Subject: the latest on Washington corruption--articles and documentary [8/7/2008; 8/17/2008; 8/20/2008; March 10, 2016]
There's no question but that these materials represent partisan politics. But even so, I think the authors are telling the straight truth. Larry
1. How Washington's Right-Wing Wrecking Crew Robbed Us Blind
Thomas Frank, the author of What's the Matter with Kansas?, is the founding editor of The Baffler, a contributing editor at Harper's, and, most recently, a columnist for the Wall Street Journal. His WSJ columns can be read at his website. He lives, of course, in Washington D.C. and this essay has been adapted from his new book, The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule (Metropolitan Books, 2008)
There's no question but that these materials represent partisan politics. But even so, I think the authors are telling the straight truth. Larry
1. How Washington's Right-Wing Wrecking Crew Robbed Us Blind
Thomas Frank, the author of What's the Matter with Kansas?, is the founding editor of The Baffler, a contributing editor at Harper's, and, most recently, a columnist for the Wall Street Journal. His WSJ columns can be read at his website. He lives, of course, in Washington D.C. and this essay has been adapted from his new book, The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule (Metropolitan Books, 2008)
[n.b. This alternet link still works as of March 10, 2016]
http://www.alternet.org/democracy/94046/how_washington%27s_right-wing_wrecking_crew_robbed_us_blind/?page=entire
2. The Wave of “Capitol Crimes” Continues
by: Bill Moyers and Michael Winship on Truthout, July 31, 2008.
Bill Moyers Journal is airing an updated version of the stunning Capital Crimes documentary about corruption in Washington that aired two years ago. You can see the four parts on line with a high speed connection. Or you can download them as (flv) files with the Firefox DownloadHelper add-on and watch later with my favorite video player application, Media Player Classic.
[n.b. As of March 10, 2016, the play buttons still work and the transcripts are still there in this fabulous three part series. Bingo!!!]
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/08012008/watch.html
----------------------------
[March 10, 2016 Here are some further articles, good articles, by Thomas Frank that I sent after August 8, 2008. I am now archiving and compiling them or a few of them. And yes, they too still work:]
sent August 17, 2008:
The plot against liberal America
http://www.newstatesman.com/north-america/2008/08/liberal-state-government
"This is an edited extract from Thomas Frank's The Wrecking Crew, published this month [August] by Harvill Secker"
[back to August 20, 2008] Yes this is an interesting article. It is basically a nasty trick. To begin with, it starts off with the words, "Most Americans revile socialism... ."
"Socialism" is a word without a clear definition. Most Americans have no idea what "socialism" is. If Americans do have a negative knee-jerk reaction to the word "socialism" I think that is because it is easy to get it mixed up with communism, which reminds us of the Cold War, or because some have it mixed up with Marxism, which is one kind of "socialism." And of course Karl Marx wrote a book with the word "communist" in the title. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_marx
[March 10, 2016: Since this archive post is for serious students of all kinds of things, obviously, this is a huge article that I have not sent out. I may send it out or I may decide that your eyes would glaze over trying to understand it. So here is your chance, perhaps your only chance. If I do send it, the subject line might be:
----------------------------
[March 10, 2016 Here are some further articles, good articles, by Thomas Frank that I sent after August 8, 2008. I am now archiving and compiling them or a few of them. And yes, they too still work:]
sent August 17, 2008:
The plot against liberal America
http://www.newstatesman.com/north-america/2008/08/liberal-state-government
"This is an edited extract from Thomas Frank's The Wrecking Crew, published this month [August] by Harvill Secker"
sent August 20, 2008
Subject: Republican cyber crime expert says do NOT trust voting machines
http://www.alternet.org/democracy/94895/voting_machines_can_never_be_trusted%2C_says_gop_computer_security_expert/?page=1
Americans may not want to believe that there are very serious and very smart Republican who want to steal elections and do steal elections. But there are. That fits perfectly with the major ongoing Republican effort to change this country permanently to a one party system as set forth in the new book that I wrote about recently, The Wrecking Crew, by Thomas Frank.
I missed this interview with Mr. Stephen Spoonamore when it aired two years ago. Mr. Spoonamore comes over as a supremely arrogant individual, but there is no mistaking the fact that he knows his subject. He works for credit card companies chasing data thieves, identity thieves around the globe, and also consults with government agencies including the Secret Service, the Pentagon, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in criminal matters.
Mr. Spoonamore said he is "a conservative" and wants Republicans to win elections legitimately. He stated emphatically that he is NOT among the Republicans who want Republicans to steal elections for their party's candidates.
And he says that voting machines, especially including but not limited to Diebold voting machines, are about stealing elections. Great effort by banks and credit card companies keeps credit card fraud to about two percent of transactions--the best they can do. Even that much margin of error is not acceptable when it comes to elections. Over and over Mr. Spoonamore states that the only reliable method of tabulating votes is with the use of paper ballots.
The work of keeping credit card fraud to a minimum includes bank employees--not just Diebold employees--reviewing every line of code in the software in Diebold ATM machines. No one other than Diebold reviews the code in Diebold voting machines. Mike Connell, the Republican IT expert who set up Ohio's computers for the 2004 election was simultaneously running the IT network for the Bush/Cheney 2004 campaign. He is also co-owner of the company that registered and administered the website for the so-called "Swiftboat Veterans for Truth" at that time.
One of the things Mr. Spoonamore knows for sure about Diebold voting machines is that they allow for negative numbers of votes--something for which there is no conceivable legitimate reason. In other words, in Diebold voting machines it is possible to open the voting for a candidate with minus one hundred votes set in the machine, for example, so that the candidate has to get a hundred votes just to get up to zero. And of course it is very easy to "flip the votes" from one candidate to another. Mr. Spoonamore said that the discrepancies we have seen between official tallies and exit polls is impossible without something being wrong.
There is much more. There is a lawsuit pending in Ohio over the 2004 election. The plaintiffs are after Mike Connell to give a deposition, and Stephen Spoonamore is their expert witness.
The article gives YouTube windows for watching the interview in pieces. I watched the entirety by downloading http://www.velvetrevolution.us/prosecute_rove/images/Spoon_Full.wmv .
Larry
http://www.alternet.org/democracy/94895/voting_machines_can_never_be_trusted%2C_says_gop_computer_security_expert/?page=1
Americans may not want to believe that there are very serious and very smart Republican who want to steal elections and do steal elections. But there are. That fits perfectly with the major ongoing Republican effort to change this country permanently to a one party system as set forth in the new book that I wrote about recently, The Wrecking Crew, by Thomas Frank.
I missed this interview with Mr. Stephen Spoonamore when it aired two years ago. Mr. Spoonamore comes over as a supremely arrogant individual, but there is no mistaking the fact that he knows his subject. He works for credit card companies chasing data thieves, identity thieves around the globe, and also consults with government agencies including the Secret Service, the Pentagon, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in criminal matters.
Mr. Spoonamore said he is "a conservative" and wants Republicans to win elections legitimately. He stated emphatically that he is NOT among the Republicans who want Republicans to steal elections for their party's candidates.
And he says that voting machines, especially including but not limited to Diebold voting machines, are about stealing elections. Great effort by banks and credit card companies keeps credit card fraud to about two percent of transactions--the best they can do. Even that much margin of error is not acceptable when it comes to elections. Over and over Mr. Spoonamore states that the only reliable method of tabulating votes is with the use of paper ballots.
The work of keeping credit card fraud to a minimum includes bank employees--not just Diebold employees--reviewing every line of code in the software in Diebold ATM machines. No one other than Diebold reviews the code in Diebold voting machines. Mike Connell, the Republican IT expert who set up Ohio's computers for the 2004 election was simultaneously running the IT network for the Bush/Cheney 2004 campaign. He is also co-owner of the company that registered and administered the website for the so-called "Swiftboat Veterans for Truth" at that time.
One of the things Mr. Spoonamore knows for sure about Diebold voting machines is that they allow for negative numbers of votes--something for which there is no conceivable legitimate reason. In other words, in Diebold voting machines it is possible to open the voting for a candidate with minus one hundred votes set in the machine, for example, so that the candidate has to get a hundred votes just to get up to zero. And of course it is very easy to "flip the votes" from one candidate to another. Mr. Spoonamore said that the discrepancies we have seen between official tallies and exit polls is impossible without something being wrong.
There is much more. There is a lawsuit pending in Ohio over the 2004 election. The plaintiffs are after Mike Connell to give a deposition, and Stephen Spoonamore is their expert witness.
The article gives YouTube windows for watching the interview in pieces. I watched the entirety by downloading http://www.velvetrevolution.us/prosecute_rove/images/Spoon_Full.wmv .
Larry
[sent August 20, 2008:]
Subject: Re: Barack Obama
the "socialist"
This concerns a URL a cousin sent me,
This concerns a URL a cousin sent me,
[The link that was here no longer works. I am replacing it with this March 10, 2016 Google search. It appears that some of the hits are along the same lines. https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#safe=off&q=%22Barack+Obama+the+%27socialist%27%22+2008]
[back to August 20, 2008] Yes this is an interesting article. It is basically a nasty trick. To begin with, it starts off with the words, "Most Americans revile socialism... ."
"Socialism" is a word without a clear definition. Most Americans have no idea what "socialism" is. If Americans do have a negative knee-jerk reaction to the word "socialism" I think that is because it is easy to get it mixed up with communism, which reminds us of the Cold War, or because some have it mixed up with Marxism, which is one kind of "socialism." And of course Karl Marx wrote a book with the word "communist" in the title. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_marx
[March 10, 2016: Since this archive post is for serious students of all kinds of things, obviously, this is a huge article that I have not sent out. I may send it out or I may decide that your eyes would glaze over trying to understand it. So here is your chance, perhaps your only chance. If I do send it, the subject line might be:
Subject: Yikes! Economics! March?, 2016 after something I wrote privately to my very smart wife:
I developed great respect for Michael Hudson a few years ago by reading some things that were not quite this hard. This is a presentation that he gave as part of a debate at a big university in China last September, 2015. Good luck. I got through some things that I do not understand and found some things here and there that I think I do understand. You can probably understand it better than I if you care to put your mind to it. I would not say it's fun, and I know you're very busy. One thing I do get from it is that one of the important predictions by Karl Marx have come true in the intervening time, but two other very important predictions have not. All three of those important predictions took up an entire book volume.
http://michael-hudson.com/2015/10/the-paradox-of-financialized-industrialization/
I was trying to locate support for a statement I made to you and others, yesterday I think it was, about debt needing to increase or else. This is not it, at least not clearly. But that is my excuse for finding this. :-7 I may decide to go back into my archives that I maintain privately and put up earlier articles by Michael Hudson. I have not seen him writing very often, but whenever I have seen something of his I have been extremely impressed. In my saying that I guess one has to assume that yes I am claiming that I am not totally stupid or ignorant either one. :-)
---------End March 10, 2016 insert---------
[back to August 20, 2008] From Wikipedia: "Since the 19th century, socialists have not agreed on
a common doctrine or program. Various adherents of socialist movements
are split into differing and sometimes opposing branches, particularly
between reformists and revolutionaries and Marxists and non-Marxists.
Some socialists have championed the complete nationalization of the
means of production, while social democrats have proposed selective
nationalization of key industries within the framework of mixed
economies... ." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism
Do take a look on the upper right of that Wiki page at all the different kinds of political philosophies that are called "socialism." They are very different from each other.
In fact, Americans are NOT opposed to everything that those who believe in government dominated by corporate influence label "socialism."
I have many times lately mentioned the book The Shock Doctrine," by Naomi Klein. I wish you would either get it from your local library or buy it and, either way, read it. Although I've mentioned a number of books, that is the only serious book I've actually read in the past few months. You can get some of it from the reviews, but not enough.
http://www.powells.com/biblio/18-9780312427993-0
http://www.amazon.com/Shock-Doctrine-Rise-Disaster-Capitalism/dp/0312427999/
In the past 30 years or so, some of the very wealthy people of the world have taken over a number of so-called third world countries in an effort to increase their wealth even more. One thing that these people do as a standard practice is to label anything that gets in the way of corporate profits as "socialism," said as if "socialism" were a dirty word. They are working on doing the same thing here in America.
Having public highways can be called a form of socialism; no one is opposed to public highways. Public water systems can be called socialism. There are wars going on in various parts of the world where large corporations such as Bechtel have bribed public officials to privatize the water systems and then raised water rates to the point where many people cannot afford water. So far most but not all locales in America have managed to fight them off.
Saul Alinsky died in Carmel, California in 1972, when Barack Obama was 11 years old. Saul Alinksy's last book was published in 1971, 37 years ago. I am old enough to remember the 1960's quite well I graduated from high school in 1962. Our language was quite different back then. There were a lot of people that were called "radicals." They did crazy things like going to Selma, Alabama to help people of color register to vote. I remember that being big then. I started college at Swarthmore, and some of the students at Swarthmore were involved. For more on Saul Alinsky see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_Alinsky
Much has changed since the 1960's. With the development of globalization, American workers have lost most of their political clout, and most people's buying power has diminished. People delude themselves that increased corporate profits will "lift all boats," but nothing like that has happened yet. The top one percent (1%) of the people with the most wealth have over half (50%+) of the money--more than the money that 99 percent of the people have all together, and the trend to increase that disparity continues. And I do not see Barack Obama or anyone else being able to do much about that even if they wanted to.
Yes the highway infrastructure in the U.S. is deteriorating. Yes a high percentage of the bridges in the U.S. are nearing the end of their 50 year lives. And I'm sure that as disasters begin happening from that direction corporations are all ready with plans to take over and make big profits from them, just as happened in New Orleans.
Even the armed forces can be called "socialistic." They are a government service paid for by taxes. Halliburton is all in favor of privatizing everything including the military, to take it out of government control and make huge profits. Halliburton does not care that private militias cost taxpayers much more than do the government armed forces.
The point: Calling something "socialism" these days is just a form of nastiness on the part of those who want a government dominated by corporate profit-making. No one except the extremely wealthy wants to live in a country that is entirely dominated by corporate profit-making. We are headed in that direction and have been for many years. But most Americans do want some limits on corporate rapaciousness even if the corporatists call those limits socialistic.
After having said all this, you know I am not totally thrilled with Barack Obama. But it is very clear to me that he is way safer than the alternative.
I note that the article you sent claims to be "by Investor's Business Daily." In other words, there is no author willing to be identified with it, no one whom I can look up in wikipedia to get an idea about.
See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatocracy
http://www.newstatesman.com/north-america/2008/08/liberal-state-government
A note about racism: I was brought up a racist, as I've said. There were no black people at all where I lived until I got to college, and the stories I heard (from my grandfather) were all bad. I've heard from some who are afraid that Barack Obama has a "black agenda." Even if that were true, Congress is still mostly white. I think we white guys can take some comfort from that. McCain is a white guy but I think he is way more dangerous to us. Either way let us try to tell the truth about things. Whether you're a Christian or a humanist or think of yourself as a moral person at all, isn't lying a moral issue. Both Obama and McCain may be liars, but two wrongs just do not make a right.
[March 10, 2016 Many more messages followed on the topic of President Obama being accused of being a socialist back in 2008, and there are also more that turn up that reference author Thomas Frank. Perhaps I will manage to get them all archived here sometime. One can dream. :-)]
Do take a look on the upper right of that Wiki page at all the different kinds of political philosophies that are called "socialism." They are very different from each other.
In fact, Americans are NOT opposed to everything that those who believe in government dominated by corporate influence label "socialism."
I have many times lately mentioned the book The Shock Doctrine," by Naomi Klein. I wish you would either get it from your local library or buy it and, either way, read it. Although I've mentioned a number of books, that is the only serious book I've actually read in the past few months. You can get some of it from the reviews, but not enough.
http://www.powells.com/biblio/18-9780312427993-0
http://www.amazon.com/Shock-Doctrine-Rise-Disaster-Capitalism/dp/0312427999/
In the past 30 years or so, some of the very wealthy people of the world have taken over a number of so-called third world countries in an effort to increase their wealth even more. One thing that these people do as a standard practice is to label anything that gets in the way of corporate profits as "socialism," said as if "socialism" were a dirty word. They are working on doing the same thing here in America.
Having public highways can be called a form of socialism; no one is opposed to public highways. Public water systems can be called socialism. There are wars going on in various parts of the world where large corporations such as Bechtel have bribed public officials to privatize the water systems and then raised water rates to the point where many people cannot afford water. So far most but not all locales in America have managed to fight them off.
Saul Alinsky died in Carmel, California in 1972, when Barack Obama was 11 years old. Saul Alinksy's last book was published in 1971, 37 years ago. I am old enough to remember the 1960's quite well I graduated from high school in 1962. Our language was quite different back then. There were a lot of people that were called "radicals." They did crazy things like going to Selma, Alabama to help people of color register to vote. I remember that being big then. I started college at Swarthmore, and some of the students at Swarthmore were involved. For more on Saul Alinsky see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_Alinsky
Much has changed since the 1960's. With the development of globalization, American workers have lost most of their political clout, and most people's buying power has diminished. People delude themselves that increased corporate profits will "lift all boats," but nothing like that has happened yet. The top one percent (1%) of the people with the most wealth have over half (50%+) of the money--more than the money that 99 percent of the people have all together, and the trend to increase that disparity continues. And I do not see Barack Obama or anyone else being able to do much about that even if they wanted to.
Yes the highway infrastructure in the U.S. is deteriorating. Yes a high percentage of the bridges in the U.S. are nearing the end of their 50 year lives. And I'm sure that as disasters begin happening from that direction corporations are all ready with plans to take over and make big profits from them, just as happened in New Orleans.
Even the armed forces can be called "socialistic." They are a government service paid for by taxes. Halliburton is all in favor of privatizing everything including the military, to take it out of government control and make huge profits. Halliburton does not care that private militias cost taxpayers much more than do the government armed forces.
The point: Calling something "socialism" these days is just a form of nastiness on the part of those who want a government dominated by corporate profit-making. No one except the extremely wealthy wants to live in a country that is entirely dominated by corporate profit-making. We are headed in that direction and have been for many years. But most Americans do want some limits on corporate rapaciousness even if the corporatists call those limits socialistic.
After having said all this, you know I am not totally thrilled with Barack Obama. But it is very clear to me that he is way safer than the alternative.
I note that the article you sent claims to be "by Investor's Business Daily." In other words, there is no author willing to be identified with it, no one whom I can look up in wikipedia to get an idea about.
See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatocracy
http://www.newstatesman.com/north-america/2008/08/liberal-state-government
A note about racism: I was brought up a racist, as I've said. There were no black people at all where I lived until I got to college, and the stories I heard (from my grandfather) were all bad. I've heard from some who are afraid that Barack Obama has a "black agenda." Even if that were true, Congress is still mostly white. I think we white guys can take some comfort from that. McCain is a white guy but I think he is way more dangerous to us. Either way let us try to tell the truth about things. Whether you're a Christian or a humanist or think of yourself as a moral person at all, isn't lying a moral issue. Both Obama and McCain may be liars, but two wrongs just do not make a right.
[March 10, 2016 Many more messages followed on the topic of President Obama being accused of being a socialist back in 2008, and there are also more that turn up that reference author Thomas Frank. Perhaps I will manage to get them all archived here sometime. One can dream. :-)]
