Pretending To Be Clean

When the USSR crapped out in the late 80s - early 90s, it became the wild west. For years, Russia was where Milton Friedman's gang of merry economic shock therapy practitioners got to apply his totally fucked up "Unfettered Free Market Capitalism" theories.

Poppy Bush sent Bob Strauss to help the transition, thinking a little "kinder gentler" window dressing would help keep things calm, but the scramble was on, and there would be almost literally nothing left on the carcass when the Soviet State Assets had been auctioned off to - or flat-out stolen by - the oligarch buzzards.

Enter Bill Browder, who's not exactly one of the bad guys, but definitely someone who was pretty much blinded to the shitty behavior going on all around him, as he concentrated on taking advantage of the new-found riches made available by privatizing the Russian government.

If you're OK with what Putin's up to, you're gonna fuckin' love the shit we can look forward to if we allow the GOP to continue with their American Plutocracy Project.

Border Crisis

Gee, I wonder if our fucked up gun culture - in concert with our fucked up profit-no-matter-what culture - together with our fucked up covert policy of ignoring (or maybe aggravating) the problems of Communities of Color - could have something to do with making all those brown people so afraid to stay in their homes that they'll risk everything trying to get into the US.

Funny how there's never a crisis at our northern border - must be there's somethin' wrong with them brown people.

I've never seen it fail. Whenever "conservatives" make a big ugly noise about anything, if you look a little bit past the bluster, it's almost a dead solid cinch you'll find some racist shit tucked up in there somewhere.

Harvard Gazette: (Feb 2022)

Every year, half a million weapons enter Mexico illegally from the U.S., and many of them are military-style weapons that end up in the hands of drug cartels and other violent criminals, said Alejandro Celorio Alcántara, legal adviser of the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

“In addition to prosecuting criminals and seizing guns that are illegally in Mexico, we decided to go to the source of the problem. Like if this were a toxic river, in addition to cleaning the river, we need to go to the source and stop the toxic waste from being dumped at the river,” said Celorio Alcántara, referring to the landmark lawsuit the Mexican government filed against 10 U.S. gun manufacturers in U.S. federal court last summer. It is the first time that a foreign government has sued American gunmakers.

Celorio Alcántara spoke on Thursday at the online panel “Exporting Mayhem: Suing Gun Manufacturers in the U.S. to Stop Violence in Mexico” about the public health crises created by gun violence on both sides of the border and the legal arguments behind the action. The panel was sponsored by the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School.

Mexican officials have said that a significant part of the epidemic of violence and crime that has plagued their nation in recent decades is driven by the illicit traffic of weapons from the U.S. Mexico has restrictive firearms laws, with one gun store in the entire nation and only about 50 permits issued per year. Between 70 to 90 percent of guns recovered at crime scenes in Mexico can be traced back to the U.S. Drug cartels, in particular, buy those weapons in the U.S., mostly in Texas or Arizona, and smuggle them across the border.

The lawsuit accuses gunmakers of marketing strategies and business practices to “design, market, distribute, and sell guns in ways they know routinely arm the drug cartels in Mexico.”

Alicia Ely Yamin, Senior Fellow in Global Health and Rights at the Petrie-Flom Center, drew a parallel between the lawsuit by the Mexican government and the settlement between Remington and the families of nine people killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. In total the gunman, armed with an AR-15-style rifle, took the lives of 20 children and six adults in the attack.

Both lawsuits focus on the firms’ marketing strategies that target individuals who pose a higher threat of gun violence, said Yamin. The settlement with Remington announced Feb. 15 awards the families $73 million and, more importantly, requires the gun manufacturer to release internal company documents about their marketing strategies.

“We decided to go to the source of the problem. Like if this were a toxic river, in addition to cleaning the river, we need to go to the source and stop the toxic waste from being dumped at the river.”

-- Alejandro Celorio Alcántara, legal adviser, Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Mexico’s legal action is novel and innovative in its efforts to pierce the veil of impunity that has been constructed in the U.S. to protect gun manufacturers, said Yamin. Since 2005, when President George W. Bush signed into law the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, or PLCAA, gun makers have enjoyed immunity from lawsuits because it shields them from liability when their arms are used in deadly crimes.

For Heidi Li Feldman, professor of law and co-director of the joint degree in law and philosophy at Georgetown University, the Mexican lawsuit is legally complex, but if it’s successful it could open possibilities for further lawsuits against U.S. gun manufacturers.

“At the heart of the Mexican complaint is the intuition that if you are feeding your guns into a criminal market and marketing your products to construct a criminal market, that is both intuitively and fundamentally unscrupulous,” said Feldman. “It may be good for your profits, but it’s clearly contrary to the social welfare. And that’s the angle that I think will ground one of the most promising arguments that the Mexican government is going to bring.”

Gun violence is a public health crisis, said David Hemenway, professor of health policy, and director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. While lawsuits can help a great deal, Hemenway said, they’re just one part of a multifaceted public health approach.

Celorio Alcántara said the lawsuit is an effort to hold gun manufacturers accountable for their business practices and marketing strategies that are fueling gun violence in his country.

“This is not a lawsuit against the Second Amendment,” said Celorio Alcántara. “The companies we’re suing know their products end up in Mexico. They know their products are hurting people in Mexico, and they do nothing to change their business practices. We want to hold them accountable. We need our day in court.”

The panel was sponsored by the Global Health and Rights Project, a collaboration between the Petrie-Flom Center and the Global Health Education and Learning Incubator at Harvard University, and the Mexico program at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies.

Understand Something

It wasn't a buncha workin' slobs who got together to lobby congress in order to insert 60,000 pages of shelters, loopholes, write-downs and exceptions into the IRS Tax Code.

Rich people hold an out-sized share of power over government, and they use their wealth very effectively to feed us a steady stream of propaganda, convincing us that they're no different from the rest of us, that they're just being smart, and that everything they do comes from a place in their hearts that's the very essence of purity, love, and charity.

It's bullshit and we know it, but we walk around acting like it's god's own truth - we eat it up like it's one of Grandma's fresh-baked mulberry pies with homemade ice cream.

If any of it were true, then guys like Branson and Bezos and Musk wouldn't be in a race to space - they'd be trying to end the cycle of poverty ignorance and crime.

"Never be deceived that the rich will let you

vote away their wealth."

-- Lucy Parsons

Happy Now?

Fortune Magazine: 

The United States is the unhappiest it’s ever been.

The 2019 World Happiness Report says that Finland remains the happiest country on Earth for the second year in the row, while the U.S. drops to No. 19, its worst ranking ever (it was No. 18 in 2018 and No. 14 in 2017).

- and -

Researchers with the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network have been creating the annual happiness report since 2012, based on global data from Gallup. Countries’ happiness scores are determined by six main variables on a three-year average:
GDP per capita

• Healthy life expectancy at birth
• Social support from friends and family
• Freedom to make life choices
• Generosity in the form of donations to charity
• Perceptions of government corruption

1. Finland (7.769)
2. Denmark (7.600)
3. Norway (7.554)
4. Iceland (7.494)
5. Netherlands (7.488)
6. Switzerland (7.480)
7. Sweden (7.343)
8. New Zealand (7.307)
9. Canada (7.278)
10. Austria (7.246)
11. Australia (7.228)
12. Costa Rica (7.167)
13. Israel (7.139)
14. Luxembourg (7.090)
15. United Kingdom (7.054)
16. Ireland (7.021)
17. Germany (6.985)
18. Belgium (6.923)
19. United States (6.892)
20. Czech Republic (6.852)

"Conservatives" and the Plutocrats in Washington are always yelling about how miserable it is to live under the horribleness of "socialism", but the countries they love to shit on are right there at the top of the list of Happiest Places To Live, while we're losing ground.

And well down the list is the place those guys apparently want us to emulate - Russia at #68.

Today's Assignment

Remember your history.

Naomi Klein - Shock Doctrine

Sssssss

That loud hissing sound we hear is either the air going out of the Daddy State balloon - finally - or it's the growing problem of snakes in the snake pit, as they escalate their attacks on each other.

And now that I stop and think about it for moment, those two things always go together.

Ronnie Reagan would not approve on either count.

WaPo:

Republican senators clashed with one another and confronted Vice President Pence inside a private luncheon on Thursday, as anger hit a boiling point over the longest government shutdown in history.

“This is your fault,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) told Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) at one point, according to two Republicans who attended the lunch and witnessed the exchange.

“Are you suggesting I’m enjoying this?” McConnell snapped back, according to the people who attended the lunch.

Johnson spokesman Ben Voelkel confirmed the confrontation. He said Johnson was expressing frustration with the day’s proceedings — votes on dueling plans to reopen the government, both of which failed to advance.

The people who attended the lunch spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a closed-door session. Aides to McConnell, citing regular policy on GOP lunches, declined to comment on the gathering.

- and -

The outbursts highlighted the toll the shutdown has taken on Republican lawmakers, who are dealing with growing concerns from constituents and blame from Democrats, all while facing pressure from conservatives to stand with Trump in his demand for money to build a wall on the border with Mexico.

- and -

“Nobody was blaming the president,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), speaking about the lunch to reporters afterward. “But there was a lot of frustration expressed about the situation we find ourselves in.”

Repubs are staring their political doom in the face and they can't bring themselves to admit that they - along with the incredibly shitty hurtful policies they've been pimping - comprise their main problem.

They can't figure out how to unhitch themselves from a very unpopular president without going against a constituency they believe is vital to their staying in power. But if they continue pandering to a shrinking group of zealous gullible rubes, they're on their way out anyway.

Most of us can see that 45* has not remade the GOP in his image so much as he is a near-perfect reflection of what the GOP has been evolving into for 30 or 40 years. Congress Critters are finally beginning to acknowledge that, as it becomes clearer to more and more people just how venal and cynically ambitious these clowns are.

And guys like Wilbur Ross and Larry Kudlow and Kevin Hassett (et al) aren't helping.

BTW, that stoopid idea about hostages borrowing money to "tide them over"?  C'mon - you're going to fuck with these people - threatening their livelihoods and their credit ratings and their plans for the future - and then you're going to charge them interest when you're basically loaning them their own fucking money?

Seriously - what the fuck is wrong with you assholes that you'd be looking to profit from this mess?

Friday's Podcast

Talking about how The Overton Window has shifted - the dialogue regarding Healthcare is now focused on how we go about delivering on everybody's right to have affordable access to quality healthcare.  Adjust your rhetoric accordingly.

Episode 396 - Trusting in the process, but not the Republicans.

The Professional Left

(Shop their Amazon link)

Welcome To Pottersville

It's Russia TV, but the truth is what the truth is.

Know Your Rights: Medical, Dental and Mental Health Care (2012 resource): Prison officials are obligated under the Eighth Amendment to provide prisoners with adequate medical care. This principle applies regardless of whether the medical care is provided by governmental employees or by private medical staff under contract with the government.

Know Your Rights: Publications Sent by Mail (2012 Resource): Restrictions on prisoners’ access to publications cannot be arbitrary; they must be “reasonably related to legitimate penological interests.” That said, in practice, courts often will accept the judgment of prison authorities in deciding whether censoring a publication is reasonable.

Know Your Rights: Legal Rights of Disabled Prisoners (2012 Resource): Statutes exist under both the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to protect the rights of prisoners with disabilities.

LA County Jails: The ACLU has served as a court-appointed monitor of the L.A. Country jails since 1985. During this time, the ACLU and the ACLU of Southern California have documented overcrowding, unsanitary conditions and extreme abuse of inmates at the hands of deputies. The ACLU is working to expose and put an end to the unconstitutional conditions and ongoing climate of violence the nation’s largest jail system.

Stop Solitary - The Dangerous Overuse of Solitary Confinement in the United States: Over the last two decades corrections systems have increasingly relied on solitary confinement as a prison management tool – even building entire institutions called “supermax prisons” where prisoners are held in conditions of extreme isolation, sometimes for years or decades. But solitary confinement jeopardizes our public safety, is fundamentally inhumane and wastes taxpayer dollars. We must insist on humane and more cost-effective methods of punishment and prison management.

That's Odd

From Yahoo News via Democratic Underground:

Beginning in January of this year, 13 states individually increased their own minimum wages, creating a sort of natural experiment in which the remaining states could serve as a control group. All that was left was for someone to do the math, and the Center for Economic and Policy Research, building on research conducted earlier in the year by Goldman Sachs, delivered that in a report last week.

Of the 13 states that raised their minimum wages, all but one saw job growth in the first five months of 2014. To be sure, that’s a small achievement in an environment where the national economy is adding something on the order of 250,000 jobs per month.

The really interesting finding is that the states that raised the minimum wage saw job growth that was, on average, higher than states that did not. The 37 states that did not raise the minimum wage at the beginning of this year saw employment increase by .68 percent. Those that did raise the wage saw employment increase by .99 percent.

So those hippie-dippie mush-brained libruls were right - again?  And what about all the death and destruction foretold by all those "grownups" on the other side? - the ones who were so absolutely certain that raising the Minimum Wage even a tiny bit threatened the natural order of the universe, and would surely call down the wrath of a vengeful Mammon to lay waste the land and curse all humankind forever, and blah blah fucking blah.

Is it at all weird that none of this has popped up on MSNBC's Morning Blow or on DumFux Business Channel?  Or is it just that I've missed too many of their riveting, insightful and mission-critical segments lately?

Dear Rush

So if them wimmins could just not "do the one thing that makes birth control necessary..." - funny how guys like Limbaugh can't quite bring themselves to talk about sex in any way that's not coded and secretive and laced with the adolescent snickering that reinforces the stilted manipulating notion that sex is dirty, and that a total slut is the only kind of woman who'd actually want to have sex - especially with an emotionally crippled bucket of pus like Rush Limbaugh.

But anyway, it does kinda pop into my brain that given the facts emerging now about sexual assault being lots more of a frequent and widespread problem, maybe birth control needs to be considered just another tool in the Self Defense Kit for every woman - right along with the whistle and the mace and the pocket .38, which of course, can be yours now for the low low price of $289.99 -  available online!

It's just a pure wonderment the NRA hasn't hired me on as a marketing consultant.  I got truly great ideas.

The KrugMan Speaks

Paul Krugman does a great job explaining the negative effects of the little temper tantrum the Repubs have been throwing for the last 5 years.  And he adds "Expansionary Austerity" to the list of oxymorons - knocking off "Conservative Values" for the top spot.

We should also acknowledge the power of bad ideas. Back in 2011, triumphant Republicans eagerly adopted the concept, already popular in Europe, of “expansionary austerity” — the notion that cutting spending would actually boost the economy by increasing confidence. Experience since then has thoroughly refuted this concept: Across the advanced world, big spending cuts have been associated with deeper slumps. In fact, the International Monetary Fund eventually issued what amounted to a mea culpa, admitting that it greatly underestimated the harm that spending cuts inflict. As you may have noticed, however, today’s Republicans aren’t big on revising their views in the face of contrary evidence.

A Question

If it's wrong to steal the wealth from rich people in order to make poor people less poor, then it's just as wrong to steal the labor from poor people in order to make rich people richer.

Having believed that first part while purposefully ignoring the second part is what haunts me about my own career history, and what leads me to believe that the flirtation with economic justice we've indulged in since the 1930s is all but over.  We're sliding back into the old ways of doing things and so we need to call our system by it's more suitable name: Kleptonomics.

I've had a bad feeling when thinking about the downward pressure on real wages and earnings here in the US over the last few decades.  It's almost as if somebody wants us to feel guilty about our success in order to make us more willing to do more and to accept less in return for it; while workers in other countries are portrayed as making "great strides" and how they're humble and so they're grateful for whatever crumbs the noble job-creators are willing to let fall from their tables; and so "why can't you spoiled rotten Americans just take whatever we give you and shut up about it?"

While we're being distracted by game shows and disaster porn and attention whores, the real meanings and merits of Socialism and Capitalism are being flipped and perverted until we have no idea what any of it means at all.

In confusion there is opportunity - somebody benefits while the credit and the culpability are shifted to those who least deserve them.

It all sounds way too conspiracy-theory-ish, but y'know, I may be paranoid but that don't mean nobody's out to get me.

Just As I Tho't

Gosh - y'mean anything that gets to be too big and too powerful always ends up being kinda bad for most of us?

And, if we don't constantly revisit and re-examine and re-interpret history we run a much greater risk of being cynically manipulated, if not flat-out hornswoggled?



Here's a question:  "Conservatives" are always yammerin' about what a bad thing it is when Government gets too big - and one of the main arguments is that "centralized power is never a good thing" - but where are they when we know with near-absolute certainty that Big Banks (just to take one good example) are ridiculously inefficient, and that the inefficiency in our financial system is a major drag on the US economy?  Where the fuck are all those anti-centralized-planning yahoos when there's really something to worry about?

A Favorite Trick

From Addicting Info:

While the right-wing blamed the collapse on favoritism, and that the company was doomed from the start, checking on the history of the commodities market reveals another story. In 2006, when Solyndra applied for its loan, the cost of materials for the various types of solar panels was rather stable. What happened next, however, is what caused the whole system to collapse.

Guys with lots of money (and therefore lots to gain or lose depending on how things go) are always looking for ways to game the system.  Nobody doesn't know that.  If you think otherwise, please - having even a shred of decency or regard for humanity left in your being - avoid the use of tools and don't drive.  Stay inside at your computer until you learn enough not to be dangerous to the people around you.

These guys make big contributions to (ie: investments in) Congress Critters, and one of the perks they're paying for is access to inside information regarding markets and opportunities - as well as having a hand in shaping the policies that have huge effects on those markets and opportunities.

BTW - Free Market Competition?  Good for thee but not me, bumpkin.

So, you can stall the movement towards renewable energy and you can score points for the Red Team by making Obama look bad, and you can rake in a big pile of dough doin' it.

There is no soul and no honor in any of this.

Without Apology - Part 2

(con'd from Without Apology - below)

If I argue "when healthcare coverage is outlawed, only outlaws will have healthcare coverage", I suspect "conservatives" to scoff and tell me I'm stupid to think they're trying to "outlaw" healthcare coverage.

But they're wrong.  Being against HealthCare Reform and against ObamaCare (and and and) almost always goes with a package that includes being in favor of Free Market Solutions. These guys will always spout the standard suite of platitudes:

• the market will always find a fair balance on its own
• the market brings innovation to satisfy all needs of every market segment
• the competition of the market will force prices down so everybody can get it on the benefits
• everything is good as long as government stays out of it completely

etc.

But outlawing coverage is (effectively) exactly what happens.  In a system of completely unfettered capitalism, the Market is the law, and your paycheck is Law Enforcement.

In that system, what's the difference between being unable to buy it and being forbidden by law to possess it?