Big Business: Capitalism & Religion

Here's a great article posted on AlterNet.

How Big Business Invented the Theology of 'Christian Libertarianism' and the Gospel of Free Markets

By Kevin Kruse / AlterNet

June 1, 2015

During the Great Depression, big business needed rebranding. Blamed for the crash, belittled in the press, and beset by the New Deal’s regulatory state, corporate leaders decided they had to improve their image, and soon. “The public does not understand industry,” an executive complained, “because industry itself has made no effort to tell its story; to show the people of this country that our high living standards have risen almost altogether from the civilization which industrial activity has set up.”

Accordingly, corporate leaders launched a public relations campaign for capitalism itself. In 1934, the National Association of Manufacturers hired its first public relations director in its four decades of existence, expanding its annual budget in that field from just $36,000 to nearly $800,000 three years later, a sum that represented half of its total budget. NAM marketed the miracles of “free enterprise” with a wide array of advertisements, direct mail, films, radio programs, a speakers’ bureau, and a press service that provided prefabricated editorials and news stories for 7500 newspapers. Ultimately, though, the organization’s efforts at self-promotion were generally dismissed as precisely that.

While old business lobbies like NAM couldn’t sell capitalism effectively, neither could new ones created especially for the cause. The American Liberty League, founded in 1934, originally seemed business’s best bet. It received lavish financial support from corporate leaders, notably at Du Pont and General Motors, but ultimately their prominence in the group crippled its effectiveness. Jim Farley, then head of the Democratic Party, famously joked that it ought to be called the “American Cellophane League” because “first, it’s a Du Pont product and second, you can see right through it.”

As the 1930s came to a close, corporate leaders looked over the returns on their investment and realized the millions spent had not swayed public opinion in the slightest. The image of big business still needed repackaging. In a 1939 address to the US Chamber of Commerce, H.W. Prentis of the Armstrong Cork Company proposed the way forward. “Economic facts are important, but they will never check the virus of collectivism,” he warned; “the only antidote is a revival of American patriotism and religious faith.” Prentis’ speech thrilled the Chamber and boardrooms across America. Soon propelled to NAM’s presidency, he continued to tell corporate leaders to get religion. His 1940 presidential address, promoted heavily in the Wall Street Journal and broadcast live on both ABC and CBS radio, promised that business’s salvation lay in “a strengthening of the spiritual concept that underlies our American way of life.”

Accordingly, corporate America began marketing a new fusion of faith, freedom and free enterprise. These values had been conflated before, of course, but in the early 1940s they manifested in a decidedly new form. Previously, when Americans thought about the relationship between religion, politics and business, they gave little thought to the role of the national state, largely because it was so small it gave little thought to any of them. But now that the federal government had grown so significantly, corporate leaders sought to convince Americans that the New Deal threatened not only the economic freedoms of business leaders, but the religious and political freedoms of ordinary citizens as well. They worked tirelessly throughout the 1940s and 1950s to advance a new ideology that one observer aptly anointed “Christian libertarianism.”

Initially, businessmen outsourced this campaign to an unlikely set of champions: ministers. Though this decision seemed unorthodox, the logic was laid out clearly in private. “Recent polls indicate that America’s clergymen are a powerful influence in determining the thinking and acting of the people in the economic realm,” noted one organizer, and so business leaders should “enlist large numbers of clergymen” to “act as minutemen, carrying the message upon all proper occasions throughout their several communities.”

Over the second half of the 1940s, corporate leaders lavishly funded new organizations of ministers who would make their case for them. Some of these groups secured donations from a broad array of businessmen. Reverend James W. Fifield’s Spiritual Mobilization, for instance, amassed millions in corporate and personal checks from leaders at companies such as General Motors, Chrysler, US Steel, Republic Steel, International Harvester, Firestone Tire and Rubber, Sun Oil, Gulf Oil, Standard Oil of New Jersey, Colgate-Palmolive-Peet and countless more. Others leaned heavily on the generosity of a single patron. The Christian Freedom Foundation, created by Reverend Norman Vincent Peale and then led by layman Howard Kershner, was sustained almost single-handedly by Sun Oil President J. Howard Pew. The Pew family’s contributions to the organization averaged more than $300,000 a year for twenty-five years.

With this generous funding, ministers in these organizations spread the arguments of Christian libertarianism. “I hold,” Reverend Fifield asserted, “that the blessings of capitalism come from God. A system that provides so much for the common good and happiness must flourish under the favor of the Almighty.” But concern for the “common good” was uncommon in their arguments, which tended instead to emphasize the values of individualism. In their telling, Christianity and capitalism were indistinguishable on this issue: both systems rested on the fundamental belief that an individual would rise or fall on his or her own merit alone. Just as the saintly ascended to Heaven and sinners fell to Hell, the worthy rose to riches while the wretched were resigned to the poorhouse...

BP - What Would Jesus Do with the Banksters?

TYT - Pope Francis Goes Off On Capitalism

BP - Stop Treating Capitalists As If They're Gods...

Love of the Capitalist "Free Market" Except When You Lose

Trey Smith

Defenders of the capitalist free market love the inherent competition involved. In theory, businesses compete on equal footing to attract customers and the business that does the best job wins. It is the ultimate "survival of the fittest" mentality. Capitalists simply love the free market...except when they come out on the losing end. When this happens, the large corporate behemoths suddenly aren't so enamored with the system they champion -- they demand intervention by the government or courts.

A while back, the US Air Force was taking bids from Boeing and Airbus for a contract to supply refueling tankers. Airbus -- a French-based company -- won the bid. Did Boeing accept that, in this case, Airbus was the fittest? Hell no! They cried foul. Utilizing their lobbying arm, they pitched a royal fit. They applied so much pressure to lawmakers that -- surprise, surprise -- new bids were ordered. And, not surprisingly, they came out on top in Round 2.

Just yesterday news came out about a court ruling that impacts Amazon.com and IBM. Both submitted bids to build the cloud computing infrastructure for the NSA. The original bid was won by Amazon, but IBM filed a protest and bids were retaken. So, Amazon took the matter to court and a judge recently ruled that Amazon's original bid should carry the day. Undaunted, IBM plans to appeal.

Also yesterday, reports indicate that Japan Airlines -- who, in the past, has always purchased their airplanes from Boeing -- has decided to go with Airbus going forward. I don't imagine that Boeing will take this situation lying down. I won't be surprised at all to read a later report that, after much lobbying and possibly US government threats, Japan Airlines has a sudden change of heart!

You see, when it comes to the unwashed masses, survival of the fittest is the name of the game and fittest tends to be defined by those who possesses the most wealth and power. But out in the dog-eat-dog capitalist marketplace, the corporate monsters truly don't really believe in that mantra. Survival of the fittest is a-ok when your company is declared the fittest, but if you come out on the losing end in a fair fight, then you go crying to mom and dad in the hope that they will "make things right" (i.e., allow you to win by intervention).

The Untermenschen

Trey Smith

You must understand, neoliberal capitalism is a heinous belief system. These neoliberal capitalists do not believe in human society, they do not believe they are their brother’s keeper, they don’t believe in the principles of the Magna Carta, the Constitution or The Rights of Man. Neoliberals believe that human beings are a commodity, like bushels of wheat, barrels of oil or broods of pigs. To neoliberals, there is only one right on earth which actually exists – property. To them, all other human rights are just made up play pretties, not worth the paper on which they’re written.

A generation ago the world faced a brutal Fascist regime, which declared by race, some as the masters and others as untermenschen — subhuman. Under neoliberalism, rather than judged by race, you are judged by your wealth. Why do so many in government insist that tax cuts for the rich brings jobs, when all evidence is to the contrary? Because you are untermenschen, you need only be placated by the media circus, while they do as they damn well planned to do all along. George W. Bush lied about 9-11 and lied about Saddam and he walks the streets drawing a fat pension and lucrative speaking fees. Untermensch! You dare to argue with a police officer? You’ll be arrested, tasered or worse.

Rather than building concentration camps, the neoliberalist simply siphoned off the jobs turning whole cities into concentration camps. Millions of Americans left behind, abandoned in the ruins of post industrial combat zones, with drugs and crime as the only prosperous occupations with positions available. Wall Street celebrates success, with all the accouterments, whores and cocaine parties. The President and the Congress pontificate about responsible consumers, not content to simply destroy our economy, they must blame you for it.
~ from If They Were You by David Glenn Cox ~

I share a portion of this fine essay because I keep returning to this notion of "shared sacrifice". It sounds like a fair way to handle things, but the problem is that the only sharing of the sacrifice is borne by the unwashed masses -- the untermenschen -- while the ruling elite continues on with business as usual.

Profits on Wall Street are high. CEO pay continues to go up. When it comes to war and surveillance, the money keeps flowing. All the while, living wage jobs are shrinking and our infrastructure is crumbling beneath our feet. The American middle class is a shell of its former self and millions have been thrown into low wage servitude.

Sooner or later, something has to give. We can't remain on this trajectory forever. This nation is being hollowed from the inside out and one of these days a stiff wind will blow and most of the house of cards will come tumbling down. The weight of this collapse will fall on those of us the elite consider the untermenschen. That weight may be so heavy that many of us won't survive.

The "All Inclusive" Doctrine

Trey Smith

The Washington Post [on Monday] has a long profile of Gen. Keith Alexander, director the NSA, and it highlights the crux - the heart and soul - of the NSA stories, the reason Edward Snowden sacrificed his liberty to come forward, and the obvious focal point for any responsible or half-way serious journalists covering this story. It helpfully includes that crux right in the headline, in a single phrase:

For NSA chief, terrorist threat drives passion to "collect it all," observers say.

What does "collect it all" mean? Exactly what it says; the Post explains how Alexander took a "collect it all" surveillance approach originally directed at Iraqis in the middle of a war, and thereafter transferred it so that it is now directed at the US domestic population as well as the global one:

"At the time, more than 100 teams of US analysts were scouring Iraq for snippets of electronic data that might lead to the bomb-makers and their hidden factories. But the NSA director, Gen. Keith B. Alexander, wanted more than mere snippets. He wanted everything: Every Iraqi text message, phone call and e-mail that could be vacuumed up by the agency's powerful computers.

"'Rather than look for a single needle in the haystack, his approach was, 'Let's collect the whole haystack,' said one former senior US intelligence official who tracked the plan's implementation. 'Collect it all, tag it, store it. . . . And whatever it is you want, you go searching for it. . . . .

"It also encapsulated Alexander's controversial approach to safeguarding Americans from what he sees as a host of imminent threats, from terrorism to devastating cyberattacks.

"In his eight years at the helm of the country's electronic surveillance agency, Alexander, 61, has quietly presided over a revolution in the government's ability to scoop up information in the name of national security. And, as he did in Iraq, Alexander has pushed hard for everything he can get: tools, resources and the legal authority to collect and store vast quantities of raw information on American and foreign communications."

Aside from how obviously menacing and even creepy it is to have a state collect all forms of human communication - to have the explicit policy that literally no electronic communication can ever be free of US collection and monitoring - there's no legal authority for the NSA to do this.
~ from The Crux of the NSA Story in One Phrase: 'Collect It All' by Glenn Greenwald ~

If nothing else, this doctrine of "All Inclusive" underscores the unhealthy marriage of an out-of-control Executive Branch with the sliminess of corporate capitalism. Whether we're talking about government-backed spooks or the typical manner in which big business operates, both entities want to enjoy unfettered domination with little oversight and almost no inherent responsibilities.

The Executive Branch -- through its designee, the NSA -- claims to hold the unilateral power to abrogate the 4th and 5th Amendments of the US Constitution as well as any law or regulation that seeks to constrain it. In this new world, the privacy of citizens no longer exists, but almost everything the Executive Branch does is private by its very nature. And so, every shred of data or communication that originates from us is seizable, but almost anything the Executive Branch does is shrouded in secrecy.

It is bad enough that the Executive Branch under the tutelage of Dubya and Obama has become the enemy of freedom and democracy, but all they have done is to take a page from the playbook of Corporate America. This is the way the titans of capital have behaved for a long time.

In a recent case heard before the US Supreme Court, a particular company sought the ability to patent human DNA! From their standpoint, every minute piece of our bodies was open game for their private profits. This company was not asking to patent merely a specific strand or two of DNA, but sought the ability to patent all of it!

Fortunately for us -- at least in the short-term -- the often conservative court threw up a major roadblock. As explained at Wikipedia, the court held that

Naturally occurring DNA sequences, even when isolated from the body, cannot be patented, but artificially created DNA is patent eligible because it is not naturally occurring.

Take a look at what Monsanto is trying to do -- rather successfully, I might add -- where it concerns seeds used in agriculture. This agricultural giant wants to corner the market on seeds. If you plant a crop, then they want you to be forced to buy seeds from them. And since they are tinkering with the genetic makeup of seeds, they stand a good chance of wiping out all non-patented seeds by the end of the century.

You see, this is THE overarching goal of capitalism: monopoly. In the perfect capitalistic world, the financial titans are able to wipe out all competition, so that one behemoth per industry or sector is left standing. This behemoth becomes the master and the rest of us its slaves. We must live on THEIR terms. If we try to stand against them, they have the capability to squash us like bugs.

While both the Executive Branch and the capitalist class mouth the words democracy and freedom, they don't favor either in terms of anyone but themselves. They want unfettered freedom to do whatever they want without the constraints of even a modicum of responsibility. For the rest of us -- the unwashed masses -- the formula is just the opposite. Our freedoms are constrained, while our responsibilities are myriad.

Is the kind of world you signed up for?

TYT - The Vulture Capitalists Plan to Smear Argentina

100

Trey Smith

A report released early this year by the organization Oxfam International revealed that the combined income of the richest 100 people in the world is enough to end global poverty four times over, and that the gap between rich and poor has exploded by some 60% in the last 20 years. Rather than hinder this division, the recent global economic crisis has exacerbated it. Money does not disappear, you see, but tends to be translated up the income ladder in times of financial distress.

According to UNICEF, nearly half the world's population lives on less than $2.50 a day. One billion children live in poverty, and 22,000 of them die each day because of it. More than one billion people lack access to adequate drinking water, and 400 million of those are children. Almost a billion people go hungry every day.

The incomes of 100 people out of the seven billion on the planet could fix that, and then fix it again, and then fix it again, and then fix it again. The exact total of the wealth of these individuals is actually something of a mystery, thanks to the tax havens they use to hide their fortunes. There are trillions of dollars squirreled away in those havens - no one knows quite how much - and the subtraction of that money from the global economy has a direct and debilitating effect on the people not fortunate enough to be part of that elite 100.
~ from The End of the Beginning of the End by William Rivers Pitt ~

How much is one human life worth? That is a difficult question to pose and answer.

In the overall scheme of things, all lives -- human and otherwise -- are worth an equivalent amount. All life forms are born and then die. From the standpoint of Tao, God, Allah or the Great Flying Spaghetti Monster, no one or thing is more or less valuable than the next.

While it is true that many other species establish pecking orders, it is only the human species that determines intrinsic worth based almost solely on a fiction the we ourselves conjured up: wealth. This is why certain individuals can hoard far more than they could ever dream of utilizing and consider such behavior just and virtuous. 

But what does it say about human society where 100 people can amass so much that they impoverish billions? What does it say about our species when the miniscule few can so dominate our institutions that they hold more power than almost everyone else combined?

More importantly, how can these 100 people look themselves in the mirror when they know that their largess is responsible for the premature deaths of thousands of innocent children per day?

This Apple Falls Far From Its Tree

Trey Smith

If you've been following along at home, then you read Friday afternoon's post about the [sort of] legal shenanigans of the corporation -- Apple Computers -- that so-called progressives gush over. It was revealed in said post that Apple is hiding a great deal of their profits in Ireland because the Irish allow them to pay a very meager 2 percent tax on their profits. By hiding their wealth over there, they are depriving the US and many other nations of tax dollars they should be paying.

Well, the story gets even worse. As Richard Eskow writes,

Even though only four percent of its workforce is based in Ireland, and only a small percentage of its profits are earned in that country, Apple recorded 65 percent of its worldwide profits there. Many other "American" companies are also taking advantage of Ireland's lax tax laws, including Google, Facebook, Pfizer, Johnson and Johnson and Citigroup.

We now know that, as the Wall Street Journal reports, "Apple used technicalities in Irish and U.S. law to pay little or no corporate taxes on $74 billion over the past four years." Sen. Carl Levin described Apple's bookkeeping as the product of "alchemy" and "ghost companies," and that's true insofar as the United States is concerned.

A Senate panel concluded that Apple negotiated a deal with the Republic of Ireland whereby it would declare earnings there and pay an ultra-low rate of two percent. That arrangement sits atop a corporate tax filing in which, as the New York Times reports, Apple assigns more than $100 billion in profits to overseas subsidiaries.

As the Times also reports, Apple created an entity called Apple Operations International and incorporated it in Ireland. But despite the fact that this entity is purportedly based on the Emerald Isle, it "keeps its bank accounts and records in the United States and holds board meetings in California."

Apple Operations International gets all the benefit of being an American company, and collects the lion's share of profits for one of the most profitable countries in the world. And yet it pays a tax rate of only two percent.

I get so sick of hearing these corporate CEOs talk about "shared sacrifice," patriotism and how they are so victimized by the US tax system!! They aren't sacrificing. They are laughing all the way to the bank! How patriotic is it to shift their profits around like a shell game? And how can they say they are victims of the US tax system, when many of them pay little or no taxes?

But that's not the worst of it for me. The thing that drives me up the wall is that liberals hold up Apple as a model for what a "progressive" company can and should be. If this is the best American capitalism has to offer, then we're in far deeper shit than most people realize!

That "Socialist" Obama Is At It Again

Trey Smith

The obscene greed-and-arrogance stories emanating from Wall Street are piling up so fast, it's getting hard to keep up. This one is from last week, but I missed it – it's about the foreclosure/robo-signing settlement that was concluded earlier this year.

The upshot of this story is that in advance of that notorious settlement, the government ordered banks to hire "independent" consultants to examine their loan files to see just exactly how corrupt they were.

Now it comes out that not only were these consultants not so independent, not only did they very likely skew the numbers seriously in favor of the banks, and not only were these few consultants paid over $2 billion (over 20 percent of the entire settlement amount) while the average homeowner only received $300 in the deal – in addition to all of that, it appears that federal regulators will not turn over the evidence of impropriety they discovered during these reviews to homeowners who may want to sue the banks.

In other words, the government not only ordered the banks to hire consultants who may have gamed the foreclosure settlement in favor of the banks, but the regulators themselves are hiding the information from the public in order to shield the banks from further lawsuits.
~ from While Wronged Homeowners Got $300 Apiece in Foreclosure Settlement, Consultants Who Helped Protect Banks Got $2 Billion by Matt Taibbi ~

When I hear about news like this, it makes my head want to explode! It is not the part about crony capitalism that puts me in a dither. It is not the fact that Wall Street and Corporate America time and time again come out of self-created debacles smelling like a rose. Sure, those sorts of things certainly peeve me, but what really takes the cake is these are the actions that leads those on the rabid Right to call the President "a socialist"?

This is business as usual capitalism! There is NOTHING socialist about it at all. This isn't that "liberal" president handing out treats to the poor and it's not Obama rescuing the middle class. No, this is providing corporate crooks with a "get out of jail free" card. This is insuring that the monied interests don't have to pay for their sins.

If Obama was the socialist the Right makes him out to be, he would have lowered the boom on these miscreants. His administration would have slapped them down so hard that they wouldn't know if they were coming or going! In fact, that is putting it lightly. With this kind of gross criminality rampant in the financial industry, a truly socialist Obama may well have nationalized the banks and Wall Street.

But he didn't do anything close to this. So, how could any upstanding person call this guy a socialist? He is about as red as the Republican Party!

Coming To Its End

Trey Smith

Though Margaret Thatcher is no longer among the living, her ideology lives on. That ideology – known today as neoliberalism, “free market fundamentalism” in a phrase coined by George Soros – is strikingly unique. Apart from religious beliefs, is there any example of an ideology that has been so thoroughly disproven yet maintains an aura of respectability?

The basic premise of neoliberalism – that “free markets” lead to better growth, higher prosperity and even more equality – was always fiction. As Cambridge economist Ha-Joon Chang has repeatedly pointed out, there is no such thing as a free market. Nor is there any example of a country that has developed by following the neoliberal tenets of privatization, liberalization and budget cuts. Instead countries have traditionally used some mix of subsidies, tariffs, and debt-financed investment to prop up industries and shift comparative advantage to higher-end goods.

Despite the history, neoliberals argue that markets alone should determine things like wages, and that corporations and their owners should be able to operate however they like. Developed countries that adopted neoliberal tenets post-1980 saw wages stagnate almost as quickly as corporate profits skyrocketed.
~ from Four Signs Neoliberalism is (Almost) Dead by Sameer Dossani ~

Often, when I remark that I am a socialist, it's not uncommon for some folks to snicker. "That system didn't work out very well in Russia or China, did it?" they laugh. While there is much truth in such assertions, what many of these same people don't realize is that capitalism ain't all it's cracked up to be either!

Capitalism is built on the edifice of exploitation. That's why the leading capitalist nations have all been imperialists. As long as there were natural resources and people to exploit, capitalism was ascendent. But lately, with natural resources decreasing rapidly and not as many people to exploit as before, the capitalist system has been staggering. It has been forced to turn inward and it seems to be hollowing itself out from the inside.

That's why we see the ever increasing income gap between rich and poor. That's why the elite are turning more and more to the strategy of privatization of public resources. That's why the rich are advocating austerity for everyone else. If they can't exploit enough people in faraway lands to keep the money flowing, they are forced to cannibalize their own nations.

Capitalism had its day in the sun, but the sun is setting. I'm not suggesting it will fall down on itself tomorrow or next year, but the day is coming soon. I don't know what sort of system will replace it, but if the powers that be have their way, it probably will be even worse than what we live under today.

That's one of the benefits of being old. I, fortunately, won't be around to see it!

So Very Little

Trey Smith

One of the guests on Friday's Real Time with Bill Maher was a young woman (I forget her name) who came to talk about the low minimum wage for workers who receive tips, predominantly waitresses. I had forgotten that tipped workers are exempt from the base minimum wage on the federal level and in most states. Did you know that in 28 states tipped workers earn a wage of $4.00 or less per hour? If based solely on the federal standard, tipped workers earn a measly $2.13 per hour in cash wages! That's only marginally higher than being an indentured servant or a slave!!

As this guest told it -- this was just as true as when Della and I first met when she working as a waitress -- food servers often receive "paychecks" for a zero amount. It is really nothing more than a paper record of the taxes and other deductions for that pay period. The money to pay rent and utilities and to buy food must come from tips -- money that is not mandatory. And so, some weeks food servers will have the requisite funds to meet their needs and other weeks they won't. What a crappy way to live!

As Main Street remains in the throes of the economic downturn, average folks have less money to spend. When you must watch every penny being spent, it means that a lot of people don't tip at all or the tips will be less than sufficient. Here we are in 2013 and our laws still expect food service workers to survive on tip money. It is absolutely insane.

It is not this way in Washington, Oregon or California (the left coast). These states have a minimum wage that is far higher than the federal version. Not only is the minimum wage higher, but it covers tipped workers as well. Here's the interesting upshot: Despite what the restaurant industry will tell you, these mandated higher base wages for tipped workers have not meant that eateries are going out of business left and right! All three states have a thriving food service industry environment. The only difference is that tipped workers aren't treated like absolute dog meat!

It is long past time for the federal minimum wage to incorporate tipped workers into its mandate. To treat tipped workers like second-class citizens is a stain on our national ethos.

For Every Disaster, There's a Golden Lining

Trey Smith

An incisive analysis by sociologists Kevin Fox Gotham and Miriam Greenberg of what happened after the 9/11 attacks in New York and in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina offers some concrete forebodings. Everyone knows that, as soon as Katrina made landfall, the racial divisions of New Orleans became the scandal of the month when it came to which communities were drowned and which got helped, who got arrested (and shot), and who left town forever. To be poor in New Orleans during and after Katrina was a curse. To be poor and black amounted to excommunication.

Gotham and Greenberg prove that, post-9/11 and post-Katrina, reconstruction and rehabilitation was also skewed heavily in favor of the business community and the wealthier. In both cities, big business controlled the redevelopment process—and so where the money landed and where it didn't.

Tax breaks and private sector subsidies became channels for federal aid. 'Public benefit' standards, which once accompanied federal grants and tax exemptions to insure that projects served some public purpose, especially to 'benefit persons of low and moderate income,' were eliminated, leaving poorer people out in the cold, while exacerbating existing inequalities. Governments scurried around inventing ways to auction off reconstruction projects to private interests by issuing tax exempt 'Private Activity Bonds.' These were soon gloriously renamed 'Liberty Bonds,' though the unasked question was: Whose liberty?
~ from A History of Disaster Capitalism by Steve Fraser ~

The way our economic system works is that, regardless of the situation, there always will be winners and losers. This is as true when things are going great as when things are going badly. While most of us common folk dread war and natural disasters, there is a small segment of the population that is chomping at the bit for the next war or natural disaster to hit. In fact, chomping at the bit is an understatement -- it suggests passive waiting. As is often the case, this small segment of the population actively tries to precipitate wars and natural disasters.

Why do you think America can't break its war addiction? While war means death, injury, dislocation and destruction to the majority, the small minority profits handsomely. Perpetual war, in conjunction with the national security state, keeps the spigot of taxpayer dollars flowing to the few and, with so much easy money to be made, this minority is loath to have the spigot turned off.

When your economic system is built on the premise of profits before people, "natural" disasters become the minority's best friend. Because these disasters are like a fatted calf, you will go out of your way to do all that you can to set the stage for them to occur. And, when they inevitably DO occur, you will swoop in to steal as much public money as your well-placed government servants will allow.

Life As a Turnip

Trey Smith

You have probably heard this old adage before: You can't squeeze blood from a turnip. It means that you can't get something from a person that the individual doesn't have in the first place. If I didn't understand this adage before, I am about to find out. I soon will become that proverbial turnip!

As I have shared here, Della is a current resident of a hospital in Portland. They are running a plethora of tests and studies. She is being pumped full of a wide assortment of pharmaceuticals and she has around the clock care from a battery of nurses, doctors and technicians. All of these various services do not come cheap and, through AmeriCorps, Della has minimal medical coverage. While most health insurance policies feature a maximum cap of $1 or $2 million, Della's meager policy has a $50,000 cap.

In year's past, I might be freaking out about the huge debt we are piling up. Depending on how long Della is ensconced at this big hospital, it is not unreasonable to expect the final bill may run in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. (In comparison, Medicaid covered my gallbladder surgery 3 years ago and it cost about $30,000 for the surgery and one day stay in the hospital.)

When Della is released, she most likely will need to withdraw from her term with AmeriCorps and be unable to work for the short OR long term. Since she has served as the family breadwinner, it means that we will go from the working poor to the very poor in no time at all. Our sole source of income will be my SSI of $756/month. We will also qualify for the max of Food Stamps, around $350/month.

Have you ever tried living on $756/month for two people? I haven't. I'm sure it is not going to be pretty.

We still retain a bit in savings and Della will receive one more AmeriCorps check, but once we are thrown out of our soon-to-be-foreclosed on house, we may be staring destitution in the face. And so, when they hand us the anticipated monstrous medical bill, I will tell them, "You can't squeeze blood from a turnip."

God Must Be a Capitalist

Trey Smith

The fight for home is still being fought in New Orleans, more than seven years after Katrina. And it’s in full-swing in the New York metropolitan area, months after Sandy.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo recently announced he wanted to use $400 million in federal funding to buy “beachfront homes” to “reshape the New York coastline.” The stated goal is to make the region “better prepared for storms like Hurricane Sandy.” With that money, the government would pay homeowners pre-storm values, raze their houses, and leave the land as “open space.” More than ten thousand homes would qualify, with notable exceptions. According to the New York Times, “The program is not targeted at the most expensive waterfront homes; it would cap the payments for houses at around the median home value in a given neighborhood.”

So, who’s going to have their homes razed? Middle and low-income owners.
~ from The Fight For Home Goes On by Daniel Wolff ~

If I wasn't convinced of it before, I am now. God must be a capitalist or least a good buddy of the capitalist elite.

Over the last few years, every time God exerts his wrath through climatic events in the US, it provides the capitalist elite with a ready-made opportunity to push poor people to the margins. That's what happened to the poor in New Orleans. The rich people had their homes rebuilt and the poor people didn't. In fact, the poor -- predominantly black -- no longer live in New Orleans. With their homes condemned, they were farmed out across the nation.

Since this blueprint worked so well in Louisiana, why not try it in New York? The people in those wealthy coastal communities didn't like those poor people so close by anyway and now, with this plan in place, they won't be!

Somebody Should Write A Song About That

Trey Smith

In the United States everything is polluted.

Democracy is polluted with special interests and corrupt politicians.

Accountability is polluted with executive branch exemptions from law and the Constitution and with special legal privileges for corporations, such as the Supreme Court given right to corporations to purchase American elections.

The Constitution is polluted with corrupt legal interpretations from the Bush and Obama regimes that have turned constitutional prohibitions into executive branch rights, transforming law from a shield of the people into a weapon in the hands of government.

Waters are polluted with toxic waste spills, oil spills, chemical fertilizer run-off with resulting red tides and dead zones, acid discharges from mining with resulting destructive algae such as prymnesium parvum, from toxic chemicals used in fracking and with methane that fracking releases into wells and aquifers, resulting in warnings to homeowners near to fracking operations to open their windows when showering.

The soil’s fertility is damaged, and crops require large quantities of chemical fertilizers. The soil is polluted with an endless array of toxic substances and now with glyphosate, the main element in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide with which GMO crops are sprayed. Glyphosate now shows up in wells, streams and in rain.

Air is polluted with a variety of substances, and there are many large cities in which there are days when the young, the elderly, and those suffering with asthma are warned to remain indoors.

All of these costs are costs imposed on society and ordinary people by corporations that banked profits by not having to take the costs into account. This is the way in which unregulated capitalism works.
~ from Polluted America by Paul Craig Roberts ~

Oops, I forget. Tom Lehrer already did!

I addressed this same topic in a post on March 3. The only point with which I quibble with Roberts is on the qualification. It doesn't really matter if capitalism is unregulated or regulated -- externalization of costs still occurs. It is just that in unregulated capitalism, those costs are far higher.

In the more regulated form, big business spends much of its time figuring out how to skirt the rules as well as lobbying to weaken those rules. Some industries spend so much time and money trying to get around the rules that they actually might have saved some money by following them! But the nature of capitalism is to maximize short-term profit at all costs and if that means sacrificing the health and well-being of the unwashed masses, so be it.

Let Others Pick Up the Crud!

Trey Smith

Parallel to the privatization scam is a con that has long been hidden yet is far more insidious. Under this version of Russian roulette, corporations have easily gotten away with the consequences of their deeds. Land was cheap, air and water unlimited, minerals abundant, workers expendable, a sucker was born everyday and you always had friends in government to bail you out when the house of cards collapsed. Who cared about industrial waste, polluted groundwater, ill workers or failed banks, everything was replaceable. Someone else will foot the bill.
~ from Socialize Costs, Privatize Profits by David Rosen ~

What Rosen describes is one of the hallmark principles of capitalism: Externalize the costs. You see, it's easy to amass great fortunes when you are adept at devising strategies that shift the costs of production onto the backs of taxpayers.

Here in the Northwest -- particularly west of the Cascade Range -- there are A LOT of mudslides. Part of the reason we are plagued with mudslides is that it rains a good deal of the year. Copious amounts of rain can unsettle the soil and bring down mountains of mud, even in the most stable of areas.

But there is another reason for the mudslides, one that is caused by humankind: clearcuts. When timber barons swoop in and remove the trees and their root systems from hillsides and mountains, there is little left to hold the mud back. The rain comes, the soil begins to move and, before you know it, a wall of mud and loose debris lets loose.

When a mudslide covers a road or train track, who do you think pays to clean up the mess? If you answered the timber companies, you would be wrong. Taxpayers foot the bill. The particular timber company might have to pay a piddly fine, but the state cleans up the mess and makes restitution, when appropriate.

How is it that the people who deforest hillsides get away with murder time and time again? It's darn easy when the state allowed them to clearcut the hillside in the first place! It means the state government is just as culpable. Since timber companies fund many a political campaign, politicians certainly don't want to tick them off. So, the timber companies realize great profits by clearcutting -- and not having to clean up any messes those clearcuts cause -- and the taxpayers -- who realize none of this enormous profit -- are left to expend public funds to deal with the messy aftermath.

And that is but one example among thousands.

Bernie, You Know the Answer

Trey Smith

When the greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior on Wall Street drove this country into the deepest recession since the 1930s, the largest financial institutions in the United States took every advantage of being American. They just loved their country - and the willingness of the American people to provide them with the largest bailout in world history. In 2008, Congress approved a $700 billion gift to Wall Street. Another $16 trillion in virtually zero interest loans and other financial assistance came from the Federal Reserve. America. What a great country.

But just two years later, as soon as these giant financial institutions started making record-breaking profits again, they suddenly lost their love for their native country. At a time when the nation was suffering from a huge deficit, largely created by the recession that Wall Street caused, the major financial institutions did everything they could to avoid paying American taxes by establishing shell corporations in the Cayman Islands and other tax havens.
~ from A Choice For Corporate America: Are You With America Or The Cayman Islands by Sen. Bernie Sanders ~

The populist answer to the question is readily discernible: Corporate America is with the Cayman Islands. It's a no-brainer. And the answer is wrong!

Truth be known, corporations and their CEOs have no allegiance to any specific country. Their sole allegiance is to profit. If they can realize greater profits today in the Cayman Islands, that's where they will go. If they realized tomorrow that it was more lucrative to shelter their wealth in Senegal or the South Pole, they would wave goodbye to the Caymans in a heartbeat. Heck, if one day they crafted things so that they could realize even greater profits by sheltering their wealth right here in the US, they would bring their money "home" in a second.

It is not about borders. It is not about geography. It's about politics. Capitalists will go wherever and deal with whomever allows them to shelter as much of their largess as possible.

End of story.

Growing Bigger Than Our Britches

Trey Smith

What is wrong with America?

Big question.

Simple answer.

We Americans have completely lost any sense of why a country, a society, and a government exist.

Politicians, lobbyists and corporate media talking heads, and far too many ordinary people, have accepted and are promoting as gospel the circular notion that it’s important to encourage business to grow so that people will be hired and the economy can grow. This specious argument is used to justify the weakening labor unions, the raising of taxes on workers while they are cut for companies and the rich, the cutting of earned benefit programs like Social Security and Medicare, the gutting worker safety and environmental safety regulations, and the elimination of regulation of activities like banking, corporate mergers and takeovers, pharmaceutical companies etc. In fact every government action that results in making life harder or more dangerous for ordinary working people or for the poor is defended on the basis that it is necessary so that business can make more profit and help the economy to grow.

Growing the economy, however, is not, or certainly should not, be the reason we have government, the reason we are a country, or the reason we are a society.

The Constitution had it right when the country was founded. It’s about “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Period.

And growth today poses a direct threat to all three of those stated goals.

Growth in all its aspects -- economic growth, growth in profits, growth in sales, growth of population, growth in income - is a threat to life. It has become clear that the imperative of ever more growth, the ethos and driving force of modern corporate capitalism, is leading to the destruction of the very biosphere that sustains life on this planet. It is a threat to liberty, too, because one country’s growth -- America’s -- requires the constant assault on those weaker countries that threaten us.

~ from Growth Is the Enemy of Humankind by Dave Lindorff ~

Since an early age, we Americans have been told that bigger or more is better. If you have x amount, you can't be a somebody unless you have xx or more. Driving a small car doesn't project the right image. If you want others to take you seriously, you need to be seen driving around town in your tank. Small houses are for the underclass. If you seek to be an "important" person, you must live in a palatial estate.

On one level or another, most of us have bought into this warped idea. Who can blame us? It's been drummed into our heads for so long. We never stop to think that bigger and more leads to most of the stress and tension in our lives. We never stop to think that this persistent striving for more is what is killing us, both physically and emotionally.

While none of us can single-handedly change the whole of society, we do have the power to change ourselves. We simply can decide that bigger and more is not what our lives are about. In time, if enough people come to this realization, it can change the trajectory of society itself.

But that shouldn't be our goal. We should simplify because it is the right thing to do for ourselves and Mother Earth. Maybe we don't have the power to make this a better world writ large, but we DO have the power to make the world within us better. We do have a mechanism to lessen our own stress and tension.

The choice is ours.