So Emmanuel Macron is being hailed as the Great White Hope of the neoLibCons, saving the paradigm from the likes of the nasty and unrepentant white rightists who have been running rampant through the Euro-Anglo-American globalist Empire.
Indeed.
Or perhaps not.
The situation in France still seems somewhat fluid as "doubts" about Macron's mandate continue in the face of his rather thumping defeat of the white rightist candidate LePen. The problem I'm hearing most frequently is that he ran and won without traditional party support and he will have a tough, nay impossible time winning a majority in parliament, leaving him in a kind of limbo with little or no political backing.
On the other hand, there is a remarkable propaganda effort to prop him up as the savior of civilization in the face of the barbarian hordes -- such as Trump and his diminishing cohort of fanboys.
Hillary and Obama apparently are going all in trying to save the paradigm for the next generation, and I even heard Condoleeeeeeezzza Rice on the radio yesterday defending not just the appalling catastrophe of the Iraq invasion and occupation but the neoLibCon ideas behind that and so much of the disaster we've been heir to since (it seems like) forever.
These people are never right, but they are intent on bulling their way forward in their wrongness come what may.
Great.
Just great.
What did we do to deserve this?
Showing posts with label Con Artists. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Con Artists. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 9, 2017
Saturday, December 10, 2016
Reality Bites -- Nomi Prins Tells It Straight
Funny.
Jeebus.
Fore!
Trump’s Bait and Switch
How to Swamp Washington and Double-cross Your Supporters Big Time
By Nomi Prins
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176219/tomgram%3A_nomi_prins%2C_the_march_of_the_billionaires/#more
I'll excerpt a few pertinent graphs from it, but please read the whole thing.
First of all, Nomi Prins is a well known and respected writer on matters of politics and economics. She has the requisite Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs background to know the real deal about the finance sector. She is somewhat of the leftish persuasion, but in our political realm, that's not really leftist at all. There is no left to speak of in US politics or economics, it's all rightist and it is more and more reactionary all the time.
Prins is telling the truth here, and the truth is kryptonite to Trump and his followers.
They can't stand it.
So what is the truth here? Let's go through some of her points, one by one.
His attacks on working people via his appointments and his Twitter machine should have been a wake-up call to his working class followers, but in the Trumpiverse, every attack is deserved. The people, institutions and companies he goes after deserve it because they are disloyal or disobedient or both. For them, no quarter. Regardless of anything else.
Of course for disaster capitalists, an "abyss of inequality and instability" is perfect. Let's not forget that, either.
There follow details of the Harding-esque nature of the coming Trump Regime a detailed examination of the important players in the New America being set up.
Finally, wrapping up, Prins notes that
For some of his followers, it was. And they hope to profit on their insight and loyalty. Others may not have seen the thieves picking their pockets as they joyously shouted "Lock her up!" or whatever, and don't see them now. Little or nothing can persuade them that they've been conned and will be fleeced of what little remains of their pelf.
They're not the only victims, of course. Everyone who can be will be relieved of everything the grubbing con artists can get their hands on. That's baked in. Anyone who tries to protect and preserve any shred of their former lives will easily become a target. That's how these things work.
Some of Trump's loyalists are eager for that outcome, looking forward to how they might profit from the ascension of His Gold Plated Self. The opportunities are immense. The victims deserve their fate.
Trouble is, they don't recognize that even the strongest loyalists can wind up in the victim basket. Or if they do recognize it, they think they will escape. Maybe it's a lack of knowledge and understanding of history, maybe it's contrariness and pigheaded self absorption, I don't know. But their illusion of safety under the circumstances is false.
Jeebus.
Fore!
Trump’s Bait and Switch
How to Swamp Washington and Double-cross Your Supporters Big Time
By Nomi Prins
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176219/tomgram%3A_nomi_prins%2C_the_march_of_the_billionaires/#more
I'll excerpt a few pertinent graphs from it, but please read the whole thing.
First of all, Nomi Prins is a well known and respected writer on matters of politics and economics. She has the requisite Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs background to know the real deal about the finance sector. She is somewhat of the leftish persuasion, but in our political realm, that's not really leftist at all. There is no left to speak of in US politics or economics, it's all rightist and it is more and more reactionary all the time.
Prins is telling the truth here, and the truth is kryptonite to Trump and his followers.
They can't stand it.
So what is the truth here? Let's go through some of her points, one by one.
Trump’s version of a political and financial establishment, just forming, will be bound together by certain behavioral patterns born of relationships among those of similar status, background, social position, legacy connections, and an assumed allegiance to a dogma of self-aggrandizement that overshadows everything else. In the realm of politico-financial power and in Trump’s experience and ideology, the one with the most toys always wins. So it’s hardly a surprise that his money- and power-centric cabinet won’t be focused on public service or patriotism or civic duty, but on the consolidation of corporate and private gain at the expense of the citizenry.The signs have been plain since the campaign, of course, but as the Gold Plated Great Man fills his cabinet and appoints loyalists and cronies to other positions of import in the coming Regime, literally daring anyone to do anything about it, there is no sign of public service or public interest in the choices and their life's work at all, any more than there is any sign of patriotism or civic duty in Trump's background. It just doesn't exist. There is every sign of consolidation of (favored) corporate and private gain at the total expense of the citizenry.
It’s already obvious that, to Trump, “draining the swamp” means filling it with new layers of golden sludge...Gee, ya think?
The rarified world of his cabinet choices is certainly a universe away from the struggling working class folks he bamboozled with promises of bringing back American “greatness.”Let's call a con a con and be done with it.
His attacks on working people via his appointments and his Twitter machine should have been a wake-up call to his working class followers, but in the Trumpiverse, every attack is deserved. The people, institutions and companies he goes after deserve it because they are disloyal or disobedient or both. For them, no quarter. Regardless of anything else.
what is guaranteed to be an abyss of inequality and instability.Precisely. This is what some of us have been warning of. Strangely, now that these warnings are being listened to, known of, and worried over outside the Cassandra Class, the opportunities for action become more and more limited. It doesn't mean that nothing can be done, just that what can be done about it is shrinking.
Of course for disaster capitalists, an "abyss of inequality and instability" is perfect. Let's not forget that, either.
There follow details of the Harding-esque nature of the coming Trump Regime a detailed examination of the important players in the New America being set up.
Finally, wrapping up, Prins notes that
His new incarnation of the old establishment largely consists of billionaires and multimillionaires with less than appetizing nicknames from their previous predatory careers. They favor government support for their private gain as well as deregulation, several of them having already specialized in making money off the collateral damage from such policies....
Trump is now surrounding himself with a crew of crony capitalists who understand boardroom speak, but have nothing in common with most Americans. So give him credit: his administration is already one of the great political bait-and-switch productions in our history and it hasn’t even begun. Count on one thing: in his presidency he’ll only double down on that “promise.”Well, yes. Wasn't it obvious?
For some of his followers, it was. And they hope to profit on their insight and loyalty. Others may not have seen the thieves picking their pockets as they joyously shouted "Lock her up!" or whatever, and don't see them now. Little or nothing can persuade them that they've been conned and will be fleeced of what little remains of their pelf.
They're not the only victims, of course. Everyone who can be will be relieved of everything the grubbing con artists can get their hands on. That's baked in. Anyone who tries to protect and preserve any shred of their former lives will easily become a target. That's how these things work.
Some of Trump's loyalists are eager for that outcome, looking forward to how they might profit from the ascension of His Gold Plated Self. The opportunities are immense. The victims deserve their fate.
Trouble is, they don't recognize that even the strongest loyalists can wind up in the victim basket. Or if they do recognize it, they think they will escape. Maybe it's a lack of knowledge and understanding of history, maybe it's contrariness and pigheaded self absorption, I don't know. But their illusion of safety under the circumstances is false.
Friday, November 18, 2016
Overturning Myths and Expectations
If nothing else, this election has kicked the complacent in the butt. The complacent have had a number of these kicks lately, but it's not entirely clear the lesson has been learned. This is quite a different country, it seems to me, than conventional wisdom would have us believe, and as all the hue and cry and schadenfreude and what have you over the outcome continue unabated -- no, no, they're redoubling! -- it doesn't appear that many observers or opinion leaders have the least clue to what is really going on. It's all about confirming bias and believing falsehood, in other words being willingly conned. And that goes for pretty much all "sides" in the "national conversation" about what happened and where we go from here. I'm as guilty of that as anyone, though of course I see myself as a font of wisdom and objective reasoning. Of course. Don't we all?
I've been through these kinds of elections many times -- going back to Ronald Reagan's California gubernatorial victory over Pat Brown in 1966. The shock then couldn't have been any greater than the shock is now, I didn't notice at the time, but I've heard that there was a similar shock nationally when JFK defeated Richard Nixon in 1960. The whole Nixon impeachment/resignation drama was certainly shocking at the time, but previously the shocks of the assassination of President Kennedy, and the undermining of LBJ's administration by anti-war fury among other things, followed by the multiple assassinations of 1968 acted as one shock after another. Nothing has been the same since.
Perhaps the most appalling shock of a presidential (s)elecction was the elevation of G W B thanks to the lawless intervention of the Supreme Court in 2000. Nothing like that had ever happened before. A naked power grab, quite simply, with the open connivance and participation of a faction of the sitting government. It was a coup, right before our eyes, and nothing was done about it.
The popular rebellion that tried to get going several times from the beginning of the Bush2 Regime fizzled out, partly because the media ignored it, being as it was fully in the tank with the usurpers. And the media was in the tank until the whole appalling mess unraveled when the economy collapsed.
The Obama elections and administration haven't been particularly shocking -- except to the white supremacists who never accommodated the notion of Negroes in the White House as anything but doormen and butlers and such -- it's been mostly a pause, a breathing space, before the next set of outrages and shocks, and here they come!
Oh yeah baby. Reversion time it will be. Reversion to America's Greatness, with White Men in charge the way they're supposed to be. You betcha. Hillary wouldn't have been a White Man (damn her all to hell!) and she wouldn't have undone the diversity progress that's been made in the government for a generation, but I have to agree with some observers that her administration, the permanent US government, and US society as a whole would still be dominated by White Men, and that white supremacy, while more or less subdued, would still be the dominant belief of many, perhaps most Americans.
Trump merely makes it explicit. Oh boy, does he.
Assuming he takes office -- and there is still some marginal doubt that will happen -- he will govern as a White Supremacist without a doubt in my mind. However, so would Hillary. And to a great extent, so has Obama.
They pretty much have to because it's baked into America's "Greatness." The US wouldn't be what it is and what it wants to be without White Supremacy.
A reversion to White Supremacy as it was as recently as the 1950s looks to be in the cards, and that's not a good thing in my mind. To many white people, the way White Supremacy operated outside the South in the 1950s was very benign and benevolent, and even in the South, as long as the colored didn't get uppity, it was tol'able.
As long as the colored and other inferiors didn't cause trouble, so the story went, they didn't get trouble.
Of course it wasn't true, but that's the myth of the era.
That's the era that Trump came up in. He's a little older than me, so he got a headstart. Of course he was born into wealth and raised in privilege (white privilege supplemented by the privilege of wealth) and was educated in private boarding schools at a time when the people who went to them were considered the offspring of the cream of the crop. He got in trouble, though, for misbehaving at one school and was then placed in a military boarding school connected with West Point to learn discipline and correct behavior. As far as anyone knows, the lessons didn't take, in part because the New York Military Academy saw his misbehavior -- particularly his bullying and "persuasion" -- as an asset rather than something to be trained out of him, and he was pretty much allowed his head.
I didn't have anything like that background. No. Not much. I was raised by a single working mother in California (who at one point said she wanted to send me to military school to train the rebellion out of me), and until I was ten years old, we always lived in lower or working class mixed race neighborhoods. When I was ten, I encountered middle class and upper middle class and then upper class "all white" society for the first time, and I recoiled -- still do, really.
It was crazy, and the beliefs that insulated white people had of their inferiors (and make no mistake, in all white society, the colored are most definitely considered inferior) were ridiculous and wrong. But since they only knew them as servants and field hands, how were insulated white folks to know that? They couldn't, right? And they didn't. And they had no better beliefs about lower and working class white folks, either. This was in the late 1950s, so I experienced it at its apogee before its fall. Or rather, its retreat. It never fell.
This is not to say that some of the white supremacists I encountered and knew weren't in many ways "good people." They were. some of them. They had no open animosity toward their inferiors -- but they didn't mix with them, either. Some employed Asians, Blacks, or Hispanics as servants, without any sort of conscious prejudice toward them, but many who had servants at the time only employed white people. Again, there was likely no conscious prejudice involved, it was just the way things were. They were following the precedent set by their parents and grandparents and the expectations of their class. That's all.
For the most part, these white-rightist-supremacists were ideological Progressives. I've tried to clarify the nature of Progressivism in other posts, but I don't think I've quite hit the spot. California was, until Reagan's terms as governor, as fully a Progressive state as there has ever been in the United States, and it still echoes some of that past, despite Reagan's successful efforts to dismantle Progressivism as California's governmental operating system.
Progressivism was a Republican innovation to counter the spreading threat of Populism that the Democratic Party was utilizing for political purposes. The basic Progressive theory was "rule by managerial elites" with the "consent" of the ruled. Experts in many fields would be called in, they would study problems and make expert recommendations regarding solutions, the public or their representatives would be given a chance to say yay or nay -- always under the assumption that they would say yay, which is what they usually did when allowed to opine -- and the expert cadres would be set to work. Previously intractable problems were indeed addressed and many were solved to the benefit of all. On the other hand, democratic principles were subverted, the "consent of the governed" part was often skipped in practice, and in operation, Progressivism was deeply intertwined with white supremacism. It was taken for granted without question. "Everyone knew" whites, particularly Anglo-Saxons and so called Nordics, were superior. Not only were they superior to the colored races, they were inherently superior to other whites, and they were meant to rule.
The reason for the withdrawal of consent for the continuation of Progressive Rule in California was simple enough to understand. By 1966, there had been numerous student rebellions in public colleges and universities (there was even a walk out in my high school) and there had been spectacular uprisings of the disincluded in urban environments, just then becoming known as "ghettos." And of course, the hated Hippies were arising.
Pat Brown, who had been a very successful Democratic and Progressive governor for two terms, was unable -- and perhaps unwilling -- to bring various rebellions under control. He was seen as feckless and ineffective against the urban blacks and rebellious white students. Both groups were seen by many Californians as "undeserving" of the privileges and benefits they had been granted by their Progressive overlords.
So the voters rebelled and installed a nonentity in the Corner Office, a nonentity who proceeded to crack down on the rebels as harshly as he and his cohorts felt necessary, to the cheers of many. Meanwhile he was instituting policies and programs to cripple public education, starting at the top and moving downwards, and insofar as possible eliminating the state hospital system for the mentally ill and insane. In the process his administration began the dismantlement of the Progressive operating system of government, substituting an advance on a prior form of government which was typical before the Progressive Revolution (essentially re-opening government to rule by corporate interests for their pecuniary benefit.)
Democrats, to their undying shame, largely went along with it. It was all based on a theory that government existed primarily to punish the lower orders and to reward the rich and powerful.
That set the pattern for what was to come nationally under Reagan when he became president, but under Democrats, too. And here we are.
Trump in some ways is the natural culmination of that theory of governance.
But Hillary, had she been able to capture the prize, wouldn't have been so much different. She wouldn't have the trappings and the glitter that Trump brings with him, but essentially their politics and policies are very similar, they just have different targets for their "wrath" as it were.
The key difference between them, I think, is that he was always sheltered and showered with the privileges of his wealth and whiteness, and she was not. He started out on third base, as they say, and succeed as a conman and gangster to reach the top of his field -- and then (apparently) become president. She worked her way up from next to nothing -- she wasn't poor, but she was brought up in a very abusive household -- and she made many indelicate compromises along the way.
What I've said about the two of them is that he is a crude and rude representative of his class, and she is the model of those who work for them.
Sigh.
I don't expect him to be any less destructive of the public good than his predecessors, but I wouldn't have expected much good to come from Hillary's reign had she succeeded. As I say, they had different targets, but in the end they both favor the already rich and powerful.
It's a complete myth that she would start WWIII; just as it's a myth that he will prevent it. It's one of the more pernicious myths of the election season, and it's unshakable among believers.
But there are many others. There's been a great deal of projection onto both candidates, most of which has nothing to do with them and everything to do with the unmet needs of the hoi-polloi. Neither candidate would actually meet those needs, however. Both would try to bamboozle their way along.
I believe the plug was pulled on Hillary primarily because she showed she was not much of a bamboozler when it came to the end when she might have turned Comey thing around. She didn't, she blew it.
Trump, on the other hand, showed himself to be 1) a master entertainer; 2) a master conman. Those are two absolute necessities in the Post-modern Presidency. Hillary just didn't come up to snuff.
Well, enough of that. We'll get through this one way or another.
I've been through these kinds of elections many times -- going back to Ronald Reagan's California gubernatorial victory over Pat Brown in 1966. The shock then couldn't have been any greater than the shock is now, I didn't notice at the time, but I've heard that there was a similar shock nationally when JFK defeated Richard Nixon in 1960. The whole Nixon impeachment/resignation drama was certainly shocking at the time, but previously the shocks of the assassination of President Kennedy, and the undermining of LBJ's administration by anti-war fury among other things, followed by the multiple assassinations of 1968 acted as one shock after another. Nothing has been the same since.
Perhaps the most appalling shock of a presidential (s)elecction was the elevation of G W B thanks to the lawless intervention of the Supreme Court in 2000. Nothing like that had ever happened before. A naked power grab, quite simply, with the open connivance and participation of a faction of the sitting government. It was a coup, right before our eyes, and nothing was done about it.
The popular rebellion that tried to get going several times from the beginning of the Bush2 Regime fizzled out, partly because the media ignored it, being as it was fully in the tank with the usurpers. And the media was in the tank until the whole appalling mess unraveled when the economy collapsed.
The Obama elections and administration haven't been particularly shocking -- except to the white supremacists who never accommodated the notion of Negroes in the White House as anything but doormen and butlers and such -- it's been mostly a pause, a breathing space, before the next set of outrages and shocks, and here they come!
Oh yeah baby. Reversion time it will be. Reversion to America's Greatness, with White Men in charge the way they're supposed to be. You betcha. Hillary wouldn't have been a White Man (damn her all to hell!) and she wouldn't have undone the diversity progress that's been made in the government for a generation, but I have to agree with some observers that her administration, the permanent US government, and US society as a whole would still be dominated by White Men, and that white supremacy, while more or less subdued, would still be the dominant belief of many, perhaps most Americans.
Trump merely makes it explicit. Oh boy, does he.
Assuming he takes office -- and there is still some marginal doubt that will happen -- he will govern as a White Supremacist without a doubt in my mind. However, so would Hillary. And to a great extent, so has Obama.
They pretty much have to because it's baked into America's "Greatness." The US wouldn't be what it is and what it wants to be without White Supremacy.
A reversion to White Supremacy as it was as recently as the 1950s looks to be in the cards, and that's not a good thing in my mind. To many white people, the way White Supremacy operated outside the South in the 1950s was very benign and benevolent, and even in the South, as long as the colored didn't get uppity, it was tol'able.
As long as the colored and other inferiors didn't cause trouble, so the story went, they didn't get trouble.
Of course it wasn't true, but that's the myth of the era.
That's the era that Trump came up in. He's a little older than me, so he got a headstart. Of course he was born into wealth and raised in privilege (white privilege supplemented by the privilege of wealth) and was educated in private boarding schools at a time when the people who went to them were considered the offspring of the cream of the crop. He got in trouble, though, for misbehaving at one school and was then placed in a military boarding school connected with West Point to learn discipline and correct behavior. As far as anyone knows, the lessons didn't take, in part because the New York Military Academy saw his misbehavior -- particularly his bullying and "persuasion" -- as an asset rather than something to be trained out of him, and he was pretty much allowed his head.
I didn't have anything like that background. No. Not much. I was raised by a single working mother in California (who at one point said she wanted to send me to military school to train the rebellion out of me), and until I was ten years old, we always lived in lower or working class mixed race neighborhoods. When I was ten, I encountered middle class and upper middle class and then upper class "all white" society for the first time, and I recoiled -- still do, really.
It was crazy, and the beliefs that insulated white people had of their inferiors (and make no mistake, in all white society, the colored are most definitely considered inferior) were ridiculous and wrong. But since they only knew them as servants and field hands, how were insulated white folks to know that? They couldn't, right? And they didn't. And they had no better beliefs about lower and working class white folks, either. This was in the late 1950s, so I experienced it at its apogee before its fall. Or rather, its retreat. It never fell.
This is not to say that some of the white supremacists I encountered and knew weren't in many ways "good people." They were. some of them. They had no open animosity toward their inferiors -- but they didn't mix with them, either. Some employed Asians, Blacks, or Hispanics as servants, without any sort of conscious prejudice toward them, but many who had servants at the time only employed white people. Again, there was likely no conscious prejudice involved, it was just the way things were. They were following the precedent set by their parents and grandparents and the expectations of their class. That's all.
For the most part, these white-rightist-supremacists were ideological Progressives. I've tried to clarify the nature of Progressivism in other posts, but I don't think I've quite hit the spot. California was, until Reagan's terms as governor, as fully a Progressive state as there has ever been in the United States, and it still echoes some of that past, despite Reagan's successful efforts to dismantle Progressivism as California's governmental operating system.
Progressivism was a Republican innovation to counter the spreading threat of Populism that the Democratic Party was utilizing for political purposes. The basic Progressive theory was "rule by managerial elites" with the "consent" of the ruled. Experts in many fields would be called in, they would study problems and make expert recommendations regarding solutions, the public or their representatives would be given a chance to say yay or nay -- always under the assumption that they would say yay, which is what they usually did when allowed to opine -- and the expert cadres would be set to work. Previously intractable problems were indeed addressed and many were solved to the benefit of all. On the other hand, democratic principles were subverted, the "consent of the governed" part was often skipped in practice, and in operation, Progressivism was deeply intertwined with white supremacism. It was taken for granted without question. "Everyone knew" whites, particularly Anglo-Saxons and so called Nordics, were superior. Not only were they superior to the colored races, they were inherently superior to other whites, and they were meant to rule.
The reason for the withdrawal of consent for the continuation of Progressive Rule in California was simple enough to understand. By 1966, there had been numerous student rebellions in public colleges and universities (there was even a walk out in my high school) and there had been spectacular uprisings of the disincluded in urban environments, just then becoming known as "ghettos." And of course, the hated Hippies were arising.
Pat Brown, who had been a very successful Democratic and Progressive governor for two terms, was unable -- and perhaps unwilling -- to bring various rebellions under control. He was seen as feckless and ineffective against the urban blacks and rebellious white students. Both groups were seen by many Californians as "undeserving" of the privileges and benefits they had been granted by their Progressive overlords.
So the voters rebelled and installed a nonentity in the Corner Office, a nonentity who proceeded to crack down on the rebels as harshly as he and his cohorts felt necessary, to the cheers of many. Meanwhile he was instituting policies and programs to cripple public education, starting at the top and moving downwards, and insofar as possible eliminating the state hospital system for the mentally ill and insane. In the process his administration began the dismantlement of the Progressive operating system of government, substituting an advance on a prior form of government which was typical before the Progressive Revolution (essentially re-opening government to rule by corporate interests for their pecuniary benefit.)
Democrats, to their undying shame, largely went along with it. It was all based on a theory that government existed primarily to punish the lower orders and to reward the rich and powerful.
That set the pattern for what was to come nationally under Reagan when he became president, but under Democrats, too. And here we are.
Trump in some ways is the natural culmination of that theory of governance.
But Hillary, had she been able to capture the prize, wouldn't have been so much different. She wouldn't have the trappings and the glitter that Trump brings with him, but essentially their politics and policies are very similar, they just have different targets for their "wrath" as it were.
The key difference between them, I think, is that he was always sheltered and showered with the privileges of his wealth and whiteness, and she was not. He started out on third base, as they say, and succeed as a conman and gangster to reach the top of his field -- and then (apparently) become president. She worked her way up from next to nothing -- she wasn't poor, but she was brought up in a very abusive household -- and she made many indelicate compromises along the way.
What I've said about the two of them is that he is a crude and rude representative of his class, and she is the model of those who work for them.
Sigh.
I don't expect him to be any less destructive of the public good than his predecessors, but I wouldn't have expected much good to come from Hillary's reign had she succeeded. As I say, they had different targets, but in the end they both favor the already rich and powerful.
It's a complete myth that she would start WWIII; just as it's a myth that he will prevent it. It's one of the more pernicious myths of the election season, and it's unshakable among believers.
But there are many others. There's been a great deal of projection onto both candidates, most of which has nothing to do with them and everything to do with the unmet needs of the hoi-polloi. Neither candidate would actually meet those needs, however. Both would try to bamboozle their way along.
I believe the plug was pulled on Hillary primarily because she showed she was not much of a bamboozler when it came to the end when she might have turned Comey thing around. She didn't, she blew it.
Trump, on the other hand, showed himself to be 1) a master entertainer; 2) a master conman. Those are two absolute necessities in the Post-modern Presidency. Hillary just didn't come up to snuff.
Well, enough of that. We'll get through this one way or another.
Monday, October 7, 2013
Regarding the House Gerrymander
It's been pointed out many times lately that the TeaBaggers in the House are running the show because they are all in safe seats and nothing at all can dislodge them short of revolution -- something that's not going to happen, at least not from the left.
Their districts were gerrymandered by Republican legislatures following the 2010 census; at this point, there's no way to rearrange the district boundaries until after the 2020 census. Isn't that special?
But the political failure, which isn't generally noted, goes back to the 2010 election, not the census, in which the Democrats basically ceded state level and many local level elections by not contesting seats or not contesting them vigorously (like funding Democratic candidates). This was one of the starkest signs that the Dems -- who had gained such majorities in the 2008 elections -- were simply giving up.
We may want to consider one day why the Big Wigs and Pooh-Bahs of the Party did this. From my perspective, it was a calculated and deliberate move, with full knowledge aforethought what it would lead to -- exactly where we are, with a government shutdown and looming federal government debt default, both engineered and implemented for one main reason: to have the ability and wherewithal and reason to "restructure" government along the lines of and in the interests of the corporate owners and rulers.
This is the End Game of the sequence of actions that became clear when the Supreme Court lawlessly intervened in the election of 2000, following, of course, the ridiculous spectacle of the Clinton Impeachment.
The High-level Dems in my view threw the election of 2010 for the purpose of enabling the Rs to manage their minority take-over gambit as smoothly as possible -- and as soon as they were able.
Here we are.
Their districts were gerrymandered by Republican legislatures following the 2010 census; at this point, there's no way to rearrange the district boundaries until after the 2020 census. Isn't that special?
But the political failure, which isn't generally noted, goes back to the 2010 election, not the census, in which the Democrats basically ceded state level and many local level elections by not contesting seats or not contesting them vigorously (like funding Democratic candidates). This was one of the starkest signs that the Dems -- who had gained such majorities in the 2008 elections -- were simply giving up.
We may want to consider one day why the Big Wigs and Pooh-Bahs of the Party did this. From my perspective, it was a calculated and deliberate move, with full knowledge aforethought what it would lead to -- exactly where we are, with a government shutdown and looming federal government debt default, both engineered and implemented for one main reason: to have the ability and wherewithal and reason to "restructure" government along the lines of and in the interests of the corporate owners and rulers.
This is the End Game of the sequence of actions that became clear when the Supreme Court lawlessly intervened in the election of 2000, following, of course, the ridiculous spectacle of the Clinton Impeachment.
The High-level Dems in my view threw the election of 2010 for the purpose of enabling the Rs to manage their minority take-over gambit as smoothly as possible -- and as soon as they were able.
Here we are.
Thursday, May 30, 2013
The Grift...
A friend of mine called from Sacramento the other day wanting to discuss the latest gossip regarding the Mayor (Kevin Johnson) and his wife (Michelle Rhee) and the way public monies were being divvied up to support the Sacramento Kings and various high-budget arts organizations... and I just sort of sighed one of my bigger sighs and pointed out that here in New Mexico (where he once lived), there may be plenty of grift, but nothing remotely like what I happily left behind in California, and there is nothing like the endless circular battles that literally get nowhere on behalf of the People while the con artists walk away with more millions lining their already bulging pockets.
Johnson and Rhee are two of the more notorious swindlers and grifters in California and the nation these days, known far and wide for their high-handedness in dealing with the rabble and their startling ability to extract millions by the hundreds out of the public coffers (and a handful of private benefactors, including, so I understand, the Kochs) on behalf of one or another of their "programs."
It doesn't take long to get very tired of this shit.
When I look at Johnson and Rhee, I see a couple of con artists who have parlayed their smooth talk and big grins into vast fortunes for themselves and untold misery for their marks. Long ago I stopped wondering why people bought into their flim-flam. Of course there are plenty of Big Money folks backing their charades, and the Big Money makes it possible for them to sell their snake oil as effectively as they do.
Ordinary People are highly vulnerable to their kind of All-American Bullshit.
It's the kind of Bullshit, too, that America has been built on from the beginning, which is part of the key to why it works so well even now, when so many people should be jaded and aware. They still fall for the cons.
Why do people fall for it? Well, I refer back to Meredith Wilson's "The Music Man." People want to believe. If you want a darker vision of what the grift is about, review your copy of Sinclair Lewis's "Elmer Gantry." People fall for the con-artists' blandishments because they want what they think the grifter is selling.
Johnson is focused on Making Sacramento A World-Class City -- a civic dream for as long as San Francisco has eclipsed the tattered majesty of California's Capital City. Say the last 150 years or so. Closer to 160 years by now. But KJ came to his current focus through some very highly profitable "education reform" by which his private education company St. HOPE took over the operations of the city's eponymous high school, turning it into a charter school. I won't go into the details of what happened, but it was a very profitable deal for KJ, not so much for the students and teachers nor for the citizens of Sacramento, some of whom are still bitter about it. Ultimately, KJ let go of St. HOPE (though one assumes he still profits from it) in order to run for Mayor -- a candidacy backed by the richest of Sacramento's rich from the get to now -- with stated objectives of keeping the Kings, building a new arena, and making Sacramento a World Class City.
Yes, well.
We all had heard that line many times before, but for once, voters believed it was possible through the agency of KJ's big, toothy grin, and so they put him in office and re-elected him even though he was essentially a failure.
Rhee, on the other hand, has stuck with the "education reform" grift and is making millions on her own account with her "Students First" con. It's really quite amazing how she continues to bamboozle the multitudes after her many failures, the high-light being her disastrous tenure as Chancellor of Washington DC's failing public schools.
But people want to believe the snake oil she's been selling will anoint their kids and make them smart and wise and successful, and she's just as happy to keep on selling it. With, of course, the backing of plenty of billionaires who help ensure her pitch is as perfect and effective as possible.
Public education in California has been on the ropes for many years, and the reasons why are plain enough to see. The system is wildly over-administered while being critically underfunded. Public schools are mandated to provide "quality education" (with an ever-shifting definition) to all, yet are burdened by top-heavy administrative requirements, and are frequently left without funding for even minimal educational purposes. There has long been a pretty obvious and deliberate policy of "administering public education to death."
The alternative private charter system largely eliminates the burden of administration (and service, but that's another issue) while providing enormous profits to the operators and proprietors of these private schools -- at the public's expense. It's a money-machine, whereas public schools have become a money-pit.
KJ and Rhee know how to squeeze the teats of the system for their own advantage. Bless their hearts.
But people really do want to believe in what they are selling. It's as American as apple pie. And I can't even bear to look at it any more...
Johnson and Rhee are two of the more notorious swindlers and grifters in California and the nation these days, known far and wide for their high-handedness in dealing with the rabble and their startling ability to extract millions by the hundreds out of the public coffers (and a handful of private benefactors, including, so I understand, the Kochs) on behalf of one or another of their "programs."
It doesn't take long to get very tired of this shit.
When I look at Johnson and Rhee, I see a couple of con artists who have parlayed their smooth talk and big grins into vast fortunes for themselves and untold misery for their marks. Long ago I stopped wondering why people bought into their flim-flam. Of course there are plenty of Big Money folks backing their charades, and the Big Money makes it possible for them to sell their snake oil as effectively as they do.
Ordinary People are highly vulnerable to their kind of All-American Bullshit.
It's the kind of Bullshit, too, that America has been built on from the beginning, which is part of the key to why it works so well even now, when so many people should be jaded and aware. They still fall for the cons.
Why do people fall for it? Well, I refer back to Meredith Wilson's "The Music Man." People want to believe. If you want a darker vision of what the grift is about, review your copy of Sinclair Lewis's "Elmer Gantry." People fall for the con-artists' blandishments because they want what they think the grifter is selling.
Johnson is focused on Making Sacramento A World-Class City -- a civic dream for as long as San Francisco has eclipsed the tattered majesty of California's Capital City. Say the last 150 years or so. Closer to 160 years by now. But KJ came to his current focus through some very highly profitable "education reform" by which his private education company St. HOPE took over the operations of the city's eponymous high school, turning it into a charter school. I won't go into the details of what happened, but it was a very profitable deal for KJ, not so much for the students and teachers nor for the citizens of Sacramento, some of whom are still bitter about it. Ultimately, KJ let go of St. HOPE (though one assumes he still profits from it) in order to run for Mayor -- a candidacy backed by the richest of Sacramento's rich from the get to now -- with stated objectives of keeping the Kings, building a new arena, and making Sacramento a World Class City.
Yes, well.
We all had heard that line many times before, but for once, voters believed it was possible through the agency of KJ's big, toothy grin, and so they put him in office and re-elected him even though he was essentially a failure.
Rhee, on the other hand, has stuck with the "education reform" grift and is making millions on her own account with her "Students First" con. It's really quite amazing how she continues to bamboozle the multitudes after her many failures, the high-light being her disastrous tenure as Chancellor of Washington DC's failing public schools.
But people want to believe the snake oil she's been selling will anoint their kids and make them smart and wise and successful, and she's just as happy to keep on selling it. With, of course, the backing of plenty of billionaires who help ensure her pitch is as perfect and effective as possible.
Public education in California has been on the ropes for many years, and the reasons why are plain enough to see. The system is wildly over-administered while being critically underfunded. Public schools are mandated to provide "quality education" (with an ever-shifting definition) to all, yet are burdened by top-heavy administrative requirements, and are frequently left without funding for even minimal educational purposes. There has long been a pretty obvious and deliberate policy of "administering public education to death."
The alternative private charter system largely eliminates the burden of administration (and service, but that's another issue) while providing enormous profits to the operators and proprietors of these private schools -- at the public's expense. It's a money-machine, whereas public schools have become a money-pit.
KJ and Rhee know how to squeeze the teats of the system for their own advantage. Bless their hearts.
But people really do want to believe in what they are selling. It's as American as apple pie. And I can't even bear to look at it any more...
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