I don’t always agree with Noam Chomsky. I think he’s too reflexively anti-American (to the detriment to his works being more widely read), that he’s been getting a lil’ cranky as he gets older (as we all do) and sometimes he veers a little too far into conspiracy theory territory for my tastes. Still, when he’s on it, Chomsky can zero in on a complex confluence of events and trends and elucidate them like few other observers of national and world politics can. He recently took on the topic of American decline on the pages of al-Akhbar:

The post-Golden Age economy is enacting a nightmare envisaged by the classical economists, Adam Smith and David Ricardo. Both recognized that if British merchants and manufacturers invested abroad and relied on imports, they would profit, but England would suffer. Both hoped that these consequences would be averted by home bias, a preference to do business in the home country and see it grow and develop. Ricardo hoped that thanks to home bias, most men of property would “be satisfied with the low rate of profits in their own country, rather than seek a more advantageous employment for their wealth in foreign nations.

In the past 30 years, the “masters of mankind,” as Smith called them, have abandoned any sentimental concern for the welfare of their own society, concentrating instead on short-term gain and huge bonuses, the country be damned—as long as the powerful nanny state remains intact to serve their interests.

A graphic illustration appeared on the front page of the New York Times on August 4. Two major stories appear side by side. One discusses how Republicans fervently oppose any deal “that involves increased revenues”—a euphemism for taxes on the rich. The other is headlined “Even Marked Up, Luxury Goods Fly Off Shelves.” The pretext for cutting taxes on the rich and corporations to ridiculous lows is that they will invest in creating jobs—which they cannot do now as their pockets are bulging with record profits.

The developing picture is aptly described in a brochure for investors produced by banking giant Citigroup. The bank’s analysts describe a global society that is dividing into two blocs: the plutonomy and the rest. In such a world, growth is powered by the wealthy few, and largely consumed by them. Then there are the ‘non-rich,’ the vast majority, now sometimes called the global precariat, the workforce living a precarious existence. In the US, they are subject to “growing worker insecurity,” the basis for a healthy economy, as Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan explained to Congress while lauding his performance in economic management. This is the real shift of power in global society.

The Citigroup analysts advise investors to focus on the very rich, where the action is. Their “Plutonomy Stock Basket,” as they call it, far outperformed the world index of developed markets since 1985, when the Reagan-Thatcher economic programs of enriching the very wealthy were really taking off.

Before the 2007 crash for which the new post-Golden Age financial institutions were largely responsible, these institutions had gained startling economic power, more than tripling their share of corporate profits. After the crash, a number of economists began to inquire into their function in purely economic terms. Nobel laureate in economics Robert Solow concludes that their general impact is probably negative: “the successes probably add little or nothing to the efficiency of the real economy, while the disasters transfer wealth from taxpayers to financiers.”

By shredding the remnants of political democracy, they lay the basis for carrying the lethal process forward—as long as their victims are willing to suffer in silence.

Read more of American Decline: Causes and Consequences by Noam Chomsky

Below, Ali G interviews Professor Chomsky in 2006:
 

 
Ladybird Bachmann’s taxpayer-supported counseling practice was descended upon by a flash-mob of over 100 “barbarians” this morning:

A local actor posing as Marcus Bachmann was “baptized” with glitter after dancing with the barbarians to Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way.”

“Let’s be clear: Marcus Bachmann is the practitioner of an unhealthy, unscientific and dangerous practice,” event organizer Nick Espinosa told Columbus Go Home.

“The American people have a right to know: does the Bachmann family profit from bogus ‘gay reparative therapy’ or not,” he added. “The medical evidence against the practice aside, the Bachmann’s subversive marginalization of the LGBT community is despicable.”

In July, a smaller group threw glitter in the lobby of the clinic after staffers said that Bachmann was not available.

The LGBT activists were inspired by Bachmann’s claim that homosexuals are “barbarians” who “need to be disciplined.”

One of the staffers at the Bachmann business was seen driving away in a purple car. Not that there is anything wrong with purple cars. Just saying…
 

 
Via Raw Story

 
Let’s elect another idiot cowboy from Texas President in 2012 and commit national suicide, shall we?

From The New York Times of August 24, 2001.

CRAWFORD, Tex., Aug. 24 — President Bush said today that there was a benefit to the government’s fast-dwindling surplus, declaring that it would create “a fiscal straitjacket for Congress.” He said that was “incredibly positive news” because it would halt the growth of the Federal government.

In a 45-minute news conference in a community hall next to a recreational-vehicle park here, Mr. Bush avoided giving specific answers to several questions about how he would find the money for his next big initiatives — from missile defense, to overhauling the military, to reforming Medicaid — without dipping into Social Security surpluses that both parties have declared off-limits. And he made it clear he would not re-think his tax cut, saying, “I can’t tell you how proud I am to be traveling around the country and people say, `Thanks for the $600.’ “

At the same time, Mr. Bush talked in some detail about the economic slowdown, which he called a “correction,” and left open the possibility that he might dip into the Social Security surplus if a further economic stimulus was needed.

“I’ve said that the only reason we should use Social Security funds is in the case of an economic recession or war,” Mr. Bush said.

Read the rest (and weep):
Bush Says Dwindling Surplus Will Halt Government Growth (New York Times archive)

Via Redditor Technicolor Motor Home

 
Some words of wisdom for the Republican Party from last night’s Rachel Maddow Show:

“If you were the Republican Party, and you were going to give one of these groups of Americans veto power over who was going to be your presidential nominee…which of these groups would you [choose]? I mean, really? You’d give that power to the one at the very, very bottom, underneath the atheists? Really?”

In their hearts, they know she’s right…

But how does this explain why the Obama administration kowtows to the Tea party?
 

 
Over at Talking Points Memo they’ve got the summary of a very interesting new academic study done recently at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. “Cultures of the Tea Party,” as the study is titled, uses polling data, and interviews with Tea party supporters at a gathering held in the state to provide a snapshot of the overall cultural attitudes of the movement.

The findings, represented on Monday at the American Sociological Association, purport that the defining attitudes of the Tea party sympathizers are “Authoritarianism, ontological insecurity (fear of change), libertarianism and nativism.” From TPM:

The study used polling of North Carolina and Tennessee, conducted by Public Policy Polling (D) in the Summer of 2010, and determined the cultural dispositions by measuring the responses of tea partiers to set questions. After PPP surveyed over 2,000 voters who were sympathetic to the Tea Party, researchers then reinterviewed almost 600 in the fall of 2010. Those interviews included everything from personality based queries like “Would you say it is more important that a child obeys his parents, or that he is responsible for his own actions?” to more political ones, like “Do you think immigrants who came into this country illegally but pay taxes and have not been arrested should be given the opportunity to become permanent legal residents?” The study also incudes interviews and short responses with ten participants at a Tea Party rally in Washington, NC.

“American voters sympathetic to the Tea Party movement reflect four primary cultural and political beliefs more than other voters do: authoritarianism, libertarianism, fear of change, and negative attitudes toward immigrants and immigration,” a statement accompanying the report reads, as the findings themselves point out a few disconnects between the what self-described members of the Tea Party say and their actual policy stances.

The report quotes one Tea Party activist as saying, “We don’t want the big government that’s taking over everything we worked so hard for…the government’s becoming too powerful… we want to take back what our Constitution said. You read the Constitution. Those values - that’s what we stand for,” but that sentiment is not reflected in the polling data from the surveys. From the report:

In our follow-up poll, 84% of those positive towards the TPM [Tea Party members] said the Constitution should be interpreted “as the Founders intended,” compared to only 34% of other respondents. Other respondents were also three times more likely not to have an opinion on the issue, highlighting the salience of the question for TPM supporters. Support for Constitutional principles is not absolute. TPM supporters were twice as likely than others to favor a constitutional amendment banning flag burning; many also support efforts to overturn citizenship as defined by the Fourteenth Amendment. That TPM supporters simultaneously want to honor the founders’ Constitution and alter that same document highlights the political flexibility of the cultural symbols they draw on.

The TPM supporters’ inconsistent views of the Constitution suggests that their nostalgic embrace of the document is animated more by a network of cultural associations than a thorough commitment to the original text. In fact, such inconsistencies around policy, whether on the right or left, highlight what many sociologists see as the growing importance of culture in political life. The Constitution - and Tea Party more generally - take on heightened symbolic value and come to represent a ‘way of life’ or a “world view” rather than a specific set of laws or policy positions.

This reminds me a lot of Canadian psychology professor Bob Altemeyer’s long-term study of cultural attitudes of conservatives, The Authoritarians, which is online in pdf format. Altemeyer’s studies reveal rightwing double standards, inconsistent beliefs, willful ignorance, misrepresentation of historical and scientific facts and bizarre justifications. It, too, is absolutely worth reading.

Quoting Altemeyer:

The second reason I can offer for reading what follows is that it is not chock full of opinions, but experimental evidence. Liberals have stereotypes about conservatives, and conservatives have stereotypes about liberals. Moderates have stereotypes about both. Anyone who has watched, or been a liberal arguing with a conservative (or vice versa) knows that personal opinion and rhetoric can be had a penny a pound. But arguing never seems to get anywhere. Whereas if you set up a fair and square experiment in which people can act nobly, fairly, and with integrity, and you find that most of one group does, and most of another group does not, that’s a fact, not an opinion. And if you keep finding the same thing experiment after experiment, and other people do too, then that’s a body of facts that demands attention.3 Some people, we have seen to our dismay, don’t care a hoot what scientific investigation reveals; but most people do. If the data were fairly gathered and we let them do the talking, we should be on a higher plane than the current, “Sez you!”

The comments thread at TPM is worth reading. I suspect that our thread here will be lively also!

 
Indiana state Republican Rep. Phil Hinkle, the hapless gay marriage opponent who made headlines earlier this month when he hired an 18-year-old rent boy via Craigslist using the email address from his legislative website, is resisting pressure from fellow Republicans to resign. Hinkle, who clings to the fig-leaf he’s not gay (why even bother with this nonsense?), has already been stripped of two committee chairmanships he held, but he’s not budging. Via The Indy Star:

State Rep. Phil Hinkle admitted Tuesday that he paid a young man $80 to have a good time. But Hinkle insisted he isn’t gay and doesn’t know why he did it.

He said that he understands why he’s being stripped of his committee chairmanships and that he won’t seek re-election. But he said he will not resign, despite House Speaker Brian Bosma’s call Tuesday to do so.

And he said he did nothing illegal with—or to—the young man and that he himself was the victim of a crime. But he said he would not file a police report.

—snip—

Hinkle’s version of what happened that night in Room 2610 at the JW Marriott hotel differs greatly from the version provided by the young man and his sister.

Kameryn Gibson, the 18-year-old who said he was looking for a “sugga daddy” in the Craigslist posting, told The Star that he tried to leave the room that night and called his sister Megan after Hinkle identified himself as a lawmaker. He also said Hinkle tried to keep him from leaving, exposed himself and then—after his sister arrived—offered them $100 cash, an iPad and a Blackberry to keep quiet.

Hinkle’s version: He never exposed himself and never offered anything to the Gibsons to keep quiet. Instead, he said, Kameryn Gibson stole those items when Hinkle was in the bathroom.

“These people,” Hinkle said, “are lying through their teeth.”

Kameryn and Megan Gibson stood by their story Tuesday.

 
Forty years after his death, George Jackson continues to reflect different things to different people depending on their ideologies and experiences.

To some, Jackson was a renowned author, Marxist, and activist truth-teller who brought the injustices of the American experience in and out of prison into harsh light as the once-vibrant ‘60s faded to a disillusioned and bloody end.

To others, he was a career criminal and prisoner turned violent radical whose acts and incitements brought misery to many and resulted in the kind of revolutionary martyrdom now worshiped by Islamicists and Tea Party extremists.

In a society that both thrives on a fundamental class-based inequality and manages to keep its prison population of 2 million over 40% black, Jackson remains a figure of some relevance, however legendary. Perhaps the best way to get a picture of the man is to read his words in Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

On the ideological side of things, here’s George Jackson - 40 year commemoration, a video produced by Jonathan Jackson Jr:
 

 
After the jump: George Jackson in context, and Bob Dylan’s salute to the man…

 
I’m feeling good vibrations
 

 
The day after the first leg of the Wisconsin recall elections, I thought the number of “We won!” emails coming from the various lefty and labor organizations I support seemed a little odd. Did we win? It sure didn’t look that way to me. If “we” would have won, the tallies would have been different, right?

Maybe they were half right. Wisconsin Democrats did, after all, oust two Republican senators in two of the very, very few successful recall races ever held in American history. Pity the other two races didn’t fall their way, but it’s certain that what happened in Wisconsin awakened an awful lot of people to what was going on in their state, the role of the Koch brothers in rightwing AstroTurf politics there and just how aggressive and vicious the GOP can get when they are in the majority in a legislative body.

The Republican majority now hinges on one vote in Wisconsin. Personally, I’d rate the glass more than half-full considering the power math of less than a year ago. There is little doubt that Democrats will retake the legislature next year.

The collective bargaining rights issue highlighted by the recall election in Wisconsin, as I’ve maintained here, has never been merely a statewide matter. It’s a national issue of great importance to the future of this country’s middle-class families. Wisconsin was the flash point. The first battle in a longer war.

When I stopped and thought about it, I realized what HAD been gained in Wisconsin and this is now coming much better into focus as Ohio Governor John Kasich and the Republican party seek to back-walk the deeply unpopular anti-labor bill SB 5—it’s not a law yet despite the GOP’s best efforts—and are asking Ohio Democrats and labor unions to withdraw a November referendum on it. The public opinion is decidedly against the Republicans and polling just a little over two months from the November 8 vote shows an overwhelming 54% to 36% gulf in favor of rejecting the bill.

With this much Republican blood in the water, why would Ohio Democrats be stupid enough to withdraw the referendum? AS IF the Republicans would ever pay them the same courtesy! It’s hilarious to watch Kasich say this shit! So craven! So… Republican.

So ridiculous!

I love watching a Republican grovel, don’t you?

Kasich and the Ohio Republicans have been knee-capped and they damn well know it. Working families across Ohio owe Wisconsin progressives their gratitude. We all do.

Good people of Wisconsin: You lit what might be a long fuse, as Rachel Maddow eloquently pointed out on her show last night:
 

 
Melody, a friend of mine here in Texas, sent me this photo.  A Facebook friend of hers took it in Fort Worth the other day and it’s a sign that not all Texans are buying into the Perry as Saviour myth. And Fort Worth is ostensibly Perry country.

Perry’s gonna have a rough ride, even in the Lone Star state.