Category Archives: Politics

Class Warfare Is a Fact

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An updated study by economist Emanuel Saez of U.C. Berkeley shows that the the top 1% of earners in the United States received more than 20% of the country’s total income in 2012, while the top 10% of earners received more than half of the country’s income. The share of income going to the wealthiest Americans is now at or near the highest levels on record since the government began keeping the relevant statistics and the federal income tax was created in 1913.

What’s even more remarkable, perhaps, is that the income of the top 1% went up nearly 20% in 2012, while the income of the remaining 99% rose only 1%. Since 2009, the wealthiest 1% have taken 95% of the income gains in our supposedly classless society.

We should remember these statistics when we hear Republican politicians, who pretend to be friends of the middle class, claim that lower taxes for the wealthy benefit everyone. It’s past time to raise taxes on the rich, invest in America’s infrastructure and start creating decent jobs again. Otherwise we’re going to continue to get economically screwed.

Note the year 1980 in this chart, when class warrior and demagogue supreme Ronald Reagan was elected President:

10economix-sub-wealth-blog480

http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/11/the-rich-got-richer/

Responding to the Use of Chemical Weapons (3rd Edition)

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Getting killed or maimed by a chemical weapon isn’t necessarily worse than being killed or maimed by a bullet or high explosive. Being aware of their terrible effects, however, almost all countries have agreed not to use chemical weapons. And despite the fact that we’ve been lied to before by our political leaders (for example, regarding the Gulf of Tonkin incident and Iraq’s weapons program), it seems likely that President Obama is telling the truth and correctly interpreting the evidence that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons — to devastating effect.

Before the President spoke yesterday, I would have bet that he was going to tell the Navy to launch cruise missiles against targets in Syria. Other presidents have made similar decisions, without Congressional approval and certainly without a declaration of war. That can be the right thing for a President to do in extraordinary circumstances. Yet I was hoping that Obama would wait for the report of the U.N. inspectors and also seek approval from Congress. If it’s clear that the Syrian government launched this attack, there should be a response, but that response doesn’t need to be immediate. It should also be a response supported by Congress, since we’re supposed to be a democracy.

Now there will be a debate in Congress. as well as a continuing debate in the media. We’ll hear many good reasons why the United States shouldn’t do anything, and some very good reasons for doing something. Maybe this will be one of those cases in which the “wisdom of crowds” will result in a good decision, even an improvement on what the President wants to do. Unfortunately, Congress, especially this Congress, rarely does anything wise.

This is the third time I’ve written this post, after deleting it twice. There is a strong moral case for doing something to stop the Syrian government and other governments from using chemical weapons, even though that may be a difficult thing to do and there will be unforeseeable consequences. We can’t know yet whether those possible consequences tip the scale toward doing nothing. 

The truth is that I don’t know what I’d do if I were Obama or a member of Congress. What’s happening in Syria (and Egypt, Iraq, etc.) may be so sick and so irrational that there is nothing for the rest of us to do but watch, hoping that these people will get tired of hating and killing each other or that someone will eventually exert control over the situation. One of those things might happen, probably after we’re dead and gone.

My Country, ‘Tis of Thee

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Sweet land of liberty?

The older I get, the less patriotic I feel. It was easier to love America when I knew less about it.

Take, for instance, those brave Texans, joined by Davy Crockett of all people, standing up to the evil General Santa Anna at the Alamo. I didn’t know until recently that Mexico had invited the Americans to settle in Texas, with the understanding that the American immigrants would become Catholics, learn Spanish, obey Mexican law and presumably become Mexicans. For the most part, the American settlers ignored Mexican law, including the law against slavery. In little more than a decade, the Americans were fighting to take Texas from Mexico and, of course, make slavery legal. (Walt Disney and John Wayne didn’t tell that part of the story.)

Despite their defeat at the Alamo, the Texans prevailed and, after some controversy, joined the United States as a slave state. President James K. Polk immediately tried to expand Texas by purchasing land from Mexico. When Mexico refused to sell, Polk sent American troops into Mexico, igniting the Mexican-American War. Ulysses S. Grant, who fought in the war, later referred to it as “one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation”. The Mexicans call it “the United States’ Invasion of Mexico”.

It’s clear that we haven’t lived up to our ideals as a nation. Obviously, nations never live up to their ideals completely, but our ideals are relatively high and our behavior is relatively low in too many cases.

So it isn’t surprising that there are lots of people with doubts about America these days. The person who wrote the article at the link below brings up Vietnam and Cambodia, Bush and Cheney, Iraq, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Manning and Snowden, the NSA and our frequent outbreaks of paranoia.

He might have mentioned a whole bunch of other things. We have the highest incarceration rate in the world. We are the largest arms exporter in the world. Our leading politicians are for sale. People sometimes wait for hours to vote in poor neighborhoods, but not in rich ones. We’re the only developed country that doesn’t require paid vacations or maternity leave. And one of my favorites: our drug companies send drugs banned in America to other countries:

Dr. Maria Guadalupe Rodriguez tries vainly to convince parents that the costly American drugs they buy to fight their babies’ diarrhea are useless and often deadly.

Some of the drugs can paralyze a child’s intestines. Others can destroy a child’s ability to fight other infections. All fail to treat the worst enemy of a child with diarrhea: the dehydration that kills about 4 million children under 5 in underdeveloped countries every year, the World Health Organization says. All these infants need, WHO says, is an inexpensive mixture of sugar, salt and water.

Of thee I sing.

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One citizen’s angry appraisal of America: 

http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2013/08/bin-laden-won-no-man-has-changed-america-more-for-the-worse.html#more

How drug companies profit by selling dangerous drugs overseas:

http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19910611&slug=1288354

Six Men with Something to Say about Israel and the Palestinians

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If you’re interested in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, you should consider watching The Gatekeepers. It’s an Israeli documentary from 2012 that features interviews with six men, each of whom has been in charge of Shin Bet, Israeli’s internal security service. Apparently, none of these men had ever been interviewed on camera before.

They talk about the history of Shin Bet, including the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, but more importantly they express their opinions regarding the conflict with the Palestinians. The impression I got was that they would all prefer fewer Israeli settlements in the occupied territories, in addition to more cooperation and negotiation with the Palestinian authorities. 

These are all men who spent years working for Shin Bet protecting their fellow Israelis from terrorist attacks. It’s highly significant that they support a less confrontational approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. One of them says he’s in favor of talking to everyone, including Israel’s enemies. Another observes that Israel is winning battles but losing the war.

If You Have Nothing To Hide

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Earlier this week, Reuters reported that certain information collected by the National Security Agency is shared with the Drug Enforcement Agency, allowing the DEA to arrest people on drug charges. Furthermore, in order to keep the source of the NSA information secret, the DEA commonly invents a “parallel construction”, i.e. an alternative history that can be presented as evidence in court. DEA agents claim that they discovered the subject criminal activity using ordinary methods, not information from the NSA.

That’s commonly called “lying” or “perjury”. 

From the Reuters article:

The unit of the DEA that distributes the information is called the Special Operations Division, or SOD. Two dozen partner agencies comprise the unit, including the FBI, CIA, NSA, Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Homeland Security. It was created in 1994 to combat Latin American drug cartels and has grown from several dozen employees to several hundred. 

There hasn’t been much reaction to this story so far. But it does raise some interesting questions. For example, is the NSA sharing information with other government agencies? Are other agencies, not just the DEA, using the NSA to keep an eye on people they have an interest in, like supposed tax evaders, members of organized crime, political activists and troublesome journalists? 

More generally, how much government surveillance should be permitted in a democracy, especially one as flawed as ours?

(Not that there’s anything wrong with secret, widespread government surveillance. Whatever the government is doing is perfectly fine with me. Keep up the good work, guys! I’ve got nothing to hide, so no complaints here. You can trust me. Really! But you should check out those odd people across the street.) 

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/05/us-dea-sod-idUSBRE97409R20130805