May 17, 2011
A U.S. Army helicopter brigade is set to pull out of Baghdad in December, as part of an agreement with the Iraqi government to remove U.S. forces. So the armed helicopters flying over the Iraqi capital next year will have pilots and machine gunners from DynCorp International, a company based in Virginia.
On the ground, it's the same story. American soldiers and Marines will leave. Those replacing them, right down to carrying assault weapons, will come from places with names like Aegis Defence Services and Global Strategies Group — eight companies in all.
All U.S. combat forces are scheduled to leave Iraq by year's end, but there will still be a need for security. That means American troops will be replaced by a private army whose job will be to protect diplomats.
Already, the State Department is approving contracts, but there are questions about whether it makes sense to turn over this security job to private companies.
Security For The State Department
Overseeing the armed personnel is Patrick Kennedy, a top State Department official.
"I think the number of State Department security contractors would be somewhere in the area of between 4,500 and 5,000," Kennedy says.
That's roughly the size of an Army brigade, and double the number of private security contractors there now.
The State Department has an in-house security force, but it has just 2,000 people to cover the entire world. They handle everything from protecting Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to guarding embassies and consulates.
Kennedy says for a tough job like Iraq, he needs help.
"In a situation like this, where you have a surge requirement that exceeds the capability of the State Department, it is normal practice to contract out for personnel to assist during those surge periods," he says.
More on this story
More Contractors Dying In Iraq And Afghanistan Than Soldiers Sept. 23, 2010
Appeals Court Revives Blackwater Shooting Case April 22, 2011
Timeline: Blackwater and Security Regulations Dec. 14, 2007
A Shaky Record
But the State Department has a shaky record overseeing armed guards. A recent congressional study found that many contractor abuses in Iraq were caused by those working for the State Department, not for the Pentagon.
The most notorious was the shooting of 17 Iraqi civilians at a Baghdad traffic circle in 2007. Guards with the private security contractor Blackwater opened fire while protecting a State Department convoy. A U.S. investigation later found there was no threat to that convoy.
Among those contractors who will be working in Iraq next year is International Development Services, a company with links to Blackwater, now renamed Xe Services.
State Department officials say they've made changes since that deadly incident in Baghdad. There are now more State Department supervisors; contractors must take an interpreter on all convoys; and companies can be penalized for poor performance.
But Grant Green, a member of the Commission on Wartime Contracting created by Congress, says that's not enough. He told a House panel recently that the State Department still isn't ready to assume responsibility for Iraq next year.
"They do not have enough oversight today to oversee and manage those contractors in the way they should be," Green says.
Kennedy of the State Department disputes that contention. He says there are plenty of supervisors who shadow these private contractors.
"We have trained State Department security professionals in every convoy in every movement in Iraq," Kennedy says.
'Beef Up' State Department Forces?
But that raises a broader question: Should the State Department be turning over these inherently military jobs to private contractors?
You might as well beef up the Bureau of Diplomatic Security ... rather than assuming the private contractors will do a good job because you've written a good contract.
- Pratap Chatterjee, of the Center for American Progress
Pratap Chatterjee of the Center for American Progress doesn't think so. Chatterjee, who writes about contractors, says these are government roles that demand accountability to the public. He has another idea about what should be done.
"You might as well beef up the Bureau of Diplomatic Security," he says.
That means greatly expanding the State Department security force of 2,000 that now covers the entire world.
"And make sure you have the capability for future operations in countries like Libya or wherever it is, rather than assuming the private contractors will do a good job because you've written a good contract. That's just not good enough," Chatterjee says.
It may be impractical to hire thousands more State Department security personnel. Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, says today's wars are different — they're lengthy and ambitious. So it doesn't make sense to build a large force to protect diplomats.
"I don't expect that the United States is going be engaged in a stabilization operation of the size of either Iraq or Afghanistan in the near future," Bowen says.
That may be true. But for the time being, private security contractors — thousands more — will soon be on the job in Iraq.
http://www.npr.org/2011/05/17/136357821/as-u-s-military-exits-iraq-contractors-to-enter
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
One Teacher's Brief Exchange with Gov. Walker
Posted by Joel Raney at 10:48 PM Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Dan Ingersoll is a friend and colleague who teaches high school art. He recently met Gov. Walker on the morning of Wisconsin’s fishing opener. I asked Dan if I could share his story on my blog. Here’s what he wrote:
Around 6:45 a.m. Saturday, May 7, a small group of four made its way from Eau Claire to the Rod and Gun Club boat landing on Lake Wissota. It was the Wisconsin Fishing Opener, the “Governor’s Opener” as well.
As we turned into the road leading to the landing we were greeted with a large vinyl sign, “Welcome to the Governor’s Opener.” The Sign was flanked by two Chippewa County Sheriff cars with uniformed officers standing next to them. Not sure why, never have had trouble with the law, but I avoided eye contact and continued to drive into the entrance to the parking lot.
At the entrance we were greeted by two bearded guys dressed in full camo who glared and asked, “May we help you?” Their words said “may we help you,” but it felt like, “who the hell are you and what are you doing here?” I told them, “We just came up for the fishing opener,” to which one gruffly replied, “Are you fishing?” I said “no, just came down to hear the Governor speak.” After a disgusted scowl, he said, “Well it’s going to cost you $4.00 to park, and you’re going to have to park over there on the grass.” Not sure why we had to park on the grass as the lot had plenty of room, but hey, we were happy they let us in after their initial greeting. We got out of the car, headed to the lake, passed the sign in the parking lot that said the club was privately owned but open for public use with the payment of a $4.00 daily user fee. I guess the boys in camo demanding $4.00 were legit after all!
As it turns out we were a bit mistaken about the whole event. We were under the impression that a good size group of folks were planning to be at the landing to silently protest, to let the Governor know we had not gone away, and were not aware that a ticket and an invitation was required to be on the site.
The only protest taking place was with boats on the water. We did pay our daily user fee, so even though there seemed to be no other like minded folk in sight, we decided to hang out and see what transpired. There were five boats on the lake floating around the landing, so we walked to the shore to check out their signs and give them the thumbs up. We recognized Jeff Smith, former Democratic State Assembly person, and some teachers from Chippewa Falls. We exchanged greetings, and they offered us a boat ride, but could not get back to the landing dock, and we thought better of grounding their boat on the rocks.
Minutes later a car pulled up about 20 feet from where we were standing and Governor Walker and some of his folks got out. Walker was dressed in a “Harley” jacket, pants, and boots. The morning sun had him all aglow as it reflected off the product in his hair, boots, and black leather. My son, who was in our group, noticed him first and pointed him out. Without thought, I found myself saying to my group, “Hey, I’m going to talk to him,” and headed in his direction. My group joined me.
I approached with outstretched hand and politely introduced myself, saying, “Governor Walker, I am Dan Ingersoll. I am a public school teacher, and I just want to let you know that the policies and laws that you’re attempting to enact have effectively devalued my profession and demoralized myself and many of my dedicated, hardworking colleagues. I have been a teacher for more than twenty five years and it feels like you have arbitrarily determined to change the rules at the end of the game.”
Now, I know I could have said something more intelligent. However, the whole thing was unplanned and a bit surreal. It was the best I could muster on the spot.
Is Harley-Davidson in competition with public
workers? Or, do they serve different purposes?
Walker appeared a bit taken aback by our presence as he thought he was on guarded property, and while his eyes appeared empty, he did respond: “Well, there is a lot of that” (I guess “that” is in reference to everything I had said) “going on in the private sector too. And those same laws and policies that you refer to, well, they are responsible for job growth, just like the 200 new jobs we created at the Harley Davidson.”
I guess I should not have been surprised that he didn’t thank me for my years of dedicated service to the children of Wisconsin. Before I could ask him if they were the same kind of jobs he created at Kurth Manufacturing, my twenty-five-year-old son had heard all he could stand. He slapped me on the shoulder and said, with just a bit of sarcasm, “Hey Dad, that’s just great! Now you can quit your teaching job and get one of them good ones at Harley.”
The encounter then came to a quick end as Walker smirked, looked down, turned, and walked away. At this point one young member of our group, whose passion was tweaked by the Governor’s dismissive, smirky, behavior, expressed a thought that began with “F” and ended with the name of Bono’s band.
Some would argue that by using such expressive language that we lost the good fight. The reality is that we were of no consequence to the man, and he was not interested in anything we had to say, be it reasoned, seasoned, or colorful. We were just a bit of an annoyance to be scoffed at. As he walked away, we turned and headed toward the cameras setting up by the landing dock to listen to the news conference.
Before reaching our destination, a nice enough woman approached us and asked us to leave. She said we were not welcome and were trespassing on private property. We shared with her that we had paid our $4.00 daily use fee and continued on to the press conference site. Moments later 10 county officers converged on our little group and the tension in the air thickened. They stopped about 15 feet away from us and one of them approached me saying, “Sir, we have been asked to escort you off this private property; however, I am not going to do that if you will agree not to disrupt the news conference and refrain from using any vulgarities or shouting out.” I said I thought we could do that, and he let us stay. He stood next to us the whole time and after about five minutes realized a member of our group was holding a small sign that read, “not a fan.” He quietly told him to put it down or he would have to leave. The sign was lowered just a bit, which seemed to do the trick.
During the conference, a news man asked a hard-hitting question about what kind of fish the Governor was going after. Walker responded with, I don’t know, but we must have over 20 poles in the boat, so we ought to catch something. At this point I leaned over and said to the sheriff, “Hey, is it legal to have 20 poles in your boat?” With an instant change in demeanor, the sheriff broke into a wide grin and said, “Good question for the DNR guys.”
As Walker and his armada of DNR boats left the landing in search of the “big one,” we walked back to the car and headed to the Altoona Family Restaurant for some breakfast. As we reflected on the experience over Greek omelets and hash browns, a few questions came up:
First and foremost, would a real Wisconsinite go fishing in a leather Harley outfit? It appears from photos that he changed into jeans and a camo jacket before hitting the water.
Since tax payers (yes, teachers do pay taxes) are footing the bill for this fishing outing, why was the kickoff held on private property and insulated from everyone except the media, invited guests, and four unwelcome taxpayers who inadvertently crashed the party.
Since he seems to be all about the destruction of the middle class, government professions, and relishes tapping into the “politics of envy” as a rationale for his actions, why did he not show us all how to live within our means and dig some worms, grab a pole, and head down to the Yahara River bank or the shores of Lake Monona to fish with the common folk who can’t afford $30,000 fishing rigs?
As I shared my story with some colleagues at my school, what I have come to realize is that the significant part of the story is that I may be one of a very few teachers who has actually spoken to Walker. With all that has transpired, he has managed to insulate himself from anyone who disagrees with him.
In the past couple of months, he jetted up to Eau Claire and other cities around the state to hold news conferences and in each case he has locked himself in an airplane hanger or in an industry-friendly, controlled environment with the press and a few invited guests. It is these actions that he has taken to insulate himself from the public that he supposedly represents that has effectively communicated to half of the people of this state that they are insignificant and that their thoughts, feelings, ideas, values, and careers are of no value to him or his handlers. This is evident in his refusal to engage in any conversation, let alone negotiation, with anyone who strays from the corporate-driven agenda and administrators to whom he answers. It is for this reason that I believe the man is not fit to govern the people of Wisconsin.
I looked the man square in the eyes and in that moment he looked away, unable to have an honest exchange with a real person. I hoped for better from the “leader” of this state.
view comments
http://starttherealconversation.blogspot.com/
Dan Ingersoll is a friend and colleague who teaches high school art. He recently met Gov. Walker on the morning of Wisconsin’s fishing opener. I asked Dan if I could share his story on my blog. Here’s what he wrote:
Around 6:45 a.m. Saturday, May 7, a small group of four made its way from Eau Claire to the Rod and Gun Club boat landing on Lake Wissota. It was the Wisconsin Fishing Opener, the “Governor’s Opener” as well.
As we turned into the road leading to the landing we were greeted with a large vinyl sign, “Welcome to the Governor’s Opener.” The Sign was flanked by two Chippewa County Sheriff cars with uniformed officers standing next to them. Not sure why, never have had trouble with the law, but I avoided eye contact and continued to drive into the entrance to the parking lot.
At the entrance we were greeted by two bearded guys dressed in full camo who glared and asked, “May we help you?” Their words said “may we help you,” but it felt like, “who the hell are you and what are you doing here?” I told them, “We just came up for the fishing opener,” to which one gruffly replied, “Are you fishing?” I said “no, just came down to hear the Governor speak.” After a disgusted scowl, he said, “Well it’s going to cost you $4.00 to park, and you’re going to have to park over there on the grass.” Not sure why we had to park on the grass as the lot had plenty of room, but hey, we were happy they let us in after their initial greeting. We got out of the car, headed to the lake, passed the sign in the parking lot that said the club was privately owned but open for public use with the payment of a $4.00 daily user fee. I guess the boys in camo demanding $4.00 were legit after all!
As it turns out we were a bit mistaken about the whole event. We were under the impression that a good size group of folks were planning to be at the landing to silently protest, to let the Governor know we had not gone away, and were not aware that a ticket and an invitation was required to be on the site.
The only protest taking place was with boats on the water. We did pay our daily user fee, so even though there seemed to be no other like minded folk in sight, we decided to hang out and see what transpired. There were five boats on the lake floating around the landing, so we walked to the shore to check out their signs and give them the thumbs up. We recognized Jeff Smith, former Democratic State Assembly person, and some teachers from Chippewa Falls. We exchanged greetings, and they offered us a boat ride, but could not get back to the landing dock, and we thought better of grounding their boat on the rocks.
Minutes later a car pulled up about 20 feet from where we were standing and Governor Walker and some of his folks got out. Walker was dressed in a “Harley” jacket, pants, and boots. The morning sun had him all aglow as it reflected off the product in his hair, boots, and black leather. My son, who was in our group, noticed him first and pointed him out. Without thought, I found myself saying to my group, “Hey, I’m going to talk to him,” and headed in his direction. My group joined me.
I approached with outstretched hand and politely introduced myself, saying, “Governor Walker, I am Dan Ingersoll. I am a public school teacher, and I just want to let you know that the policies and laws that you’re attempting to enact have effectively devalued my profession and demoralized myself and many of my dedicated, hardworking colleagues. I have been a teacher for more than twenty five years and it feels like you have arbitrarily determined to change the rules at the end of the game.”
Now, I know I could have said something more intelligent. However, the whole thing was unplanned and a bit surreal. It was the best I could muster on the spot.
Is Harley-Davidson in competition with public
workers? Or, do they serve different purposes?
Walker appeared a bit taken aback by our presence as he thought he was on guarded property, and while his eyes appeared empty, he did respond: “Well, there is a lot of that” (I guess “that” is in reference to everything I had said) “going on in the private sector too. And those same laws and policies that you refer to, well, they are responsible for job growth, just like the 200 new jobs we created at the Harley Davidson.”
I guess I should not have been surprised that he didn’t thank me for my years of dedicated service to the children of Wisconsin. Before I could ask him if they were the same kind of jobs he created at Kurth Manufacturing, my twenty-five-year-old son had heard all he could stand. He slapped me on the shoulder and said, with just a bit of sarcasm, “Hey Dad, that’s just great! Now you can quit your teaching job and get one of them good ones at Harley.”
The encounter then came to a quick end as Walker smirked, looked down, turned, and walked away. At this point one young member of our group, whose passion was tweaked by the Governor’s dismissive, smirky, behavior, expressed a thought that began with “F” and ended with the name of Bono’s band.
Some would argue that by using such expressive language that we lost the good fight. The reality is that we were of no consequence to the man, and he was not interested in anything we had to say, be it reasoned, seasoned, or colorful. We were just a bit of an annoyance to be scoffed at. As he walked away, we turned and headed toward the cameras setting up by the landing dock to listen to the news conference.
Before reaching our destination, a nice enough woman approached us and asked us to leave. She said we were not welcome and were trespassing on private property. We shared with her that we had paid our $4.00 daily use fee and continued on to the press conference site. Moments later 10 county officers converged on our little group and the tension in the air thickened. They stopped about 15 feet away from us and one of them approached me saying, “Sir, we have been asked to escort you off this private property; however, I am not going to do that if you will agree not to disrupt the news conference and refrain from using any vulgarities or shouting out.” I said I thought we could do that, and he let us stay. He stood next to us the whole time and after about five minutes realized a member of our group was holding a small sign that read, “not a fan.” He quietly told him to put it down or he would have to leave. The sign was lowered just a bit, which seemed to do the trick.
During the conference, a news man asked a hard-hitting question about what kind of fish the Governor was going after. Walker responded with, I don’t know, but we must have over 20 poles in the boat, so we ought to catch something. At this point I leaned over and said to the sheriff, “Hey, is it legal to have 20 poles in your boat?” With an instant change in demeanor, the sheriff broke into a wide grin and said, “Good question for the DNR guys.”
As Walker and his armada of DNR boats left the landing in search of the “big one,” we walked back to the car and headed to the Altoona Family Restaurant for some breakfast. As we reflected on the experience over Greek omelets and hash browns, a few questions came up:
First and foremost, would a real Wisconsinite go fishing in a leather Harley outfit? It appears from photos that he changed into jeans and a camo jacket before hitting the water.
Since tax payers (yes, teachers do pay taxes) are footing the bill for this fishing outing, why was the kickoff held on private property and insulated from everyone except the media, invited guests, and four unwelcome taxpayers who inadvertently crashed the party.
Since he seems to be all about the destruction of the middle class, government professions, and relishes tapping into the “politics of envy” as a rationale for his actions, why did he not show us all how to live within our means and dig some worms, grab a pole, and head down to the Yahara River bank or the shores of Lake Monona to fish with the common folk who can’t afford $30,000 fishing rigs?
As I shared my story with some colleagues at my school, what I have come to realize is that the significant part of the story is that I may be one of a very few teachers who has actually spoken to Walker. With all that has transpired, he has managed to insulate himself from anyone who disagrees with him.
In the past couple of months, he jetted up to Eau Claire and other cities around the state to hold news conferences and in each case he has locked himself in an airplane hanger or in an industry-friendly, controlled environment with the press and a few invited guests. It is these actions that he has taken to insulate himself from the public that he supposedly represents that has effectively communicated to half of the people of this state that they are insignificant and that their thoughts, feelings, ideas, values, and careers are of no value to him or his handlers. This is evident in his refusal to engage in any conversation, let alone negotiation, with anyone who strays from the corporate-driven agenda and administrators to whom he answers. It is for this reason that I believe the man is not fit to govern the people of Wisconsin.
I looked the man square in the eyes and in that moment he looked away, unable to have an honest exchange with a real person. I hoped for better from the “leader” of this state.
view comments
http://starttherealconversation.blogspot.com/
The Obama Deception: Why Cornel West Went Ballistic
Posted on May 16, 2011
By Chris Hedges
By Chris Hedges
The moral philosopher Cornel West, if Barack Obama’s ascent to power was a morality play, would be the voice of conscience. Rahm Emanuel, a cynical product of the Chicago political machine, would be Satan. Emanuel in the first scene of the play would dangle power, privilege, fame and money before Obama. West would warn Obama that the quality of a life is defined by its moral commitment, that his legacy will be determined by his willingness to defy the cruel assault by the corporate state and the financial elite against the poor and working men and women, and that justice must never be sacrificed on the altar of power.
Perhaps there was never much of a struggle in Obama’s heart. Perhaps West only provided a moral veneer. Perhaps the dark heart of Emanuel was always the dark heart of Obama. Only Obama knows. But we know how the play ends. West is banished like honest Kent in “King Lear.” Emanuel and immoral mediocrities from Lawrence Summers to Timothy Geithner to Robert Gates—think of Goneril and Regan in the Shakespearean tragedy—take power. We lose. And Obama becomes an obedient servant of the corporate elite in exchange for the hollow trappings of authority.
No one grasps this tragic descent better than West, who did 65 campaign events for Obama, believed in the potential for change and was encouraged by the populist rhetoric of the Obama campaign. He now nurses, like many others who placed their faith in Obama, the anguish of the deceived, manipulated and betrayed. He bitterly describes Obama as “a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats. And now he has become head of the American killing machine and is proud of it.”
“When you look at a society you look at it through the lens of the least of these, the weak and the vulnerable; you are committed to loving them first, not exclusively, but first, and therefore giving them priority,” says West, the Class of 1943 University Professor of African American Studies and Religion at Princeton University. “And even at this moment, when the empire is in deep decline, the culture is in deep decay, the political system is broken, where nearly everyone is up for sale, you say all I have is the subversive memory of those who came before, personal integrity, trying to live a decent life, and a willingness to live and die for the love of folk who are catching hell. This means civil disobedience, going to jail, supporting progressive forums of social unrest if they in fact awaken the conscience, whatever conscience is left, of the nation. And that’s where I find myself now.
“I have to take some responsibility,” he admits of his support for Obama as we sit in his book-lined office. “I could have been reading into it more than was there.
“I was thinking maybe he has at least some progressive populist instincts that could become more manifest after the cautious policies of being a senator and working with [Sen. Joe] Lieberman as his mentor,” he says. “But it became very clear when I looked at the neoliberal economic team. The first announcement of Summers and Geithner I went ballistic. I said, ‘Oh, my God, I have really been misled at a very deep level.’ And the same is true for Dennis Ross and the other neo-imperial elites. I said, ‘I have been thoroughly misled, all this populist language is just a facade. I was under the impression that he might bring in the voices of brother Joseph Stiglitz and brother Paul Krugman. I figured, OK, given the structure of constraints of the capitalist democratic procedure that’s probably the best he could do. But at least he would have some voices concerned about working people, dealing with issues of jobs and downsizing and banks, some semblance of democratic accountability for Wall Street oligarchs and corporate plutocrats who are just running amuck. I was completely wrong.”
West says the betrayal occurred on two levels.
“There is the personal level,” he says. “I used to call my dear brother [Obama] every two weeks. I said a prayer on the phone for him, especially before a debate. And I never got a call back. And when I ran into him in the state Capitol in South Carolina when I was down there campaigning for him he was very kind. The first thing he told me was, ‘Brother West, I feel so bad. I haven’t called you back. You been calling me so much. You been giving me so much love, so much support and what have you.’ And I said, ‘I know you’re busy.’ But then a month and half later I would run into other people on the campaign and he’s calling them all the time. I said, wow, this is kind of strange. He doesn’t have time, even two seconds, to say thank you or I’m glad you’re pulling for me and praying for me, but he’s calling these other people. I said, this is very interesting. And then as it turns out with the inauguration I couldn’t get a ticket with my mother and my brother. I said this is very strange. We drive into the hotel and the guy who picks up my bags from the hotel has a ticket to the inauguration. My mom says, ‘That’s something that this dear brother can get a ticket and you can’t get one, honey, all the work you did for him from Iowa.’ Beginning in Iowa to Ohio. We had to watch the thing in the hotel.
“What it said to me on a personal level,” he goes on, “was that brother Barack Obama had no sense of gratitude, no sense of loyalty, no sense of even courtesy, [no] sense of decency, just to say thank you. Is this the kind of manipulative, Machiavellian orientation we ought to get used to? That was on a personal level.”
But there was also the betrayal on the political and ideological level.
“It became very clear to me as the announcements were being made,” he says, “that this was going to be a newcomer, in many ways like Bill Clinton, who wanted to reassure the Establishment by bringing in persons they felt comfortable with and that we were really going to get someone who was using intermittent progressive populist language in order to justify a centrist, neoliberalist policy that we see in the opportunism of Bill Clinton. It was very much going to be a kind of black face of the DLC [Democratic Leadership Council].”
Obama and West’s last personal contact took place a year ago at a gathering of the Urban League when, he says, Obama “cussed me out.” Obama, after his address, which promoted his administration’s championing of charter schools, approached West, who was seated in the front row.
“He makes a bee line to me right after the talk, in front of everybody,” West says. “He just lets me have it. He says, ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself, saying I’m not a progressive. Is that the best you can do? Who do you think you are?’ I smiled. I shook his hand. And a sister hollered in the back, ‘You can’t talk to professor West. That’s Dr. Cornel West. Who do you think you are?’ You can go to jail talking to the president like that. You got to watch yourself. I wanted to slap him on the side of his head.
“It was so disrespectful,” he went on, “that’s what I didn’t like. I’d already been called, along with all [other] leftists, a “F’ing retard” by Rahm Emanuel because we had critiques of the president.”
Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to the president, has, West said, phoned him to complain about his critiques of Obama. Jarrett was especially perturbed, West says, when he said in an interview last year that he saw a lot of Malcolm X and Ella Baker in Michelle Obama. Jarrett told him his comments were not complimentary to the first lady.
“I said in the world that I live in, in that which authorizes my reality, Ella Baker is a towering figure,” he says, munching Fritos and sipping apple juice at his desk. “If I say there is a lot of Ella Baker in Michelle Obama, that’s a compliment. She can take it any way she wants. I can tell her I’m sorry it offended you, but I’m going to speak the truth. She is a Harvard Law graduate, a Princeton graduate, and she deals with child obesity and military families. Why doesn’t she visit a prison? Why not spend some time in the hood? That is where she is, but she can’t do it.
“I think my dear brother Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men,” West says. “It’s understandable. As a young brother who grows up in a white context, brilliant African father, he’s always had to fear being a white man with black skin. All he has known culturally is white. He is just as human as I am, but that is his cultural formation. When he meets an independent black brother, it is frightening. And that’s true for a white brother. When you get a white brother who meets a free, independent black man, they got to be mature to really embrace fully what the brother is saying to them. It’s a tension, given the history. It can be overcome. Obama, coming out of Kansas influence, white, loving grandparents, coming out of Hawaii and Indonesia, when he meets these independent black folk who have a history of slavery, Jim Crow, Jane Crow and so on, he is very apprehensive. He has a certain rootlessness, a deracination. It is understandable.
“He feels most comfortable with upper middle-class white and Jewish men who consider themselves very smart, very savvy and very effective in getting what they want,” he says. “He’s got two homes. He has got his family and whatever challenges go on there, and this other home. Larry Summers blows his mind because he’s so smart. He’s got Establishment connections. He’s embracing me. It is this smartness, this truncated brilliance, that titillates and stimulates brother Barack and makes him feel at home. That is very sad for me.
“This was maybe America’s last chance to fight back against the greed of the Wall Street oligarchs and corporate plutocrats, to generate some serious discussion about public interest and common good that sustains any democratic experiment,” West laments. “We are squeezing out all of the democratic juices we have. The escalation of the class war against the poor and the working class is intense. More and more working people are beaten down. They are world-weary. They are into self-medication. They are turning on each other. They are scapegoating the most vulnerable rather than confronting the most powerful. It is a profoundly human response to panic and catastrophe. I thought Barack Obama could have provided some way out. But he lacks backbone.
“Can you imagine if Barack Obama had taken office and deliberately educated and taught the American people about the nature of the financial catastrophe and what greed was really taking place?” West asks. “If he had told us what kind of mechanisms of accountability needed to be in place, if he had focused on homeowners rather than investment banks for bailouts and engaged in massive job creation he could have nipped in the bud the right-wing populism of the tea party folk. The tea party folk are right when they say the government is corrupt. It is corrupt. Big business and banks have taken over government and corrupted it in deep ways.
“We have got to attempt to tell the truth, and that truth is painful,” he says. “It is a truth that is against the thick lies of the mainstream. In telling that truth we become so maladjusted to the prevailing injustice that the Democratic Party, more and more, is not just milquetoast and spineless, as it was before, but thoroughly complicitous with some of the worst things in the American empire. I don’t think in good conscience I could tell anybody to vote for Obama. If it turns out in the end that we have a crypto-fascist movement and the only thing standing between us and fascism is Barack Obama, then we have to put our foot on the brake. But we’ve got to think seriously of third-party candidates, third formations, third parties.
“Our last hope is to generate a democratic awakening among our fellow citizens. This means raising our voices, very loud and strong, bearing witness, individually and collectively. Tavis [Smiley] and I have talked about ways of civil disobedience, beginning with ways for both of us to get arrested, to galvanize attention to the plight of those in prisons, in the hoods, in poor white communities. We must never give up. We must never allow hope to be eliminated or suffocated.”
http://www.truthdig.com/report/print/the_obama_deception_why_cornel_west_went_ballistic_20110516/
Friday, May 13, 2011
Humanity Hitting the Resource Ceiling
Stephen Leahy
UXBRIDGE, Canada, May 12 (IPS) - Better living through using far fewer material resources is the only possible future, experts agree. Humanity is pressing up against the limits of a finite planet to provide resources like water, oil, metals and food, according to a new report released Thursday.
Higher resource consumption levels will be prohibitively costly or simply impossible, warns the report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
"Global resource consumption is exploding. It's not a trend that is in any way sustainable," said Ernst von Weizsäcker, co-chair of UNEP's International Resource Panel.
"We must realise that prosperity and well-being do not depend on consuming ever-greater quantities of resources," said von Weizsäcker.
The world is running out of cheap and high quality sources of some essential materials such as oil, copper and gold, the supplies of which, in turn, require ever-rising volumes of fossil fuels and freshwater to produce, the report found.
During the 20th century, the rate of resource use has increased twice as fast as the increase in global population. Now, resources are being consumed at an even greater rate and are on pace to triple by 2050, the report calculates. Except there simply aren't enough resources left on the planet to manage that.
The average person in Canada or the United States currently consumes 25 tonnes of key resources every year, while a person living in India and in most African countries uses just four tonnes, the report found.
Industrialised countries need to reduce their consumption by making significant reductions in waste and major improvements in the efficiency with which they use resources. At the same time, developing countries need to create new low-carbon, super-efficient resource use pathways for their economic development.
Developing countries have to change their idea of what development means in a resource-scarce world. They need to forge a new resource- efficient, low carbon development path, said Mark Swilling of the Sustainability Institute at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa.
There is a pressing need for sanitation in much of Africa, but instead of building expensive Western-style water treatment infrastructure, countries can use their wetlands and natural vegetation to provide the same service, Swilling, a co-author of the report, told IPS.
"We will miss out on these kinds of opportunities if we follow Western development patterns," he said.
Public infrastructure is the biggest determinant of future energy and resource use, said Marina Fischer-Kowalski of the Institute of Social Ecology in Vienna.
North America's infrastructure, including transportation, sanitation, food production and so on, are all high-energy, high-material-use systems, said report co-author Fischer-Kowalski. They were designed with the assumption of never-ending access to cheap and plentiful energy and resources. Efficiency improvements can be made but it is more expensive and limits to what can be done.
"Our report calls for an urgent rethink of the links between resource use and economic prosperity," Fischer-Kowalski told IPS.
At a bare minimum, wealthy countries need to freeze their per capita consumption and help developing nations follow a more sustainable path, recommends the report, "Decoupling natural resource use and environmental impacts from economic growth". Decoupling means disconnecting economic growth from increasing use of material resources.
Economic theory has long linked rising economic development as measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to increasing resource use. However, countries like Japan and Switzerland have far higher GDP per capita than Australia but they use just 25 percent of the natural resources per capita that Australians use.
Japan has an explicit goal of becoming a "sustainable society" focused on low carbon, the reduction, reuse and recycling of materials, and harmony with nature. The government has successfully focused on increasing resource productivity and minimising negative environmental impacts, the report found.
Germany aims to double energy and resource productivity by 2020. China has declared it will build an "ecological civilisation" with resource and environmental concerns as top priorities.
'Decoupling' is a way of getting away from using the GDP to measure growth and development, said Swilling. Since GDP is a measurement of economic activity, disasters like Hurricane Katrina or even a traffic accident increase GDP.
"GDP measures everything except those things that really matter to people," he said.
This shift to decoupling "will require require significant changes in government policies, corporate behaviour, and consumption patterns", the report concludes with considerable understatement.
Right now, Africa is being hard pressed to sell off its primary resources to foreign interests. Many African states are becoming increasingly dependent on the cash that exports of minerals, timber and food bring. Meanwhile the rising costs of such resources are driving "land grabs" across the continent, where corporations and foreign states are buying or leasing vast tracts of land, said Swilling.
"Grabbing cheap land in Africa has become a popular sport," he said.
Over 50 million hectares of African land has been acquired by foreign interests in the last 10 years, according to Oxfam and the International Land Coalition, an NGO tracking the issue. That's more farmland than Canada has.
Much of Africa's soils are degraded and need rehabilitation, not exploitation, said Swilling. Food prices are going to rise and this is going to cause havoc in the future.
"Countries need to see their farmland and soil as a strategic priority, as part of their national security," he said.
While land grabs rightly captures media attention, most of Africa's export revenues come from selling off its mineral resources. That has to be carefully monitored and at the very least those revenues need to be invested in education and training and the creation of a manufacturing sector, said Swilling.
Education is crucial, agreed Fischer-Kowalski. "Investment in human capital is the key to being able to do more with less," she said.
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=55614
UXBRIDGE, Canada, May 12 (IPS) - Better living through using far fewer material resources is the only possible future, experts agree. Humanity is pressing up against the limits of a finite planet to provide resources like water, oil, metals and food, according to a new report released Thursday.
Higher resource consumption levels will be prohibitively costly or simply impossible, warns the report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
"Global resource consumption is exploding. It's not a trend that is in any way sustainable," said Ernst von Weizsäcker, co-chair of UNEP's International Resource Panel.
"We must realise that prosperity and well-being do not depend on consuming ever-greater quantities of resources," said von Weizsäcker.
The world is running out of cheap and high quality sources of some essential materials such as oil, copper and gold, the supplies of which, in turn, require ever-rising volumes of fossil fuels and freshwater to produce, the report found.
During the 20th century, the rate of resource use has increased twice as fast as the increase in global population. Now, resources are being consumed at an even greater rate and are on pace to triple by 2050, the report calculates. Except there simply aren't enough resources left on the planet to manage that.
The average person in Canada or the United States currently consumes 25 tonnes of key resources every year, while a person living in India and in most African countries uses just four tonnes, the report found.
Industrialised countries need to reduce their consumption by making significant reductions in waste and major improvements in the efficiency with which they use resources. At the same time, developing countries need to create new low-carbon, super-efficient resource use pathways for their economic development.
Developing countries have to change their idea of what development means in a resource-scarce world. They need to forge a new resource- efficient, low carbon development path, said Mark Swilling of the Sustainability Institute at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa.
There is a pressing need for sanitation in much of Africa, but instead of building expensive Western-style water treatment infrastructure, countries can use their wetlands and natural vegetation to provide the same service, Swilling, a co-author of the report, told IPS.
"We will miss out on these kinds of opportunities if we follow Western development patterns," he said.
Public infrastructure is the biggest determinant of future energy and resource use, said Marina Fischer-Kowalski of the Institute of Social Ecology in Vienna.
North America's infrastructure, including transportation, sanitation, food production and so on, are all high-energy, high-material-use systems, said report co-author Fischer-Kowalski. They were designed with the assumption of never-ending access to cheap and plentiful energy and resources. Efficiency improvements can be made but it is more expensive and limits to what can be done.
"Our report calls for an urgent rethink of the links between resource use and economic prosperity," Fischer-Kowalski told IPS.
At a bare minimum, wealthy countries need to freeze their per capita consumption and help developing nations follow a more sustainable path, recommends the report, "Decoupling natural resource use and environmental impacts from economic growth". Decoupling means disconnecting economic growth from increasing use of material resources.
Economic theory has long linked rising economic development as measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to increasing resource use. However, countries like Japan and Switzerland have far higher GDP per capita than Australia but they use just 25 percent of the natural resources per capita that Australians use.
Japan has an explicit goal of becoming a "sustainable society" focused on low carbon, the reduction, reuse and recycling of materials, and harmony with nature. The government has successfully focused on increasing resource productivity and minimising negative environmental impacts, the report found.
Germany aims to double energy and resource productivity by 2020. China has declared it will build an "ecological civilisation" with resource and environmental concerns as top priorities.
'Decoupling' is a way of getting away from using the GDP to measure growth and development, said Swilling. Since GDP is a measurement of economic activity, disasters like Hurricane Katrina or even a traffic accident increase GDP.
"GDP measures everything except those things that really matter to people," he said.
This shift to decoupling "will require require significant changes in government policies, corporate behaviour, and consumption patterns", the report concludes with considerable understatement.
Right now, Africa is being hard pressed to sell off its primary resources to foreign interests. Many African states are becoming increasingly dependent on the cash that exports of minerals, timber and food bring. Meanwhile the rising costs of such resources are driving "land grabs" across the continent, where corporations and foreign states are buying or leasing vast tracts of land, said Swilling.
"Grabbing cheap land in Africa has become a popular sport," he said.
Over 50 million hectares of African land has been acquired by foreign interests in the last 10 years, according to Oxfam and the International Land Coalition, an NGO tracking the issue. That's more farmland than Canada has.
Much of Africa's soils are degraded and need rehabilitation, not exploitation, said Swilling. Food prices are going to rise and this is going to cause havoc in the future.
"Countries need to see their farmland and soil as a strategic priority, as part of their national security," he said.
While land grabs rightly captures media attention, most of Africa's export revenues come from selling off its mineral resources. That has to be carefully monitored and at the very least those revenues need to be invested in education and training and the creation of a manufacturing sector, said Swilling.
Education is crucial, agreed Fischer-Kowalski. "Investment in human capital is the key to being able to do more with less," she said.
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=55614
Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords ‘will return to Congress’
By Agence France-Presse
Thursday, May 12th, 2011 -- 5:59 pm
LOS ANGELES — US lawmaker Gabrielle Giffords, who was almost killed in a horrific shooting in January, will eventually return to Congress, a senior Democrat who saw her last week said Thursday.
Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, the newly-elected chair of the Democratic National Committee, said Giffords -- shot in the head at point blank range -- had made "tremendous progress" in the fourth months since the Arizona attack.
"I do think she's gonna come back to Congress," she told Good Morning America on ABC television. "I mean the progress that she's making, I think that from what I understand, she's on track for that to happen," she added.
"I had dinner with her in Houston last Friday and she's beginning to walk now, really doesn't use the wheelchair," she added, saying Giffords "is responding in more complex sentences."
While declining to predict when Giffords could return to Congress, Wasserman-Schultz added: "She's making tremendous progress and we're all really proud of her."
Giffords has been undergoing rehabilitation to regain movement on the right side of her body after a bullet tore through the left side of her brain in a shooting rampage in Tucson, Arizona on January 8.
Six people were killed, including a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl, when a gunman opened fire at a political meeting Giffords was holding with constituents outside a grocery store.
Last month Giffords flew to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to watch her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, command the space shuttle Endeavour on its final journey to the International Space Station.
But she returned to her Texas rehabilitation center after the launch was scrubbed a few hours before liftoff due to technical problems.
A new launch attempt is scheduled for next Monday. On Thursday its crew, including five Americans and an Italian, arrived back at Kennedy Space Center to prepare for the new liftoff bid.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/05/12/congresswoman-gabrielle-giffords-will-return-to-congress/
Thursday, May 12th, 2011 -- 5:59 pm
LOS ANGELES — US lawmaker Gabrielle Giffords, who was almost killed in a horrific shooting in January, will eventually return to Congress, a senior Democrat who saw her last week said Thursday.
Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, the newly-elected chair of the Democratic National Committee, said Giffords -- shot in the head at point blank range -- had made "tremendous progress" in the fourth months since the Arizona attack.
"I do think she's gonna come back to Congress," she told Good Morning America on ABC television. "I mean the progress that she's making, I think that from what I understand, she's on track for that to happen," she added.
"I had dinner with her in Houston last Friday and she's beginning to walk now, really doesn't use the wheelchair," she added, saying Giffords "is responding in more complex sentences."
While declining to predict when Giffords could return to Congress, Wasserman-Schultz added: "She's making tremendous progress and we're all really proud of her."
Giffords has been undergoing rehabilitation to regain movement on the right side of her body after a bullet tore through the left side of her brain in a shooting rampage in Tucson, Arizona on January 8.
Six people were killed, including a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl, when a gunman opened fire at a political meeting Giffords was holding with constituents outside a grocery store.
Last month Giffords flew to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to watch her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, command the space shuttle Endeavour on its final journey to the International Space Station.
But she returned to her Texas rehabilitation center after the launch was scrubbed a few hours before liftoff due to technical problems.
A new launch attempt is scheduled for next Monday. On Thursday its crew, including five Americans and an Italian, arrived back at Kennedy Space Center to prepare for the new liftoff bid.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/05/12/congresswoman-gabrielle-giffords-will-return-to-congress/
FACT Sheet: Tax Haven Abuse by the Numbers
• $100 billion: The amount that the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations estimated in 2008 that the U.S. lost in tax revenue due to offshore tax abuse every year
1
• $1 trillion: the amount of unrepatriated foreign profits sitting offshore
2
• $810 billion: The average outflow of illicit money from developing countries per year between 2000-2008 as estimated by Global Financial Integrity
3
• 18,857: The number of registered businesses at one address in the Cayman Islands
4
• 217,000: The number of companies housed at 1209 Orange Street in Wilmington, Delaware
5
• 759: Number of offshore subsidiaries in tax havens for Citigroup, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley combined
6
• 83: number of the 100 largest U.S. companies that use offshore tax havens - including the big banks taxpayers bailed out in 2008
7
• $57.2 billion – Amount of money Egypt lost to trade mispricing and other forms of commercial crime between 2000 and 2008
8
• $2: Daily earnings for at least one third of Egyptians
9
• 30%: Corporate share of the nation’s tax receipts in the mid 1950s
10
• 6.6%: Corporate share of the nation’s tax receipts in 2009
11
• 64%: Publicly traded U.S. parent companies incorporated in Delaware
12
• 51%: Publicly traded U.S. subsidiaries incorporated in Delaware
13
• 6.2%: Next highest percentage of subsidiaries incorporated in any other state
14
Citations
1 Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. TAX HAVEN BANKS AND U. S. TAX COMPLIANCE STAFF REPORT
http://levin.senate.gov/newsroom/supporting/2008/071708PSIReport.pdf
This $100 billion estimate is derived from studies conducted by a variety of tax experts. See, e.g., Joseph
Guttentag and Reuven Avi-Yonah, “Closing the International Tax Gap,” in Max B. Sawicky, ed., Bridging the Tax Gap: Addressing the Crisis in Federal Tax Administration (2006) (estimating offshore tax evasion by individuals at $40-$70 billion annually in lost U.S. tax revenues); Kimberly A. Clausing, “Multinational Firm Tax Avoidance and U.S. Government Revenue” (August 2007) (estimating corporate offshore transfer pricing abuses resulted in $60 billion in lost U.S. tax revenues in 2004); John Zdanowics, “Who’s watching our back door?” Business Accents magazine, Volume 1, No.1, Florida International University (Fall 2004) (estimating offshore corporate transfer pricing abuses resulted in $53 billion in lost U.S. tax revenues in 2001); “The Price of Offshore,” Tax Justice Network briefing paper (March 2005) (estimating that, worldwide, individuals have offshore assets totaling $11.5 trillion, resulting in $255 billion in annual lost tax revenues worldwide); “Governments and Multinational Corporations in the Race to the Bottom,” Tax Notes (2/27/06); “Data Show Dramatic Shift of Profits to Tax Havens,” Tax Notes (9/13/04). See also series of 2007 articles authored by Martin Sullivan in Tax Notes (estimating over $1.5 trillion in hidden assets in four tax havens, Guernsey, Jersey, Isle of Man, and Switzerland, beneficially owned by nonresident individuals likely avoiding tax in their home jurisdictions), infra footnote 3.
2 Drucker, Jesse. “Tax Holiday for $1 Trillion May Lure Back Profits Without Growth.” Bloomberg. 17 March 2011 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-17/tax-holiday-for-1-trillion-may-lure-profits-without-spurring-u-s-growth.html
3 Kar, Dev and Curcio, Karly. Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries 2000-2009. Jan 2011
4 Government Accountability Office, International Taxation: Large U.S. Corporations and Federal Contractors with Subsidiaries In Jurisdictions Listed as Tax Havens or Financial Secrecy Jurisdictions, Dec 2008. http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d08778high.pdf
5 Shaxson, Nicholas. (2011) Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and The Men Who Stole the World (p.143). London: The Bodley Head
6 Government Accountability Office, International Taxation: Large U.S. Corporations and Federal Contractors with Subsidiaries In Jurisdictions Listed as Tax Havens or Financial Secrecy Jurisdictions, Dec 2008. http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d08778high.pdf
7 Id.
8 Kar, Dev and Curcio, Karly. Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries
2000-2009. Jan 2011
9 Bronner, Eithan. “Mubarak Denies Corruption and Defends His Legacy.” New York Times. 11 April 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/11/world/middleeast/11egypt.html?scp=1&sq=Egypt%20%242&st=cse
10 Kocieniewski, David. “G.E.’s Strategies Let It Avoid Taxes Altogether.” New York Times. 24 March 2011 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/business/economy/25tax.html?_r=3
11 Id.
12Dyreng, Scott, Lindsey, Bradley P. and Thornock, Jacob R., Exploring the Role Delaware Plays as a Domestic Tax Haven 28 April 2011 http://ssrn.com/abstract=1737937
13 Id.
14 Id.
http://fact.gfip.org/documents/FACT_Tax_Haven_Abuse_by_the_Numbers.pdf?utm_source=hootsuite&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=linktracking
1
• $1 trillion: the amount of unrepatriated foreign profits sitting offshore
2
• $810 billion: The average outflow of illicit money from developing countries per year between 2000-2008 as estimated by Global Financial Integrity
3
• 18,857: The number of registered businesses at one address in the Cayman Islands
4
• 217,000: The number of companies housed at 1209 Orange Street in Wilmington, Delaware
5
• 759: Number of offshore subsidiaries in tax havens for Citigroup, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley combined
6
• 83: number of the 100 largest U.S. companies that use offshore tax havens - including the big banks taxpayers bailed out in 2008
7
• $57.2 billion – Amount of money Egypt lost to trade mispricing and other forms of commercial crime between 2000 and 2008
8
• $2: Daily earnings for at least one third of Egyptians
9
• 30%: Corporate share of the nation’s tax receipts in the mid 1950s
10
• 6.6%: Corporate share of the nation’s tax receipts in 2009
11
• 64%: Publicly traded U.S. parent companies incorporated in Delaware
12
• 51%: Publicly traded U.S. subsidiaries incorporated in Delaware
13
• 6.2%: Next highest percentage of subsidiaries incorporated in any other state
14
Citations
1 Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. TAX HAVEN BANKS AND U. S. TAX COMPLIANCE STAFF REPORT
http://levin.senate.gov/newsroom/supporting/2008/071708PSIReport.pdf
This $100 billion estimate is derived from studies conducted by a variety of tax experts. See, e.g., Joseph
Guttentag and Reuven Avi-Yonah, “Closing the International Tax Gap,” in Max B. Sawicky, ed., Bridging the Tax Gap: Addressing the Crisis in Federal Tax Administration (2006) (estimating offshore tax evasion by individuals at $40-$70 billion annually in lost U.S. tax revenues); Kimberly A. Clausing, “Multinational Firm Tax Avoidance and U.S. Government Revenue” (August 2007) (estimating corporate offshore transfer pricing abuses resulted in $60 billion in lost U.S. tax revenues in 2004); John Zdanowics, “Who’s watching our back door?” Business Accents magazine, Volume 1, No.1, Florida International University (Fall 2004) (estimating offshore corporate transfer pricing abuses resulted in $53 billion in lost U.S. tax revenues in 2001); “The Price of Offshore,” Tax Justice Network briefing paper (March 2005) (estimating that, worldwide, individuals have offshore assets totaling $11.5 trillion, resulting in $255 billion in annual lost tax revenues worldwide); “Governments and Multinational Corporations in the Race to the Bottom,” Tax Notes (2/27/06); “Data Show Dramatic Shift of Profits to Tax Havens,” Tax Notes (9/13/04). See also series of 2007 articles authored by Martin Sullivan in Tax Notes (estimating over $1.5 trillion in hidden assets in four tax havens, Guernsey, Jersey, Isle of Man, and Switzerland, beneficially owned by nonresident individuals likely avoiding tax in their home jurisdictions), infra footnote 3.
2 Drucker, Jesse. “Tax Holiday for $1 Trillion May Lure Back Profits Without Growth.” Bloomberg. 17 March 2011 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-17/tax-holiday-for-1-trillion-may-lure-profits-without-spurring-u-s-growth.html
3 Kar, Dev and Curcio, Karly. Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries 2000-2009. Jan 2011
4 Government Accountability Office, International Taxation: Large U.S. Corporations and Federal Contractors with Subsidiaries In Jurisdictions Listed as Tax Havens or Financial Secrecy Jurisdictions, Dec 2008. http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d08778high.pdf
5 Shaxson, Nicholas. (2011) Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and The Men Who Stole the World (p.143). London: The Bodley Head
6 Government Accountability Office, International Taxation: Large U.S. Corporations and Federal Contractors with Subsidiaries In Jurisdictions Listed as Tax Havens or Financial Secrecy Jurisdictions, Dec 2008. http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d08778high.pdf
7 Id.
8 Kar, Dev and Curcio, Karly. Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries
2000-2009. Jan 2011
9 Bronner, Eithan. “Mubarak Denies Corruption and Defends His Legacy.” New York Times. 11 April 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/11/world/middleeast/11egypt.html?scp=1&sq=Egypt%20%242&st=cse
10 Kocieniewski, David. “G.E.’s Strategies Let It Avoid Taxes Altogether.” New York Times. 24 March 2011 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/business/economy/25tax.html?_r=3
11 Id.
12Dyreng, Scott, Lindsey, Bradley P. and Thornock, Jacob R., Exploring the Role Delaware Plays as a Domestic Tax Haven 28 April 2011 http://ssrn.com/abstract=1737937
13 Id.
14 Id.
http://fact.gfip.org/documents/FACT_Tax_Haven_Abuse_by_the_Numbers.pdf?utm_source=hootsuite&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=linktracking
How America Is Like 18th Century Europe: Our Imperialistic Attitude Has Led to Endless Wars
By William Astore, Tomdispatch.com
Posted on May 12, 2011, Printed on May 13, 2011
© 2011 Tomdispatch.com All rights reserved.
Posted on May 12, 2011, Printed on May 13, 2011
The killing of Osama bin Laden, “a testament to the greatness of our country” according to President Obama, should not be allowed to obscure a central reality of our post-9/11 world. Our conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Libya remain instances of undeclared war, a fact that contributes to their remoteness from our American world. They are remote geographically, but also remote from our day-to-day interests and, unless you are in the military or have a loved one who serves, remote from our collective consciousness (not to speak of our consciences).
And this remoteness is no accident. Our wars and their impact are kept in remarkable isolation from what passes for public affairs in this country, leaving most Americans with little knowledge and even less say about whether they should be, and how they are, waged.
In this sense, our wars are eerily like those pursued by European monarchs in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: conflicts carried out by professional militaries and bands of mercenaries, largely at the whim of what we might now call a unitary executive, funded by deficit spending, for the purposes of protecting or extending the interests of a ruling elite.
Cynics might say it has always been thus in the United States. After all, the War of 1812 was known to critics as “Mr. Madison’s War” and the Mexican-American War of the 1840s was “Mr. Polk’s War.” The Spanish-American War of 1898 was a naked war of expansion vigorously denounced by American anti-imperialists. Yet in those conflicts there was at least genuine national debate, as well as formal declarations of war by Congress.
Today’s ruling class in Washington no longer bothers to make a pretense of following the letter of our Constitution -- and they sidestep its spirit as well, invoking hollow claims of executive privilege or higher callings of humanitarian service (as in Libya) or of exporting democracy (as in Afghanistan). But Libya is still torn by civil war, and Afghanistan has yet to morph into Oregon.
“Enlightened” War, Then and Now
History does not simply repeat itself, yet realities of power, privilege, and pride ensure certain continuities from the past. Consider how today’s remote wars and the ways they reinforce existing power relations for a privileged and prideful elite echo a style of European warfare more than three centuries old.
Surveying the wreckage of the devastating Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), fought feverishly across Germanic territories by most of Europe, monarchs like Louis XIV of France began to seek to fight “limited” wars. These they considered more consistent with the spirit of a rational and “enlightened” age. In their hands, such wars became the sport of kings, the real-life equivalents of elaborate chess matches in which foot soldiers drawn from the lower orders served as expendable pawns, while the second or lesser sons of the nobility, fulfilling their duty as officers, proved hardly less expendable knights, bishops, and rooks.
As much as possible, the monarch and his retinue tried to keep war-making and its disruptions at a distance from thriving economic and manufacturing concerns. In many cases, in the centuries to follow, this would essentially mean exporting war to faraway, “barbaric” realms or colonies. In the process, death and destruction were outsourced to places and peoples remote from European metropoles.
In fact, this was precisely what enraged our founders: that the colonies in America had become a never-ending battleground for French and British imperial ambitions from which the colonists themselves reaped the whirlwind of war while gaining few of its benefits. A close reading of the Declaration of Independence, for instance, reveals a proto-republic’s contempt for wars fought at a king’s whim and guaranteed to reduce the colonists to so much cannon fodder.
Refusing to surrender the hard-fought right as British men to have a say in how they were taxed, how their families and lands were defended, and especially for what purposes they themselves fought and died, the founders forged a new nation. Given this history, it’s not surprising that they granted to Congress, and not to the President, the power to declare and fund war.
In this way, a noble experiment was born, and it worked, however imperfectly, until the devastation of a new thirty years’ war in Europe (better known as World Wars I and II) propelled the United States to superpower status with all its accompanying ambitions stoked by existential fears, whether of yesterday’s godless communists or today’s god-crazed terrorists.
Inside the Washington Beltway: The New Court of Versailles
In the eighteenth century, France was the superpower of Europe with a military that dwarfed those of its neighbors. And who dictated France’s decisions to go to war? The answer: the king, his generals, and his courtiers at the Court of Versailles. In the twenty-first-century, the U.S. celebrates its status as the world’s “sole superpower” with a military second to none. And who dictates its decisions to go to war? Considering the lessons of Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Libya, the answer is no less obvious: the president, his generals, and his courtiers within the vast edifice of Washington’s national security state.
France’s “enlightened” wars were fought by professional armies and mercenaries, directed by a unitary executive who did as he pleased, and endured by the lower orders who had no say (even though they provided the brawn and blood). Similarly, our twenty-first century masters plunge us into their version of enlightened wars and play their version of global chess matches.
The analogy can be pushed further. In pre-revolutionary France, the First and Second Estates (the clergy and the nobility) constituted less than 2% of the population but controlled nearly all of France’s wealth and power. Their unholy alliance kept the Third Estate (everyone who wasn’t a churchman or a noble) under their collective thumb.
Now, consider the United States today. Our equivalent to the First Estate would be the clergy of finance and banking (the religion of the almighty dollar). Look for them in their houses of worship on Wall Street. Our Second Estate equivalent would be the movers and shakers inside Washington’s Beltway. Look for them in the White House, the Pentagon, Congress, and on K Street where the lobbyists for the First Estate tend to congregate. The unholy alliance of these two estates leaves the American Third Estate -- you and me -- with the deck stacked against us.
When it comes to war, the American ruling class has relegated the members of its Third Estate alternately to the role of “foreign legionnaires” in overseas service, or silent spectators passively watching moves on the big board. These, in turn, are continually interpreted for us by retired members of the Second Estate: generals and admirals in mufti, hired by the corporate media to provide color commentary on Washington’s wars.
Small wonder that today’s Beltway elite is as imperious and detached as yesterday’s Court of Louis XIV. A colleague of mine recently endured a short audience with some members of our Second Estate near Dupont Circle in Washington. In his words: “They were at once condescending and puzzled by ‘tea party types,’ as they referred to them, which was to say that they inadvertently admitted to being out of touch and were pretty okay with that. ‘Look,’ I finally said, ‘you cannot continue to pick someone’s pocket while hectoring him about how stupid and uninformed he is and then be surprised that he gets angry.’”
Whether it be unwashed “tea party types,” “retarded” (according to ex-courtier Rahm Emanuel) progressives, or other members of a disgruntled American Third Estate, the Washington elites who wage war in our name simply couldn’t care less what we think, just as Louis XIV and his court couldn’t have cared less about their subjects’ desires.
Endless “limited” wars fought for the interests of the ruling class, massive deficit spending on those wars, a refusal to recognize (or even understand) the people’s growing disgruntlement, a “let them eat cake” mentality: all of this is familiar to a historian. And like those old French masters of limited war, our new masters of war are hemorrhaging legitimacy.
The Crash and Burn of Old Regimes
In isolating the American Third Estate from war -- indeed, in disengaging it from any meaningful public debate about this nation’s perpetual war-making -- our rulers have conspired to advance their own interests. Yet in deciding everything of importance out of view, they have unwisely eliminated any check on their folly.
Consider again the example of pre-revolutionary Versailles. A top-heavy, remarkably dissolute, and openly parasitic bureaucracy plundered the commonweal of France in its pursuit of power and privilege. Can we not say the same of Washington today? In its kleptocratic tendency to enrich itself and its accountability-free deployment of military power globally, the American ruling class bears a certain resemblance to French kings and their courts which, in the end, drove their country to economic ruin and violent revolution.
Fed up with its prodigal and prideful rulers, France saw the tumbrels roll and the guillotine blades drop. How many more undeclared “enlightened” wars, how many more trillions of dollars in war-driven debt, how many more dead and wounded will it take for the American people to reclaim their power over war? Or are we content to remain deferential to our ruling class and court -- and to their less-than-liberty-loving overseas creditors -- until such a time as their prideful wars and prodigal trillion-dollar-plus “defense” budgets bring our great democratic experiment crashing down?
William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), now teaches at the Pennsylvania College of Technology. His books and articles focus primarily on military history and include Hindenburg: Icon of German Militarism (Potomac Press, 2005). He may be reached at wastore@pct.edu.
© 2011 Tomdispatch.com All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/150915/
Study: 44 million could lose Medicaid coverage under GOP plan
By Noam N. Levey, Washington Bureau
10:07 AM PDT, May 10, 2011
Reporting from Washington
House Republican plans to repeal the new healthcare law and to convert the Medicaid insurance program into a block grant to states could force as many 44 million poor and disabled Americans out of the program over the next decade, according to a new analysis by the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation.
Hardest hit would be states, many in the South and West, that have not built up their healthcare safety nets in recent years.
These states would have received a large influx of federal money in the healthcare law President Obama signed last year. In 2014, the law will make all Americans making less than 133% of the federal poverty level eligible for Medicaid.
The House GOP plan, authored by Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), would eliminate that expansion and also slash $750 billion in federal spending on Medicaid over the next decade. The plan was approved by the House last month, though it is not expected to pass the Democratic-controlled Senate.
The Medicaid program, which insures more 50 million poor and disabled people, is jointly funded by the federal government and by the states, each of which operates a slightly different program.
Because of these differences, the cuts to each state would vary widely, according to the analysis of Ryan's plan.
Florida, for example, could see a 44% cut in federal funding for its Medicaid program by 2021, the report concludes.
Other states projected to see major cutbacks in federal aid include Wyoming, Alaska, Colorado, Georgia, Oregon and Nevada.
Nationally, the Kaiser report estimates that federal assistance for Medicaid will drop 34%. Illinois, with a projected 32% cut, and California, with a 31% cut, are expected to suffer relatively less than some other states.
Least affected would be Washington, Vermont, Minnesota, the District of Columbia and Iowa.
Many states are already struggling to hold together their Medicaid programs while trying to balance budgets and deal with millions of new enrollees who signed up for the insurance program during the last recession.
Ryan has touted his budget plan as a way to preserve Medicaid by offering states more flexibility to wring savings from their programs. "States will no longer be shackled by federally determined program requirements and enrollment criteria," he said of the block grants.
But many experts -- including the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office -- have concluded that House budget proposal would more likely simply result in major cutbacks.
"The repeal of the ACA combined with the adoption of the Medicaid block grant would add millions more to the number of uninsured Americans and compromise Medicaid's role as the health safety net in the next recession," said Diane Rowland, executive director of the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured.
The commission produced the report in conjunction with the Washington, D.C.,-based Urban Institute.
noam.levey@latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-gop-medicare-analysis-20110510,0,2528525,print.story
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Wis. lawmaker proposes new bargaining restrictions
Associated Press - May 11, 2011 2:35 PM ET
MADISON, Wis. (AP) - Local police and firefighters would no longer be exempted from key restrictions on collective bargaining under a proposed bill.
A bill introduced by Independent Rep. Bob Ziegelbauer of Manitowoc would eliminate collective bargaining rights for public safety employees on health care and pension contributions. The bill does not require employee contributions to health care and pension funds, but would allow municipalities to mandate them.
Ziegelbauer says the bill is an attempt to apply key parts of Gov. Scott Walker's controversial budget repair bill to police and firefighters without "blowing up" the entire collective bargaining process. Ziegelbauer voted for Walker's bill.
Walker's bill curtails collective bargaining rights for most public employees, but exempts police and firefighters. A judge has blocked the law from taking effect.
http://www.wbay.com/Global/story.asp?S=14626518
MADISON, Wis. (AP) - Local police and firefighters would no longer be exempted from key restrictions on collective bargaining under a proposed bill.
A bill introduced by Independent Rep. Bob Ziegelbauer of Manitowoc would eliminate collective bargaining rights for public safety employees on health care and pension contributions. The bill does not require employee contributions to health care and pension funds, but would allow municipalities to mandate them.
Ziegelbauer says the bill is an attempt to apply key parts of Gov. Scott Walker's controversial budget repair bill to police and firefighters without "blowing up" the entire collective bargaining process. Ziegelbauer voted for Walker's bill.
Walker's bill curtails collective bargaining rights for most public employees, but exempts police and firefighters. A judge has blocked the law from taking effect.
http://www.wbay.com/Global/story.asp?S=14626518
Comcast taps FCC Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker for D.C. office
May 11, 2011 | 12:58 pm
Cable giant Comcast Corp. has hired Federal Communications Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker as senior vice president of government affairs for its NBCUniversal unit.
Baker Baker, who will resign from the FCC, is the latest hire for Comcast, which has been beefing up its already formidible lobbying team since taking over NBCUniversal. Earlier this year, Comcast wooed National Cable & Telecommunications Assn. President Kyle McSlarrow away from the association to be president of Comcast/NBCUniversal Washington.
“Commissioner Baker is one of the nation’s leading authorities on communications policy and we’re thrilled she’s agreed to head the government relations operations for NBCUniversal," McSlarrow said in a statement.
A Republican who served as a commissioner for a little less than two years, Baker's hire so soon after voting in favor of Comcast's deal to acquire majority control of NBCUniversal from General Electric Co. raised eyebrows among some media watchdogs.
"This is just the latest -- though perhaps most blatant -- example of a so-called public servant cashing in at a company she is supposed to be regulating," said Craig Aaron, president and chief executive of Free Press, a nonprofit media reform organization.
Not everyone took such a hardline.
“Commissioner Baker has been a consummate public servant," said Media Access Project policy director Andrew Schwartzman. "While her viewpoints have often differed from ours, she has always been open-minded, conscientious and dedicated to acting in the public interest as she saw it.”
As for her move to Comcast, Schwartzman said in an email that he is "unhappy in a generic sense that the door revolves in Washington," but "this one is no different, and no worse, than what happens all the time."
It is not uncommon for government officials to end up working for companies that they used to regulate. Former FCC Chairman Michael Powell, for example, recently succeeded McSlarrow as head of the NCTA. Dick Wiley, an FCC chairman in the 1970s, went on to become one of the most powerful communications lawyers for the media and telecom industries in Washington, D.C. There will be some restrictions on Baker's lobbying activities with Comcast and her old FCC bosses and other administration officials.
Before her appointment to the FCC by President Obama, Baker was acting assistant secretary of Commerce for communications and information, and acting administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration under President George W. Bush.
-- Joe Flint
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2011/05/comcast-taps-fcc-commissioner-meredith-attwell-baker-for-dc-office.html
Cable giant Comcast Corp. has hired Federal Communications Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker as senior vice president of government affairs for its NBCUniversal unit.
Baker Baker, who will resign from the FCC, is the latest hire for Comcast, which has been beefing up its already formidible lobbying team since taking over NBCUniversal. Earlier this year, Comcast wooed National Cable & Telecommunications Assn. President Kyle McSlarrow away from the association to be president of Comcast/NBCUniversal Washington.
“Commissioner Baker is one of the nation’s leading authorities on communications policy and we’re thrilled she’s agreed to head the government relations operations for NBCUniversal," McSlarrow said in a statement.
A Republican who served as a commissioner for a little less than two years, Baker's hire so soon after voting in favor of Comcast's deal to acquire majority control of NBCUniversal from General Electric Co. raised eyebrows among some media watchdogs.
"This is just the latest -- though perhaps most blatant -- example of a so-called public servant cashing in at a company she is supposed to be regulating," said Craig Aaron, president and chief executive of Free Press, a nonprofit media reform organization.
Not everyone took such a hardline.
“Commissioner Baker has been a consummate public servant," said Media Access Project policy director Andrew Schwartzman. "While her viewpoints have often differed from ours, she has always been open-minded, conscientious and dedicated to acting in the public interest as she saw it.”
As for her move to Comcast, Schwartzman said in an email that he is "unhappy in a generic sense that the door revolves in Washington," but "this one is no different, and no worse, than what happens all the time."
It is not uncommon for government officials to end up working for companies that they used to regulate. Former FCC Chairman Michael Powell, for example, recently succeeded McSlarrow as head of the NCTA. Dick Wiley, an FCC chairman in the 1970s, went on to become one of the most powerful communications lawyers for the media and telecom industries in Washington, D.C. There will be some restrictions on Baker's lobbying activities with Comcast and her old FCC bosses and other administration officials.
Before her appointment to the FCC by President Obama, Baker was acting assistant secretary of Commerce for communications and information, and acting administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration under President George W. Bush.
-- Joe Flint
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2011/05/comcast-taps-fcc-commissioner-meredith-attwell-baker-for-dc-office.html
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