Communist My Ass

Mr Jefferson said some things that get clearer and wiser the more I revisit them.

"Every generation needs a new revolution."

-and-

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of tyrants and patriots."

We hear a lot about how China is this big and powerful and scary thing.  We also hear lots of criticism of China's "Communist System" and how these dirty commies may be doin' great capitalistic things, but they're still just a buncha dirty commies blah blah blah - well, they aren't really.  At least not completely.  Not when there's a story about the grandson of one of China's old guard Party People, who's been hangin' like a rock star as he matriculates at Harvard, cuz suddenly it's kinda hard for me not to see it as another example of the amazing resilience of the very human propensity towards aristocracy.

From NYT:

One Chinese friend of mine was a judge in corruption cases, and made a good living taking bribes from defendants. Another friend, the son of a Politburo member, was paid several hundred thousand dollars a year simply to lend his name to a real estate company.

Officials have a maddening sense of entitlement. When I lived in China, my wife and I once attended a party with many middle-age officials (including one now in the Politburo) and a crowd of trophy female secretaries. One cabinet minister mistook my wife, who is Chinese-American, for a secretary and crassly made moves on her. Let’s just say that my wife ruined his evening.

The scale of corruption has become mind-boggling. Zhang Shuguang, a railways official,managed to steal $2.8 billion and move it overseas, the state news media have reported. A Chinese central bank report suggested that 18,000 corrupt officials had fled China and taken $120 billion with them. The average take was almost $7 million per person.

The backdrop is the staggering wealth enjoyed by the elite. More than 300 million Chinese lack access to safe water, but one tycoon’s home I visited had an indoor basketball court, a movie theater and a pond with rare fish worth up to tens of thousands of dollars each.

In Chinese, the words for power (“quan”) and money (“qian”) sound alike, and in China one often translates into another.

The Old Made New Again

Reading thru this today from The ArchDruid, via The Agonist:
(while trying to find a new way of saying "forget your history and you'll have to relive it")

The first of these shifts was the Great Depression or, more precisely, the feckless response of both American mainstream political parties to the economic collapse that followed the 1929 stock market crash. In the crucial first years after the crash, Democrats and Republicans alike embraced exactly the same policies they are embracing in today’s economic troubles, with exactly the same lack of success, and showed exactly the same unwillingness to abandon failed policies in the face of economic disaster. Then as now, the federal government launched a program to bail out big banks and corporations—it was called the Reconstruction Finance Corporation in those days—and pumped dizzying amounts of money into the upper end of the economy in the belief, real or feigned, that the money would work its way down the pyramid, which of course it didn’t do. Then as now, politicians used the shibboleth of a balanced budget to demand austerity for everybody but the rich, and cut exactly those programs which could have helped families caught by hard times. Then as now, things got worse while the media insisted that they were getting better, and the mounting evidence that policies weren’t working was treated as proof that the same policies had to be pursued even more forcefully.

And then I had to go reread the Kipling piece:

The White Man's Burden --Rudyard Kipling, 1899

Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.

Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden--
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper--
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.

Take up the White Man's burden--
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
"Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"

Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.

Take up the White Man's burden--
Have done with childish days--
The lightly proferred laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!

Yeesh

You tho't it just couldn't get any worse than Rebecca Black - think again.

Dear Mrs Romney

Dear Mrs. Romney,

Perhaps you can advise me. Since you have raised 5 boys, I'm sure you'll understand. One of the kids is sick again and I have no sick days left at work. In fact, my boss gave me a bad performance review and no raise this year because he said I obviously don't care that much about my job since I've missed so many days and if I miss anymore he may have to replace me. Whenever my child gets sick, my boss reminds me how easily I can be replaced.

We don't have health insurance at my job, so, if my boy gets worse, I'll probably be at the ER most of the night tonight. Not for the first time, but that's ok, he'll get care. It's tomorrow I'm worried about.

As you know, regular day care will not take a sick child, so if I want to work when my child is sick, I have to pay for sick child day care, which costs as much as I make, and, as I'm sure you know from personal experience, I still have to pay my regular day care, whether my child is there or out sick, so I actually lose money in order to work while he's sick. It's that or take a chance on losing my job entirely.

Should I take my child to the day care for sick kids and lose money and not have enough for my bills this month, so I can keep my job, or should I stay home with my sick child and hope that I don't get fired?
What did you do when this happened to you?

Sincerely, Just Another Mom

Us vs Them

So here's a potentially interesting thingie - al Jazeera reports a big scary story about all the mutant seafood coming from the post-BP Gulf, complete with eyeless shrimp and clawless crabs; while US Federal agencies seem a bit reluctant to tell us any bad news about what we're eating.  And I'm wondering: does a good American patriot believe the terroristy news agency or does he look to the Gubmint for reassurance?

(hat tip = Wonkette)

Baldwin vs Buckley

The great debate of its time (mid 60s I think).

The American dream at the expense of black people
- or -
The American dream in spite of the injustices shown black people



Two things always to remember:
1) When a great injustice has been done, it becomes nearly impossible for either side to trust the other.  On some level, the victim will always expect the perpetrator to repeat the crime, and the perpetrator will always expect retribution from the victim.

2) The victim requires the witness to (voluntarily) carry part of the burden of his victimhood by making a morality judgement.  The perpetrator only wants the witness to be morally neutral - to see, hear and speak no evil.

At about 48:00 Buckley makes the classic 2-part conservative argument that (1) yes, it's true "the black problem" is bad, but hey, we're workin' on it, and (2) we're working on it harder than anywhere else in the world (this is where nowadays somebody starts the USA USA chant).  The problem here is that conservatives always conveniently ignore the simple fact that the USA has foundational documents that are very explicit in calling for (and requiring) equality for all people, and that those same documents REQUIRE the government to work towards ensuring that equality on behalf of everybody in this country.  Plus, this conservative argument seems always to ignore the simple fact that guys like Baldwin are never asking for anything more than for the USA to live up to its own declarations and fundamental tenets.

Straight From The Horse's Mouth

James Fallows is no Libtard.

One thing this means is that we could reduce our Oil Consumption dramatically, which means we could reduce political tensions in the world dramatically.

The 8.2 million barrels of oil (per day) we're currently burning as gasoline in light duty autos becomes 2.9 million.  Please don't try to tell me we wouldn't benefit greatly from that kind of change in the status quo.

And please don't try to tell me there's nobody working overtime to keep that kind of change from happening.

Today's Pix

How Stupid Are We?

The Buffett Rule is stuck in the US Senate because Repubs won't let it get unstuck.  This is a measure that CNN's polling tells us is supported by 72% of us.  But because we have a near-totally dysfunctional US Senate, nothing gets done without a 60 vote majority.

But the real kicker is that most of the Press Poodles look at a vote tally of 51 AYEs vs 45 NAYs, and report to us that "the measure failed".

USA Today:

The 51-45 defeat of the "Buffett rule," named after billionaire investor Warren Buffett, fell mostly along party lines.

Huffington Post:

Democrats' attempt to pass a Buffett Rule tax on the super wealthy failed Monday in the Senate, as Republicans blocked the measure in a sharply partisan debate.

Reuters (headline):

Buffett rule fails Senate vote in tax fight

New York Daily News:

The Senate rejected the "Buffett Rule," which would've raised the tax rates for millionaires, after Republicans accused President Barack Obama of pitting Americans against each other.

I hope it's just lazy, but it seems to be bordering on dishonest.

NYT has a breakdown that's feels a lot more straightforward to me.

Dots

You just gotta figure there's a blogger or some wingnut somewhere who's feverishly working on how to put the Secret Service partiers together with something that makes the whole thing look even worse.  And here it is.  You're welcome.