DUE PROCESS - September 2, 2010

It is interesting to see how the processes of law impact differently on people of differing social positions and resources. I am looking today at the behavior of the legal process in the cases of ex-Governor Blagojevich of IL and ex-House whip Delay of TX. In the one case, he was overheard bemoaning that it was not possible for him to cash in on a unique opportunity to profit from his political position, as so many others had done before him, and in the other, he was proven to have profited from his own. The apparent logic seems to be that Blagojevich was revealed to be greedy, though unavailing, while Delay was shown to be successfully corrupt, if possibly not proven beyond reasonable doubt. In the one case, Blagojevich was shown to be a Bad Man, and the federal attorney has promised to have him punished for the moral lapse, while the other managed to get his case dismissed by the Department of Justice (?) because doubt about its legal certainty hangs on a thin thread. Of course, Delay comes from TX, a state almost as widely considered morally corrupt as IL, except that he found a way to collect his booty with support from those who share his degree of exemption from the fingers of the Law. In fact, the situation of those exposed as morally corrupt is that they can be punished without any such due process, while “solid citizens” can often get away with open flouting of the law. TX conservatives, of course, are considered solid citizens, and their Party stands behind them, so Obama’s administration turns them free. Meanwhile, the US Attorney has made himself the agent of the Wrath of God, so that anything so strict and formal as certainty is not required when harassing a Democrat of working class roots. In this administration, the nature of one’s persona might be sufficient to respect the façade of a GOP grandee, while Obama’s regime might otherwise extract vengeance in a case of bare suspicion.

SAVING - August 19, 2010

As a recent retiree who has a certain concern about savings for possible necessities, I find it distressing to consider the options that I see as a saver and to consider that in contrast to the options available by others more affluent and by those who are in a position to profit from the rules for lending money to the US government. For various reasons, this nation gives special benefits to those lending us money from abroad, even when that money has its origin in domestic earnings and loses its identity when shunted through the labyrinth of foreign banks and institutions. It does not seem unreasonable that our treasury should look to domestic savings as a prime source of borrowed funds, especially if that should result in economic gains for our financial situation. The middle-class saver is treated as an unwelcome supplicant when it comes to federal borrowing, while foreign companies and even nations are courted with the best rates and freedom from income taxes. Indeed there are several dimensions on which our economies would profit from the unexpected consequences if our treasury would pay private borrowers the same rates available to strangers, and as tax-free as apparently alien funds. Such a change would free us from the need to borrow as much from overseas, even not counting the fees paid to the agents that maintain the foreigner fiction for us. Also, more of the interest would be spent on domestic products, which might even help in the cause of recovery. Finally, the extension of the existing benefit to Americans might make domestic borrowing enough better so that the interest paid on that borrowing would decrease. Is it possible that this obvious result has not been seen by the supposed scientists who advise our government, or is it the case that these are again a recital of the benefits that the rich and the powerful rain on each other and that are denied to those of us who scrape by as best we can?

SOLAR VS. NUCLEAR - August 12, 2010

In a stunning article in the International Herald-Tribune recently, it was revealed that the cost of a kwhr in NC has dropped (to 16c) below that for nuclear, which continues to rise. And this is in NC, not AZ. That puts a seal on the question of what we can do to rein in the peril of disasters like that at Chernobyl. Because the true cost of solar is just what was reported, while the cost of nuclear does not satisfactorily reflect the total insurance cost that should be paid by nuclear to protect the public from that kind of industrial disaster. The US law simply lays the bulk of the risk on the populace, which makes losses over a certain level unrecoverable. And we have recently seen new developments that further reduce to cost of solar panels. Indeed, a prize of Eu 800k was given by a Eu foundation for a new way of building these more cheaply, and promises transparent panels in window panes. That makes glass houses a new way of dealing with that placement problem. So the new differential will continue to grow, and we should be able soon to decommission the old nuclear reactors as the new solar ones continue to grow cheaper. It is a genuine change in the nuclear game to the advantage of the human race. Thus, the atomic age, which promised for over 65 years to deliver unlimited power, both military and electrical, to the people is now over. The new technology leaves us only with the question of how to deal with the detritus of the existing atomic works. Of course, that problem has never been solved, and we are now at least saved from having to consider what we can do to protect ourselves from the shadow that continues to hang over our future as the electrical issue clouds that one from the consideration of nations that claim that their nuclear efforts are economic in nature, while the sun continues to offer a better answer to that.

GOVERNMENTS LIE - August 5, 2010

Years ago, I learned from my friend I. F. Stone that governments lie. Not that they always lie, or even most of the time, but they have no strong tendency to tell the truth. In fact, the only thing that we can conclude from a statement of fact from one of them is that they would rather we believe it than not. This injunction applies especially when they give us a reason for undertaking fierce action or even going to war. When we remember the Alamo or the Maine, we are very likely to be seduced into doing something that we would otherwise not do. In more recent memory, that applies to the sinking of the Lusitania or the USS Maine, or the incident in the Gulf of Tonkin or the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Today, we are being told of the long chain of events in Pakistan and Afghanistan, which up until now had apparently escaped the notice of the US or UK governments. And to the extent that the leak is not exactly what the government in question wants us to believe, the revelation in question is claimed as a government secret, and we are told that deep consequences would follow if the facts in question were known. Thus is a democratic populace denied the facts on which its welfare, or even survival, is dependent, we are told. Today the issue is how we view our ally Pakistan who are, according to what we see, either supporting our needs in Asia or plotting with the Taliban to murder our soldiers there. And we have been told that that the facts in question are so dangerous for us to know that no official body can be told them without endangering us from who knows what. And this about an allegation that could engage us in a war, even an atomic one. I do not know when we shall know the truth about this, or about so many stories that have led us into a century of world wars, but we vote every so often based on what we have been told.

TERROR - July 29, 2010

This weekend, I went to see Danton’s Death by Georg Buechner. It was a scorching play by a contemporary and supporter of the French revolution who was highly critical of the Reign of Terror, like Edmund Burke and Thomas Jefferson before him. It lasted 3 years and claimed the lives of 2500 people. Mark Twain, in A Connecticut Yankee, called it the little terror, comparing it with the Great Terror which lasted over 1000years, taking the lives of many hundreds of thousands and consuming those of many millions more. Still, many compare its excesses to the beastliness of a dog that has been turned wild by prolonged extreme mistreatment and whose behaviour is the result of its suffering , possibly not in its deep nature. Buechner obviously felt deeply for the agonies of the revolutionaries and even more for the suffering of the moderates for whom he spoke. It was hard not to see comparisons for our own time, as we move ever closer to the possibility of devastating war with Pakistan, with claims of virtue on both sides. The American and French revolutions were testing grounds for the theory of the Enlightenment, with the American managing to keep it alive and the French going overboard in what must have appeared to their ideologists as an excess of zeal. It never made sense to me, but in a speech from the play about Marat and Sade, Peter Weiss gives us some understanding of why it failed under the rubric of “Everybody wants to bring something with him through a revolution, a souvenir of the time before.” It has appeared to me for a long while that a society in which the ruling caste feels itself secure against revolution becomes steadily worse to those who are thought to have no option, while an actual revolution consumes all civility in its path. I fear I am about to live through such a time. Again!!

TAXES - July 22, 2010

In last week’s Times, Paul Krugman alerted us to a change in polemic on the part of GOP. Abandoning their fixation on the debt, they have decided that it is more important to re-enact the Bush tax cuts for the rich. By the time this comment reaches them, they will have in their heads in their argument that the debt is unimportant, and will be pressing for the recovery potential of the tax cut. They are so deep into their hubris that they cannot see what a wonderful opening they have left for the Dems. I recommend that Obama and co. should go for a tax cut themselves, but in the form of a cut in 5G of taxable income from the bottom of the tax table. It would be a straight out tax cut for every taxpayer as against a restoration of the Bush giveaway to the rich. It would mimic the action of the Tories in GB in a simple act of money for the rich against money for everybody. And as recovery it would be surer that the taxes saved would go into consumer goods than into stock market gambling. It would be easier to enforce and cost less in income manipulation. In addition, it would be on a field where a simple veto could block the GOP move if it failed to persuade the ordinary voter that they would rather have the saving for themselves than pass it on to the banksters and their gang. If the Dems will not take this initiative, then there is 0 to be said for them, and if the voters will not respond to this choice, they become the authors of their own victimization. It has always been easy for slick lobbyists to get the voters to support the fat cats rather than themselves, but in this plan, it is tax cut against tax cut, us against them, and if the Dems will let this opportunity get away from them, then they would be as worthless as some of my left-wing friends tell me. I hope that Tammy Baldwin will take up this stratagem and pass it on to Sen. Feingold.

ENDLESS WAR - July 8, 2010

For over 60 years, we have been hearing about war syndromes, as though these were in some sense individual and accidental errors, all different. Actually, they are all aspects of the same problem, which has been haunting US for the past 6 decades, and as it reappears, we act as though it were unique, something we had never seen before except for the fact that the most perceptive among us see it as a reflection of the past immediate instance, but not as a chronic weakness that threatens to afflict us until it finally brings the US experiment to a crashing ruin. In capsule, it arises from the belief that US military and diplomatic superiority is so huge in comparison with the resources of underdeveloped countries and movements that it is required only to rattle the saber to bring compliance from a force that DC considers inimical to their orders. It reflects what we imagine was the history of the late XIX and early XX centuries as we see it was still in effect. That was a history in which the disjunction between the advanced countries and their colonial servants was settled by confrontation between Gatling Guns on one side and sharpened sticks on the other. Them days is gone forever, and good riddance. Even the Spanish Empire was easier to confront than the Philippine guerrillas that fought for independence when the European masters were gone. And we have been learning over and over what it means to be arrayed against a domestic resistance movement that swims like a fish in the sea that is the population. After the Greek resistance and Tito’s Croatian socialists, there was the armies of Peru, Chile and Argentina against their people, the conquest of Guatemala by its colonels, the overthrow of the elected governments in Iran and Chile, and always the same script with new antagonists, always at a disadvantage our rulers never imagined.