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FOCUS: Scott Walker: The Assassination of Wisconsin Democracy |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=11104"><span class="small">Charles Pierce, Esquire</span></a>
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Wednesday, 15 July 2015 11:08 |
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Pierce writes: "On May 16, 2012, I wrote this about Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage their midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin. At the time, Walker was facing a recall election after a year in which 100,000 people regularly camped on his front lawn."
Scott Walker. (photo: Getty)
Scott Walker: The Assassination of Wisconsin Democracy
By Charles Pierce, Esquire
15 July 15
In which coward Scott Walker makes his campaign for president official tonight.
 n May 16, 2012, I wrote this about Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage their midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin. At the time, Walker was facing a recall election after a year in which 100,000 people regularly camped on his front lawn.
I predict that he will have an "exploratory committee" set up in Iowa within the month, and he will suddenly discover a deeply held desire to spend a lot of time in places like Nashua and Manchester. Make no mistake: If he hangs on, he will be the biggest star in the Republican party. Chris Christie yells at all the right people, but has he ever faced down the existential threat that schoolteachers and snowplow drivers brought to bear on Walker? Marco Rubio? Has he withstood the wrath of organized janitors and professors of the humanities? If Walker wins in June, it wouldn't take very much effort at all for Fox News and for the vast universe of conservative sugar-daddies and their organization to decide that Walker should be the odds-on choice for 2016...It's not idle speculation to say that a lot more is riding on this than who gets to be governor of Wisconsin. This is the first real fight of the 2016 presidential election.
That all becomes official in Waukesha tonight, when Walker formally kicks off his campaign. I know some things have changed. Walker's bungled a bit on the stump, and the campaign flyer that passes for his 2015 budget has pissed off both parties in Wisconsin, a state about which he cares very little at this point. And it seems that the rise of Donald Trump -- and, to a lesser extent, the presence of Jeb (!) -- has cost Walker in the national polls and has shaved his lead a bit in Iowa, where he really must win. But he is still formidable enough, as the elite political press is already engaged in whitewashing his record for him. Here are two profiles -- an old one from the National Journal and one that appeared on Monday in Tiger Beat On The Potomac. You will note that in neither piece does the phrase "the Koch Brothers" appear, and you will also note that the penny-ante corruption that has surrounded every campaign Walker ever has run is soft-pedaled in NJ and absent completely from TBOTP. Hey, why should Chris Christie be the only Republican running for president while under criminal investigation? And Rick Perry's indicted, so he's still in the lead by that important metric. Step up your games, people.
(My favorite part of the National Journal profile is how the nearly unbroken strain of petty grifting that has sent so many of his aides to the sneezer is merely Walker's unfortunate habit of trusting the wrong people: In interviews with dozens of Wisconsin Republicans, none of whom would speak on the record when asked about Walker's weaknesses, one consistent criticism leveled at the governor is that he has not, over the years, surrounded himself with good people. That's just too, too adorable for words.)
Since his approval rating in Wisconsin is headed south, and since he can't point to having accomplished much there except winning three elections, and since the budget he just signed demolishes Wisconsin's public universities while bestowing more goodies on the extraction industries, Walker's entire campaign is going to consist of how he stood up bravely to schoolteachers and firemen and elderly grandparents back in 2011 and 2012. This man can stand up to ISIL because he was able to beat back hordes of angry guidance counselors. We are going to hear about alleged death threats -- and a lot about the one that allegedly threatened to gut his wife like a fish -- and about how he bravely went to work each day. (You should keep in mind that at least one of those stories that he peddles is pure moonshine.) And then there's that business about the "teacher of the year" that Walker uses to make the case that the wreckage he's made of public education in the state is really the construction of a palace. (Go Warriors!) Nothing the man says can be trusted. If you work for him, and you are instructed to do something ethically dubious, rest assured that you're on your own when it hits the fan. But Walker's invocation of his own courage as a campaign trope is perhaps the most fraudulent thing of all. Because, throughout his career, Scott Walker has been nothing if not a political coward.
During the protests back in 2011 and 2012, he hid in his office. A hundred thousand of his constituents were there on his lawn and he declined to hear what they had to say. He used a tunnel to get back and forth to the state capitol. He empowered the Capitol police to roust legitimate demonstrators from a building that had a proud history of open protest and open political activism. He lit the capitol's Christmas tree in the early morning hours in a closed ceremony instead of opening the proceedings to the public. In January, a Wisconsin appeals court ruled that many of the tactics that were used against the demonstrators -- and, in particular, against the Solidarity Singers -- were unconstitutional. This was what Unintimidated Scott Walker hid behind while he was dismantling progressive democracy in the state where so much of it was born and selling the state off wholesale to whoever wanted to buy a chunk. And, last week, when it was discovered that there had been slipped into the budget an item that would have gutted the state's open-records law, one of the last remaining elements of progressive government in Wisconsin that Walker hasn't shredded, the state exploded in bipartisan outrage. True to form, Walker and his people tried to fob the responsibility off on the Republicans in the legislature until Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald blew the whistle on who really was to blame. Unintimidated! Leadership!
Walker has spent his time as governor cosseted by (until very recently) a docile legislative majority and insulated by millions and millions of dollars of out-of-state money. If he were any deeper in someone's pocket, he'd be covered in lint.
In 1897, in a small town called Mineral Point in Wisconsin, the governor of the state came to give a speech about the state's economy. His name was Robert LaFollette, Sr.
These corporations, not content with taking royal tribute daily from the private citizen, shift upon him the chief support of the government. The same disregard for the rights of others, and of all obligations of the state is shown in a determined resistance to bearing a just share of the burdens of taxation. Corporations exacting large sums from the people of this state in profits, upon business transacted within its limits, either wholly escape taxation, or pay insignificantly in comparison with the average citizen . . . Owning two thirds of the personal property of the country, evading payment of taxes wherever possible, the corporations throw almost the whole burden up on the land, upon the little homes, and the personal property of the farms. This is a most serious matter, especially in the pinching times the people have suffered for the last few years. . .
It is LaFollette's legacy that Walker has made his mission to dismantle root and branch on behalf of the modern plutocrats who have funded his remarkable rise in the country's politics because, if they can do it in Wisconsin, they can do it everywhere. It continues tonight, in comfortable Waukesha, where Scott Walker will announce that he is running for president. He has spent his entire political life punching down and leaving the people who do his dirty work twisting in the wind when they get caught. Christ, what a mess this can make of democracy.
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FOCUS: The World Rebukes Netanyahu |
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Wednesday, 15 July 2015 10:28 |
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Parry writes: "Led by President Obama, six world powers ignored Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's harangues against Iran and agreed to a plan for limiting - not bombing - Iran's nuclear program."
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (photo: Ahikam Seri/AP)
The World Rebukes Netanyahu
By Robert Parry, Consortium News
15 July 15
Led by President Obama, six world powers ignored Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s harangues against Iran and agreed to a plan for limiting – not bombing – Iran’s nuclear program. But Netanyahu wields more sway with Congress and the mainstream media, which parrot his complaints, writes Robert Parry.
 n a rare rebuke to his bullying, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu failed to stop the United States and five other world powers from reaching an agreement to constrain but not eliminate Iran’s nuclear program. Yet, Netanyahu still is dominating how the U.S. public and congressional debate is being framed, with Iran accused of regional “aggression” in four countries.
On Tuesday, a recurring theme on U.S. news broadcasts, such as Andrea Mitchell’s MSNBC program, was that any lifting of economic sanctions against Iran will give it more money to engage in trouble-making in the Middle East with references to four nations – Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen – a central theme in Netanyahu’s speech on March 3 to a joint session of the U.S. Congress.
To repeated standing ovations from U.S. senators and congressmen, Netanyahu declared: “In the Middle East, Iran now dominates four Arab capitals, Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut and Sanaa. And if Iran’s aggression is left unchecked, more will surely follow. So, at a time when many hope that Iran will join the community of nations, Iran is busy gobbling up the nations. We must all stand together to stop Iran’s march of conquest, subjugation and terror.”
Netanyahu’s reference to “Iran’s aggression,” which is now becoming a conventional-wisdom talking point in Official Washington, was curious since Iran has not invaded another country for centuries. In 1980, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq – at the urging of Saudi Arabia – invaded Iran. But Iran has not invaded any of the four countries that Netanyahu cited.
One of Netanyahu’s citations of Arab cities supposedly conquered by Iran was particularly strange: Baghdad, which is the capital of Iraq where the U.S. military invaded in 2003 to overthrow Saddam Hussein and his Sunni-dominated government, on Netanyahu’s recommendation. In other words, Iraq was conquered not by Iranian “aggression” but by U.S. aggression with the support of Israel.
After the Iraq invasion, President George W. Bush installed a Shiite-dominated government which then developed friendly ties to Iran’s Shiite government. So, whatever influence Iran has in Baghdad is the result of a U.S. invasion that Netanyahu personally encouraged.
More recently, Iran has helped the embattled Iraqi government in its struggle against the murderous Islamic State militants who seized large swaths of Iraqi territory last summer. Indeed, Iraqi officials have credited Iran with playing a crucial role in blunting the Islamic State, the terrorists whom President Barack Obama has identified as one of the top security threats facing the United States.
So, in the current Iraqi fight against the head-chopping Islamic State, Iran and the United States are on the same side. Yet, Netanyahu calls Iran’s help “aggression” – and American talking heads repeat that refrain.
Netanyahu also cited Damascus, where Iran has aided the Syrian government in its struggle against the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front. That means that Iran is assisting the internationally recognized government of Syria hold off two major terrorist organizations. By contrast, Israel and Saudi Arabia have provided direct and indirect help at least to Nusra. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Did Money Seal Israel-Saudi Alliance?”]
The Israeli prime minister also mentioned Beirut, Lebanon, and Sanaa, Yemen, but those were rather bizarre references, too, since Lebanon is governed by a multi-ethnic arrangement that includes a number of religious and political factions. Hezbollah is one and it has close ties to Iran, but it is stretching the truth to say that Iran “dominates” Beirut or Lebanon.
Similarly, in Sanaa, the Houthis, a Shiite-related sect, have taken control of Yemen’s capital and have reportedly received some help from Iran, but the Houthis deny those reports and are clearly far from under Iranian control. The Houthis also have vowed to work with the Americans to carry on the fight against Yemen’s Al-Qaeda affiliate, which has benefitted from a brutal Saudi bombing campaign against Houthi targets, an act of real aggression that has killed hundreds of civilians and provoked a humanitarian crisis.
Indeed, Iran and these various Shiite-linked movements have been among the most effective in battling Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, while Israel’s Saudi friends have been repeatedly linked to funding and supporting these Sunni terrorist organizations.
So, there is little truth and much exaggeration to Netanyahu’s depiction of what is going on in the Middle East. Yet, the U.S. mainstream media mindlessly reprises Netanyahu’s falsehood about Iran “gobbling up” nations.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). You also can order Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.
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Hillary Clinton's Refusal to Reinstate Glass-Stegall |
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Wednesday, 15 July 2015 08:42 |
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Reich writes: "It's a mistake politically because people who believe Hillary Clinton is still too close to Wall Street will not be reassured by her position on Glass-Steagall. Many will recall that her husband led the way to repealing Glass Steagall in 1999 at the request of the big Wall Street banks."
Robert Reich. (photo: Getty Images)
Hillary Clinton's Refusal to Reinstate Glass-Stegall
By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog
15 July 15
 illary Clinton won’t propose reinstating a bank break-up law known as the Glass-Steagall Act – at least according to Alan Blinder, an economist who has been advising Clinton’s campaign. “You’re not going to see Glass-Steagall,” Blinder said after her economic speech Monday in which she failed to mention it. Blinder said he had spoken to Clinton directly about Glass-Steagall.
This is a big mistake.
It’s a mistake politically because people who believe Hillary Clinton is still too close to Wall Street will not be reassured by her position on Glass-Steagall. Many will recall that her husband led the way to repealing Glass Steagall in 1999 at the request of the big Wall Street banks.
It’s a big mistake economically because the repeal of Glass-Steagall led directly to the 2008 Wall Street crash, and without it we’re in danger of another one.
Some background: During the Roaring Twenties, so much money could be made by speculating on shares of stock that several big Wall Street banks began selling stock along side their traditional banking services – taking in deposits and making loans.
Some banks went further, lending to pools of speculators that used the money to pump up share prices. The banks sold the shares to their customers, only to have the share prices collapse when the speculators dumped them.
For the banks, it was an egregious but hugely profitable conflict of interest.
After the entire stock market crashed in 1929, ushering in the Great Depression, Washington needed to restore the public’s faith in the banking system. One step was for Congress to enact legislation insuring commercial deposits against bank losses.
Another was to prevent the kinds of conflicts of interest that resulted in such losses, and which had fueled the boom and subsequent bust. Under the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, banks couldn’t both gamble in the market and also take in deposits and make loans. They’d have to choose between the two.
“The idea is pretty simple behind this one,” Senator Elizabeth Warren said a few days ago, explaining her bill to resurrect Glass-Steagall. “If banks want to engage in high-risk trading — they can go for it, but they can’t get access to ensured deposits and put the taxpayers on the hook for that reason.”
For more than six decades after 1933, Glass-Steagall worked exactly as it was intended to. During that long interval few banks failed and no financial panic endangered the banking system.
But the big Wall Street banks weren’t content. They wanted bigger profits. They thought they could make far more money by gambling with commercial deposits. So they set out to whittle down Glass-Steagall.
Finally, in 1999, President Bill Clinton struck a deal with Republican Senator Phil Gramm to do exactly what Wall Street wanted, and repeal Glass-Steagall altogether.
What happened next? An almost exact replay of the Roaring Twenties. Once again, banks originated fraudulent loans and sold them to their customers in the form of securities. Once again, there was a huge conflict of interest that finally resulted in a banking crisis.
This time the banks were bailed out, but millions of Americans lost their savings, their jobs, even their homes.
A personal note. I worked for Bill Clinton as Secretary of Labor and I believe most of his economic policies were sound. But during those years I was in fairly continuous battle with some other of his advisers who seemed determined to do Wall Street’s bidding.
On Glass-Steagall, they clearly won.
To this day some Wall Street apologists argue Glass-Steagall wouldn’t have prevented the 2008 crisis because the real culprits were nonbanks like Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns.
Baloney. These nonbanks got their funding from the big banks in the form of lines of credit, mortgages, and repurchase agreements. If the big banks hadn’t provided them the money, the nonbanks wouldn’t have got into trouble.
And why were the banks able to give them easy credit on bad collateral? Because Glass-Steagall was gone.
Other apologists for the Street blame the crisis on unscrupulous mortgage brokers.
Surely mortgage brokers do share some of the responsibility. But here again, the big banks were accessories and enablers.
The mortgage brokers couldn’t have funded the mortgage loans if the banks hadn’t bought them. And the big banks couldn’t have bought them if Glass-Steagall were still in place.
I’ve also heard bank executives claim there’s no reason to resurrect Glass-Steagall because none of the big banks actually failed.
This is like arguing lifeguards are no longer necessary at beaches where no one has drowned. It ignores the fact that the big banks were bailed out. If the government hadn’t thrown them lifelines, many would have gone under.
Remember? Their balance sheets were full of junky paper, non-performing loans, and worthless derivatives. They were bailed out because they were too big to fail. And the reason for resurrecting Glass-Steagall is we don’t want to go through that ever again.
As George Santayana famously quipped, those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. In the roaring 2000’s, just as in the Roaring Twenties, America’s big banks used insured deposits to underwrite their gambling in private securities, and then dump the securities on their customers.
It ended badly.
This is precisely what the Glass-Steagall Act was designed to prevent – and did prevent for more than six decades.
Hillary Clinton, of all people, should remember.
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Iranians' View of the Nuclear Deal: Optimistic, With Significant Caveats |
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Wednesday, 15 July 2015 08:38 |
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Excerpt: "U.S. media coverage of the Iran deal is, as usual, overwhelmingly focused on American and Israeli voices, with the hard-liner fanatics in each country issuing apocalyptic decrees, insisting that the deal is far too lenient on Iran and provides it with far too many benefits."
Iranians and the nuclear deal. (photo: Carlos Barria/Pool/AP)
Iranians' View of the Nuclear Deal: Optimistic, With Significant Caveats
By Glenn Greenwald and Murtaza Hussein, The Intercept
15 July 15
 .S. media coverage of the Iran deal is, as usual, overwhelmingly focused on American and Israeli voices, with the hard-liner fanatics in each country issuing apocalyptic decrees, insisting that the deal is far too lenient on Iran and provides it with far too many benefits. Though largely excluded from U.S. media discussions, there is also substantial debate among Iranians about the virtues of the deal, with most viewing it positively due to the economic benefits it is expected to provide, but with many holding the view that it unfairly impinges on Iranian sovereignty in exchange for very few legitimate concessions.
The optimistic Iranian view is grounded in the expectation that the deal will usher in a normalization of relations between Iran and the West, lifting both the sanctions regime and the threat of war. That view was expressed by the ringing endorsement from National Iranian American Council President Trita Parsi, who proclaimed that “diplomacy has triumphed and war is off the table. The United States and Iran have turned the tide on decades of enmity and instead have secured a nuclear deal that promises a better and brighter future.” He added that “we now know that the U.S. and Iran need not remain hostile enemies, but can interact with each other to achieve shared interests.”
But much Iranian public opinion, while positive, is more nuanced and guarded. Hooshang Amirahmadi, an Iranian-American professor of international relations at Rutgers University (who was one of the individuals targeted for NSA spying), has devoted most of his career to advocating for a normalization of U.S./Iran relations and the lifting of the sanctions regime. To the extent this deal accomplishes that, he said today in an interview with The Intercept, he supports it, though if it ends up confined only to nuclear issues, “then it will be very bad for both countries.” Amirahmadi added that the mood in Tehran is, in general, “very happy.” Ordinary Iranians, he said, “obviously like what has happened” primarily because “they expect money to arrive, which will help the economy and create jobs.”
But he noted several critical caveats. To begin with, expectations among ordinary Iranians are very high: they expect substantial economic improvement, and if that fails to materialize, Amirahmadi sees a likelihood of serious political instability, which “could go in a terrible direction for Iran.” He pointed out that for many years, the Iranian government has, with some good reason, blamed the U.S., Europe and their sanctions regime for the economic suffering of Iranians. “They no longer have that pretext, which means they have to deliver,” he said. He argued that the 1979 revolution was driven primarily by the Shah’s devotion to distributing wealth to a tiny elite at the expense of most Iranians, and that any repeat of that with this new flow of money would exacerbate wealth inequality even further and risk serious domestic unrest.
A similar point was made by Alireza Haghighi, a political science PhD from Tehran University and professor at the University of Toronto. He told The Intercept that the prime driver of the deal from the Iranian side was economic mismanagement during the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which weakened the Iranian economy to the point where it could no longer sustain sanctions. “Had it not been for that,” he said, “sanctions could have been managed and no deal would have been necessary.”
As for outright Iranian opposition to the deal, Professor Amirahmadi said that it was largely confined to “conservatives,” by which he means “fundamental Islamists who are now the only real hard-core nationalists in the country.” But he also said that deal opponents “have some valid points.” For one, Iran (unlike Israel) is a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and as such has the absolute right to enrich uranium at any levels; “there’d be no reason to join the NPT except to get that right, so the fact that this deal ‘lets’ Iran do what they already had the right to do, at lesser levels, is not really a ground for celebration,” he said. He also pointed out that “the money that will flow to Iran under this deal is not a gift: this is Iran’s money that has been frozen and otherwise blocked.” As a result, he said, the hard-liners have a valid objection to viewing these provisions as real concessions.
Leading Iranian government critics seem to view the deal quite favorably. Hadi Ghaemi of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran is a harsh government critic, but told The Intercept this morning that the deal is likely to alleviate economic suffering among ordinary Iranians.
While he foresees positive outcomes for the country, he said that in the immediate aftermath, “there may be short-term backlash in the form of domestic repression or the flaring of minor conflicts with the U.S, because the state has built its entire identity and official ideology on the idea of countering American imperialism.” Nonetheless, “the center of gravity is moving towards being pragmatic and engaging once again — the anti-imperialism and confrontational attitude has lost its pull on the people, even those who took part in the revolutions, and has lost all content over the years.” He added that “Iran is never going to become a real ally or friend of the U.S, but inside the country people say that the same way that China has both economic cooperation and strategic and political rivalry with America, this is what we should also strive for.”
There are some noble exceptions, but the general exclusion of Iranian voices from establishment U.S. media coverage, whether by intent or otherwise, has had a very distortive effect on how Iran is perceived, allowing them to be depicted as primitive, irrational, apocalyptic religious fanatics. While that caricature arguably applies to the U.S.’s closest allies in the regime, and to some of the most extremist Iranian (and Israeli and American) fringes, it is wildly inapplicable to Iran as a whole.
The youth literacy rate in Iran is 98.7 percent, as compared to 82.4 percent in Iraq, 70.8 percent in Pakistan, and 89.3 percent in Egypt. Enrollment in tertiary education is only 2% points below that of Germany, U.K., and France. Iran’s Human Development Index is far ahead of most of its neighbors. As Elahe Izadi explained last year in the Washington Post, “being a highly educated Iranian woman is actually quite normal. Women outnumber men in Iranian universities, a trend that started in 2001.” Similarly, Reza Aslan has pointed out that “Iran currently has the highest number of U.S. college alums serving in any foreign government cabinet in the world.” The country’s vice president, Masoumeh Ebtekar, is a woman.
But the silencing of Iranian voices has meant that absurd, ignorant demonizing caricatures like this are the norm:
American journalists, who pride themselves on “neutrality” and “balance,” should spend some time considering how much of a platform they give to Israelis and how little they give to Iranians. Whatever one’s views, hearing from Iranians themselves about their own country — rather than relying on Israeli and American critics — is a prerequisite to journalistic fairness.
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y easing tensions with Cuba and now Iran, President Obama is “recklessly squandering America’s precious supply of enemies,” the leader of a conservative think tank said on Tuesday.
