Shared Sacrifice and Balance? Ha!

Amy Goodman plucked away on my nerves in a column she wrote for the Nation of Change!
by Charlie Leck

In an article in Nation of Change, called War, Debt and the President, Amy Goodman builds a solid case that our President has not been able to carry the water for those progressives who supported him.

“President Barack Obama touted his debt-ceiling deal Tuesday, saying, ‘We can't balance the budget on the backs of the very people who have borne the biggest brunt of this recession.’ Yet that is what he and his coterie of Wall Street advisers have done.

“In the affairs of nations, Alexander Hamilton wrote in January 1790, ‘loans in times of public danger, especially from foreign war, are found an indispensable resource.’ It was his first report as secretary of the treasury to the new Congress of the United States. The country had borrowed to fight the Revolutionary War, and Hamilton proposed a system of public debt to pay those loans.”

[Read More]

As I go through Goodman’s piece, she touches on a number of truths that pluck at my nerves and raise my hackles.

She uses the word “compliant” in referring to a Congress that so easily agreed to fund the George W. Bush wars. How did they fund those wars? Reread the second paragraph in the quote above. We relied on our national ability to borrow money from the people and other nations. We’re broke now because of those wars. Every time you hear Ms. Bachmann of Minnesota claim it is because of the expense of Social Security and Medicare, please remember that we had to borrow trillions (that’s trillions with a “t”) of dollars to fund those wars.

As every one of us who uses a credit card knows, there comes a time when one has to pay the piper. Times up!

I’m very unnerved by Goodman’s assessment that the boys (boys becoming men) who fought those wars and paid the price with their life and limbs will be the ones whose care will now not be properly funded

It was like someone was strumming on my nerves when Goodman quoted William Hartung, of the Center for International Policy. Hudson points to Dwight Eisenhower’s presidential warning to us about the “military industrial complex.”

“Essentially, he’s to the left of Barack Obama on these issues.”

Ping! My nerves are vibrating wildly and chills are running up and down my spine. Old Ike knew what of he spoke. Ask yourself: Just who did profit from the trillions of dollars we spent on the Bush Wars? The answer, of course, has to be: Multinational Corporations!

Goodman reminds me, with a dubious shake of her head, just what the recent Congressional legislation on our national debt does:

“The Budget Control Act of 2011 assures drastic cuts to the U.S. social safety net. Congress will appoint a committee of 12, dubbed the ‘Super Congress,’ evenly split between Republicans and Democrats, to identify $1.2 trillion in cuts by Thanksgiving. If the committee fails to meet that goal, sweeping, mandatory, across-the-board cuts are mandated. Social services would get cut, but so would the Pentagon.”

Do you think that those corporations and their CEOs who profited so richly from the Bush Wars are going to help us pay the piper through increased taxes on them? Do you think the Republican House, where so many of the Representatives have signed a no new taxes pledge, will allow it? Of course not! We, the people, get the shaft again! I assure you!

Goodman is plucking wildly at my nerves, which are out of tune. The sound in my mind is worse than fingernails on a blackboard. I am rattled!

“President Obama's debt-ceiling deal is widely considered a historic defeat for progressives, a successful attack on the New Deal and Great Society achievements of the past century. Congresswoman Donna Edwards, D-Md., summed up the disappointment, in which half the Democrats in the House voted against their president, tweeting: ‘Nada from million/billionaires; corp tax loopholes aplenty; only sacrifice from the poor/middle class? Shared sacrifice, balance? Really?’”

Ooooooh!

If you’ve got the nerve, go ahead and read her entire column!

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Blog Junkie

There are good, bad and awful, but I love checking out the blogs!
by Charlie Leck

In absolute truth, I’m a blog junkie. I find more truth on the blogs than I do in the newspapers, which, in this day and age, are owned and controlled by massive, profit-seeking corporations. The Alternative News supplied by blogs get much closer to the truth. Here’s a little report on my morning reading of the blogs today (Friday, 12 September 2008).

David Letterman, in an opening monologue this week pretty much set to rest the question about whether Sarah Palin is ready to be President, revealing to us again that comedy often strikes deep at the heart of truth.

“I don’t think we need to worry about that because Bush has
lowered the bar so tremendously, I mean, I’m ready to be President.”

Now, in truth, that’s not funny! It’s a tragic truth.

David Zetland was a guest blogger on Freakonomics, one of my favorite blogs, writing about water and its future and the future shortages of water we can expect – in a nation that treats water so casually that “we water our sidewalk.” I urge you to read both of these blogs if you care. Part I. And, Part II.

A few days ago, I republished one of my blogs here at the request of a friend. The blog displays the incredible embassy that the U.S. is soon to move into in Iraq. The compound pretty much indicated the U.S. has very long term plans in Iraq. Now comes an Amy Goodman report about a “recently leaked draft of an Iraqui-U.S. agreement that outlines the long-term status of U.S. forces in Iraq.”

If you don’t read (or listen to) Amy Goodman regularly at Democracy Now, you’re missing one of the most important, insightful news writers in America.

A long time ago I wrote in disgust about the hundreds of millions of dollars that William McGuire made as the head of United Health Group. Need I emphasize the word health? While we wonder why health care and health insurance is so expensive in America, fat-assed executives skim nearly a billion dollars right off the top to pad their personal wealth. Now, legal settlements between McGuire and a host of government entities sound like it will cost the ex-executive nearly a billion dollars. [Here’s a story in our local paper about the settlement!]

Good! But, believe me, this is only the tip of the iceberg in the industry and it’s the American public that gets screwed!

Rachel Maddow has just launched a new show on MSNBC. That’s great. She’s wonderful and I enjoy her commentary. The problem is, just as it is in the case of Keith Olbermann, the only people who listen to them are the people who agree with them. Oh well, maybe the two of them can make us angry enough that we’ll get up off our lazy butts and join the fight to get rid of the right-wing, religious freaks who are taking control of our nation.

If you are a person of faith, but can’t stand the religious puke the right-wingers throw around – and you want something more rational and thoughtful, you really ought to spend some time every few days catching up with things at God’s Politics with Jim Wallis. You read some sensible and thoughtful commentary on the place of faith in our nation’s political struggles.

I also go to a blog called Healing Iraq regularly. I find it a pretty balanced read. They try to look at Iraq and what’s happening there in a very fair and accurate way. The state of the nation (Iraq) was a recent subject. It has been placed at the bottom of the scale in almost every category. Only Sudan is rated in more desperate condition.

“The height of the U.S. military surge in Iraq was a key factor in this year’s analysis of that country. And though Iraq’s score improved slightly, the gains that one might hope for—those that reflect fundamental, long-term changes—did not occur. The desperate predicament of nearly 4 million people driven from their homes, the abysmal state of public services, and the discord among sectarian factions have shown no real improvement. The incremental security and economic progress that has occurred are dependent on tenuous, short-term factors that could unravel at any time. Eager to cobble together a fragile peace, the U.S. military has armed dozens of new Sunni militia groups that could later turn their guns on the Iraqi government, their Shiite rivals, or the Americans many still regard as occupiers. Similarly, Iraq’s economy has improved only moderately, thanks largely to the spike in global oil prices, not Iraqi production. In short, progress in Iraq last year was negligible at best and deeply susceptible to reversal should the country suffer the kind of shock—a food shortage, a high-level assassination, an attack that unleashes ethnic hatreds—that has exposed so many states’ deep vulnerabilities in recent months.”

This is the mess that yet needs cleaning up. The cost to the U.S. is going to be staggering – even while we leave our own infrastructure and educational system without attention. Is this really the political party you want to vote for – to give them another 4 years to mess us up?

Andrew Sullivan, who blogs at The Atlantic, is another very balanced blogger. One can't accuse him of being to the left or to the right. He wrote yesterday about an Obama speech in which the Senator raised one of the issues that interests me most in these awful days – habeus corpus!

If you really have a strong theological bent, or want to, Our of Ur (by Christianity Today) might be a blog you’d like to visit and read. This thought comes from an essay posted there by Brandon O’Brien. It’s something we ought to really keep in mind.

“If we find our authenticity and identity in Christ, we’ll have to be prepared to stop judging our effectiveness by how people respond to us. We’ll no doubt be misunderstood by some. But we won’t, as some people fear, be disregarded or discredited for speaking or acting in each given situation according to the need. That doesn’t make us hypocrites. In fact, people are more likely to question your motives if you’re always affirming, always in-your-face, always cool and groovy.”

I’ll let you put your own interpretations on that and I won’t comment further.

For pure entertainment and reading pleasure I always find my way to Dick Cavett and The Talk Show. He posts about once a week and the reading is just wonderful. In his most recent blog he muses about how he would like time to ask Sarah Palin a question or two -- one being:

"I’d love to have the chance to ask her how being able to see Russia from parts of her state apparently qualifies her to deal with that vastly complex country more effectively than those scholars and diplomats who find themselves less proximate to its shores."

Enough! I hope you enjoyed this little tour around the blogs!

Journalism in Corporate America

Am I being an alarmist?
by Charlie Leck

The LA Times review of the new book by Bill Moyers, Democracy in America, is extremely positive.

"There's a Jeremiah among us and his name is Bill Moyers… Noting that right-wing polemicists have long tried to tar 'fact-based reporting that undermines their worldview' as 'liberal advocacy journalism,' of which he is among the country's prominent practitioners, he responds, 'All I can say is that if reporting what happens to ordinary people because of events beyond their control, and the indifference of government to their fate, is 'liberal,' I plead guilty.'"

A good friend from New Hampshire responded to my last blog, suggesting that I'm being a bit of an alarmist about the demise of our American democracy. I would response and argue that I am not. The democracy we have known in this country has been severely eroded and further deterioration is on the horizon. Unless, of course, we do something about it and there are possibilities – meaning the cup is half full.

In his most recent book, Moyers on Democracy, Bill Moyers has a great deal to say about Journalism and the "news industry" in America that ought to make us sit up and take notice.

"I wish I could say that journalists in general are showing the same interest in uncovering the dangerous linkages thwarting this democracy. It is not for lack of honest and courageous individuals who would risk their careers to speak truth to power -- a modest risk compared to those of some journalists in authoritarian countries who have been jailed or murdered for the identical "crime." But our journalists are not in control of the instruments they play. As conglomerates swallow up newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, and networks, and profit rather than product becomes the focus of corporate effort, news organizations -- particularly in television -- are folded into entertainment divisions. The "news hole" in the print media shrinks to make room for advertisements, and stories needed by informed citizens working together are pulled in favor of the latest celebrity scandals because the media moguls have decided that uncovering the inner workings of public and private power is boring and will drive viewers and readers away to greener pastures of pabulum. Good reporters and editors confront walls of resistance in trying to place serious and informative reports over which they have long labored. Media owners who should be sounding the trumpets of alarm on the battlements of democracy instead blow popular ditties through tin horns, undercutting the basis for their existence and their First Amendment rights." (Bill Moyers: Moyers on Democracy [Doubleday, New York, 2008])

That is pretty much all that needs to be said – except to emphasize something positive in all this. As newspapers and main-line broadcast news services become more controlled by corporations, a host of alternative news outlets have developed and they are producing some rather good reporting. For a time we called it the "underground news" and now we've settled on a more compatible tag, "alternative news."

There are extraordinarily good on-line news sources, such as AlterNet, Slate and Salon. My main news source remains the NY Times, but I never finish the day without checking in on AlterNet and I always get to Slate at least once during the week.

Moyers, in a speech before the National Conference of Media Reform, pleads for more alternative broadcast news sources and he expresses his fear that "this country is going to die from too many lies." That's strong stuff. In the speech he really plugs Amy Goodman's extraordinary TV show, Democracy Now. If you don't watch this show, you're missing one of the great ones. There is probably no more important broadcast source for alternative news. Watch this video in which Amy Goodman explains how "Democracy Now" began.

The Real News is another of these important alternative news sources. If it's not broadcast in your area, go on-line to watch its archived videos or subscribe to its podcasts.

Indeed, the nature of the local newspaper in America has changed. If it weren't for the sports section and the Sunday opinion pages, I'd drop my subscription to our local paper. I check in regularly with a local alternative, on-line news source call MinnPost. The writers there are much freer to tell the "whole story." As Moyers points out in the quotation above, it is difficult for writers these days to go to the heart of the story when, at the heart, they encounter large corporate interests that also have some stake in the news reporting business.

Take a look at Bill Moyers, talking about his book, on the Daily Show or watch this You Tube video of Moyers in a WNYC Radio interview.

I'm not suggesting you abandon your regular, normal news sources, but I'm urging you to expand your horizons and get different views and more expansive coverage. Had we strong, alternative news sources 5 years ago, we probably would not have gone into the Iraq War. An informed public would not have allowed it.

Next: Moyers on government that is non-responsive.