The Faux Progressives or The Roosevelt Institute Betrayal

The Roosevelt Institute took $200,000 from Pete Peterson, the arch enemy of non rich America. Their explanation is not worth discussing; it amounts to claiming that the Soviet Union provided excellent free education on all levels. (It's true, but they were a terribly oppressive regime.)

The Roosevelt guys just don't see the problem. Their work is mostly progressive and solid. Mike Konczal writes great reports with which the left typically agrees. He is good at what he is doing. Yet, he is not an expert on progressive tactics, methods and approaches. Actually, it seems that the whole bunch believes that progress will come from excellent reports and plans.

The element of fight, struggle, sticktoitness, dedication, confrontation, brain to brain combat and really needed class warfare is way outside the grasp of the Institute individuals. It is not an academic exercise; it is a real life struggle for the well being of the working people. It is a fight to get back the soul of the country from the rich terrorists that have kidnapped it.

Writing reports is nice, but useless. We need fighters. The Roosevelt Institute is a bunch of slackers. They don't understand that you don't cooperate with those who are about to cut your throat. Their thinking is yet another facet of the moronic postpartisanship that sold us all down the drain. They fail to realize that the deficit flag is a distraction intended to prevent us from seeing that the oligarchy is the real problem in the country.

Cooperating with oligarch is antiprogressive, it supports the nonstop pillaging the Petersons inflict on the non rich.

The upset with Roosevelt is old news. An out of hand affluent and spoiled middle class has contorted the whole Democratic Party, from right to almost the last left, into an established group seeking friendly relationship with the rich, their approval and, if possible, some of their exquisite crumbs. They elected Obama who is an average exemplar of the affluent and spoiled and attacked vehemently the candidates that reminded them of the badly behaved, according to them, people from Hope Arkansas. The candidate that reminded them of their origins, i.e. poor hardworking blue collar Americans, was attacked as a whore, a witch and other choice adjectives reserved to those that threaten them.

Petersen was watching and smiling; he didn't get his crooked billions by working hard; he got them by using the middle class and its needs to support him. Screaming bloody murder now is doing so after attending the funeral way back. Roosevelt has crossed the line way before it was created.

American Total Ignorance of the Middle East

Obama stating that the solution of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict will be based on the 1967 border is very old news. Olmert and Abbas disagreed, Olmert wanted 6% of the 1967 West Bank while Abbas was willing to give up 2%. Either figures are just about the 1967 order. Barak, Arafat and Clinton argues around the same parameters. Why didn't they agree on 4%? because one of both parties weren't ready for peace.

So why did Obama get into trouble by stating the obvious? First, his language was offensive to some Jews and and even Arabs didn't jump in joy. Obama and his team just don't measure up. How else do you explain stating the obvious and yet running into the wall?

The reason that Olmert and Abbas didn't agree is identical to the reason Bill Clinton did close it up in 2000. The Palestinians are not ready. That is acceptable as long as some progress is made.

Obama talks about the Arab spring. What spring? Syria, Libya, Bahrain and Yemen go no where. Tunis doesn't matter. Egypt shows ominous signs of regression. The leading candidate for president, Amer Moussa, is an old pre-Sadat Arab demagogue. The Muslim Brotherhood increases its power daily; if they come to power, forget democracy. All the talk about their moderation was applied to Bashir Assad. He is a real moderate. Where the hell is the spring here.

Still Obama, his team and all the pundit are simply ignorant, don't read the news or don't understand it. The latest Syrian instigated run on the Israeli order that took place in the Golan heights, Lebanon and Gaza (all Iranian occupied land) was called a sign of the Ara spring. Stating such thing is beyond ignorance, it's downright moronic. It's not the first time such beauty is uttered. When the Turkish flotilla tried to get to Gaza despite a long diplomatic effort by Israel to prevent it was a pure Turkish provocation attempting to carry favor with the Iranians. We heard the same reaction. Outside the US, a German friend said right away: it's a Turkish provocation. A British friend quoted Virgil: beware of the Turks.

Obama, his team and the media also don't understand the Fatah/Hamas reconciliation. First and foremost, it's a must for peace. There is no ignoring Hamas in the peace process. Yet, one must let the reconciliation proceed naturally; in other words, wait 6-12 months and restart major peace talk when it's clearer where both sides stand. Meanwhile, let the Palestinian declare a state. What is the problem with that? Both the US and Israel should support the effort: welcome to the UN (where they have been anyway for 30 years).

It seems that when it's dark in the Middle East, in the US everyone talks about daylight and when it's day...

Osama and the Media are Dead

After 10 years of hard work of many military, CIA and others individuals, Osama has been killed. It will give the 9/11 victim's family and friend some relief. Other than that, nothing major was accomplished. It is a large symbolic victory.

The reporting of the US media about the event is nothing short of shameful. Mostly, it consisted of baseless speculations about the act itself, its ramification and the potential reaction of certain entities. It was unprofessional, childish, moronic, pretentious, repetitious and boring.

The US does not have a viable media.

It is not a class war, it is oppression and Exploitation

A class war is a conflict between social or economic classes, especially between the capitalist and proletariat classes. This rather common definition of class war uses older terms, but otherwise is proper. Capitalists have been replaced by entrepreneurs, employers (non-governmental), the rich or the private sector. A good name for this side is the “Haves.” The proletariat has disappeared and was replaced by blue collar workers, unionized workers and white collar workers that are not “the rich.” A good name for this side is the “Have Nots.”

For a conflict to exist, one needs at least two sides opposing each other actively. A class war exists when the Haves fight the Have Nots and vice versa. Determining whether we actually witness a class war in the country is important for the understanding of the current social and political environment. Evaluating the Haves and the Have Nots as warring entities might shed light on the whether the conflict exists or whether it lives only in the rhetoric of interested parties.

The Haves are well organized through a large network of organizations. First and foremost, the Republican Party is the strongest, probably most ferocious and long standing supporter and protector of the Haves. Other organizations are the Chamber of Commerce, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, a collection of right and extreme right wing think tanks, many loud and mostly hysterical radio talk hosts, the Tea Baggers, etc.

The support the Haves enjoy is total, constant, unwavering and increasing. The support comes in many forms. The Republicans are constantly fighting for tax cuts for the haves. They also try to free the haves from responsibility and consequences of their economic and personal misdeeds and failures. If that is not enough, the Party never stops to demand to put the Haves above the law. Other Haves supporting organizations such as Fox, WSJ and radio talk show hosts propagandize for the Haves using shrill voice and little regard for the truth, facts and the good of the country. The right wing think tanks astonishingly produce reports, opinions and individuals with little regard to “think” and with absolute loyalty to the Haves; once again truth and facts are not considered essential to being think tanks.

The Haves openly advocate for their position no matter how out of bounds it is. Being above the law is not a commonly supported view. Even undemocratic societies where the rule of law is typically ignored pretend to be law abiding. The Haves have abandoned the pretense; they openly demand removal of safety laws, accountability for financial and human loss and special treatment under the law. They also demand a special tax status that lowers their taxes relative to the rest of the population. Huge governmental subsidies are requested by the Haves and the government responds by forking out trillions of dollars with no strings attached. Recently, Haves companies have acquired the status of voters and can use the overwhelming financial force to influence elections.

The Haves, and their political arm – the GOP, are unified solidly behind their goals and methods. Since 1992, there is no dissent in ranks of either the Haves or the Republicans. If there were a few exceptions, they were white noise. Although, the many of the Haves are Democrats, e.g. in Aspen, CO, Obama got 70% of the votes; in matters of having more they simply are for more. No social conscious, no misgivings and no regrets.

The country has a politicized justice system by design. The senate has to approve judge candidates nominated by the executive branch. Many states have elections for local judges. After 30 years dominated by the Haves, our judicial system is dominated by the Haves. Political control of the judicial system has lead directly, after 30 years, to a system that decides cases politically with a strong tendency towards the Haves and their interests and downright despise for the Have Nots. It is not only the Supreme Court, with its more than 20 years of political decisions lacking any basis is the law; appellate courts and district courts also support the Haves.

The Have Nots are loosely supported by the Democratic Party, although in the last 30 years this support declined time and again until it became quite tenuous. Most Have Nots are unorganized; only a small percentage of them belong to unions. Another loose group includes unorganized workers working for small companies, temp jobs, low paying jobs and retirees on limited income. Many other Have Nots are in in suspended animation. They are neither poor nor comfortable; their middle class status tends to make them feel way better than the poor. The left Have Nots, solid middle class and even upper middle class, consider themselves, at least conceptually, Haves or semi Haves.

Politically, the Have Nots do not constitute a coherent whole and are hardy a warring front. It is a collection of fragments and sects that are way too weak to fight successful for anything meaningful. If that were not enough, some fragments are openly at war with other fragments. President Clinton, who belonged to a centrist fragment, faced constant abuse by Democrats in congress and by those who name themselves progressives. Politically, Democrats include blue collar workers, their supporters and the labor union we call the Cesar Chavez Democrats. Also present are solid middle class white collar workers, well off white collar workers, some business owners or principals, media people and other, relatively “elevated” people who consider themselves progressives. Their concept of progressives does not necessarily conform to the universal concept of progressives. In the presidential elections of 2008, the “progressives” demeaned and despised blue collar worker. There are also centrist Democrats who are on average less socially liberal than progressives and their fiscal view is way more conservative. Then there are the Blue Dog Democrats who side with Republicans way more frequently than other Democrats.

The “progressives” seems to be fighting with every other group with the Party. Blue Dogs are in many cases in opposition to the rest of the Party and cause everyone a lot of aggravation. The unions are not fully accepted even within the Party. The new education reform is also a slap in the face of the teachers unions. The Democrats look more like a defeated force in retreat than a forceful fight one.

Of particular interest is the role of the media in world of Haves and Have Nots. In democratic societies the media treats the Haves and Have Nots, at the very least, equally. Typically in democratic societies, the media tends to side with the underdog, namely the Have Nots. Our media would have none of it. It openly sides with the Haves; it ridicules or ignores the Have Nots. It shockingly resembles the media in dictatorships. It intervenes in elections on the side of the Haves, typically, using the same lies and techniques used by the Haves themselves. In other words, the media is member of the Haves support network. That state of affairs robs the Have Nots of one of the crucial weapons in potential class war in which the importance of the media cannot overstated.

Financially, the Have Nots are at a standstill the last 30 years. The country, during these 30 years, made substantial progress in areas such technology, medicine, media, huge loss of industry and an almost cancerous growth of the financial sector. The progress has produced a windfall that went almost without exception to the Haves. Consequently, the affluence gap between the Haves and the Have Nots has increased without any sign of stopping any time soon. The growth of the gap implies that the Haves portion part of the national pie increased, while the Have Nots, at a standstill, have been left with the pie’s crumbs. In other words, the Have Nots family average buying power has decreased for 30 years without any sign of stopping any time soon. The trajectory of this process is clear. In the end, the Haves will own the pie and the Have Nots will have nothing.

A class war between the Haves and the Have Nots, if it were to exist, would cause a collision between the two camps. It would most likely find the warring sides at each other throat. Since the two camps have been supposedly warring a long time, one would expect the warring sides to be matched about equally as the history of prolonged wars shows. Prolonged wars also tend to cause wide spread damage and destruction inflicted on both sides. Not surprisingly, the scars of war are apparent only on the Have Nots side. Quite clearly, what is happening is not a class war. The Haves rule over the Have Nots. This rule increases oppressively, the law has been abrogated and the Have Nots are punished by disappearing services, added taxes and campaigns to blame them with the trouble of the day. Trying to fit the oppression and abuse into a framework of a class war is downright ridiculous.

The current oppressive regime cannot last forever. Once the Have Nots deteriorate into abject poverty, the country will start to resemble North Korea. While North Korea is carried by the much larger and prosperous China, no one can carry us. At that point the country will simply deteriorate into complete chaos. The country founded by Jefferson will become a collection of gangs roaming the streets on the lookout for food and water. Hopefully, the Have Nots will rebel way before that happens. In 2008, we missed a golden opportunity to start to dismantle the Haves monolith and redistribute the pie according to real free market rules. The major banks were almost bankrupt, the Haves financial and market philosophy was on the ropes and the Republicans could have been justifiably blamed for pillaging, robbing and harming the country. The opportunity was missed because the president was elected, influenced and owned by the Haves. The Haves were and are in total control of the system.

The Haves cannot control everything forever; they are a small minority. Elections are not the only way to topple oppressive regimes. Remember Egypt and Tunisia.

Beautiful Life

We live in difficult times, in a difficult country, with difficult people. In 2008, under the irresponsible right wing administration of W Bush, we suffered the great recession. It turned out that the US has become one large Ponzi scheme. The gambling, parasitic and arrogant financial sector has become 40% of the economy. This sector concentrates on super sophisticated gambling with other peoples' money; they produce nothing. They should be 4% of the economy.

Workers are as important as serial killers if they do not make tons of money. Education is useless, no jobs are available except patty flipping and educators are the newly established enemies of the people. Academic freedom has narrowed into the freedom to be right wing, otherwise schools will be cut, teachers fired or treated as stray dogs, and universities will be run like corporations with the ability, talent and arrogance of the huge class of failed CEOs.

It seems that the political system has taken lessons from an African dictator. Its main function is to enrich themselves and their supporters; reality has to be ignored if does not conform to the needs of their tribe. Climate change is not for them (no gain, just pain), we have enough oil to last us until the year 10,000. Since workers are garbage, they don’t deserve health care which is provided through non-existent market place tribal insurance companies. Abortions are illegal because the tribe decided so. Since workers are garbage, they don’t deserve social security; the tribe can use the trillions of the social trust slated for the garbage workers. Regulations are not needed since workers and their families are not needed. It is enough for the tribe with its handful billionaires to have only a handful of workers.

The role of the media, like in good old days of Stalin and Mugabe, is to serve the needs of the tribe. Naturally, the tribe is aware of occasional outbreaks of workers thankless and unjustified unrest as is in Wisconsin. Dealing with the unrest is particularly difficult, the tribe sends it storm troopers to repel the workers and the tribe judges, of which there are way too many, to choke legal objections raised by workers. The media, mimicking in astonishing precision Stalin’s and Bashar Assad’s media horns, simply ignore Wisconsin and similar events. For the farmer in Iowa, the construction worker in New Mexico or the retired New Yorker in Florida, there is no unrest; there is no violation of civil rights of workers. Peace on earth.

The tribe, which is heavily subsidized by the government, is terminally on the hunt for more, more, more. Social security and Medicare have targets of looting for decades, but now stated such Michigan and Wisconsin have “discovered” the availability of state resources that be overtaken by the tribe. Walker in Wisconsin wants to privatize government. Gov. Rick Snyder in Michigan has been radically restructuring his state after being empowered by a new law that allowed him to unilaterally abrogate contracts made by local governments. Snyder has been using this form of “financial martial law” to do things like dispatch an “emergency financial manager” to Detroit who promptly laid off every single one of the city’s teachers.

The tribe already owns the presidency, the government and congress. It dictates fiscal policy and transfers of money to itself. It raised the specter of immediate collapse if they don’t get to control Social security and eliminate Medicare. It also demands the practical elimination of taxes on the tribe. The latter makes a lot of sense; isn’t it simply a shard for the government to give to the tribe with one hand and take some of it b back with another? But now the tribe wants to own the taxes paid in each state, all the structures, lands, pension funds and what have you.

You cannot blame the tribe; no one except the unions stands in their way. Did people stop watching CNN after it ignored Wisconsin? Didn’t the people vote in the midterm election for the biggest supporters of the tribe? Didn’t progressives support, elevate, admire and elect the tribe’s candidate for president in 2008?

Obama on the West Coast

“We have an unsustainable situation,” Obama said. “We face a critical time where we are going to have to make some decisions -- how do we bring down the debt in the short term, and how do we bring down the debt over the long term?”

Why is the situation unsustainable?

“We face a critical time where we are going to have to make some decisions." Is it really critical? The dictionary say that critical means: "Pertaining to, or indicating, a crisis or turning point." The crisis we suffer is slow recovery and high unemployment. We are not even close to a turning point.

Obama to supporters: I understand your frustration. It's almost "I feel your pain." Except that Obama is not Big Dawg, he doesn't give a s..t about your pain. He sold you down the river and intends to do time and time again.

Moody's and Standard and Poor's gave top ratings to high-risk securities

Standard and Poor has "warned" the US on it's deficit and threatened to lower it credit worthiness.

Credit-rating agencies, Moody's and Standard and Poor's, gave top ratings to high-risk securities that they were dependent upon, which was a conflict of interest.

Standard and Poor are a bunch of criminals.