Tag: Domestic Policy

Shades Of COINTELPRO–#BlackLivesMatter

Ferguson is once again in the news…..of course there is the inevitable mentions of those darn “outside agitators”……..after the report DOJ things are starting to tighten up around the doings in the city……protestors are once again making the news…..and that is where this post will begin…..

If you are a regular visitor then you have heard me mention the government program from the 60’s and 70’s…..COINTELPRO……a little history that I was apart of in my youth.

In case you are new or too young to know of such a governmental program….I can help with that also……….

Between 1956 and 1971, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) conducted a campaign of domestic counterintelligence. The agency’s Domestic Intelligence Division did more than simply spy on U.S. citizens and their organizations; its ultimate goal was to disrupt, discredit, and destroy certain political groups. The division’s operations were formally known within the bureau as COINTELPRO (the Counterintelligence Program). The brainchild of former FBI director j. edgar hoover, the first COINTELPRO campaign targeted the U.S. Communist party in the mid-1950s. More organizations came under attack in the 1960s. FBI agents worked to subvert Civil Rights groups, radical organizations, and white supremacists. COINTELPRO existed primarily because of Director Hoover’s extreme politics and ended only when he feared its exposure by his critics. A public uproar followed revelations in the news media in the early 1970s, and congressional hearings criticized COINTELPRO campaigns in 1976.

Slowly the program slipped from the headlines and was thought to be put to rest…..but was it?  Or was it re-flagged as some other program with some ‘patriotic’ sounding acronym?

Fast forward to today…….back in the Summer when so many were being killed by the police a group started up to lead the protests….#BlackLivesMatter.  It seems that the FBI has a special interests in this group……..

Members of an FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force tracked the time and location of a Black Lives Matter protest last December at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, email obtained by The Intercept shows.

Activists had planned the protest at the mall to call attention to police brutality against African Americans. “Our system disproportionately targets, profiles and kills black men and women, that’s what we are here talking about,” organizer Michael McDowell told a reporter at the time. “We wanted to show people who have the everyday luxury of just living their lives that they need to be aware of this, too.”

READ ON………….

Why Was an FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force Tracking a Black Lives Matter Protest? – The Intercept.

Seems the FBI cannot resist the temptation to spy on dissent……Dear Protestors:  Keep an eye on your 6…….they are watching!

‘Burglars’ Revealed: Sixties Activists Who Stole FBI COINTELPRO Files | Common Dreams

Americans are outraged that their government would violate their privacy……WAKE UP!

They have been doing so for 40+ years……only in the past it was those darn Leftist that were the biggest ‘threat’…..sorry a citizen is a citizen no matter what they choose to believe, ideologically that is,…….and yet no one wants to think about what they have done in the past….why?  Because they think it did not apply to them……once again let me reiterate….WAKE UP!

As an aging radical I was targeted by a program called COINTELPRO……a secret program to keep track of citizens that may not agree with the government…..it was a secret program until it was exposed…….and here are the people that did the exposing…….

‘Burglars’ Revealed: Sixties Activists Who Stole FBI COINTELPRO Files | Common Dreams.

Now Is NOT The Time For Domestic Policy

I watch a lot of political stuff and usually try to watch “Meet The Press” to get caught up on the dialogs I may have missed over the week….of course, we all know the problem in Japan a quake, a tsunami and a nuclear disaster waiting to happen…..everyone seems to be trying to analyze the nuclear situation (personally, I do not think the Japanese are being totally honest on the situation)…..but here they are gonna start re-evaluating the nuclear program because of the disaster in waiting….

I hear the GOP’s point man in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, talking on the Japanese problem and what the consequences could be for the US and then he said something that I found very telling on the GOP stance on energy and environmental issues….he said…..”after an environmental crisis is not the time to make domestic policy”  (A paraphrase)

OK, if not now, when?

The GOP wants to wait for calmer days when NO one gives a crap and it can be addressed without much attention….where any restrictions of nuclear construction can be blocked at every turn….without much media attention…..think I am mistaken?

Look at deep water oil drilling…..after the massive oil spill that damn near destroyed the US Gulf Coast…..we are back to issuing permits to do it again….funny how that worked out!  The old saying, “outta sight, outta mind”…is one that the GOP lives by and will do whatever it takes to keep it that way…..

So, sports fans….I ask again…..If Not Now, Then When?

For a little injection of humor into the post….you need to hear from Glenn Beck……

http://mm4a.org/h3kPu1……..enjoy!

Obama Presidency: Year One Report Card

Inkwell Institute

I decided to offer my analysis of the Obama Admin before his year is up….that way I cannot be accused of letting others influence my analysis…..my technique will be a percentage grade and a letter grade for the different categories and then an overall grade in the conclusion……

I know….I know….this is a bit early for a one year evaluation…but we bloggers have been blamed with just following the leader on many issues and I thought I would eliminate that accusation before someone had a chance to level it…..onward and upward!

Foreign Policy:

Diplomacy:  95%–because Obama is trying to turn the world away from the distaste for American policies–A+

War:  75%–because he ran and won on an anti-war rhetoric and he has done little to end these conflicts.  He has set a couple of deadlines for troop removal….a promising turn–C

Economy:

Stimulus:  90%–because he helped stop the economic skid into oblivion…..B+

Jobs:  65%–because there has been lots of lip service..no action….F

Domestic:

This category will cover everything from education to energy to ……well use your imagination…..75%–because little has been done to improve the lives of American citizens….C

Legislative:

50%–he has NOT done what he was sent to Washington to be…the leader…if he cannot get an issue passed even when he has a 60 vote majority in the Senate …then he has failed….F

Approval of the American people:  70%–because he has helped Wall Street become MORE profitable than before the crash and Main Street less profitable…..he is not holding the approval of the people……D

Finally…there is EFFORT……Obama has tried to tackle as many issues as he could….because of that effort I give him 95%…..A

Now for Pres. Obama’s score for his first year as president…….he plays well with others…..participation needs work….needs to be more assertive……his score total is 80% or educational terms ….a C+!

In his inauguration OBama said, “Change has come to America” and that was the truth…but the only change that has come is that there is not some white dude in the Oval Office……

Obama’s Cap And Trade

As a candidate, Barack Obama said he’d tackle climate change by imposing caps on emissions of greenhouse gases. Now, as President, he’s doing exactly that. He proposes reducing U.S. emissions 14% below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83% below by 2050. And he’d raise $646 billion from 2012 to 2019 by auctioning the rights to emit such gases—in effect putting a price on carbon emissions. With Congress also serious about the climate, business knows the battle has been joined for real and is trying to shape a compromise bill likely to emerge this year. “We are now playing with live bullets,” says the Environmental Defense Fund’s Mark Brownstein, who works with a group of companies that supports the plan.

In theory, a workable cap-and-trade market for carbon emissions would give business executives more certainty about future energy costs, helping them make better investment decisions. A market price on carbon would boost energy efficiency and renewable energy efforts, already beneficiaries in Obama’s stimulus package. Nuclear power plants, such as Exelon’s, would become more valuable. “I have great hope for the ‘green’ stimulus, but it won’t fulfill its potential unless there is a price on carbon,” says James E. Rogers, chief executive of Duke Energy.  Also, there’s little chance of getting China and India to agree to binding limits, which American companies insist is needed to keep the international playing field level, unless the U.S. takes action at home.

The real fight, therefore, is not whether to impose carbon limits but how to do so and at what cost to business. Obama proposes that companies buy an allowance, or permit, for each ton of carbon emitted, at an estimated cost, to start, of $13 to $20 per ton. (Those permits could also be bought and sold.) Even at the lower range of $13 per ton, energy companies and utilities would likely pass along the added cost to consumers. It’s estimated the price of gasoline would go up by 12 cents a gallon and the average electricity bill by about 7% nationally—and far higher in states more dependent on coal. Unfair, say many executives. “It is a clear transfer of the middle part of the country’s wealth to the two coasts,” says Michael G. Morris, CEO of American Electric Power, a coal-heavy power generator based in Columbus, Ohio, that supplies electricity in 11 states.

The Obama team points out that its cap-and-trade plan returns much of the money raised by permit sales to consumers nationwide in the form of lower taxes, so many people come out ahead. And the Environmental Defense Fund has created a map of 1,200 alternative energy or energy-efficiency companies in key manufacturing states that stand to benefit from the climate plan. While the Midwest will bear a higher cost from reducing carbon emissions, the region will also benefit from the most new jobs, the EDF argues

The “New Deal” Was A Failure!

From a piece written in the NY Times by Adam Cohen.

Repubs are grasping at straws as usual trying desperately to find anything that will stop their party’s erosion.  This time the new talking point is the the New Deal of FDR was a failure and did little to help the country.  Sounds more like revisionists trying to rewrite history.

Conservatives have railed against the New Deal from the start. In 1934, H. L. Mencken was already decrying it as “a saturnalia of expropriation and waste.” When F.D.R. ran for re-election in 1936, a headline in William Randolph Hearst’s newspapers insisted that “Moscow Backs Roosevelt.”

But Americans were not fooled. They knew F.D.R. was on their side in a way that Herbert Hoover and his fellow free-marketers hadn’t been. They could see first-hand the good that Roosevelt’s jobs programs were doing for the Depression’s victims and the slow but unmistakable improvements in the economy.

Anti-New Deal rhetoric has never disappeared from American political life. When Barry Goldwater ran for president in 1964, he attacked President Dwight Eisenhower for having presided over a “dime store New Deal.” But in recent years, the attacks have heated up.

At the start of the Bush administration, conservatives talked openly about rolling back the New Deal. They were trying to unravel the regulatory state, including protections for workers, consumers and investors. They were also promoting a favorite cause of Wall Street’s: privatizing Social Security, the crown jewel of the New Deal.

These days the public is in no mood, given the high costs of deregulation in the mortgage industry and the Bernard Madoff scandal, for more talk about dismantling regulations and federal oversight. But today, the new focus is Mr. Obama’s stimulus package. If F.D.R.’s New Deal spending made things worse, it follows that the Obama administration should not make the same mistake.

The anti-New Deal line is wrong as a matter of economics. F.D.R.’s spending programs did help the economy and created millions of new jobs. The problem, we now know, is not that F.D.R. spent too much priming the pump, but rather that he spent too little. It was his decision to cut back on spending on New Deal programs that brought about a nasty recession in 1937-38.

The second problem is that the criticism overlooks the relief Roosevelt’s programs brought to millions. When F.D.R. took office, unemployment was 25 percent, and families were losing their homes, living in shantytowns, even fighting one another for food at garbage dumps.

Obama And Jobs

The economic plan announced Saturday by President-Elect Barack Obama, with the goal of “saving or creating” 2.5 million jobs in 2009 and 2010, is a measure that has already been outstripped by events. The deepening crisis of American and world capitalism could destroy that many US jobs in the next six to nine months alone.

The collapse of the auto industry itself would wipe out 2.5 million to 3 million jobs according to most estimates, canceling out the entirety of Obama’s plan, even if it were to be enacted quickly and in full by the incoming Democratic-controlled Congress. The broader recession, well under way, is expected to increase the ranks of the unemployed by a million or more by next spring.

Obama announced his jobs plan in a brief radio speech on Saturday morning, excerpts of which were also posted on YouTube. He noted the most recent, extremely ominous, economic figures: “New home purchases in October were the lowest in half a century. 540,000 more jobless claims were filed last week, the highest in eighteen years. And we now risk falling into a deflationary spiral…”

The gauzy, patriotic rhetoric conceals a lie. The economic and class divisions in the United States are not small; they are the largest and widest in American history. Never has such a tiny minority of the population monopolized such a huge proportion of overall wealth, to the detriment of the vast majority. As for the demand that action be taken “above all, together,” it means that the financial aristocracy, which is responsible for the crisis, should not be compelled to pay for it. Instead, the burden will be placed on the backs of “all,” i.e., on working people.

Obama aides signaled the next day that he was retreating from his campaign promise to roll back the Bush administration’s tax cuts for the wealthy. Top adviser David Axelrod, appearing on two Sunday television interview programs, did not contradict reports that Obama would instead allow the Bush tax cuts to continue for another two years, when they are scheduled to expire. Another Obama adviser, William Daley, former Clinton commerce secretary, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that a continuation of the tax cut for those making over $250,000 a year until its scheduled expiration at the end of 2010 now “looks more likely than not.”

In other words, these selections demonstrate that Obama will pursue economic policies determined by the same class interests upheld by his Republican predecessor. The primary concern will be the defense of the financial system—i.e., the accumulated wealth of the financial aristocracy, embodied in the giant banks, hedge funds and other huge financial institutions, whose parasitic and speculative operations precipitated the current crisis.

Market Reform

I was sent this piece in an email from a friend in Oregon and I wanted to see what others thought of the ideas contained within it.

Reforms are needed and change is needed there are ways to do this.  But will anyone be up to the challenge?

1. The market mechanism is an effective control device for a myriad of unimportant decisions, and as an arbiter of the economic value of a commodity. But it fails important equity, efficiency, and stability tests.

2. A sophisticated, complex and dynamic financial system such as ours must play an essential role in enabling scientific and technological revolutions to emerge, be tested, and successfully be deployed throughout society. However, this process is inherently so destabilizing that serious depressions and greatly aggravated class conflict are its natural consequence. Thus: finance cannot be left to free markets.
3. Decentralized markets are particularly unstable and inefficient for an economy in which capital investment constitutes a significant portion of private national product, and investment goods are expensive to produce.

4. Under capitalism, financial resources will not be risked on large-scale, long-lived capital assets without protection against market forces. Public control, if not outright ownership, of large-scale capital intensive production units is essential.

5. The greater stability comes from the counter-cyclical impact of government deficits in stabilizing profits. However, if a MORE SOCIALIST form of capitalism is not going to be inflationary, its government must have the taxing and fiscal authority to hold back profits through budget SURPLUSES when and if inflation rises.

6. The historical emphasis (since the New Deal) on investment and “economic growth” rather than on employment as a policy objective is a mistake. A full employment economy is bound to expand, whereas an economy that aims at accelerating growth through devices that induce capital intensive private investment may grow, but will also be increasingly inequitable in its income distribution, inefficient in its choice of technologies and techniques, and unstable in its overall performance.

7. The employment strategy of a more responsive form of capitalism would be as follows:
a) The development of public, private, and in-between institutions that furnish jobs at a non-inflationary base wage, for any person laid off from the private economy.
b) Remove all barriers to labor force participation (for example social security penalties).
c) Modify the structure of transfer payments (unemployment compensation, AFDC-type payments, etc) to accommodate government as the employment of last resort.
d) Retraining privileges equivalent to military service for all.
e) Access to national health care coverage.
f) Enhanced public retirement protection.
g) In a full employment economy, compensation for increased productivity can include SHORTENING THE WORK DAY, especially in the lower third of the income scale.

The most challenging policy and administrative challenge implied in these principles is, of course, the “base wage.” By guaranteeing full employment, government effectively sets the economic floor for any and every member of society. It must take care that advances in the floor — surely the greatest promise of sustained economic productivity growth — not fall prey to the temptations of “great leaps forward,” which would lead to an inflationary spiral — and ultimately a crash.

Does anyone see these reforms working?

Is The Government Doing Its Part?

Excerpts from an article written by staffers of politicalaffairs.net
The US government has failed to live up to the expectations of its citizens regarding the provision of basic needs, a new international poll released this week showed.

According to the results of the survey conducted by World PublicOpinion.org this summer, American respondents to the poll by high margins stated they believe the US government has a large role to play in the provision of basic food needs, education, and health care.

Almost three in four Americans said the US government has a responsibility to help ensure that people are able to meet their food needs. Almost half, however, indicated that the US government failed to meet these needs “at all” or “very well.”

Even more Americans agreed that the US government is responsible to providing access to education. According to the survey, more than 80 percent of Americans believed the government should play a role in providing education. Only six in 10 Americans felt the government adequately accomplished the task.

On the issue of health care, Americans expressed the most concern about the government’s responsibility and its job performance. Almost eight in 10 Americans said the government is responsible for providing this basic need, but only three in 10 gave it good marks for its role in this.

Overall, American opinions on these three areas of concern reflect, more or less, typical opinions on the role of government globally. The poll showed, however, wide variations among people from different countries on how well their governments lived up to that responsibility.

Overall, respondents expressing the highest levels of satisfaction with their government’s performance in meeting such needs are found in China, Great Britain, Jordan, and the Palestinian Territories. The lowest levels are found in Russia, Ukraine, Argentina, and Nigeria.

American responses to the survey expressed the third largest amount of dissatisfaction with the government’s role in the provision of health care. While citizens of China, Palestine, and Indonesia expressed greater satisfaction on this issue than Americans by large margins, only Russians, Ukrainians, and Argentinians expressed more disapproval.