Professor Smartass

Recently, the publisher of the Washington Post, Katharine Weymouth, advertised a dinner at her home where, for the low price of $250,ooo, you could talk off the record with Post reporters and top Obama administration officials. The first was to be on health care reform (paid for by Kaiser Permanente). Weymouth later ran an unconvincing apology claiming she knew little about the details of the event that was supposed to take place in her own home.

While this story by itself has little direct consequence, it is further evidence of what we all should have learned about the financial elite in the last decade, as I explain in my letter to the Post:

Weymouth's hard-to-believe apology as well as the original idea for the event itself shows why newspapers and our democratic process are dying: the public is fed platitudes and PR spin to herd them toward pre-approved opinions while the real debate is going on behind closed doors between those who have the money to buy the outcome they want.

The original article shows one part of the problem is nepotism. Weymouth got her job not because she is the crème de la crème of journalists but because she is the grand-daughter of famed owner Katherine Graham. Owning the press no more makes you a competent publisher than being the first president Bush's son makes you a competent president.

When the press is a for-profit business, it is the toy or tool of the wealthy. They can take a good paper and turn it into a worthless rag as has happened at the Los Angeles Times, or they can simply shut it down as is happening at newspapers across the county because though profitable, they don't make enough of a profit margin to please their owners.

We need a new model of press, perhaps like the Guardian in the UK that is run like PBS & NPR here (but the Guardian doesn't have to beg for corporate donations). We should also fully fund PBS & NPR, so they aren't beholden to corporations and the foundations of the wealthy to stay in business.

We need a new model for business and especially news that doesn't depend on the whims of the Katherine Weymouths of the world.

Even better would be if she simply gave the paper to its employees to run as a non-profit.

We need a new model for journalism, business, and government that limits the power of those who only bring money not talent to the table (and NO, bookkeeping scams you learned in your MBA program are no more talents than stealing money from your mother's purse was when you were a kid).

Since the wealthy love charity and their foundations so much, Weymouth could do a great public service by removing herself entirely from the operation of the paper, and letting the reporters choose their own editors from their midst rather than letting the idle rich pick those who are corporate compliant. Then Weymouth should never speak to the reporters or editors again except for a congratulatory phone call when they get their Pulitzers.

If the presidency of George W. Bush, the Enron collapse, the theft of countless pensions, the attempted theft through privatization of Social Security, the banking crisis, our health insurance system that puts profits ahead of saving lives, and our on-going wars for oil and pipeline routes in the Middle East were not evidence enough, Katherine Weymouth provides further proof that the financial elite in this country is as morally and intellectually crippled as George W. Bush--and just as dangerous when their hands are on the levers of power.

Sincerely,

More on the inevitable extinction of the financial elite

Labels: behind closed doors, death of newspapers, dinner, financial elite, Katharine Weymouth, martha graham, off the record, power brokers, washington post

Just about a hundred years ago, Jack London wrote The Iron Heel about the oligarchy in America taking open control of the government to crush the rising political power of the working and middle class:

The Iron Heel

by Jack London

chapter 5 excerpt

He sketched the economic condition of the cave-man and of the savage peoples of to-day, pointing out that they possessed neither tools nor machines, and possessed only a natural efficiency of one in producing power. Then he traced the development of machinery and social organization so that to-day the producing power of civilized man was a thousand times greater than that of the savage.

`Five men,' he said, `can produce bread for a thousand. One man can produce cotton cloth for two hundred and fifty people, woollens for three hundred, and boots and shoes for a thousand. One would conclude from this that under a capable management of society modern civilized man would be a great deal better off than the cave-man. But is he? Let us see. In the United States to-day there are fifteen million8 people living in poverty; and by poverty is meant that condition in life in which, through lack of food and adequate shelter, the mere standard of working efficiency cannot be maintained...

`But to return to my indictment. If modern man's producing power is a thousand times greater than that of the cave-man, why then, in the United States to-day, are there fifteen million people who are not properly sheltered and properly fed? Why then, in the United States to-day, are there three million child laborers? It is a true indictment. The capitalist class has mismanaged. In face of the facts that modern man lives more wretchedly than the cave-man, and that his producing power is a thousand times greater than that of the cave-man, no other conclusion is possible than that the capitalist class has mismanaged, that you have mismanaged, my masters, that you have criminally and selfishly mismanaged....

`You have failed in your management. You have made a shambles of civilization. You have been blind and greedy. You have risen up (as you to-day rise up), shamelessly, in our legislative halls, and declared that profits were impossible without the toil of children and babes. Don't take my word for it. It is all in the records against you. You have lulled your conscience to sleep with prattle of sweet ideals and dear moralities. You are fat with power and possession, drunken with success; and you have no more hope against us than have the drones, clustered about the honey-vats, when the worker-bees spring upon them to end their rotund existence. You have failed in your management of society, and your management is to be taken away from you.

FULL TEXT

The words Jack London put in his characters mouth in The Iron Heel still ring true, though it needs some additions:

When you are no longer allowed in one country to work women and children around the clock for starvation wages, you simply move your factory to another country that will let you abuse your workers.

And you figured out the way to keep moving the factories forever: break the economies of the countries that are strong, so when you have finally worked your way down to the poorest of poor here, the formerly rich countries will be grateful for your starvation wages jobs. Isn't that what is happening to America today?

When one of your country club brethren charges you too much for health insurance for your employees, rather than drive a hard bargain with your fraternity brother, you simply stop giving health insurance to your employees and let them fend for themselves.

If anything in America tends to produce a more vigorous democracy like decent education in K-12 or college, you tell your bought off politicians in state capitals and Washington to starve it of funds or kill it outright.

You publicly claim to believe in competition, but use your pawns in Washington to tax your small competitors and subsidize you. And when someone comes along with a better product that would bury something like say, GASOLINE, you buy up the patents and if it isn't a patentable technology, you launch a massive PR campaign to crush it.

One person in America can do the work that a thousand did a hundred years ago, and yet they can only survive by incurring debt and more debt, and working two jobs and then three.

All so you can put more and more money in the bank than you can ever spend in your lifetime. Do you think your descendant four generations out will thank you for your hard work (if you did any) to accumulate your fortune, or will they be a moral and intellectual cripple like Paris Hilton and so many of the idle rich?

And those who inherited great wealth, don't you secretly know that you are incompetent and even helpless to defend yourselves without your army of middle and working class drones who manage your money, cut the crust off your toast and wipe your ass?

George Orwell said essentially the same thing as London in 1984:

Labels: 1984, american fascism, financial elite, free market fundamentalism, george orwell, jack london, middle class, oligarchy, the iron heel, wall street bailout, working class

Americans and many others around the world are hoping for an outcome to Iranian election away from the religious hardliners like President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but even if Mir-Hossein Mousavi takes power, several things are unlikely to change, and most of them are the points of tension between the US and Iran.

For example, while a new government might be less likely to call for Israel to be "wiped off the map" (or "disappear" from the map as many translators said was more accurate), they will still probably be sympathetic to the plight of Palestinians, fellow Muslims who are undeniably being killed in far larger numbers than Israelis, and systematically forced off their land by Israeli settlers, a process we would call ethnic cleansing anywhere else.

Likewise, it's hard to see them forsaking Hezbollah in Lebanon, given the multiple invasions by Israel and the many Muslims (and Christians) killed there, first in "overkill" to drive the PLO out of the country, then in attempts to crush Hezbollah whose ranks were swelled with Lebanese angered by the first war that caused so much death and destruction beyond its supposed targets.

What is especially unlikely to change is a sense of national ownership of their oil reserves and the income derived from it. Iran has the second or third largest oil reserves in the world. One of our goals in the Iraq War was to force them to give up 88% of their oil income to oil companies as stated in a Bush sponsored Hydrocarbon Law. For comparison, the Saudis, only give up about half. Despite Bush and members of both parties in Washington strong-arming Iraqis to pass it, they could only get the Iraqi cabinet to pass it, never the whole parliament--even when the oil companies offered millions in bribes to each member. And in spite of a war and occupation that cost the lives of over a million Iraqis.

If Iraq won't surrender their oil after all that, the tools of the oil industry in Congress would be foolish to expect the Iranians to give up theirs after an election. The truth is, real democracy makes it harder for corporations to cheat countries out of their natural resources. The oil companies would have had an easier time simply trying to bribe the handful of mullahs who are the real power behind the throne in Iran, just as they did the Shah, the dictator we installed after we overthrew the last secular, democratically elected leader of Iran, Mohammed Mossadegh. His sin was trying to nationalize his country's oil, which would have cut the big oil companies out of most of the profits. In the 1979 revolution in Iran, students were carrying signs with his photo on it. They had not forgotten who fought for their oil, and they wouldn't forgive someone who gave it away now.

Neither will Iran's antagonism with some of her neighbors diminish.

The Saudi conflict with Iran is likely based oil and who gets to decide how much is pumped and therefore the price as much as the Sunni-Shia rivalry.

Israel doesn't want any strong Muslim country in the region who might check their expansion or even criticize it, so they are unlikely to change much, even if the new government makes peace proposals that offer recognition in exchange for reasonable conditions on how Israel treats Palestinians.

And on the broader global stage, how the US treats a more secular, democratic Iran will depend almost entirely on how compliant they are to oil interests. After all, we overthrew Iran's secular prime minister in 1953, and have embraced the Sunni religious extremist Saudis for decades, even though they are far from democratic and Saudi Arabia supported the 9/11 hijackers who killed 3,000 Americans. Blood is thicker than water, but in Washington, oil is thicker than both (or at least the bribes oil companies give are).

MORE IRAQ OIL THEFT LINKS

Labels: big oil, election, hezbollah, hydrocarbon law, iran, iraq, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, palestine, protests, shah of iran

I don't know if he will listen, but it's worth a shot:

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
State Capitol Building
Sacramento, CA 95814

Gov. Schwarzenegger,

I am a community college instructor, and based on the previous round of budget negotiations, I believe you want to limit the harm caused by any budget cuts.

To truly do that though, you need to take a bold step: sever your ties with the Republican party so you will be free to modestly increase taxes on the wealthy, large retail corporations, extraction industries, and other large businesses that cannot threaten to pull up stakes and go elsewhere as factories can. As a very wealthy person yourself, you know that if your taxes went up say 5%, you would not have to sell one house, pull your kids out of private school, or even give up a Hummer. At worst, some future descendant of yours will have to get a job a year or two sooner instead of coasting on the fruits of your labor.

The Republican Party has not appreciated the fact that you are the governor of a mostly Democratic state and therefore are limited in how radically you can apply their tax and budget priorities.

By contrast, as a Democrat, you would have the overwhelming majority of the legislature behind you, and just as you used your early popularity to cut the budget, you could use your renewed popularity as a Democrat to get California out of the race to be the new Mississippi, and make it an example for other states to aspire to imitate again.

More importantly, you can see and probably have heard from far more people than just me the serious damage deep budget cuts will cause this state, making it more difficult for middle class kids to get a good K-12 and college education, and possibly costing some of the poor their lives because of cuts in medical care.

You still have a chance to be California’s hero. But to do that, you have to admit that the party that brought you to power is morally bankrupt and a danger to most Californians.

Sincerely,





Professor Smartass

Labels: Arnold Schwarzenegger, budget crisis, change parties, drop GOP, governator, hero, switch parties, terminator

Digg Dialogg is taking questions from the public that California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will answer on CNN Tuesday.

Here's my two.

Vote them up on Digg if you like them(with linked first line of each question):

• Arnold, why are you and your rich friends such crybabies about paying your taxes?If your taxes went up say 5%, how would your lifestyle change at all? Would you have to sell a home or a hummer or pull your kids out of private school? Why are you so willing to make cuts to education and social programs that will hurt average Californians, but not raise taxes on wealthy individuals and big businesses who would not be hurt at all by paying more?

• Why did you meet with Ken Lay of Enron during the height of the rolling blackouts in California? Why didn't you try to get California's billions back that were extorted by Lay and the other energy traders who scammed the state?
  
  http://www.gregpalast.com/madhouse/index.php/30
  
  Do you think that laws and taxes should only apply to middle and working class people, not the wealthy?

Those are pretty simple, but I doubt that he could answer either honestly.

Labels: Arnold Schwarzenegger, cnn, digg dialogg, girlie man, girly man, hummer, interview, public opinion, puppet, vote up questions

A Republican consultant who wished to remain anonymous said he came up with the tea bag protest concept during his weekly session with GOP male prostitute Jeff Gannon.


"I was trying to figure out what we could do to show our displeasure with the Obama administration, and then I felt a tingling in my loins and the idea settling in comfortably. I shared it with Jeff and he enthusiastically said, 'Gluh huh, glul gluh...' His words were very supportive--but he can be biting when he needs to," the well known consultant said.

"In subsequent visits, I came up with the Reach Around pro-defense protest (we have to reach around and grab new threats as they arise) and our Dirty Sanchez anti-illegal immigrant policy, demanding that we draw an unmistakable line at the border than none would dare cross or even get downwind of."

The consultant said Gannon has become so valuable to him that Gannon will now join his exclusive strategy group composed of Sen. Larry Craig, former Rep. Mark Foley, and Diaper Boy David Vitter that meets in the mens room at Dulles International Airport.

Gannon is most famous for posing as a reporter in the White House press corps and pitching softball questions at President Bush during press conferences. Whether he was pitching or catching in his private sessions with President Bush has yet to be disclosed.

Labels: david vitter, dirty sanchez, double entendre, jeff gannon, karl rove, larry craig, mark foley, reach around, tea bag protest

In an emergency meeting of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Pentagon officials said they urgently needed a space-based death star to fight the emerging pirate threat.

"With a spheroid battleship about half the size of Earth's moon, we should be able to contain the pirate threat for three to five years," said Gen. Dennis Tully.

"However, we must act with maximum haste," he added. "Right now, the pirates are using small speed boats, but if we wait until the acquire cabin-cruiser technology, there's no telling what kind of devastation they will leave in their wake--and I mean wake literally."

"Even with their current speed boat fleet, if they coupled that with water skiing suicide bombers, they could ski right into the side of a ship or go off a jump and engage aircraft. The pirates would literally be able to blackmail the entire world."

The general went on to say that while nuclear submarines, aircraft carriers, and stealth bombers have been adequate to fight terrorists, they are not enough for the new pirate threat.

"Al Qaeda is a formidable threat, but they don't have their own ride. Hell, they had to hijack planes to do 9/11," Tully said. "These pirates have their OWN boats--really, really fast boats, like maybe 35 knots. We don't have anything like that."

The general added that with some modifications, the death star could be used to fight rabid dogs or a re-emergence of Neanderthals with their precision-flaked cutting tools.

Gen. Tully said the projected cost would be half a trillion dollars spread over three years.

When Democrats questioned the need for the death star, their republican colleagues were quick to point out their lack of patriotism and concern for their country's safety.

"They would like the see the pirates swing in on their ropes with their poofy shirts and rape and pillage at will," said GOP senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, whose state would manufacture all the toilets for the death star.

He was joined in his criticism by erstwhile Democrat Joe Lieberman. "I cannot tell you how pained I am that my sometimes party does not see the clear and present danger posed to our country by illiterate pirates in speed boats halfway around the world." Lieberman's state of Connecticut is home to the Electric Boat Company whose expertise making submarines will be invaluable to them as the prime contractor on the death star.

All concerns about the cost and practicality of the project were swept aside though, when Tully suggested an alternative solution: stop selling American speed boats, outboards, and gasoline to pirates, something all the senators agreed was too extreme.

Labels: armed services committee, death star, pirates, somali, somalia, terrorist threat

In a gesture meant to regain the trust of the American people, Wall Street investment firms, insurance companies, and banks are literally opening their offices to those they made homeless.

Initially, the firms were going to require people to bring in a copy of their foreclosed mortgage, pension statements, or other investments Wall Street has made worth less than the paper they were printed on. Since that proved too time-consuming for staff to process, the program has simply been opened to all the homeless though they still must bring their own blanket and pillow.

Trip Caine of AIG explains the thinking behind the program, "I and most other people I know got into finance to help people fulfill the American Dream and pull themselves up by their bootstraps, so we really feel a profound sense of guilt and personal responsibility for the damage
our schemes have caused, and we wanted to give something back."

"At first, we didn't know what we could do, but then we realized we have so much space in these nice offices, and a lot of people could use it as a place to sleep at night or even crash out during the day without really getting in our way," Caine added.

Word of mouth quickly spread on the street, and grateful former members of the middle class began to find their way to the offices of AIG, Goldman Sachs, Merril Lynch, Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorganChase, and others.

Some smaller firms were saddened that few arrived at their offices because of their lack of name recognition, so they started putting bumper stickers on their town cars and limos that said, "Follow me to sleep for free." Eventually, the homeless started following all limos into parking garages. Most execs don't mind if the homeless hop in their limo for a nap while it's idling outside some meeting or stuck in traffic.

One hitch that has occurred is offices widespread use of restroom keys. Execs were loathe to give up this perk and simply leave the door unlocked for anyone, so they simply look the other way when the homeless defecate in their plants and waste baskets. In areas where there are no public restrooms, transients are even encouraged to duck into the lobby of their buildings to defecate. Doorman Bob Denning said he didn't mind the smell and added, "I wouldn't want to bare my ass outdoors on a cold day like this. Not only that, it's worth it just to see some of the suits step in what they did to the rest of us."

When protesters started showing up outside AIG executives homes, one exec realized he could defray some of the anger by offering protesters the guest wing of their house to live in. Soon others followed suit and the practice became universal.

Likewise, exclusive athletic clubs are opening their doors to anyone who needs a shower, massage, and some time in the jacuzzi, and country clubs are allowing people living in their RVs to park on their golf courses. "We can't be elitists at a time like this, we have to be Americans first," said Hal Stark, president of Chatham Hollow Country Club. "Our members realize they used laws and infrastructure of this country to acquire their massive wealth and it is only right if they give some back in this time of need."

One question that arose surprisingly rarely was when this open door policy would end. Trip Caine of AIG was philosophical. "I don't know if it should. When I come home from the office and see Garth and Jennifer Puckett, the family staying with us, struggling to find a job or figure out how to pay for their kids to go to the doctor or send them to college, it really puts things in perspective for me. My actions have hurt real people. If they leave, I might forget that."

Wall Street's earlier effort to feed the homeless

Labels: aig, aig bailout, april fools, foreclosures, homeless shelter, wall street