Day: October 22, 2008

In Defense Of Bill Ayers

This was sent to me in an email by a friend in Oregon and thought I would pass it on to my readers.

The attack on Bill Ayers needs to be placed in its political and historical context.

Born in 1944 in a Chicago suburb, the son of a prominent businessman and philanthropist, Ayers was radicalized by the civil rights struggles and the Vietnam War.

In his memoir, Fugitive Days, he writes of his thinking in the late 1960s: “Humanity itself, it seemed to me, was what was at stake. The humanity of people in Vietnam and around the world, the humanity of Black Americans, and, finally, my own humanity. You could not be a moral person with the means to act, I thought, and stand still. The crisis demanded a choice. To stand still was to choose indifference. Indifference was the opposite of moral. If we didn’t speak out and act up, we were traitors. To fail now was fatal, and so there was nothing that could justify inaction. Nothing.”

However mistaken his eventual political choices, Ayers’s was part of a generational experience. His sense of horror over US crimes in Vietnam, the destruction of a small nation, and his shame that this savagery was being committed in the name of the American people were sentiments shared by thousands and thousands of college and high school students, and young people in general.

As a leading member of the Weatherman group, Ayers admits to having set off several small bombs, which blew up a police memorial and damaged public buildings. No one was killed or injured in those actions. Ayers was never charged with, let alone convicted, of a crime.

Sowing The Seeds Of Chaos–Part 2

Is their a statute of limitations in politics?  Apparently so!  The media or Obama cannot bring up the Keating affair because that was 20+ years ago and does not add to the conversation of today’s politics.  But somehow something that happen 40 years ago is okay territory to attack.  Someone explain that logic..  If we are talking about Obama’s thinking and decisions, could we not say the same for McCain and Keating?

The media has become a willing accomplice in this brand of chaos, by allowing the question to go unasked and allowing the McCain surrogates to control that part of any dialog.  It is like they are afraid to ask the question.  Where have the journalist with nuts gone?  Long time passing.

Obama has his drags on the campaign like Ayers, Wright, whoever, but so does McCain with Keating, Singlaub and Palin with the Alaskan Independence Party, with the founder talking about hating the US and the flag, but none of this is asked or reported.  Why?  McCain surrogates question Obama’s patriotism but yet the AIP stuff is allowed to lie undisturbed, even after the president of the party calls US troops in Alaska, An occupying force.  Why is this?

The media hates bloggers and with good reason.  Why?  Bloggers are not afraid to bring up the crap, they do not have to answer to their corporate owners.  They can ask real questions and not let the surrogates control the tone of the debate.  The early morning media is afraid to challenge the McCain machine, bloggers are not.

The media is allowing the McCain camp to sow the seeds of chaos and of hate, by pretending that their questioons of Obama’s patriotism and judgement are valid.  Just once I would like to find a news outlet that has a set of cajones.  The people would be better served and the seeds of chaos would die a natural death.

A Vote For McCain Will End The Partisanship

Really?  Looks and sounds like the lovable maverick invented the partisanship instead of being the cure.  The candidate himself is talking socialism and terrorism and ….you get the idea.  While his running mate the VP candidate Sarah Palin is talking about certain areas as pro-American and then there is the socialism thingy.  And now there are the surrogates Bachmann that thinks that Americans are divided into pro and anti factions.  Florida’s Mel Martinez calls Obnama a communiust and the yahoo Rep. Robin Hayes of North Carolina said, “Liberals hate real Americans because they work, achieve and believe in God.”  Sorry but this is partisanship at its worse and we are to believe that a person with so much dislike will reach across the aisle and work with anti-Americans?

All surrogates as well as the candidates are trying very hard to drive a wedge into the political fabric of the country, which is essentially dividing the country in half, the “us against them” mindset or the pro and anti American factions.

I had thought by the 21st century we would have moved beyond the labeling of people.  Partisanship has become this ugly and scary practice in this country.  A McCain presidency with a Dem Congress will be nothing but more ugliness.

Another Economic Stimulus Package

Lawmakers and officials moved toward forging a second fiscal stimulus bill after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke endorsed the idea and the Bush administration dropped its opposition.

Bernanke warned legislators yesterday the credit crunch is “hitting home,” with Americans unable to get auto loans and companies denied cash, and recommended measures to help borrowers. White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said President George W. Bush was “open to the idea” of a new stimulus.

Bernanke told the Budget Committee yesterday that the danger of a “protracted slowdown” and a “weak” outlook for the U.S. economy into next year convinced him to support a new round of economic stimulus. A similar endorsement by Bernanke earlier this year helped clear the way for a $168 billion measure enacted in February.

The Bush administration is “open to the idea” of another economic stimulus package, though approval would depend on details drafted by Congress, Perino said. Proposals “put forward so far” by Democratic leaders in Congress “were elements of a package we did not think would actually stimulate the economy, so we would want to take a look at anything very carefully,” Perino said.

The first stimulus package will cost about $150 billion and then the bailout will cost more than $700 billion and now they may consider another package to assist the economy get back on its feet.  Wait a damn minute!  I was thinking that was what the first package was for and then the bailout were all suppose to get the economy rolling and now it will take more money?  Does anyone else smell a steaming pile of canine fecal matter?

Is The Bailout Socialism?

The easy and quick answer is NO!  But I am sure you want more.  It seems the concern over the economic crisis is waning a bit, kinda like the silence on the price of gas.  Given enough time then Americans will just shut up and take what is given.

Worship of the “free market” has long been something of a secular religion in the US. Capitalist ideology has proclaimed that the market’s “invisible hand” will best advance the interests of historical progress, that taxes on the rich and regulations on big businesses must be reduced because only the “risk-takers” know where resources can best be allocated, that any sort of government intervention to improve the living conditions of workers, the poor, the elderly and jobless youth creates a “climate of dependency,” that government cannot simply “throw money” at problems, etc., etc.

All these shibboleths now stand exposed as rank hypocrisy, as the biggest financial institutions belly up to the public trough. Yet amidst this historic crisis of the capitalist system, some of those opposed to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s Wall Street bailout have claimed that the measures employed are “socialist.”

Suddenly—17 years after the Soviet Union’s collapse and the supposed “death of socialism”—the “S” word is being bandied about by American politicians and media pundits.

Charges that the Wall Street bailout is socialism have come most frequently from the far right wing of the Republican Party. To note a few examples, Congressman Jeb Hensarling, a Texas Republican, claimed that Paulson’s plan may put the US on, “the slippery slope to socialism.” Representative Sam Johnson, also of Texas, warned, “As a relentless supporter of free enterprise, I fear we are rushing headlong into socialism.” Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky called Paulson’s measures, “financial socialism” and “un-American.” Congressman Thaddeus McCotter of Michigan even compared the bailout to the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.

The claim that the Wall Street bailout is a socialist measure is absurd on its face. Paulson, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, who has an estimated personal fortune of $700 million and is a member of the most right-wing administration in US history, has authored a bill that will ultimately divert trillions of dollars to the coffers of the biggest banks in the land. This is socialist?

Such claims display a combination of stupidity and deceit. Those who make them rely on the low level of historical knowledge and political understanding among the American people, for which the population is not to blame. It is the product of the decades-long promotion of political reaction and celebration of the most backward ideologies and conceptions—including hostility toward science—along with the gutting of public education.

What would a socialist approach to the financial crisis look like? Emergency measures would be taken to transform the great banks, hedge funds, insurance companies and financial houses into public utilities. They would be placed under the democratic control of the working class, with safeguards for the savings of small depositors. Their resources would be used for productive and socially useful purposes and to alleviate the suffering of the population.  Not hasppening under the rules of the bailout.  So to consider this any form of socialism is just ignorant.