The Bipartisan War on Liberty

Liberal and conservative elites agree on one thing:
Americans are too free for their own good.

A. Barton Hinkle | November 18, 2011

To outward appearances, it might seem as though the left and right have never been more at odds. And for the average man in the street, drawn to the Tea Party on one side or the Occupy movement on the other, this might be true. But it is not so true for elite opinion. The nation's high and mighty may be divided about many things, but on one point they often agree: Americans are still too darn free.

For example: Not enough people exercise their right to vote. Problem, right? Well, William Galston of the Brookings Institution has a solution: Force them to. The other day he took to the pages of The New York Times to explain why we should be "Telling Americans to Vote, or Else." (It doesn't seem to have occurred to Galston that making people exercise a right takes that right away, by turning it into an obligation.)

Galston is hardly alone. Mitt Romney considers it a problem that many foreign nationals enter America without a government permission slip. His solution: Force every U.S. resident to carry a biometric ID card. (Just the thing to present at the polls when meeting your mandatory-voting requirement, eh? Great minds think alike.)

One of Romney's GOP primary opponents, Michele Bachmann, laments that many Americans—53% of them—pay no federal income tax. So she proposed forcing everyone to do so, even if they don't have any income to pay taxes on. That'll show 'em.

Time magazine proposed forcing every American into national service. A federal advisory board has decided, to much applause, that we should force boys as well as girls to receive the HPV vaccine. Proponents of ObamaCare believe the government should force everyone to buy health insurance.

The Obama administration also has lots of other bright ideas about how to bend the American people to its will. Last year Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told those at a National Press Club that the administration's "livability" initiative "is a way to coerce people out of their cars." The administration also wants to force insurers to pay for birth control and abortifacients, and to force consumers to buy more fuel-efficient cars.

Voices outside the administration, however, fret that it is not being forceful enough. In a recent Washington Post column, Dana Milbank advised the president to emulate the ruthless tactics of JFK. Milbank recounts how Roger Blough, chairman of U.S. Steel, raised prices in defiance of the president's wishes. "'You have made a terrible mistake,' Kennedy told him. Subpoenas flew, FBI agents marched into steel executives' offices, and Kennedy spoke about IRS agents examining 'hotel bills and nightclub expenses [that] would be hard to get by the weekly wives' bridge group out at the country club.'"

Ahh, the good old days. When J. Edgar Hoover pulled stunts like that, liberals considered it proof that the dark night of fascism was descending across the land. But when their own guys do it, they call it getting things done. Nary a word from Milbank about what business the president has dictating steel prices, by the way.

Yet Milbank is a piker in the thuggery-worship category, at least when compared with The New York Times' Thomas Friedman. In 2009, Friedman penned a column about how China's one-party autocracy was better than America's two-party system: "One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks," he wrote, "but when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people . . . it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies to move a society forward." He went on to list some of China's critically important policies, which were—surprise!—policies of which he personally approved.

Well, anyone can write a stinker of a column now and then (heaven knows!). But a year later Friedman was still at it, relating on Meet the Press how he has "fantasized" about "what if we could just be China for a day?" Then "we could actually, you know, authorize the right solutions." He didn't actually want America to "be China," mind you, he just wanted "my democracy to work with the same authority." That way, Friedman could impose his will on everyone else, and life would be grand.

This is what power fetishists always do: assume the power will be used in ways they like. (And since the ends are noble, they surely must justify the means, right?) Sometimes it is. But when power changes hands, the inheritors may be a rather different sort. The people pushing for more government power never seem to think of that—until it's too late.

Cops For Sale

The New Praetorian Guard

by GEORGE OCHENSKI

 

Alarms went off when it was revealed that the armed forces of the United States were using increasing numbers of private contractors to provide everything from transportation to security in war zones around the globe.

Those alarms clanged louder when the indiscriminate slaughtering of unarmed Iraqi civilians by the notorious security firm formerly known as Blackwater were exposed.

Now, the war has come home as wealthy private corporations hire not only security firms, but also public law enforcement officers to ensure that the riff-raff, formerly known as citizens of the U.S., stay out of the way of their money-making schemes and political manipulations.

The Praetorian Guard was established by the emperors of Rome to ensure that neither citizens nor disgruntled military units could harm them. While it may have made sense at first, the story soon changed as the Praetorians became less of a security force to protect Rome’s rulers than hired killers for those who could afford them.

Now a new and dangerous Praetorian Guard is emerging in the U.S. What makes it even worse is that our new Praetorians are not simply hired killers like Blackwater, but officers of public police forces whose salaries and pensions are provided by taxpayers until such time as they are needed by those with the wealth to hire them for private purposes.

If that sounds far-fetched, consider the actions of the “white shirts” I mentioned in last week’s column, in the ongoing Occupy Wall Street protests. A New York City policeman wearing a white shirt, which is supposed to differentiate supervisors from the blue-uniformed line officers, walked up to several women who were already corralled in a police barricade and blasted them in their faces with pepper spray. The women collapsed screaming in pain as the officer who sprayed them turned away smiling.

Shortly after that incident, it was revealed that JP Morgan Chase, one of Wall Street’s most powerful players, had donated $4.6 million to the New York City Police Foundation, the largest such donation ever. JP Morgan Chase CEO and Chairman Jamie Dimon could not have been more revealing, saying, “These officers put their lives on the line every day to keep us safe. We’re incredibly proud to help them build this program and let them know how much we value their hard work.”

The donation is supposed to pay for 1,000 new patrol car laptops and security monitoring software for the NYPD main data center. Surely such a donation couldn’t buy off the cops, could it?

Consider that last week’s column also noted that 700 citizens were arrested trying to cross the Brooklyn Bridge. Where were they headed? To protest in the Chase Manhattan Plaza.

Maybe the donation and the arrests aren’t connected. But if you believe that, perhaps you’d be interested in buying that bridge.

There’s no need for speculation as to whether those with enough money can buy public police protection. They can. In a program started by former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani called the “Paid Detail Unit,” private corporations can hire New York City policemen to protect their interests for a mere $37 per hour each, with a 10 percent “administrative fee” paid directly to the police department.

According to a recent CounterPunch article by Pam Martens, not only do these hired cops get to carry guns and handcuffs, they also have the authority to arrest citizens at the behest of the private wealth that hired them. In 2010, corporations such as Goldman Sachs, the World Financial Center and the New York Stock Exchange spent almost $12 million doing just that.
 
There’s no need to look to the East Coast, though, when we have examples right here at home.

Remember those mega-loads Exxon Mobil wanted to ship through Idaho and Montana on narrow, two-lane roads? Guess whom they hired to ensure that no protestors barred their way?

Our own Montana Highway Patrol.

Like most Montanans, I’ve always respected our Highway Patrol officers. So how is it that they are now for hire by anyone with the money to do so, and they can sweep the citizens who normally pay their wages out of the way of private corporations?

Exxon Mobil is “required to pay for a two-car safety escort by the Montana Highway Patrol,” the Missoulian noted recently. Yet the corporations aren’t even required to tell the Highway Patrol before they move their loads. “‘To be honest, we’re kind of lost, too,’” Montana Highway patrol Sgt. Jason Holdenstab told the paper. Holdenstab, based in Helena, is in charge of scheduling the safety escorts. “I’m at the mercy of [transport company Mammoet] when they send me a schedule,” he said.

Having our Highway Patrol “at the mercy” of a mega-corporation doesn’t sound like a very good idea.

Nor does getting beaten, gassed or arrested by privately hired cops.

But that’s the state of America today, as the new Praetorian Guard emerges to stand between citizens and the corporations who plunder them. And the silence from our political leaders is deafening.

Chant of 'Tax the Rich' Growing Louder in Nation

Friday, September 2, 2011 by the San Francisco Chronicle

by Carla Marinucci 

 

 

Billionaire Warren Buffett may not seem to have much in common with angry laborers at town hall meetings or armies of California nurses protesting in the streets.
But these days, the executive celebrity in his boardroom and working folks on the front lines have found a common mantra as the economy continues to sputter and the 2012 election approaches: "Tax the rich."

   

"In this country, the working people pay and pay and pay and the wealthy don't - and they get bonuses and bailouts," widening the gap between rich and poor, said Rose Anne DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association. (photo: dignidadrebelde)

They are joining Democratic politicians, such as U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, who pounded the issue of making "millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share" nearly a dozen times at a recent event in Oakland.

The calls have become louder as President Obama plans to unveil his jobs plan next Thursday in a highly anticipated speech that they hope will provide a counterpoint to conservative grassroots GOP groups pressing lawmakers to slash government programs to stimulate the economy - without raising taxes.

Also driving the debate is the looming work of the bipartisan 12-member congressional "super committee" on deficit reduction set to begin its work this month in Washington.

'Stop Coddling the Rich'
At the same time, the liberal activist group MoveOn.org has launched a "Stop Coddling the Rich" campaign to underscore what it says is a growing disparity between American income classes at a time of growing economic uncertainty.

Today, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, and the powerful National Nurses United union will take the message one step further with one of their trademark protests - this time opening a symbolic "soup kitchen."

The nationwide protests are expected to involve about 10,000 participants in street-theater events in more than four dozen cities and other locations around the country.

Millions are suffering
"What's happened is that the unemployed and the uninsured, the underinsured and the homeless have become invisible in our culture," says Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the nurses' union, which has 170,000 members nationally and 75,000 in California, where it's also known as California Nurses Association.

DeMoro said she hears daily from her union members upset by the millions of Americans who are suffering while Wall Street financiers are making substantial amounts of money.
"In this country, the working people pay and pay and pay and the wealthy don't - and they get bonuses and bailouts," widening the gap between rich and poor, said DeMoro.

Gulf between parties (Democrats coddle the rich, too--jef)
With the 2012 election approaching and Republicans at state and local levels drawing a line in the sand against new taxes, the "tax the rich" movement underscores a growing gulf between the parties.

"The Republican Tea Party is trying to hold the country hostage," said Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, who has held job fairs around the country the past few weeks with other members of the Congressional Black Caucus. "The only way you're going to create jobs is a direct investment (from the federal government) in job creation and repealing the Bush tax cuts."

Activists such as DeMoro say that members of the congressional super committee from both political parties appear more interested in cutting social programs "to funnel more resources to Wall Street and foreign banks and investors."

Buffett, in a widely read opinion piece last month in the New York Times, kicked off the latest debate, saying, "My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It's time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice."

Executive pay
A survey released Wednesday by the Institute of Policy Studies, a liberal think tank in Washington, appeared to confirm some of his views, finding that 25 of the highest paid CEOs earned more last year than their firms paid in income tax, and that several of those firms paid more to lobbyists than they did in taxes.

Even conservative Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista (San Diego County), a self-made millionaire and one of the richest members of Congress, issued a statement on the survey, saying that it's time to examine "the extent to which the problems in CEO compensation that led to the economic crisis continue to exist today."

But some Democrats, including California Gov. Jerry Brown, have acknowledged the political quicksand present in such a discussion. In comments circulated on Twitter, Brown suggested that Republicans view new taxes as something akin to "a sexually transmitted disease."

Liberals such as Lee are warning Obama not to call for more tax cuts in his jobs speech next week.

"You can't keep giving tax cuts because tax cuts do nothing but drain money from our economy," Lee said, arguing that 40 percent of the $787 billion federal stimulus package in 2009 were tax cuts that "didn't do anything."

$500 billion for jobs
She wants at least $500 billion in direct federal investment in job creation and training, to be paid for by closing the Bush tax cuts. She also would like unemployment benefits extended for 14 weeks.

"If there are 14 million people unemployed, we want to see a targeted approach to everyone who is unemployed," Lee said. "This is a national emergency. I want to hear the president say that."

Rich Lifestyles of the GOP's Starve-the-Poor Presidential Candidates

(In all fairness, I don't believe any of the top Democrats are hurting for mountains of cash either. They both are owned by the same companies.--jef) 

With housing foreclosures at an all-time high, the top tier of Republican presidential candidates is living high on the hog.

By Rania Khalek, AlterNet
Posted on September 2, 2011

With the campaign season for Republican presidential primaries in full bloom, the candidates are falling all over each other in a fierce competition to tout their conservative bona fides. Even as housing foreclosures reach all-time highs, and unemployment in some states climbs into the double digits, Republican presidential contenders remain insistent in their demands for reducing government assistance to those suffering under the weight of economic disaster. So, let's have a look at how the candidates themselves are faring on this dismal economic landscape.

1) Rick Perry

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, the GOP's presidential frontrunner, according to the latest Gallup poll, is hardly an elitist. Born into a farming family of modest means in rural Haskell County, Perry continued farming cotton and raising cattle even after he was elected to the state legislature in the mid-1980s, according to the Texas Tribune, yielding him and his wife a combined income of just $45,000 -- a pittance compared to his current $150,000 annual salary as governor (not to mention the millions he's earned on the side in real estate).

You would think that a past of manual labor would have instilled in Perry a sense of solidarity with the working class, but it's just the opposite. Although Perry wasn't born into wealth, he might as well have been, given the ease with which he became accustomed to a life of privilege, which is currently being funded by the taxpaying residents of Texas.

Based on Perry's tax records, the Texas Tribune's Jay Root reveals that "Perry's biggest income gains have come from buying and selling land" during his 30 years in public office. "Since the early 1990s, when Perry began serving as a statewide elected official, the transactions have helped him earn about $2 million in pre-tax profits," according to Root.

Even with all that money, Perry finds it appropriate to use taxpayer funds to pay for his extravagant and temporary mansion, while he and his family await renovations and repairs to the governor's mansion. (An unknown arsonist practically destroyed the residence in 2008.)

According to a May 2010 Associated Press investigation, Perry "has spent almost $600,000 in public money during the past two years to live in a sprawling rental home in the hills above the capital." Texans are forking up over $10,000 a month to cover Perry's rent, which includes "utilities and upkeep to house Perry in a five-bedroom, seven-bath mansion that has pecan-wood floors, a gourmet kitchen and three dining rooms."

The AP breaks down the costs:

His 6,386-square-foot rental sits on more than three acres and was advertised in 2007 for sale at $1.85 million. Perry's state-paid expenses at the home include $18,000 for "consumables" such as household supplies and cleaning products, $1,001.46 in window coverings from upscale retailer Neiman Marcus, a $1,000 "emergency repair" of the governor's filtered ice machine, a $700 clothes rack, and a little over $70 for a two year subscription to Food & Wine Magazine. Maintenance on the heated pool has cost taxpayers at least $8,400, and the tab for grounds and lawn maintenance has topped $44,000, the records show. All told, taxpayers have spent at least $592,000 for rent, utilities, repairs, furnishings and supplies since Perry moved in.

While charging the Lone Star state a steep fee to maintain his fancy abode, Perry has kept busy slashing funds to public education and the social safety net to solve his state's budget woes. In 2011 alone, he cut $4 billion from public education and $4.8 billion from Medicaid to fill a $27 billion two-year budget gap (even as one in four Texas children are living in poverty).

He also put in place a state tax structure that redistributes wealth from the working class to the rich, a conclusion reached in a recent analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

Meanwhile, Perry complained about "the injustice that nearly half of all Americans don't even pay any income tax" during his announcement of his presidential candidacy, referring to the 50 percent of Americans who earn too little to pay income taxes, or whose tax payments are refunded through programs such as the Earned Income Tax Credit, which is a form of aid to families with children. (All legally employed Americans, however, pay federal taxes for Social Security and other benefits.)

However, Perry was kind enough to "cut back on some luxuries in response to the state's tight finances," a spokeswoman told the AP. She explained that the Perrys have restricted their help to just "one housekeeper, one full-time chef -- although a second chef works part time -- and a mansion administrator who left and was not replaced."

2) Mitt Romney

What former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney lacks in charisma he makes up for in money, with a net worth between $190 million and $250 million. He was born into a wealthy family, which clearly gave him a headstart in life and helped him amass even more wealth as a businessman, demonstrating some truth behind the slogan "the poor stay poor and the rich get rich."

Romney's large fortune wouldn't be such a point of contention if not for his stated desire to raise the retirement age for Social Security and Medicare rather than raising taxes on tax-dodging corporations and the rich. Ian Millhiser of ThinkProgress reported on Romney's June campaign stop in Iowa, where he told his audience that we "should consider a higher retirement age" as opposed to raising taxes on corporations because "corporations are people, my friends."

Since Romney's campaign is funded heavily by Wall Street banks, his willingness to coddle the rich at the expense of senior citizens isn't exactly surprising.

His rhetoric also illustrates how out of touch and disconnected he is from everyday Americans. For example, while millions of Americans struggle with losing their one and only home, Romney owns three homes: a vacation home in New Hampshire, a townhouse in Boston, and a second vacation home in La Jolla, California. Romney recently came under fire after the San Diego Union-Tribune revealed his plans to quadruple the size of his $12 million Pacific beachfront home in La Jolla.

The silver-spoon-fed millionaire is entitled to do with his money as he pleases. Still, it's near impossible to witness such ostentatious materialism by a man who says the following about the plight of society's most vulnerable, without cringing:

"The threat to our culture comes from within. In the 1960s there were welfare programs that created a culture of poverty in our country. Now some people think we won that battle when we reformed welfare, but the liberals haven't give up. At every turn they try to substitute government largess for individual responsibility. They fight to strip work requirements from welfare, to put more people on Medicaid and remove more and more people from having to pay any income tax whatsoever. Dependency is death to initiative, risk taking and opportunity. Dependency is culture killing. It's a drug. We have got to fight it like the poison it is."

Those are Romney's words from a speech he gave at the 2008 Conservative Political Action Conference, which prompted the crowd to burst into cheers and applause. His heartless rhetoric is not only reserved for the poor. Brad Johnson of ThinkProgress reported on Romney's inability to feel compassion for disaster victims, as well, when speaking about government aid for tornado-ravaged communities in the Midwest earlier this year. "We cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids," Romney said, referring to deficit spending on federal disaster relief for tornado and flood victims. "It is simply immoral, in my view, for us to continue to rack up larger and larger debts and pass them on to our kids, knowing full well that we'll all be dead and gone before it's paid off. It makes no sense at all."

3) Ron Paul

Some laud Rep. Ron Paul of Texas for his vehemently anti-war stance, a position most Democrats refuse to take. He is one of the only members of Congress willing to admit that our worldwide military apparatus is both sucking our treasury dry and creating more enemies for America in the long run.

That being said, Paul has some scary plans for fixing the economy. Here are his views on "entitlements," including Social Security and Medicare, as posted on his official House of Representatives Web site:

"Fiscal conservatives should not be afraid to attack entitlements philosophically. We should reject the phony narrative that entitlement programs are inherently noble or required by "progressive" western values. Why exactly should Americans be required, by force of taxation, to fund retirement or medical care for senior citizens, especially senior citizens who are comfortable financially?"

Paul, born in 1935, is 76 years old, meaning he is eligible for Medicare and Social Security, which he refuses to access because he believes it would be morally hypocritical. While his intellectual integrity on entitlements may be commendable, the congressman's path is eased by his net worth of between $2.25 to $5 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Public education fares no better in Paul's plan for America; he hopes to one day abolish the Department of Education. In a recent meeting with a group of parents who homeschool their children, Paul displayed his distaste for public schooling (via the Huffington Post):

"The public school system now is a propaganda machine," Paul said, prompting applause from the crowd of hundreds of home schooling families. "They start with our kids even in kindergarten, teaching them about family values, sexual education, gun rights, environmentalism -- and they condition them to believe in so much which is totally un-American."

Ironically, Paul is a product of public schooling, and he's done pretty well for himself. Paul's approach to public education pretty much sums up his approach to all things public: abolish government involvement, let the so-called "free" market fix it. (In fairness, today's public school system is nowhere near the level it used to be. It's definitely broken, but needs to be fixed, not eliminated or privatized.--jef)

4) Michele Bachmann

Rep. Michele Bachmann, Minn., may not be the richest of the GOP presidential contenders, but she still remains several hundreds of thousands of dollars wealthier than the average American. Of course, that wealth was earned through her hard work and sweat without any help from the government, right? Well, not exactly….

Not only has Bachmann collected upward of a quarter million dollars in government subsidies to prop up her family farm, an investigative report by NBC News revealed that her husband's Christian counseling clinic -- which appears to offer discredited therapies designed to turn gay and lesbian people into heterosexuals -- has collected $24,000 in federal and state funds in addition to $137,000 in Medicaid payments.

As the Bachmanns accept government money to boost their profit margins and improve their quality of life, Michele Bachmann is famous for decrying public assistance programs, even for the poor, as promoters of a culture of dependence. She has even gone so far as suggesting we "wean" people off of Social Security and Medicare, two programs that guarantee Americans won't die of hunger in their old age.

Kimberly Kimby reported last month in the Washington Post that Bachmann has benefited from one of the government-backed home loan programs offered by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as well. "Just a few weeks before Bachmann called for dismantling the programs during a House Financial Services Committee hearing, she and her husband signed for a $417,000 home loan to help finance their move to a 5,200-square-foot golf-course home," Kimby wrote.

According to Kimby, the $760,000 home "was custom built with a paneled library, spa and wine cellar for former NFL player Ross Verba in 2005. Verba faced foreclosure after sinking more than $2 million into the property, court and mortgage records show. He originally listed the home for $1.75 million in 2007."

Bachmann didn't do anything illegal; she simply took out a federally subsidized home loan to finance her house. Yet, as Kimby points out, "Bachmann has been the most outspoken critic of the loan programs and other government subsidies among Republican presidential candidates."

Bachmann has made it clear, with both her words and legislative actions, that she is staunchly opposed to government assistance of any kind. That includes help for families struggling with foreclosure as a result of the devastated economy -- some due to the under-regulated subprime mortgage industry -- which has left many homeless. Bachmann opposed the Wall Street reform package passed by Congress in part, according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, because it leaves the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac entities intact.

The Minnesota Independent reports that Bachmann's 6th congressional district takes the lead in the state's foreclosure rates, yet she has voted down all five foreclosure relief bills introduced in Congress. Bachmann believes that providing relief to families about to lose their homes, or even establishing consumer protections against malicious mortgage schemes would be tantamount to "rewarding the irresponsible while punishing those who have been playing by the rules."

With net worth of at least $900,000, according to Politico, Michele Bachmann can afford to back an agenda only a banker could love.

* * * *

As millions of Americans grapple with unemployment, foreclosure and poverty, it's frightening to consider how they would fare under a Perry, Romney, or Bachmann administration. All of the candidates seem determined to enact a far-right agenda that will likely lead to the destruction of the already dwindling government programs that have kept the working class and poor from absolute destitution.

‘Let ‘Em Eat Peas’: An Elitist Mantra for Our Age

Sunday, July 17, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

by Donna Smith

The elite of this nation have largely forgotten the rest of us. Wall Street was bailed out; Main Street was sold out.

It has been a challenging week for many people.  While our elected officials have been broadly reported to be at odds about exactly how to raise the debt ceiling or not, millions of Americans have no work, are running out of ways to keep their homes – rented or owned, and struggle even to keep the basic necessities for themselves and their families.

Nurses served soup to hungry folks in Lansing, Michigan. There was a stampede of people hoping to secure low-cost housing in Dallas.

Yet in a glaring display of the inability of this nation’s elected leaders to publicly recognize and address the suffering happening across the country – in every Congressional District and in every state – those who have the power to alleviate some of that suffering have decided it’s time to cut the social safety nets of Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security rather than protect and enhance it.  How that will help the economy is unclear to me.  No one has yet explained to me how allowing more people to go belly up helps us now or in the longer term.

People who are not working, who don’t have homes, who don’t have a weekly paycheck – no matter how meager, who don’t have adequate retirement protection and income, who don’t have healthcare, who don’t have access to healthy foods,  and who may not have a health environment , have a very hard time contributing much at all to their local economies.  It is common sense to me that tax revenues fall ever lower, local and state governments are having budget difficulties unlike those ever seen before, and the entities least able to absorb large losses and a weakened economy are hurting most.

Earlier this week, while chastising the Republicans for not agreeing to a debt ceiling deal that would include his suggestions to cut Medicare and Social Security benefits, President Obama said Congressional members needed to do their work, reach a deal and just “eat their peas.”    That’s insulting not only to the peas but to every one of us who worries that both Republicans and Democrats have so lost their way that cutting benefits that will harm real people in very real ways has now become just another “man up” photo-op moment in a political struggle instead of the horrific and damaging action that it really is.  It was a diminishment of the seriousness of the actions both parties are about to take that will cause great and terrible harm to millions.

While no one knows for sure if Marie Antoinette ever really said, “Let them eat cake,” we do know the elite in France all those years ago in the 1700s were clueless to the cries of people who couldn’t afford bread much less the cake they had been admonished to eat.  It appears that in 2011 in the United States of America, we can now replace that admonition with our own:  “Let them eat their peas.”    That’s just about the size of things from Washington, DC, from my view.

The elite of this nation have largely forgotten the rest of us.   We’ve already sacrificed.  There was no sharing of peas or anything else.  Wall Street was bailed out; Main Street was sold out. And the march goes on to call for “shared sacrifice.”  It’s a ruse of the most horrible kind, and it dishonors those who have gone before us.

Criminal Law is Not for Political Elites

Saturday, June 4, 2011 by Salon

by Glenn Greenwald

 

The Washington Post Editors work in a city and live in a nation in which huge numbers of poor and minority residents are consigned to cages for petty and trivial transgressions of the criminal law -- typically involving drugs -- and pursuant to processes that are extremely tilted toward the State.  Post Editors virtually never speak out against that, if they ever have.  But that all changes -- that indifference disappears -- when political elites are targeted for prosecution, even for serious crimes:

The Post Editors, July 3, 2007:

IN COMMUTING I. Lewis Libby's prison sentence yesterday, President Bush took the advice of, among others, William Otis, a former federal prosecutor who wrote on the opposite page last month that Mr. Libby should neither be pardoned nor sent to prison. We agree that a pardon would have been inappropriate and that the prison sentence of 30 months was excessive. . . . Add to that Mr. Libby's long and distinguished record of public service, and we sympathize with Mr. Bush's conclusion "that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive."

The Post Editors, October 27, 2007:

The biggest sticking point [in agreeing to a new FISA bill] concerns the question of retroactive immunity from lawsuits for communications providers that cooperated with the administration's warrantless surveillance program. As we have said, we do not believe that these companies should be held hostage to costly litigation in what is essentially a complaint about administration activities.

The Post Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt, August 30, 2009:

[T]his is also a nation where two political parties compete civilly and alternate power peacefully. Regimes do not seek vengeance, through the courts or otherwise, as they succeed each other. Were Obama to criminally investigate his predecessor for what George W. Bush believed to be decisions made in the national interest, it could trigger a debilitating, unending cycle. . . . There is a better, though not perfect, solution, one that the administration reportedly considered, rejected and should consider again: a high-level, respected commission to examine the choices made in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001, and their consequences. . . . The alternative, for Obama, is a series of debilitating revelations, prosecutions and arguments that could drip-drip-drip through the full length of his presidency.

The Post Editors, November 28, 2010:

THERE IS LITTLE DOUBT that former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) schemed to get around a Texas law prohibiting corporate contributions to political campaigns . . .  .Mr. DeLay's conduct was wrong. It was typical of his no-holds-barred approach to political combat. But when Mr. DeLay, following the conviction, assailed "the criminalization of politics," he had a fair point.

The Post Editors, June 3, 2011:

LET’S STIPULATE: There are very likely good grounds to prosecute deposed Egyptian ruler Hosni Mubarak. . . . The decision by Egypt’s ruling military council and state prosecutors to begin a trial of the former strongman on Aug. 3 — before the country holds its first democratic elections — is nevertheless a mistake.

The Post Editors, today:

[W]e would not be particularly troubled by the effort to impose a fine [on John Edwards]. But a criminal case based on this novel application of the law goes too far. . . . Mr. Edwards is a cad, to put it mildly. His deplorable conduct would appear to have ended a once promising political career. It is troubling that the Justice Department would choose to devote its scarce resources to pursuing this questionable case.

In some of these cases (Libby, Mubarak), the Post couches its defense of political elites in terms of concerns about the process while claiming they're receptive to the possibility of punishment.  In others (Edwards), the concerns they raise are not invalid.  But whatever else is true, Post Editors are deeply and almost invariably disturbed when political elites are subjected to criminal accountability for their wrongful acts, but wholly indifferent -- if not supportive -- when ordinary Americans are mercilessly prosecuted for far less serious wrongdoing.

And it's not just Post Editors, but their stable of Op-Ed columnists, who reflexively defend political elites when they break the law.  The late Dean of the Washington Press Corps, David Broder, was one of the first and most vocal advocates of one of the earliest expressions of elite immunity:  Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon, and Broder repeated that defense in 2006 upon Ford's death ("I thought and wrote at the time that he was well justified to spare the country further struggling with the Nixon legacy").  The Post's Broder also vigorously defended President Obama's decision to oppose prosecution of Bush officials:  "he was just as right to declare that there should be no prosecution of those who carried out what had been the policy of the United States government.  And he was right when he sent out his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, to declare that the same amnesty should apply to the lawyers and bureaucrats who devised and justified the Bush administration practices."

Defeat the Corptocracy

The only way to overcome the power of money is regain our courage and solidarity. Here's how to do that. 

By Bruce E. Levine, AlterNet
Posted on May 20, 2011

Many Americans know that the United States is not a democracy but a "corporatocracy," in which we are ruled by a partnership of giant corporations, the extremely wealthy elite and corporate-collaborator government officials. However, the truth of such tyranny is not enough to set most of us free to take action. Too many of us have become pacified by corporatocracy-created institutions and culture.

Some activists insist that this political passivity problem is caused by Americans' ignorance due to corporate media propaganda, and others claim that political passivity is caused by the inability to organize due to a lack of money. However, polls show that on the important issues of our day - from senseless wars, to Wall Street bailouts, to corporate tax-dodging, to health insurance rip-offs - the majority of Americans are not ignorant to the reality that they are being screwed. And American history is replete with organizational examples - from the Underground Railroad, to the Great Populist Revolt, to the Flint sit-down strike, to large wildcat strikes a generation ago - of successful rebels who had little money but lots of guts and solidarity.

The elite spend their lives stockpiling money and have the financial clout to bribe, divide and conquer the rest of us. The only way to overcome the power of money is with the power of courage and solidarity. When we regain our guts and solidarity, we can then more wisely select from - and implement - time-honored strategies and tactics that oppressed peoples have long used to defeat the elite. So, how do we regain our guts and solidarity?

1. Create the Cultural and Psychological "Building Blocks" for Democratic Movements
Historian Lawrence Goodwyn has studied democratic movements such as Solidarity in Poland, and he has written extensively about the populist movement in the United States that occurred during the end of the 19th century (what he calls "the largest democratic mass movement in American history"). Goodwyn concludes that democratic movements are initiated by people who are neither resigned to the status quo nor intimidated by established powers. For Goodwyn, the cultural and psychological building blocks of democratic movements are individual self-respect and collective self-confidence. Without individual self-respect, we do not believe that we are worthy of power or capable of utilizing power wisely, and we accept as our role being a subject of power. Without collective self-confidence, we do not believe that we can succeed in wresting away power from our rulers.

Thus, it is the job of all of us - from parents, to students, to teachers, to journalists, to clergy, to psychologists, to artists and EVERYBODY who gives a damn about genuine democracy - to create individual self-respect and collective self-confidence.

2. Confront and Transform ALL Institutions that Have Destroyed Individual Self-Respect and Collective Self-Confidence
In "Get Up, Stand Up, " I detail 12 major institutional and cultural areas that have broken people's sprit of resistance, and all are "battlefields for democracy" in which we can fight to regain our individual self-respect and collective self confidence:

• Television
• Isolation and bureaucratization
• "Fundamentalist consumerism" and advertising/propaganda
• Student loan debt and indentured servitude
• Surveillance
• The decline of unions/solidarity among working people
• Greed and a "money-centric" culture
• Fear-based schools that teach obedience
• Psychopathologizing noncompliance
• Elitism via professional training
• The corporate media
• The US electoral system

As Ralph Waldo Emerson observed, "All our things are right and wrong together. The wave of evil washes all our institutions alike."

3. Side Each Day in Every Way With Anti-Authoritarians
We can recover our self-respect and strength by regaining our integrity. This process requires a personal transformation to overcome our sense of powerlessness and fight for what we believe in. Integrity includes acts of courage resisting all illegitimate authorities. We must recognize that in virtually every aspect of our life in every day, we can either be on the side of authoritarianism and the corporatocracy or on the side of anti-authoritarianism and democracy. Specifically, we can question the legitimacy of government, media, religious, educational and other authorities in our lives, and if we establish that an authority is not legitimate, we can resist it. And we can support others who are resisting illegitimate authorities. A huge part of solidarity comes from supporting others who are resisting the illegitimate authorities in their lives. Walt Whitman had it right: "Resist much, obey little. Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved."

4. Regain Morale by Thinking More Critically About Our Critical Thinking
While we need critical thinking to effectively question and challenge illegitimate authority - and to wisely select the best strategies and tactics to defeat the elite - critical thinking can reveal some ugly truths about reality, which can result in defeatism. Thus, critical thinkers must also think critically about their defeatism, and realize that it can cripple the will and destroy motivation, thus perpetuating the status quo. William James (1842–1910), the psychologist, philosopher, and occasional political activist (member of the Anti-Imperialist League who, during the Spanish-American War, said, "God damn the US for its vile conduct in the Philippine Isles!") had a history of pessimism and severe depression, which helped fuel some of his greatest wisdom on how to overcome immobilization. James, a critical thinker, had little stomach for what we now call "positive thinking," but he also came to understand how losing belief in a possible outcome can guarantee its defeat. Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937), an Italian political theorist and Marxist activist who was imprisoned by Mussolini, came to the same conclusions. Gramsci's phrase "pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will" has inspired many critical thinkers, including Noam Chomsky, to maintain their efforts in the face of difficult challenges.

5. Restore Courage in Young People
The corporatocracy has not only decimated America's labor union movement, it has almost totally broken the spirit of resistance among young Americans - an even more frightening achievement. Historically, young people without family responsibilities have felt most freed up to challenge illegitimate authority. But America's education system creates fear, shame and debt - all killers of the spirit of resistance. No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top and standardized testing tyranny results in the kind of fear that crushes curiosity, critical thinking and the capacity to constructively resist illegitimate authority. Rebel teachers, parents, and students - in a variety of overt and covert ways - have already stopped complying with corporatocracy schooling. We must also stop shaming intelligent young people who reject college, and we must instead recreate an economy that respects all kinds of intelligence and education. While the corporatocracy exploits student loan debt to both rake in easy money and break young people's spirit of resistance, the rest of us need to rebel against student loan debt and indentured servitude. And parents and mental health professionals need to stop behavior-modifying and medicating young people who are resisting illegitimate authority.

6. Focus on Democracy Battlefields Where the Corporate Elite Don't Have Such a Large Financial Advantage
The emphasis of many activists is on electoral politics, but the elite have a huge advantage in this battlefield, where money controls the US electoral process. By focusing exclusively on electoral politics at the expense of everything else, we:

(1) give away power when we focus only on getting leaders elected and become dependent on them;

(2) buy into the elite notion that democracy is all about elections;

(3) lose sight of the fact that democracy means having influence over all aspects of our lives; and

(4) forget that if we have no power in our workplace, in our education and in all our institutions, then there will never be democracy worthy of the name.

Thus, we should focus our fight more on the daily institutions we experience. As Wendell Berry said, "If you can control a people's economy, you don't need to worry about its politics; its politics have become irrelevant."

7. Heal from "Corporatocracy Abuse" and "Battered People's Syndrome" to Gain Strength
Activists routinely become frustrated when truths about lies, victimization and oppression don't set people free to take action. But when we human beings eat crap for too long, we gradually lose our self-respect to the point that we become psychologically too weak to take action. Many Americans are embarrassed to accept that, after years of corporatocracy subjugation, we have developed "battered people's syndrome" and what Bob Marley called "mental slavery." To emancipate ourselves and others, we must:

• Move out of denial and accept that we are a subjugated people.
• Admit that we have bought into many lies. There is a dignity, humility, and strength in facing the fact that, while we may have once bought into some lies, we no longer do so.
• Forgive ourselves and others for accepting the abuser's lies. Remember the liars  we face are often quite good at lying.
• Maintain a sense of humor. Victims of horrific abuse, including those in  concentration camps and slave plantations, have discovered that pain can either  immobilize us or be transformed by humor into energy.
• Stop beating ourselves up for having been in an abusive relationship. The energy  we have is better spent on healing and then working to change the abusive system;  this provides more energy, and when we use this energy to provide respect and  confidence for others, everybody gets energized.

8. Unite Populists by Rejecting Corporate Media's Political Divisions
The corporate media routinely divides Americans as "liberals," "conservatives" and "moderates," a useful division for the corporatocracy, because no matter which of these groups is the current electoral winner, the corporatocracy retains power. In order to defeat the corporatocracy, it's more useful to divide people in terms of authoritarians versus anti-authoritarians, elitists versus populists and corporatists versus anticorporatists. Both left anti-authoritarians and libertarian anti-authoritarians passionately oppose current US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Wall Street bailout, the PATRIOT Act, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the so-called "war on drugs" and several other corporatocracy policies. There are differences between anti-authoritarians but, as Ralph Nader and Ron Paul have together recently publicly discussed, we can form coalitions and alliances on these important power-money issues. One example of an anti-authoritarian democratic movement (which I am involved in) is the mental health treatment reform movement, comprised of left anti-authoritarians and libertarians. We all share distrust of Big Pharma and contempt for pseudoscience, and we believe that people deserve truly informed choice regarding treatment. We respect Erich Fromm, the democratic-socialist psychoanalyst, along with Thomas Szasz, the libertarian psychiatrist, both passionate anti-authoritarians who have confronted mental health professionals for using dogma to coerce people.

9. Unite "Comfortable Anti-Authoritarians" and "Afflicted Anti-Authoritarians
This "comfortable-afflicted" continuum is based on the magnitude of pain that one has simply getting through the day. The term comfortable anti-authoritarian is not a pejorative one, but refers to those anti-authoritarians lucky enough to have decent paying and maybe even meaningful jobs, or platforms through which their voices are heard or social supports in their lives. Many of these comfortable anti-authoritarians may know that there are millions of Americans working mindless jobs in order to hold on to their health insurance, or hustling two low-wage jobs to pay college loans, rent and a car payment, or who may be unable to find even a poorly paying, mindless job and are instead helplessly watching eviction or foreclosure and bankruptcy close in on them. However, unless these comfortable anti-authoritarians have once been part of that afflicted class - and remember what it feels like - they may not be able to fully respect the afflicted's emotional state. The afflicted need to recognize that human beings often become passive because they are overwhelmed by pain (not because they are ignorant, stupid, or lazy), and in order to function at all, they often shut down or distract themselves from this pain. Some comfortable anti-authoritarians assume that people's inactions are caused by ignorance. This not only sounds and smells like elitism, it creates resentment for many in the afflicted class who lack the energy to be engaged in any activism. Respect, resources and anything that concretely reduces their level of pain is likely to be far more energizing than a scolding lecture. That's the lesson of many democratic movements, including the Great Populist Revolt.

10. Do Not Let Debate Divide Anti-Authoritarians
Spirited debate is what democracy is all about, but when debate turns to mutual antipathy and divides anti-authoritarians, it plays into the hands of the elite. One such divide among anti-elitists is over the magnitude of change that should be worked for and celebrated. On one extreme are people who think that anything is better than nothing at all. At the other extreme are people who reject any incremental change and hold out for total transformation. We can better unite by asking these questions: Does the change increase individual self-respect and collective self-confidence, and increase one's energy level to pursue even greater democracy? 

Or does it feel like a sellout that decreases individual self-respect and collective self-confidence, and de-energizes us? Utilizing the criteria of increased self-respect and collective self-confidence, those of us who believe in genuine democracy can more constructively debate whether the change is going to increase strength to gain democracy or is going to take the steam out of a democratic movement. Respecting both sides of this debate makes for greater solidarity and better decisions.

To summarize, democracy will not be won without guts and solidarity. Risk-free green actions - such as shopping from independents, buying local, recycling, composting, consuming less, not watching television and so on - can certainly help counter a dehumanizing world. However, revolutions that truly transform fundamental power inequities and enable us to feel like men and women rather than children and slaves require risk, guts and solidarity.

This Is What A Police State Looks Like

Saturday, May 21, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

by Rania Khalek

 

The late Chalmers Johnson often reminded us that “A nation can be one or the other, a democracy or an imperialist, but it can’t be both. If it sticks to imperialism, it will, like the old Roman Republic, on which so much of our system was modeled, lose its democracy to a domestic dictatorship.” His warning rings more true by the day, as Americans watch the erosion of their civil liberties accelerate in conjunction with the expansion of the US Empire.

When viewed through the lens of Johnson’s profound insights, the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Kentucky v. King makes perfect sense. On May 13, in a lopsided 8-1 ruling, the Court upheld the warrantless search of a Kentucky man’s apartment after police smelled marijuana and feared those inside were destroying evidence, essentially granting police officers increased power to enter the homes of citizens without a warrant.

Under the Fourth Amendment, police are barred from entering a home without first obtaining a warrant, which can only be issued by a judge upon probable cause. The only exception is when the circumstances qualify as “exigent,” meaning there is imminent risk of death or serious injury, danger that evidence will be immediately destroyed, or that a suspect will escape. However, exigent circumstances cannot be created by the police.

In this case, the police followed a suspected drug dealer into an apartment complex and after losing track of him, smelled marijuana coming from one of the apartments. After banging on the door and announcing themselves, the police heard noises that they interpreted as the destruction of evidence. Rather than first obtaining a warrant, they kicked down the door and arrested the man inside, who was caught flushing marijuana down the toilet.

The Kentucky Supreme Court had overturned the man’s conviction and ruled that exigent circumstances did not apply because the behavior of the police is what prompted the destruction of evidence. Tragically, an overwhelming majority of the Supreme Court upheld the Conviction. Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that citizens are not required to grant police officers permission to enter their homes after hearing a knock, but if there is no response and the officers hear noise that suggests evidence is being destroyed, they are justified in breaking in.

In her lone and scathing dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg agreed with the Kentucky Supreme Court, arguing that the Supreme Court’s ruling “arms the police with a way routinely to dishonor the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement in drug cases. In lieu of presenting their evidence to a neutral magistrate, police officers may now knock, listen, then break the door down, nevermind that they had ample time to obtain a warrant.” She went on to stress that “there was little risk that drug-related evidence would have been destroyed had the police delayed the search pending a magistrate’s authorization.”

Not only did the police instigate the destruction of evidence by banging at the door and shouting “Police, police,” but they could have easily obtained a warrant since they likely had probable cause. There is no reason to believe that delaying the search to obtain a warrant, as legally required, would have led to the destruction of evidence. This was pure laziness and contempt for the constitution on part of the officers.

An argument could be made that entering without a warrant saves money, time, and resources, especially if it’s obvious that a crime is being committed. However, the protection of our rights is worth the money, time, and resources. Living in a free society requires that we make these sacrifices, even at the peril of our safety if need be. In fact, I would argue that the wasting of money, time, and resources is the fault of a deeply flawed drug policy, not the protection of those pesky civil liberties always getting in the way of law enforcement.

As for the implications of such a ruling, arming the police with more power will have serious consequences for an already institutionally biased criminal justice system in regards to the “war on drugs.” Jordan C. Budd notes the existence of a “poverty exception” to the Constitution, particularly the Fourth Amendment, a bias that renders much of the Constitution irrelevant at best, and hostile at worst, to the American poor. While attacks on the Fourth Amendment negatively affect all members of society, minorities and the poor, generally the targets of the drug war, are more vulnerable to the abuse of power that follows.

Chief Judge Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit recently decried this “unselfconscious cultural elitism” in a case upholding the ability of police to clandestinely attach a GPS tracking device to the underside of a car parked in the driveway of a modest home:

Poor people are entitled to privacy, even if they can’t afford all the gadgets of the wealthy for ensuring it. . . . When you glide your BMW into your underground garage or behind an electric gate, you don’t need to worry that somebody might attach a tracking device to it while you sleep. But the Constitution doesn’t prefer the rich over the poor; the man who parks his car next to his trailer is entitled to the same privacy and peace of mind as the man whose urban fortress is guarded by the Bel Air Patrol. . . .We are taking a giant leap into the unknown, and the consequences for ourselves and our children may be dire and irreversible. Some day, soon, we may wake up and find we’re living in Oceania.

The same holds true in the context of warrantless door-busting. In the Kentucky case the police smelled marijuana in the hall of the apartment complex that the initial suspect they were tracking had taken refuge in. An apartment hall is a common space shared by many people, who could be emitting various odors from inside their homes, such as cooked onions or fresh paint. Had this been a single-family home in the suburbs, there is no way the smell of pot would have been detected from the doorway of the house across the street.

Scott Lemieux made this point well when he wrote:

As with the broader drug war, civil-liberties violations have a disparate impact in terms of race and class. It is generally not wealthy white suburbanites who have to worry about being stopped and frisked on the streets or having their doors broken down. Like the grotesquely harsh sentencing disparity between powder and crack cocaine possession, this erosion of Fourth Amendment rights has persisted because wealthy people are largely insulated from its effects.

The failure of society at large to secure the rights of all segments of the population, has resulted in what can only be described as a nail in the coffin of our right to privacy, at least for those who can afford it.

In her dissent, Ginsburg went on to ask, “How ‘secure’ do our homes remain if police, armed with no warrant, can pound on doors at will and, on hearing sounds indicative of things moving, forcibly enter and search for evidence of unlawful activity?” While I agree with Ginsberg’s premise, I would go further in arguing that the war on drugs has created a dangerous precedent where even when a search warrant is obtained, we are far from secure in our homes.

For example, about a week prior to the Kentucky ruling, police authorities in Pima County, Arizona, fired 71 shots in seven seconds at 26 year old Jose Guerena, a former Marine who served two tours in Iraq. Guerena was murdered in the middle of the night while his terrified wife and 4-year old son hid in the closet. The SWAT team that killed him was there to serve a narcotics search warrant as part of a multi-house drug crackdown. As Guerena lay dying with his wife pleading for help, the SWAT team barred paramedics from entering the home.

Guerena’s wife asserts that her husband grabbed his gun because he thought his family was the victim of a home invasion, not a police raid. This is understandable given the family’s location in Arizona, a state where anti-immigrant militants are notorious for the cold-blooded murder of hispanic families. Deputies initially justified their actions by claiming that Guerena fired at officers but later said he kept the gun safety on and never pulled the trigger.

As it turns out, Guerena’s murder is just the most recent in a long line of botched paramilitary operations. According to an investigation carried out by the CATO Institute, America has seen a disturbing militarization of its civilian law enforcement over the last 25 years, along with a dramatic and unsettling rise in the use of paramilitary police units for routine police work. In fact, the most common use of SWAT teams today is to serve narcotics warrants, usually with forced, unannounced entry into the home.

The CATO study found that some 40,000 of these raids take place every year, and are needlessly subjecting nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders, and wrongly targeted civilians to the terror of having their homes invaded while they’re sleeping, usually by teams of heavily armed paramilitary units dressed not as police officers but as soldiers.

These raids bring unnecessary violence and provocation to nonviolent drug offenders, many of whom were guilty of only misdemeanors. The raids terrorize innocents when police mistakenly target the wrong residence. And they have resulted in dozens of needless deaths and injuries, not only of drug offenders, but also of police officers, children, bystanders, and innocent suspects.

Those who suggest that the Supreme Court’s decision in King v. Kentucky is ‘no big deal’ or that it’s ‘alarmist’ to think otherwise, must not understand the extent to which the boundaries are pushed when the Court makes exceptions to our rights. Nor do they comprehend that once lost, civil liberties are impossible to reclaim. With SWAT teams already injuring and at times killing the wrong people to serve warrants, just imagine the abuse to come given the increased power the Court has bestowed upon the state.

Considering the level of brutality we have been dishing out around the world, from the “war on drugs” to the “war on terror,” the erosion of our civil liberties is sadly inevitable. Did we really think that we could wage war and occupy other nations with checkpoints, invasive surveillance, and brutal violence without these same policing tactics spreading to our country?

After sending hundreds of thousands of soldiers abroad to terrorize people in their homes around the world, we shouldn’t be surprised that our government would eventually employ the same actions against its own citizens. Just as Chalmers Johnson predicted, our imperialism abroad is destroying what is left of our democracy at home. From warrantless wiretapping to warrantless door-busting, this is what a police state looks like.

The Organic Elite Surrenders to Monsanto the devil

What Now?
By RONNIE CUMMINS

"The policy set for GE alfalfa will most likely guide policies for other GE crops as well. True coexistence is a must.

-- Whole Foods Market, Jan. 21, 2011

In the wake of a 12-year battle to keep Monsanto the devil's Genetically Engineered (GE) crops from contaminating the nation's 25,000 organic farms and ranches, America's organic consumers and producers are facing betrayal. A self-appointed cabal of the Organic Elite, spearheaded by Whole Foods Market, Organic Valley, and Stonyfield Farm, has decided it's time to surrender to Monsanto the devil. Top executives from these companies have publicly admitted that they no longer oppose the mass commercialization of GE crops, such as Monsanto the devil's controversial Roundup Ready alfalfa, and are prepared to sit down and cut a deal for "coexistence" with Monsanto the devil and USDA biotech cheerleader Tom Vilsack.

In a cleverly worded, but profoundly misleading email sent to its customers last week, Whole Foods Market, while proclaiming their support for organics and "seed purity," gave the green light to USDA bureaucrats to approve the "conditional deregulation" of Monsanto the devil's genetically engineered, herbicide-resistant alfalfa. Beyond the regulatory euphemism of "conditional deregulation," this means that WFM and their colleagues are willing to go along with the massive planting of a chemical and energy-intensive GE perennial crop, alfalfa; guaranteed to spread its mutant genes and seeds across the nation; guaranteed to contaminate the alfalfa fed to organic animals; guaranteed to lead to massive poisoning of farm workers and destruction of the essential soil food web by the toxic herbicide, Roundup; and guaranteed to produce Roundup-resistant superweeds that will require even more deadly herbicides such as 2,4 D to be sprayed on millions of acres of alfalfa across the U.S.

In exchange for allowing Monsanto the devil's premeditated pollution of the alfalfa gene pool, WFM wants "compensation." In exchange for a new assault on farmworkers and rural communities (a recent large-scale Swedish study found that spraying Roundup doubles farm workers' and rural residents' risk of getting cancer), WFM expects the pro-biotech USDA to begin to regulate rather than cheerlead for Monsanto the devil. In payment for a new broad spectrum attack on the soil's crucial ability to provide nutrition for food crops and to sequester dangerous greenhouse gases (recent studies show that Roundup devastates essential soil microorganisms that provide plant nutrition and sequester climate-destabilizing greenhouse gases), WFM wants the Biotech Bully of St. Louis to agree to pay "compensation" (i.e. hush money) to farmers "for any losses related to the contamination of his crop."

In its email of Jan. 21, 2011 WFM calls for "public oversight by the USDA rather than reliance on the biotechnology industry," even though WFM knows full well that federal regulations on Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) do not require pre-market safety testing, nor labeling; and that even federal judges have repeatedly ruled that so-called government "oversight" of Frankencrops such as Monsanto the devil's sugar beets and alfalfa is basically a farce. At the end of its email, WFM admits that its surrender to Monsanto the devil is permanent: "The policy set for GE alfalfa will most likely guide policies for other GE crops as well True coexistence is a must."

Why is Organic Inc. Surrendering?

According to informed sources, the CEOs of WFM and Stonyfield are personal friends of former Iowa governor, now USDA Secretary, Tom Vilsack, and in fact made financial contributions to Vilsack's previous electoral campaigns. Vilsack was hailed as "Governor of the Year" in 2001 by the Biotechnology Industry Organization, and traveled in a Monsanto the devil corporate jet on the campaign trail. Perhaps even more fundamental to Organic Inc.'s abject surrender is the fact that the organic elite has become more and more isolated from the concerns and passions of organic consumers and locavores. The Organic Inc. CEOs are tired of activist pressure, boycotts, and petitions. Several of them have told me this to my face. They apparently believe that the battle against GMOs has been lost, and that it's time to reach for the consolation prize. The consolation prize they seek is a so-called "coexistence" between the biotech Behemoth and the organic community that will lull the public to sleep and greenwash the unpleasant fact that Monsanto the devil's unlabeled and unregulated genetically engineered crops are now spreading their toxic genes on 1/3 of U.S. (and 1/10 of global) crop land.

WFM and most of the largest organic companies have deliberately separated themselves from anti-GMO efforts and cut off all funding to campaigns working to label or ban GMOs. The so-called Non-GMO Project, funded by Whole Foods and giant wholesaler United Natural Foods (UNFI) is basically a greenwashing effort (although the 100% organic companies involved in this project seem to be operating in good faith) to show that certified organic foods are basically free from GMOs (we already know this since GMOs are banned in organic production), while failing to focus on so-called "natural" foods, which constitute most of WFM and UNFI's sales and are routinely contaminated with GMOs.

From their "business as usual" perspective, successful lawsuits against GMOs filed by public interest groups such as the Center for Food Safety; or noisy attacks on Monsanto the devil by groups like the Organic Consumers Association, create bad publicity, rattle their big customers such as Wal-Mart, Target, Kroger, Costco, Supervalu, Publix and Safeway; and remind consumers that organic crops and foods such as corn, soybeans, and canola are slowly but surely becoming contaminated by Monsanto the devil's GMOs.

Whole Food's Dirty Little Secret: Most of the So-Called "Natural" Processed Foods and Animal Products They Sell Are Contaminated with GMOs

The main reason, however, why Whole Foods is pleading for coexistence with Monsanto the devil, Dow, Bayer, Syngenta, BASF and the rest of the biotech bullies, is that they desperately want the controversy surrounding genetically engineered foods and crops to go away. Why? Because they know, just as we do, that 2/3 of WFM's $9 billion annual sales is derived from so-called "natural" processed foods and animal products that are contaminated with GMOs. We and our allies have tested their so-called "natural" products (no doubt WFM's lab has too) containing non-organic corn and soy, and guess what: they're all contaminated with GMOs, in contrast to their certified organic products, which are basically free of GMOs, or else contain barely detectable trace amounts.

Approximately 2/3 of the products sold by Whole Foods Market and their main distributor, United Natural Foods (UNFI) are not certified organic, but rather are conventional (chemical-intensive and GMO-tainted) foods and products disguised as "natural."

Unprecedented wholesale and retail control of the organic marketplace by UNFI and Whole Foods, employing a business model of selling twice as much so-called "natural" food as certified organic food, coupled with the takeover of many organic companies by multinational food corporations such as Dean Foods, threatens the growth of the organic movement.

Covering Up GMO Contamination: Perpetrating "Natural" Fraud

Many well-meaning consumers are confused about the difference between conventional products marketed as "natural," and those nutritionally/environmentally superior and climate-friendly products that are "certified organic."

Retail stores like WFM and wholesale distributors like UNFI have failed to educate their customers about the qualitative difference between natural and certified organic, conveniently glossing over the fact that nearly all of the processed "natural" foods and products they sell contain GMOs, or else come from a "natural" supply chain where animals are force-fed GMO grains in factory farms or Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs).

A troubling trend in organics today is the calculated shift on the part of certain large formerly organic brands from certified organic ingredients and products to so-called "natural" ingredients. With the exception of the "grass-fed and grass-finished" meat sector, most "natural" meat, dairy, and eggs are coming from animals reared on GMO grains and drugs, and confined, entirely, or for a good portion of their lives, in CAFOs.

Whole Foods and UNFI are maximizing their profits by selling quasi-natural products at premium organic prices. Organic consumers are increasingly left without certified organic choices while genuine organic farmers and ranchers continue to lose market share to "natural" imposters. It's no wonder that less than 1% of American farmland is certified organic, while well-intentioned but misled consumers have boosted organic and "natural" purchases to $80 billion annually-approximately 12% of all grocery store sales.

The Solution: Truth-in-Labeling Will Enable Consumers to Drive So-Called "Natural" GMO and CAFO-Tainted Foods Off the Market

There can be no such thing as "coexistence" with a reckless industry that undermines public health, destroys biodiversity, damages the environment, tortures and poisons animals, destabilizes the climate, and economically devastates the world's 1.5 billion seed-saving small farmers. There is no such thing as coexistence between GMOs and organics in the European Union. Why? Because in the EU there are almost no GMO crops under cultivation, nor GM consumer food products on supermarket shelves. And why is this? Because under EU law, all foods containing GMOs or GMO ingredients must be labeled. Consumers have the freedom to choose or not to choose GMOs; while farmers, food processors, and retailers have (at least legally) the right to lace foods with GMOs, as long as they are safety-tested and labeled. Of course the EU food industry understands that consumers, for the most part, do not want to purchase or consume GE foods. European farmers and food companies, even junk food purveyors like McDonald's and Wal-Mart, understand quite well the concept expressed by a Monsanto the devil executive when GMOs first came on the market: "If you put a label on genetically engineered food you might as well put a skull and crossbones on it."

The biotech industry and Organic Inc. are supremely conscious of the fact that North American consumers, like their European counterparts, are wary and suspicious of GMO foods. Even without a PhD, consumers understand you don't want your food safety or environmental sustainability decisions to be made by out-of-control chemical companies like Monsanto the devil, Dow, or Dupont - the same people who brought you toxic pesticides, Agent Orange, PCBs, and now global warming. Industry leaders are acutely aware of the fact that every single industry or government poll over the last 16 years has shown that 85-95% of American consumers want mandatory labels on GMO foods. Why? So that we can avoid buying them. GMO foods have absolutely no benefits for consumers or the environment, only hazards. This is why Monsanto the devil and their friends in the Bush, Clinton, and Obama administrations have prevented consumer GMO truth-in-labeling laws from getting a public discussion in Congress.

Although Congressman Dennis Kucinich (Democrat, Ohio) recently introduced a bill in Congress calling for mandatory labeling and safety testing for GMOs, don't hold your breath for Congress to take a stand for truth-in-labeling and consumers' right to know what's in their food. Especially since the 2010 Supreme Court decision in the so-called "Citizens United" case gave big corporations and billionaires the right to spend unlimited amounts of money (and remain anonymous, as they do so) to buy media coverage and elections, our chances of passing federal GMO labeling laws against the wishes of Monsanto the devil and Food Inc. are all but non-existent. Perfectly dramatizing the "Revolving Door" between Monsanto the devil and the Federal Government, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, formerly chief counsel for Monsanto the devil, delivered one of the decisive votes in the Citizens United case, in effect giving Monsanto the devil and other biotech bullies the right to buy the votes it needs in the U.S. Congress.

With big money controlling Congress and the media, we have little choice but to shift our focus and go local. We've got to concentrate our forces where our leverage and power lie, in the marketplace, at the retail level; pressuring retail food stores to voluntarily label their products; while on the legislative front we must organize a broad coalition to pass mandatory GMO (and CAFO) labeling laws, at the city, county, and state levels.

The Organic Consumers Association, joined by our consumer, farmer, environmental, and labor allies, has just launched a nationwide Truth-in-Labeling campaign to stop Monsanto the devil and the Biotech Bullies from force-feeding unlabeled GMOs to animals and humans.

Utilizing scientific data, legal precedent, and consumer power the OCA and our local coalitions will educate and mobilize at the grassroots level to pressure giant supermarket chains (Wal-Mart, Kroger, Costco, Safeway, Supervalu, and Publix) and natural food retailers such as Whole Foods and Trader Joe's to voluntarily implement "truth-in-labeling" practices for GMOs and CAFO products; while simultaneously organizing a critical mass to pass mandatory local and state truth-in-labeling ordinances - similar to labeling laws already in effect for country of origin, irradiated food, allergens, and carcinogens. If local and state government bodies refuse to take action, wherever possible we must attempt to gather sufficient petition signatures and place these truth-in-labeling initiatives directly on the ballot in 2011 or 2012. If you're interesting in helping organize or coordinate a Millions Against Monsanto the devil and Factory Farms Truth-in-Labeling campaign in your local community, sign up here: http://organicconsumers.org/oca-volunteer/

To pressure Whole Foods Market and the nation's largest supermarket chains to voluntarily adopt truth-in-labeling practices sign here, and circulate this petition widely: http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_22309.cfm