base of the war. Then we'll have another look."

One of Colonel Aureliano Buendía's political advisers hastened to intervene.

"It's a contradiction," he said. "If these changes are good, it means that the Conservative regime is good. If we succeed in broadening the popular base of the war with them, as you people say, it means that the regime has a broad popular base. It means, in short, that for almost twenty years we've been fighting against the sentiments of the nation."

He was going to go on, but Colonel Aureliano Buendía stopped him with a signal. "Don't waste your time, doctor," he said. "The important thing is that from now on we'll be fighting only for power."

Barack Obama, speaking to a group of college students back in March:

[Lincoln’s] first priority was preserving the Union. I’ve got the Emancipation Proclamation hanging up in my office. And if you read through it, turns out that most of the document is – those states and areas where the emancipation doesn’t apply because those states are allied with the Union, so they can keep their slaves. Think about that. That’s the Emancipation Proclamation. Right?

So here you’ve got a wartime president who’s making a compromise around probably the greatest moral issue that the country ever faced because he understood that right now my job is to win the war and to maintain the union.

Well can you imagine how the Huffington Post would have reported on that? It would have been blistering. Think about it. “Lincoln sells out slaves.” There would be protests. They’d run a third-party guy.

Moral integrity is for losers. And you want to win, right?

(via Tim Cavanaugh)