Ron Paul: Greatest Danger With Iran is We'll Overreact and Get Into Another 'Useless War' Like Iraq

(...but he's crazy! Yeah, right...he's the only anti-war candidate from either party in a nation of warmongers, so he MUST be crazy...--jef)

from the LA Times

Ron Paul did it again. The libertarian-minded Republican separated himself from the pack of candidates at tonight's debate by urging restraint in response to a possible Iranian nuclear threat, saying the U.S. can ill afford a repeat of its now-concluded war in Iraq.

Paul said there was "no U.N. evidence" that Iran is developing a nuclear weapons program, calling claims to the contrary "war propaganda."

"To me the greatest danger is that we will have a president that will overreact, and we will soon bomb Iran," he said. "We ought to really sit back and think, not jump the gun and believe that we are going to be attacked. That's how we got into that useless war in Iraq and lost so much."

Paul said it "makes more sense" to directly engage with Iran diplomatically. And he even praised President Obama for "wisely backing off on sanctions" against Iran, which he called overreaching.

"We have 12,000 diplomats in our services. We ought to use a little bit of diplomacy once in a while."

The Roads To War And Economic Collapse

Standing Up to Tyranny

by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

 

November 23, 2011: The day before the Thanksgiving holiday brought three extraordinary news items.  One was the report on the Republican presidential campaign debate. One was the Russian President’s statement about his country’s response to Washington’s missile bases surrounding his country. And one was the failure of a German government bond auction.

As the presstitute media will not inform us of what any of this means, let me try.

With the exception of Ron Paul, the only candidate in either party qualified to be the president of the US, the rest of the Republican candidates are even worst than Obama, a president who had the country behind him but sold out the American people to the special interests.

No newly elected president in memory, neither John F. Kennedy nor Ronald Reagan, had the extraordinary response to his election as Barak Obama. A record-breaking number of people braved the cold to witness his swearing in ceremony. The mall was filled with Americans who could not see the ceremony except as televised on giant screens.

Obama had convinced the electorate that he would end the wars, stop the violation of law by the US government, end the regime of illegal torture, close the torture prison of Guantanamo, and attend to the real needs of the American people rather than stuff the pockets of the military/security complex with taxpayers’ money.

Once in office, Obama renewed and extended the Bush/Cheney/neoconservative wars.

He validated the Bush regime’s assaults on the US Constitution. He left Wall Street in charge of US economic policy, he absolved the Bush regime of its crimes, and he assigned to the American people the financial cost necessary to preserve the economic welfare of the mega-rich.

One would think such a totally failed president would be easy to defeat.  Given an historic opportunity, the Republican Party has put before the electorate the most amazingly stupid and vile collection of prospects, with the exception of Ron Paul who does not have the party’s support, that Americans have ever seen.

In the November 22 presidential “debate,” the candidates, with the exception of Ron Paul, revealed themselves as a collection of ignorant warmongers who support the police state. Gingrich and Cain said that Muslims “want to kill us all” and that “all of us will be in danger for the rest of out lives.”

Bachmann said that the American puppet state, Pakistan, is “more than an existential threat.”  The moron Bachmann has no idea what is “more than an existential threat.”

However, it sounded heavy, like an intellectual thing to say for the candidate who previously declared the long-defunct Soviet Union to be today’s threat to the US.

Any sentient American who watched or read about the Republican presidential debate must wonder what there is to be thankful for as the national holiday passes.

The Russian government, which prefers to use its resources for the economy rather than for the military, has decided that it has been taking too many risks in the name of peace. The day before Thanksgiving, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said, in a televised address to the Russian people, that if Washington goes ahead with its planned missile bases surrounding Russia, Russia will respond with new nuclear missiles of its own, which will target the American bases and European capital cities.

The President of Russia said that the Russian government has asked Washington for legally binding guarantees that the American missile bases are not intended as a threat to Russia, but that Washington has refused to give such guarantees.

Medvedev’s statement is perplexing. What does he mean “if Washington goes ahead?”  The American missile and radar bases are already in place. Russia is already surrounded.  Is Medvedev just now aware of what is already in place?

Russia’s and China’s slow response to Washington’s aggression can only be understood in the context of the two countries’ experience with communism. The sufferings of Russians and Chinese under communism was extreme, and the thinking part of those populations saw America as the ideal of political life. This delusion still controls the mentality of progressive thinkers in Russia and China.  It might prove to be a disaster for Russia and China that the countries have citizens who are aligned with the US.

Belief in Washington’s trustworthiness even pervades the Russian government, which apparently, according to Medvedev’s statement, would be reassured by a “legally binding guarantee” from Washington.  After the massive lies told by Washington in the 21st century–”weapons of mass destruction,” “al Qaeda connections,” “Iranian nukes”–why would anyone put any credence in “a legally binding guarantee” from Washington? The guarantee would mean nothing. How could it be enforced?  Such a guarantee would simply be another deceit in Washington’s pursuit of world hegemony.

The day prior to Thanksgiving also brought another extraordinary development–the failure of a German government bond auction, an unparalleled event.

Why would Germany, the only member of the EU with financial rectitude, not be able to sell 35 per cent of its offerings of 10-year bonds?  Germany has no debt problems, and its economy is expected by EU and US authorities to bear the lion’s share of the bailout of the EU member countries that do lack financial rectitude.

I suspect that the answer to this question is that the failure of the German government’s bond auction was orchestrated by the US, by EU authorities, especially the European Central Bank, and private banks in order to punish Germany for obstructing the purchase of EU member countries’ sovereign debt by the European Central Bank.

The German government has been trying to defend the terms on which Germany gave up control over its own currency and joined the EU. By insisting on the legality of the agreements, Germany has been standing in the way of the ECB behaving like the US Federal Reserve and monetizing the debt of member governments.

From the beginning the EU was a conspiracy against Germany. If Germany remains in the EU, Germany will be destroyed. It will lose its political and economic sovereignty, and its economy will be bled in behalf of the fiscally irresponsible members of the EU.

If Greeks will not submit to the tyranny, why should Germans?

A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving GOP debate

Mocking the Dying, Profiting off the Work of Uninsured Artists

The American Disease
by DAVE LINDORFF

The first thing that needs to be said to the heartless boneheads who, at the last Republican presidential debate, cheered at the idea of letting a hypothetical 30-year-old cancer victim who hadn’t bought health insurance die, is that this is no mere hypothetical situation. The second thing that needs to be said is that most such people in real life don’t “refuse to get” health insurance. They either cannot afford it (and their employer doesn’t provide it), or they are rejected by insurers because of pre-existing conditions.

If you are a young person, earning a take-home salary of perhaps $20,000, are trying to raise two kids on your own, and you live in Texas, for example (Medicaid eligibility is set state by state), you would not be eligible for Medicaid coverage. Your two kids would supposedly be eligible, but not you. Meanwhile, if your employer, like most employers who are paying minimum wage, doesn’t offer some kind of group policy, if you were lucky enough not to be rejected for some pre-existing medical condition like diabetes or a heart murmer or something, you’d have to come up with perhaps $3,000 to cover yourself with a plan that would not pay for doctor visits, just major hospital bills. But say you were paying $800 a month for rent, and another $3000 a year to keep some 12-year-old rust-bucket of a vehicle insured and on the road to get you to work and home. That would only leave you $7,000 to feed and clothe your kids and yourself. Would you take $3000 of that to pay for health insurance for yourself and reduce your money for living expenses to $4000 for the year?

Of course not!  It would be coming right out of your childrens’ mouths!

All over America, especially these days with one in five of us either out of work or working at some job like the one described above or worse, while looking for a decently paying job, millions of individuals and families are struggling with this desperate problem.

And what happens is this. First off, they don’t go to the doctor when they get sick, or when they feel that something is wrong — say they see rectal bleeding, or feel a lump somewhere that a lump shouldn’t be, or they feel dizzy, or whatever. They soldier on and hope it will go away.

That’s what a dear friend of mine, a writer married to an actor, did. When her family fell on hard times between gigs, they found themselves without insurance coverage. Without any insurance, and with two kids to support, she did not go for regular physical checkups, which were expensive, so a cancer that might have been spotted early and taken care of, had she been covered and gone for regular doctor visits, was able to grow and metastacize. Worse, because she had a cancer, she could not get insured even when her husband got a job that offered coverage.  The only reason she got into a hospital at all was that her doctor, at some personal risk for violating the rules, had her wheeled into a big New York hospital right past the financial intake office, and got her assigned to a bed, from which she could not be evicted once admitted. She ultimately died of her cancer.  Ironically, she had for years been a fierce advocate for women’s health and for insurance coverage for all freelance writers like herself.

The morally challenged scum who heartily and heartlessly cheered for the death of a hypothetical 30-year-old were really cheering for the death of my friend, and millions like her.

But this obscenity goes much further.

I read in Daily Kos about the fate of a 63-year-old guitar maker, Steve Patience, whose sister eloquently raged at the laughing “assholes” whom she said were actually mocking her own brother.  She explained that he had devoted his life to making beautiful hand-made guitars, working 14-hour days, but never earning enough to get by (her family had had to help him out on occasion just to keep things going). He could not afford health insurance, but at 63, though he had been forced to retire to get Social Security benefits, he was two years too young for Medicare when he learned he had metastatic cancer.  A hospital emergency room wouldn’t even examine him despite rectal bleeding and intense pain and just sent him home on pain relievers. When he was finally — too late — seen and diagnosed with cancer, thanks to $2000 that friends provided for him to be seen by a proctologist, it took six weeks to get the hospital to let him in. It wanted $20,000 up front just for use of a room for the examination procedure. Only when his heart started to fail did he get admitted as an emergency patient. Some emergency! It was like making an auto accident victim with a head injury wait six weeks to be admitted for an MRI to spot a blood clot in the brain.

This is health care in America today for those without the resources to buy insurance.

I thought about this some more, recently, when I sat down to play my guitar, a hand-made 1972 instrument built by J.W. Gower, an independent maker who worked out of a trailer at his home outside Nashville. It’s an extraordinary instrument–apparently the second he built (the first is in the Nashville Guitar Hall of Fame). I don’t know if Gower had health insurance, but it’s a fair bet he never had any. The thought of such a master craftsman or his co-builder wife having to forego medical care for lack of insurance, or even having to worry about such a thing, makes me sick.

Most of the things of beauty that enrich our lives — guitars, harpsichords, hand-crafted pottery, paintings, beautiful music of all genres, etc. — are created by artists and artisans who barely earn enough to live on. They do the work they do because they love it, but they earn so little at it that the idea of health insurance is a luxury that many don’t even bother thinking about.

Basically most of them just hope not to get sick, or to die fast when they do.

The rest of us, who buy their creations, or who listen to their music or watch their plays or drink from their mugs, don’t even do that. We just forget about their problems.

And then there are those who enjoy the fruits of these artists’ labor and turn around and laugh at them when they do get seriously ill.

There are others who are even more obscene still, though. They don’t laugh at the suffering of the poor. Rather, they actively work to keep them that way. I’m thinking here of the real scum — the Wall Street bankers, huge pharmaceutical companies, insurance firms (including Blue Cross), and other giant industries that have lobbied hard to block real health care reform, such as expansion of Medicare to cover everyone — and who then will, with no sense of shame, put something like fine baroque music on their telephone “hold” system to add a touch of class to the “customer experience.”  Meanwhile, many of the musicians who perform that music can’t even afford health insurance.

It’s bad enough that we as a society close our eyes to the suffering of the tens of millions who are unable to get decent health care in this richest country in ther world. It’s worse yet that some obnoxious jerks are so blinded by their fears, their ignorance or their rank ideology of smug selfishness and greed that they can mock that suffering, but it’s purely evil that corporations and the wealthy can avail themselves of works of art and craftsmanship and pose as connoisseurs, and even use those creations to help generate profits for themselves, while actively working to block all efforts to make health care available to the creators of those things.

Enough! It’s time for us to do what the rest of the civilized modern world has done, and establish a system of Medicare for all Americans, cradle to grave, as is advocated by Physicians for a National Health Program.

David Gergen says Many were 'Horrified' By Republican Debate

Campaign 2012 as a Classic Conflict-of-Interest Story

Wednesday, September 14, 2011 by TomDispatch.com

by Tom Engelhardt

 

If I hear one more radio or TV journalist or pundit tell me what Mitt Romney must do, I think I’ll scream.  Election 2012 is still 14 months away and yet the nattering commentators, the Iowa straw poll -- we were told it was meaningless and to prove it 800 reporters showed up from a downsizing media -- the first “debates,” the instant rise and fall of possible candidates (and the ignoring of others) have already been part of the scenery for months.  If the job of journalists is now to tell us what Mitt Romney or any other candidate must do, then we, the viewers or listeners or readers, essentially become millions of mute political advisors in an endless campaign. 

I mean what do I think Mitt Romney must do, now that what’s-his-name is on the rise and Michele Bachman’s advisors are jumping ship like so many proverbial rats, and what about that crowd in the Ronald Reagan library cheering Rick Perry’s Texas execution record, or the idea of social security as a Ponzi scheme, and -- sorry to harp on it -- but really what should Mitt do about the Tea Party, or evolution, or Obama-rama-care?  Or really, at this point, who cares?

And don't think you can find relief by visiting oppositional websites online.  They're already geared up 24/7 to feed off mainstream “reporting,” while discussing what Mitt and his pals have done -- their gaffes, stupidities, idiocies, etc. -- presumably for the next 14 months.  And here’s the shameful thing: they’re not even making real money off it!

For the mainstream media, especially TV, it’s another matter.  In fact, it’s one of the great, unmentioned conflict-of-interest stories of our time.  If, in a different context, someone was selling you on the importance of a phenomenon and at the same time directly benefiting from it, that would be considered a self-evident conflict of interest.  For campaign 2012, TV alone is likely to have close to $3 billion in ad money dropped into its electronic lap -- especially if news shows can drum up attention for the eternal election season as the political event of a lifetime.  So whenever those pundits go on about Mitt and his musts, they are functionally shilling for their owners’ bottom lines, though no one in our world bothers to say so.

Focused on picking and handicapping candidates, the media version of the political campaign is a process which now begins the day after the previous campaign ends.  As a result, elections have become the political equivalent of our ever-expanding, increasingly overlapping sports seasons.  If you don’t mind logrolling at three in the morning, sports is never absent from our onscreen lives, and it looks like the same may soon be said about electoral politics.

These days, of course, every crisis or alarum in American society -- take the most recent terror alert that coincided with 9/11 coverage as an example -- can be transformed with remarkable ease into eyeball-gluing screen fare and so into a money-maker for some complex or other (military-industrial, homeland-security, media-industrial, etc.).  So endless months before the first vote that counts, we get polls pouring in, elections coming out of our ears, and constant chatter. But democracy?  In a country where, in the best of times, only 60% of its citizens actually vote, don’t make me laugh.  The people’s representatives?  Please!

My apologies to the Roman Empire, but politics is now part of bread-and-circus time in the increasingly chaotic American version of empire.  The circuses are, of course, for us, the bread (and I mean dough, moolah) for them.  They grow fat.  We remain riveted to our many screens.  Meanwhile, out there in the real world, where towers are falling all the time, even American decline is undoubtedly being gilded, and readied to be put up in lights, and sold as yet more fun for the masses: disintegration, the last word in on-screen entertainment.  Time to turn off the TV and join Mike Davis for a eulogy at the graveside of an imperial America in decline.

Buddy Roemer Was Not Invited

Decline of the Empire 09/08/2011

Those vying to become the leaders of the Republican "cult" (as renegade congressional staffer Mike Lofgren put it) held a "debate" last night. It apparently has not occurred to anyone on National Public Radio this morning that any  "debate" featuring Michele Bachmann, who is always painted as a front-runner, indicates the complete collapse of political legitimacy in the United States. I wonder how Angela Merkel views this. Not to mention Hu Jintao.

Former Louisiana governor Buddy Roemer was not invited to participate, although he is running for President on the Republican side. Unlike Michele, he does not have enough support yet to warrant a spot on the Big Debate Platform. Buddy has a pet peeve about politics in America. His problem with the whole process is that special interests run the show. Here is an excerpt from his speech to the National Press Club on August 17, 2011. He called his talk The Tyranny of The Big Check. I will quote it at length. I've presented Roemer's remarks on money in politics just as they appear on his campaign website.

But today, i want to talk about why these bold actions will not take place, will not happen.

Special interests own this town.

And the special interests have never been so well off. They are in control, and in a land run more and more by the government, they finance the choice of national candidates, and the presidential election itself.

We are broken and need to take bold action to grow again, but the special interests have never had it so good —- why change?

I agree with those who say that our political system, our nation’s capital, is institutionally corrupt.

For example, special interests write the tax code. You cannot read it. They can. General electric is the largest corporate giver in the last election cycle, made a profit last year of $5.2 billion and paid zero federal income taxes, while the average profitable small business person pays 36%. Fair?

Every year the costs of elections rise, and the same 1% or 2% of America give the money. 98% give nothing. That’s the system and it results in special favors and provisions and opportunities for those at the top who give the money.

We are owned from the top down by special interest money, political action committee (PAC) money, by wall street money, and by the big check.

Institutionally corrupt and it’s getting worse.

Look at the record.

Healthcare reform under president Obama was designed to lower the cost of healthcare yet it didn’t include tort reform. The tort lawyers are big givers to both parties.

It didn’t eliminate the protection that insurance companies have to prevent competition from out of state. Big givers, those insurance companies.

It didn’t require pharmaceutical companies to discount prices on government business. Oh no! Big bucks and the threat of big bucks from these multi-nationals.

A 2,300 page bill, unconstitutional at its core with the insurance mandate, and it didn’t even touch three of the most expensive healthcare costs.

Special interest money wrote healthcare.

Did you know that PACS and lobbyists with Washington dc area addresses gave more money in the last presidential campaign than 32 states combined?

Washington dc is a boom town and the rest of America is hurting.

Now, four years later, it’s worse.

The PACS are now uncountable. They can give twice as much as individuals. Why? There is no disclosure, no names, and no accountability as to purpose or source.

Then there is the “bundler”, who collects checks from others, delivers them to the candidate in a bundle with political credit going not to the sucker who give their $2,500 or $5,000, but to the collector who gives the PACkage to the candidate at $100,000 or $200,000 or $1,000,000 or $2,000,000 political value.

I recently read a paper written by a Harvard law school student about bundling and the selection of united states ambassadors under Obama and his predecessors. Checkbook diplomacy he called it.

Historically, all presidents have appointed about 30% political appointees versus 70% professional Foreign Service selections. President Obama is at 65% political (58 out of 90), and the major portion went to “bundlers”, such as

Roos to Japan with a $500,000 bundle
Susman to Great Britain with a $500,000 bundle
Rivkin to France with a $800,000 bundle
Gutman to Belgium for a $775,000 bundle
Beyer to Switzerland for a $745,000 PACkage.

On and on it goes.

And this is just 5 out of the first 24 bundler-nominees put forth by president Obama. These 24 nominees bundled more than $11 million minimum without counting their contributions to other fund raising opportunities such as the inaugural committee, the president’s leadership PAC, and the democrat national committee. There is no end to the cash these bundlers give and to the power and control it buys.

Both parties have done it, but Obama is the master.

We are selling important public jobs for special favored private money like a third world country.

The Tyranny of the Big Check. Position for sale!

It doesn’t end there.

Lobbyists have become fundraisers in an institutionally corrupt system. Lobbyists have been a critical source of information and focused industry knowledge since the beginning of our nation. It is a position considered honorable and necessary to the function of a representative democracy.

But it should not be combined with the role of a political fundraiser, where the danger is that the size of the check should determine the action of the representative.

Vote buying is a dangerous and slippery slope in a world where fair play and level playing field are as American as “apple pie”.

In short, a registered lobbyist should not be allowed to both lobby and fund raise. His/her choice, one or the other.

Jack Abramoff is a name that comes to mind.

The American bar association just endorsed this separation of registered lobbyist from the act of fund raising.

Special interest money, PAC money, bundled money. They never stop. They never cease. They never sleep.

Announce a new committee or a new appointment? A fundraiser by the special interest lobbyist immediately follows!

Two weeks ago congress agreed on a pitiful budget-debt ceiling resolution which called for a special committee of six dems and six republicans with awesome power of spending cuts and tax increases. It was a bad idea in my opinion, but it is now the law.

We immediately contacted the office of the speaker of the house and the president of the senate asking that all meetings of the special committee be held in a public forum and that members selected pledge not to accept PAC or lobbyists checks during the remainder of their term of office. Let the vote of the people be the ultimate decider of the choices inherent in this unusual situation, not the power of a special interest check.

No response from the congressional leadership.

Last week the leadership’s selections were made public and 24 hours later one of the members selected, congressman Becerra, had leaked the fact that he had accepted a major fundraiser by a group of lobbyists at $1,500 a ticket high lighting the fact that he was on the committee that would imPACt their special interests, their budget earmarks, and their tax loopholes.

It never stops. Incredible.

And Becerra’s answer? “I will continue to do what i have to do as a member of congress. So yes, we are going to move forward.”

So exactly what is his role as a member of congress? Collect fat special interest and lobbyists and PAC checks to get re-elected?

Or to represent his district and help rebuild America?

Watch the money!!!

We challenge the leadership of the house and the senate. Let the people decide these issues at the voting booth, not the special interest cash and check booth.

It is not too late to make a statement. Ask members of the special committee to eschew lobbyists, PACS, and special interest fundraising for the duration of this term. Ideas are welcome. Contributions from the vested interests are not.

The system is institutionally corrupt. Both parties are guilty and it is getting worse.

Which leads me to something new: “SUPERPACS”.

SUPERPACS do not have to disclose the contributions received and dollar amounts are unlimited. Their only requirement is that they have to be independent of any candidate although concepts can be shared.

What a joke!!

Independent? Romney’s SUPERPACS (or does he have two?) Got a $1 million contribution from a corporation formed special for that purpose and which dissolved after the check was delivered. When word leaked out about the million, Romney reluctantly revealed the source. Why was the million dollars hidden?

Independent? The PAC is run by former chief of staff, business partners, former employees, and is funded by individuals who already have contributed the maximum amount.

This is not disclosure or independence. This is phony, shadowy, hidden, corrupt in the truest sense of the word, corrupt in every sense of the word.

And I don’t want to pick on Romney alone. He is not unique. It is revealed that governor Rick Perry has seven SUPERPACS headed by former associates, staff, and maximum operatives. Bachmann has a SUPERPACS as does Paul and Huntsman.

Don’t do it. I challenge them. Don’t do it.

Join with me and let’s give ourselves a chance to take bold, clean action to restore America and to energize the plain people of our country who fight the wars, build the roads, start the small businesses, teach the kids, and raise the families of America.

Let’s restore honesty, and faith, and transparency to this corrupt political system.
These SUPERPACS are phony. They are not independent. They are just bald-faced efforts to hide the facts of the power of the big checks from the American people. They are just special interests buying yet more influence. You don’t believe the SUPERPACS are phony in their pretending to be independent?

Do you know that the candidate can attend the fundraising dinner, speak and be acknowledged, have it run by his henchman, and claim independence?

It is a joke, but a joke on our country. Don’t do it candidates. Join with me.

Still unsure about the below the surface corruption of our system? Look at the so-called banking reform of last year. Read Grethchen Morgenson in the New York Times every Sunday as she describes banking corruption, or ask a community banker in your town.

Our financial system is still not out of the woods, because “banking reform” did not eliminate too big to fail. Glass-Stegal is still dead. Goldman Sachs is still the largest political contributor in the financial sector and no one went to jail after they lied to the congress and abused their client privilege. And Obama is on wall street a month later having a huge fundraiser at $35,000 a ticket.

See how this corrupt system works? Jobs for sale. Wink and nod for change. Oh the president is a great fundraiser. Just what I’m looking for in a president — how about you?

I don't have much to add. See my post The Root Of All Political Evil. Today's post should not be taken as an endorsement of Buddy Roemer, but he's the only one running who is willing to talk about the only issue that matters. I'm never going to vote again, and I recommend you do the same.

The McLaughlin Group

I love it when they all bark at the same time, but they make some really good, hard points. Check it out.

US Senate opens debate on Patriot Act

By Agence France-Presse
Tuesday, May 24th, 2011

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US Senate voted to open a debate on a proposed four-year extension of the Patriot Act, a controversial anti-terrorism law passed after the September 11 attacks.

Key provisions of the law, which gave the government sweeping authority to conduct anti-terrorism investigations over the protests of civil libertarians, are due to expire on Friday.

The Senate voted 74-8 to open debate. A final vote is expected later this week.

In recent months, Congress has debated whether to extend the act temporarily, longer-term or permanently. In February, Congress approved a three-month extension to allow time for negotiations.

In play are provisions allowing authorities to use roving wiretaps to track an individual on several telephones; track a non-US national suspected of being a "lone-wolf" terrorist not tied to an extremist group; and to seize personal or business records or "any tangible thing" seen as critical to an investigation.

While the White House backs extending those powers, the law has drawn fire from an unusual coalition of liberal Democrats and Republicans tied to the archconservative "Tea Party" movement who say it goes too far.

In a statement released before the vote, the White House confirmed its strong support for an extension through 2015, arguing that the provisions are "crucial" for the intelligence and law enforcement communities.

The US House of Representatives must also vote later this week, before it goes to President Barack Obama for his signature.

The Levers of Power

If Progressives Wanted to Win

By DEAN BAKER

As we mark the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan's birth, his most important legacy has gone largely overlooked. Reagan helped to put a caricature of politics at the center of the national debate and it remains there to this day. In Reagan's caricature the central divide between progressives and conservatives is that progressives trust the government to make key decisions on production and distribution, while conservatives trust the market.

This framing of the debate is advantageous for the right since people, especially in the United States, tend to be suspicious of an overly powerful government. They also like the idea of leaving important decisions to the seemingly natural workings of the market.

It is therefore understandable that the right likes to frame its agenda this way. However, since the right has no greater commitment to the market than the left, it is incredible that progressives are so foolish as to accept this framing.

In reality, the right uses government all the time to advance its interest by setting rules that redistribute income upward. As long as progressives ignore the rules that are designed to redistribute income upward, they will be left fighting over crumbs. There is no way that government interventions will reverse a rigged market. For some reason, most of the people in the national political debate who consider themselves progressive do not seem to understand this fact.

To take the most obvious example, fighting inflation has come to be seen as bakerthe holy grail of central banks; a policy that it is supposed to be outside of the realm of normal political debate. On slightly more careful inspection, the inflation fighting by the Fed and other central banks is actually a policy that is designed to ensure that the wages of ordinary workers do not grow too rapidly.

When central banks jack up interest rates to tame inflation, the CEOs at Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan won't be out on the street. The people who lose their jobs will be factory workers, store clerks and other less privileged workers. Raising unemployment among the group of less-educated workers keeps their wages down.

In other words, controlling inflation is about making sure that the wages of less-educated workers don't rise relative to the wages of more educated workers. And, the central banks have a license to push as hard as they like in this direction.

Incredibly, the vast majority of progressives go along with this central bank squeeze. They accept the absurd notion that this upward redistribution by the central banks is simply apolitical monetary policy and agree not to criticize the central bank. As a practical matter there is nothing that Congress could plausibly do in the way of downward redistribution that would offset the upward redistribution from the Fed's tightening.

This is not the only policy lever that progressives are happy to turn over to conservatives. The exchange rate has enormous impact on the relative wages of workers who have been subjected to international competition through trade policy. If the dollar is over-valued by 20-30 percent against other currencies, then this is giving a subsidy to foreign producers relative to domestic ones of this magnitude.

Doctors and lawyers are smart enough to know that this sort of competition will drive down their wages and incomes. This is why they maintain strong barriers that prevent them from being subject to international competition in the same way as autoworkers and textile workers.

Unfortunately, the people who represent ordinary workers fail to understand this simple point. Therefore, exchange rate policy rarely is featured prominently in political debates, even though it is another huge cause of the upward redistribution of income that we have seen over the last three decades.

Similarly, patent and copyright policy lock off large areas of the economy in monopolies assigned to large corporations and wealthy individuals. The United States now spends more than 2 percent of GDP, $300 billion a year, on prescription drugs that would likely cost less than one-tenth this much if they were sold in a competitive market. The $270 billion handed to the drug companies each year through government-provided patent monopolies is five times as much money as what was at stake with the Bush tax cuts for the rich. Yet, here as well progressives largely ignore patent and copyright policy.

The battles that occupy progressives' energies are almost invariably trivial in their impact relative to these three fulcrums of the economy. In effect, conservatives have managed to gain control of the most important levers of economic activity and left the crumbs for progressives to fight over in the political sphere.

It would be very hard to challenge the right's control over these levers, but the first step is to simply recognize them. Unfortunately, there is little appreciation among progressives of their importance. Instead we get great histrionics over policies that really won't have very much impact, even if they might be wrong-headed.

It seems that progressives have taken a pledge to be the Washington Generals of national politics. The policies that have led to the most massive upward redistribution of income in the history of the world go largely unchallenged, while we instead fight endlessly over the Reagan-Bush tax breaks to the rich.

Ron Paul: Stop Your Demagogy About The NYC Mosque!

(Dr. Paul correctly views the mosque BS as a distraction from larger issues. See the next post where Alan Grayson also thinks it is a distraction. And my accompanying editorial about why this mosque issue is even getting airtime, much less the furor and outrage is does not deserve.--jef)

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Sunshine Patriots...
by RonPaul.com on August 20, 2010

Congressman Ron Paul today released the following statement on the controversy concerning the construction of an Islamic Center and Mosque in New York City:

Is the controversy over building a mosque near ground zero a grand distraction or a grand opportunity? Or is it, once again, grandiose demagoguery?

It has been said, “Nero fiddled while Rome burned.” Are we not overly preoccupied with this controversy, now being used in various ways by grandstanding politicians? It looks to me like the politicians are “fiddling while the economy burns.”

The debate should have provided the conservative defenders of property rights with a perfect example of how the right to own property also protects the 1st Amendment rights of assembly and religion by supporting the building of the mosque.

Instead, we hear lip service given to the property rights position while demanding that the need to be “sensitive” requires an all-out assault on the building of a mosque, several blocks from “ground zero.”

Just think of what might (not) have happened if the whole issue had been ignored and the national debate stuck with war, peace, and prosperity. There certainly would have been a lot less emotionalism on both sides. The fact that so much attention has been given the mosque debate, raises the question of just why and driven by whom?

In my opinion it has come from the neo-conservatives who demand continual war in the Middle East and Central Asia and are compelled to constantly justify it.

They never miss a chance to use hatred toward Muslims to rally support for the ill conceived preventative wars. A select quote from soldiers from in Afghanistan and Iraq expressing concern over the mosque is pure propaganda and an affront to their bravery and sacrifice.

The claim is that we are in the Middle East to protect our liberties is misleading. To continue this charade, millions of Muslims are indicted and we are obligated to rescue them from their religious and political leaders. And, we’re supposed to believe that abusing our liberties here at home and pursuing unconstitutional wars overseas will solve our problems.

The nineteen suicide bombers didn’t come from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan or Iran. Fifteen came from our ally Saudi Arabia, a country that harbors strong American resentment, yet we invade and occupy Iraq where no al Qaeda existed prior to 9/11.

Many fellow conservatives say they understand the property rights and 1st Amendment issues and don’t want a legal ban on building the mosque. They just want everybody to be “sensitive” and force, through public pressure, cancellation of the mosque construction.

This sentiment seems to confirm that Islam itself is to be made the issue, and radical religious Islamic views were the only reasons for 9/11. If it became known that 9/11 resulted in part from a desire to retaliate against what many Muslims saw as American aggression and occupation, the need to demonize Islam would be difficult if not impossible.

There is no doubt that a small portion of radical, angry Islamists do want to kill us but the question remains, what exactly motivates this hatred?

If Islam is further discredited by making the building of the mosque the issue, then the false justification for our wars in the Middle East will continue to be acceptable.

The justification to ban the mosque is no more rational than banning a soccer field in the same place because all the suicide bombers loved to play soccer.

Conservatives are once again, unfortunately, failing to defend private property rights, a policy we claim to cherish. In addition conservatives missed a chance to challenge the hypocrisy of the left which now claims they defend property rights of Muslims, yet rarely if ever, the property rights of American private businesses.

Defending the controversial use of property should be no more difficult than defending the 1st Amendment principle of defending controversial speech. But many conservatives and liberals do not want to diminish the hatred for Islam–the driving emotion that keeps us in the wars in the Middle East and Central Asia.

It is repeatedly said that 64% of the people, after listening to the political demagogues, don’t want the mosque to be built. What would we do if 75% of the people insist that no more Catholic churches be built in New York City? The point being is that majorities can become oppressors of minority rights as well as individual dictators. Statistics of support is irrelevant when it comes to the purpose of government in a free society—protecting liberty.

The outcry over the building of the mosque, near ground zero, implies that Islam alone was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. According to those who are condemning the building of the mosque, the nineteen suicide terrorists on 9/11 spoke for all Muslims. This is like blaming all Christians for the wars of aggression and occupation because some Christians supported the neo-conservatives’ aggressive wars.

The House Speaker is now treading on a slippery slope by demanding a Congressional investigation to find out just who is funding the mosque—a bold rejection of property rights, 1st Amendment rights, and the Rule of Law—in order to look tough against Islam.

This is all about hate and Islamaphobia.

We now have an epidemic of “sunshine patriots” on both the right and the left who are all for freedom, as long as there’s no controversy and nobody is offended.

Political demagoguery rules when truth and liberty are ignored.

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(Hell yeah!--jef)