The Enterprise Incident(s)

The Enterprise Incident(s),

or,

Why Corporations Cannot Be Trusted to Self-Regulate,

by Liviana (Giovanna L.)

"Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

~ George Santayana, The Life of Reason, Volume I, Reason in Common Sense, Chapter XII, "Flux and Constancy in Human Nature," Charles Scribner's Sons, 1905

Preface

Some of my readers already know, and others may have guessed from avatars I use in various places online, that I greatly enjoyed an episode of Star Trek (The Original Series) with the title of "The Enterprise Incident."  Indeed, it is my favorite episode of all the Trek series.  As a young child, watching the show for the first time (forty-eight years ago this evening when it was first broadcast on 27 September 1968), I do not recall my response to the episode.  I was too young at the time to have much self-awareness or to remember much of what I was like then.  However, having watched The Original Series (hereafter referred to as "TOS") in syndication for most of my life since then (and now having the entire series on DVD), "TEI" became my favorite episode from a rather early age.  The Romulan commander in that episode (unnamed in the show or the script, but called variously "Di'on Charvon," "Liviana Charvanek," and "Praetor Thea" in the various novels which expanded upon the episode in subsequent years, and portrayed by the actress Joanne Linville) was someone I aspired to be, in some sense, and part of the reason for this, I must confess, is because Spock (Leonard Nimoy) was so damned hot!  But part of it was also because she was a woman with authority, in charge of not merely one ship, but a wing of at least three ships.

For those who don't remember, in this episode, Commander t'Charvon sought to seduce Spock with two goals in mind (at least as far as the episode revealed):  she wanted him, and she wanted the Enterprise, which had violated the treaty between the United Federation of Planets and the Romulan Star Empire by entering and crossing the Federation-Romulan Neutral Zone into Romulan territory.  As the story played out, Spock deceived her, but only in part (as was revealed in the scene in the turbolift near the end).  She did win his heart, but not his loyalty to the Romulan Star Empire;  he did not and would not betray the Federation, and it was revealed also that the entire incident of the Enterprise entering Romulan territory had been a ruse ordered by Starfleet, in order to effect the theft of the new cloaking device then being used by the Romulans, an act, that is to say, of military espionage.

It is, therefore, with some annoyance that I write this particular blog post and give it this title.  I would far rather anything I write which borrows this title be about more pleasant things than the subject matter of this blog post.  Nevertheless, as some of my readers have noticed, I have recently begun a series of posts with the titles of episodes of TOS ("The Alternative Factor," "Bread and Circuses," and "For the World Is Hollow, and I Have Touched the Sky"), and I mean to continue that, for a bit longer at least;  some of the episode titles would be challenging to apply to the sort of blogging I have been doing over the past several months, concerned primarily with social, political, and economic matters.  I cannot see doing a series of posts with titles borrowed from TOS episodes without including the title of my favorite episode, but the only way of which I can conceive doing so at present is to do a post on incidents involving enterprise in the economic sense, and, to tie it (tenuously) to the ideas of the episode, what I will discuss in this post will concern corporate crime, including theft.

Introduction

The word "enterprise" is defined by the Oxford Online Dictionaries, for our purposes, as "a business or company," or "entrepreneurial economic activity."  We can of course substitute "a corporation" for "a  business" or "a company," they being synonymous.

Ayn Rand (born Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum) was a Russian woman who emigrated to the United States in 1926, aged 21 years.  When she was 12, the Russian Empire fell in the February Revolution, which was followed some months later by the October Revolution, which brought the Bolsheviks to power.  Rand supported the February Revolution.  After the Bosheviks came to power later in 1917, her family's shop was seized and nationalized, which, according to her followers, resulted in "crushing poverty" for the family.  As a consequence of the Bolsheviks coming to power, however, Russian universities were opened to women, and a sixteen-year-old Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum was in the first group of women to enroll in Petrograd State University.  She and many other "bourgeois" students were purged from the university shortly before graduation, but complaints by foreign scientists visiting the Soviet Union resulted in her (and other purged students) being allowed to complete her work and graduate.  Sometime before this, she had decided to call herself "Ayn Rand" as a nom-de-plume.

After coming to the United States, and eventually getting published, Rand began to fancy herself a philosopher.  Now, this is something I know a fair amount about, having gotten my BA with a double major, and one of those majors was Philosophy, in which my focus was Logic and the history of ideas (as is the usual course of study in undergraduate Philosophy departments these days).  I read a few of Rand's works as an undergrad (not for any class, but on my own initiative), but by no means all, finding them rather unsatisfactory in the philosophical concepts put forth in the pages.  In later years, I learned more about her life, and her attitudes.  Ayn Rand apparently firmly believed that the Soviet Union was a communist nation, and could never get over the facticity (or baggage, if you will) of her family having lost their shop and the subsequent "squalor."  Her "philosophy," then, was influenced by these two things, and she became a staunch opponent of what she thought was Communism and Socialism, conflating the two into a conception of "Collectivism," and based, as she assumed, on a tribalist notion as distinct from Individualism.  The Soviet Union named itself the "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics," and made use of much Marxist and other socialist rhetoric, and was generally portrayed as communist in the West, so perhaps she should not be faulted too much for believing this to be the case.  However, a philosopher ought to examine rhetoric and seek to know if it be true or no.  Not only is "the People's Democratic Republic of China" not democratic, but "the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" was never socialist, much less communist, and while Tribalism is not radically individualistic, neither is it radically collectivistic (nor, for that matter, is all Socialism collectivist), but rather, Tribalism in its economic aspects is a form of Cooperativism.

Among Ayn Rand's ideas was the notion that any government regulation of corporate activities was undesirable, and she attempted to make virtues of greed and selfishness, regarding altruism as a vice.  A full criticism of her "philosophy," which she named "Objectivism," is beyond the scope of this blog post (if the reader would like to see more thorough criticism of her ideas, I can recommend Adam Lee's two-part series of articles published by Alter-Net:  "10 Things I Learned About the World from Ayn Rand's Insane "Atlas Shrugged'," and "10 Things I Discovered About Ayn Rand's Addled Brain After Reading 'Atlas Shrugged';"  and for a criticism of her ideas in practice, I can recommend Edwin Lyngar's article, "My libertarian vacation nightmare: How Ayn Rand, Ron Paul & their groupies were all debunked," published by Salon), nor is it my intention here (or anywhere else) to defend the USSR (or actual Communism -- however, conflating all forms of Socialism with Marxism is intellectually dishonest, and there are forms of Socialism which are considerably different from Marx's version).  At some point in the near future, I intend to discuss Socialism in greater detail, perhaps as part of a larger discussion of economic theories including Communism, Capitalism, Mercantilism, Feudalism, and Tribalism, but this will have to come after a discussion of the distinctions between Progressivism and Liberalism, because in talking about economic theories, I will have to go into distinctions between, say, Democratic Socialism and Social Democracy (the former is more in tune with progressive ideals, while the latter is more in tune with liberal ideals).

Corporate Criminal Incidents

Twenty years and three days ago, on 24 September 1996, Pete Wilson, then Governor of California, signed AB 1890, the Electric Energy Restructuring bill, into law, it having been passed by the California Legislature without a single dissenting vote.  AB 1890 was supposed to dispense with utility monopolies in California, opening the market and thereby, theoretically, lowering costs to consumers.  What happened in actuality was deregulation of the electric energy industry, massive consumer abuse by the industry, and unbridled greed which led to rolling blackouts and price gouging, which has forever after been associated with the name "the Enron scandal."  Who can forget the Enron traders' callous references to having stolen "all that money ... from those poor grandmothers in California," who were personified as "Grandma Millie" in tapes and transcripts of calls released to the media?  There were eventually hearings and lawsuits, government prosecution and incarceration and/or fining of at least some of the guilty.  The CEO of Enron, however, Ken Lay, escaped the justice of man by dying from a heart attack while on vacation at his summer house in Colorado, three months before he was to be sentenced, having been found guilty on ten counts of securities fraud;  his conviction was therefore posthumously vacated.  One would think (hope, even) that the state government of California, as well as citizens of California and the rest of the nation, would have learned from this experiment in deregulation.   But Jerry Brown is the current Governor of California, and while he may have been at one time somewhat progressive, today he is a cog in the establishment, and that means, among other things, that the state government's control over the industry is once again being questioned and put at risk.

Lest anyone think such excess is restricted to the energy industry (which I cannot imagine anyone who hasn't been living under a rock for the past 20 years assuming), the same capitalist motto is whispered in the ear of executives across the corporate world:  "Profit is success, and success is life!"  Witness, for example, the strange case of one Martin Shkreli, who raised the price to consumers of a life-saving HIV drug by 4000%, without any increase of cost to produce the drug and no justification for the price hike other than his own greed, news of which broke about a year ago, while the pharmaceutical industry tried to pretend that his price hike was somehow uncharacteristic of the industry as a whole.  Daraprim, the medication in question, was raised from $13.50 to  $700, per pill.  Nor did Shkreli start or stop with that single medicine, having previously owned a company which raised the consumer price of Thiola from $1.50 to $30 per pill in 2014, and went on in November of 2015 to buy a majority share in another pharmaceutical company, thereafter applying for exclusive right of sale to another medication.  In December of 2015, Shkreli was charged with securities fraud by the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York, and arrested by the FBI.  In February of 2016, he appeared before the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform of the US House of Representatives, having been subpoenaed to answer questions about the Daraprim price increase.  Shkreli refused to answer questions, on the basis of the Fifth Amendment and on the advice of his counsel.  His behavior in the appearance, and his subsequent social media activity demonstrated what many believe (and I concur) to be an astounding level of hubris and sense of entitlement.  While his criminal case has not yet been decided, he has continued to profit in the meantime, although he is no longer CEO of Retrophin, Turing Pharmaceuticals, or KaloBios Pharmaceuticals.

Now, once again, you would think that people would learn from this example, even though his case has not yet been decided, simply by virtue of Shkreli's notoriety for a while as "the most hated man on the internet," due in no small measure to his price hikes of medications like Daraprim.  Yes, you would think, and hope, that others would have learned from Shkreli's sorry example.  Not so!  Enter Heather Bresch, daughter of Joe Manchin (former Governor of West Virginia, Democratic Super Delegate who supported Hillary Rodham Clinton's nomination for President by the Democratic National Convention, and current Senator from West Virginia to the US Senate) and CEO of Mylan, another pharmaceutical company, who saw to it that Mylan raised the price of the EpiPen, used to treat anaphylaxis, by 461-550% from the time the company secured the rights.  This price hike resulted in a 600% salary increase for Bresch.  The cost of an EpiPen in the United States is now as much as nine times higher than in other developed nations.  If this price hike were not malicious enough, Bresch's mother, Gayle Manchin, after becoming head of the National Association of State Boards of Education, encouraged states to require schools to purchase epinephrine auto-injectors, and the EpiPen, manufactured exclusively by Mylan, was nearly the only such product available.  In addition, while it could have been an honest mistake (although skepticism of such an explanation is perhaps warranted, given all that has been revealed already in this paragraph), Bresch did not give an accurate reckoning of profits to Congress during a recent House committee hearing.  And the most repulsive thing about all of this?  Anaphylaxis is deadly, the cost of manufacturing an EpiPen is rather small, and no justification for the price hike exists (unless, like Ayn Rand, you believe that greed is good, selfishness is a virtue, and altruism is a vice, and if you do, then may you swiftly reap what you sow).

Speaking of corporations which should have learned from the past, Wells Fargo should have remembered 2008, when, as a result of the 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act and banking "self-regulation" inspired by Alan Greenspan, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy and was subsequently liquidated, the Federal government had to take over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and bail out AIG, which it also took over, and the Dow fell more than 700 points in a single day.  These banking corporations had seen accounting scandals, high risk lending and investment in the bubble economy of the housing market, negligence, and malfeasance including "cooking the books."  But even these banking corporations should have known history well enough to know better, for bubble economies and deregulation were among the causes of the Great Depression.  But again, that old lie, "Profit is success and success is life!" was whispered around inside the heads of the executives, and they hoped to avoid being caught.  No concern for those who were exploited has been in evidence, lower level employees have been fired, and the executives believe that they will be able to enjoy their ill-gotten gains and escape any meaningful punishment.  Indeed, so far, the only punishment for Wells Fargo's crimes has been a record-breaking fine which, however, was paltry in light of their profits, and their CEO, John Stumpf, being yelled at by US Senator Elizabeth Warner (perhaps trying to recoup some of the credibility she lost by endorsing corrupt corporatist pimpette Hillary Clinton) and verbally chastised by Senator Robert Menendez, and Wells Fargo has, as might be expected, admitted no wrongdoing.  I am not the only one to point out that Wells Fargo and Mylan should have known something was wrong;  Walter Isaacson, CEO of the Aspen Institute, said something similar on the 19th, in reference to more recent history.  Seth Meyers also alluded to the banking crisis of 2008 in reference to Wells Fargo's actions.  Jimmy Dore pointed out that this has been going on at Wells Fargo since 2011, a mere three years after the events of 2008, and that Wells Fargo stock initially went up following the revelation of the cheating (although it has dropped some since then):

Although Stumpf did accept responsibility and claims to be "deeply sorry" for the actions of Wells Fargo, he has not resigned, has not been fired, has not, in fact, been punished in any way.  Indeed, Carrie Tolstedt, head of the division responsible for overseeing the sector of Wells Fargo where the fake accounts were created, retired in July, with approximately $96.6 million in stock, stock options, and equity awards.  In 2015, Stumpf himself received $4 million in awards, on top of his salary, from Wells Fargo, in addition to base salary and other compensation, and in 2014, his salary was $2.8 million, on top of which he also received a $4 million cash bonus, and shares valued at $12.5 million, for a total of $19.3 million in "compensation" for the year.  Wells Fargo executives will retain their bonuses in spite of the scandal, and were Stumpf to retire, step down, or be fired, he would receive $123.6 million.  In spite of Stumpf's repeated insistence that the culture of Wells Fargo was not to blame for these criminal actions, not everyone agrees.  And to make matters worse, it turns out that Wells Fargo executive salaries were subsidized by US taxpayers.  Pissed off yet?  You should be.  Just make sure you're pissed off at the right people, and don't fall for their attempts to blame the little guy who has only crumbs:

In light of these abuses, Violation Tracker, the corporate crime and misconduct searchable database maintained by the Corporate Research Project of Good Jobs first, has been expanded and now highlights banking, consumer protection, false claims, environmental, health, safety, price-fixing and bribery cases initiated by 30 federal regulatory agencies and the Justice Department since 2010.  You can access Violation Tracker here.

But wait, there's more! ... although, at this point, I'm not sure we can take much more.  But yea, verily, there have been still more "enterprise incidents" in the recent news, not least of which is the blatant destruction of ancient sacred sites by the interests behind the Dakota Access Pipeline (hereafter called the DAPL), and the intransigent insistence on building the thing, crossing the Missouri River twice and going through a sacred tribal burial ground of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, despite massive public opposition, outcry, and protests.  The Department of Homeland Security (as if to cement its reputation as a government gaggle of fascist bully-boys intent on imposing the will of the corporate oligarchy on the people whether we want it or not) has been involved, cutting the water supply of the Sioux and others protesting (mostly other Native Americans, as well as environmentalists, anti-statists, anti-corporatists, and progressives), private security firms have used pepper spray on protesters and allowed their dogs to attack the protesters, and a sheriff's department has issued arrest warrants for Amy Goodman, a journalist who was simply covering the protests, as well as for Green Party presidential nominee Doctor Jill Stein for "vandalizing" the blade of a bulldozer (the spray paint she used on the blade would of course be worn away in the ordinary course of use of the 'dozer, so the charge of "vandalism" stretches the credibility of the sheriff's department) and "trespassing."

Furthermore, in defiance of the judicial process then in play, the corporate interests behind the DAPL had a two-mile, 150-foot wide path bulldozed through the sacred burial ground on Labor Day Weekend, land which was being contested in Federal Court when the path was bulldozed through it, another in a long history of injustices against Native Americans.  On the Tuesday following the long weekend, 6 September 2016, a Federal Judge declined to order a halt to construction, instead requesting that Dakota Access LLC halt construction on only a small area in contention, pending a separate ruling to be issued later in the week.  The company agreed to the request.  This same Federal Judge, James Boasberg, on that Friday, the 9th, denied the Standing Rock Sioux tribe's request for an injunction against the DAPL, but then, the U.S. Department of the Interior, Department of Justice, and Department of the Army, issued this joint statement, which temporarily halted work on the DAPL on Corps land bordering or under Lake Oahe.  Also on the 6th, Democracy Now! reported on a new investigation which revealed more than two dozen major banks and financial institutions helping to fund the DAPL, among which are Bank of America Corporation, HSBC Holdings plc (held by the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, Ltd.), UBS AG (originally Union Bank of Switzerland), the Goldman Sachs Group, Wells Fargo & Co, and JPMorgan Chase & Co., as seen here:

Not only because of the  desecration of the sacred site of the Standing Rock Sioux, but also because of the potential ecological damage, the DAPL is ill-advised, as Doctor Jill Stein has pointed out.  Between 2010 and the middle of 2015, leaks or ruptures in US pipelines killed 80 people, injured 389 more, cost $2.8 billion in damages, and released toxic chemicals into soil, waterways, and the atmosphere, in numerous states, as documented by the Center for Effective Government.  Toxic chemicals released into soil and waterways may seep down into the aquifers, poisoning untapped reserves of what was formerly pure water.  Truly, as Doctor Jill Stein has said, we do not need to be building more pipelines, but dismantling those already in existence, and moving to clean, sustainable, renewable energy.  The outcome of the concerns around the DAPL remains uncertain.  For the moment, construction in a limited area has been halted, pending a determination about whether or not the government will need to reconsider any of its previous decisions on the matter.  Meanwhile, already back in May at the time the DAPL protests were gaining ground, the Obama administration quietly approved permits for two pipelines in Texas also owned by Energy Transfer Partners, and signed an agreement with Mexico forming the "US-Mexico Energy Business Council."  Instead of approving these potential ecological disasters, we could be using our time, labor, and resources to fix some of the ecological damage which has been done.

And looming in the background are the "free trade" pacts which President Obama has favored, and which Hillary Clinton will push if elected to succeed Obama, agreements which will devastate national sovereignty by relaxing regulations on corporations even more and even allow multinational corporations to sue national governments for "lost profits" over any legislation which might include GMO labeling, country-of-origin labeling, protection of the environment, minimum wage, pro-labor policies, anti-trust laws, and so on.

And if you think this is only about the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the already-extant North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), or even those and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), no;  there are others already prepared in case the TPP and TTIP fail:  the Comprehensive Economic & Trade Agreement (CETA) and the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA).  It is not enough to be vigilant;  the corporate oligarchy has plans on top of plans on top of plans, and the money to hire thugs with pepper spray and attack dogs and bulldozers and more.  While we are focused on one abuse, they are already busily planning more.  When we have exhausted our bodies, minds, and financial resources fighting one abuse, they can simply hire more mercenaries and drones to enact their will while we recuperate and build back up our own finances which were expended in our previous resistance efforts.  Instead, we must focus our efforts, not on the symptoms, but on the root causes of these abuses;  we must change the system.  This cannot be done by voting for politicians who are part of that system;  we have to step out of line and elect those who have the interests of our nation and her states and people at heart.  We must end the two-party duopoly, a deception in which two seeming parties are in actuality but one, which is controlled by the same establishment of corporatist oligarchs who have steadily eroded our democratic republic for their own gain.  It's time.  Will you step out of line and vote for Doctor Jill Stein for President, and progressives down the ballot?  It's in our hands.  We can do it, if we stop being afraid.  Winning is impossible without the will to risk losing.

The title of the post comes from Star Trek (The Original Series), Season 3, episode 2;  episode 57 overall;  production code 59.


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A Sense of Perspective on Liberty? Part 6, or, Okay, Let Me Tell You AGAIN Why I Support Senator Sanders for President

A Sense of Perspective on Liberty?

Part 6,

Or, "Okay, Let Me Tell You Again

Why I Support Senator Sanders for President,"

by Liviana (Giovanna L.)

Yet again, I am asked why I am supporting Bernie Sanders instead of someone else.  Well, gee, Wally, maybe because I believe in the things he believes in, things which some other candidates either oppose vehemently or merely give lip-service to?  Here, then, read and learn why I am supporting Bernie Sanders (I've liberally sprinkled the text with links to back up what I'm saying, and put in a few pictures because I wanted to):

Senator Bernie Sanders is not Republican Lite like Secretary Hillary Clinton, and he's not polarizing like Secretary Clinton.

Senator Sanders is an actual Leftist (this is NOT a bad word!), not a "less-far-to-the-Right-than-the-Republicans-ist" (Hell, at this point, even Mussolini is almost less to the Right than some Republicans [and I don't believe I need to justify this assertion in any way, thanks to Herr Trump, whom even some public figures in his own party are calling out for his views], so being "less Right Wing than the Republicans" is not exactly sufficient for my vote).  Senator Sanders believes in Progressive values and will not cave at the first sign of resistance like a "Nu Democrat" will.  He will give us change for the better, and not the mediocrity of business as usual, nor a descent into the maelstrom of madness.

Bernie Sanders is pissed off about most if not all of the same things I'm pissed off about, and he supports most if not all of the ideals I hold dear.

No, Hillary.  Some of us know you're just a Right Winger in "Liberal" clothing.

Senator Sanders has a long -- and consistent --history of fighting for liberty, justice, and equality for all.  He was active in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, and supported LGBTI rights as early as the 1970s, and is the only 2016 Presidential candidate who voted against DOMA.  He also stands firmly for Women's Reproductive Rights.

He is not in the pocket of the banks and corporations (nor for-profit prison corporations) and Wall Street like some other candidates, but will actually stand up for the middle class and the poor against those leeches.

Not being the beneficiary of dark money contributions, Bernie Sanders has no vested interest in wearing kid gloves when dealing with campaign finance reform.  Of what other candidate can this be said?  Not a one.

While some are busy trying to pit the Middle Class and the Less Fortunate against one another, Bernie is willing to go after the 1% who are not paying their fair share.  That current situation means that the burden of taxation falls on the Middle Class and the Less Fortunate are resented for even the subsistence level benefits they receive.

Bernie Sanders believes in social and economic justice, in uniting us against our common foe, instead of trying to divide us so that the foe can continue to live a life of luxury.  He will work for making education available to all, and not merely the "fortunate son."  He will endeavor to patch the safety net, and his plan is sound.  And, contrary to the fear-mongering, his plan will NOT bankrupt the nation by these efforts.

Senator Sanders is an advocate of a living wage, recognizing that, no matter what job someone does, if they put in 40 hours a week for wages, they deserve better than they're currently getting.  And no, this isn't going to hurt the Middle Class like business publications claim.  It's going to decrease some of the massive profits that the huge corporations get, though, which, you know, is probably why those business publications are spewing bile about it.

Unlike the candidates from the other party, Senator Sanders will not send young people overseas to die in imperialistic and economic wars, only to pat them on the back and send them on their way if they manage to make it home alive.

And, as noted above, Bernie is not polarizing the way Hillary is;  if the Republicans hate anyone more than they hate President Obama, it's Hillary Rodham Clinton, so their ilk will turn out in droves to vote against her, while Bernie has a real chance to win.  She's not even, as some would assume, the candidate of the Progressive American Woman.  Guess who is.  Go on, guess.

He's not gung-ho for "gun control," the perennial cause célèbre of the Democratic Party, which effort blatantly ignores "shall not be infringed," and which will never resonate with voters in the heartland nor any rural area.  He did not attempt to exploit recent tragedies to push the same ridiculous un-constitutional proposals that so many "Democrats" started trying to push.  We are all of us "innocent until proven guilty" in this nation.  Being merely suspected of something is no justification for denying us our Constitutional Rights -- and, lest we all forget, that "no-fly list" bullshit is a product of another Republican régime, one which gave us the attempted dismantling of the Bill of Rights which goes by the euphemistic acronym "USA PATRIOT Act" (and let me point out that Senator Sanders voted against that bit of fascism, for all the right reasons;  Ms Clinton, on the other hand, who was also a Senator at the time, voted for it)  I'm afraid my confidence is lacking in the Dubya régime's ability to not place political opponents on such a list (especially since many of us saw the same news articles which strongly suggested that that very thing did in fact happen), and some current candidates would like to continue warrantless surveillance and other government spying on our own citizens.  To my international friends who may be appalled to read of my support for the Law of the Land in the USA (our Constitution), which includes the 2nd Amendment recognition of the right of the people to keep and bear arms:  you're never going to convince this Texas Girl to support "gun control."  Prohibition has never worked in any form, and this particular variation on Prohibition cannot be done legally without an Amendment to the Constitution of the USA (and I, for one, do not believe the Constitution should ever be amended except to expand the list of rights recognized by the government and improve our political system itself, but never to deny rights).

So, you want to know, again, why I'm supporting Senator Bernie Sanders for President?  These are a few of my reasons.  I can go on, if you wish, but I think I've made my point.  Let me ask you, then:  "Why wouldn't I support Bernie Sanders?  Why wouldn't any rational person support him?"

Power to the people!

A Sense of Perspective on Liberty? Part 3

A Sense of Perspective on Liberty?

Part 3,

or, "Abusive ad Hominem in Partisan Politics,"

by Liviana (Giovanna L.)

Earlier this afternoon, in an internet chat group which I founded, someone criticized something based on the source of the something.  To him I replied, "Even Hitler did one or two good things, [REDACTED NAME]."

After some preliminary reactions, I continued (the following has been expanded for this blog post, but most of these points were covered in my discussion):

Nobody here denies that he was a horrible, horrible person, and did all manner of wrong.  What I'm saying is that the source of the request shouldn't matter, if what they call for is a good thing.  Kinda like how when the Democrats do something the Republicans would have liked if a Republican had done it, if it's good, it's good, regardless of who did it.

Remember all the hell they gave Clinton over Bosnia?  But if Reagan or Bush the Elder or Bush the Lesser had been CiC at the time and got American troops involved, it would have been another great example of Murkans wavin' our dicks in ever'one's faces, because MURKA!

And look, they elected Mitt Romney to be their candidate for President last go around, and he's the guy who did Obamacare before it was 'Obamacare.'  And even though popular opinion is against them on the question of the Affordable Care Act, they continue making the untenable claim that 'most Americans' are opposed to it, and they continue to waste time trying to overturn it.

And that's not all!  If you order now, you also get the dying gasps of inequality, in which they claim that they would use the military to prevent women from exercising freedom of choice guaranteed by the Supreme Court, call for laws to enable citizens to shoot anyone they merely suspect of being Gay, and gerrymander voting districts in an effort to disenfranchise minority voters, while praising the fascist bully boys for shooting yet another unarmed kid who happened to be non-Caucasian.

And they'll also throw in a bonus of astoundingly anti-American theocratic rhetoric and posturing, in which they argue that they have a "right" to decide what individuals in their communities can and cannot do (in spite of the evidence that so-called "dry counties" do not prevent residents from purchasing alcohol elsewhere, and in spite of the evidence that the same situation actually promotes driving while intoxicated), attempt to legalize discrimination under the guise of "religious freedom," advocate (in direct violation of Jesus' teachings in Matthew VI, 1-6) for public-led prayer in public schools, and pretend that science is a lie from the devil, so that they can justify allowing the petroleum industry to continue destroying our lives, prohibit the teaching of evolution in public schools, and continue to ignore the evidence which says, 'Yes, Virginia, Homosexuality and Transsexuality are no more matters of choice or alternative lifestyles than Intersex conditions are.'

And the list goes on, and on, and on.  I'm not sure if they actually believe the lies, irrational horseshit, and blatant insanity they're spouting or are merely engaging in showmanship in an effort to win more support from the ignorant and prejudiced, but that ship has sailed.

But they're still fighting FDR over Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security, 80+ years later, all because FDR was a Democrat who did the things that their sorry asses would not do because they were too busy pimping the citizens out to the corporatists.

'AMG, Soshulizm!'  Yeah, so?  It saved your beloved Capitalism from dying the death it so richly deserved, after it attempted suicide in the 20s with all the voodoo economics, anti-labor policies, tax breaks for corporations, encouragement of bubble economies, opposition to any help for the workers, and so on.  The same shit, by the way, which the Republicans have been trying again ever since Reagan.  Verily, Santayana was right.

More to the point, the so-called 'socialism' which FDR brought to the table was the right thing to do for the people, whether he were Democrat or Republican.

But even causes which the Republicans embraced in the past have now been abandoned by the Republican Party, because Democrats got on board.  Teddy Roosevelt and Ike Eisenhower believed in protecting the environment.  Ike Eisenhower opposed racial inequality.  For Mike Huckabee to speak of using the military to prevent abortion is an insult to heroes of the nation like Ike.  I like Ike.  (Hell, I'm even somewhat fond of Barry Goldwater, Dick Nixon, and Gerry Ford.)  I loathe the Right Wingnuts, Would-be Theocrats, and Social Reactionaries, just as I loathe ignorance, prejudice, superstition, and irrationality.

Chris Christie's Vision for the United States?

From Rolling Stone:

... Camden is just across the Delaware River from the brick and polished cobblestone streets of downtown Philadelphia, where oblivious tourists pour in every year, gobbling cheese steaks and gazing at the Liberty Bell, having no idea that they're a short walk over the Ben Franklin Bridge from a full-blown sovereignty crisis – an un-Fantasy Island of extreme poverty and violence where the police just a few years ago essentially surrendered a city of 77,000.

All over America, communities are failing. Once-mighty Rust Belt capitals that made steel or cars are now wastelands. Elsewhere, struggling white rural America is stocking up on canned goods and embracing the politics of chaos, sending pols to Washington ready to hit the default button and start the whole national experiment all over again.

But in Camden, chaos is already here. In September, its last supermarket closed, and the city has been declared a "food desert" by the USDA. The place is literally dying, its population having plummeted from above 120,000 in the Fifties to less than 80,000 today. Thirty percent of the remaining population is under 18, an astonishing number that's 10 to 15 percent higher than any other "very challenged" city, to use the police euphemism. Their home is a city with thousands of abandoned houses but no money to demolish them, leaving whole blocks full of Ninth Ward-style wreckage to gather waste and rats.

It's a major metropolitan area run by armed teenagers with no access to jobs or healthy food, and not long ago, while the rest of America was ranting about debt ceilings and Obamacares, Camden quietly got pushed off the map. That was three years ago, when new governor and presumptive future presidential candidate Chris Christie abruptly cut back on the state subsidies that kept Camden on life support. The move left the city almost completely ungoverned – a graphic preview of what might lie ahead for communities that don't generate enough of their own tax revenue to keep their lights on. Over three years, fires raged, violent crime spiked and the murder rate soared so high that on a per-capita basis, it "put us somewhere between Honduras and Somalia," says Police Chief J. Scott Thomson. ...

Read more:
Apocalypse, New Jersey: A Dispatch From America's Most Desperate Town

See also:
The Bankruptcy and Privatization of Detroit Is a Terrifying Preview of What Republicans Want to Do to the Rest of the Country

Pope Calls for Decentralized Church, Condemns Capitalism

From The Guardian:

Pope Francis has attacked unfettered capitalism as "a new tyranny", urging global leaders to fight poverty and growing inequality in the first major work he has authored alone as pontiff.

The 84-page document, known as an apostolic exhortation, amounted to an official platform for his papacy, building on views he has aired in sermons and remarks since he became the first non-European pontiff in 1,300 years in March.

In it, Francis went further than previous comments criticising the global economic system, attacking the "idolatry of money" and beseeching politicians to guarantee all citizens "dignified work, education and healthcare".

He also called on rich people to share their wealth. "Just as the commandment 'Thou shalt not kill' sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say 'thou shalt not' to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills," Francis wrote in the document issued on Tuesday.

"How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points?"

Read more:
Pope Francis calls unfettered capitalism 'tyranny' and urges rich to share wealth


From the Los Angeles Times:

Eight months into his headline-grabbing papacy, Pope Francis issued a wide-ranging manifesto Tuesday in which he sharply criticizes the excesses of capitalism and says he wants a decentralized Roman Catholic Church that is "bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets."

Francis' 84-page Apostolic Exhortation, titled "The Joy of the Gospel," gathers together a number of the causes he has championed in speeches and homilies since being elected in March, including the need for "a conversion of the papacy," to reverse the "excessive centralization."

Read more:
Pope Francis calls for decentralized Catholic Church in manifesto


I cannot help but admire the more progressive and more open-minded statements which Francis has made on a number of subjects.  The unbridled free market really is unjust and unethical.  Capitalism really is appalling.  The centralized polity of the Roman Catholic Church really has usually produced undesirable results.  The Church really has been too hung up on condemnation and really has been too inflexible on a number of issues.



However, considerable room for improvement will still exist, even if he successfully gets the Church to improve in the small ways he seems to desire.


See also:
Pope Francis Denounces ‘Idolatry of Money’ And ‘Tyranny’ of Capitalism


Related:
Pope Francis's Theory of Economics

Lessons in leadership from Pope Francis

Jim Hightower: "Black Friday" is spoiling Thanksgiving

From Jim Hightower's Commentaries:

Here comes Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, and Christmas! It's a month-long season of friends and family, spiritual reflection, and time to decompress from our usual helter-skelter lives, right?

Good lord, shout the corporate bosses, are you nuts? Do you think America is some kind of Norman Rockwell fantasyland? This is the Season of Mass Consumerism, Bucko, so lift your tail-end out of that La-Z-Boy and hit the malls – pronto! And if you happen to have a job in a chain store, don't even think about taking a holiday, or you won't have a job the next day. Let us now praise the one God we all serve: Mammon!

Read more:
"Black Friday" is spoiling Thanksgiving

Some Walmart Employees Can Barely Afford to Eat?

From MSN News:

The company says it's "proof employees care about each other." It's also proof that some Walmart employees can barely afford to eat.

Read more:
This Walmart is running a food drive for its workers

Related/Update:
Walmart's idea of Thanksgiving charity