For the Record

George Bush is an idiot

For the record, George Bush is an idiot.   Not just an idiot---the kind you feel sorry for---but a complete and unabashed idiot---the kind you rightly despise.

"My job is a decision-making job. And as a result, I make a lot of decisions," the president said.

He elaborated on that point later.

"I delegate to good people. I always tell Condi Rice, `I want to remind you, Madam Secretary, who has the Ph.D. and who was the C student. And I want to remind you who the adviser is and who the president is.'

I got a lot of Ph.D.-types and smart people around me who come into the Oval Office and say, `Mr. President, here's what's on my mind.' And I listen carefully to their advice. But having gathered the device (sic), I decide, you know, I say, `This is what we're going to do.' And it's `Yes, sir, Mr. President.' And then we get after it, implement policy."

Astonishing.   A complete, unabashed idiot of the magnitude of George Bush is---get this---president of the U.S.  Even ignoring all the destruction and devastation he and his fellow right-wingers have wrought on the U.S. and any country or people in their sights, the fact that---by whatever hook and crook---such a complete, unabashed idiot became president of the U.S. is itself enough to establish that the U.S. has entered its period of ultimate decline and fall.

And who are the compliciters saying "Yes, sir, Mr. President" to this complete, unabashed idiot?

Where did all the good people go?

When the basic illusions have been exhausted...

[What follows is from John Cusack's interview with Naomi Klein, a journalist in the tradition of Robert Fisk and Seymour Hersh, and author of recent articles and a book on Disaster Capitalism.]

Cusack: One of my favorite quotes is from Arthur Miller, who said: "An era can be considered over when its basic illusions have been exhausted."  And with The Shock Doctrine, you are basically trying to shatter and obliterate the illusion of the neo-liberal or neo-con fundamentalist free market -- this official narrative wherein we not only are supposed to worship free markets that really aren't free, we must actually kill to feed them.

What the book rightly asks is what many have felt for a very long time: shouldn't we make a moral choice that you either make defense policy or you profit from it? I think that kind of transparency would be very important to have in the public sphere. Those people who go on CNN and are treated as impartial statesmen when, in reality, the book -- which is triple footnoted and sourced -- suggests otherwise. They did hold their former jobs...I guess by defintion they are statesmen....but if we are compelled to be honest we know they are other things as well... I'm speaking of people like George Shultz or Richard Perle.

Klein: Right.  If we look at who the real intellectual engines of this war are, we'd see a web of people who are not simply the statesmen they appear to me but card-carrying members of the disaster capitalism complex -- shareholders, board-members and directors of companies that profit directly and enormously from war and other disasters --

Cusack: Who would these people be..?

Klein: Well, for instance, the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq was a propaganda arm of the Bush administration, publicly making the case for the invasion of Iraq.  And it was founded by Bruce Jackson, a vice president of Lockheed Martin who had been out of his job for just three months.  Jackson stacked the committee with old colleagues from Lockheed -- Charles Kupperman, Lockheed Martin's vice president for space and strategic missiles was on it, and so was Douglas Graham, Lockheed's director of defense systems. And even though the committee was formed at the explicit request of the White House to make the case for war in the public mind, no one had to step down from Lockheed or sell his shares. Which was certainly good for committee members, since Lockheed's share price jumped 145 percent thanks to the war they helped engineer -- from $41 in March 2003 to $102 in February 2007. The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq was chaired by George Shultz, who wrote op-eds and went on TV beating the drums, and was presented just as this respected statesman. But Shultz hasn't been in office for decades.  And in the meantime, he'd been working for Bechtel -- at the time he was calling for the invasion, he was still on its board, and since Bechtel is a privately held company, we don't know anything about his holdings. We do know that Bechtel was one of the biggest winners of the reconstruction game in Iraq, landing $2.3-billion in contracts.

Cusack: How about James Baker and the $1 billion kickback that the Carlyle Group used him to try to get from the government of Kuwait, which you wrote about in The Nation?

Klein: Right.  I talk about the incredible power of the "formers." One of the distinguishing features of the Bush administration has been its reliance on outside advisers and freelance envoys to perform key functions: James Baker, Paul Bremer, Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, Richard Perle, Bruce Jackson, and so on. So you have Congress playing a rubber-stamp role during the pivotal decision-making years, and Supreme Court rulings treated as little more than gentle suggestions, while these mostly volunteer advisers have wielded enormous influence, especially when it comes to Iraq. Their power stems from the fact that they used to perform key roles in government -- they are former secretaries of state, former ambassadors and former undersecretaries of defense. All have been out of government for years and, in the meantime, have set up lucrative careers in the disaster capitalism complex. And because they are freelance government contractors, they aren't subject to the same conflict-of-interest rules as elected or appointed politicians. The effect has been to eliminate the so-called revolving door between government and industry and allow the disaster industries to simply set up shop inside the government, using the reputations of these supposedly illustrious ex-politicians as cover.

As you say, in the press, they maintain their credibility as statesmen -- their current, far more relevant work in the corporate world is almost never mentioned. You brought up Baker. He was Bush's debt envoy to Iraq while he was still a partner in the Carlyle Group, which is a major arms trader whose fortunes have exploded since the war. He was also still a partner at Baker Botts, which represents some of the largest oil companies in the world, as well as Halliburton.  Kissinger is another classic example of the power of the formers because he's primarily been a businessman, not a statesman, now for some 25 years. He met with Bush and Cheney regularly making Iraq policy -- according to Bob Woodward, more than any other advisor. But who was he representing in those meetings? Kissinger has repeatedly put his business interests ahead of the public interest, most dramatically when he resigned as chair of the 9/11 Commission rather than disclose his list of corporate clients at Kissinger Associates.

Another example is Richard Perle.  Richard Perle headed the Defense Policy Board. Just two months after 9/11 he launched a venture capital firm called Trireme Partners that exists to invest in the homeland security and defense sectors.  One of his first investors was Boeing -- it sunk $20 million in Trireme. Meanwhile, Perle is using the Defense Policy Board to make the case for war. And of course Boeing was another one of the huge winners from the invasion of Iraq.

So I asked the question, "Why is it that we refer to Richard Perle merely as an ideologue -- rather than, say, as an arms dealer with an impressive vocabulary?"

Cusack: The question becomes one of intellectual honesty and basic morality. I wanted to talk about the players or the heirs of the Friedman legacy who are in the public sector today... The Grover Norquists and Bill Kristols of the world come to mind ...You also talk about the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the American Enterprise Institute as pursuing the goal of the elimination of the public sphere and the total liberation of corporations.

Klein: I refer to the people in those think tanks as "the people who are paid to think by the makers of tanks" because a huge amount of the funding for these think tanks is coming directly from the weapons and homeland security industry. They are funded by some of the wealthiest families and the wealthiest corporations in this country so the question of intellectual honesty really has to come up. They exist in a strange intellectual gray zone where they get money in order to think. And besides, I'm not sure thinking really belongs in tanks.

Cusack: So you're saying that the Shultzes and the Perles and the Kissingers and the Jim Bakers of the world are embedded in the homeland security/privatized war economy?

Klein: More than embedded. I mean, they are it.

Cusack: I was trying to --

[laughter ]

Klein: Why are you trying to be polite?

Cusack: I don't know. I don't know. That's part of the problem, too: being polite with this immorality and not having the courage to call something what it is...The refusal of the Congress to challenge Bush in a meaningful way is proof of the Democratic complicity in the new economy. To name only right wing people is to ignore the central thesis of intellectual honesty as the first step in a long corrective march... So we'll have to talk about what Democrats are in on this game and name them, too...we'll have to get into that later.

Waking up to power

Here is a brilliant commentary by Keith Olbermann on Bush's commutation of Libby's sentence.  The comparison with the trajectory of Watergate---where Nixon's injudicious firing of special prosecutor Archibald Cox was the final straw leading to Nixon's resignation---indicates how the political landscape has, since then, hardened into a seemingly impermeable crust of criminality and corruption.

At issue now as then, Olbermann suggests, is Cox's question of whether we are to be a nation of men, not laws.  I agree, but on the other hand it has always been persons, and more specifically certain of their virtues---their integrity, their compassion, their desire to do good, their desire to avoid shame---that have ultimately kept us safe from the abuses of those in positions of great political power.  What has happened since Nixon had the decency to resign is that right-wingers have woken up precisely to the fact that it wasn't laws that were preventing them from achieving their nefarious purposes; that if they ditched their scruples and shamelessly went for the gusto, nothing in particular would stop them.  The real question now, as then, is whether we are to be a nation of law-abiding persons, not criminals.  And what's different now is the answer given by those even at the highest stations of government: yeah, we're criminals; so what?

This right-wing strategy has succeeded beyond anyone's wildest dreams thanks not just to the opposition's still playing by the old rules and assumptions, but also because almost no one has been able to admit to themselves or anyone else that criminals have been installed as the leaders of the U.S., much less take appropriate action to put them behind bars or at least out of office.  Human virtues are also the ultimate ground of the laws' being enforced, and here too things have evidently taken a turn for the worse.

The true measure of power

The true measure of power is how much you can get away with, which makes the gangsters running the U.S. effectively all-powerful.

The wholly privatized family

Unicef has just released a report assessing the well-being of children in the top 21 wealthiest countries (for which there is appropriate data; see below).

The [report] looks at six dimensions of child well-being: material well-being, health and safety, educational well-being, family and peer relationships, behaviors and risks, and young people's own perceptions of their well-being.

Both the U.S. and Britain were in the bottom two-thirds of five of the six categories, and came in dead last overall, by a considerable margin.  The overall results:

(Note: Australia, Iceland, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, New Zealand, the Slovak Republic, South Korea, and Turkey were excluded due to lack of data). The U.S. came in last on health and safety:

While none of the countries studied can claim "mission accomplished" in securing child well-being in every measurement, the United States fared particularly poorly. It ranked last in health and safety, primarily because of high rates of infant mortality, low birth weight, and deaths from accidents and injuries.

No great surprise, given the persistent legacies of Reagan and Thatcher:

One of the study's researchers, Jonathan Bradshaw, said children fared worse in the US and Britain -- despite high overall levels of national wealth -- because of greater economic inequality and poor levels of public support for families.

“What they have in common are very high levels of inequality, very high levels of child poverty, which is also associated with inequality, and in rather different ways poorly developed services to families with children,” said Bradshaw, a professor of social policy at the University of York in Britain.

“They don’t invest as much in children as continental European countries do,” he said, citing the lack of day care services in both countries and poorer health coverage and preventative care for children in the U.S.

More discussion of causal factors here.

Why is there a U.S. health care crisis?

Contrasting our positive experiences with the Canadian health care system with what she is experiencing in the U.S., my mother writes:

This is such a basic, serious issue that each and every American should be agreeing on.  Who and what is it that stands in the way of universal, caring health care for all Americans?  [...]

Is it the health insurance companies who now virtually do NOT insure anyone who has ever had a health problem in their background?  (My husband and I have both had cancer and have been cancer-free for 5 years, but are both uninsurable at any price in the US--one of our [relatives],  age 26, had a "iffy" Pap smear (not cancer but might turn into it sometime in the future) and was denied insurance.   

And what is the benefit to Americans that health insurance companies have the luxury of not insuring anyone who is in any way a "risk"?  Is not life itself a risk, and are we not all going to die, sooner or later, of something??  If health insurance is not a "viable business" given that we are all going to die, isn't that the best reason in the world to make health care the responsibility of the government, and not a profit-making corporation?

And then there is the prescription problem.  The restrictions and regulations in the new "Medicare D" are so ridiculous that it's almost impossible to describe it without thinking the world has gone crazy.  But it's all understandable if you understand that it's all about helping the pharmaceutical companies keep on making money. [...]

But to get back to my original point, who in the vast American population benefits when health insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies are virtually dictating who gets cared for and how much they pay for their drugs??

I realize that there are quite a few Republican congressmen and lobbyists and others who rake in a lot of dough as all this goes on.  But what are their ranks compared to the enormous number of people who just need decent, affordable health care---namely, almost all Americans.  Surely the millions who deserve fair, affordable health care far outnumber the handful of crooks who are cashing in on denying these millions the care they need.

Can it possibly be true that a few corporations and congresspeople are denying an entire nation of people this basic human right?   And why is it that each and every American who is at risk (and that is most of us) isn't screaming bloody murder about this one issue alone??   I really don't get it.

This excerpt from David Sirota's new book (Hostile Takeover: How Big Money and Corruption Conquered our Government -- and How We Take it Back) provides some answers to my mother's good question of why the interests of such a small segment of the U.S. population have been allowed to "deny an entire nation of people of this basic human right" (perhaps a right contingent on sufficient resources---but clearly this condition is met). 

Sirota makes the question more pointed, by noting that those who endorse (and in any case stand to benefit from) national health care include not just those needing care but increasingly, doctors and members of the business community:

According to a nationwide ABC/Washington Post poll in 2003, "Americans by a 2-1 margin, 62-32 percent, prefer a universal health insurance program over the current [private] employer-based system."

Doctors, too, are chiming in with support for universal health insurance. In 2003, the prestigious--and conservative--Journal of the American Medical Association published a proposal for government-sponsored universal health care that was endorsed by more than 8,000 physicians (including two former surgeon generals).

Even parts of the business community support government intervention. For instance, Ford, GM and Chrysler all endorsed Canada's system, where the government funds health care for all citizens. Similarly, a poll of Michigan small businesses found that 63 percent supported creating a universal health care system, even if it required tax increases. The health insurance industry, you see, is not only gouging patients--it is gouging employers who provide health care benefits to workers.

Horrifically, lack of universal health care is killing 18,000 U.S.-ers a year:

The Institute of Medicine was created by Congress in 1970 to be the chief, nonpartisan adviser to the federal government on all matters related to health care. That's why the announcement it made in 2004 was so stunning. "Lack of health insurance causes roughly 18,000 unnecessary deaths every year in the United States," the Institute said. Therefore, "By 2010, everyone in the United States should have health insurance ... [The Institute] urges the president and Congress to act immediately by establishing a firm and explicit plan to reach this goal."

The health care system, which is supposed to preserve and protect human life, is allowing thousands of Americans to die every year, and America's top experts were sounding the alarm.

Sirota goes on to address my mother's question:

So how is it that government and media have settled into complacency when the system is so bad for so many? The status quo pays big dividends.

In 2003, HMOs nearly doubled their profits from just a year before, adding $10 billion to their bottom line. That year, top executives at the 11 largest health insurers made a combined $85 million in one year. In the first three quarters of 2004, HMO profits increased by another 33 percent. The sheer numbers behind these profits are staggering: In 2004 alone, the four biggest health insurance companies reported $100 billion in revenues. That's $273 million a day, every day, 365 days of the year.

That's the kind of cash that allowed the health industry to spend more than $300 million on lobbying in 2003, and another $300 million on campaign contributions to politicians since 2000. Their agenda is pretty simple: stop any proposals to curb health care profiteering by private insurance companies. To make its arguments, the industry buys off high-profile ex-politicians and makes them its spokespeople.

Really, who needs lobbyists when corrupt politicians who will do the job?  People like Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) can be counted on to bring up the specter of health care "rationing" whenever the topic of universal health care comes up, as when Ron Pollock of Families USA testified before a house committee on the issue:

Like a drooling pit bull snarling at a passerby, Rogers barked, "You support rationing health care for American citizens and limiting the ability for them to have access to pharmaceutical treatment in order to keep costs down."

Rogers might well have screamed "Communist!" had his time not run out. Why was he so aggressively hurling out deceptive accusations? He was just doing the job he'd been paid to do: Over the previous four years, Rogers found himself in possession of more than a quarter million dollars of campaign contributions from the health care industry. Rogers is just a cog in the industry's spin machine--a $275,000 cog, but a cog nonetheless. That machine has been effective over the years in one of its most important goals: tarring any government health care initiative as the precursor to "rationing." So when advocates of government involvement make an appearance anywhere in Washington, the industry's hired goons can be counted on to shout them down before any ugly truth gets out there.

We are led to believe that because we have a private, for-profit health care system, we don't have health care rationing in America. But the whole point of most health insurance companies is to ration care, limiting the amount of coverage their patients get in order to save cash. Even the Supreme Court admits that. [...] The ultraconservative Washington Times admitted that the court made very clear that "it is the point of any HMO to ration care and within its prerogative to delay tests, avert expensive consultations or refuse experimental care."

Sirota goes on to make some obvious suggestions about how the health care crisis could be resolved: either go for a single-payer system ("Medicare for everyone") or else regulate the industry.  Easier said than done,  though.  The deeper answer to my mother's question remains unanswered: how on earth can U.S.-ers get corporations back into the bottle?

The not-so-good life

From a 4-year poll of 93,000 people in 50 countries:

In increasing numbers, people around the globe resent American power and wealth and reject specific actions like the occupation of Iraq and the campaign against democratically elected Palestinian leaders, in-depth international polling shows.

Analysts say America's image problem is pervasive, deep and perhaps permanent, an inevitable outcome of being the world's only superpower.

There isn't anything inevitable about it.  The U.S. has been the world's only superpower at least since the USSR vanished in 1991, but until recently was seen as a largely benevolent force (and moreover was the target of great sympathy right after 9/11).  The present resentment of U.S. power rather stems from the transparently unwise and unjust use of this power, primarily in service of various corporate elites enriching themselves via the tragic mechanisms of war, oppression, and resource extraction, as implemented in other countries's backyards.  They were thinking people wouldn't notice?

But there is worse news. In the past, while Europeans, Asians and Arabs might have disliked American policies or specific U.S. leaders, they liked and admired Americans themselves.

Polls now show an ominous turn. Majorities around the world think Americans are greedy, violent and rude, and fewer than half in countries like Poland, Spain, Canada, China and Russia think Americans are honest.

Indeed, U.S.-ers are frequently greedy, violent, and rude.  No surprise: the serious stress that the vast majority of Americans are perpetually subject to (due to job, health, and retirement insecurity; lack of time and community; increasingly degraded cultural and aesthetic environment; and so on) would put anyone on or over the edge.  It's also true that U.S.-ers are dishonest---not so much with others (legions of corporate shills, politicians, and reporters aside) as with themselves: they just can't admit how bad things really are, for themselves and for the rest of the world, thanks to the exponentially insidious influence of U.S. corporate capitalism.

Beyond a growing antipathy toward American policies, people reject the American lifestyle portrayed in films and television.

Asked where to find the "good life," no more than one in 10 people recommended the United States in a poll conducted in 13 countries, Kohut said. More popular: Canada, Australia, Britain and Germany.

Looks like it's time for an intervention.

Canadian health care, continued

In Toronto recently, Clinton warned Canadians away from the U.S. health care model:

The answer to Canada's health-care woes does not lie in the "insane" system in place south of the border, former U.S. president Bill Clinton said last night.

Speaking in Toronto, Mr. Clinton said that reform may be needed in Canada, but he argued forcefully that the U.S. model is a "colossal waste of money" that is "killing" his country competitively.

"It's a good thing, your health care system, with all of its problems," Mr. Clinton told supporters of the inaugural World Leaders Forum [...]

Mr. Clinton said that he was familiar with the Chaoulli decision of the Supreme Court of Canada, in which the justices ruled that the public system was too slow and struck down a Quebec prohibition on private health insurance. Arguing that the United States had made a mess of health care, he encouraged Canadians to study instead how other countries have tackled these issues. [...]

Mr. Clinton, who failed in his own attempt to overhaul the U.S. health-care system during his presidency, pointed out that the portion of health costs spent on administration in the United States is nearly twice that of any other industrialized nation.

Our own experiences with the Canadian system have been uniformly positive.  We spoke about our initial experience here, and we continue to find socialized medicine efficient, inexpensive, and humane.

For example, a few days ago, we went to an emergency walk-in clinic.  Not fancy, but servicable: a waiting room, an administrative office, and an examining room.  It took about 5 minutes to see the doctor.  A relatively high-tech test was performed, and all was well. For some reason we hadn't yet received our OHIP (Ontario Health Insurance Plan) cards yet (more on this shortly), so had to pay out of pocket.  The bill: $25 Canadian.

[UPDATE: Reader CO informs me that the situation is different at hospital emergency rooms, where without an OHIP card you can expect to pay a base cost of around $500.]

As it turns out, our OHIP cards hadn't arrived because in order to get them we had to apply at the local Ministry of Health (a communication mishap).  We went in today.  We spent about 1 minute in line before we were at a desk talking with a competent person, who gave us a simple form to fill out and directed us to another competent person, who looked at our work permits and house lease, asked us a couple of questions, took our pictures and gave us temporary OHIP passes (cards to be mailed shortly).  The whole process took about ten minutes; so much for the supposed inefficiency of government administration.

It gets better.  For the last months, while we were supposedly waiting for our cards, we've paid various small sums out of pocket for medical expenses.  I asked the Ministry of Health person what our chances were of getting reimbursed; she responded that she was backdating our cards to last November (when we would have initially qualified for them) for this purpose.  An immediate rational response to the financial benefit of the consumer: can you imagine that happening in a for-profit health care system?

One of the unexpected pleasures of being in Canada is the feeling of happy surprise that comes from being treated in such contexts as a person, as opposed to an entry on a corporation balance sheet.  That alone will probably add years to my life.

A new law for our times

In the U.S., the new law is: Everything just gets worse.

Here's a recent instance of the law, as applied to what used to be genuinely alternative news sources in the U.S.:

The Village Voice has now been politically eviscerated, along with the other city-based alternative weeklies bought up by Michael Lacey (nice picture!  maybe he doesn't want to be recognized?) and the New Times corporation (check out those ads!  Lots of alternatives there), which now operate “without the burden of a political agenda”.  To get a taste of we've lost here, check out these excerpts from this April 13 Democracy Now segment:

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to former Village Voice reporter Jim Ridgeway in our Washington studio. And here in New York we’re joined by Sydney Schanberg, the former press critic at the Village Voice, Pulitzer Prize winner. He resigned in February, following the sale of the paper. He won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting in Cambodia during the 1970s. His story inspired the film The Killing Fields. We’re also joined by Mark Jacobson.  He’s a reporter with New York Magazine.  In November, he wrote a major piece on the Voice-New Times merger, entitled "The  Voice from Beyond the Grave."  He’s a former writer at the Village Voice. 

And I also want to say, we did try to reach Michael Lacey, who is the new Executive Editor of the Village Voice and co-founder of New Times Media, as well as Christine Brennan, the Executive Managing Editor of the Village Voice, but they did not return our calls. And New Times Media is now called Village Voice Media. 

Sydney Schanberg, you attended a meeting in early February with Michael Lacey and the whole Village Voice staff. What happened?

SYDNEY SCHANBERG: What happened was very sad. Mr. Lacey came in and very quickly told the staff that he was disappointed and appalled by the fact that the front of the book was all commentary and that he wanted hard news. He said if he wanted to read a daily or regular critiques of the Bush administration, he would read the New York Times, and that's not what he wanted  in the Village Voice. He was insulting to the staff. He figuratively or in effect called them stenographers. He said they had to stop being stenographers. When I objected to that, because that was so insulting, and I said that you can criticize any news staff in some ways, but the one thing that you couldn't call the Village Voice staff was a  staff of stenographers, taking   notes from public figures and  just passing them on.

Lacey's charge is such a bunch of contradictory bullshit---stenographers to what public figures !!?-- that I can't read this without becoming enraged, but maybe that's just because I can still remember the fast-disappearing good old days:

AMY GOODMAN: We are also joined on the   telephone by Tim Redmond.  He is the  executive editor at the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Tim, why is this a story that you feel is a national story?  We’re talking to you from  New York. 

TIM REDMOND: I’ll tell you why it’s a national story. It's a national story, because the alternative press has always been kind of feisty, independent, challenging the status quo, and the alternative press has always been about independent media, has been about independent voices. And, you know, it sounds kind of hokey, but I got into this business 25 years ago, because, you know, I thought I could help change the world. And I’m not saying the alternative press has changed the world, but I think the Village Voice has made a huge difference in  New York, and the Bay Guardian, where I work, has made a huge difference  in San Francisco, and that's something.

And what the folks from New Times, now known as Village Voice Media, want to do, they want to buy up alternative papers all around the country and make them all the same. You know, I don't think anyone should own 17 alternative papers. And I particularly don't think a company run by people who despise activism, who are not activists and don't think of themselves journalistically as activists, who don't endorse candidates, who don't take stands on issues, who haven't even come out against the war, should be taking over the Village Voice.  It's really sad. I mean, the Voice was always part of the activist tradition of the alternative press. And, you know, in the same way that a few big chains like Gannett have bought up and control most of the daily newspapers in the United States and a few big corporations like Clear Channel control an awful lot of the radio, a few big corporations control most of the TV, if we go that way in the alternative press, it's going to be very sad, particularly, as I say, when it is an operation that doesn't believe in activist politics. That's not what the alternative press has been about.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, Tim, a question. New Times has a reputation, supposedly, for hard-hitting local investigative stories in many of their other chains. How do you reconcile that "reputation" with their current moves, in terms of the Village Voice? 

TIM REDMOND: New Times has some good journalists, and they have done some good stories. I’ve never doubted that. But they don't believe in providing progressive community leadership on issues. They'll do some investigative reporting, and there's nothing wrong with that. But when it comes to the role the alternative press has always taken, which is to provide activist leadership, they don't believe in it.

Besides, you know, I don't care if Mike Lacey wants to run a kind of neo-libertarian paper down in Phoenix and say whatever he wants to say and do whatever he wants to do. But once he tries to take papers all over the country and make them all the same, you know, it's kind of like the Borg. They sweep into town, they take over a paper, and they remold it in their own image so it's exactly like all of the other New Times papers. If you go from city to city to city, you know, Denver, Phoenix, you go around, Houston and Miami, they all look the same. They all have the same voice. They all have the same tone. And that's not good for the alternative press, and I would say that's not good for the United States. It's not good for progressive politics. This is not what the alternative press is about.

It's bad enough that we are losing what we once had.

Even worse is that lots of kids coming up these days---those not lucky enough to have progressive parents or get plugged into progressive blogs, in particular---are not even going to know what things used to be like 20 years ago. 

They're going to think it's just the way things are that every single thing you hear from the media is aimed at selling you something (or keeping things cool for the sellers) rather than telling you what is actually going on.   That the corporate message---and indeed, the entire cultural landscape--- is always the same, no matter whether you're in New York, or LA, or Denver, or wherever. 

They're not going to know that there once was a genuine alternative.  Correction: genuine alternatives.

Say goodbye to one more thing that used to make the U.S. a place worth living in; say hello to the new law of ever decreasing returns.

Too little, too late

Jane Smiley has pointed words for all the "conservatives" finally jumping ship.  Just a taste:

5. Tyranny is your creation. What we have today is the natural and inevitable outcome of ideas and policies you have promoted for the last generation. [...]  you cannot believe that the ideology of the unregulated free market has created the world we live in today. You are tempted to say: "Mistakes have been made", but in fact, psychologically and sociologically, no mistakes have been made. The unregulated free market has operated to produce a government in its own image. In an unregulated free market, for example, cheating is merely another sort of advantage that, supposedly, market forces might eventually "shake out" of the system. Of course, anyone with common sense understands that cheaters do damage that sometimes cannot be repaired before they are "shaken out", but according to the principles of the unregulated free market, the victims of that sort of damage are just out of luck and the damage that happens to them is just a sort of "culling". It is no accident that our government is full of cheaters--they learned how to profit from cheating when they were working in corporations that were using bribes, perks, and secret connections to cheat their customers of good products, their neighbors of healthy environmental conditions, their workers of workplace safety and decent paychecks. It was only when the corporations began cheating their shareholders that any of you squealed, but you should know from your own experience that the unregulated free market as a "level playing field" was the biggest laugh of the 20th century. No successful company in the history of capitalism has ever favored open competition. When you folks pretended, in the eighties, that you weren't using the ideology of the free market to cover your own manipulations of the playing field to your own advantage, you may have suckered yourselves, and even lots of American workers, but observers of capitalism since Adam Smith could have told you it wasn't going to work.

And then there was the way you used racism and religious intolerance to gain and hold onto power. Nixon was cynical about it--taking the party of Lincoln and reaching out to disaffected southern racists, drumming up a backlash against the Civil Rights movement for the sake of votes, but none of you has been any less vicious. Racism might have died an unlamented death in this country, but you kept it alive with phrases like "welfare queen" and your resistance to affirmative action and taxation for programs to help people in our country with nothing, or very little. You opted not to take the moral high ground and recognize that the whole nation would be better off without racism, but rather to increase class divisions and racial divisions for the sake of your own comfort, pleasure, and profit. You have used religion in exactly the same way. Instead of strongly defending the constitutional separation of church and state, you have encouraged radical fundamentalist sects to believe that they can take power in the US and mold our secular government to their own image, and get rich doing it. The US could have become a moderating force in what seems now to be an inevitable battle among the three monotheistic Abrahamic religions, but you have made that impossible by flattering and empowering our own violent and intolerant Christian right.

You have created an imperium, heedless of the most basic wisdom of the Founding Fathers--that at the very least, no man is competent enough or far-seeing enough to rule imperially. Checks and balances were instituted by Madison, Jefferson, Franklin, and the rest of them not because of some abstract distrust of power, but because they had witnessed the screw-ups and idiocies of unchecked power. You yourselves have demonstrated the failures of unchecked power--in an effort to achieve it, you have repeatedly contravened the expressed wishes of most Americans, who favor a moderate foreign policy, reasonable domestic programs, a goverrnment that works, environmental preservation, women's rights to contraception, abortion, and a level playing field. Somehow you thought you could mold the imperium to reflect your wishes, but guess what--that's what an imperium is--one man rule. If you fear the madness of King George, you have no recourse if you've given up the checks and balances that you inherited and that were meant to protect you.

Your ideas and your policies have promoted selfishness, greed, short-term solutions, bullying, and pain for others. You have looked in the faces of children and denied the existence of a "common good". You have disdained and denied the idea of "altruism". At one time, our bureaucracy was full of people who had gone into government service or scientific research for altruistic reasons--I knew, because I knew some of them. You have driven them out and replaced them with vindictive ignoramuses. You have lied over and over about your motives, for example, making laws that hurt people and calling it "originalist interpretations of the Constitution" (conveniently ignoring the Ninth Amendment). You have increased the powers of corporations at the expense of every other sector in the nation and actively defied any sort of regulation that would require these corporations to treat our world with care and respect. You have made economic growth your deity, and in doing so, you have accelerated the power of the corporations to destroy the atmosphere, the oceans, the ice caps, the rainforests, and the climate. You have produced CEOs in charge of lots of resources and lots of people who have no more sense of reciprocity or connection or responsibility than George W. Bush.

Now you are fleeing him, but it's only because he's got the earmarks of a loser. Your problem is that you don't know why he's losing. You think he's made mistakes. But no. He's losing because the ideas that you taught him and demonstrated for him are bad ideas, self-destructive ideas, and even suicidal ideas. And they are immoral ideas. You should be ashamed of yourselves because not only have your ideas not worked to make the world a better place, they were inhumane and cruel to begin with, and they have served to cultivate and excuse the inhumane and cruel character traits of those who profess them.