Supporting Netanyahu Instead of Obama? and These Guys Call Themselves Democrats!

An Op-Ed piece appeared in Politico this week claiming that Senators Schumer and Menendez would save the Democratic party from disaster by defeating the non-proliferation treaty with Iran. As is typical with these right-wing memes, the authors claim to be Democrats, but don't let that fool you. They are no more Democrats than Joe Lieberman, who endorsed John McCain for President in 2008. The problem is that the party has moved away from the old, war-mongering party that it was during the Vietnam War.

Pat Caddell is one of the writers. He was a pollster for Jimmy Carter, which may give you an idea of how much out of touch he is with the current Democratic party. Caddell calls environmentalism a conspiracy against capitalism. Caddell claims the polls show that most Democrats are against the treaty, so Obama should just give up and prepare for war. The other pseudo-Democrat is Douglas Schoen, who opposed the Affordable Care Act and advised Obama not to run for re-election in 2012. These two claim that Democrats will save their party by voting against a treaty that Obama, Clinton, and Kerry have worked for years to conclude.

Caddell and Schoen are Fox News Democrats, people that Fox News trots out before the cameras whenever they want someone who is not a Republican to parrot Republican propaganda. They are also Politico Democrats, continuing that online news magazine's tradition of pretending to be neutral while publishing the least credible and most conservative op-eds.

Fox News, meet Politico. Caddell and Schoen, stop pretending to be Democrats and admit that you're merely political opportunists who will work for whoever pays the bills.

Republican lies are a Ponzi scheme for American voters

Chaz K writes, "The midterm elections were a repudiation of Obama and his policies."

I would agree with him except that the Republican party spent over $100 million running attack ads that misrepresented the issues and the candidates' positions. What he are saying is, if Fox News and the Koch Brothers were successful in buying the election, then the election is a repudiation of the president and his policies. This position is nonsensical. If Bernie Madoff convinced a thousand people to invest in a Ponzi scheme, it doesn't prove Madoff's Ponzi scheme is a good investment. More to the point, it doesn't "repudiate" the laws of mathematics that prove Ponzi schemes don't work. 

But the Republicans began opposing Obama and his policies before they even knew what they were. They opposed his policy of marriage equality, falsely saying it would legalize polygamy and somehow devalue traditional marriage.They opposed limited intervention in the Middle East, saying that Obama was a closet Muslim who favors ISIS. They opposed the Affordable Care Act, saying it would destroy the US medical system (it hasn't), bankrupt the economy (it hasn't), and create death panels (it hasn't). They opposed the EPA policy of decreasing coal production and burning in the atmosphere, by saying that Climate Change is a myth created by the scientists because...scientists don't know anything about what they spend their whole lives studying.

If the Republicans lied about the policies of the administration to win the election, their repudiation is only a repudiation of the fantasy that Republicans created with their lies. In other words, it was a repudiation of nothing. In addition, the Republicans have suggested no alternatives to policies they oppose--because they know those policies are reasonable and there are no defensible right-wing alternatives.

Ferguson Police Riots: An Occupation Army in Missouri

People seem confused by what the police are doing in Ferguson. Some people believe that the police are within their rights to arrest people for swearing or failing to move on when ordered to do so. Others believe the police resemble a paramilitary force. Police vary in different areas and react differently depending on whether they perceive someone as a threat. 

Look at the news reports. Try to get them from several different viewpoints, not just conservative sources like Fox News. You will see from the videos that the police in Ferguson are indeed equipped like a paramilitary force. They are also routinely violating the rights of Ferguson's citizens by assaulting them, arresting them for using obscene language or just for standing in one place. The police have been recorded threatening to kill journalists and they have arrested both journalists and humanitarian workers, like the National Lawyers Guild monitors who simply observe police behavior.

Some people claim the police are just protecting citizens from the demonstrators. We don't know what the police are trying to do, but we know what they are doing. They are quite clearly violating the law and the Constitution. They are using terror tactics against US Citizens who are within their rights of freedom of speech and assembly. They are also using weapons against innocent bystanders. Sound cannons affect everyone in the area. Tear gas can force people over a mile away to leave their homes to breathe fresh air. This is a major reason why tear gas (and other poison gases used by police) have been banned in warfare by the Geneva conventions, because they harm everyone nearby, not just armed combatants.

As far as the police protecting themselves from heavily-armed individuals, there has been a but single incident of a policeman wounded by gunshot in Ferguson. On the other hand, we have numerous pictures of police in riot gear aiming rifles or shotguns at demonstrators. It seems the armaments are much more prevalent on the police side. The police fire tear gas and other poison gases, as well as rubber bullets. They also arrest people by slamming them to the ground hard enough to injure them.

The demonstrations are a textbook example of what came to be called a "police riot" after the police attacked demonstrators at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. In a police riot, it is the police who are the instigators of violence, not the demonstrators. In many cases, the demonstrators are not armed, and certainly never to the extent that police are armed.

There are many other ways for the police to interact with demonstrators. The best way is to negotiate with them. All along, the demonstrators have been demanding that the police officer who killed Michael Brown be arrested and put on trial. This is a simple demand. There is nothing illegal about such a procedure, though it may violate police regulations. Even if it does, there should be a high priority placed on civilian safety. Complaints against police, who are hired to protect the people they are now assaulting, should be handled promptly and in an orderly manner.

The Ferguson Police Department has behaved throughout as if they are an occupying army. This must not be tolerated.

Racist Omertá Exposed in Ferguson

The Heritage Foundation recently posted on Google Plus that Mississippi should cut its corporate income tax. I pointed out in a comment that Mississippi ranks 50th among states in education, 50th in health care, and that its failures in these areas were race-based, since the poor who are affected by lack of education and health care are predominantly African American. I don't think there is any doubt about that statement. But one person, I'll call him Jack, commented that Mississippi may have been racist in the 1960s, but not any more.

Southern whites were embarrassed by the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights bills in the late 1960s. Their response to these exposures of racist government was not to work to end racism, but to conceal it (and in this they are joined by northern Republicans). They have done this through a policy of omertá--a rigid code of silence about racial matters imposed on southern whites. Under the policy of omertá, white southerners pretend that racism is dead, that there is no discrimination against African-Americans, and that what happened in the bad old days just doesn't matter any more.

The 5 conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) recently endorsed this fiction by striking down part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 because, they claimed, it wasn't needed any more. The Court ruled that the law made sense because of past violations of voters' rights, but is no longer valid because today African-Americans can vote without any problems. SCOTUS thus let themselves be convinced by Southern omertá that everything is fine now and the federal government does not need to keep watching the southern states for potential violations.

Naturally, the first thing that Republicans in state legislatures (not all of them in the South) have done is to enact laws to restrict voting rights--Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Arkansas have tried this. One of their favorite techniques is to require state-issued id (generally a driver's license) to be able to vote. This immediately disenfranchised all elderly black voters who no longer drove cars, even if these people could prove they had been on the voting rolls for 50 years--since the voting rights law of 1965 was enacted. Another way African-Americans have been disenfranchised is to gerrymander them all into one district instead of letting them exercise their votes in several districts--Alabama has tried this.

Political commentators, including Fox News host Bill O'Reilly, have bought into the idea that racism is dead. O'Reilly goes so far as to say that those who accuse others of racism are the real problem because they would create a nation of haters.

All of these arguments against racism have been exposed by events in Ferguson. There, in a town that is two-thirds African-American, the white police chief has refused to arrest a police officer on suspicion of homicide after the officer shot times and killed an unarmed youth. The lines between white and black are being clearly drawn by the suppression of demonstrators in Ferguson, a town outside Saint Louis, Missouri. Rather than acceding to the reasonable requests of law-abiding citizens that the officer in question be arrested, the police floated rumors that the boy was high on drugs, or had recently robbed a convenience store, or was attacking the officer when he was shot.

All of the excuses given why the officer should not be arrested and arraigned for murder are irrelevant. They are arguments with which a defense attorney might try to sway a jury, but they are not reasons why a trial should not take place. The rift between black and white in this country is as deep as it ever was, fueled by the toxic flames of racism that have been kept hidden by white southerners for the last 50 years. But no longer. Ferguson has exposed the true state of race relations in this country. Let's all call for something more than silence--omertá--in response.

Rupert Murdoch has turned Wall Street Journal into Political Rag

Investors need to know the truth. They need to know what is really happening that may affect the price of gold or oil so they can plan accordingly. That is why business journals have a reputation for telling it like it is. Their readers demand that they do.

That was before the advent of fact-free journalism, however. Rupert Murdoch, an advocate of fact-free journalism, has been encouraging Fox personalities to read the idiot cards without straying from the Republican Party line. Murdoch's most successful huckster at Fox, Bill O'Reilly, strongly advocates the doctrine of the Catholic Church. At least he did when Benedict was Pope. Pope Francis has led O'Reilly to challenge the papacy, however.

Francis has made the welfare of the poor the cornerstone of his mission:

As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world’s problems or, for that matter, to any problems. Inequality is the root of social ills.

O'Reilly, who always contends that he is a good Catholic, addresses the problem of the poor quite differently, because he believes that

some people are the cause of their own poverty. “If you’re an [addict] and you can’t hold a job, and you can’t support your children, […] then you’re bringing the havoc. You’re asking people who may be struggling themselves to put food on the table to give their tax money to you, […] and then you’re going to buy booze and drugs with it.”

So O'Reilly is now arguing with the Pope, who is the spiritual leader of O'Reilly's professed faith. Francis states that market capitalism is the cause of inequality and inequality is the root of social ills. O'Reilly says we shouldn't help the poor because their condition, poverty, is their own fault. These two sentiments share no common ground. Either you help the poor by ending inequality, as Francis preaches, or you don't, as O'Reilly recommends, because the poor are not worthy of our help.

O'Reilly is an author who uses a tv show to sell his books. Murdoch is a media mogul who uses his outlets to sell his philosophy. His philosophy is simple: rich people should be protected against threats to their wealth from poor people. This means poor people should be taxed more to keep taxes low on rich people.

This philosophy also means that all corporate actions, especially dangerous and illegal acts, should be protected in the courts and in the press.

In the past 50 years, no corporate actions have been more destructive of property and human life than those of asbestos manufacturers and purveyors of products made using asbestos. My article gives details of the long struggle to force corporations to pay for their deliberate poisoning of the environment. The struggle is not over.

Here comes the Wall Street Journal with an article that ignores the existence of the struggle for justice. The WSJ accepts claims by a single bankruptcy court judge that it is really the plaintiffs--the people suffering from asbestos poisoning--who are causing problems. The victims, according to the judge and WSJ, are corporations who fought for 50 years to prevent the public from finding the truth about asbestos, who spent millions to pretend that some forms of asbestos are safer than others, who successfully lobbied for laws that made it more difficult for victims to get justice.

This judge took it upon himself to accept the asbestos-using company's estimate of $125 million in damages because, he said, plaintiff's lawyers lied about how many claims they were filing. The decision says, in effect, the damages to plaintiffs may be $1.3 billion, but the plaintiffs should sue other companies for it.

The judge accuses plaintiffs of a "pattern of misrepresentation", though the well-documented actions of defendants in outright lies about their products is just as serious. Defendants introduced 15 cases to support their thesis. The judge asserted that "more extensive discovery would show more extensive abuse", but this was an assumption, not evidence. Since there may have been thousands of asbestos cases over the years, 15 cases is hardly a large sample. These cases were chosen by defendants as being particularly supportive of their claims.

The judge repeats the falsehood, fostered by asbestos producers and the government of Canada, that chrysotile asbestos is "relatively less potent" than other forms of the mineral. In fact, studies have shown that chrysotile asbestos may be more toxic, not less.

The WSJ also states that several states have passed laws against plaintiff's practices, but fails to note that industry lobbying groups and the right-wing front group ALEC were influential in passing those laws.
Only at the tail end of the article did WSJ quote spokesmen for the plaintiffs, who correctly observed that the opinion of this judge was out of step with the vast majority of other courts that have ruled on this issue in recent years.

Once again and predictability, the WSJ has come down on the side of corporations and against their victims. Their coverage appears fair until you look more closely and discover their bias, subtle but absolute.

Washington, D.C. pushes bogus marijuana decriminalization bill

Anyone who's seen a Fox “News” program knows how they work. One talking head reads a news story and the others comment on it, using the most violent distortions of the truth. For instance, one might say, 89 percent of the persons arrested for simple possession of marijuana in the District of Columbia are African-Americans or another minority. Then the Fox commentator says, I wonder why that is? And another one goes into a long-winded reply about how that's the way people are.


Or, on another occasion, someone might read a news item that indicates that marijuana is neither addictive nor harmful. It is certainly not a gateway drug to anything except entanglement in the prison system. Then the other Fox commentator says, surely we can't let this dangerous drug be distributed to our children. Another Fox commentator says, certainly we can't permit this dangerous drug to be legalized.


This sort of comedy show is very popular on Fox. Firmly held opinions of the status-quo are endlessly repeated, no matter how discredited those ideas have been. But these little falsehoods were repeated in DC City Council Chambers last Thursday, October 24, 2013, where the Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety was holding hearings on the “decriminalization” of marijuana. The ring master for this farce was Tommy Wells, who I understand is running for mayor. It was Councilman Wells's responsibility to see that witnesses were truthful and all points of view were considered. Unfortunately, Wells did not do that. Instead, he permitted reams of falsehoods to be entered into the record.


Take, for example, the study by Washington Lawyers' committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs. This careful study, based entirely on records of the Metropolitan Police Department, showed that 89 percent of arrests made in DC for simple possession were African-Americans. What did Wells say about this disparity in treatment of different races by the police department? He asked the witnesses for the Lawyers' Committee what could be the reason for this startling figure.


Let me make this clear. Wells did not ask the representative of the Mayor, Andrew Fois, how the police intended to fix this problem. No, Wells acted as if it wasn't a problem. Then he sat and listened while Fois explained how decriminalization would work. Mere possession would be legal, but not using the drug on the street. But possession itself would be illegal in City Parks and near schools.


Possession for sale, of course, would still be illegal. Councilman Marion Barry asked how much marijuana a person would have to have before he could be arrested for intent to sell.


Andrew Fois: Oh, any amount.
Barry: Even a single joint?
Fois: Yes.
Barry: So if you had a single joint in your pocket you could be arrested for intent to sell?


At this point one of Fois's deputies jumped in to rescue his boss from the blind alley he had wandered into. “Oh, no,” he said. “There would have to be some other evidence.” What the other evidence might be was not revealed.


When my turn came to testify, I asked the court why they were not considering total legalization. David Rosso has introduced a bill to that effect. It seemed to me inevitable that marijuana would be legalized eventually. Why not now?


Wells got a little hot under the collar. I suppose he was angry at me for disrupting his dog and pony show, where official witnesses lined up to tell Wells what a great guy he was, and what a great job the police are doing, busting 40,000 African-Americans a year, mostly for nothing at all, and how we really can't legalize marijuana right now because, as Wells explained

1. The Congress might do something if we did.
   
2. Legalization of marijuana would do nothing to halt use of more dangerous drugs.
   
3. The time isn't right.
   

To which I would have responded (if Wells had the courtesy to ask what I thought of the matter, instead of pontificating at length about what he thinks,

1. Congress hasn't done anything yet. It is likely, however, that the courts will do something soon about the prevalence of racial profiling, as they did in Floyd v. City of New York.
   
2. Legalization of marijuana only legalizes marijuana, it is not intended to resolve all of society's drug problems. To oppose legalization because it doesn't stop other drugs doesn't make logical sense.
   
3. The time is always right to stop enforcing an unjust law that police use to harass African-Americans.