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A SIGN OF UNEMPLOYMENT: PART ONE (OF SIX)

In Business, Law, Politics, Social commentary on March 14, 2013 at 12:00 am

Linda Smith, a resident of Menifee, California, wants to help her daughter land a job.

Lisa Smith, 36, has been out of the job market for almost 20 years.

Not that she hasn’t spent those years working.  She has–as a caregiver for her mother.

In 1996, Linda, now 61, was hit by a drunk driver and left with mild dementia.  She couldn’t remember names or safely travel by herself.  Holding down a steady job was impossible.

So Lisa quit her job as a full-time commercial model to care for her mother.  They lived off of Lisa’s part-time jobs, a government caregiver stipend, and Linda’s disability money.

But in June, 2012, a doctor found that Linda was well enough to live alone.

That was the good news.  The bad news was: There would be no more caregiver funds.

As Lisa’s applications for full-time work went unanswered, Linda wanted to help. So, in late February, she began standing on the side of the road, holding a sign.

Linda Smith holds her sign in Menifee, Calif.

Linda Smith

And offering $500 cash to any employer willing to hire her daughter at at least $15 an hour or more for an office job, such as an executive assistant.

This will be no easy task.  California has an unemployment rate of 9.8%–one of the worst in the nation.  And it’s a truism that if you’ve been out of the workforce more than six months, employers don’t want to know you.

You might have won the Medal of Honor or be the next Einstein or Steve Jobs.  But it doesn’t matter.

The basic employer mentality goes: “If someone else wasn’t responsible enough to hire you, why should I be?”

An article in the March, 2011 issue of Reader’s Digest gives the lie to the excuses so many employers use for refusing to hire.

Entitled “22 Secrets HR Won’t Tell You About Getting a Job,” it lays bare many of the reasons why America needs to legally force employers to demonstrate as much responsibility for hiring as job-seekers are expected to show toward searching for work.

Click here: 22 Secrets HR Won’t Tell You About Getting a Job | HT Staffing

Among the truths it reveals:

TRUTH NO: 1: Once you’re unemployed more than six months, you’re considered unemployable.

TRUTH NO. 2: As you’ve always suspected: It’s not what but who you know that counts.

TRUTH NO. 3: If you can, avoid HR entirely and seek out someone in the company you know. If you don’t know anyone, go straight to the hiring manager.

TRUTH NO. 4: Don’t assume that someone will read your cover letter. Many of them go straight into the garbage can.

TRUTH NO. 5: You will be judged on the basis of your email address–especially if it’s something like “Igetwasted@aol.com.”

TRUTH NO. 6: Don’t assume you’re protected against age discrimination just because it’s against the law. If you’re in your 50s or 60s, leave your year of graduation off your resume.

TRUTH NO: 7: Don’t assume you’re protected from unemployment just because it’s illegal to discriminate against applicants who have children. Many managers don’t want to hire people with children, and will go to illegal lengths to find out their parental status–like checking an applicant’s car for child safety seats.

TRUTH NO. 8: It’s harder to get a job if you’re fat. Hiring managers make quick judgments based on stereotypes.

TRUTH NO. 9: Many managers will assume you’re a loser if you give them a weak handshake.

TRUTH NO. 10: Encourage the interviewer to talk–especially about himself. Ego-driven interviewers love hearing the sound of their own voices and will assume you’re better-qualified than someone who doesn’t want to listen to them prattle.

The United States has reached the depths of shame when a willing-to-work American must bribe fat-pockets employers to show a sense of hiring responsibility.

Millions of Americans continue to blame President Barack Obama for the nation’s high unemployment rate. But no President can hope to resolve this problem until employers are legally required to act like patriots instead of predators.

Their responsibilities should encompass more than simply fattening their own pocketbooks and/or egos at the expense of their fellow Americans.

Such behavior used to be called treason.

It’s past time to recognize that a country can be betrayed for other than political reasons.  It can be sold out for economic ones, too:

  • Employers who enrich themselves by weakening their country—by throwing millions of qualified workers into the street and moving their plants to other countries—are traitors.
  • Employers who set up offshore accounts to claim their American companies are foreign-owned—and thus exempt from taxes—are traitors.
  • Employers who systematically violate Federal immigration laws—to hire illegal aliens instead of willing-to-work Americans—are traitors.

And with a new definition of treason should go new penalties–heavy fines and/or prison terms–for those who sell out their country to enrich themselves.

It is time, in short, to put a long-overdue end to the Theory of the Divine Right of Employers.

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GREED? THY NAME IS AYN

In Business, History, Politics, Social commentary on March 13, 2013 at 12:00 am

“Thirty years after her death, Ayn Rand’s ideas have never been more important.

“Unfettered capitalism, unregulated business, bare-bones government providing no social services, glorification of selfishness, disdain for Judeo-Christian morality—these are the tenets of Rand’s harsh philosophy.”

So reads the jacket blurb for Ayn Rand Nation: The Struggle for America’s Soul, by Gary Weiss.

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“The timing of this book couldn’t be better for Americans who are trying to understand where in the hell the far-out right’s anti-worker, anti-egalitarian extremism is coming from,” asserts Jim Hightower, New York Times bestselling author of Thieves in High Places.

“Ayn Rand Nation introduces us to the godmother of such Tea Party craziness as destroying Social Security and eliminating Wall Street regulation. Weiss writes with perception and wit.”

For those who believe that Rand’s philosophy is the remedy for America’s economic and social ills, a 60 Minutes news story sounds a warning.

New England Compounding Center (NECC) pharmacy, based in Framington, Massachusetts, is under criminal investigation.  The reason: Shipping, in the fall of 2012, 17,000 vials of a steroid to be injected into the joints or spines of patients suffering chronic pain.

But instead of relieving pain, this steroid–contaminated with fungal meningitis–brought only agony and death.

The vials went out to thousands of pharmacies scattered across 23 states.

Forty-eight people have died, and 720 are still fighting horrific infections caused by the drug.

Just as Ayn Rand would have wanted, the pharmacy managed to avoid supervision by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

NECC was one of thousands of pharmacies that Congress exempted from FDA oversight. The reason: By law, they are allowed to make custom drugs for just one patient at a time.

But within a few years, NECC went national–and vastly expanded the quantities of drugs produced.

“The underlying factor is that the company got greedy and overextended and we got sloppy, and something happened,” John Connolly, a lab technician for the company, told 60 Minutes, the CBS news magazine.

And, also as Rand would have wanted, the four family members who founded the pharmacy were enriched by it–receiving over $16 million in wages and profits, from December 2011 through November 2012.

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Bankruptcy records show the family members racked up $90,000 on corporate American Express credit cards, including charges made after the company shut down in early October.

A month before the first steroid death, Connolly says he warned his supervisor: “Something’s gonna happen, something’s gonna get missed and we’re gonna get shut down.”

His supervisor just shrugged.

NECC was shut down by the authorities.  Barry Cadden, the president and lead pharmacist of the company, was subpoenaed by Congress to testify.  In true gangster fashion, he pleaded the Fifth.

He claims he doesn’t know how the contamination started.

Which brings us back to Ayn Rand–and, more specifically, Ayn Rand Nation.

Among the themes explored in Weiss’ book:

  • Atlas Shrugged–Rand’s 1957 novel–depicts a United States where many of society’s most productive citizens refuse to be exploited by increasing taxation and government regulations and go on strike. The refusal evokes the imagery of what would happen if the mythological Atlas refused to continue to hold up the world.  The novel continues to influence those who aren’t hard-core Rand followers, who are known as Objectivists.
  • Ayn Rand’s novels dramatically affirm such bedrock American values as independence, creativity, self-reliance, and above all, a permanent distrust of government.
  • In Rand’s 1936 novel, We the Living–set in Soviet Russia–her heroine, Kira Argounova, tells a Communist: “I loathe your ideals; I admire your methods.” Objectivists believe in defending capitalism with the same ruthless methods of Communists.
  • In Rand’s ideal world, government would control only police, armies and law courts.  To her, a   government which performs more than these three functions is not simply impractical or expensive: it is evil.

Many of those who embrace Rand substitute rage for logic: Tea Partiers are furious about the 2008 Wall Street crash, yet they blame the government for it.

(Ironically, in a way, they are right: The government can be blamed–but not for too much regulation of greed-fueled capitalists but too little.)

Weiss asserts that Tea Party members resent the social and economic realities facing the nation, but lack a coherent intellectual framework to help them focus and justify their rage.  But Objectivists have–and offer–such a framework.

Thus, Tea Partiers form the ideological part of the right wing, and the clarity–and fanaticism–of their views gives them a power far out of proportion to their numbers.

Weiss believes that Rand is presenting a moral argument for laissez-faire capitalism, which means eliminating  Social Security, Medicare, public road system, fire departments, parks, building codes–and, above all, any type of financial regulation.

Weiss maintains that Rand’s moral argument must be directly confronted–and defeated–with moral arguments calling for charity and rationality.

Given the fanaticism of Tea Partiers and the right-wing Republicans they support, success in countering Rand’s “I’ve-got-mine-and-the-hell-with-everybody-else” morality is by no means assured.

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TAX FAVORS FOR THE RICH

In Business, Law, Politics, Social commentary on March 12, 2013 at 12:02 am

On December 10, 2012, Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber summoned lawmakers for a special (interest) session of the legislature.

The reason: To give Nike, Inc., a guarantee that it would be taxed only on in-state sales.

Nike had promised to spend at least $150 million and create at least 500 jobs in Oregon–if the legislature approved such a tax-guarantee bill.

Multinational corporations such as Nike and Intel relish the state’s current tax policy–which took effect in 2006. The reason: It saves them millions of dollars on state income taxes.

Oregon caters to such well-heeled companies because they provide thousands of jobs and revenues from personal income taxes for state programs.

The catch: Its tax policy–called the single-sales factor–taxes companies on their sales in Oregon while ignoring their worldwide operations.

Nike reported revenues of $6.5 billion for 2012.

Asked why he needed the bill so quickly, Kitzhaber said Nike officials were expressing “a sense of urgency” and he didn’t want to risk losing what could be a significant job-creation opportunity.

“They have to make their move as soon as possible,” he said.

In short, Nike is threatening to leave Oregon if it doesn’t get a tax-break guarantee.

Kitzhaber’s haste to appease a giant multinational sportswear company is yet another reason why America needs an Employers Responsibility Act (ERA).

Such legislation would ensure fulltime, productive employment for millions of capable, job-seeking Americans.  And it would achieve this goal without raising taxes or creating controversial government “make work” programs

If passed by Congress and vigorously enforced by the U.S. Departments of Justice and Labor, an ERA would legally require employers to demonstrate as much initiative for hiring as job-seekers are now expected to show in searching for work.

Among its provisions would be one to cover the above-mentioned type of corporate extortion:

The seeking of “economic incentives” by companies in return for moving to or remaining in cities/states would be strictly forbidden.

Such “economic incentives” usually:

  1. allow employers to ignore existing laws protecting employees from unsafe working conditions;
  2. allow employers to ignore existing laws protecting the environment;
  3. allow employers to pay their employees the lowest acceptable wages, in return for the “privilege” of working at these companies; and/or
  4. allow employers to pay little or no business taxes, at the expense of communities who are required to make up for lost tax revenues.

Employers who continue to make such overtures would be prosecuted for attempted bribery or extortion:

  1. Bribery, if they offered to move to a city/state in return for “economic incentives,”
  2. Extortion, if they threatened to move their companies from a city/state if they did not receive such “economic incentives.”

This would protect employees against artificially-depressed wages and unsafe working conditions; protect the environment in which these employees live; and protect cities/states from being pitted against one another at the expense of their economic prosperity.

To return to the Oregon story, “creating at least 500 jobs in Oregon” may sound like a lot, that doesn’t necessarily mean they will be high-paying, professional ones by which an employee can support himself and a family.

“Jobs” could also mean part-time jobs, which come without medical insurance benefits.

In the “Careers” section of Nike’s website, a prospective employee will find the following:

NIKE, Inc.’s competitive benefits program provides employees with the opportunity to stay fit, ensure the wellness of their families, and create a positive working environment. That is why every geography provides for variable health coverage, fitness center memberships, time off, retirement savings, and more.

Your particular benefits package will depend on your position, location, and years with the company. Here’s a look at what you might be eligible for.

  • Health insurance
  • Life & Accident insurance
  • Disability insurance
  • Retirement Savings Plan with a company contribution
  • Employee Stock Purchase Plan (15% discount)
  • Paid vacations and holidays
  • Paid sabbaticals
  • Product discounts
  • Onsite fitness center/fitness discounts
  • Transportation allowance/discount
  • Tuition assistance

Note the sentence: “Your particular benefits package will depend on your position, location, and years with the company.”

That sentence contains a lot of “if’s”–and the less time an employee has been with the company, the less likely s/he is to be found eligible for a fuller package of benefits.

It’s a safe bet that those who have just been hired–such as under Nike’s doing so in the immediate future–will not be eligible for full benefits.

Thus, these newly-hired employees may well find themselves struggling to pay for health and/or disability insurance.

And here’s another matter for consideration: Kitzhaber claimed that the average pay at Nike is a little above $100,000 a year–roughly twice the average for the rest of the state.

But how does Nike–or Kitzhaber–arrive at that figure?

On its face, it seems as though Nike is paying its avewrage employee $100,000 per year.  But that’s highly unlikely if the employee is acting as simply a glorified shoe salesman.

So Nike might have arrived at that figure by simply adding the total salaries of all its Oregon employees and then dividing that figure by the number of those employees.

At moments like this, it’s well to remember the warning of former British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli: “There are three kinds of lies–lies, damned lies and statistics.”

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TIME TO FIND THE EXIT

In History, Politics, Social commentary on March 11, 2013 at 12:01 am

In April, 2010, Afghan president Hamid Karzai threatened to quit politics and join the Taliban if America kept pressuring him to enact reforms.

He accused the United States of interfering with Afghanistan’s affairs, and warned that the Taliban would become a legitimate resistance movement if America did not stop.

Hamid Karzai

Almost three years later, on March 10, 2013, Karzai accused the Taliban and America of conspiring to persuade Afghans that violence will worsen if most foreign troops leave.

It’s time for the United States to do in Afghanistan what it should have done in Vietnam: Declare victory and get out.

The history of American conflict in Afghanistan began on September 11, 2001.

On that date, Islamic highjackers slammed two jetliners into the World Trade Center in New York and one into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.

A fourth plane, headed for the White House or Capitol Building, failed to reach its target when its passengers rioted–and the highjackers dove it into a Pennsylvania field.

The mastermind of the attacks was Osama bin Laden, a Saudi millionaire then living in Afghanistan, under protection by its ruling thugocracy, the Taliban.

The administration of President George W. Bush demanded his immediate surrender to American justice.

The Taliban refused.

So, on October 7, 2011–less than one month from the 9/11 attacks–American bombers began pounding Taliban positions.

The whole point of the campaign was to pressure the Taliban to surrender Bin Laden.

But the Taliban held firm.  Bin Laden holed up in the mountains of Tora Bora, and then ultimately escaped into Pakistan.

After December, 2001, American Intelligence completely lost track of Bin Laden.  CIA officials repeatedly said he was likely living in the “no-man’s-land” between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Osama bin Laden

Thus, there was no longer any point in pressuring the Taliban to surrender Bin Laden.

Still, the United States continued to commit forces to Afghanistan–to turn a primitive, warlord-ruled country into a modern-day democracy.

There was, admittedly, a great deal to detest about the Taliban:

  • When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, they turned soccer stadiums into execution plazas for mass beheadings or shootings.
  • Taliban “fighters” have proven their “courage” by throwing acid into the faces of women who dared to attend school.

Taliban atrocities

  • On August 8, 1989, the Taliban attacked Mazar-i-Sharif. Talibanists began shooting people in the street, then moved on to mass rapes of women. Thousands of people were locked in containers and left to suffocate.
  • The Taliban forbade women to leave their homes unless accompanied by a male relative and wearing the burqa–a traditional dress covering the entire body. Those who disobeyed were publicly beaten.

Yet, as horrific as such atrocities were, these did not obligate the United States to spend eternity trying to bring civilization to this barbaric country.

And, in pursuing that goal, both the Bush and Obama administrations have repeatedly overlooked the following realities:

  • Hamid Karzai, the “president” of Afghanistan (2001-present) doesn’t belileve in democracy–despite American claims to support his efforts to bring this to Afghanistan.
  • His authority doesn’t extend beyond Kabul, and he is viewed by most Afghans as an illegitimate ruler, imposed by America.
  • American soldiers in Afghanistan feel surrounded by enemies and hamstrung by unrealistic orders to win “hearts and minds” at the risk of their own lives.
  • The Taliban poses no threat to the security of the United States.
  • Afghan “insurgents” are fighting American forces because (1) they are in a civil war; and (b) they believe their country has once again been occupied by foreigners.
  • Counterinsurgency is being preached as the key to defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan–where it hasn’t worked.
  • Americans entered Afghanistan without an exit strategy.

All these truths applied just as firmly to America’s failed misadventure in Vietnam.

Almost 50 years ago, American “grunts” felt about their so-called South Vietnamese allies as American troops now feel about their Afghan “allies.”

Dr. Dennis Greenbaum, a former army medic, summed up how Americans had really felt about their supposed South Vietnamese allies.

American surgical team in Vietnam

“The highest [priority for medical treatment] was any U.S. person. The second highest was a U.S. dog from the canine corps.  The third was NVA [North Vietnamese Army].  The fourth was VC [Viet Cong].

“And the fifth was ARVIN [Army of the Republic of South Vietnam], because they had no particular value,” said Greenbaum.

When you despise the “ally” you’re spending lives and treasure to defend, it’s time to pack up.

American soldiers long ago recognized that “friendly Afghans” were worthless as allies.  But only recently has the Pentagon publicly admitted that ”friendly Afghans” pose as great a threat to American troops as self-declared Talibanists.

Can anyone recall such “ally-on-American” attacks by British or French soldiers during World War II?  Of course not.

It’s past time for the Obama administration to recognize this–and start shipping those troops home.

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THE OSCARS: “LINCOLN’S” LEGACY: PART ONE (OF TWO)

In History, Politics, Social commentary on February 27, 2013 at 12:09 am

Argo won for Best Picture atthe 2013 Academy Awards ceremony.   But, in the long run, it will be Lincoln who is deservingly remembered–and loved.

Argo focuses on a humiliating episode that most Americans would like to forget.  On November 4, 1979, at the climax of the Iranian revolution, militants stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran, taking 52 Americans hostage.

But, in the midst of the chaos, six Americans managed to slip away and find refuge in the home of the Canadian ambassador.  Knowing it was only a matter of time before the six were found and likely killed, a CIA “exfiltration” specialist offered a risky–and ultimately successful–plan to smuggle them out of the country.

While Argo wrings cheers from American audiences for the winning of this small victory, it cannot erase the blunt truth of the Iranian hostage crisis: For more than 14 months, American diplomats waited helplessly for release–while America proved unable to effect it.

By contrast, Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln celebrates a far greater victory: the final defeat of human slavery in the United States.

And it teaches lessons about the past that remain equally valide today–such as that racism and repression are not confined to any one period or political party.

At the heart of the film: Abraham Lincoln (Daniel Day-Lewis) wants to win ratification of what will be the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. An amendment that will forever ban slavery.

True, Lincoln, in 1862, had issued the Emancipation Proclamation. This-–in theory-–freed slaves held in the Confederate states that were in rebellion against the United States Government.

But Lincoln regards this as a temporary wartime measure.

He fears that, once the war is over, the Supreme Court may rule the Proclamation unconstitutional. This might allow Southerners to continue practicing slavery, even after losing the war.

To prevent this, Congress must pass an anti-slavery amendment.

But winning Congressional passage of such an amendment won’t be easy.

The Senate had ratified its passage in 1864. But the amendment must secure approval from the House of Representatives to become law.

And the House is filled with men-–there are no women members during the 19th  century-–who seethe with hostility.

Some are hostile to Lincoln personally. One of them dubs him a dictator-–”Abraham Africanus.” Another accuses him of shifting his positions for the sake of expediency.

Other members–-white men all-–are hostile to the idea of “equality between the races.”

To them, ending slavery means opening the door to interracial marriage–especially marriage between black men and white women. Perhaps even worse, it means possibly giving blacks-–or women–-the right to vote.

To understand the Congressional debate over the Thirteenth Amendment, it’s necessary to remember this:  In Lincoln’s time, the Republicans were the party of progressives.

The party was founded on an anti-slavery platform.  Its members were thus reviled as “Black Republicans.”

And until the 1960s, the South was solidly Democratic.  Democrats were the ones defending the status quo–slavery–and opposing freed blacks in the South of Reconstruction and long afterward.

In short, in the 18th century, Democrats in the South acted as Republicans do now.

The South went Republican only after a Democratic President–Lyndon B. Johnson–rammed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through Congress.

Watching this re-enactment of the 1865 debate in Lincoln is like watching a rerun of the recent Presidential campaign.  The same mentalities are at work:

  • Those (in this case, slave-owners) who already have a great deal want to gain even more at the expense of others.
  • Those (slaves and freed blacks) who have little strive to gain more or at least hang onto what they still have.
  • Those who defend the privileged wealthy refuse to allow their “social inferiors” to enjoy similar privileges (such as the right to vote).

During the 2012 Presidential race, the Republicans tried to bar those likely to vote for President Barack Obama from getting into the voting booth.  But their bogus “voter ID” restrictions were struck down in courts across the nation.

In the end, however, it is Abraham Lincoln who has the final word.  Through diplomacy and backroom dealings (trading political offices for votes) he wins passage of the anti-slavery amendment.

The movie closes with a historically-correct tribute to Lincoln’s generosity toward those who opposed him–in Congress and on the battlefield.

It occurs during Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address: “With malice toward none, with charity for all….To bind up the nation’s wounds.  To care for him who shall have bourne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan….”

Listening to those words, one is reminded of Mitt Romney’s infamous comments about the “47%: “

Well, there are 47% of the people who…are dependent upon government, who believe that–-that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they’re entitled to healthcare, to food, to housing, to you name it.”

Watching Lincoln, you realize how incredibly lucky we were as a nation to have had such leadership when it was most needed.

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THE REAL “TAKERS”: THE RICH

In Business, History, Politics, Social commentary on February 26, 2013 at 1:08 am

Ann Coulter, the Republican version of the Miss America Nazi, was devastated by the November 6 defeat of Mitt Romney.

“People are suffering,” she whined. “The country is in disarray. If Mitt Romney cannot win in this economy, then the tipping point has been reached. We have more takers than makers and it’s over. There is no hope.”

Actually, Coulter was right–but not in the way she thought she was.

The “takers” are not the “have-nots” who depend on government for assistance.  They are the “more-than-haves” who cheat the government of billions in lost tax revenues.

In 2012, Tax Justice Network, which campaigns to abolish tax havens, commissioned a study of their effect on the world’s economy.

The study was entitled, “The Price of Offshore Revisited: New Estimates for ‘Missing’ Global Private Wealth, Income, Inequality and Lost Taxes.”

http://www.taxjustice.net/cms/upload/pdf/Price_of_Offshore_Revisited_120722.pdf

The research was carried out by James Henry, former chief economist at consultants McKinsey & Co.  Among its findings:

  • By 2010, at least $21 to $32 trillion of the world’s private financial wealth had been invested virtually tax-­free through more than 80 offshore secrecy jurisdictions.
  • Since the 1970s, with eager (and often aggressive and illegal) assistance from the international private banking industry, private elites in 139 countries had accumulated $7.3 to $9.3 trillion of unrecorded offshore wealth by 2010.
  • This happened while many of those countries’ public sectors were borrowing themselves into bankruptcy, suffering painful adjustment and low growth, and holding fire sales of public assets.
  • The assets of these countries are held by a small number of wealthy individuals while the debts are shouldered by the ordinary people of these countries through their governments.
  • Local elites continue to vote with their financial feet while their public sectors borrow heavily abroad.
  • First World countries do most of the borrowing.
  • Of the $7.3–$9.3 trillion of offshore wealth belonging to residents of these 139 countries, the top 10 countries account for 61% and the top 20 for 81%.
  • The offshore industry has many levels of protection: Private bankers, lawyers and accountants get paid handsomely to hide their clients assets and identities.  These groups also maintain influential lobbies.
  • Bank regulators and central banks of most individual countries typically view private banks as key clients.  They have long permitted the world’s top tax havens and banks to conceal the ultimate origins and ownership of assets under their supervision, especially those held in off-balance sheet trusts and
    fiduciary accounts.
  • Although multilateral institutions like the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the IMF and the World Bank are supposedly insulated from politics, they have been highly compromised by the collective interests of Wall Street.
  • These regulatory bodies have never required financial institutions to fully report their cross-­border customer liabilities, deposits, customer assets under management or under custody.
  • All conventional measures of inequality sharply understate the levels of income and wealth inequality at both the country and global level.
  • Less than 100,000 people, .001% of the world’s population, now control over 30% of the world’s financial wealth.
  • The impact on lost tax revenue may be huge–large enough to make a significant difference to the finances of nations.
  • Assuming that global offshore financial wealth of $21 trillion earns a total return of just 3% a year, and would have been taxed an average of 30% in the home country, this unrecorded wealth might have generated tax revenues of $189 billion per year.

Summing up this situation, the report notes: “We are up against one of society’s most well-­entrenched interest groups. After all, there’s no interest group more rich and powerful than the rich and powerful.”

Yet the study reveals two bright spots for countries fed up with being bled dry by those parasites whose allegiance runs only to their wallets.

  1. A huge pile at least $21 trillion of untapped financial wealth has been discovered–monies that can be called upon to help solve the most pressing global problems.
  2. A substantial fraction of this wealth is being managed by the top 50 players in the global private banking industry.

As a result, these findings allow nations’ leaders to:

  • Prevent the abuses that have lead to off-the-books wealth accumulation in the future.
  • Make use of the huge stock of accumulated, untaxed wealth that is already there, as well as the steady stream of untaxed earnings that it generates.

It was Stephen Decatur, the naval hero of the War of 1812, who famously said: “Our country, right or wrong.”

Billionaire tax-cheats like those uncovered in the above-cited report have coined their own motto: “My wallet–first and always.”

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THE MEDIA: WIMPS ON THE LEFT, BULLIES ON THE RIGHT (END)

In History, Politics, Social commentary on February 22, 2013 at 12:33 am

The mainstream media–fearing it will be labeled “partisan” and “leftist”–generally refuses to call the Right on its lies and slanders.

Meanwhile, Rightist organs–such as The Washington Times–continue spewing a McCarthyist brew of fear and smears.

Consider the July 22, 2012 editorial that appeared in The Washington Times: “President’s Socialist Takeover Must Be Stopped.”

Written by its columnist, Jeffrey T. Kuhner, it called for the impeachment of President Barack Obama.

Among his allged “high crimes and misdemeanors”:

The state is intervening in every aspect of American life–beyond its constitutionally delegated bounds. Under Mr. Obama, the Constitution has become a meaningless scrap of paper.

Kuhner didn’t object when the administration of George W. Bush:

  • Gave us an unprovoked war against Iraq founded on lies;
  • Authorized the use of torture;
  • Drafted laws that allegedly protected consumers and the environment–laws written by lobbyists for drug and oil companies; and
  • Gave us a “co-Presidency where Vice President Dick Cheney ruled as “power-behind-the-throne.”

[Obama conspired] to cause chaos for the Mexican citizens by letting…guns go into the drug cartels’ hands and terrorize the Mexican citizens. Forcing them to flee north across the border. Which would create a need for a refugee program for the fleeing Mexicans.

President Obama doesn’t need to create chaos in Mexico, which has always been a failed nation-state.  Nor does he have to encourage Mexicans to illegally enter the United States. 

The Mexican Government has long used its American border to free itself of those who might otherwise demand major reforms in the country’s political and economic institutions. 

If Republicans win back Congress in November, they should–and likely will–launch formal investigations into this criminal, scandal-ridden administration….

Mr. Obama has betrayed the American people.  Impeachment is the only answer.  This usurper must fall.

Of course he’s a usurper: He defeated a Republican candidate for President in 2008!  Everyone on the Right believes the United States should be a one-party country–with Republicans’ being the only ones allowed to hold office. 

Of course Republicans should dominate the House of Representatives; the Senate; the White House; the Justice Department; the courts; the Pentagon. 

After all, if holding total power was good enough for the fascists running Adolf Hitler’s Germany, it’s certainly good enough for the fascists who burn to command America today.

Finally: It’s helpful to remember that the Washington Times is owned by the Unification Church of the late Sun Myung Moon (1920 – 2012).  Moon, in his role of self-styled “messiah,” lived well off the labors of his underpaid and brainwashed followers. 

Sun Myung Moon

In 1982, Moon was convicted of filing false federal income tax returns and conspiracy to subvert American tax laws.  It’s only natural that those who share Moon’s Rightist beliefs should consider themselves above the laws they intend to vigorously apply against everyone else.

* * * * *

The First Amendment of the United State Constitution specifically establishes a protection of “freedom of the press.”

Political reporters are empowered by their employers to learn–and report–all they can about the actual workings of the American political system.

And they are often given privileged access to those workings by influential men and women running for office or holding it.

This is no mere textbook exercise in high-school civics but a matter of deadly importance.

Democracy is founded on the belief that voters can effectively govern themselves.

But that belief works only when voters can learn the truth about the institutions that govern their lives–and about those who run those institutions.

Allowing members of one political party–in this case, the Republicans–to blatantly lie about their opponents and stir unwarranted fears in voters stands as a betrayal of the trust given those reporters.

Portraying the ruthless pursuit of absolute power by one political party–the Republicans–as merely “politics as usual” amounts to a similar betrayal of the public trust.

“Fascism,” warned Ernest Hemingway shortly before the outbreak of World War II, “is a lie told by bullies.”

Seventy-one years ago, the United States declared war on the lies and aggression of global Fascism.  Twelve million Americans served in uniform until Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini were dead, and their legions utterly defeated.

Too many Americans believe that Fascism died in 1945 with Hitler and Mussolini.  It didn’t. 

The struggle against those who make a profession of lying and aggression continues.  It is the duty of the press to see that struggle for what it is–and to report it accurately and courageously.

To describe the efforts of a ruthless political party to gain absolute power as merely “politics s usual” is to mock the truth and abdicate the most important duty of a journalist.

“The duty of journalists is to tell the truth,” wrote historian and political criitic Noam Chomsky, “Journalism means you go back to the actual facts, you look at the documents, you discover what the record is, and you report it that way.”

That is a philosophy of journalistic integrity that too many reporters have forgotten.

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THE MEDIA: WIMPS ON THE LEFT, BULLIES ON THE RIGHT: PART FOUR (OF FIVE)

In History, Politics, Social commentary on February 21, 2013 at 12:05 am

On the December 12, 2012 edition of “Hardball,” MSNBC’s veteran political analyst Chris Matthews tackled a subject that few reporters have dared to confront:

How much of the mainstream press has allowed itself to be co-opted by the Right.

His guests that night were David Corn, of Mother Jones, and Joan Walsh, political analyst for Salon.

JOAN WALSH, POLITICAL ANALYST FOR SALON.COM: Right. The false equivalence.

Well, yes. I mean, there’s this constant false equivalence that we’re always trying to fight here, Chris. And I think you do a good job of it, but it’s really ingrained in the Beltway culture…

…To say that they’re [Republicans and Democrats] both as radical, they’re both–you know, even in the debt ceiling debate or in the fiscal cliff negotiations, that neither side will give and they’re both being unreasonable, and really not drilling down.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Yes. I agree.

….Who can forget back in August, not a million years ago, when the Romney pollster, Neil Newhouse, said the following. “We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers.”

DAVID CORN, MOTHER JONES: Yes.  I thought this…just showed their whole attitude towards reality, towards being vetted. It was sort of an arrogance that, We can say whatever we want to say.

And I think in years past–this is what’s changed–campaigns would not be so brazen. If they’re caught in a lie, they try to wiggle around it. They maybe feel some shame. But here was Neil Newhouse telling reporters–he said this at a breakfast meeting at the convention to a group of reporters…

CORN: … that, We don’t care what you say about our facts. We’re going to use them anywhere. Good example was what they said about Barack Obama changing welfare rules…so that people don’t have to work. And that’s what he was referring to…

MATTHEWS: You’ve got people like Michele Bachmann, who would say just casually that we should begin an investigation of members of Congress for their anti-American attitudes. That was followed up by Adam–Allen West, who’s just been defeated, Allen West saying there are 79 to 81 communists…

But nobody–you know, you would think that “The Nightly News” would come on….[or] The New York Times [would]–say,”Wait a minute. This is so frickin’ far out. This kind of claim goes back at least to Joe McCarthy.”

* * * * *

A major house organ of the Rightist press–The Washington Times–clearly has no intention of backing away from “frickin’ far out” charges against Democrats generally–and President Obama in particular.

On July 22, 2012, one of its columnists, Jeffrey T. Kuhner, authored a piece entitled: “President’s Socialist Takeover Must Be Stopped.”

From that editorial:

President Obama has engaged in numerous high crimes and misdemeanors.  The Democratic majority in Congress in in peril as Americans reject his agenda.  yet more must be done: Mr. Obama should be impeached.

COMMENTARY:  Of course!  Sending U.S. Navy SEALS to take out Osama bin Laden was certainly worthy of impeachment.  And so was taking out a traitorous American Al Qaeda recruiter–Anwar al-Awlaki–with a Predator drone.

Then there’s “Obamacare”: Ensuring that people other than millionaires get medical care is undoubtedly the most impeachable offense of all.

He is….assaulting the very pillars of traditional capitalism.

COMMENTARY: And what are these pillars? 

  • Greed and selfishness: “I’ve got mine and the hell with you, Jack.” 
  • Corporations shipping millions of jobs overseas, paying their foreign workers “coolie wages” and pocketing the profits themselves. 
  • CEOs cheat their country out of the taxes they owe and–through their lobbyists in Congress–force the poor and middle class to take up the slack in taxes. 
  • Meanwhile, millions of their formerly employed Americans struggle to survive. 

So it’s understandable why those CEOs should object to Obama’s demanding they live up to their legal and moral obligations to their country.

Obamacare’s most pernicious aspect is its federal funding of abortion.  Pro-lifers are now compelled to have their tax dollars used to subsidize insurance plans that allow for the murder of unborn children. This is more than state-sanctioned infanticide. It violates the conscience rights of religious citizens.

COMMENTARY: During the Vietnam war, millions of war-hating protesters objected to paying taxes which would finance the bombing and ravishing of a country that hadn’t attacked us.  But the IRS made no exceptions for them.

As for violating “the conscience rights of religious citizens”: When George W. Bush ordered the unprovoked invasion of Iraq, millions of Americans felt their consciences to be violated.  But the war continued. 

And for all of Kuhner’s rantings on the “murder of unborn children”: Right-wingers are notorious for caring about fetuses–until they come out of the womb.  But if the mother of that newborn baby can’t afford healthcare, food or shelter for her new arrival, that’s her tough luck.

Apparently, only Rightist Presidents are allowed to offend the consciences of others with impunity.

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THE MEDIA: WIMPS ON THE LEFT, BULLIES ON THE RIGHT: PART THREE (OF FIVE)

In History, Politics, Social commentary on February 20, 2013 at 12:00 am

The “liberal” press continues to allow itself to be co-opted by the Right.

Consider the following from the December 12, 2012 episode of “Hardball With Chris Matthews”:

Chris Matthews

CHRIS MATTHEWS:  “Let Me Start” with this tonight. Did you get the impression during the presidential campaign that the press was trying too hard to be even- handed?

Did you think the people delivering the news were pushing what we call balance at the expense of the obvious facts?

…. That the Democrats in this election were like Democrats going back to Jack Kennedy, but the Republicans were far to the right of anything we’ve seen from that party ever?

….So tonight we’re going to nail it. We go to the truth, and why was it the truth that dared not be reported in the mainstream media. Joining me now for a brutal autopsy is Joan Walsh of Salon and David Corn of Mother Jones, neither of whom can be charged with hiding what’s wrong with the right.

Here’s what Norm Ornstein, I guy I really respect, of AEI, the American Enterprise Institute, told the HuffingtonPost about the broadcast networks.

Quote, “I can’t recall a campaign where I’ve seen more lying going on, and it wasn’t symmetric, but it seemed pretty clear to me that the Republican campaign was just far more over the top. It’s the great unreported big story of American politics. If voters are going to be able to hold accountable political figures, they’ve got to know what’s going on.

“And if the story that you’re telling repeatedly is that they’re all to blame–they’re all equally to blame, then you’re really doing a disservice to voters and not doing what journalism is supposed to do.”

JOAN WALSH, SALON.COM: Right.

MATTHEWS: And never caught that in the main news stories. Your thoughts about coverage. I hate to be a media critic, but we’re into it right now.

WALSH: Well, it’s–you know, it’s very important, Chris, because–it’s actually–I did read the whole piece. It’sy Dan Froomkin. It’s a really interesting piece, and you would enjoy it.

They are talking about newspapers. They are talking about magazines. They are talking about cable. It’s not just the broadcast networks….

And this is the amazing thing. When you read this Dan Froomkin piece, you get the sense that these men are so wounded by–now they are being treated as pariahs….

DAVID CORN, MOTHER JONES:  I wrote a piece beforehand which I think–which is very much in keeping with their thesis and what Dan wrote, saying that I thought the Romney campaign was much more foundational in its lies about Obama.

And by that, I mean that the core of [Romney’s] campaign [charges]…

Obama promised to lower unemployment below 8 percent.  Not true. Obama appeases. Not true. Obama went on an apology tour. Not true. Obama wants to cut $500 million — billion, excuse me, out of Medicare. Not true.

MATTHEWS: [Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney is claiming that President Barack Obama is] apologizing, but I’ll be a robust patriot. I’ll defend America against fact or–you know, against anything, foe or friend, because I’m a real American.

CORN: … [Romney’s] campaign was based on a lot of major, big, sweeping lies. Now, you can look at Obama and point out that he made a mistake or he misrepresented Obama’s policy in this way or that way, but his–you know, his overall case was not based on a series of falsehoods against Mitt Romney, while, indeed, that was true on the Republican side. And that’s the asymmetry.

And they point out that the media has a really hard time saying that.  It’s much easier to say everybody lies on both sides.

* * * * *

Millions of Americans see the struggles between Republicans and Democrats as “politics as usual,” as though both parties are equally guilty.

In fact, these struggles owe their origin to Right-wing efforts to gain total power over the government–and over the lives of all Americans.  And if they can’t attain this, they are determined to deny Democrats the ability to govern effectively or even protect the nation Republicans claim to love.

For example: In his February 12 State of the Union address, President Barack Obama said that one of his top priorities was protecting America’s critical infrastructure from the growing threat of cyber-attacks.

There is good reason to be alarmed: Since August, 2012, the websites of American banks have repeatedly been attacked, reportedly by Iran.

Major U.S. media companies–The New York Times, Bloomberg News, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post–have all said the Chinese are behind sustained hacking attempts on them.

Yet in August, Senate Republicans helped kill the most comprehensive cyber-security bill to date, arguing it would’ve imposed too great a regulatory burden on business.

If a Republican President introduced such a bill, Rightists would vigorously support it and slander anyone who didn’t as an “America-hating traitor.”

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THE MEDIA: WIMPS ON THE LEFT, BULLIES ON THE RIGHT: PART TWO (OF FIVE)

In History, Politics, Social commentary on February 19, 2013 at 12:00 am

Today’s “lamestream media,” as Sarah Palin likes to refer to the press, are often accused of liberal bias.

But the Right has more often gotten a free ride due to media cowardice or indifference in reporting the truth about its lies and slanders.

Consider the case of Wisconsin U.S. Senator “Tail Gunner” Joseph R. McCarthy, the spiritual Godfather of today’s Republican party.

Joseph R. McCarthy

According to David Halberstam, Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of The Best and the Brightest:  With the help of a compliant or even willing press,  McCarthy successfully exploited America’s postwar fears and uncertainties.

And the reason: After four lackluster years in office, McCarthy desperately needed an issue to ensure his re-election.  He saw rising fears of Communism as his ticket to not only that but vastly increased power.

“Around the country he flew,” wrote Halberstam, “reckless and audacious, stopping long enough to make a new charge…a good newsworthy press conference at the airport, hail-fellow well met with the reporters….

“The emptiness of the charge never [caught] up with him, the American press [was] exploited in its false sense of objectivity (if a high official said something, then it was news, if not fact, and the role of the reporter was to print it straight without commenting, without assailing the credibility of the incredulous, that was objectivity).”

McCarthy was always on the attack, always looking for new targets.  His charges didn’t stick–they couldn’t being utterly false.

But they left a lasting legacy of poison: “Where there was smoke, there must be fire.  He wouldn’t be saying those things if there wasn’t something to it” wrote Halberstam of how most Americans reacted during the “golden age” many now think of as the 1950s.

Not being content with small-fry targets, McCarthy accused high-ranking officials of the Truman administration of being Communists or at least Communist sympathizers.

Among these: Secretary of State Dean Acheson and Secretary of Defense (and later of State) George C. Marshall, the man considered by military historians as the “architect of victory” for American forces in World War II.

And how did the Republican party react?  With elation.

“The real strength of McCarthy was not his own force or brilliance,” wrote Halberstam.  “It was the acquiescence of those who should have known better….The press was willfully exploited by him; very few stood and fought.”

Halberstam pointedly observed that the famous “See It Now” anti-McCarthy broadcast by legendary newscaster Edward R. Murrow happened in 1954–four years after McCarthy began his Red-baiting career.

The Democrats refused to confront and refute his false charges.  And the Republicans were thrilled at the huge voter turnouts his charges were arousing–to vote Republican.

“When he had gone too far, then [Republicans] would turn on him, which they did.”

“Going to far” in this case meant “that he had begun to attack the Republicans themselves”–such as no less a figure than President Dwight D. Eisenhower himself.

Meanwhile, “the more he assaulted the Democrats, the better for [Republicans].  The Democrats were on the defensive, and the Republicans were the beneficiaries.”  An observer compared McCarthy to being “a pig in a minefield for [Republicans].”

McCarthy was by no means the only Republican to rise to influence by playing on Americans’ fears of the Red Menace.  Another was California U.S. Senator Richard M. Nixon, who claimed to be a “moderate” between McCarthy and more “respectable” Republicans.

Eventually McCarthy destroyed himself: He accused the top leadership of the U.S. Army of being a cabal of Communist traitors.

The televised “Army-McCarthy hearings” finally revealed him as the bully and liar he had always been, and his credibility vanished overnight.  His Senate colleagues at last found the courage to censure him.

While he was allowed to keep his seat, he was shunned–by reporters who had rushed to cover his every press conference and by Republicans who had fought to have their picture taken with him.

Increasingly taking to alcohol, he fell into depression and had to be hospitalized at Bethesda Naval Hospital, ultimately dying of alcoholism in 1957.

President Eisenhower, commenting upon McCarthy’s fall from grace, reportedly said that “McCarthyism” was now “McCarthywasm.”

Many Democrats sighed with relief, believing that the worst was now over.  But it wasn’t.

Republicans had learned that Red-baiting was politically profitable.  Their fear- and slander-mongering had put Eisenhower in the White House for eight years and elected and re-elected scores of Republicans to the House and Senate.

It had also put the Democrats on the defensive–especially on matters of foreign policy.  The false right-wing charge that President Harry S. Truman had “lost China” would haunt the Democratic party for decades to come.

America had not “lost China.”

Generalissimo Chaing Kai-Shek lost out in a duel for power with Mao tse Tung.  Americans, powerless to change the outcome, could only watch as spectators.

As a result, Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson felt they must commit U.S. forces to a backward and insignificant country called Vietnam–to forestall the Republican charge: “Who lost Vietnam?”