Congress – Page 57 – The Wrongologist

Iran: WMD 2.0?

The Republicans job of whipping up support to override an Obama veto of the bill to kill the Iran deal got tougher since Kerry just secured limited support for the deal from the Gulf States. The NYT reports that Khalid al-Attiyah, the foreign minister of Qatar, who hosted the meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council, said:

This was the best option among other options…We are confident that what they undertook makes this region safer and more stable.

With that, most Democrats who are on the fence will likely be convinced to support the deal.

Republicans should be convinced as well, but most won’t be. However, one Republican, Pat Buchanan, thinks they are wrong:

It appears that Hill Republicans will be near unanimous in voting a resolution of rejection of the Iran nuclear deal. They will then vote to override President Obama’s veto of their resolution…

Buchanan goes on to say that, if Republicans override the veto, the US will vote in the UN Security Council to lift sanctions, along with the UK, France, Germany, Russia and China, and:

A…vote to kill the Iran deal would thus leave the US isolated, its government humiliated, unable to comply with the pledges its own secretary of state negotiated. Would Americans cheer the GOP for leaving the United States with egg all over its face?

And if Congress refuses to honor the agreement, but Iran complies with all its terms, who among our friends and allies would stand with an obdurate America then? Israel would applaud, the Saudis perhaps, but who else?

Now, it seems that applause will not include the Gulf States. Here’s Buchanan’s money quote:

And how is Israel, with hundreds of atom bombs, mortally imperiled by a deal that leaves Iran with not a single ounce of bomb-grade uranium?

Word. Another Republican, David Stockman, (former OMB Director for Reagan) had this to say about the deal and its Republican support: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

Indeed, it was the same crowd of Cheney, Wolfowitz, Bolton, Feith et.al. [who]…falsified the WMD claims against Saddam Hussein, [and] have been beating the war drums so loudly about the alleged Iranian nuclear weapons program.

Stockman concludes: (emphasis by Stockman)

So it needs to be shouted from the rafters at the outset that all the arm-waving and screeching against this deal by the GOP war-mongers and the Israeli lobby is grounded in a Big Lie. The whole Iran-is-after-the-bomb narrative is just WMD 2.0.

Finally, some clear thinking by a few Republicans on Iran.

The Iraq War was one of the most important and damaging episodes in the history of US foreign policy. And everyone remembers that the war was based on a lie, and that the lie was brought to you by Republicans.

Can Republicans explain why their demand for total capitulation by Iran is so well-suited to creating a winning position for the West? How can these Republicans pretend that nothing has happened over the last 15 years that throws their neo-con, chicken-hawk worldview into question?

It’s fair to ask Republicans who championed the Iraq War to explain the differences between the Iraq WMD debacle and the current situation in Iran. If they are compelled to debate why we should bomb or invade, and how that outcome would be any better than it was in Iraq, the debate over the Iran nuclear deal might turn out not to be much of a debate at all.

Sadly, most Republicans are not thinking clearly regarding Israel vs. Iran. In April, the Wrongologist reported on a Bloomberg poll showing that Republicans think that “patriotism” doesn’t mean they must support America’s interests first when it comes to Israel. From Bloomberg:

Republicans by a ratio of more than 2-to-1 say the US should support Israel even when its stance diverges with American interests…Democrats, by roughly the same ratio, say the opposite is true and that the US must pursue its own interests over Israel’s.

American Republicans said that Israel comes first by a 67/30 margin.

Learn from that, and don’t vote for ANY candidate who says that Israel’s needs come first in the debate about the Iran deal.

Israel Pays to Play

The Hill reports that on Monday, almost every freshman member of the US Congress jetted off on an all-expense paid trip to Israel for a week of briefings and lobbying. This year, the trip is intended to ensure they vote against the Iran nuclear deal.

The junket is an annual affair organized by AIPAC, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, and just 3 freshman are not going. 67 of the total of 70 are expected to go this year, flying business class and staying at five star hotels. AIPAC’s stated goal is that 80% of any Congress has been on one of its trips to Israel at least once. Among the world’s democracies, it is an unparalleled example of one country’s attempted influence on the political system of another.

The trip is paid for by The American Israel Education Foundation (AIEF), the educational wing of AIPAC. According to the National Journal, over the past 14 years, the foundation has spent more than $9.4 million on Congressional travel. There are two separate trips organized along party lines, one for Democrats, and another for Republicans. The Democrats’ trip begins on August 3, and will be led by House Minority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland). The Republican trip begins on August 8, and will be led by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-California).

Wouldn’t it be nice if Congress had as much interest in the concerns of America as they apparently have for the concerns of Netanyahu? The ~~bribe~~ visit comes during the 60-day period in which Congress is reviewing the deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program. President Obama has threatened a veto if the GOP-led Congress votes to reject the agreement. That would place the onus on lawmakers to muster enough votes to override the president, and the trip gives Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, a fierce critic of the Iran deal, another chance to make his case directly to lawmakers.

This despite polls showing that 84% of US Jews favor Iran nuclear deal. The trip draws new attention to the fact that just about the ONLY opposition to this deal (discounting oil sheikhdoms) comes from the Republicans and Bibi. It will make it even more obvious that those Congress people who oppose the agreement do so not out of loyalty to their own country, but to Israel. But, a look at 2014 pro-Israel donations to Congress critters shows that Republicans have no monopoly on Israeli money. The data below are from OpenSecrets.org:

This is just what they gave in 2014. When will we demand that our Congress act to benefit Americans before seeking to benefit another country?

Think of the hypocrisy. We send $3.1 billion each year to Israel. Since 1948, we have sent $121 billion in total to them, all paid by taxpayers, most in the form of military assistance. And some of that money comes back in the form of donations to our Congress.

Israel is not our 51st state, yet we’ve sent them our dough rather than using it to repair our roads or to build new bridges at home. We’ve allowed them to meddle in our internal politics, we’ve invited them to disrupt our presidential elections.

Now, we will release Jonathan Pollard on parole after 30 years in prison. Pollard is a spy who stole US defense secrets and gave them to Israel. Pollard will be greeted as a hero in Israel, should he get to leave the US as a condition of his parole. Pollard’s release is dubious because he provided Israel with information during the Cold War that allegedly was then traded to the Soviet Union (reportedly in exchange for allowing Jews to emigrate). Think about it: Our #1 ally sent our secrets to the Soviets?

How long before Americans see the Israeli effort to buy Congress for what it is?

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – July 19, 2015

We live in an amazing time. Donald Trump is again running for President, and the Huffington Post has decided it will not cover his run, because they consider him to be a joke.

Yet, the Republican base is happy with Mr. Trump. WaPo reports that 57% of Republicans now have a favorable view of Trump, compared to 40% who have an unfavorable view. That is a complete reversal from a late-May Post-ABC poll, in which 65% of Republicans saw Trump unfavorably. The Donald has pushed some candidates polling numbers down to the point where it could affect their ability to raise money.

Since Trump is currently polling at the top of the big group of Republican presidential candidates, the media shouldn’t assume his candidacy is a joke. They should be taking him seriously. Trump’s approval numbers with Republicans is currently the biggest story in the political campaign, and the reasons why he’s so popular deserves to be front and center.

He is the Cliff’s Notes version of today’s Republican Party.

What he is saying resonates with many in their base, which has been diligently cultivated and grown for the last 40 years. Now, their crop is coming in. Consider that Sen. Ted Cruz is only in his third year of his first term in office and Sen. Rand Paul is only in his fifth year. Except for Scott Walker, not one of them has a political record they can run on. The rest are bottom of the barrel careerist pols.

Once, we thought that no one could be lower in that barrel than Nixon. Then we had Reagan. And then, GWB. Hard to believe that the next Republican presidential candidate could be lower in the barrel than GWB, but if there is someone, the GOP will find him/her, and about 45% of the electorate will vote for him/her.

So, don’t focus simply on the media’s carping about Trump’s comments on Mexicans, because 55+% of American Republicans agree with him.

Trump’s bombast actually helps the others:

Pluto is clearer to us than the 2016 Super PACs:

Obama now has to deal with our domestic Ayatollahs about Iran:

Iran deal will never be good enough for some on the Right:

Harper Lee’s book has startling revelation:

The Greek deal is mythic:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – July 12, 2015

In recent years, many on the right talk as if they have inside knowledge of what the Creator wants us to think and do. As reported here last week, we have been arguing about the role of religion in our politics since the founding of the Republic. In 1789, George Washington declared a day of “public thanksgiving and prayer.” 12 years later, Thomas Jefferson abruptly canceled the ritual. The First Amendment, explained Jefferson, erected a “wall of separation between church and state.”

But Jefferson’s contractor failed to make that wall strong enough.

So, Wrongo is adding a book to his summer reading list. It is “One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America” by Kevin Kruse. The book tries to explain the religiosity in our politics. Kruse investigates how the idea of America as a Christian nation was promoted in the 1930s and ’40s when industrialists and business lobbies, chafing against the government regulations of the New Deal, recruited and funded conservative clergy to preach faith, freedom and free enterprise. He says this conflation of Christianity and capitalism moved to center stage under Eisenhower’s watch in the ’50s, when the words “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance and the phrase “In God we trust” was inserted on the back of the dollar bill.

This week saw the USA Women’s soccer team take Manhattan, the NYSE go dark, Greece on the verge of going dark, the Confederate flag comes down in Charleston and Trump jumps into the lead in Republican opinion polls.

Women’s soccer is America’s new role model:

Stock Exchange glitch wasn’t explained clearly, so speculation ensued:

South Carolina makes something old new again:

Clay Bennett, Chattanooga Times Free Press

Socratic Method not enough to fix Greek quagmire:

Trump divides Republicans:

And forces a new strategy:

While W keeps rolling along:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – June 28, 2015

There will be limited blogging for the next seven days, as the Wrongologist and Ms. Right head to Bermuda.

It was an epic news week, from the killings in Charleston to the ACA decision by the Supreme Court, 6-3, in which Antonin Scalia wrote the 21 page dissent. Then came the Marriage Equality decision. Antonin Scalia wrote another dissent, starting with:

I write separately to call attention to this Court’s threat to American democracy

Here is the Cliff notes version of both Scalia dissents: “I stole the 2000 election for this”??

They shot and missed:

Republicans secretly happy about SCOTUS decision on ACA:

Marriage equality decision not popular with everyone:

And the Supremes said, “Let them eat cake”:

The big change on the Confederate flag doesn’t change much:

What the Flag means:

Reform The College Accreditation Process

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting report, “The Watchdogs of College Education Rarely Bite”, which reviews the current state of four-year college accreditation. It makes a case that accreditation, at least for the four-year colleges, needs an overhaul.

Who accredits colleges? The US Department of Education (DOE) recognizes 38 accreditors who act as gatekeepers of federal aid to college students. Federal student aid can only be used at accredited schools. About 90% of accredited four-year colleges are overseen by an accreditor from one of the six geographic regions. These six oversee more than 3,000 US colleges, public and private. Other colleges are overseen by faith-based accreditors, or groups that review vocational schools.

The WSJ found that in the past 15 years, those six accreditors have rescinded the membership of just 26 educational institutions. Their report is silent on how many colleges are on probation. Typically, schools on probation have 5 years to make it back to an accredited status.

They found a link between college graduation rates and student default rates on college loans:

(Some may be confused by the graph’s notation of average graduation rates and loan default rates. The red bars reflect the number of colleges with those rates, not a graphical representation of the percentages.)

The article examined graduation rates and student loan defaults. Not a bad start if you wanted to measure a school: we should want high graduation rates, and we want low student loan default rates, both as matters of public policy. They compared these numbers to a baseline, the average for schools that have lost accreditation since 2000. The question implied by the WSJ is if a school has a lower graduation rate or a higher default rate than the baseline numbers, should they keep their accreditation?

The WSJ methodology took the list of accredited colleges that were posted on the accreditors’ websites. For each of those colleges, the Journal then examined DOE statistics on graduation rates, student aid and loan default rates. The analysis was limited to four-year colleges that offered at least a bachelor’s degree. Colleges where students received no federal aid weren’t included in the analysis.

The DOE is barred by law from telling the 38 accreditors how to do their job. The Obama administration recognized the problem and in 2013, proposed an end-run, tying access to loans and grants to a new ratings system that would compare colleges on measurements such as graduation rate, student debt and income after graduation. It was greeted by mixed reviews by the education establishment, who felt as usual, that the data would be misinterpreted and bad decisions would follow.

The idea had little Republican support, since they would prefer to eliminate the DOE, not expand its brief. Most Republicans, starting with Rick Perry in 2012, object to the federal government’s financing of students, and have called for the downsizing or elimination of the DOE. A few candidates for 2016 have followed Perry’s lead. It’s the position of Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio, who all think that setting standards should be a local responsibility.

The Republican opposition is not new. Opposition to the DOE began in 1979 when it became a Cabinet-level department. It is opposed mainly by conservatives, who see the department as undermining of states’ rights, and libertarians who believe it is an unnecessary and illegal federal intrusion into local affairs. Republicans all believe in letting Mr. Market do his job. That of course, is the position favored by the for-profit schools who have been big donors to Republican candidates.

So, how does a family with a prospective college freshman move forward? Say they are trying to compare two schools, one with a higher graduation rate than the other. Is the school with the higher graduation rate better? Or could the other school with a lower rate be better because it takes chances on more students?

Similarly, higher loan default rates should be viewed in context. Engineering schools tend to graduate students who find jobs quickly and easily, but that doesn’t mean every school should become an engineering school.

We need to connect the dots and understand that we can’t produce more college grads by pretending all kids are prepared for it. They are not. Our colleges enroll many woefully unprepared kids, who can’t make the grade, but can run up large debts.

The way to get more kids through college: Force a good K-12 education back into K-12 where it belongs.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – June 14, 2015

Let’s talk taxes. Specifically, let’s focus on a Republican governor, Jindal of Louisiana. Louisiana faced a massive shortfall ($1.6 billion) due to the fact they are governed by Bobby Jindal and a bunch of Republicans who can’t admit that they are raising taxes because otherwise, Grover Norquist will get angry at them. From the NYT:

With less than two hours left in the 2015 session, Louisiana legislators agreed Thursday on a solution to the worst budget shortfall in decades, approving a funding arrangement that drew bipartisan criticism

The legislators had looked at raising taxes, but Jindal said that he would veto anything that violated his pledge to Norquist. The big losers if no deal was reached would have been public education and health care.

So, the governor consulted with Americans for Tax Reform, the Washington anti-tax advocacy group led by Norquist, and came up with a complicated plan that was an accounting fiction, in order to solve the budget crisis.

• The plan obligated $350 million of the revenue raised during the session to higher education, thus preventing cuts
• That was augmented by an “assessment” of $1,600 per student on the state’s public college students
• Nobody would actually pay the assessment because students would also be granted a tax credit against that assessment
• The student’s tax credit, in turn, would be transferred to the state Board of Regents, the body that runs higher education

The board would then use the credit to draw money from the Department of Revenue. It’s confusing, and not just to the accounting-challenged. But, under the plan, no one’s tax burden went up or down, which allowed the Louisiana Legislature to raise the cigarette tax by 50 cents a pack, increase costs for businesses by reducing a variety of tax credits and raise fees on car buyers and other Louisianians.

Lawmakers have called the provision everything from “money laundering” to “stupid,” and that was just the Republicans. Robert Travis Scott, president of the nonpartisan Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana said:

There is no way you can explain that it’s an offset…This is a vehicle that allows Governor Jindal to raise taxes, period.

The fact that Norquist helped Republicans in Louisiana figure out a way around HIS OWN PLEDGE tells you that this “no new taxes” nonsense has become simply theater. Now Jindal can run for president with Norquist’s blessing. Isn’t that nice?

On to cartoons. The big news of the week included the Trade Fast Track fail, sending more troops to Iraq, and a new Jurassic Park movie.

Fast Track is side tracked:

The same old Iraq strategy reappeared:

With predictable results:

New Jurassic movie brought out new GOP creatures:

Like Jurassic movies, STEM in Congress creates BIG problems:

Monday Wake Up Call – May 8, 2015

“Ethics is knowing the difference between what you can do and what you should do.” – Justice Potter Stewart

It looks like Scrooge McDuck runs human resources at Disney. Disney World laid off 250 tech workers, who were American programmers and computer operators that have been replaced by Indian techies with H-1B visas. The techs were supplied by HCL America, an Indian outsourcing firm.

H-1B visas are intended for high-level professionals who, in concept, fill jobs for which no Americans are available. 85,000 of these visas are granted each year, and they are in high demand. Technology giants like Microsoft, Facebook and Google repeatedly press Congress to add to the annual quotas, saying there are not enough Americans with the skills they need.

In Disney’s case, the Americans were not only available, they were actually working in the jobs.

The H-1B visa program has been great for tech innovation, and the Wrongologist supports it, but this is an egregious abuse of the corporate right to employment at will, and of the spirit of the H-1B visa laws. From the NY Times:

The chairman of the Walt Disney Company, Robert A. Iger, is a co-chairman with Michael R. Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York, and Rupert Murdoch, the executive chairman of News Corporation, in the Partnership for a New American Economy, which pushes for an overhaul of immigration laws, including an increase in H-1B visas.

Companies speak a lot about teamwork, esprit de corps, and group identity, all in the context of helping the company reach its goals. But the Disney lesson is that we’re really good at ignoring those lofty ideals, while driving an anti-employee, mean-spirited chase of a marginal dollar of profit.

If employers really need a foreign employee resource, they should be charged an annual fee of $50K for each H1-B visa they use. For truly unusual skills, it would be worth the fee. For Disney, who is just looking to buy labor for a few dollars less than the going rate for American citizens, it would remove the economic advantage. We need to ask our corporations to stop defending the indefensible.

Republicans shout from the mountaintops about illegal immigrants, while on the other hand, they are quite willing to add to the numbers of H-1B visas, immigration of a kind. Furthermore, H-1Bs allow for chain migration (kids and spouses) as well, and thanks to new rules, H-1B spouses can work as well.

Time to wake up America! Disney’s H-1B’s are the first step in a process. They have been brought in by Disney so that they can gain the experience to manage Disney’s IT operation. And some time down the road, Disney’s Florida HCL people will work with HCL’s India-based IT workers, allowing Disney to move most of their IT operation over there at a fraction of the cost that Disney pays here.

Corporatism has inverted Henry Ford’s mantra to pay his workers enough to afford his cars. The new mantra is, pay only a few employees enough to afford your goods, and let the government worry about the rest of them.

America has to be more than a spreadsheet and a flag.

Today’s wake-up is another in our spring bird collection. It is the Orchard Oriole, the smallest of North America’s orioles, it builds hanging, pouch like nests during its breeding season. We get both the Baltimore Orioles and these guys in Mid-May:

For those who read the Wrongologist in email, you can view the video here.

Monday’s Hot Links:

The Wall Street Journal had a blog post open letter to consumers asking why consumers didn’t spend more money. Imagine their concern, since mean US family income is stuck at the same level as in the late 1990s. Remember that the WSJ supports the TPP trade legislation, like the last deal that outsourced millions of middle class jobs. Please, WSJ, go back to talking to companies, and leave consumers alone.

A list of the top 50 restaurants in the world. 5 are in the US. Wrongo and Ms. Right are going to #49 later this month.

In a stunning discovery that overturns decades of textbook teaching, researchers at the University Of Virginia School Of Medicine have found that the brain is directly connected to the immune system.

Owning a home no longer plays the same role in the lives of Americans that it has in the past. And it is clear that many middle-income Americans cannot realistically aspire to become homeowners anytime soon. A recent survey conducted by the American Institute of CPA’s found that most Americans are now more concerned about having enough money to retire than about becoming a homeowner.

China has 30,000 tons of gold, (which is almost more gold than the rest of the world’s central banks, combined). It’s also important to make explicit that the Chinese are slowly laying the groundwork for it to take over the dollar’s role as the global reserve currency sometime in the future.

Chinese state media has warned that war with the US may be “inevitable.” Beijing published a policy paper detailing how its military will shift its focus from land and coastlines to the open seas. They criticized “external countries…busy meddling in South China Sea affairs. The money quote:

We do not want a military conflict with the United States, but if it were to come we have to accept it.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – June 7, 2015

This week, mass surveillance by the USA Freedom act replaced mass surveillance by the Patriot Act.

It’s as if Kafka and Orwell collaborated on a novel that was too unrealistic to publish. The plot shows how the NSA operates a $multi-billion program in violation of the Constitution. But, EVERY element of that program is protected by national security secrecy, so no one knows about it. In addition, the managers of the program lie to Congress and hide the extent of the program from lawmakers.

Then an NSA contractor informs us that the illegal program exists. As the story unfolds, the contractor is pursued, is forced into asylum, and faces prosecution if he returns home. And he can’t use the fact of that illegal program to defend himself because of state secrecy. Here is Charlie Pierce on the new legislation:

The ambivalence about Edward Snowden, International Man of Luggage, all clears away at one simple point — without him, none of this happens. Without what he did, nobody looks closely enough at the NSA and its surveillance programs even to think of reforming them even in the mildest way, which is pretty much what this is. Without what he did, the conversation not only doesn’t change, it doesn’t even occur.

Without Edward Snowden, this timid effort to roll back from the politics of fear created in the wake of September 11, 2001 would not have happened last week in Washington. Instead of thanking Snowden for his public service and inviting him to come home, the US government is still seeking to arrest him and try him on charges that carry long prison sentences. Bring this hero home.

Is the new Act the same, or better than the old act?

Apparently, phone records were not covered by the founding fathers:

You didn’t lose your privacy, it was transferred to Squillionaires:

In other news, Caitlyn Jenner dominated:

Denny Hastert’s indictment reminded us of who holds the moral high ground:

And California’s water problems get executive attention:

Where Are The Activists?

And why aren’t they out in the streets? Why isn’t every bank office, and every legislature, “occupied?”

The NYT reported on their NYT/CBS News poll on income inequality. It found that Americans are broadly concerned about inequality of wealth and income despite the improving economy. Among the findings:

Nearly six in 10 Americans said government should do more to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor.

Inequality is no longer a partisan issue. The poll found that inequality is important to almost half of Republicans and two-thirds of independents, suggesting that it is likely to be a central theme in next year’s general election. We are already seeing populist appeals by politicians of both parties who are trying to capitalize on the sense among Americans that the economic recovery benefited only a handful at the very top.

Sadly, the surveillance society has changed the costs and benefits of protests. The Occupy movement was crushed with a coordinated 17 city paramilitary crackdown. In this day of background checks as a condition to get a job, a misdemeanor arrest for protesting can make you unemployable. You can find yourself on any one of a variety of official lists that cannot be challenged because of secrecy laws; there are sham arrests like those conducted at Occupy Wall Street or, at the NYC Republican convention in 2004 by then-Mayor Bloomberg.

And the financial services industry seems to be able to get cops to come in and round up people on their behalf.

It is not enough to gather in the street. Once you are there and gathered, it must lead somewhere, there must be a goal. Admittedly, the problem with activism is that the fight is to change perceptions and narratives, and progress toward those goals is slow, and rarely concrete and visible.

It’s astonishing today to see how Americans have been conditioned to think that political action and engagement is futile. The Wrongologist was a demonstrator when the reverse occurred, when activism in the 1960s produced significant advances in civil rights for blacks and women, and eventually led the US to exit the Vietnam War. But today, when activism is an option, quite a few argue that there is no point in making the effort, that we as individuals are powerless. Yet, what Richard Kline wrote about protest in 2010 still applies:

The nut of the matter is this: you lose, you lose, you lose, you lose, and [then] they give up. As someone who has protested, and studied the process, it’s plain that one spends most of one’s time being defeated. That’s painful, humiliating, and intimidating. One can’t expect typically, as in a battle, to get a clean shot at a clear win.

What activism does is change the context, and that change moves the goalposts on your opponent. It also raises the political price for governments that make bad decisions. Demonstrations helped stop LBJ and Nixon from making a few bad decisions. The same principle could apply to the Conservative’s desire to kneecap Social Security, Medicare and Obamacare while they hand out more baubles to their rich friends. This kind of class inequality is deeply un-American, but it has big political benefactors in both parties.

We can’t use the protests of the 1960s as a model in today’s political environment. Back then, power feared the people. Power feared the people because there was a free press to publicize and record events. The White House press confronted presidents; they didn’t pander, or act as stenographers as they do now.

That no longer exists. The press has been destroyed by corporate consolidation and foreign ownership. Investigative reporting and the institutions that nurtured and supported it were alive and well.

In the 1960s, few local politicians would refuse a permit for a peaceful demonstration, if in fact, a permit was even required. That is no longer true. No permit, no demo. The arrogance of power is demonstrated repeatedly right in front of cameras and reporters; the police harass and provoke, restrain and intimidate at peaceful demonstrations. They also create incidents to blame on demonstrators, which are dutifully captured by the cameras.

If one unit of protest worked in 1965, we need 10 units today to achieve similar results. In the meantime, reflect on this quote from a noted demonstrator:

“When the idea is a sound one, the cause a just one, and the demonstration a righteous one, change will be forthcoming”–Martin Luther King, Jr.

See you on Sunday.

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: Congress