H. P. Lovecraft "As for the Republicans — how can one regard
seriously a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky
idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, steel their emotions
against decent human sympathy, cling to sordid and provincial ideals
exalting sheer acquisitiveness and condoning artificial hardship for the
non-materially-shrewd, dwell smugly and sentimentally in a distorted
dream-cosmos of outmoded phrases and principles and attitudes based on
the bygone agricultural-handicraft world, and revel in (consciously or
unconsciously) mendacious assumptions (such as the notion that real
liberty is synonymous with the single detail of unrestricted economic
license or that a rational planning of resource-distribution would
contravene some vague and mystical 'American heritage'…) utterly
contrary to fact and without the slightest foundation in human
experience? Intellectually, the Republican idea deserves the tolerance
and respect one gives to the dead." —Lovecraft in a letter to C. L. Moore, exact date unknown, mid-October 1936
In August of 1865, a Colonel P.H. Anderson of Big Spring, Tennessee,
wrote to his former slave, Jourdon Anderson, and requested that he come
back to work on his farm. Jourdon — who,
since being emancipated, had moved to Ohio, found paid work, and was
now supporting his family — responded spectacularly by way of the letter
seen below (a letter which, according to newspapers at the time, he
dictated).
August 7, 1865
To My Old Master,
Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee
Sir: I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten
Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again,
promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt
uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before
this, for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never
heard about your going to Colonel Martin's to kill the Union soldier
that was left by his company in their stable.
Although you shot at me
twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and
am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear
old home again, and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther,
Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will
meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see
you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of the
neighbors told me that Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a
chance.
I want to know particularly what the good chance is you
propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here. I get twenty-five
dollars a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for
Mandy,—the folks call her Mrs. Anderson,—and the children—Milly, Jane,
and Grundy—go to school and are learning well. The teacher says Grundy
has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday school, and Mandy and me
attend church regularly. We are kindly treated. Sometimes we overhear
others saying, "Them colored people were slaves" down in Tennessee. The
children feel hurt when they hear such remarks; but I tell them it was
no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Colonel Anderson. Many darkeys
would have been proud, as I used to be, to call you master. Now if you
will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to
decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.
As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be
gained on that score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the
Provost-Marshal-General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she
would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to
treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity
by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This
will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and
friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years,
and Mandy twenty years. At twenty-five dollars a month for me, and two
dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand
six hundred and eighty dollars. Add to this the interest for the time
our wages have been kept back, and deduct what you paid for our
clothing, and three doctor's visits to me, and pulling a tooth for
Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to.
Please send the money by Adams's Express, in care of V. Winters, Esq.,
Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past, we
can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good
Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have
done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations
without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night; but in
Tennessee there was never any pay-day for the negroes any more than for
the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those
who defraud the laborer of his hire.
In answering this letter,
please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are
now grown up, and both good-looking girls. You know how it was with
poor Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve—and die,
if it come to that—than have my girls brought to shame by the violence
and wickedness of their young masters. You will also please state if
there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your
neighborhood. The great desire of my life now is to give my children an
education, and have them form virtuous habits.
Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.
From your old servant,
Jourdon Anderson.
Some 39 months after the multiple explosions at Fukushima, thyroid cancer rates among nearby children have skyrocketed to more than forty times (40x) normal.
More than 48 percent of some 375,000 young people—nearly 200,000
kids—tested by the Fukushima Medical University near the smoldering
reactors now suffer from pre-cancerous thyroid abnormalities, primarily nodules and cysts. The rate is accelerating.
More than 120 childhood cancers have been indicated where just three
would be expected, says Joseph Mangano, executive director of the Radiation and Public Health Project.
The nuclear industry and its apologists continue to deny this public health tragedy. Some have actually asserted that “not one person” has been affected by Fukushima’s massive radiation releases, which for some isotopes exceed Hiroshima by a factor of nearly 30. More
than 48 percent of some 375,000 young people—nearly 200,000 kids—tested
by the Fukushima Medical University near the smoldering reactors now
suffer from pre-cancerous thyroid abnormalities, primarily nodules and
cysts.
But the deadly epidemic at Fukushima
is consistent with impacts suffered among children near the 1979
accident at Three Mile Island and the 1986 explosion at Chernobyl, as
well as findings at other commercial reactors.
The likelihood
that atomic power could cause such epidemics has been confirmed by
the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, which says that “an increase in the risk of childhood thyroid cancer” would accompany a reactor disaster.
In evaluating the prospects of new reactor construction in Canada,
the Commission says the rate “would rise by 0.3 percent at a distance of
12 kilometers” from the accident. But that assumes the distribution of
protective potassium iodide pills and a successful emergency evacuation,
neither of which happened at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl or Fukushima.
The numbers have been analyzed by Mangano. He has studied the impacts
of reactor-created radiation on human health since the 1980s, beginning
his work with the legendary radiologist Dr. Ernest Sternglass and
statistician Jay Gould.
Speaking on www.prn.fm’s Green Power & Wellness Show, Mangano
also confirms that the general health among downwind human populations
improves when atomic reactors are shut down, and goes into decline when
they open or re-open.
Nearby children are not the only casualties at Fukushima. Plant operator Masao Yoshida has died
at age 58 of esophogeal cancer. Masao heroically refused to abandon
Fukushima at the worst of the crisis, probably saving millions of lives.
Workers at the site who are employed by independent contractors—many
dominated by organized crime—are often not being monitored for radiation
exposure at all. Public anger is rising over government plans to force
families—many with small children—back into the heavily contaminated
region around the plant.
Following its 1979 accident, Three Mile Island’s owners denied the
reactor had melted. But a robotic camera later confirmed otherwise.
The state of Pennsylvania mysteriously killed its tumor registry,
then said there was “no evidence” that anyone had been killed.
But a wide range of independent studies confirm heightened infant
death rates and excessive cancers among the general population.
Excessive death, mutation and disease rates among local animals were confirmed by the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture and local journalists.
In the 1980s federal Judge Sylvia Rambo blocked a class action suit
by some 2,400 central Pennsylvania downwinders, claiming not enough
radiation had escaped to harm anyone. But after 35 years, no one knows
how much radiation escaped or where it went. Three Mile Island’s owners
have quietly paid millions to downwind victims in exchange for gag
orders.
At Chernobyl, a compendium of more than 5,000 studies has yielded an estimated death toll of more than 1,000,000 people.
The radiation effects on youngsters in downwind Belarus and Ukraine
have been horrific. According to Mangano, some 80 percent of the
“Children of Chernobyl” born downwind since the accident have been harmed by a wide range of impacts
ranging from birth defects and thyroid cancer to long-term heart,
respiratory and mental illnesses. The findings mean that just one in
five young downwinders can be termed healthy. Physicians for Social Responsibility and the German chapter of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War have warned of parallel problems near Fukushima.
Japan earthquake and tsunami aftermath
The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic
Radiation (UNSCEAR) has recently issued reports downplaying the
disaster’s human impacts. UNSCEAR is interlocked with the United
Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency, whose mandate is to promote
atomic power. The IAEA has a long-term controlling gag order on UN
findings about reactor health impacts. For decades UNSCEAR and the World
Health Organization have run protective cover for the nuclear
industry’s widespread health impacts. Fukushima has proven no exception.
In response, Physicians for Social Responsibility and the German
International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War have issued a
ten-point rebuttal, warning the public of the UN’s compromised credibility.
The disaster is “ongoing” say the groups, and must be monitored for
decades. “Things could have turned for the worse” if winds had been
blowing toward Tokyo rather than out to sea (and towards America).
There is on-going risk from irradiated produce, and among site
workers whose doses and health impacts are not being monitored. Current
dose estimates among workers as well as downwinders are unreliable, and
special notice must be taken of radiation’s severe impacts on the human
embryo.
UNSCEAR’s studies on background radiation are also “misleading,” say
the groups, and there must be further study of genetic radiation effects
as well as “non-cancer diseases.” The UN assertion that “no discernible
radiation-related health effects are expected among exposed members” is
“cynical,” say the groups. They add that things were made worse by the official refusal to distribute potassium iodide, which might have protected the public from thyroid impacts from massive releases of radioactive I-131.
Overall, the horrific news from Fukushima can only get worse.
Radiation from three lost cores is still being carried into the
Pacific. Management of spent fuel rods in pools suspended in the air and
scattered around the site remains fraught with danger.
The pro-nuclear Shinzo Abe regime wants to reopen Japan’s remaining
48 reactors. It has pushed hard for families who fled the disaster to
re-occupy irradiated homes and villages.
But Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and the plague of death and disease
now surfacing near Fukushima make it all too clear that the human cost
of such decisions continues to escalate—with our children suffering
first and worst.
Harvey Wasserman edits www.nukefree.org and wrote SOLARTOPIA! Our Green-Powered Earth. His Green Power & Wellness Show is at www.prn.fm.
How the vampire squid is controlling our lives: They helped cause
the crash. Then profited from it. Now, from the Bank of England to the
Fed, ex-Goldman Sachs chiefs are pulling the levers of power
Published:
20:58 EST, 27 March 2014
| Updated:
07:46 EST, 28 March 2014
Amid the recent management shake-up at
the top of the Bank of England, as it was dragged into the
investigation of the alleged fixing of the £3 trillion-a-day
foreign-exchange markets, one crucial appointment went almost unnoticed.
While public attention was
understandably focused on an Egyptian-born mother of twins becoming
only the second female deputy governor of the bank, the far more
influential appointment was that of economist Ben Broadbent. As the new deputy governor for monetary policy, he is now the predominant voice on the future direction of interest rates.
Influential: Ben Broadbent, the Bank of
England's new deputy governor for monetary policy, who spent a decade
during the boom-and-bust years as senior economist at Goldman Sachs
His work will have a
huge effect on the lives of the British people, for he will have a key
role in deciding when the record five years of super-low mortgage rates
will end — a decision that will inevitably lead to home-owners facing
considerably bigger monthly bills.
But
there is one crucial fact that should concern us about the Cambridge
and Harvard-educated Broadbent: he spent a decade during the
boom-and-bust years as the senior economist at the global headquarters
of the investment bank Goldman Sachs.
He
joins an elite few who hold senior positions in the world’s most
powerful central banks — from London to New York, Frankfurt and beyond —
and all of whom come from this one company, which was controversially
described by Rolling Stone magazine as ‘a great vampire squid wrapped
around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into
anything that smells like money’. The
fact that so many alumni of the world’s most profitable — as well as
most ruthless and cunning — investment bank wield such a level of
influence in these central banks is nothing short of remarkable.
Because
Goldman Sachs is an institution that, as I will explain, not only
helped cause the financial crisis in 2008, but also profited from it —
hugely enriching its own staff while leaving a trail of chaos for
taxpayers to clear up.
Do we really want one of the
most controversial financial institutions on the planet, which was
eventually fined a record £343 million for shamelessly misleading
investors during the crisis, to have so many of its ex-staff holding the
levers of power in the City of London?
What
makes the choice of Broadbent an issue of major public concern is that
his period at Goldman saw the New York investment firm deeply embroiled
in some of the most shocking financial scandals of recent years. First,
there was the crisis triggered by the sub-prime mortgage disaster, when
vast quantities of loans were made by U.S. banks to homeowners who
could never pay them back.
This
reached disaster point in 2007-8, once the loans had been sold on by
banks and institutions around the world — by which time they had been
packaged up as financial instruments or ‘derivatives’ so complicated
that no one could tell how toxic they were.
Goldman
Sachs played a key part in inventing these poisonous derivatives, which
were a major factor in triggering the financial crisis. But
even more morally offensive was that once people finally began to
realise how dangerous these derivatives were, Goldman Sachs started
making money by speculating in the market that they would collapse in
value. So not only did the bank help create the crisis, it also profited from it.
'God's work': Goldman Sachs fast-talking CEO
Lloyd Blankfein stunned the world last year when he offensively boasted -
amid his banks return to fat profits - that that's what he and his
employees were doing
It was the same Goldman
Sachs that, during the financial crisis in 2008, when, like all
financial institutions, its shares were falling, accepted a $10 billion
bailout from the U.S. government. Handily,
many of its former staff — such as Hank Paulson, who was then U.S.
Treasury Secretary — happened to be in key posts in the government when
the decision was made. Then there is the fact that Goldman
Sachs reportedly arranged with the Right-wing Greek government to
present the national accounts in the best possible light so that Greece
could join the Eurozone in 2001. The bank was subsequently involved in
elaborate schemes that masked the true horror of the country’s public
debt crisis, which saw Greece having to be bailed out by the EU and left
in economic ruins. Despite
this, Goldman bosses were able to pick up $111 million in bonuses soon
afterwards, which were understandably branded an outrage as they were
awarded during the worst recession for 80 years — one that had mainly
been caused by irresponsible bank behaviour.
'A vampire squid wrapped around the face of
humanity, jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money'
- Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone
Influence in high places,
though, did not stop Goldman from being heavily fined by the Wall Street
regulator, the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC), in 2010 for
selling dodgy complex securities, based on sub-prime mortgages, to
clients including the hapless Royal Bank of Scotland. What
makes the behaviour of Goldman Sachs so shameless is the arrogance with
which it has sought to protect its reputation and the claims its bosses
like to make for its integrity.
The
group’s chairman and chief executive, the smiling and fast-talking
former trader Lloyd Blankfein, stunned everyone last year when he
offensively boasted — amid Goldman’s return to fat profits — that the
bank was doing ‘God’s work’. Perhaps
it is this arrogance that enables former Goldman executives, such as
Ben Broadbent at the Bank of England, to rise ineffably to the very top
jobs in international finance.
With
the approval of Chancellor George Osborne, 49-year-old Broadbent was
plucked from his relatively obscure role as an external member of the
Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee and promoted over the head
of the Old Lady’s best and brightest internal prospects.
His
elevation to the top economic role at Britain’s central bank means he
will now be making the crucial interest rate, inflation and growth
forecasts for the Bank’s quarterly Inflation Report — on which key
decisions are made that affect millions of people. Broadbent’s
promotion must have seemed the most natural thing in the world to the
Bank of England’s Canadian governor Mark Carney.
Carney,
after all, is himself an Old Goldmanite and a member of the most
exclusive club in world economic policy-making — much more influential
than David Cameron’s kitchen cabinet of Old Etonians. Carney spent the largest stretch of his career — from 1990 to 2003 — working for Goldman Sachs in Tokyo, New York and London.
Alumni: Bank of England Governor Mark Carney, spent the longest stretch of his career working at Goldman Sachs.
The chairman of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi is another
former Goldman Sachs banker
The choice of Goldman bankers
for senior roles at the Bank of England is a novel development for an
institution that has always frowned on any suggestions of dual loyalty
or conflicts of interest. When
Gordon Brown was Chancellor (from 1997 to 2007), he steadfastly refused
to appoint the person many regarded as the most talented economist of
his generation, Gavyn Davies, as governor of the Bank of England.
Brown
feared a political backlash because of Davies’s role as the millionaire
chief global economist at Goldman Sachs, and the fact that his wife,
Sue Nye, was a special assistant to the Chancellor. However,
despite 13 years in a variety of roles at Goldman, and a successful
stint as governor of the Bank of Canada, Carney was given not only the
Bank of England role but also the job of chairman of the Financial
Stability Board. This is
the body established by the G20 committee of rich and emerging market
nations to try to reform global banking — including the rapacious bonus
culture — in the aftermath of the 2007-9 credit crunch.
Indeed,
Old Goldmanites seem to be everywhere. When Broadbent and Carney meet
fellow central bankers, there will be a number of familiar faces around
the table. The chairman of the European
Central Bank, Mario Draghi, who is credited with rescuing Euroland from
total implosion with his promise to do ‘whatever it takes’ to save the
euro, is another former Goldman Sachs banker. Arguably,
he is the most powerful figure in European finance, having forced
Euroland interest rates down to rock-bottom levels and bought the
government bonds of Europe’s struggling ‘Club Med’ economies before
exchanging them for cash. He is now trying to tackle Europe’s near-bankrupt banking system.
The Goldman Sachs booth at the NYSE: The banks
culture of ever-more complex securities and trades was at the core of
the financial crisis
In
the U.S., there is the amiable Bill Dudley, the former head of U.S.
economics at Goldman, who is now president of the Federal Reserve Bank
of New York, the operating arm of America’s central bank. Goldman
boss Lloyd Blankfein once explained to me that one of the advantages of
paying Goldman Sachs’s bankers so lavishly — they sit at the top of the
bankers’ pay league — was that the ‘partners’ can retire young and very
rich, and then go off to jobs in the public service.
There
is, however, a deeply disturbing paradox in the fact that Goldman
bankers are now effectively running the world’s monetary system. The
Goldman culture of creating ever-more complex securities and trades,
coupled with absurdly high pay and bonuses as incentives for the bank’s
workforce, were at the very core of the financial crisis that brought
the world to the brink of economic collapse and led to a long period of
painful austerity.
None of
these former Goldman economists and executives, who are now the
overlords of the global economy, seems to have predicted the fact that
the world was sitting on a financial time-bomb. It
seems very strange that when there are so many talented economic
thinkers, Nobel prize winners and lifelong central bankers to be called
upon, it is nearly always Goldmanites that carry off the plum jobs. Allowing
such a cultish group to control the levers of global finance shows, I
would suggest, a worrying lack of imagination and judgment by the ruling
class of politicians that appointed them. The
concentration of such huge economic power in the hands of a small cabal
of economists and financiers, drawn from such a narrow pool of
interests, is deeply unhealthy.
However
honourable the motives of this group, there remains a fear that when
the next crisis comes — as it inevitably will — their concern to protect
their cronies in the banking world will take precedence over their
responsibility to look after the long-suffering public.
Although
its reputation for intellectual seriousness was previously overstated,
those who worried that former South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint’s ascension
as chief of the Heritage Foundation would lead to the right-wing think
tank’s disgrace are looking mighty prescient after a Monday afternoon
panel on the Banghazi attack’s lingering “unanswered questions” devolved into a bigoted freak show.
When
one considers the panelists involved, it’s unlikely the so-called
discussion was ever going to go too well. Alongside straight-up crank
and professional bigot Frank Gaffney, Heritage also invited ACT! for America’s Brigitte Gabriel (known for repeatedly describing Muslims as “barbarians“) and Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi’s Clare Lopez (who previously described the Obama administration as having “switched sides” in the war on terror). Leading the conversation was Chris Plante, a conservative talk radio host.
According
to the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank, while the panel rather quickly
and predictably transitioned from vague expressions of concern about a
Benghazi conspiracy to a more free-floating animus toward Islam and
Muslims, things didn’t get really ugly until one audience member, an
American University law student named Saba Ahmed, decided to push back
against the panelists’ many ignorant and harmful assertions.
“We
portray Islam and all Muslims as bad, but there’s 1.8 billion followers
of Islam,” Ahmed reportedly told the panel. “We have 8 million-plus
Muslim Americans in this country, and I don’t see them represented
here.”
Copy and paste to browser for video:
http://mm4a.org/1q8cCBt
This
was unacceptable. Gabriel was the first to attack, according to
Milbank, responding that “180 million to 300 million” Muslims are
“dedicated to the destruction of Western civilization” and that the
“peaceful majority” of the world’s Muslims “were irrelevant” on
September 11, 2001. Besides, Muslims are like Nazis, Gabriel argued:
“Most Germans were peaceful,” she said, “yet the Nazis drove the agenda,
and as a result, 60 million died.”
Gabriel then questioned
Ahmed’s citizenship before telling her that “political correctness” of
the kind she spouts should be kept “in the garbage” where it belongs.
Ahmed was then asked “Where are the others speaking out?” but before she
could explain why demanding a community of hundreds of millions have
“others” who “speak out” against murder is ridiculous and disingenuous,
the audience drowned her out with a standing ovation.
As the
evening progressed, Plante implied Ambassador Chris Stevens’ real cause
of death was being hidden, Gabriel suggested Stevens was secretly
working on a weapons-swap between Libya and Syria, and Lopez joked about
how journalists covering the attack are secretly friends with Islamist
terrorists, with whom they were “sipping frappes … in juice bars.” One
audience member even suggested that Gen. Carter Ham, then-commander of
U.S. Africa Command, had been “placed under house arrest” so as to allow
the attack to occur. Plante said he’d heard the same.
One can only wonder why average working class Americans would
vote for a party that is so obvious in their bias towards the wealthy.
It would make sense that someone in the top 1 percent of the income
bracket would vote for the Republican party
since they have the wealthiest American's best interest at heart. You
could even make the case that highly religious Christians would vote for
Republicans even though, at times, they vote against their own best
economic interests. So the question remains, while scratching your head,
why do working class Americans vote for Republican candidates?
I once sat down and spoke with an acquaintance of mine, trying to get
a grip on what people are thinking about the future of our country. He
said he voted for Mitt Romney in 2012 because, "we need a business
person to get our debt down." I asked where he got his news and
information from, and after trying to deflect from the question, the
answer finally came. "I don't pay attention too much, but when I do, I
watch Fox." Fox News is the primary source for information for millions of Americans across the country and that's where the problem starts.
Whether it's Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity or other right wing
ideologues, Fox News is a tunnel vision information outlet with only one
particular agenda that is being pushed through. Millions of Americans
watch Fox News, listen to the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Neal Boortz,
Michael Savage and others while getting information from right wing
think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute.
With big businesses and billionaire allies, the truth and facts in
American have gone from a clear right and wrong, black and white
situation to muffled shades of gray. It's not to say that Fox News, the
Cato Institute and others like them totally lie because that would be
too difficult to pull off. What these think tanks do, is take a fact and
twist it to fit their own personal agenda, leaving out key information
that would contradict with the platform they're trying to create.
A perfect example in describing the way groups like the Cato Institute operate is a report that came out by alternet.org.
In the early 2000s, the Cato Institute released a report that suggested
that families receiving welfare were making between $17,000 and $25,000
a year, but the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities countered that
claim. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities showed that the
average income for welfare recipients was below $9,000 a year, which is
nearly $3,000 a year below the poverty line.
The misinformation also comes from another right wing think tank, the
Heritage Foundation. In 2011, when Paul Ryan released the "Ryan"
Republican budget, the Heritage Foundation claimed that unemployment
would drop to 6.4% in 2012 and to 2.8% in 2022. A report released by the
Washington Monthly pointed out that these claims were extremely exaggerated. The CBO,
the Congressional Budget Office, showed the errors of the Heritage
Foundation's report and the director of the Heritage Foundation's Center
for Data Analysis, William Beach, was forced to walk backed the claims.
In 2009, the Heritage Foundation released ads attacking the Employee Free Choice Act,
a bill that was brought to congress that would give all employees the
right to form a union without fear of being fired from their current
job. Since the Heritage Foundation is bought and paid for by million and
billionaire conservatives, the idea of having workers unite with more
power and freedom threatens their control at the top. The ads released
painted a false picture about the Employee Free Choice Act, claiming
that unions will bully workers into joining them with an attempt to take
money from the employee. According to the Huffington Post,
the Heritage Foundation "frame(s) the EFCA issue based on bald-faced
lies. Business-financed 'think tanks' like Heritage propagandize workers
against their own interests in psychologically sophisticated ways,
often pulling on their heartstrings and framing their anti-union stance
as 'common sense.'"
Average Americans need to be more informed about what is going in the
country, but also where to get their information. The argument isn't
about holding a liberal or conservative ideology, it's about facts that
are based on truth and not information based on twisted logic. Americans
need to learn to dig a little deeper to find honest reporting, not just
believe something that falls in their lap at the expense of a
billionaire funded think tank or news organization.
(Updated: 2/20/2014) Like what you've read? Have any questions or comments? If so, e-mail me at rsobelexaminer@gmail.com, Tweet me on Twitter at @liberalexaminer
Contracts for Chilean
student loans worth $500m go up in flames – the 'imaginative auditing'
of the artist Francisco Tapia, commonly known as Papas Fritas (Fried
Potatoes). Photograph: David von Blohn/REX
As history has shown, France is capable of the best and the worst, and often in short periods of time.
On the day following Marine Le Pen's Front National victory
in the European elections, however, France made a decisive contribution
to the reinvention of a radical politics for the 21st century. On that
day, the committee for a citizen's audit on the public debt
issued a 30-page report on French public debt, its origins and
evolution in the past decades. The report was written by a group of
experts in public finances under the coordination of Michel Husson, one of France's finest critical economists. Its conclusion is straightforward: 60% of French public debt is illegitimate.
Anyone who has read a newspaper in recent years knows how important debt is to contemporary politics. As David Graeber
among others has shown, we live in debtocracies, not democracies. Debt,
rather than popular will, is the governing principle of our societies,
through the devastating austerity policies implemented in the name of
debt reduction. Debt was also a triggering cause of the most innovative
social movements in recent years, the Occupy movement.
If it were
shown that public debts were somehow illegitimate, that citizens had a
right to demand a moratorium – and even the cancellation of part of
these debts – the political implications would be huge. It is hard to
think of an event that would transform social life as profoundly and
rapidly as the emancipation of societies from the constraints of debt.
And yet this is precisely what the French report aims to do.
The audit is part of a wider movement of popular debt audits in more than 18 countries. Ecuador
and Brazil have had theirs, the former at the initiative of Rafael
Correa's government, the latter organised by civil society. European
social movements have also put in place debt audits, especially in
countries harder hit by the sovereign debt crisis, such as Greece
and Spain. In Tunisia, the post-revolutionary government declared the
debt taken out during Ben Ali's dictatorship an "odious" debt: one that
served to enrich the clique in power, rather than improving the living
conditions of the people.
The report on French debt contains
several key findings. Primarily, the rise in the state's debt in the
past decades cannot be explained by an increase in public spending. The
neoliberal argument in favour of austerity policies claims that debt is
due to unreasonable public spending levels; that societies in general,
and popular classes in particular, live above their means.
This is
plain false. In the past 30 years, from 1978 to 2012 more precisely,
French public spending has in fact decreased by two GDP points. What,
then, explains the rise in public debt? First, a fall in the tax
revenues of the state. Massive tax reductions for the wealthy and big
corporations have been carried out since 1980. In line with the
neoliberal mantra, the purpose of these reductions was to favour
investment and employment. Well, unemployment is at its highest today,
whereas tax revenues have decreased by five points of GDP.
The
second factor is the increase in interest rates, especially in the
1990s. This increase favoured creditors and speculators, to the
detriment of debtors. Instead of borrowing on financial markets at
prohibitive interest rates, had the state financed itself by appealing
to household savings and banks, and borrowed at historically normal
rates, the public debt would be inferior to current levels by 29 GDP
points.
Tax reductions for the wealthy and interest rates
increases are political decisions. What the audit shows is that public
deficits do not just grow naturally out of the normal course of social
life. They are deliberately inflicted on society by the dominant
classes, to legitimise austerity policies that will allow the transfer
of value from the working classes to the wealthy ones.
A sit-in called by Occupy France at La Défense business district in Paris. Photograph: Afp/AFP/Getty Images
A stunning finding of the report is that no one actually knows who
holds the French debt. To finance its debt, the French state, like any
other state, issues bonds, which are bought by a set of authorised
banks. These banks then sell the bonds on the global financial markets.
Who owns these titles is one of the world's best kept secrets. The state
pays interests to the holders, so technically it could know who owns
them. Yet a legally organised ignorance forbids the disclosure of the
identity of the bond holders.
This deliberate organisation of ignorance – agnotology
– in neoliberal economies intentionally renders the state powerless,
even when it could have the means to know and act. This is what permits
tax evasion in its various forms – which last year cost about €50bn to
European societies, and €17bn to France alone.
Hence, the audit on the debt concludes, some 60% of the French public debt is illegitimate.
An
illegitimate debt is one that grew in the service of private interests,
and not the wellbeing of the people. Therefore the French people have a
right to demand a moratorium on the payment of the debt, and the
cancellation of at least part of it. There is precedent for this: in
2008 Ecuador declared 70% of its debt illegitimate.
The nascent
global movement for debt audits may well contain the seeds of a new
internationalism – an internationalism for today – in the working
classes throughout the world. This is, among other things, a consequence
of financialisation. Thus debt audits might provide a fertile ground for renewed forms of international mobilisations and solidarity.
This new internationalism could start with three easy steps.
1) Debt audits in all countries
The
crucial point is to demonstrate, as the French audit did, that debt is a
political construction, that it doesn't just happen to societies when
they supposedly live above their means. This is what justifies calling
it illegitimate, and may lead to cancellation procedures. Audits on
private debts are also possible, as the Chilean artist Francisco Tapia
has recently shown by auditing student loans in an imaginative way.
2) The disclosure of the identity of debt holders
A
directory of creditors at national and international levels could be
assembled. Not only would such a directory help fight tax evasion, it
would also reveal that while the living conditions of the majority are
worsening, a small group of individuals and financial institutions has
consistently taken advantage of high levels of public indebtedness.
Hence, it would reveal the political nature of debt.
3) The socialisation of the banking system
The
state should cease to borrow on financial markets, instead financing
itself through households and banks at reasonable and controllable
interest rates. The banks themselves should be put under the supervision
of citizens' committees, hence rendering the audit on the debt
permanent. In short, debt should be democratised. This, of course, is
the harder part, where elements of socialism are introduced at the very
core of the system. Yet, to counter the tyranny of debt on every aspect
of our lives, there is no alternative.
• This article was amended
on 10 June to say that Greece and Spain had been "harder hit" by the
sovereign debt crisis, not "hardly hit".
"As for the Republicans — how can one regard
seriously a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky
idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, steel their emotions
against decent human sympathy, cling to sordid and provincial ideals
exalting sheer acquisitiveness and condoning artificial hardship for the
non-materially-shrewd, dwell smugly and sentimentally in a distorted
dream-cosmos of outmoded phrases and principles and attitudes based on
the bygone agricultural-handicraft world, and revel in (consciously or
unconsciously) mendacious assumptions (such as the notion that real
liberty is synonymous with the single detail of unrestricted economic
license or that a rational planning of resource-distribution would
contravene some vague and mystical 'American heritage'…) utterly
contrary to fact and without the slightest foundation in human
experience? Intellectually, the Republican idea deserves the tolerance
and respect one gives to the dead."
