How it Works

Posted on February 22, 2013 by camelotkidd

You’ve heard me pontificate about propaganda enough, that I think a real life example is in order.

My wife, a health care worker, is sick and tired of co-workers and patients referring to the Affordable Care Act as Obamacare. And, who can blame her when the complaints she hears are based on a basic misunderstanding of the ACA.

The dominant narrative about President Obama’s signature health care reform, is that it is a socialist expansion of big-government. Of course, this narrative is completely at odds with reality. The intellectual underpinnings of the health care reform originated at the Heritage Foundation and it was first implemented in Massachusetts by Mitt Romney when he was governor.

The ACA, rather than aiding the American people, was primarily set up to benefit the health care industry.

“Is it any surprise that the woman who wrote the Affordable Care Act is now leaving the White House for a job with health care giant Johnson & Johnson? Liz Fowler worked for Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) during the drafting of the ACA and had the primary responsibility for authoring the legislation. After its passage, she migrated to the White House to help with implementation. Seems reasonable enough. However, it is important to note where she was before joining the staff of Senator Baucus. Yup, you guessed it…she was a bigwig at WellPoint, the nation’s second leading health insurance company with nearly 54 million policyholders.” 

Now that the ACA is becoming a reality, many of its defects are starting to become apparent. Employers are cutting back on employee hours so they don’t have to fund their health care. Republican governors are refusing to expand their Medicaid rosters–a crucial step in the implementation of the ACA. And health insurance companies are already raising rates.

Reporter, David Dayen outlines some other potential problems with the ACA as we move towards its implementation.

“Will the states and the federal government sufficiently create exchanges that automatically determine eligibility for anyone who accesses them? Will the feds, not expecting to have to take over the exchange process for the majority of states, prove up to the task (and find the funding)? Will the subsidies get delivered to insurance companies in a seamless way? Will we still see efforts at denying coverage or rescinding policies? Will eligible beneficiaries even know that they’re eligible for subsidies? Will the states with partisan leaders predisposed to fight Obamacare seek to sabotage the whole effort? Will Congress shift more costs onto individuals and states in ways that will cause states in particular to resist coverage? What if drug pricesstart to rise in relative terms, and the cost of health care overall expands in ways that the ACA cannot keep up with? Will the inevitable failures in implementation sour the public on the program? Will there ever be an opportunity to improve or tweak this program, given the political realities?” 

Ask yourself a question. Why didn’t President Obama push for an expansion of Medicare, a government health insurance program with a proven track record and low costs?

And, here we are at the heart of our propaganda system. The big lie of conservative media: Obama and Democrats are socialists, out to enslave American citizens in a vast web of government programs, like the ACA, that will sap their freedoms.

Obama didn’t push for single-payer or even a public option, because he’s not liberal or a Democrat in the traditional sense. And, the modern Democratic Party is anything but socialist. A more appropriate description would be corporate.

“Corporatism, of course, is a vague label, but in Democratic politics it typically refers to helping campaign contributors bust unions and dismantle environmental regulations, with the expectation that servile labor and environmental leaders will sit by as their movements are decimated.”

The Democrats get to pretend that they are liberal in order to get support and money from real liberals. Democrats are only liberal in relation to social issues. On economics and health care, not so much.

 “From the Democrats you get back-door privatization, like Obama’s Health Care act. Ask yourself — why didn’t Obama just offer a bill that expanded Medicare to everyone in the country? Answer: Because he wanted to shovel money into corporate (meaning, billionaire CEO) hands with a “public-private solution” to a public policy problem. This is always the Neoliberal “solution” — starve the government along with the Republicans, then sell public-private “deals” that screw the public while offering pretend or partial solutions.”

So what can we do?

We need to press for single-payer health care, or at least a public option. Look, good policy is good politics. Americans are acting negatively towards the ACA because instinctively they recognize that it will make their life harder, with its corporate mandate and paucity of actual coverage.

I’ll leave the last word to Avedon Carol.

“We can argue some about which is the biggest, most important issue, but it has to be understood that none of that matters as long as we don’t have democracy. The public has been pretty clear about what it wants, and the Hill has been pretty clear that it doesn’t care what we want. If we can’t figure out how to turn back into a democracy, this train is going to run right over us.“

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Think Globally, Act Locally

Posted on February 15, 2013 by camelotkidd

Air pollution horribly afflicts our western valley in the winter. For the past month, we’ve had the dubious distinction of having the worst air in the nation. Hurray!

But, this situation is also fraught with possibilities for change–the hacking, coughing, foul odor, and lack of visibility contribute to an acute and obvious problem. It should be a non-political issue that transcends traditional Republican/Democratic framing. A family values issue. In fact, a local mom was so concerned about the health affects of pollution on her daughter that she started Utah Moms for Clean Air.

“Mothers are in a special moral position to advocate for clean air. Our intent is simple: to ensure that our children, whose lives are entrusted to us, have a healthy environment in which to grow and flourish. Cooping them up indoors to avoid toxic air outside is not the solution.”

Utah Governor Gary Herbert has touted the Utah Clean Air Partnership as his voluntary solution to the dirty air.

Other groups, such as, Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment, are pressing for mandatory measures such as cutting industry emissions, more mass transit and bikes, working to eliminate wood and coal burning and battling destructive land use practices–sprawl.

Our local air pollution is also linked to the larger issue of global climate warming, caused by burning fossil-fuels. Hence, by acting to alleviate our own problem we can help the planet. Right?

Not so fast. Just because we have an obvious problem does not mean that we have the wherewithal to fix it. Like every other urgent crisis in our country, air pollution is ultimately a political problem. And like all the other political problems we face, there are powerful economic forces that do not want to change. The oil and gas industries, the coal industry, nuclear power, and land developers all find the status quo to be quite profitable, thank you very much. And, of course, our state legislators are much more responsive to these powerful economic actors than to we the people. Imagine that.

And, it’s not just powerful economic actors. There are ideological opponents. Our local Madame Defarge, Gayle Ruzicka, president of the conservative Utah Eagle Forum, said her study of climate change on the Internet led her to conclude “everybody disagrees” that the changing climate poses serious risks.

Ah, the Internet. Where everything you read is true. With Gayle, or other conservatives, if there is an issue that liberals are against, she must be for it, or if liberals are for it, she must be against it. Go team Red.

Global warming is also seen by conservatives as a backdoor assault on capitalism. Therefore global warming is a liberal plot to bring about Marxism. Or something.

However, change is afoot. Renewable energy, funded by federal and state subsidies has the potential to radically change the traditional fossil-fuel economic paradigm. This potential for radical change makes renewables threatening to the fossil-fuel status quo.

“Right-wing groups funded by the fossil-fuel industry and the billionaire Koch brothers are rolling out a nationwide assault to repeal state Renewable Electricity Standards (RES), a key component, along with such federal tax incentives as the wind production tax credit (PTC), in driving renewable energy growth in the United States.”

To have this sort of new economy based on renewable energy, you need government subsidies and government regulations.

“Having the standards is what enables the market to grow rapidly,” said Robert Pollin, a University of Massachusetts economics professor and co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute. He said that if states were to overturn these renewable standards, they would be “shooting themselves in the foot” because wind is roughly already at cost parity with coal and “a huge market opportunity.”

But, you know how much conservatives and corporations hate government regulations. Almost as much as they hate environmentalists.

“Pollin said that the standard argument from the right is, “Well, if you do these environmental things it’s bad for economic growth, it’s bad for jobs.”

“The tactic, is to pay for a bogus study that shows that the costs are prohibitive and it’s actually a job killer rather than job creator. Then find a champion in the state legislature who is more interested in supporting fossil-fuels and keep hammering away at that message.”

So, what can we do?

We have to participate. By acting locally to reduce our air pollution, we have the capability to help minimize global climate change. Ride your bike, utilize public transportation, and carpool.

Get involved. Visit: Utah Moms for Clean Air and Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment. And call the Governor.

Utah Governor Herbert Contact Information: 800-705-2464

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Modalities of Control

Posted on February 12, 2013 by camelotkidd

Why are American’s so docile in the face of persistent unemployment, record levels of foreclosure and a banana republic system of inequality?

One word–Debt.

“Workers who are unable to meet their debts, who are victimized by constantly rising interest rates that can climb to as high as 30 percent on credit cards, are far more likely to remain submissive and compliant. Debt peonage is and always has been a form of political control.”

Think about it. Your credit report is used to determine everything from a job prospect, to getting a security clearance, to even finding dating partners. For many young adults, starting out after college means hundreds of thousands of dollars of student loans to service, even if they can’t find a job.

“But with the reward for a college degree falling and default rates sky-rocketing, many students and their parents will end up as the student loan debt slaves.”

In the last 40 years wages have remained flat. To maintain a middle-class lifestyle, American’s have become trapped into a Web of Debt. And, it’s not just American citizens, but the US government as well.

“The United States is legally bankrupt, defined in the dictionary as being unable to pay one’s debts, being insolvent, or having liabilities in excess of a reasonable market value of assets held. By October 2006, the debt of the U.S. government had hit a breath-taking $8.5 trillion. Local, state and national governments are all so heavily in debt that they have been forced to sell off public assets to satisfy creditors. Crowded schools, crowded roads, and cutbacks in public transportation are eroding the quality of American life.”

Written by author Ellen Brown, Web of Debt, is a fascinating history of the banking cartel’s control of America and the world. Their aim was to control the political systems of respective countries through their control of the central banks.

“The key to their success was that they would control and manipulate the money system of a nation while letting it appear to be controlled by the government.”

The dirty little secret of finance, is that our money is loaned into existence by banks. But the US government could do this just as easily.

 “At one time, the right to issue money was the sovereign right of the king; but that right got usurped by private moneylenders.” 

The United States has created its own money before. During the Civil War, President Lincoln created “Greenbacks” to finance the war.

“These federal dollars were first issued by President Lincoln when he was faced with usurious interest rates in the 1860s. Lincoln had foiled the bankers by funding the government with U.S. Notes that did not accrue interest and did not have to be paid back to the banks.”

As you might remember from your history book, he was assassinated, and the US reverted to a gold backed dollar, controlled by the bankers. I’m sure it was just a coincidence.

“The bankers countered that allowing the government to issue money would be dangerously inflationary. What they failed to reveal was that their own paper banknotes were themselves highly inflationary, since the same gold was “lent” many times over, effectively counterfeiting it; and when the bankers lent their paper money to the government, the government wound up heavily in debt for something it could have created itself.”

As we debate austerity, and listen to Republican congress critters caterwaulling about how any day we’ll turn into Greece, it’s useful to remember that we have alternatives to this system of private finance.

“If governments everywhere are in debt, who are they in debt to? The answer is that they are in debt to private banks. The “cruel hoax” is that governments are in debt for money created on a computer screen, money they could have created themselves.”

We the people, in order to create a more perfect union… You know how that goes. As a representative democracy, there is nothing more important to sovereignty than control of the money supply.

“The dollar is a national resource that belongs to the people. It was an original invention of the early American colonists, a new form of paper currency backed by the “full faith and credit” of the people. But a private banking cartel has taken over its issuance, turning debt into money and demanding that it be paid back with interest. Taxes and a crushing federal debt have been imposed by a financial ruling class that keeps the people entranced and enslaved.”

Read Web of Debt and tell your friends. We have a choice going forward. To either become educated and organized, or to become serfs. And, you know how I feel about becoming a serf.

Fuck you. I won’t do what you tell me.

Update: “First, it is impossible to justify the conventional view that fiat money should operate almost exclusively via today’s system of private borrowing and lending.” 

Update: David Dayen has a great idea–bring back postal banking.

 

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Dollarocracy

Posted on February 6, 2013 by camelotkidd

A friend asked me a great question the other day: Is neo-feudalism just fascism?

According to the 1983 American Heritage Dictionary, fascism is:

“A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism.”

Thom Hartmann and Sam Sacks, in “No, Actually, This Is What a Fascist Looks Like, explain fascism’s historical significance.

“Fascism originated in Italy, and Mussolini claims to have invented the word itself. It was actually his ghostwriter, Giovanni Gentile, who invented it and defined it in the Encyclopedia Italiana in this way: “Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.”

“In other words, fascism is corporate government – a Libertarian’s wet dream. It’s a government in which the Atlas’s of industry are given free rein to control the economy, just how they’re regulated, how much they pay in taxes, how much they pay their workers. “

So, how did I define neo-feudalism?

“Neo-feudalism is the resort to a private-public structure of governance, where the wealthy and corporations use the government for their own devices.”

Fascism and neo-feudalism sound very similar. But, because we’re talking about America, land of the free, home of the brave, we can never describe it in those terms. Nor would most Americans entertain such a concept; we have an amazing system of advertising, p.r. and propaganda to largely obscure this reality.

Contrary to this pro-business propaganda with its ode to free markets, and hostility to government regulations, American corporations have long welcomed the “dead hand of the state,” strongly advocating for federal government intervention to address the problems of economic downturns, depressions and, crucially, plunging profits due to cutthroat competition.

“Government involvement in the accumulation process was inescapable, and was to be secured only by deliberate class-concerted mobilization aimed at securing the state for the interests of big business.”

It has only been when the federal government has intervened in the interests of workers that there has been hostility to regulation and a corresponding outbreak of rhetoric about the evils of “big government.”

“When the New Deal-Great Society period 1949 – 1973 evidenced an influential labor movement, several large-scale labor actions and the first and only 40-year downward distribution of income from the top 1 percent to the rest in the nation’s history, elites perceived this as a major crisis and mobilized in the mid-1970s to seize control of the state in order to undo the social programs and business regulations of the Golden Age, paving the way for the neoliberal macroeconomic reconfiguration superintended by Reagan, Clinton, Bush pere, Bush fils and Obama.”

See the Powell Memo for more on how elites plotted their comeback.

I first observed this dichotomy between anti-government propaganda and reality when in college I discovered historian Gabriel Kolko, and read his masterpiece, The Triumph of Conservatism. It has been illuminating to re-read it.

“Although specific conditions varied from industry to industry, internal problems that could be solved only by political means were the common
denominator in those industries whose leaders advocated greater federal regulation. Ironically, contrary to the consensus of historians, It was not the existence of monopoly that caused the federal government to intervene in the economy, but the lack of it.”

It’s time to acknowledge frankly and honestly that the United States Government is run for the benefit of corporations and the wealthy. We have an all-American synthesis between government and business, that while not quite fascism, could rightfully be called a dollarocracy. Or maybe, neo-feudalism. And like fascist states, the US maintains this system through belligerent nationalism, expressed through a War on Terror, that shows no sign of ending, ever.

Look, I’m not a utopian. I’ve undertaken this neo-feudalism project at CK with the goal of illuminating the real political economy of the United States. Lord knows, the mainstream media isn’t doing it. They’re busy fellating the plutocracy, or showing the latest Honey Boo Boo freak show.

“The historical unfolding of American capitalism has put the class character of the State squarely on the political agenda. It has been the plutocracy’s top priority for a long time. It is clearer to more Americans than ever that the entire political establishment is unprepared and unwilling to manage the economy and the State in the interests of working people. The ruling-class concerns of the neoliberal State homogenizes policy options and renders standard Party politics otiose and obsolete. An effective Left political program must make available to its constituency a radically revised conception of what it means to do politics.”

Mea Culpa:
Don’t know what I was smoking last week when I said to eschew national politics. We have to get involved at every level. The elite has captured the US government to the detriment of everyone else. We have to take it back.

That is all.

 

 

 
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Not a Serf

Posted on January 30, 2013 by camelotkidd

Neo-feudalism is on the march in the United States. The US Government has been largely captured by the financial industry, and is operating against the rest of us. This business/government alliance is the 1% that Occupy Wall Street railed against. If you need a face to attach to this nefarious cabal, think of “Little Timmah” Geithner.

One of the key methods that the 1% uses to enslave the rest of us is debt.

“Today, we have entered a new phase.  What might be called capitalist underdevelopment and once again debt has emerged as both the central mode of capital accumulation and a principal mechanism of servitude.  Warren Buffett (of all people) has predicted that, in the coming decades, the United States is more likely to turn into a “sharecropper society” than an “ownership society.”

“In our time, the financial sector has enriched itself by devouring the productive wherewithal of industrial America through debt, starving the public sector of resources, and saddling ordinary working people with every conceivable form of consumer debt.”

This all sounds hopeless, I know, but, how do we fight back?

1) Don’t be a serf. Resist this imposition of neo-feudalism. Take charge of your life. You are a citizen, not just a fucking consumer. In Civil Disobedience, Henry David Thoreau argues that citizens should not permit governments to dull their consciences, and that they have a duty to avoid allowing their consent to enable the government to make them the agents of injustice.

2) Avoid “rents.”

“As Lenin and others predicted, industrial capitalism has turned into finance capitalism. Finance capitalism does not finance or create new real investments such as manufacturing facilities. Instead, finance capitalism functions as a rentier. It leverages debt and extracts interest payments (and today taxpayer bailouts for its over-leveraged gambles). Finance capitalism flourishes by converting more and more of society’s resources into payments to itself…the result is that bankers now receive the rents (a form of unearned income) that once flowed to the landed aristocracy. Unlike the aristocracy, who were dispossessed of their rents, the bankers have not been.

Take your money out of the bank, especially if it is one of the “too big to fail” banks. Join a credit union. And, it’s not just banks, our country is overrun with rentiers: Comcast, Microsoft, Walmart, AT&T, etc. Find alternatives.

3) Take part in a community. Humans are communal, act like it. Remember, the powers that be would like nothing better than to have us all alone in front of the TV. Turn it off.

4) Plant a garden. It’s a small step, but it gives you a measure of control, and there is nothing better than fresh tomatoes and basil with dinner in the summer.

5) Exercise. Not only will you get in better shape and be healthier, but it offers the best anti-depressant. And it’s empowering.

6) Learn a sport. It will provide a entertaining way to exercise. If you chose an extreme sport, like this, or this, or this, you can risk your life, like I do. Risking your life is exhilarating, but it also puts some of the petty things we stress about into perspective.

7) Get involved with local politics. Notice, I didn’t say get involved with national politics, where Team D is almost as bad as Team R, and they are both down with neo-feudalism.

8) Stay positive. Understand what is going on without becoming cynical.  Cynicism is paralyzing. Again, that is what the powers that be would like.

9) Don’t become spiteful. When you are spiteful of your neighbors, it feeds into the divide and rule paradigm. Find what Alex Cockburn calls your “pure hatred.” By that, Cockburn means, hate the real villains that are turning this country into a “banana republic.”

10) Love someone. I’m starting to sound like Dr. Phil, but having a partner makes life so much more enjoyable. As the saying goes–Live, Laugh, Love.

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Red Queen’s Race

Posted on January 24, 2013 by camelotkidd

Here at CK, I’m always thinking about our present dilemma. How did we come to an arrangement between neo-conservatives and neo-liberals to enact neo-feudalism?

Lewis Carroll well described our present milieu years ago in his unequaled--Through The Looking Glass.

“Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else — if you run very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.”

“A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”

The best internet writer, you’ve never heard of, Stirling Newberry, lays out the economic policy of the US–running to keep in the same place, and eloquently describes it as the Red Queen’s Race.

“That basis was the paper for oil economy. In this economy the United States generated paper based on development arbitrage and technology, which Arabs bought, and in return they sold us oil for that paper which we were to turn around and use to create more paper.”

“It served, in a way, both interests. First it gave the oil to the old sprawl system, and for the Arabs it provided an umbrella of protection and stability, as well as assets for the time when their oil no longer commanded the same premium that it did then. The internal response in the US was to create a Red Queen’s Race, where it was made harder and harder to own the assets of America, at the same time, the Arab states grew socially conservative, and attempted to thwart the rise of a middle class that would demand imports and capitalization. It was an agreement by the conservative forces in both systems, and in turn both used it to drive their respective political systems to the right, even though underlying technological and social trends were for greater liberalization and freedom.”

“It is this dynamic, and not any of its subsidiary moves, that is important. The implementation of trade, banking deregulation, tax policy are all means by which the United States and the West tried to stay one step ahead of oil. The roots of this crisis are then the demand to keep the sprawlconomy going, the decision to engage in the paper for oil economy, and the de facto result of making it so that the wealthy, rather than the society as a whole, would hold the paper. In short, our rich, had to stay ahead of their rich. This created the most important race to the bottom: of top tax rates. It is impossible to tax our wealthy more than their wealthy taxed themselves.”

“The 1% solution to the Red Queen’s race was to allow our top 1% to pile up asset inflation to match the petro-dollar acquisition of assets. The Iraq war was a recognition that, to keep the Republican base, oil was needed, and to keep control of the top, it had to be in American hands.”

“As with many things, what we got was socialism, protectionism, Keynesianism and liberalism – for the Republican Coalition. This was the practical political realization of the post-Reagan Republican Party. They couldn’t afford to buy landslides any more, but they could afford to buy enough of the cheap states to control Congress and the Presidency. With the occasional assist from the Supreme Court.”

Stirling says the recent financial crisis was anything but accidental.

“These events are not a short term bump on the road, but the culmination of the decision a generation ago to use paper to buy oil, to inflate that paper by allowing those at the very highest reaches of a social elite to engage in a “race to the top” with the suppliers of oil. This system was accepted by both parties, and it created a neo-liberal era where any restriction to creating paper wealth had to be removed. This was not a matter of left or right, everyone was a neo-conservative, and every one was a neo-liberal.”

In another dense, must read in full, post, Stirling Newberry articulates a post-petroleum thesis, with an amazing chart depicting the political forces influencing our country as: Confederates, Moderates and Progressives.

“The present break down of political forces follows three different views of this thesis. The first view is that the land casino merely needs to be allowed to run. This is the “Confederate” wing of American politics. The second view is that the land casino can continue longer, but only if carefully managed, this is the “Moderate” view. The third view is that it requires careful management to transition away from the land casino, or the “Progressive” view.”

Stirling goes on to well describe this fucked-up political economy. And, I really mean fucked-up! Writing this, as I am, with the worst air pollution in the country, wracking our western valley.

“The American economy exists in the “Petroleum Paradigm.” That paradigm is visible in a host of ways, the fundamental idea is that value is created by turning petroleum into consumption, and using petroleum driven transportation to act as a “wind” that expands the size of the suburban land bubble. Think of it like a balloon, with people driving being the pressure that keeps it inflated.”

“This is the first thing that people must realize about the petroleum paradigm: we are paying very high indirect taxes. One form of taxation is the stagnation tax, where governments do not stimulate the economy to full employment, because doing so would radically increase their borrowing costs. Thus ordinary people have much lower wages, much lower job prospects, and much less stability. The millions out of work now, are paying the stagnation tax. Another form of taxation is insurance company profits. These profits go into markets, such as stocks, which raise the prices of stocks, which foreign investors buy. The 30% increase in cost of US health care over what it could be, and the large swathe of uninsured, are a tax that we pay to keep capital flowing in, so that we can turn around and borrow. That borrowing is used for consumption, which seems cheap in the United States, but only because the taxes that pay for it are disembodied. In the rest of the developed world consumption is taxed to pay for education and health care, in the United States, health care and education are taxed to pay for consumption.”

And, we get air pollution– indirect tax. Indirect, my ass! Cough, Cough.

“As long as the possibility of starting up the land casino is there, as long as the present generation can believe that the next generation will pay heavily for access to it, there will be no substantial change in the American political landscape. The question will be between two wings of the political spectrum over which can best maintain the present system.”

That is why we elected Barak Obama as President. Twice.

“Financial elite money and support shifted to the Moderates(Democratic Party), on the proviso that the Moderates did not disturb the Confederate architecture of George W. Bush. No major part of the Bush legacy has been overturned by Obama. None. No major part of the Bush legacy is on the calendar to be overturned. None. Obama’s money mandate is to Do Bush Right.”

What, dear readers, has been the result of doing Bush right? Eww! Typing that felt really dirty.

Another internet writer, Ian Welsh, who like Stirling Newberry, got his start at The Agonist, makes the connection to neo-feudalism.

“The reasons are simple enough. Inheritance taxes have been weakened and progressive taxation has been slashed. The primary education system, funded by local tax dollars, systemically favors people who live in wealthy neighbourhoods, while university tuition has grown far faster than inflation at the same time as student aid has been slashed to the bone. The extremely rich have bought the government and use it to arrogate money to themselves, either through preferential laws—for example, Medicare Part D or the Bush tax cuts; or directly—for example, the 15 trillion spent on the financial crisis, the vast majority of which went in effect to the rich.Power is passed from father and mother to daughter and son, with Congressional seats being passed on like some sort of inheritance and major network spots likewise going to the children of the influential. Perhaps there are no titles, but when, for example, Luke Russert, a man with no meaningful accomplishments of his own save being the offspring of late NBC news anchor Tim Russert, is hired as a national news commentator at age 22 over others who have worked harder, who have done more, and are vastly better qualified, it’s hard to see his inheritance as all that different from a Baron passing his rights, lands and chattel to his son.

All men are created equal. But, as Orwell noted in Animal Farm, some are more equal than others.”

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A clean get away

Posted on January 15, 2013 by camelotkidd

Anyone who says “crime doesn’t pay” hasn’t been paying attention to the behavior of the American elite in the 21st century. Historians of the future, when the study this era, will marvel at the rampant criminality and official impunity, that for all intents and purposes has enabled our very own “feral elite” to stage a clean get away.

In discussing our descent into neo-feudalism here at Camelotkidd, I’ve focussed primarily on the contributions of the neo-liberal elite. But I’ve been remiss in acknowledging the contribution of the neo-conservative elite.

A post at Eschaton the other day reminded me that we’re coming up on the ten year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. As Duncan says–“There were about 20 different reasons for invading Iraq, none of them good or true. Still back then it was people like me who were treated as lunatics. The Iraq war turned out to be a bigger disaster most of us imagined, and yet we’ve all just agreed to move on. Bygones.”

The neo-cons elite who brought about the illegal invasion and destruction of Iraq have paid no price. In fact, they have gone on to prosper and are still a potent force in American foreign policy, as the confirmation battle of Chuck Hagel can attest. They have demonstrated conclusively that advocacy for war is never a setback for you career in Washington.

The only ones that have paid a price are the whistleblowers who have exposed this rampant criminality. The most prominent example is Bradley Manning, but there are others. “People like John Kiriakou and Thomas Drake have had their careers destroyed and their lives torn apart simply for telling uncomfortable truths that expose corruption and lawlessness at the highest levels.”

I’m always on the lookout for intellectual underpinnings of this grand new order. So the question I’ve been pondering–is there a common link between the neo-libs and the neo-cons? In jest I’ve come to express this as a mathematical formula: neo-conservatism + neo-liberalism = neo-feudalism (NC + NL = NF)

There is, in fact, a connection. The intellectual incubator for neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism can be found at the University of Chicago. The University of Chicago was financed by John D. Rockefeller, prompting writer Upton Sinclair to call it “The University of Standard Oil.”

Professor Leo Strauss, the godfather of neo-conservatism, taught political philosophy at the University of Chicago in their Department of Political Science. And Milton Friedman, the American maestro of neo-liberalism, taught economics at the University of Chicago Business School for three decades.

Google “Chicago Boys” for a taste of their policies.

Just to complete the connection between neo-libs, neo-cons, and the present Administration: President Obama was a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, rather than a Socialist–Muslim–Kenyan. Hah! Take that “Birthers.”

After getting away scott free, this partnership of neo-lib and neo-con elite(they actually share a lot of common interests and goals) are not content to enjoy the fruits of their crimes. Oh no. These criminals are pointing to the deficit(largely caused by their crimes) and are busily advocating austerity. After all, someone, certainly not them, must pay for the crimes.

Economist Michael Hudson makes the same point as yours truly. “Today’s post-bubble austerity blames the victim, taxing consumers and wage earners to provide governments with enough revenue to pay banks for their financial losses and misdeeds. So matters are brought back to the classic political issue of Who/Whom. Who will absorb the losses – at whose expense? Will government rule on behalf of the economy, or its creditors?”

I don’t have to be prescient to know how that will turn out. The creditors, of course. You and I will just have to move out when they come to foreclose.

Allowing our elite, whether neo-conservative 0r neo-liberal, to break the law with impunity and benefit from it hastens the neo-feudal trajectory of America. IMF economist Simon Johnson still has the best description for where we’re headed– “a banana republic.”

Update: Ian Welsh shows what happens when a society chooses a bifurcated legal system.

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The Antidote

Posted on January 8, 2013 by camelotkidd

In the United States we have a breathtaking system of propaganda that is directly enabling our descent into neo-feudalism. This propaganda, disseminated by the dominant corporate media, is astonishingly effective in its depiction and framing of economic issues. And this sort of misleading economic reporting is everywhere. There’s not a day that goes by without some new revelation of falsehood posing as official wisdom. From the New York Times and the Washington Post, or, as I sardonically refer to them–Pravda and Izvestia, to the administration of Barak Obama, which has been shamelessly shilling for the “too big to fail banks,” to the Wall Street Journal, with some Pete Peterson clone explaining why the American people must sacrifice their first born.

It’s all lies.

Thankfully the internet provides an antidote to shoddy, ideological and misleading economic reporting in the form of Naked Capitalism. Creator, Yves Smith runs a first rate economic blog where one can read alternatives to the neo-liberal orthodoxy propounded by the corporate media. At NC, I’ve been exposed to the alternative economic world of Modern Monetary Theory, and to economist Michael Hudson and law professor William Black, at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, where they teach.

At NC, I’ve also had a chance to read political theorist and former congressional staffer Matt Stoller, who has been invaluable in explaining how official Washington D.C. corruption works. His latest story, detailing the hidden subsidies in the ‘fiscal cliff” bill, has even caused such a stir that it’s been picked up by mainstream media. Matt points to this fact to argue that vigilant citizens can start to make difference.

So get over to Naked Capitalism pronto and take the antidote. And if you can, donate, like I did. Thanks Yves.

Update: Matt Stoller is on a roll. Today, he makes the case that American neo-feudalism is hugely enabled by the monopolies and oligopolies that exist in all facets of our day to day life. “Antitrust is the core problem here. Without restraint on behavior, corporate executives will work to grab as much market and political power as possible, because only market power and political power allows them to have pricing leverage without investment, risk, or innovation. Competition is the enemy of these businessmen. America has a long tradition of monopoly power and anti-monopoly sentiment and activism. From the progressive era of Teddy Roosevelt to the early 1980s, America had a strong tradition of antitrust regulation rooted in the understanding that too much market power led to inefficiency and price gouging. This tradition ended under Reagan. Since this dramatic shift in antitrust enforcement, corporate power in every industry from cable to railroads to rental cars to banking to health insurance to pipelines has skyrocketed. The result has been inefficiency and price gouging. American electric utilities have dramatically reduced the number of people they have that can repair power lines, which is why it took so long to restore power after Hurricane Sandy. Increasingly, services provided by American corporate oligopolies are terrible… We know how to fix this. It’s called antitrust. And all we have to do is dust off some old law books, decide that greed isn’t the only core value we believe in, and get to work.”

Update 2: At Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi’s new article makes depressingly clear the federal government, in response to the Wall Street crash has “…made lying on behalf of our biggest and most corrupt banks the official policy of the United States government.” On a brighter note, he has one of the funniest quotes I’ve read in some time about the horrible decisions that were made.

“The result is one of those deals where one wrong decision early on blossoms into a lush nightmare of unintended consequences. We thought we were just letting a friend crash at the house for a few days; we ended up with a family of hillbillies who moved in forever, sleeping nine to a bed and building a meth lab on the front lawn.”

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It’s What’s for Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner

Posted on January 3, 2013 by camelotkidd

Neo-feudalism that is.

We have mentioned neo-feudalism here at Camelotkidd enough that I think an explanation is in order. Let’s start with feudalism.

My New Oxford American Dictionary, defines feudalism as: “Historically the dominant social system in medieval Europe, in which the nobility held lands from the Crown in exchange for military service, and vassals were in turn tenants of the nobles, while the peasants or serfs were obliged to live on their lords land and give him homage, labor, and a share of the produce, notionally in exchange for military protection.”

So what is neo-feudalism?

Neo-feudalism is the resort to a private-public structure of governance, where the wealthy and corporations use the government for their own devices. (The demonization of government since Reagan was always meant to obscure this)

In his masterpiece, “The Predator State“, James K. Galbraith refers to the merging of corporate and State power as that

“coalition of relentless opponents of the regulatory framework……whose major lines of business compete with or encroach on the principal public functions of the enduring New Deal. It is a coalition, in other words, that seeks to control the state partly in order to prevent the assertion of public purpose and partly to poach on the lines of activity that past public purpose has established. They are firms that have no intrinsic loyalty to any country. They operate as a rule on a transnational basis, and naturally come to view the goals and objectives of each society in which they work as just another set of business conditions, more or less inimical to the free pursuit of profit….. As an ideological matter, it is fair to say that the very concept of public purpose is alien to, and denied by, the leaders and the operatives of this coalition.”

According to Wikipedia, neo-feudalism: “is a division of labour in which the state remains a key source of security through its access to violence, while non-state resources are mobilized to establish security networks that operate according to risk management principles. Among the clearest indicators of this is the difference between the security strategies employed within the new feudal domains that the emergence of ‘mass private property’ has established — for instance the security practices within places like Disney World — and the way in which poor neighbourhoods are policed through the use of target hardening strategies by police agencies and by private security agencies contracted to state agencies.[1]

“–As such, the commodification of policing and security operates to cement (sometimes literally) and exacerbate social and spatial inequalities generated elsewhere; serving to project, anticipate and bring forth a tribalised, ‘neo-feudal’ world of private orders in which social cohesion and common citizenship have collapsed.[9]“

This prescient Wikipedia depiction continues. “A primary characteristic of neofeudalism is that individuals’ public lives are increasingly governed by business corporations, as Martha K. Huggins finds:

Besides public and private property, there is now an intermediate status that Shearing and Stenning label “mass public property,” where public activities take place within privately owned facilities that are guarded primarily by private security backed up by the formal police system. […]
Whether in Los Angeles, New York City, or Sao Paulo, as increasing amounts of public space become the real or de facto property of privileged apartment owners and business-run complexes like shopping centers and malls, these areas come to be defined, adjudicated, and regulated by the laws on private property and commercial legislation and practices. With more and more public life now taking place on privately owned mass public property, the definition of “deviance” within such areas turns on the particular logic of private ownership, profit-making, and resource protection. With “security” tailored to protect such spaces, social control agents shift their attention “from discovering and blaming wrongdoers to eliminating sources of…threats in the future”. Thus, as relatively heterogeneous urban public spaces are transformed into symbolically gated homogeneous private regions, and overburdened and fiscally strapped governments transfer responsibility for protecting and regulating “mass private property” to the private security forces attached to it, a “new class of ‘offenders’ [emerges] — those who create opportunities for threats against the interests of the client”. Such special interest social control fosters regions that resemble the “free trade zones” in developing countries, where international and national industry receive generous tax and political incentives from nation-states to establish or expand their business operations. Within such areas — whether designated “free-trade zones,” or as is more common, simply city blocks and shopping malls — business and industry are the de facto government. Shearing and Stenning label this a “new feudalism” and characterize such areas as huge tracts of property and associated public spaces that are controlled and policed by private corporations. These corporations develop an extensive security apparatus there, of which “uniformed security personnel are only the supervisory tip of the iceberg.” Out of such a marriage of business and government, a symbiosis emerges between the commercial sector’s own private security forces and the local government’s police forces.”

A pre-Christmas release of FBI documents, in response to a Freedom of Information lawsuit initiated by The Partnership for Civil Justice, shows how the FBI, in partnership with the Department of Homeland Security, engaged in a crackdown on Occupy Wall Street. The FBI collusion with the nations largest banks depicts an emerging neo-feudal structure that should be viewed with alarm. “If you’ve been following the story of the official response to Occupy Wall Street, it was apparent that the 17 city paramilitary crackdown was coordinated; it came out later that the Department of Homeland Security was the nexus of that operation. The deep FBI involvement is a new and ugly addition to this picture.”

Partnership for Civil Justice executive director Maya Verheyden-Hilliard says, “The documents we’ve obtained show that the FBI was acting as a private intelligence and protective agency for Wall Street and the banks against people who are engaged in First Amendment-protected free speech activities.”

Following this revelation about how the government is working at the behest of Wall Street and the financial industry, it’s fair to ask–so who are the new nobility in our milieu of neo-feudalism?

Michael Hudson, a research professor of economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City, says that, of course, the new nobility is made up of members of the financial industry. “What’s basically wrong is that the financial system is running the government. For years, Republicans and Democrats have both said that a strong government, careful regulation and progressive taxation are markers on the road to serfdom. The politicians and neoliberal economists who write their patter say, “Let’s take planning out of the hands of government and put it in the ‘free market.’” But every market is planned by someone or other. If governments step aside, then planning passes into the hands of the bankers, because of their key role in allocating credit.”

Hudson goes on to show how they are impoverishing the rest of us in his latest series of articles at Naked Capitalism. “So despite the fact that the financial system is broken, it has gained control over public policy to sustain and even obtain tax favoritism for a dysfunctional overgrowth of bank credit. Unlike the progress of science and technology, debt is not part of nature. It is a social construct. The financial sector has politicized it by pressing to privatize economic rent rather than collect it as the tax base. This financialization of rent-extracting opportunities does not reflect a natural or inevitable evolution of “the market.” It is a capture of market structures and fiscal policy. Bank lobbyists have campaigned to shift the economic arena to the political sphere of lawmaking and tax policy, with side battlegrounds in the mass media and universities to capture the hearts and minds of voters to believe that the quickest and most efficient way to build up wealth is by bank credit and debt leverage.”

Even with the “financial cliff” averted, President Obama is still calling for more deficit reduction. But what exactly does that portend for the economy going forward into 2013?

Economist, Michael Hudson explains: “Wall Street lobbyists blame unemployment and the loss of industrial competitiveness on government spending and budget deficits – especially on social programs – and labor’s demand to share in the economy’s rising productivity. The myth (perhaps we should call it junk economics) is that (1) governments should not run deficits (at least, not by printing their own money), because (2) public money creation and high taxes (at least on the wealthy) cause prices to rise. The cure for economic malaise (which they themselves have caused), is said to be less public spending, along with more tax cuts for the wealthy, who euphemize themselves as “job creators.” Demanding budget surpluses, bank lobbyists insist that austerity can enable private-sector debts to be paid.”

“The reality is that when banks load the economy down with debt, this leaves less to spend on domestic goods and services while driving up housing prices (and hence the cost of living) with reckless credit creation on looser lending terms. Yet on top of this debt deflation, bank lobbyists urge fiscal deflation: budget surpluses rather than pump-priming deficits. The effect is to further reduce private-sector market demand, shrinking markets and employment. Governments fall deeper into distress, and are told to sell off land and natural resources, public enterprises, and other assets. This creates a lucrative market for bank loans to finance privatization on credit. This explains why financial lobbyists back the new buyers’ right to raise the prices they charge for basic needs, creating a united front to endorse rent extraction. The effect is to enrich the financial sector owned by the 1% in ways that indebt and privatize the economy at large – individuals, business and the government itself.”

Welcome to neo-feudalism bitches! Eat up. But, don’t you dare protest. The FBI is watching.

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Bowling Alone for Columbine

Posted on December 22, 2012 by camelotkidd

The world hasn’t ended yet, it just sometimes feels like it has.

In reading about the terrible massacre in Newtown Connecticut, and the responses to it by various political actors, it struck me that the gun culture in this country has a direct relation to the neo-feudalism I discuss regularly here at Camelotkidd.

When I grew up here in America, it was common for one parent, usually a father, to have a good job that paid the bills, provided a pension and healthcare, and allowed the other parent to stay home and raise the kids. There was also enough time to volunteer for church or school, coach Little League or be a Cub Scout den-mother. No longer. These days, Americans are under tremendous economic stress with both parents having to work, leaving little time for child rearing let alone community activities. They have to labor in a workplace that doesn’t provide nearly enough jobs, deal with horrible bosses who treat them like shit, and a corporate employer  who is realizing all their gains in productivity. The neo-liberal solution has been to take on more and more debt, which adds to the stress. Consequently, we have a “pressure cooker society awash in guns.”

Mark Ames trenchant tome about workplace shootings, Going Postal, makes the argument that these sort of mass shootings are a recent phenomenon. According to Ames, these sorts of massacres have only been occurring since the Reagan administration and the adoption of neo-liberal economic policies. These sorts of economic policies have hit white working-class males especially hard. And, no surprise, white males are the ones pulling the trigger in these, all too frequent, mass murders.

That is why I find it more than ironic that the father of Newtown killer Adam Lanza, was a highly paid executive at General Electric. General Electric, under former CEO Jack Welsh, led the way in the sorts of “downsizing” and “off-shoring” that has decimated the jobs of these white working class males. Welch was known as “Neutron Jack” for his propensity for firing workers and leaving behind the factories. Welch often spoke about how given the choice, all his factories would be located on barges, so they could be moved to wherever the most desperate, cheapest labor existed.

These economic policies that Jack Welsh and GE  pioneered have been extremely detrimental to the majority of Americans. Policies that were largely enacted by using the oldest trick in the ruling elite playbook–divide and rule. Americans have been pitted against each other by race, class, ethnicity, gender and political identity.

Books such as Bowling Alone, have missed the real ramifications of such an atomization in the larger political-economy–deliberate policies of control by our new class of neo-feudal rulers. Also ignored is the elite intellectual embrace of the sort of Randian hyper-individualism where everyone is responsible for their outcome in life. We got a glimpse of this sort of thinking in the recent presidential campaign, where Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan made infamous remarks before donors about how they really feel about their fellow citizens. With the sort of elimination rhetoric like moocher and parasite bandied about, it’s no wonder that Americans view each other with suspicion and fear.

Firmin Debrubander, in his article entitled The Freedom of an Armed Society, argues that guns increase this polorazation and make us less free. “…nothing suits power so well as extreme individualism…political and corporate interests aim at nothing less than “individualization,” since it is far easier to manipulate a collection of discrete and increasingly independent individuals than a community. Guns undermine just that — community. Their pervasive, open presence would sow apprehension, suspicion, mistrust and fear, all emotions that are corrosive of community and civic cooperation. To that extent, then, guns give license to autocratic government.”

According to Debrubander, “our gun culture promotes a fatal slide into extreme individualism. It fosters a society of atomistic individuals, isolated before power — and one another — and in the aftermath of shootings such as at Newtown, paralyzed with fear. That is not freedom, but quite its opposite. And as the Occupy movement makes clear, also the demonstrators that precipitated regime change in Egypt and Myanmar last year, assembled masses don’t require guns to exercise and secure their freedom, and wield world-changing political force.”

As we have deconstructed America, we have created an armed, fearful society. Quite the opposite of  the “land of the free–home of the brave.”

What can we do about our gun culture? Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism offers some thoughts.

And, Charles Pierce has an excellent idea on how to hold gun manufacturers accountable for the damage their products do.

Update: The NRA just called for more guns in schools to protect us from guns in schools. Who could have predicted–an organization that exists to lobby for the gun industry coming up with a plan to sell more guns?

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