A Feast of Unrepentant Wingnuts

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Egalitarian societies are more productive than societies in which a mere one percent owns more than some 90 percent of the rest of the population. Since 1980, US productivity declined with the dollar in a race to the bottom. The results may be seen quantified at the CIA's 'World Fact Book' where the US is at the bottom of a list of nations with the world's largest negative current account balance. It is not coincidental that America became the world's largest net debtor nation as it joined the ranks of the most inequitable.

American politics has been hijacked by a tiny coterie of right-wing economic extremists, some of them ideological zealots, others merely greedy, a few of them possibly insane. The scope of their triumph is breathtaking. Over the course of the last three decades, they have moved from the right-wing fringe to the commanding heights of the national agenda. Notions that would have been laughed at a generation ago--that cutting taxes for the very rich is the best response to any and every economic circumstance or that it is perfectly appropriate to turn the most rapacious and self-interested elements of the business lobby into essentially an arm of the federal government--are now so pervasive, they barely attract any notice.

The result has been a slow motion disaster. Income inequality has approached levels normally associated with Third World oligarchies, not healthy Western democracies. The federal government has grown so encrusted with business lobbyists that it can no longer meet the great public challenges of our time. Not even many conservative voters or intellectuals find the result congenial. Government is no smaller--it is simply more debt-ridden and more beholden to wealthy elites.

--Feast of the Wingnuts: How economic crackpots devoured American politics

The US won the race to the bottom begun with the ascension of Ronald Reagan to the White House.

In 1981, the top federal income-tax rate was 70 percent. Today it is 35 percent. Looked at in another way, the retention rate — the rate of income that individuals keep after taxes — went from 30 percent to 65 percent, an increase of well-over 100 percent since 1981.

Rohmann goes on to identify what he calls a “corollary hypothesis,” the so called trickle-down theory, where greater spending and investing power unleashed by tax cuts for those at the top of the economic ladder eventually “trickles down” in the form of increased employment, benefiting all of society. The term “trickle down” is a derogatory term invented by detractors of supply-side ideas. An appropriate description of the effects of supply-side policies was captured by John F. Kennedy in reference to the importance of economic growth in driving up the well-being of all Americans. Said JFK, “a rising tide raises all boats.”

--Tom Nugent, Laffer Lines

The US will remain on bottom or eventually collapse entirely unless and until it repudiates the failed and incompetent policies that got us there!

Egalitarian societies are more productive. Higher employment makes possible increased spending and supports economic expansion from the bottom up --not from the top down!

US wages have stagnated for the past three decades, while the
work force has also faced an erosion of job security, health care, and pension plans. This increasing economic insecurity has coincided with rapid globalization. Is there a causal relationship between the two? This policy brief probes domestic and international economic changes over the past half century to argue that the main causes of eroding US living standards have been “made in the USA,” as the postwar consensus in favor of egalitarian economic policy has broken down.

The domestic consensus that supported a relatively egalitarian US economy and good living standards for a broad middle class had seriously eroded before the current phase of globalization began. Globalization revealed and exacerbated, rather than created, the basic problems with the US system.

...

Currently, over 30 million workers—one-fifth of the US work force—earn less than the $9.80 per hour that would be required for a sole wage earner to lift a family of four out of poverty. The minimum wage should also be indexed to inflation and increases in worker productivity. This productivity link would help to distribute the gains from productivity more broadly across the economy and correct the disproportionate capture of gains by investors and corporate executives. This would be good for both low-income households and domestic demand. If the minimum wage grew with average productivity gains, it would also steer capital toward more productive firms that succeeded by increasing the productivity of minimum-wage workers rather than toward firms relying on sweatshop wages. This would increase the overall efficiency of the economy.

--US Living Standards in an Era of Globalization, Sandra Polaski, Senior Associate and Director, Trade, Equity, and Development Project, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Of course, I deny that anyone can lift themselves, let alone a family, out of poverty on some nine bucks per hour. Nevertheless, Polaski makes her point succinctly and effectively.

The Rise of Reaganism; the Fall of America

Since Ronald Reagan, GOP tax cuts have benefited only the upper classes, an increasingly tiny percentage of the population, now just one percent of the entire population. The promise that these 'tax cuts' would trickle down or result in increased investment and thus jobs was not merely false but disingenuous. The right wing [GOP] leadership knew better but proceeded in any case. It was apparently a quick and painless way to pay off the base for its continuing support.

The term 'supply side economics' is just an advertising slogan focus group tested for its effectiveness. The theory itself is said to have been cooked up by Arthur Laffer and drawn on a napkin.

Starting in 1972, Wanniski came to believe that Laffer had developed a blinding new insight that turned established economic wisdom on its head. Wanniski and Laffer believed it was possible to simultaneously expand the economy and tamp down inflation by cutting taxes, especially the high tax rates faced by upper-income earners. Respectable economists-- not least among them conservative ones--considered this laughable. Wanniski, though, was ever more certain of its truth. He promoted this radical new doctrine through his perch on The Wall Street Journal editorial page and in a major article for The Public Interest, a journal published by the neoconservative godfather Irving Kristol. Yet Wanniski's new doctrine, later to be called supply-side economics, had failed to win much of a following beyond a tiny circle of adherents.

That fateful night, Wanniski and Laffer were laboring with little success to explain the new theory to Cheney. Laffer pulled out a cocktail napkin and drew a parabola-shaped curve on it. The premise of the curve was simple. If the government sets a tax rate of zero, it will receive no revenue. And, if the government sets a tax rate of 100 percent, the government will also receive zero tax revenue, since nobody will have any reason to earn any income. Between these two points--zero taxes and zero revenue, 100 percent taxes and zero revenue--Laffer's curve drew an arc. The arc suggested that at higher levels of taxation, reducing the tax rate would produce more revenue for the government.

...

At that moment, there were a few points that Cheney might have made in response. First, he could have noted that the Laffer Curve was not, strictly speaking, correct. Yes, a zero tax rate would obviously produce zero revenue, but the assumption that a 100-percent tax rate would also produce zero revenue was, just as obviously, false. Surely Cheney was familiar with communist states such as the Soviet Union, with its 100 percent tax rate. The Soviet revenue scheme may not have represented the cutting edge in economic efficiency, but it nonetheless managed to collect enough revenue to maintain an enormous military, enslave Eastern Europe, fund ambitious projects such as Sputnik, and so on. Second, Cheney could have pointed out that, even if the Laffer Curve was correct in theory, there was no evidence that the US income tax was on the downward slope of the curve--that is, that rates were then high enough that tax cuts would produce higher revenue.

--Feast of the Wingnuts

Thus was removed from the economy revenues/monies that might have driven expansion, growth, or the creation of new jobs had any class but the increasingly tiny elite benefited. The utter failure of 'trickle down/supply side economics' has proven that for the US industrialist, a tax cut is just a windfall --not an incentive. Such windfalls are simply transferred offshore to numbered accounts or other dodges. If 'demand' had justified additional investment in equipment or labor, the industrialist would have already made the decision and taken the 'investment tax credit' up front. There is no need to wait for tax cuts. Therefore, GOP tax cuts misstate the issue, compound the problem and are at the root cause of the decline and fall of American productivity, living standards and 'would-be' empire.

Glyn identifies five internal constraints on an egalitarian economic policy: (1) sluggish private capital accumulation, (2) conflicting claims, (3)government deficits, (4) financial markets, and (5) taxation and the costs of expansion. Each of these items sounds familiar. It is as if nothing fundamental regarding the economy's structure has changed since the early 1970s. In varying degrees, each of these constraints was present then, and the implication is that the only barrier against returning to the relatively more egalitarian economic outcomes of that period is changed political climate.

--The Unbalanced Economy: Business Domination as the Real Constraint on Egalitarian Policies, Thomas I. Palley, Assistant Director of Public Policy, AFL-CIO

Wal-Mart rose as American purchasing power and the dollar fell. Not coincidental. The CIA's 'World Fact Book' puts the US as the bottom of a list with the world's largest negative current account balance. Of equal importance is the overlooked fact that Wal-Mart is patronized by the American working class which is impoverished of late. Again --not coincidental.

In better times, the American working class, especially highly skilled auto workers or steel workers, might have patronized a better version of Wal-Mart where moneys spent remained in the community and enriched it. But Wal-Mart is not a characteristic of 'better times' It is a symptom of America's broken promise and economic demise.

The rise of the GOP, however, seems to have confirmed David Ricardo 's theory of wages in which it was said that wages represented 'labor's natural price —the income which is necessary for the worker to exist'. Not surprisingly, capitalists agreed with Ricardo but only because he seems to support the idea of 'subsistence' wages, keeping workers poor, impoverished, hungry. Things have only gotten worse. Today's capitalist thinks the prototypical conservative Ricardo 'pink' for daring to ascribe to labor any value at all. Even so, it is difficult for even robber barons to ignore the verifiable fact: wealthier workers spend more on a better life. Paying subsistence wages 'contracts' the economy --a recipe for depression. Capitalists are blind and stupid if they insist upon keeping workers poor. Economies are driven by purchases. Poorer people purchase less. Economies contract. Depression results. Basic economics. GOP stupid. GOP blind and dumb.

The Wal-Mart Leech Exposed!

The rise of Wal-Mart is the inverse of the loss of domestic purchasing power. It is a race to the bottom and we've won it! It is said that demand is created when the people have discretionary spending. More accurately, discretionary spending may facilitate or 'satisfy' demand but must not be confused with demand itself.

If one has 'everything' no additional amounts of money will encourage spending; 'tax breaks' for those already among the top one percent will simply wind up offshore. The net effect on the domestic economy is one of 'contraction' i.e, recession/depression. People have diminished capacity for 'discretionary spending' when jobs are exported and the value of the dollar declines as a result. Again --economies contract. Depression results. Basic economics. GOP stupid. GOP blind and dumb.

During WWII, Adolph Hitler derided the US manufacture of refrigerators and other appliances. On another occasion, he and Albert Speer BLEW PAST a US made auto on the new autobahn. In a German Mercedes, Hitler and Speer left the US car in the dust amid great laughter and ridicule. [ src: Inside the Third Reich] The significance of that is that prior to the outbreak of WWII, US auto manufacturers were selling cars in Europe if they were not of Mercedes quality. Some went too far. Henry Ford, for example, helped finance Adolph Hitler who proudly displayed a portrait of Ford in his new Chancellery. I can tell you from experience, you will see precious few US made cars on any major thoroughfare or street in Europe.

As we have established, the most egalitarian societies are most productive. Conversely --those societies, like the US, in which just one percent owns more than 90 percent combined are least productive. Even conservatives in America will tell you: 'if you want a prosperous economy, you must create wealth', a true statement that does not go far enough. It is labor that creates wealth or, if you prefer, value. This is the 'labor theory of value' espoused by almost every major economist from David Ricardo to Paul Krugman, from Karl Marx to John Maynard Keynes. Wealth is created by work alone! If you wish to create wealth with money, you must first put money to work with productive, domestic investment --not offshore dodges.

Wealth is not created by transferring the products of labor upward to the increasingly tiny clique of moneyed elites --just one percent or less of the entire population. Wealth is not created by exporting jobs or by undermining local merchants with Faustian bargains and/or Wal-Mart. Wealth is not created by shipping it offshore to benefit only those who have never worked. Wealth is not created by 'screwing' the working, productive classes, robbing them of jobs, educations, and futures.

Under GOP mismanagement, dishonesty and incompetence, the US has done everything that DOES NOT create wealth while unfairly burdening those who do! Wealth is not created with tax cuts for those already rich. That strategy inevitably results in 'economic contraction'. As Reagan said: here we go again --economies contract. Depression results. Basic economics. GOP stupid. GOP blind and dumb.

Insanity!

Ideologues work backward from conclusions in a frantic search for premises to prove them. Sane, rational, pragmatic or scientific folk will begin with facts rather than conclusions. Wealth is created when wealthy folk are taxed fairly and when working consumers have purchasing power to buy things with the moneys they earn. The GOP system is a race to the bottom. As the rich get richer and the poor, poorer only Wal-Mart prospers by brokering the transfer of US wealth to China. To drive the point home: economies contract. Depression results. Basic economics. GOP stupid. GOP blind and dumb.

It has been aid that when conservatives cut taxes, they cut them for everyone. That has never been true. Ronald Reagan's 'tax cut' resulted in my paying higher taxes, a much higher percentage of my income. That was true primarily because 'breaks' are called 'loopholes' if an individual avails themselves of them, but 'tax incentives' if it is the big corporation that benefits. In any case, across the board tax cuts are meaningless as long as the range from poor to very, very, very rich is plotted on increasingly steeper curves. [See: the L-Curve]

As a percentage of income, everything is cheaper for the rich!

Because billionaires spend infinitesimally less as a percentage of income just staying alive as do those who work, the benefits of a tax cut accrue only to the wealthy. Only a progressive tax addresses this injustice. As a percentage of their income, the prices rich folk pay is much, much, much less than you pay for just about everything. A restaurant meal, for example, is a negligible expense for the wealthy, a precious and expensive luxury for those in the middle class.

As they grow richer, elites bid up the prices of properties and/or goods, a process that puts necessities beyond the reach of the poor, and makes them a luxury for the middle class. In the late fifties and early sixties, thirty thousand dollars would put you in a very fine, two story home in an excellent neighborhood. A comparable home today will cost you millions. If this increase were merely inflationary, your income would have kept pace and kept you in the market. That it did not has created super enclaves affordable only to the super rich.

As recently as 1967 a distinguished economist observed that there were increasingly fewer status symbols available to millionaires that were not also available to someone earning $20,000 per year. A rising tide, it would appear, does not raise all boats.

Moreover, the ruling elite of just one percent of the population has access to tax dodges and offshore accounts that those who work for a living may never have even heard of.

The first bailout gave these companies over 700 billion in bailouts and the main culprit of the insurance derivative fraud AIG that primarily caused the disaster received 150 billion dollars of taxpayers money.

More than 83 corporations have offshore subsidiaries where their funds are protected in tax havens in the Caymen islands such as: The Bank of America, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, AIG, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and even Pepsi and General Motors who received 13.4 billion have hundreds of millions of dollars in tax havens offshore. All those corporations receive protection from paying the US government their taxes and the loss to the US is into the 100 billion dollars of lost tax revenue.

Senator Carl Levin a democrat from Michigan and Byron Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota requested the report to be released and are pushing for new laws prohibiting these bailout scam corporations from being tax dodgers while asking for bailouts from the taxpayer.

--Bailout Corporation Tax Havens in Caymen Islands

It is no coincidence that the US was most productive when it was most egalitarian and that was the era that began with the end of WWII and ended with the inauguration of Reagan.

The automobile industry successfully converted back to producing cars, and new industries such as aviation and electronics grew by leaps and bounds. A housing boom, stimulated in part by easily affordable mortgages for returning members of the military, added to the expansion. The nation's gross national product rose from about $200,000 million in 1940 to $300,000 million in 1950 and to more than $500,000 million in 1960. At the same time, the jump in postwar births, known as the "baby boom," increased the number of consumers. More and more Americans joined the middle class.

--The Post War Economy: 1945-1960

Democracy is always the first victim of militarism. Today, Germany, which is said to have lost WWII, is the world’s largest exporter of manufactured goods, ahead of China for whom the US is just a place to dump product while polluting its own environment. To make the point even more dramatically, German wages and benefits today are higher than those in the US even as it maintains a much higher and better 'safety net'.

Back in February–when even the mainstream media was convinced the capitalist economy was in full-blown meltdown mode–Newsweek magazine ran an article titled “Why there won’t be a revolution.” Newsweek wanted to reassure the rich–and convince working people–that the masses weren’t getting ready to dust off their pitchforks and head to the town square.

“Americans might get angry sometimes,” they wrote, “but we don’t hate the rich. We prefer to laugh at them.”

Newsweek couldn’t be more wrong. The 10 percent of Americans who rely on food stamps, the 25 percent of Ohioans who are waiting in lines at food banks, the 500,000 people who lost their jobs last month and the millions more who can’t find work–these people aren’t laughing.

And plenty of Americans–rightly–hate the rich. While our homes go into foreclosure, while our credit card rates go up, while our jobs disappear and college tuition shoots up, the well-heeled “masters of the universe” on Wall Street are still making out like bandits, but now with hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer money, courtesy of the Obama administration.

A lot more people would be even angrier if the mainstream media reported the truth about the rich and powerful in America–who they are and how they “made it” to the top. Consider the 10 richest people in the country as of last September, according to the annual Forbes magazine list.

--Adam Turl, How the Other 0.00000003 Percent Lives

The US economy--in obvious decline since 1982 --is 'fragmented, inefficient. Health care has become a luxury that the working classes cannot afford. US investment in research and development is dropping precipitously as a share of GDP. The result: US product quality continues to deteriorate and markets for US goods will continue to decline because of it.

"War is a racket!"

Concurrently, democracy itself is threatened. 'Presumed external' enemies have been exploited to justify subsidies given the Military/Industrial Complex. A crack down on dissent has threatened to undo the US Constitution, called a 'goddamned piece of paper' by the incompetent liar who had recently sworn to uphold it. As America's future dims, there is no 'mea culpa'. There is no remorse. There is no lesson learned. We are not a feast fit for the gods; we are, rather, burgers and fries for unrepentant wingnuts.

Gen. Smedley Butler was precise and correct when he said: "War is a racket!" It's not about external threats, it's about CONTRACTS. As long as industrialists make money facilitating the mass murder of human beings, there will be NO peace! EVER!

Trickle Down Theory Debunked

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Economics Lessons from 'A Beautiful Mind'

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

The Greek tradition found virtue in the pursuit of rational self interest, a tradition that later found expression in Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" in which is posited "rational self-interest" as an "invisible hand" upon "free markets". Recent bank failures, recession, accounting crimes and corporate scandals, however, amount to enormous empirical evidence that "laissez faire" capitalism is a myth, and if not a myth, an impractical ideology. The "invisible hand" --as modern conservatives have defined and appropriated it --is mere "wishful thinking".

If there is an "invisible hand" it does not militate against crooks, charlatans, and fast buck artists who have now firmly ensconced themselves as much in board rooms as among sleazy fly-by-nighters. The Reagan administration alone, like that of Warren Harding before it, is proof that, left to its own devices, an elite, robber-baron class will act to enrich itself and, in the process, imperil the nation. Business is not the business of America or, indeed, any nation which wishes to remain solvent or, in other ways, ensure the defense and futures of its people. A 'robber baron' era, a 'Gilded Age' did not merely precede the Great Depression, it caused it by impoverishing every other class but the upper crust. While there has never been a bust without the 'bubble' that precedes it, the 'bubble' itself is the result of the deliberate transfer of wealth to an increasingly small elite. Today, in America, that elite is but one percent of the total population. It owns more than some 95 percent of the rest of us combined.

Markets left to their own devices trend toward oligopoly in which oligarchs effect political plutocracy through the exercise of sheer political muscle, intimidation, fraud, and outright bribery. The "invisible hand" does not moderate the rich and powerful. If a ruling cabal is to be moderated it must be done by political action and the power of cooperative or, perhaps, 'socialist' interventions. This much is implied by Adams himself.

In civilized society he stands at all times in need of the cooperation and assistance of great multitudes, while his whole life is scarce sufficient to gain the friendship of a few persons. In almost every other race of animals each individual, when it is grown up to maturity, is entirely*43 independent, and in its natural state has occasion for the assistance of no other living creature. But man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour, and show them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them.

--Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter II, Of the Principle which gives Occasion to the Division of Labour

Whenever I hear a modern Republican spout Smith on the one hand and 'laissez-faire' Capitalism on the other, I suspect that they have not bothered to read Smith. Certainly, my concerns are less a criticism of Smith himself than of modern economic conservatives and/or 'supply-siders' who find in Smith a rationalization for many rapacious and monopolistic behaviors lately witnessed among the ruling one percent and the combination of both greed and incompetence among the big banks.

Smith is no more to be faulted for this than Darwin should be faulted for the excesses of "Social Darwinism" --neither Social nor Darwin. "Social Darwinists" are most often associated with the age of the Robber Barons, providing them the ideological bias with which they justified all manner of corporate crookedness and sleazy practices. Likewise, the contemporary GOP believes 'greed is good' , a neat slogan by which, during the Reagan years in particular, the transfer of wealth upward by way of inequitable tax cuts of trillions of dollars to the ruling elite led inexorably to Reagan's depression of some two years --the deepest and longest depression since 1929. The maxim: "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need' was, of course, not merely dismissed but reviled. Communism -- it was dismissively called!

To his credit, Smith himself feared the rise of monopoly power --a fear which modern conservative commentary either does not understand or omits entirely. Moreover, Smith subscribed to a 'labor theory of value' which 'wingnuts' would have you believe was the radical, 'seditious' brainchild of that 'Satan incarnate' --Karl Marx. Not so! Smith subscribed to a 'labor theory' of value as have almost every major economist since the 18th Century.

The real price of everything, what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it. What everything is really worth to the man who has acquired it, and who wants to dispose of it or exchange it for something else, is the toil and trouble which it can save to himself, and which it can impose upon other people. What is bought with money or with goods is purchased by labour as much as what we acquire by the toil of our own body. That money or those goods indeed save us this toil. They contain the value of a certain quantity of labour which we exchange for what is supposed at the time to contain the value of an equal quantity. Labour was the first price, the original purchase-money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all the wealth of the world was originally purchased; and its value, to those who possess it, and who want to exchange it for some new productions, is precisely equal to the quantity of labour which it can enable them to purchase or command.

--Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Chapter 5: Of the Real and Nominal Price of Commodities, or their Price in Labour, and their Price in Money

Immanuel Kant however, assailed the pursuit of self interest in favor of "good in and of itself" --a "categorical imperative", a moral standard that no one I know is capable of living up to. Nevertheless, Kant has became the other great influence upon American conservative thought --though I cannot give most contemporary conservatives credit for having actually read Kant or understanding him. It is not Kant himself but the many misconceptions about him that may be found lurking beneath the ideological surface of the extremist right-wing and the religious right.

It is unfortunate that Kant himself defined this "transcendent reality" --which he called the noumena --as being unknowable. By definition, nothing meaningful can be said about whatever is "unknowable". One cannot make sense about the unknowable; there is no 'knowledge' of the unknowable. Nevertheless, righteous ideologues will insist upon 'deducing' from the unknowable a veritable gestalt of gibberish which they profess to know as 'fact' and, upon that basis, will seek to impose it upon you!

We are given the false choice between two mutually exclusive alternatives: "selfishness" or "selfless transcendentalism". Neither position, however, is entirely true and neither is completely understood even by the conservative mentality that espouses them. Adam Smith's "invisible hand" is no more valid than Laffer's "trickle down" theory and it is highly doubtful that even Kant lived up to his own moral dictum --though I credit Kant with sincerity and doubt it among his followers. Mankind is probably neither entirely selfish nor entirely selfless but somewhere in between.

The truth is most likely found in the middle. The work of mathematician John Nash, celebrated in the motion picture "A Beautiful Mind", wrote a brilliant paper on "binding agreements" that casts grave doubts upon many "conservative" fables, shibboleths, and fairy tales --including those whose origins lie in "mutually exclusive" intellectual traditions.

Next in my mini-series about the great economic thought leaders who were seminal in the development and success of modern outsourcing is one of my favorites, the mathematician John F. Nash, who took economists a step or two beyond Adam Smith with his ideas on Game Theory and Behavioral Economics.

His conclusions are right in the Vested Outsourcing wheelhouse; that is, playing nice and playing cooperatively from the start of a business or contract relationship is good for everyone.

If you’ve seen the movie A Beautiful Mind, which is loosely based on the life of Nash, there’s a brief scene in it that captures in an entertaining nutshell his great breakthrough in the use of games – especially non-cooperative games – as a basis for understanding complicated economic issues.

In the scene Nash, as portrayed by Russell Crowe, has a revelatory moment in a campus bar as he and his mates ponder the best ways to produce optimum results in their approach to and pursuit of a beautiful blonde and her friends.

Nash’s inspiration was that Adam Smith’s principle that the “best result comes from everyone in a group doing what’s best for themselves” was incomplete and needed revision: The best result comes from everyone in a group doing what’s best for themselves and the group.

--The Big Thinkers – Part 2 John Nash: Game Theory (or Playing Nice is Good for Everyone)

The American right wing is locked into 'competition' whether it works or not. The American right wing is not prepared to consider facts that prove that in many if not all cases, cooperation is more practical, more efficient and, in the longer term, more successful. It must be especially annoying for the right wing mentality that this principle was proven by three horny intellectuals --geeks --in a bar, in the northeast.

A Beautiful Mind

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Mr. Obama, Bring Down the War Criminals!

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Among several sticky tar babies Bush left Obama the worst are: Guantanamo, torture, capital war crimes! The clock is ticking for Obama. The time for 'good faith' is running out! Unless Obama moves to close Guantanamo now and end the practice of torture while bringing war crimes charges against Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney et al., he risks being so charged himself!

Preventive detention is the classic defining characteristic of a military dictatorship. Because dictatorial regimes rely on fear rather than consensus, their priority is self-preservation rather than improving their people's lives. They worry obsessively over the one thing they can't control, what Orwell called "thoughtcrime" -contempt for rulers that might someday translate to direct action.

Locking up people who haven't done anything wrong is worse than un-American and a violent attack on the most basic principles of Western jurisprudence. It is contrary to the most essential notion of human decency. That anyone has ever been subjected to "preventive detention" is an outrage.

--Ted Rall, Resign Now

One hundred days have come and gone! There is still no strongly worded condemnation of the practice of torture! There is still no support for the bringing of war crimes charges against Bushco! The 'closing of Guantanamo' is merely confused --not resolved!

As the New York Times noted: "... the unresolved eight year nightmare will continue raining down drip by drip, disrupting Obama's high ambitions". If torture had not been wrong, illegal, immoral, then why did Bush spend so much of his time denying it, lying about it, conning the American people and the world?

Bush lied about US policies of torture and other war crimes because Bush knew it was wrong and deliberately set about to 'fool' the people! He failed because he was and remains a lousy liar, a cretin, an ignorant ass wipe who did not win the White House fairly. His morally bankrupt party stole the White House in what Republicans themselves boasted was a coup d'tat! Bush and his party are likewise 'credited' with Reaganesque and outrageous deficits which coupled with astronomical transfers of wealth upward to the elite have brought the nation to the very edge of financial collapse! We expected more and we deserve more from the Democrats! We held them to a higher standard! Will Obama prove us wrong to have done so?

Obama reversed himself with a declaration that no more photos of torture will be released! Is this not an admission that there are --indeed --more photos that SHOULD be released? Is this not an admission that the practices of torture, some of which should have resulted in capital crimes charges against Bush himself, are still underway? If Bush's orders resulting in death make Bush culpable for the death penalty, then where is the clause that absolves Obama of the same crime?

(a) Offense.— Whoever, whether inside or outside the United States, commits a war crime, in any of the circumstances described in subsection (b), shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both, and if death results to the victim, shall also be subject to the penalty of death.

--US Codes, Title 18, Section 2441

This federal law is still on the books! It is still ignored by the office of President of the United States, the office that is empowered by the US Constitution with the authority to enforce and uphold the laws of the United States. Does this basic concept no longer mean anything to the people and, most importantly, to those who are sworn to uphold the law? I want ...no! I demand to know when the laws of the United States came to mean absolutely nothing.

I find it significant that both public immorality and disregard for the 'rule of law' have increased with the rise of the religious right, radical fundamentalism and 'religiosity' in general. I find significant that support for war crimes, state sponsored murder, death squads, torture and other Nazi-like atrocities was extremely strong among the religious right, devotees of Pat Robertson and similar ilk. As I have stated, the 'religious right' is not just wrong but dead wrong and immoral. Pat Robertson, it may be recalled, advocated 'death squads' and the murders of foreign leaders with whom he disagreed! This is just evil --pure and simple!

Ever since he was released from Guantanamo in February after six years of due-process-less detention and brutal torture, Binyam Mohamed has been attempting to obtain justice for what was done to him. But his torturers have been continuously protected, and Mohamed's quest for a day in court repeatedly thwarted, by one individual: Barack Obama. Today, there is new and graphic evidence of just how far the Obama administration is going to prevent evidence of the Bush administration's torture program from becoming public.

In February, Obama's DOJ demanded dismissal of Mohamed's lawsuit against the company which helped "render" him to be tortured on the ground that national security would be harmed if the lawsuit continued. Then, after a British High Court ruled that there was credible evidence that Mohamed was subjected to brutal torture and was entitled to obtain evidence in the possession of the British government which detailed the CIA's treatment of Mohamed, and after a formal police inquiry began into allegations that British agents collaborated in his torture, the British government cited threats from the U.S. government that it would no longer engage in intelligence-sharing with Britain -- i.e., it would no longer pass on information about terrorist threats aimed at British citizens -- if the British court disclosed the facts of Mohamed's torture.

--Glenn Greenwald, Obama administration threatens Britain to keep torture evidence concealed

I demand that those government officials in both administrations be arrested, charged and tried for the capital crimes that are specifically and unambiguously the subject of the above cited federal law --US Codes, Title 18, Section 2441!

If the laws do not apply to elected officials, then they do not apply to us!
Government may not have it one way! Those governments that presume to be above the law are, in fact, outlaw governments. They are illegitimate.
Despite the Obama order that no more photos be released, there are still more photos to be seen! Certainly --the photos are evidence that US Codes were and continue to be violated with impunity. Orders that the photos be suppressed are obstructions of justice and are, in themselves, prosecutable! I will support the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate this order! Clearly, however, any move to impeach Obama is transparently hypocritical if the same charges are not brought against the gang of heinous war criminals who dared call themselves the 'Bush administration'!

The photos will be released --eventually! And the order to suppress them will look foolish if not criminal! Some of them have already been leaked. I am not interested in rationalizations that we hoped had bit the dust along with the failed Bush administration, primarily the cop out that Al Qaeda will be angered! Fuck Al Qaeda! I doubt that they are half as angered as am I! Secondly, I doubt that Al Qaeda exists as anything other than the CIA 'shill' organization that they were in their inception, the CIA 'shill' organization that they most certainly continue to be.

Obama refuses to hold responsible and accountable the very people who authorized and utilized a heinous and un-American program of torture, perhaps murder! It is imperative that the US prove to the world that it take these issues seriously! The entire world takes them seriously and will forever dismiss the US, a waning 'superpower' in any case if it should not! The US has no moral choice but to:

• expose and 'own up' to heinous practices of torture and state-sponsored murder!
• bring specific charges against individuals who have issued specific orders in specific cases;
• bring charges against the architects of these policies in both the Bush and the Obama administrations!

The country, the world is sick to death of talk, spin and propaganda! The world demands action! The world demands an immediate end to this bullshit!


Mr. Obama, TEAR DOWN THESE ILLEGAL PRISONS!

MR. OBAMA, BRING TORTURERS AND MURDERERS TO TRIAL!

MR. OBAMA, STOP THE WAR CRIMES, STOP THE MURDERS, STOP THE TORTURE! NOW!

A list of broken promises continues to grow! These crimes are but a continuation of Bush administration policies.

Mr. Obama --you were NOT elected to be Bush-lite!

You were elected to UNDO Bush's many failures!

You were elected to RIGHT the many wrongs that had been done by Bush!

You were elected to UPHOLD the rule of law!

You put your hand on a black book and swore to protect and defend the Constitution! That act meant nothing to Bush. We had hoped it meant more to you!

Mr. Obama, the commission of war crimes abroad is NOT authorized to any branch of the US government by the US Constitution! Either you will uphold the Constitution or you will not! If you will not, it is the moral responsibility of the US citizenry to remove you and replace you with someone who will.

---

Obama's Honeymoon is Over

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Barack Obama has had his 100 days! The honeymoon is over! The gloves are off! Mr. Obama, tear down those illegal prisons!

Two thousand pictures of Americans performing acts of savage torture on prisoners will not be released to the general public if Mr. Obama gets his way. Military commissions will continue to try prisoners outside the scope of American law, and will be free to use brazen hearsay as "hard" evidence against defendants. Mr. Obama continues to cleave to the most abhorrent aspects of Bush-era secrecy policies, and has moved to block a lawsuit filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) on behalf of former CIA agent Valerie Plame, who was outed by Bush administration officials in order to silence her Iraq whistle blower husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson.

--William Rivers Pitt, Truthout

It was not merely the stolen elections in Florida and later Ohio that made Bush illegitimate; it was his declaration in both word and deeds: "The Constitution is just a goddamned piece of paper!" Under the cover given him by 'war' (however illegal), Bush claimed to be above the law, beyond responsibility to the people, in effect, a dictator!

The sooner that the United States dissociates itself from the crimes of the Bush administration, the sooner will it regain its role as leader of the world's democracies. Indicting the Bush administration now for its promotion of torture as US policy is the first, and most important, step in that direction.

Unfortunately, there is no way to impeach George Bush retroactively for leading us into the illegal and disastrous Iraq war. Nevertheless, Barack Obama should realize that victory over terrorism depends critically on the United States emphatically denouncing its ties to Bush's failed policies of unilateralism, militarism and torture.

--Sweep Bush policies into dustbin, John F. Bellantoni, Sarasota

No, we cannot impeach Bush now! We blew an opportunity to make the statement that OUTLAW PRESIDENTS WILL NOT BE TOLERATED! Instead, we bent over and allowed a war criminal to get away with murder.

Here's the bad news for Obama: if Bush is guilty of war crimes for his attack and subsequent war crimes in Iraq, so, too, is Obama for continuing them. I have yet to see active, good faith efforts by Obama to end the illegal, military occupations in the Middle East.

That fact most certainly makes Obama prosecutable for continuing violations of the War Crimes Act of 1996 passed by both houses of Congress without dissent. The act covers every crime that may be charged to Bush as of this moment and as of the moment Bush exited the 'cover' given him by his occupation of the Oval Office.

The act deals specifically with his deliberate "killing, torture or inhumane treatment" of 'detainees' at Abu Ghraib, GITMO and the gulag archipelago of 'detention centers' throughout Eastern Europe. Violations of the War Crimes Act that result in the death of a detainee carry the death penalty and there is no statute of limitations.

(a) Offense.— Whoever, whether inside or outside the United States, commits a war crime, in any of the circumstances described in subsection (b), shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both, and if death results to the victim, shall also be subject to the penalty of death.

--TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 118 > § 2441 § 2441. War crimes

Ironically, it was the GOP congress which passed the War Crimes Act in 1996 without a dissenting vote. It was said that they wished to 'rebuke the unpunished war crimes of dictators like Saddam Hussein'.

But this was the era of 'wag the dog'. The GOP had hoped make Clinton prosecutable in the Hague. Significantly, when it was feared that it would be Bush who would wind up in the dock, the GOP did a transparent about face, a cowardly and disingenuous move that we have come to expect from the GOP. Tom DeLay sponsored legislation authorizing the US military to invade the Hague should Bush find his sorry ass in the dock! DeLay was reacting to legislation that defined a "war crime" as any "grave breach" of the Geneva Conventions.

I want to know: what is the frickin' point of passing legislation if it is routinely ignored by 'Presidents' be they Clinton, Bush, Obama?

What is the point?

Either we will insist upon the rule of law --or our governments hereinafter will be illegitimate. People of the US, I put it to you: you are NOT represented by a legitimate government. Nor have you been for some time now!

It did not help his case that Bush was (and, presumably remains) an idiot, a waste of human DNA, a cancer on mankind, a slimy liar of no talent and less wit or intelligence.

Obama seemed to be everything that Bush was not: literate, intelligent, perhaps even moral! But Obama has been given his 100 days and more! By now it is clear: Obama has no intention of righting the fatal harms inflicted by Bush upon the 'rule of law' or that 'goddamned piece of paper', the US Constitution. Obama has no intention of ending the illegal occupations of both Afghanistan and Iraq!

These so-called 'Military Commission' are kangaroo courts and have no legitimacy whatsoever. Verdicts handed down by them are invalid, bogus, unlawful, and because the US occupations are illegal, the verdicts themselves may violate treaties and international laws. Surely the arbitrary assumption of powers not granted by a 'sovereign' is illegal! Any death resulting is murder! Any illegal US tribunal ordering 'death' is, itself, a murderer!

The presence of US troops anywhere in the world not supported by a declaration of war is illegal, a war crime. If death results to any person in those US occupied territories, the penalty is death! Clearly --the Obama administration has, heretofore, shown no interest in restoring legitimacy or the rule of law.

It appears, however, that the rule of law no longer applies to Presidents or, for that matter, the 'elected' idiots in Congress who write them. Clearly --everything enacted by Congress with regard to war, prisoners of war, or war crimes has failed to impress those occupying the Oval Office! Is this the reason the US has NOT won a war since War II?. Does this have something to do with the fact that the US --now a third world economy with the world's largest negative current account balance --has not paid for any war since World War II? Come to think of it, I am not quite sure we paid for WWII!

It is ludicrous to expect other nations to respect our sovereignty if we do not respect theirs.

The US remains a rogue and criminal nation, an oil thief, a pathetic, idiotic bully boy whose presence abroad still threatens its own economic underpinnings. What is the origin of this idiotic idea that because we covet another nation's oil or other resources, we may dictate to them with threats of bombs and/or invasion?

The US has nukes! But cannot use them! What would result if there should be another Hiroshima or Nagasaki?

The people of the US have been treasonously betrayed by both parties, by the Congress and in the unkindest cut of all, by the courts --the same judiciary that was intended to be the remedy of last resort. Thanks to the pin head Antonin Scalia and like minded, slit-tongued, slit-eyed reptilians, the courts are compromised and corrupt --sell-outs to the various elite interests that long ago 'invested' their money in the Congress and the White House. The best politicians money could buy??

How absurd the US has become! While the MIC murders for the sake of death, America, like a moronic, drooling, lumbering leviathan on steroids, wages war for the sake of war, bleats bullshit that it might hear its own pathetic, whining voice amid a wailing chorus awaiting Armegeddon!

Wake up, Mr. Obama! You are what you do! Have you become Bush?

---

When you die in America, it will be because you are NOT RICH!

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Of the many ways in which a ruling elite of just one percent of the US population wages war upon the American people, the denial of health care to everyone but the very, very rich is the most evil. This is a direct result of the GOP/right wing domination of America since the rise of Ronald Reagan.

Today, just one percent of the population is in a position to deny everyone but the very, very rich a right to even basic health care. Denied this right, millions will die that might have lived productive and meaningful lives. This is not merely a matter of personal loss; it is that of the nation.

Since the GOP ascension to power began with the rise of Ronald Reagan in the early 80s, American wealth has been re-distributed upward. Gini indices evinced a dramatic shift upward even as Ronald Reagan still ruled. Those indices, published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Census Bureau and the U.S. Department of Commerce-BEA prove that only the uppper quintile benefited from Reagan's widely touted tax cuts'.

Although this trend reversed under Clinton, the GOP wasted no time in undoing the good that had been done. Under Bush Jr, the GOP transfer of wealth to the ruling aristocracy, the ruling elite was resumed at even faster rates.

Today --just one percent or less of the US population earns more and owns more than 90 percent of the rest of us combined. As a result, 90 percent of us are priced out of the markets for better homes, cars and other consumables, but most importantly crucial essentials like health care. The effects of these policies are transparent. These effects are achieved so predictably, so methodically, so consistently that I am entirely justified in charging that it is all done deliberately.

In today's America, the chances are increasing that when you die it will be because you are NOT RICH!

That is but ONE result of the right wing/GOP THEFT of America's wealth! Question is: what are you going to do about it?

We are repeatedly told that the US is the best and most advanced nation on earth! In response: I say: BULLSHIT! That might have been true before the four horsemen of the GOP road roughshod through what had been the hope of the world!

Following are a letter from my friend and progressive crusader, Doug Drenkow and a recent column by Paul Krugman:

Progressive friends,

Thanks for this article, which -- in classic Krugman style -- lays it on the line. It was remarkable to me that in the months running up to the election the people on the Right I spoke with had one thing consistently on their mind (another example of the lockstep political messaging from the Right): They didn't speak with passion about the election -- it was apparently obvious even to them that Bush was too much of an albatross around any GOP nominee's neck -- but they did against health care reform, which they even more than I knew was going to be the big issue (It is the Number One issue in labor/management disagreements; and has been noted elsewhere, as by the president, rising health care costs are driving much of the increase in costs of entitlement programs, read Medicare and Medicaid, which are not as cataclysmic and the Right insists, in their continuing effort to dismantle those and other social programs, but which do demand addressing).

What is most remarkable to me, though, is not the lockstep messaging but the opposition to something that affects everyone, across the political spectrum: the failure of our existing health "care" system to deliver adequate care to millions, including those going bankrupt from medical expenses (Most personal bankruptcies are due to medical expenses, and in most of those cases the person going bankrupt had health insurance when he or she first got sick: Get sick, lose job, go broke -- everyone I've talked to acknowledges that as a very real, very big problem).

In a sense, we are in a political battle like the military battle we're in against Al Qaeda: Unlike in the Cold War, when our adversary was controlled, as we were, by Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), when we're up against those opposing the repair of our health care system or we're fighting suicide bombers we're dealing with those who are basically willing to take themselves down just as long as they take us down with them.

Just as we cannot allow the Taliban and Al Qaeda to get their hands on the growing Pakistani nuclear arsenal -- I doubt they would really be dissuaded from using such powerful weapons by our threats to send them to all those virgins "awaiting them" in Paradise (Damn their blasphemous twisting of Islam's basically humane teachings) -- we cannot allow the Right, funded by the deep pockets of Big Pharma, Big Insurance, Big Etc., to continue propping up a system literally taking and otherwise destroying tens of millions of our lives (Not even Al Qaeda can do that).

As we approach Independence Day, we are reminded that America was founded in dedication to the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and there is no more fundamental right than the right to life (and I'm not getting into the particulars of the abortion issue now but rather the general principle vital to all of us who live and breathe) and there is no issue more important than allocating the resources we do have, as the richest nation on Earth and in history, to provide as good a care as we can to all those in need, financed as equitably as possible -- I'm sure we can come up with a system not only as good as that working in every other industrial nation, as we've heard ad nauseum, but even better, in terms of quality, accessibility, and affordability of care and, again, equity in financing (Yes, I'm talking progressive taxation, not the regressive "value added" sales-type tax as used so much in Europe to finance health care).

The Obama Administration is about to begin its very public push for health care reform -- beginning on the sixth of June (http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/hckickoff) -- and ultimately, as always, the real power in this country lies not with big business or big government but with the public at large. That was the spirit that put our historic president in office (and I believe he will be historic not only because of his ancestry but also because of his leadership of the nation, with our backing, into much better years ahead). If we demand real reforms, then woe be unto those who oppose us. Change will, however, probably be at least somewhat incremental, if history is any guide; but change can be inevitable -- if and only if we the people demand it.Change health care for the better? Yes we can!

--Doug Drenkow

And this from Paul Krugman:

That didn't take long. Less than two weeks have passed since much of the medical-industrial complex made a big show of working with President Obama on health care reform -- and the double-crossing is already well under way. Indeed, it's now clear that even as they met with the president, pretending to be cooperative, insurers were gearing up to play the same destructive role they did the last time health reform was on the agenda.

So here's the question: Will Mr. Obama gloss over the reality of what's happening, and try to preserve the appearance of cooperation? Or will he honor his own pledge, made back during the campaign, to go on the offensive against special interests if they stand in the way of reform?

The story so far: on May 11 the White House called a news conference to announce that major players in health care, including the American Hospital Association and the lobbying group America's Health Insurance Plans, had come together to support a national effort to control health care costs.

The fact sheet on the meeting, one has to say, was classic Obama in its message of post-partisanship and, um, hope. "For too long, politics and point-scoring have prevented our country from tackling this growing crisis," it said, adding, "The American people are eager to put the old Washington ways behind them."

But just three days later the hospital association insisted that it had not, in fact, promised what the president said it had promised -- that it had made no commitment to the administration's goal of reducing the rate at which health care costs are rising by 1.5 percentage points a year. And the head of the insurance lobby said that the idea was merely to "ramp up" savings, whatever that means.

Meanwhile, the insurance industry is busily lobbying Congress to block one crucial element of health care reform, the public option -- that is, offering Americans the right to buy insurance directly from the government as well as from private insurance companies. And at least some insurers are gearing up for a major smear campaign.

On Monday, just a week after the White House photo-op, The Washington Post reported that Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina was preparing to run a series of ads attacking the public option. The planning for this ad campaign must have begun quite some time ago.

The Post has the storyboards for the ads, and they read just like the infamous Harry and Louise ads that helped kill health care reform in 1993. Troubled Americans are shown being denied their choice of doctor, or forced to wait months for appointments, by faceless government bureaucrats. It's a scary image that might make some sense if private health insurance -- which these days comes primarily via HMOs -- offered all of us free choice of doctors, with no wait for medical procedures. But my health plan isn't like that. Is yours?

"We can do a lot better than a government-run health care system," says a voice-over in one of the ads. To which the obvious response is, if that's true, why don't you? Why deny Americans the chance to reject government insurance if it's really that bad?

For none of the reform proposals currently on the table would force people into a government-run insurance plan. At most they would offer Americans the choice of buying into such a plan.

And the goal of the insurers is to deny Americans that choice.

They fear that many people would prefer a government plan to dealing with private insurance companies that, in the real world as opposed to the world of their ads, are more bureaucratic than any government agency, routinely deny clients their choice of doctor, and often refuse to pay for care.

Which brings us back to Mr. Obama.

Back during the Democratic primary campaign, Mr. Obama argued that the Clintons had failed in their 1993 attempt to reform health care because they had been insufficiently inclusive. He promised instead to gather all the stakeholders, including the insurance companies, around a "big table." And that May 11 event was, of course, intended precisely to show this big-table strategy in action.

But what if interest groups showed up at the big table, then blocked reform? Back then, Mr. Obama assured voters that he would get tough: "If those insurance companies and drug companies start trying to run ads with Harry and Louise, I'll run my own ads as president. I'll get on television and say 'Harry and Louise are lying.' "

The question now is whether he really meant it.

The medical-industrial complex has called the president's bluff. It polished its image by showing up at the big table and promising cooperation, then promptly went back to doing all it can to block real change. The insurers and the drug companies are, in effect, betting that Mr. Obama will be afraid to call them out on their duplicity.

It's up to Mr. Obama to prove them wrong.

--PAUL KRUGMAN, Blue Double Cross,

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