Sticking It to Us Again and Again

Trey Smith

If a government shutdown genuinely shut the entire government down, you might be able to trace a few silver linings from an otherwise bad situation. Military conflicts might end (or at least be temporarily suspended), the destructive drug war might grind to a halt, mass surveillance might be put on hold and congressional legislators might be financially punished for their malicious behavior. But a government shutdown is mostly just a shutdown of good things — stuff like Head Start and food assistance to low-income moms and kids. Indeed, because of the way shutdowns are structured, the only silver lining from a budget stalemate is that you might get to hear a few curse words and see some nudity on television.

Of course, there is an insidious method to the madness of government shutdowns. In general, the dividing line between what gets shut down and what doesn’t is a similar dividing line between what America’s political culture typically venerates as The State and what that culture lambasts as The Government. Consider what will not be shut down:

• The State’s war machine is largely exempted from the shutdown. Sure, the Armed Forces’ football season is in jeopardy. But our wars will press on unabated and many military paychecks — including to private contractors — will continue to be issued, even as other federal workers are furloughed.
• Many key parts of The State’s surveillance apparatus are exempted from the shutdown. That’s not to say the shutdown affects nothing at the NSA. The agency cannot, for instance, respond to the public’s Freedom of Information Act requests (which is convenient for the NSA). And some of its employees are, in fact, furloughed. But a lot of the spying will still go on.
• Despite its failures and rampant waste, much of the Drug War is exempted from the shutdown. So are many of The State’s other police-related activities.
• The government shutdown does not affect the Internal Revenue Service’s ability to collect taxes. It only means you can’t get your tax questions answered.
• The lawmakers who orchestrated the government shutdown are exempted from the government shutdown. Yes, they will still be getting handsomely remunerated, without having to worry that they might lose their paychecks like other federal employees.

So, in sum, major portions of The State — aka the Military-Industrial Complex, the Police State, the revenue-generating apparatus of the IRS and professional politicians in Washington — are somewhat exempted from the effects of the shutdown. Meanwhile, The Government — aka the Safety Net, the Regulators and the Inspectors — gets hit hard.

At a practical level, this institutionalized double standard creates incentives for government shutdowns — at least on the political right. That’s because while conservatives loathe The Government, they love The State.
~ from GOP's Massive Fraud: The Shutdown Isn't Really a Shutdown! by David Sirota ~

There's really no need for much comment here. What Sirota basically is pointing out is that the parts of The State that might impact the corporate benefactors keeps humming along DESPITE the so-called shutdown. The parts that don't impact those same corporate behemoths in a substantial way are the ones that get shuttered or massively reduced.

Put another way, those who already slurp up egregious amounts of public dollars will still be paid, while those of us who rely on government services to survive will be punished even more than usual!

X Marks the Spot

Trey Smith

Apparently if you are the world’s richest oil company used to making $104 million in profit every day, no lawsuit is too frivolous, expensive or downright hilarious when you are the plaintiff. That’s the message from ExxonMobil this week as it filed a lawsuit against the FX television network. In court papers, the oil behemoth effectively argues that it owns the exclusive right to put two X’s next to each other.

Underscoring the ridiculousness of a company claiming to own a letter of the alphabet, Deadline notes, “This double-cross brawl may come as a surprise to Dos Equis, which also has a double-X logo, and we assume the legal wrangling will be watched with considerable interest by the XX chromosome, and the roman numeral for 20.” Same thing for any clothing companies that make T-shirts marked double extra large.

In an interview with Ad Age, an FX spokesperson called the suit “entirely meritless” and said, “We are confident that viewers won’t tune into FXX looking for gas or motor oil and drivers won’t pull up to an Exxon pump station expecting to get ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.’”
~ from Big Oil Loses It: ExxonMobile Claims It Owns the Letter "X"! by David Sirota ~

On the surface, this seems like such a silly lawsuit. I mean, really? A corporation claiming ownership of a letter?

In actuality, however, it is neither shocking nor surprising. There are corporations out there attempting to patent seeds, plant DNA and human genes. Corporations seem to think that, if they pull something from the commons and make use of it, they should be able to claim it as belonging to them and them alone.

Situations like this put the lie to the image corporations painstakingly try to craft -- that they are all about community. They don't give a shit about community; their sole interest is in profits. If corporations had parents, they would run over them in a nanosecond if it meant even the slightest increase in market share or the bottom line.

It's not that corporations are immoral beasts; they are amoral. The way they see it, rules, regulations, societal values and mores are for suckers.

Global Warming? Nah!

Trey Smith

Two months before my community and so many others were overwhelmed this week by epic rains, our state’s chief oil and gas regulator, Matt Lepore, appeared onstage in nearby Loveland with representatives of the fossil fuel industry. During that event, Lepore — an industry-lawyer-turned-public-official — proceeded to berate citizens concerned about the ecological impact of fracking and unbridled drilling. More specifically, he insisted that those asking fossil fuel development to be governed by the precautionary principle are mostly affluent and therefore unconcerned with the economic impact of their environmentalism.

Ignoring public polling data that documented the broad support for tougher environmental regulation, Lepore was making the classic populist argument against the precautionary principle. In this instance, an industry puppet: 1) pretended environmental stewardship is merely a luxury for those fortunate enough to be able to afford it; and 2) insinuated that a lack of such stewardship primarily harms the sensibilities of rich folk, but not much else.

Today, parts of the same city where Lepore delivered his diatribe remain inundated. Same thing for “thousands of oil and gas wells and associated condensate tanks and ponds,” according to the Boulder Daily Camera.

Already, there is at least one confirmed oil pipeline leak. At the same time, the Denver Post reports that “oil drums, tanks and other industrial debris mixed into the swollen (South Platte) river.” Some of this has been caught on camera, as harrowing photos of partially submerged oil and gas sites now hit the Internet. It all suggests that there’s a very real possibility of a slow-motion environmental disaster, one whose potential damage to water supplies, spread of carcinogenic chemicals and contamination of agricultural land should concern both rich and poor.

In retrospect, then, the flood powerfully illustrates the problem with officials like Lepore (who later apologized) pretending that environmental stewardship and the precautionary principle are just aristocratic priorities. They are, in fact, quite the opposite: They are priorities for everyone and if those priorities have any class implications at all, those implications disproportionately involve the middle and lower classes.
~ from Industry Puppets Spew Obscene Lies While People Drown by David Sirota ~

Another odd thing about the situation in Colorado is the overall lack of analysis in the mainstream media of possible causes. I heard many a host and correspondent say words like epic and historic, but I don't think I heard any of them say the most obvious ones: global warming/climate change. When an area that has been dry for hundreds of years experiences torrential rains, one would think that it would be okay to explore the possibility that one of the reasons for this event had to do with climate change.

Too often, unfortunately, the mainstream media treats atypical storms just like they treat mass killings perpetrated by white men -- they utilize the "lone wolf" rationale. In terms of storms, we are told it is a freak occurrence completely unrelated to any number of other so-called freak storms. Though all these huge dots seem to be staring the establishment in the face, they are loathe to connect the dots! It's not that they don't see the obvious connections; it's more that they don't want us to recognize them.

Why? Because, if the majority of people start connecting the dots, we will demand significant changes to business as usual and that might mean a dip in the corporate world's short-term profits. We can't have that now!

Yeah, There Is a Word For It

Trey Smith

With the latest major revelation about National Security Agency surveillance, there’s a huge taboo question that needs to be put out on the table: Has President Obama been deliberately lying about the NSA, or have his statements just been repeatedly “wrong”?

After Barton Gellman’s blockbuster story [Aug. 16] about the NSA breaking “privacy rules or overstepp(ing) its legal authority thousands of times each year,” the Washington Post published an attendant commentary with a headline declaring the president was merely “wrong” in last week suggesting that the NSA wasn’t “actually abusing” its legal authority. The implication is that when Obama made that comment — and then further insisted the surveillance programs “are not abused” — he may have been inaccurate, but he didn’t necessarily deliberately lie because he may not have known he was not telling the truth.

This is not to single out the Post commentary because, of course, such a rhetorical dance is fairly standard for the official political discourse these days. Since at least the Iraq War if not before, the media and political class typically goes out of its way to avoid declaring a lie a lie. Simply put, from “we know where (the WMDs) are” to Obama’s “actually abusing” declaration, seemingly deliberately inaccurate statements are rarely ever framed as outright lies. Even when such statements come from those with vested interests in hiding the truth, words and phrases like “misstated,” “wrong,” “least untruthful” and “misspoke” are trotted out.

These words and phrases now comprise a whole Washington vocabulary crafted specifically to avoid the L word. That’s because once the L word comes out, it means the official in question is deliberately misleading the public — and that is rightly considered an abhorrent act in a democracy.

But just as it is utterly absurd to claim Director of National Intelligence James Clapper didn’t lie before Congress (and some reporters thankfully admitted that truth in the open), it has now become almost silly to insinuate or assume that the president hasn’t also been lying. Why? Because if that’s true — if indeed he hasn’t been deliberately lying — then it means he has been dangerously, irresponsibly and negligently ignorant of not only the government he runs, but also of the news breaking around him.
~ from What If the President Lied to Us? by David Sirota ~

One way to tell how times have changed is to remember that the mainstream press wasn't shy at all in calling out President Richard Nixon. When he lied -- and he told lots of 'em -- the media was darn quick to point it out.

Today, however, politicians and elected leaders frequently are caught not telling the truth and yet -- except in the most obvious and blatant cases -- the mainstream media goes through grammatical gymnastics to avoid using the L word!

In the case of Obama in relation to the NSA scandal, there really are only three plausible explanations for his many "misstatements": a) He is lying, b) He is incompetent or c) It's a sorry combination of a and b.

I suppose one could argue that the officials from the NSA have been misleading him, but that is a difficult argument to make when he himself declares he is on top of the situation. If he indeed is "on top of it" and yet he keeps telling the American people information that is not true, we then return to the fact that either he is willfully being dishonest or he's an incompetent doofus.

Since few people would argue the latter, the former is the default position.

This is not to suggest that President Obama's penchant for being untruthful or, to be more charitable, spreading disinformation is an anomaly among US presidents or world leaders, for that matter. It seems to come with these types of positions. The elite always try to shape pronouncements so as not to overburden or unduly excite the unwashed masses. Our overlords know better than ignorant peons like us.

Where I particularly fault Obama is that even when he is caught in a lie, not only will he not fess up, but he doubles and triples down on it! While James Clapper provided a mealy-mouthed explanation for why he lied to Congress, President Obama won't even go that far. He behaves as if everything word that comes out of his mouth is the god's honest truth and to question him is a treasonous act.

It's almost as if Obama thinks he is our sovereign king!

If I Was Roger Clemons, I'd Be Mad As Hell

Trey Smith

There is no longer any doubt that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper lied to Congress. Likewise, there is no doubt that his lie runs afoul of federal law. And, of course, there is no doubt that in terms of its implications for oversight, constitutional precepts and privacy for millions of Americans, his lies were far more serious than those which have gotten other people prosecuted for perjury. The question now is whether his brazen dishonesty will become a political issue – or whether it will simply disappear into the ether.

As evidenced by President Obama this week attempting to promote Clapper to head an “independent” NSA reform panel, the White House clearly believes it will be the latter. But a set of new polls out today suggests such a calculation may be wrong.
~ from Huge Majority Wants Clapper Prosecuted for Perjury by David Sirota ~

Roger Clemons was sure to be a first ballot major league baseball Hall of Famer...until he became suspected of using of using PEDs (performing enhancing drugs) to gain an edge on his competition. Now he -- like greats Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro and Sammy Sosa -- may never be enshrined in the hall.

Clemons was suspected of lying before Congress and this suspicion led to perjury charges being brought against him. He was ultimately acquitted of the charges, though in the eyes of many (me included), his records and legacy remain tarnished.

Compare these two situations.  Clemons was suspected of lying to Congress about his personal actions, ones that didn't directly affect anyone else in a direct way.  Clapper, on the other hand, has been caught lying to Congress -- he has all but admitted to it.  His lie impacts millions of Americans.

Yet it was Clemons, not Clapper, who was taken to court and had his reputation sullied.  If suspected lying about taking PEDs is a chargeable offense, shouldn't admitted lying to Congress about the invasion of the privacy of millions of innocent Americans be so too?

It Began Quite Some Time Ago

Trey Smith

Back in the early 1990s, programmer Phil Zimmerman released his “Pretty Good Protection” (PGP) encryption code first in book form and then on the Internet. According to U.S. News and World Report, that move was met with Justice Department-led grand jury investigation “for possible violation of federal arms-export laws” Why? Because encryption was viewed by the government as a weapon and once it was on the Internet, the magazine noted it meant Zimmerman’s “‘cryptography for the masses’ has slipped out of America.”

At the time, a U.S. intelligence official justified the harassment of Zimmerman by bluntly stated that the government was concerned not about Americans’ privacy, but about the fact that PGP would allow more people to guarantee that privacy.

“The ability of just about everybody to encrypt their messages is rapidly outrunning our ability to decode them,” the official told the magazine, lamenting that “it’s a lot harder to eavesdrop on a worldwide web than it is to tap a cable.”

For his part, Zimmerman explained his decision to publish PGP as a response to the threat of congressional efforts to effectively outlaw secure encryption – efforts led by none other than now-Vice President Joe Biden.

That’s right, back in 1991, Biden inserted language into an omnibus crime bill that “providers of electronic communications services and manufacturers of electronic communications service equipment shall ensure that communications systems permit the government to obtain the plain text contents of voice, data, and other communications.” Zimmerman says that if the language “had become real law, it would have forced manufacturers of secure communications equipment to insert special trap doors in their products, so that the government can read anyone’s encrypted messages.”

Though the three-year grand jury investigation ended up with no charges against Zimmerman, and though Biden’s language was removed from the final bill, it was the beginning of an ongoing campaign by government officials to try to ban, restrict or otherwise undermine truly secure, privacy-protecting encryption.

That campaign has now culminated in the Obama administration’s heavy-handed push for Internet-wide skeleton keys. It is a classic — if abhorrent — political workaround. Unable to convince rank-and-file members of Congress to openly vote against privacy and pass legislation outlawing secure encryption, anti-privacy/pro-surveillance ideologues have resorted to circumventing the democratic process by convincing the executive branch to try to simply bully tech companies into submission.

Though unstated, the government’s presumption in its anti-encryption crusade is that Americans should have no right to access technology that cannot be infiltrated by law enforcement agencies.
~ from Is Online Privacy a Right? by David Sirota ~

I've shared a longer snippet than usual just to provide you with a better picture of what is going on here. Not only does the federal government want the capability to listen in to and read all of our communications, but they want to make it illegal for any of us to try to protect our own privacy!

As Sirota also reports, the Obama administration is working to compel all communications companies to turn over to them each company's encryption keys. What this would mean, for example, is that if you use Google or Microsoft tools to encrypt your online communications, the NSA easily could decode it. So, these big corporations will continue to run ads bragging about their privacy features, while, in actuality, such privacy features already are being subverted by government spooks.

It would be like me inviting you into my home to allow you to use the restroom. I would tell you that you can be assured of complete privacy because I have covered up the windows and made the walls five feet thick. But unbeknownst to you, while you are in there doing your business, there is a concealed camera being utilized by "intelligence analysts" who can watch your every move and listen to any sounds you might make.

If you somehow figured out there was a hidden camera and listening device, wouldn't you be outraged? Would you accept my explanation that a) I couldn't tell you about the hidden camera and microphone because the government has sworn me to secrecy and b) the reason these things are there is for your safety! We wouldn't want you accidentally to drown if you fell face first into the toilet.

Lies in the First and Second Degree

Trey Smith

So Clapper first says it was a calculated move, and now he’s saying it was just an innocuous misunderstanding and an inadvertent error. With that, the public — and the Obama administration prosecutors who aggressively pursue perjurers — are all supposed to now breathe a sigh of relief and chalk it all up to a forgivable screw-up. It’s all just an innocent mistake, right?

Wrong, because in this crime, as Clapper’s changing story suggests, there remains a smoking gun.

Notice this statement from Sen. Wyden about Snowden’s disclosures — a statement, mind you, that the [Washington] Post didn’t reference in its story yesterday (emphasis added):

“One of the most important responsibilities a Senator has is oversight of the intelligence community. This job cannot be done responsibly if Senators aren’t getting straight answers to direct questions. When NSA Director Alexander failed to clarify previous public statements about domestic surveillance, it was necessary to put the question to the Director of National Intelligence. So that he would be prepared to answer, I sent the question to Director Clapper’s office a day in advance. After the hearing was over my staff and I gave his office a chance to amend his answer.

So Clapper had a full day’s notice of the specific — and impossible to misunderstand — question Wyden asked, and is nonetheless now claiming that in the heat of the moment he spontaneously misunderstood the question. In other words, he’s not coming clean, as the Post story seems to imply. On the contrary, he’s lying about his deliberate lie, which should only make a perjury prosecution that much easier, for it shows intent.

The importance of such a perjury prosecution, of course, should not be lost on our constitutional law professor-turned-president.
~ from James Clapper Is Still Lying to America by David Sirota ~

As is my wont to do, let's change the setting a bit as well as the characters involved. Let's do so in a way that the average parent could identify with.

For this example, you are the mother of an 11 year old son. Your boy is a baseball fanatic -- he's always cavalierly tossing a baseball around, even in the house sometimes. You have a prized glass sculpture of some sort on the hutch in your dining room. Not only is it expensive, but it holds a certain sentimental value for you.

You have warned your son on numerous occasions to be very careful around your prized glass sculpture. You have forbade him from throwing any balls in the dining room, specifically, and the house, in general.

After returning home from an errand, you discover that the prized glass sculpture has been shattered into little pieces. As you go to clean it up, you notice a baseball sitting under the dining room table. As you pick up the ball, you find that there are some very small glass shards embedded in the leather.

Upon confronting your son, you ask him a simple and straightforward question: Did you break the glass sculpture? He looks you square in the eye and replies, "No ma'am, I did not." You mention that you found one of his baseballs under the dining room table and it appeared some shards of glass were embedded in it. He replies that he left it there the night before and so the glass may have struck the ball upon shattering.

"How do you think the sculpture was shattered?" you ask him. Initially, he only shrugs his shoulders, but then offers that before going outside that morning, he saw the family cat sleeping on the table. "Maybe something spooked him," he says "and he jarred the hutch which caused the sculpture to fall and break."

Since you believe that your son has always been straight and honest with you, you accept his possible explanation as plausible.

Later that day, your husband informs you that he heard your son telling his friends how "he busted that ugly thing my mom keeps in the dining room." Your husband tells you that he had gone into the garage to get something and he heard your son and his friends talking outside. Your son was regaling his friends with his dastardly deed and all of them found his tale to be quite hilarious.

When you later confront your son with this damning information, would you accept the explanation that his response was the "least untruthful" answer he could give? For that matter, would you accept his explanation that he misunderstood your original question?

My guess is that the vast majority of parents would not accept either explanation. The boy would be punished in some manner not only for the original offense, but for lying about it afterwards. He had been provided with the opportunity to give a truthful answer and he instead chose to be dishonest.

That's what we're talking about here. James Clapper willfully lied to Congress and, as David Sirota points out, now he is lying about the lie itself. In legal terms, this is called perjury and there can be stiff penalties for perjuring oneself in official testimony. 

The question is: Will Clapper face any punishment at all?

Fire in the Sky

Trey Smith

If I told you that government officials possessed ironclad proof that an imminent threat to this nation had the capacity to create a 9/11′s worth of injuries and deaths every year at an annual economic cost of a quarter trillion dollars, ask yourself: Would you say we should do something about it?

I’m guessing you would. Out of a basic sense of patriotism, you would probably at minimum support some new security regulations and investments in enforcing those regulations, even if that meant paying slightly higher taxes. After all, you profess to love America, and that’s the least we should do in the face of such a threat to our country, right?

Now ask yourself: Would your response to the original query change if you discovered that the threat at hand was not from a terrorist, but from unsafe workplaces — and that because of that unaddressed problem, these casualties and costs have already become a fact of life in America? Come on, admit it — your response probably would change. Yes, many who would reflexively support more regulations and enforcement in the face of a foreign terrorist threat would suddenly scoff at more regulations and enforcement in the face of unsafe workplaces. Why the double standard?
~ from America’s Greatest Threat: Unsafe Work Conditions by David Sirota ~

I have held onto this Sirota column for a month because I knew it wouldn't be that long before we had another deadly accident in the workplace. Right on cue, there have been two explosions with fatalities and injuries -- both in Louisiana -- within the past two days. The first one happened on Thursday in Geismar at a chemical plant. One person died and 73 were injured. The very next day a nitrogen plant only 10 miles from the chemical plant exploded resulting in one death and 7 injured.

While Americans tend to be more worried and frightened by potential terrorist attacks, far more people die each year at work -- often because of greed and lax safety standards. Sirota is right to ask "Why the double standard?"

It is an easy question to answer. Our political leaders drive the unrealistic fear of imminent terrorism, while covering up for the shortcomings of workplace safety. Terrorism is a moneymaker for the elite. Worker safety is a cost. Faced with the choice of making oodles of money versus spending it, corporations and their political lackeys almost always choose the former.

Without Warning

Trey Smith

As the Federal Times recently reported, sequestration includes an 8.2 percent cut to the National Weather Service. According to the organization representing weather service employees, that means there is “no way for the agency to maintain around-the-clock operations at its 122 forecasting offices” and also means “people are going to be overworked, they’re going to be tired, they’re going to miss warnings.”

Summarizing the problem, the American Institute of Physics put it bluntly: “The government runs the risk of significantly increasing forecast error, and the government’s ability to warn Americans across the country about high impact weather events, such as hurricanes and tornadoes, will be compromised.”

The good news is that the National Weather Service station in Norman, Okla., had a warning in effect for 16 minutes before the most recent Oklahoma City tornado hit. That’s better than the 13 minute average so, thankfully, more people probably had more time than usual to evacuate or find safe shelter.

But what about the next time around? Will we be as ready as we can and should be? The answer is maybe not.

Though the past few years saw a record number of billion-dollar weather cataclysms, the weather service remains a perennial target for budget cuts and already has nearly a 10 percent employment vacancy rate — and those realities may be damaging its long-term ability to warn the public about severe weather events.
~ from Anyone Regret Slashing National Weather Service Budget Now? by David Sirota ~

By now, we all know the mantra of conservatives: Shrink government. Government, they say, is the problem. So, we need to cut it to the bone.

But this government they desperately want to eviscerate is responsible for a host of things that helps to keep average Americans safe and healthy. If we do away with workplace safety inspectors, then workplaces become unsafe. If we do away with food inspectors and/or food safety regulations, then our food supply becomes unsafe. If we do away with safeguards to protect the air, water and land, they will become unsafe too. And, as David Sirota points out, if we cut back on funds available to the National Weather Service, we may not be adequately warned the next time a climate catastrophe is upon us.

In the aftermath of the recent tornado in Moore, Oklahoma, the President pledged whatever federal support the State of Oklahoma needed. Interestingly enough, the state's Republican Governor -- a member of one of the political parties that wants to shrink government -- Mary Fallin graciously accepted. The irony here is palpable! When tragedy strikes, those who want to shrink government almost never turn away federal government assistance. In fact, they sometimes complain of not receiving all they desire.

It's almost like they are saying, "Shrink government, but not when you're dealing me!"

Cause and Effect

Trey Smith

Throughout history, the one proven check on the unbridled militarism has not been Congress, the Constitution, foreign casualties or unsustainable Pentagon budgets; it has been the perception of life-and-death risk to the wider citizenry. When conscription ended in 1973, that perceived risk for most Americans was reduced and, not coincidentally, we’ve seen our government feel freer to engage in longer and more risky military adventures than ever, and without fear of widespread opposition.

Now with drone warfare, the same government perceives that violence comes with even less immediate life-and-death risk for our country, and consequently our technologized violence is expanding. Indeed, according to the New York Times, the U.S. government feels so uninhibited that it has moved beyond targeted killing to “drone attacks based on patterns of activity” — attacks aimed at locations without actually “know(ing) the identity of the targets.” Among the general population, it’s much the same dynamic: With drones seeming to make war less risky, there hasn’t just been little opposition to the drone war; polls actually show strong support for continuing the robot onslaught, even as we learn about its deplorable civilian casualties.

But in those casualties exist the pernicious lie of drone technology, the lie that suggests drone warfare is ultimately a consequence-free endeavor for the drone-wielding nation.
~ from How Drones Deceive Us by David Sirota ~

As I have written before, drone warfare is an out of sight/out of mind endeavor. Because Americans don't see or experience it, drones provide a false sense of sanitized war. But as David Sirota points out, cause and effect don't go bye bye with the use of drones. Instead, drones create blowback that tends to manifest itself in ways we have trouble dealing with.

For all the horror of the Boston Marathon bombings, we should expect to suffer a lot more attacks of this nature. When one side holds a vast superiority of power, the other side must resort to guerrilla warfare. This is a lesson that Americans should understand well because this was how the colonists often attacked British troops during the American Revolution!

As Sirota continues,

With mounting evidence that America’s massacre of foreign civilians is creating more terrorists than it is neutralizing, and with terrorists citing our drone operations as motivations for their plots against us, there are consequences; they are just different than what we’re accustomed to. They aren’t, say, traditional counter-volleys on a declared battlefield. Instead, they are more like the Boston bombing, aka asymmetrical terrorist attacks against nearly impossible-to-protect soft targets.

Violence -- whether committed by individuals OR nations -- breeds more violence. The annals of human history serves as a testament to this assertion. The more we kill with drones, the more animus we will find mounted against us. That animus eventually will play out in ways that we can hardly fathom.

Pulling the Rug from Beneath Dissent

Trey Smith

Though polls showed that many Americans opposed the Iraq War, that invasion and occupation was historically unprecedented in length and yet never generated the kind of mass protest that earlier, shorter wars evoked. Same thing for the Afghanistan War. Same thing for all the forward deployments to far-flung bases and one-off missions.

The pattern suggests that in the absence of conscription, dissent — if it exists at all — becomes a low-grade affair (an email, a petition, etc.) but not the kind of serious movement required to compel military policy changes. Why? Because as former Defense Secretary Robert Gates put it, without a draft “wars remain an abstraction — a distant and unpleasant series of news items that does not affect (most people) personally.”

The danger, says West Point’s Lance Betros, is that Americans then “reflexively move towards a military solution before they will try all the other elements of national power.”
~ from Was Ending the Draft a Mistake? by David Sirota ~

I find it sad to say that far too many of my fellow citizens have a compassion deficit. If an issue doesn't impact them directly, it is deemed unimportant and insignificant. Though most of the world's religions, philosophies and other types of belief systems strongly condemn the acts of war and indiscriminate killing, most Americans would never consider demanding an end to our perpetual state of war.

This is not to suggest that Americans don't care about any issues. Suggest gun control and many of them are ready to take to the streets with their loaded guns. Suggest that a county courthouse is not the most appropriate place to hang the Ten Commandments and you may well have a riot on your hands. Suggest that women should have the right to control their own bodies or that homosexuals should have the legal right to marry and calls will flood into our elected leaders. But worry about the death and carnage that war and/or military aggression brings? You will be lucky these days to get ten people on a street corner waving signs!

You see, without the military draft, war is out of sight, out of mind. As Sirota suggests in his column, war become a sterile abstraction. It is not something most Americans have to deal with. Since it rarely impacts them personally, they simply don't give a shit if it means death and destruction for strangers, particularly strangers who belong to a religion that many don't approve of anyway.

Of course, a military draft is not a perfect solution. It is really nothing more than a lottery that impacts the poor and middle class -- the elite have their ways of skirting it. But while it is far from perfect, it IS one mechanism that would cause much of America to look up and take notice. It is hard to avoid when men and women start coming home in body bags or with messed up psyches. This is happening now, but not in huge numbers. If the numbers went up, then my guess is that more Americans would start to think twice about being mindless cheerleaders for our insane military-industrial complex.

The Battle Cry of Freedom

Trey Smith

There’s plenty of proof of an authoritarian streak and animus toward democratic ideals in today’s conservative movement. There was the movement’s use of its judicial power to halt a vote recount and instead install a president who had lost the popular vote. There is the ongoing GOP effort to make it more difficult for people to cast a vote in an election. There is the GOP’s record use of the Senate filibuster to kill legislation that the vast majority of the country supports. There is a GOP leader’s declaration that what the American people want from their government simply “doesn’t matter.”

Up until today, you might have been able to write all that anti-democratic pathology off as one infecting only the Republican Party’s politicians and institutional leadership, but not its rank-and-file voters. But then this morning Fairleigh Dickinson University released this gun control-related poll showing that authoritarianism runs throughout the the entire party.

Take a look at the cross-tabs on page 3 of the national survey. That’s right, you are reading it correctly: Almost half (44 percent) of all self-described Republican voters say they believe “an armed revolution might be necessary to protect our liberties.” Just as bad, more Republicans believe an armed revolution might be necessary than believe one isn’t necessary.
~ from Rise of the Conservative Revolutionaries by David Sirota ~

I don't know what to say. This result is both a bit scary and ludicrous. The worst part is that it is NOT about freedom. The lunatic Right wants to impose their will on others, not allow us to make free choices.

I suppose, however, I shouldn't be that surprised. On two social issues, arch conservatives are seeing the writing on the wall. More and more states have legalized gay marriage or civil unions. Washington and Colorado have legalized marijuana. Young people tend to favor both of these initiatives which means that, as the old guard dies off, these "sins and abominations" will become acceptable and commonplace.

So, since they see they are losing to the democratic process, they believe their only recourse is to overthrow the government to install their idea of a conservative Christian theocracy.

Far Worse Than a Bloody Nose

Trey Smith

If you knew of a person who bullied others day in and day out, would you not understand it when one or more of the bullied became upset?

Most of us don't like being pushed around. We want to make our own choices freely, not be forced into them against our will. Being forced to do something you don't want to do and often don't need to do is a very uncomfortable position to be in. If the bully refuses to leave you alone, it is quite natural to become resentful and angry. If you have the opportunity, it is not above most of us to want to avenge the abuse.

While most Americans can identify with the emotions of being bullied -- if presented in a hypothetical situation -- why is it that they can't or won't apply this sort of identification to Muslims? The answer, of course, has everything to do with American Exceptionalism.

Despite the fact that our nation has spent the last 11+ years bullying Muslims in several nations, the vast majority of Americans express dismay that some of them might be a tad bit resentful and angry. It would be like saying, "I don't understand why they are so mad at us. All we've done is kill tens of thousands of them. So, where on earth could this seething rage come from?"

As David Sirota wrote a few days ago,

With America having killed thousands of civilians in its wars, we should be appalled by acts of terrorism — but we shouldn’t be surprised by them.

And yet, that is precisely the sentiment most Americans express. They are surprised. They are shocked. They are horrified. In many cases, they are utterly dumbfounded.

If the shoe was on the other foot, then most Americans would understand. If another nation routinely bombed American cities and the countryside, do you think Americans would have the least bit of difficulty in understanding how such actions breed hate and contempt?

The Best and the Worst

Trey Smith

Tragedies and calamities tend to bring out the very best in humanity and, unfortunately, the very worst.

On the positive side of the ledger, when people are viewed as individuals, we humans recognize the commonality of life and suffering. When the explosions rocked the crowd near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, rather than run away from the blasts (a very understandable inclination), some people ran towards them. Not concerned with their own health and safety, they went to aid the victims.

In almost every case, I bet the distinctions we usually see did not exist. People going to aid the victims didn't see or care about race, ethnicity, gender, age, disability or sexual orientation. I am betting that not one of these first responders stepped over someone who they thought might be more liberal or conservative than they are and Christians didn't ignore a victim if they thought they were Jewish or an atheist.

What these rescuers found were people in need and they provided what care and comfort they could.

It plays out this same way in scores of other tragedies. When the suffering is real and you meet this suffering face-to-face -- whether you're on the scene or thousands of miles away -- you reach out to strangers. You do whatever you can to try to minimize the pain and agony the victims suffer from. (I should note that the victims aren't always human either. There are many examples of people placing themselves in harm's way to rescue or comfort domestic and even wild animals.)

But for all these positives, there is a dark side as well. When others are viewed not as individuals, but as a faceless group or category, then the distinctions of human life raise their ugly heads.

Over the last three days, columnist David Sirota courageously has written about the big elephant in the room of American society: racism and ethnic bias. He has taken a lot of heat from writing about the deep-seated racism that permeates the US and how it relates to the national reaction to the explosions at the Boston Marathon. (Go here to see one snippet I featured previously.)

He laid the cupboards bare in a column yesterday.

For a country that so often purports to be color blind, that insists too many people of color are overly obsessed with race, and that claims to live up to Dr. King’s dream of not judging people “by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” the last two days have revealed a much uglier reality. They have revealed that — “doth protest too much” claims to the contrary — America is anything but color blind, that too many white folk are the ones obsessed with race, and that Dr. King’s dream is still just that: a distant dream. And that’s not just a general truism that is irrelevant to this moment of national emergency — it is, on the contrary, a very specific point that must be made, right now, precisely because of that national emergency.

Three seemingly separate events tell this story in all its hideous detail. First came the blatant ethnic/religious profiling of an Arab student injured at the Boston Marathon bombing. In that deplorable episode, he was immediately targeted as a suspect because — like thousands of others — he was running away from the blast, but unlike those others, he happened also to be Saudi. In that case, “probable cause” seemed to be a reflexive judgment exclusively about the color of his skin, not the content of his character — and, as with the Oklahoma City bombing before it, that inaccurate and unsubstantiated judgment was then unceremoniously blared all over the world, quickly becoming fodder for the Islamophobic hate-o-sphere and fueling conservative pundits’ fact-free speculation.

Then came CNN’s declaration that police had arrested a “dark-skinned male” — again, unquestioningly blared all over the world, drowning out a CBS News report alleging that the “man sought as a possible suspect is a white male, wearing a white baseball cap on backwards, a gray hoodie and a black jacket.”

And then this morning came the New York Post’s front cover purporting to show two dark-skinned men that the newspaper claimed police had identified as suspects. As Gawker shows, the Post opted to ignore previous reporting debunking that photo and eagerly published it on its front-page.

Taken together, this is much more than just the journalistic sloppiness of the 2000 Election Night now playing out in the coverage of a horrific terrorist attack. It is a rare spotlight on the prejudiced suppositions baked into our worldview, a commentary on what too much of America wants, and an illustration of the kind of bigotry that people of color in America unfortunately must live with on a daily basis.

White Is Alright

Trey Smith

As we now move into the official Political Aftermath period of the Boston bombing — the period that will determine the long-term legislative fallout of the atrocity — the dynamics of privilege will undoubtedly influence the nation’s collective reaction to the attacks. That’s because privilege tends to determine: 1) which groups are — and are not — collectively denigrated or targeted for the unlawful actions of individuals; and 2) how big and politically game-changing the overall reaction ends up being.

This has been most obvious in the context of recent mass shootings. In those awful episodes, a religious or ethnic minority group lacking such privilege would likely be collectively slandered and/or targeted with surveillance or profiling (or worse) if some of its individuals comprised most of the mass shooters. However, white male privilege means white men are not collectively denigrated/targeted for those shootings — even though most come at the hands of white dudes.

Likewise, in the context of terrorist attacks, such privilege means white non-Islamic terrorists are typically portrayed not as representative of whole groups or ideologies, but as “lone wolf” threats to be dealt with as isolated law enforcement matters. Meanwhile, non-white or developing-world terrorism suspects are often reflexively portrayed as representative of larger conspiracies, ideologies and religions that must be dealt with as systemic threats — the kind potentially requiring everything from law enforcement action to military operations to civil liberties legislation to foreign policy shifts.

“White privilege is knowing that even if the bomber turns out to be white, no one will call for your group to be profiled as terrorists as a result, subjected to special screening or threatened with deportation,” writes author Tim Wise. “White privilege is knowing that if this bomber turns out to be white, the United States government will not bomb whatever corn field or mountain town or stale suburb from which said bomber came, just to ensure that others like him or her don’t get any ideas. And if he turns out to be a member of the Irish Republican Army we won’t bomb Dublin. And if he’s an Italian-American Catholic we won’t bomb the Vatican.”
~ from Let's Hope the Boston Marathon Bomber Is a White American by David Sirota ~

We see this very same dynamic with mass shootings in this country. If the shooter is white -- a good bet since most of them ARE white -- he is a lone wolf suffering from some degree of mental illness. On those few occasions when the shooter is not white, that's a different story. If the shooter is black, then a lot of people will immediately point to the shooter's race as if that provides a definitive explanation (i.e., black males are "prone to violence" and "crime"). If the shooter happens to be Arab and/or Muslim, then too many people simply say, "See, all of 'em are terrorists!"

There is no question that there are blacks and Arabs who are overtly violent and willing to commit crimes against humanity. But the very same is true of whites. In fact, over the past decade or two, I would venture that whites are just as culpable, if not more so, than any other racial group of killing tens of thousands of innocents.

The One-Way Lens

Trey Smith

The Big Brother theory of surveillance goes something like this: pervasive snooping and monitoring shouldn’t frighten innocent people, it should only make lawbreakers nervous because they are the only ones with something to hide. Those who subscribe to this theory additionally argue that the widespread awareness of such surveillance creates a permanent preemptive deterrent to such lawbreaking ever happening in the first place.

I don’t personally agree that this logic is a convincing justification for the American Police State, and when I hear such arguments, I inevitably find myself confused by the contradiction of police-state proponents proposing to curtail freedom in order to protect it. But whether or not you subscribe to the police-state tautology, you have to admit there is more than a bit of hypocrisy at work when those who forward the Big Brother logic simultaneously insist such logic shouldn’t apply to them or the governmental agencies they oversee.
~ from Suddenly, NYPD Doesn’t Love Surveillance Anymore by David Sirota ~

Isn't this how it tends to go? A principle is laid down as being incontrovertible...unless, of course, you point that principle back to the folks advocating it. Then, in their specific case, the incontrovertible principal somehow becomes controvertible!

Sirota's target in this piece is the NYPD. The mayor and police chief have advanced the notion outlined in the first paragraph of the snippet above. But, in their eyes, when it comes to the establishment of an independent police monitor, being watched ain't such a good thing.

Somehow, they argue that their own Big Brother theory about surveillance supposedly stopping current crime and deterring future crime should not apply to municipal officials themselves.

The "logic" here would be downright hilarious, if not for the seriousness of the issue.

The Melting Pot

Trey Smith

As one of the world’s largest news outlets, the Associated Press’s linguistic mandates significantly shape the broader vernacular. So when the organization this week decided to stop using the term “illegal immigrant,” it was a big victory for objectivity and against the propagandistic language of bigotry.

Cautious AP executives did not frame it exactly that way. Instead, editor Kathleen Carroll portrayed the decision as one in defense of grammar, saying that the term “illegal” properly “describe(s) only an action” and that it is not an appropriate label to describe a human being.

“Illegal,” of course, has been used as more than a mere label — it has for years been used as an outright epithet by xenophobes. They abhor the notion of America becoming more diverse — and specifically, more non-white — and so they have tried to convert “illegal” into a word that specifically dehumanizes Latinos. Thus, as any honest person can admit, when Republican politicians and media blowhards decry “illegals,” they are pretending to be for a race-blind enforcement of immigration laws, but they are really signaling their hatred of Latino culture.

How can we be so sure that dog-whistle bigotry is the intent? It’s simple, really. Just listen to who is — and who is not — being called an “illegal.”

Almost nobody uses the term to attack white immigrants from Europe or Canada who overstay their visas. Nobody uses the term to describe white people who break all sorts of criminal laws.
~ from There Are No “Illegal Immigrants” by David Sirota ~

Conservatives like to talk of America as the beacon for the rest of the world. We are the shining city on the hill. To be patriotic is to honor our glorious past. Words and sentiments written during our halcyon years are to be treated like words written in granite.

And yet, these very same people somehow don't like the idea of honoring the words of The New Colossus affixed to the Statue of Liberty, the symbol of our supposed beacon-ness.

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
(emphasis added)

Doesn't that sound to you like an open-ended invitation?

How then can we call the people who come "illegal"?

Break a Leg

Trey Smith

What is it that someone might say to a thespian as they approach their opening performance in a new play? Break a leg. I don't know the origin of that phrase, but I do know that it's not something that is said to athletes! Breaking one's leg in a sporting event almost always means that you won't be participating in that sport for a good long time.

On Sunday, in a nationally televised college basketball game, a guard from the University of Louisville broke his leg during the game. The break resulted in a compound fracture which featured his bone sticking out of his leg. According to those who saw the events unfold -- I wasn't watching -- it was a gruesome sight that caused a few of the other players to vomit.

When I read about this incident later, I figured that the university and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) would cover the medical costs. That seemed to me like a no-brainer, but that may not be the case at all. According to David Sirota, it is not uncommon at all for the student-athletes and his/her family to get stuck with the bill!

On its face, that is absolutely outrageous. As Sirota points out, "NCAA basketball is a $780 million-a year business that makes 1 percenters out of NCAA executives, coaches, athletic directors and college administrators," but it doesn't necessarily cover the medical costs of the players injured generating that staggering amount.

I suppose I shouldn't be all that surprised. That's how our system works. The workers are expected to generate most all of the actual capital without actually sharing in the mammoth profits created.

One of the Three Rs

Trey Smith

The battle in education right now pits public schools against ones of the for-profit variety. It turns out that many of those pushing the latter only care about one of the proverbial 3 Rs. It's not reading. It's not 'riting. It's the last one: 'rithmetic. The 'rithmetic these folks care most about is how to add millions or billions of dollars to their bottom line!

As David Sirota explains in his recent column, Getting Rich Off of Schoolchildren, a good number of the businessmen pushing various varieties of so-called educational reform have a vested interest in their outcomes. If school districts adopt these reforms, then guess who will be there to sell them the products and services?

This is nothing more than another privatization scheme. Corporations desperately want to get their hands on public resources because it will turn into easy money. They make all sorts of promises about the wonderful services they will provide -- so much more efficiently than "bad" government -- but it is mostly a lie. In case after case, the savings aren't realized and the services and products delivered are inferior or, in some cases, not actually delivered at all.

But what do they care? They don't devise these schemes because they are altruistic; they do it because they are greedy bastards! They want to fatten their already fattened wallets while putting forth minimal effort.

Why can't people see this?

An Aha Moment?

Trey Smith

I never thought I’d write these words, but here goes: Thank you, John Boehner. Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for finally admitting on national television that all the fiscal cliffs, sequestrations and budget battles you’ve created are, indeed, artificially fabricated by ideologues and self-interested politicians and not the result of some imminent crisis that’s out of our control.

America owes this debt of gratitude to Boehner after he finally came clean on yesterday’s edition of ABC’s “This Week” and admitted that “we do not have an immediate debt crisis.” (His admission was followed up by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, who quickly echoed much the same sentiment on CBS’ “Face the Nation”).

In offering up such a stunningly honest admission, the GOP leader has put himself on record as agreeing with President Obama, who has previously acknowledged that demonstrable reality. But the big news here isn’t just about the politics of a Republican House speaker tacitly admitting they agree with a Democratic president. It is also about a bigger admission revealing the fact that the GOP’s fiscal alarmism is not merely some natural reaction to reality, but a calculated means to other ideological ends.
~ from GOP: We've Been Lying All Along by David Sirota ~

Could this be one of the great aha moments in US history?

Hardly. Most Democrats, including President Obama, have been playing along with this charade. Sirota muses that maybe Boehner's admission will lead to a "more reasoned debate."

That's one way to look at it. Here's another. Boehner simply articulated what everyone in Washington already knows. Federal politics is a game and each side plays their assigned role.

If this admission was truly a bombshell, then it might have a great impact on the upcoming mid-term elections. I'm not holding my breath. I think Boehner merely stated the obvious and it won't change the workings in Washington one bit. For those who work there everyday, this ain't shocking news at all. It's like stating the sky is blue.