Of course, anti union and anti middle class sentiment plays a role in efforts by Senate Republicans to block the auto worker bailout. It also provides a convenient pretext.

It's become pretty obvious, at least to me, that the GOP is using a desperate and risky political strategy. They are doing everything they can to make the economy implode, hoping that Democrats will be blamed for it in 2010. They won't be satisfied until the current recession becomes a depression. Of course, if voters pay attention to who is blocking legislative action, it will backfire big time.

This shows how intellectually and morally bankrupt the GOP has become. They are willing to deliberately trash the country in a pathetic attempt to regain power. These days, I'm not to thrilled with the excess of conservative policies being accepted by "Democrats." However, I can't help but notice how much the Republicans deserve to lose elections, by huge margins. They seem obsessed with being the greater of two evils.

 

Hillary Clinton is one of the least diplomatic people I've ever heard of. Why is she going to be Secretary of State? WTF?

That was my initial reaction to Obama choosing Ms. Clinton as Secretary of State. Clinton is notorious for trying to bulldoze over anyone who disagrees with her or changing the subject when confronted with inconvenient facts. Her persona is disturbingly similar to that of John Bolton.

Upon further reflection, a larger problem has occurred to me. Hillary Clinton has been involved in militant, fundamentalist prayer groups on Capitol Hill for some time now. Those are clubs you don't get to join unless you are one of the fundie flock. She often speaks in the language of the Christian Taliban too. Ms. Clinton's Christian extremism, like George W. Bush's militant, Christian fundamentalism, is a news story that has been largely censored by the corporate media, but it is quite important.

Can a Christian extremist like Clinton be an effective diplomat when dealing with foreign leaders who are Muslim?

There was a time when the US was so powerful that we could have nominated a talking monkey as Secretary of State, and the world would have to cow tow to us. Those days are over, largely thanks to the failed rightist Reagan/Bush/Clinton/Bush policies of the past 28 years that have devastated our country militarily, economically, politically, and morally.

In this multipolar world, we need effective diplomacy from people who can think rationally about people of non-Christian faiths and about people with no religious faith at all. There are strong reasons to doubt that Ms. Clinton is capable of being diplomatic in general, much less rational about non-Christians.

Photo credits (top to bottom):
soggydan
World Economic Forum
Center for American Progress Action Fund
Mira (on the wall)
 

As part of this ongoing series on the last years Top 25 censored news stories according to Project Censored, I thought I would highlight an excellent resource of theirs:

List of Links to Independent News Sources

Now, here are items 6-10.

6: The Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act

In a startling affront to American freedoms of expression, privacy, and association, the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act (H.R. 1955) passed the House on October 23, 2007, by a vote of 404–6. The Senate is currently considering a companion bill, S. 1959. The act would establish a national commission and a university-based “Center for Excellence” to study and propose legislation to prevent the threat of “radicalization” of Americans.

Author of the bill Jane Harman (D-CA) explains, “We’re studying the phenomenon of people with radical beliefs who turn into people who would use violence.”

...

UPDATE BY JESSICA LEE

While civil liberties and religious freedom groups credit independent journalists and grassroots activists with helping to stall the passage of the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007, some members of Congress continue to push for Internet censorship and racial profiling as necessary to prevent “homegrown terrorism.”

The House of Representatives approved the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act in October 2007 by a 404-6 vote, but widespread opposition forced the Senate to shelve the bill. As of June 1, 2008, no vote was scheduled or expected during the current legislative year.
Read More

7: Guest Workers Inc.: Fraud and Human Trafficking

While the guest worker program in the United States has been praised and recommended for expansion by President Bush, and is likely to be considered by Congress as a template for future immigration reform, human rights advocates warn that the system seriously victimizes immigrant workers. Workers, labor organizers, lawyers, and policy makers say that the program, designed to open up the legal labor market and provide a piece of the American dream to immigrants, has instead locked thousands into a modern-day form of indentured servitude. Congressman Charles Rangel has called the guest worker program “the closest thing I’ve ever seen to slavery.”
Read More

8: Executive Orders Can Be Changed Secretly

On December 7, 2007, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, disclosed on the floor of the US Senate that he had declassified three legal documents of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) within the Department of Justice that state:

1. An executive order cannot limit a president. There is no constitutional requirement for a president to issue a new executive order whenever he wishes to depart from the terms of a previous executive order. Rather than violate an executive order, the president has instead modified or waived it.

2. The President, exercising his constitutional authority under Article II, can determine whether an action is a lawful exercise of the President’s authority under Article II.

3. The Department of Justice is bound by the President’s legal determinations.
Read More

9: Iraq and Afghanistan Vets Testify

Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans are coming forward to recount the brutal impact of the ongoing occupations. An investigation by the Nation (July 2007) and the Winter Soldier hearings in Silver Spring, Maryland, in March 2008, which was organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War and brought together over 300 veterans, have made their experiences public. Soldiers’ harrowing testimony of atrocities they witnessed or participated in directly indicate a structural problem in the US military that has created an environment of lawlessness. Some international law experts say the soldiers’ statements show the need for investigations into potential violations of international law by high-ranking officials in the Bush administration and the Pentagon. Though BBC predicted that the Winter Soldier event would dominate headlines around the world that week, there was a near total back-out on this historic news event by the US corporate media.
Read More

10: APA Complicit in CIA Torture

When in 2005 news reports exposed the fact that psychologists were working with the US military and the CIA to develop brutal interrogation methods, American Psychological Association (APA) leaders assembled a task force to examine the issue. After just two days of deliberations, the ten-member task force concluded that psychologists were playing a “valuable and ethical role” in assisting the military. A high level of secrecy surrounding the task force prohibited disclosure of the proceedings and of members and attendees. It wasn’t until a year later that the membership was finally published on Salon.com, revealing that six of nine voting members were from the military and intelligence agencies with direct connections to interrogations at Guantánamo and CIA black sites that operate outside of Geneva Conventions.

...

Censored Update

Members of the American Psychological Association have voted to prohibit consultation in the interrogations of detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, or so-called black sites operated by the Central Intelligence Agency overseas, the association said on Wednesday.

The vote, 8,792 to 6,157 in a mail-in balloting concluded Monday, may help to settle a long debate within the profession over the ethics of such work. Psychologists have helped military and C.I.A. interrogators evaluate detainees, plan questioning strategy and judge its psychological costs. The association’s ethics code, while condemning a list of coercive techniques adopted in the Bush administration’s antiterrorism campaign, has allowed some consultation “for national security-related purposes.”
Read More

Commentary and Analysis

All Items
All of these items have a common thread. Corporate media outlets are generally covering up misconduct commited by the Bush regime or with their encouragement or orders. It's interesting to note how most Americans are being kept in the dark about things that should make Americans cringe with shame. No wonder most people in this country are perplexed at the anti American sentiments abroad.

Item 9:
Project Censored referenced the efforts of Pacifica radio station KPFK and CorpWatch in their War Comes Home site, which has an audio archive of the Winter Soldier testimony. The Pacifica stations carried live coverage of the Winter Soldier hearings, in contrast to corporate media which censored the story. The text archives from Iraq Veterans Against the War also were mentioned.

You may be interested in the following YouTube Playlist: Winter Soldiers testimony

This blog also has done some coverage of the Winter Soldier hearings and the lead up to them.

Info From Winter Soldier - Part 4 - Sleep Deprivation of Prisoners in Iraq

Info From Winter Soldier - Part 3 - Winter Soldier on YouTube

Info From Winter Soldier - Part 2 - Taking Pictures With Corpses

Info From Winter Soldier - Part 1 - Traumatic Brain Injury

Action Alert: "Why Are Winter Soldiers Not News?"

Report on the Thursday Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) Fundraiser

Previous Censored News Stories:

11-15

16-20

21-25

 

I've already blogged a couple of times about this issue.

Anti Union and Anti Middle Class Sentiments Behind the Corporate Media's Attacks on the Automotive Bailout

FAIR Responds to Demonization of Autoworkers by ABC

Congress has acted like a bunch of proverbial fiddling Neros instead of acting in a responsible fashion and passing the auto worker bailout. It's time to support efforts to put pressure on Congress. The AFLCIO has an Action Alert urging our lawmakers to pass the bailout, which they are referring to as a "bridge loan" for the auto industry. The default email text (which you should replace with your own words) follows:

An emergency bridge loan for our domestic automakers, enabling them to keep the production lines moving, is a necessary step to revitalize the U.S. auto industry, protect American jobs and begin rebuilding our economy.

The automakers have submitted plans to cut costs and strengthen products, and the UAW announced that workers will do their part, too. The bridge loan requested by the automakers and endorsed by the UAW is not a blank check like the ones Henry Paulson has handed out to Wall Street banks.

I urge you to act now to protect our auto industry and help save the jobs of millions of workers, both in and out of the auto industry. Millions of Americans are counting on your leadership.

Yes, the CEOs at the Big Three have been lousy at their jobs. However, that's no reason to punish the workers who have no say in who runs the company. It certainly is no reason to throw hundreds of thousands of Americans out of work during a deep and long recession.

You don't need to be a union member to take action. In fact, it would help if a lot of non-union people joined in solidarity with the union movement. All of us will suffer if the economy is sabotaged by politicians to corrupt or cowardly to pass the bailout, a bailout that is dwarfed in comparison by the Financial industry bailout.

Please Take Action Now!

 

I am so sick of seeing political operatives using Karl Rove style spin to defend Obama's conservative appointees and Republican policy positions on avoiding a windfall profits tax for Big Oil, on continuing the endless war on Iraq, on keeping the rich from paying anywhere near their fair share in taxes, and on other important matters.

Hildebrand's Huffington Post nonsense shows why I've lost all trust and respect for the Obama administration, and they haven't even taken office yet. Look at this garbage:

I could go on and on. The point I'm making here is that our new president, the Congress and all Americans must come together to solve these problems. This is not a time for the left wing of our Party to draw conclusions about the Cabinet and White House appointments that President-Elect Obama is making. Some believe the appointments generally aren't progressive enough. Having worked with former Senator Obama for the last two years, I can tell you, that isn't the way he thinks and it's not likely the way he will lead. The problems I mentioned above and the many I didn't, suggest that our president surround himself with the most qualified people to address these challenges. After all, he was elected to be the president of all the people - not just those on the left.

This nonsense insults peoples' intelligence for a variety of reasons.

1) Executive Branch Appointments Matter
Executive branch appointees make an enormous amount of policy decisions that don't make the nightly news, but which cumulatively have a huge effect on peoples' lives. With the Obama administration already loaded up with so many rightist nutjobs, many people will suffer needlessly. Some people literally will die needlessly.

2) Liberals Gave Bill Clinton a Chance:
Does Hildebrand think liberals suffer from historical amnesia? During the transition and early in the Clinton administration, liberals were bombarded with bullshit from Clinton operatives about how we had to "give him a chance." He took that chance to govern like a rightist Reagan/Bush Republican. We have been betrayed just as badly by Phonycrats like Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Any liberal who trusts a Democrat who starts governing from the right should be ashamed.

3) It's Never Premature for People to Call for the Government to Address Their Grievances.
In a democracy, people don't wait for permission from an authority figure, even one as minor as Hildebrand, to speak out. Those appointments belong to the people even more than they belong to Barack Obama. We have a right to say "no" when they represent the same administrations and interests that got our country into this terrible mess.

4) These Aren't the Most Qualified People
Let's look at this cast of losers and Clinton/Bush retreads. Robert Gates is a Bush family crony whose only "accomplishment" as Defense Secretary was repeatedly lying to the American people about the Iraq war. Hillary Clinton has very few qualifications to serve in any administration. She is just trading on her husband's name in much the same way that another empty suit in New York politics, Andrew Cuomo, has built a career on trading on his father's name. Nepotism and cronyism are not change you can believe in.

What the fuck is Larry Summers doing as Obama's senior economic adviser? The man is an arrogant, incompetent ignoramus on almost everything, and this description is especially apt in the field of economics. Summers' push for financial deregulation and corrupt, corporate trade deals like NAFTA make him one of the people most personally responsible for the Crash of 2008 and our horrible recession. These are the most glaring examples of a set of appointees who are neither qualified or even interested in taking the kinds of actions that will get us out our mess.

5) Where Is an Openly Queer Cabinet Appointee?
On of the ways that Bill Clinton discriminated against the queer community was by not appointing even one openly queer Cabinet member during his entire administration. So far, Obama is heading in the same bigoted direction.

If Rovian bs is all that liberals are going to get from the Obama administration, we need to wake up. So far, Obama has worked to continue the Reagan/Bush/Clinton/Bush policies of the last 28 years. Obama is getting less like FDR and more like Herbert Hoover every day.

There is no way I can ever take anything Steve Hildebrand says seriously after this. What a hack.

 

In a previous posting, I complained about the anti union and anti worker agenda behind the corporate media's demonization of the auto worker bailout. It looks like I'm not the only one noticing this. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) has a recent Action Alert on ABC's role in all of this.

People have a lot of sympathy for the workers in the auto industry, and, understandably, nil sympathy for the CEO. So, ABC decided to attack the auto workers themselves in order to undermine the strongest basis of support for the bailout.

ABC's Overpaid Autoworkers

12/5/08

In an attempt to explain the plight of the Big Three U.S. automobile manufacturers, ABC's World News used a wildly misleading statistic regarding autoworkers' pay.

On the December 3 edition of the ABC newscast, reporter Chris Bury took aim at the supposed inflexibility of the United Auto Workers: "But the union did not offer to give back the big stuff, pay and benefits that remain a fundamental problem. Ford, Chrysler and GM pay union workers more than $73 an hour in wages and benefits. Japanese plants here shell out just over $44. For GM, that translates into $1,500 more per car more than Toyota has to pay."

This factoid, which is a favorite of the industry--and, increasingly, of the media as well (see Media Matters, 11/22/08)--has been exposed as misleading for some time. In the New Republic (11/21/08), Jonathan Cohn called it "wildly misleading," and cited an analyst for the Center for Automotive Research who determined that "average wages for workers at Chrysler, Ford and General Motors were just $28 per hour as of 2007." The much higher figure, according to Cohn, results from a mathematical sleight of hand. "The cost of all employer-provided benefits--namely, health insurance and pensions--and then dividing by the number of workers." In other words, costs related to retired workers, who well outnumber current employees, are used to create an inflated figure that is misleadingly labeled as current labor costs.

Writing in Portfolio (11/18/08), Felix Salmon called it a "ridiculous number," adding: "Now that GM's healthcare obligations are being moved to a UAW-run trust, even that fictitious number is going to fall sharply. But anybody who uses it as a rhetorical device suggesting that U.S. car companies are run inefficiently is being disingenuous." The United Auto Workers also has a page on their website debunking the industry figures (http://www.uaw.org/barg/07fact/fact02.php).

And as the Wall Street Journal reported (11/20/08), "During the past three years, the union agreed to eliminate tens of thousands of production jobs, reduce healthcare coverage for union retirees and slash wages for new hires--moves that essentially level the playing field between the Big Three auto makers and their foreign-owned rivals." The paper went on to explain that these concessions are significant: "Analysts believe the changes will bring the average cost of union labor to less than $50 an hour by 2010 or 2011, in line with Toyota Motor Corp.'s labor costs. The Harbour Report, a closely watched scorecard of auto-plant productivity, earlier this year found that in 2007 the average per-vehicle labor costs for the Big Three in 2007 was no more than $260 above Toyota's"--far from the $1,500 premium ABC claimed GM pays.

ABC did include a quote from UAW president Ron Gettelfinger, saying that he "bristled at blaming auto workers"--but ABC's newscast was as much behind the finger-pointing as the industry is. As economist Dean Baker noted (Beat the Press, 11/18/08), this misinformation has serious consequences: "It certainly can affect public support for a bailout if they are led to believe that autoworkers are paid much more than is actually the case." ABC should correct the record.

ACTION:
Tell ABC that it should correct its December 3 report that inaccurately characterized autoworker salaries.

CONTACT:
ABC World News

Phone:
212.456.4040

Webform:
http://abcnews.go.com/Site/page?id=3271346&cat=World%20News%20with%20Charles%20Gibson

I encourage you to check out the UAW's page debunking this corporate media bullshit. The page has other information that does a good job of explaining how salaries and benefits work in that industry that are similar to how they work in many other areas of the economy.

 

Hat tip to Pagan Sphinx

CODEPINK has called on Obama to meet with peace groups.

Barack Obama was elected in large part because of his promise to end the Iraq War and we want to hold him to that pledge. You can send Obama and his transition team a letter asking him to sit down with leaders of the peace and anti-war movement to talk about bringing home our troops. Read CODEPINK's “Let’s Talk” invitation to the President-elect below, add in your own words, sign your name and zip code, and send your letter. Your letter will be automatically sent to Obama via the www.change.gov website through a few clicks on our website--now there's action magic!

There was one significant disagreement I had with the alert, which sends a message to the Obama transition team. I edited the default text to ask Obama to meet with secular peace groups and deleted the names of the two religious groups CODEPINK listed. The involvement of religious groups in politics violates state/church separation and discriminates against atheists. I suspect other atheists reading this will have similar concerns and will make edits to the language as well.

Please Take Action!

 

When the corporate media start to chastise corporate executives, it should make you suspicious. A good example of this is the not so mainstream media's war of words against the automotive bailout. The same media outlets that pushed a $700 billion bailout for banks and brokerage firms have been pushing just as hard against a much, much smaller automotive industry rescue.

They are up to something.

Some rightist pundits have openly expressed the real agenda behind efforts to block the bailout. In "Auto Bailout Aimed at Unions, Not Companies" on TheStreet.com (11/18/08), Debra Borchardt overtly spelled part of out the real agenda. Often, you need to read business news to find out what the corporations are really doing.

The bill circulating in the House of Representatives would allow the automakers to continue making payments to the trust fund established to fund obligations for retiree health benefits.

The automakers established the Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association in 2007 to get the health plan funding off their books. VEBAs, a popular tool for distressed companies, also help protect retirees' benefits in case the companies go bankrupt, according to Voluntary.com. Obviously both the automakers and the union saw the writing on the wall last year and began making strategic moves to prepare for it.

The only problem is that the automakers ran out of cash to keep feeding the beast. Starting in July, the companies began requesting payment deferrals. The UAW granted the request, but the union is getting antsy for its money.

No healthcare for those damned middle class retirees. Only the rich should get that. What is Congress thinking?

Kathleen Pender got down and dirty in the San Francisco Chronicle 11/20/08, arguing in favor of bankruptcy filings for automakers. If you keep scrolling down a while, you find the dirt.

Many employees lose their jobs. The businesses that go into Chapter 11 on average come out with about half the workers they had before they started downsizing, LoPucki says. "The employment loss is not caused by bankruptcy. Bankruptcy is simply the recognition that you needed to shrink the business."

In bankruptcy, unions are forced to renegotiate contracts. Members of the United Auto Workers have benefits that far exceed what most Americans have, including generous retiree health plans and pay for time they are furloughed. Those would undoubtedly shrink in bankruptcy.

In other words, the corporate media want to take benefits from retirees and to make unions give up wages and benefits for people who still have jobs. This isn't just about autoworkers. Good union jobs put upward pressure on wages and benefits throughout the economy. This is an effort to redistribute wealth from the middle class to the rich in the long term, taking advantage of a crisis in the short term.

The crack about "benefits that far exceed what most Americans have" is particularly interesting. It is an appeal to envy and resentment, when collective political action and solidarity actually can help all the middle class and poor people being screwed.

Shock Doctrine anyone?

 

Here's a lighthearted explanation of the Roman holiday, the Saturnalia, from LAist. In case you don't know, Saturnalia is the holiday that Christmas is based on.

The Romans are often bagged on as being the Borg of the ancient world: assimilating barbarian cultures left and right, stealing the style and grace of the Greeks, tossing the odd Christian to lions. Yet, you must admit they did know how to PARTY, especially during those barren winter months.

In antiquity, the feast of Saturn or “Saturnalia” was celebrated from about December 17th through the 23rd. It was a winter solstice festival in honor of the merry old god of the seed and its sowing, and if he was cranky, the blighting of crops. His fertile wife, Ops, goddess of plenty, was also celebrated around this time. Janus (the two faced fella who gives his name to next month) supposedly started the tradition in remembrance of the Golden Age of Saturn's rule. You know, way, way, way back in mythic times, when everyone was equal and free and the "man" wasn't around to keep us down.

This high spirited festival engendered many of our own holiday traditions such as extravagant feasting, kissing under the mistletoe, lighting candles, wearing silly hats, exchanging gifts and the odd orgy. Woo Hoo!, who needs Christmas?

So this week, why not celebrate the really ancient traditions or at least add a Roman twist to your festivities? Instead of the usual Christmas dealee, I am having some friends over tomorrow for a Saturnalia party. We will feast on decadent finger foods (the ancients didn't believe in forks), drink copious amounts of vino and spirits, and don wreaths or the traditional Saturnalia Phrygian cap, which looks a hell of a lot like a Santa hat. We'll also try our hands at a bit of friendly gambling, as the Roman's encouraged games of chance during Saturnalia time. The odd orgy part? Well, perhaps I'll screen Fellini's Satyricon instead of White Christmas. Then again, my friends are pretty darn odd. Wink!

Why do stores say "Happy Holidays" instead of "Sexy Saturnalia"? Why don't the media acknowledge this important and fun holiday? Why do they keep up with all the pious Christmas stuff when the whole thing is really about food, wine, sex, and temporarily inverting the social order?

This stinks! Where is Bill "Falafel Man" O'Reilly when you really need him?

 

World AIDS Day isn't supposed to be a schmaltzy acknowledgment that AIDS is still around. It was originally intended to be a call to political action. People are still dying, at home and abroad. "Abstinence only" scams are still being funded in the US and Africa, despite the fact that they are succeeding in the real agenda: promoting the spread of HIV. That money should be going to genuine HIV prevention programs. Drug companies have way too much influence over AIDS research, and there needs to be a focus on the cure.

In the meantime, here are some actions you can take to fight AIDS.

Support AMFAR's call for a national AIDS strategy.

Join Housing Works in opposing anti-needle exchange Rep. Jim Ramstad as "Drug Czar."

 

Obama's national security team is rather disturbing, to put it mildly. The two marquee nominations, Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State and Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense are absolutely execrable. Neither has sound judgement on foreign policy in general and especially on matters of war and peace. Both are dishonorable, rightist war mongers who should never hold any office in government. Their support of the Bush agenda of endless war is downright sickening.

The choice of Eric Holder as Attorney General was unwise as well. He is a Clinton administration retread, which raises questions about his ability to serve in any administration interested in meaningful change. His involvement in Bill Clinton's corrupt pardons (a typical Republican behavior of a supposedly "Democratic" president) also should make one pause.

The choice of a former general as National Security Adviser is an error as well. This undermines civilian control of the military.

Susan Rice as UN ambassador is less disturbing than the previously mentioned nominees. Her status as a Clinton administration retread is not good, to put it mildly. But, at least she supported Obama rather than Clinton during the campaign. That might be a hopeful sign.

Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano also is a Clinton administration retread. However, she was a lawyer for Anita Hill which suggests she has some integrity. She also has experience running a state government, which should help at Homeland Security.

Obama's appointees have all the markings of being a somewhat more competent set of administrators for the Reagan/Bush/Clinton/Bush agenda. They have shown little interest in moving the country in a more rational and productive direction, especially on foreign policy.

Obama has made a huge mistake. Liberals and progressive better get ready to fight this administration with all of our efforts. Obama has given the middle finger to all the people who voted for him in the Democratic primaries.