Monday, July 31, 2017

Close All US Military Bases On Foreign Soil

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JULY 31, 2017
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The Coalition Against Foreign Military Bases is a new campaign focused on closing all US military bases abroad. This campaign strikes at the foundation of US empire, confronting its militarism, corporatism and imperialism. We urge you to endorse this campaign.
On the occasion of its announcement, the coalition issued a unity statement, which describes its intent as “raising public awareness and organizing non-violent mass resistance against U.S. foreign military bases.” It further explains that US foreign military bases are “the principal instruments of imperial global domination and environmental damage through wars of aggression and occupation, and that the closure of U.S. foreign military bases is one of the first necessary steps toward a just, peaceful and sustainable world.”
While the US sought to be an imperial force beginning just after the US Civil War and then escalated those efforts at the turn of the 20th Century, it became the dominant empire globally after World War II. This was during the time of de-colonization, when many traditional empires were forced to let their colonies become independent nations. So, while the US is the largest empire in world history, it is not a traditional empire in which nations are described as colonies of the US empire. Nations remain independent, at least in name, while allowing US bases on their soil and serving as a client state of the United States. They are controlled through the economic power of the US, World Bank and International Monetary Fund. The US has used regime change tactics, including assassination and military force, to keep its empire intact.
Commentators have described the United States as an “empire of bases.” Chalmers Johnson wrote in 2004:
As distinct from other peoples, most Americans do not recognize — or do not want to recognize — that the United States dominates the world through its military power. Due to government secrecy, our citizens are often ignorant of the fact that our garrisons encircle the planet. This vast network of American bases on every continent except Antarctica actually constitutes a new form of empire — an empire of bases with its own geography not likely to be taught in any high school geography class. Without grasping the dimensions of this globe-girdling Baseworld, one can’t begin to understand the size and nature of our imperial aspirations or the degree to which a new kind of militarism is undermining our constitutional order.
Our military deploys well over half a million soldiers, spies, technicians, teachers, dependents, and civilian contractors in other nations. To dominate the oceans and seas of the world, we are creating some thirteen naval task forces built around aircraft carriers whose names sum up our martial heritage — Kitty Hawk, Constellation, Enterprise, John F. Kennedy, Nimitz, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Carl Vinson, Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, John C. Stennis, Harry S. Truman, and Ronald Reagan. We operate numerous secret bases outside our territory to monitor what the people of the world, including our own citizens, are saying, faxing, or e-mailing to one another.
We do not know the exact number of US military bases and outposts throughout the world. The Unity Statement says “the United States maintains the highest number of military bases outside its territory, estimated at almost 1000 (95% of all foreign military bases in the world). . . . In addition, the United States has 19 Naval air carriers (and 15 more planned), each as part of a Carrier Strike Group, composed of roughly 7,500 personnel, and a carrier air wing of 65 to 70 aircraft — each of which can be considered a floating military base.”
The annual Department of Defense (DoD) Base Structure Report says the DoD manages a massive “global real property portfolio that consists of nearly 562,000 facilities (buildings, structures, and linear structures), located on over 4,800 sites worldwide and covering over 24.9 million acres.” They value DoD property located in 42 nations at over $585 billion. It is difficult to tell from this report the number of bases and military outposts, which has led analysts like Tom Engelhardt to describe US empire as an “invisible” empire of bases. He points out the US military bases are rarely discussed in the media. It usually takes an incident, like US soldiers being attacked or a US aircraft being shot down, for them to get any mention in the media.
Many of the bases remain from previous wars, especially World War II and the Korean War:
According to official information provided by the Department of Defense (DoD) and its Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC) there are still about 40,000 US troops, and 179 US bases in Germany, over 50,000 troops in Japan (and 109 bases), and tens of thousands of troops, with hundreds of bases, all over Europe. Over 28,000 US troops are present in 85 bases in South Korea, and have been since 1957.
The number of bases is always changing as the US seeks to continuously expand its empire of bases. Just this week the US is opening a military base in South Korea, which is described as a city of 25,000 people. The Washington Post reports:
“We built an entire city from scratch,” said Col. Scott W. Mueller, garrison commander of Camp Humphreys, one of the U.S. military’s largest overseas construction projects. If it were laid across Washington, the 3,454-acre base would stretch from Key Bridge to Nationals Park, from Arlington National Cemetery to the Capitol.
* * *
Now, the $11 billion base is beginning to look like the garrison that military planners envisaged decades ago.
The Eighth Army moved its headquarters here this month and there are about 25,000 people based here, including family members and contractors.
There are apartment buildings, sports fields, playgrounds and a water park, and an 18- hole golf course with the generals’ houses overlooking the greens. There is a “warrior zone” with Xboxes and Playstations, pool tables and dart boards, and a tavern for those old enough to drink.
Starting this August, there will be two elementary schools, a middle school and a high school. A new, 68-bed military hospital to replace the one at Yongsan is close to completion.
Also this week, it was reported that the United States has created ten new military bases in Syria. This was done without permission of the Syrian government and was exposed by Turkey in protest against the United States.
There is a cost to these bases, not only the $156 billion in annual funds spent on them, but also the conflicts they create between the United States and people around the world. There have been protests against the presence or development of US bases in Okinawa, Italy, Jeju Island Korea, Diego Garcia, Cyprus, Greece, and Germany. Some of the bases are illegal, as the unity statement points out, “The base that the U.S. has illegally occupied the longest, for over a century, is Guantánamo Bay, whose existence constitutes an imposition of the empire and a violation of International Law.”  Cuba has called for the return of Guantánamo since 1959. David Vine, the author of Base Nation, describes how these bases, which seek to project US power around the globe, create political tensions, are a source for military attacks and create alliances with dictators. They breed sexual violence, displace indigenous peoples, and destroy the environment.
The unity statement of the Coalition Against Foreign Military Bases concludes by urging all of us to unite to close US bases around the world because:
U.S. foreign military bases are NOT in defense of U.S. national, or global security. They are the military expression of U.S. intrusion in the lives of sovereign countries on behalf of the dominant financial, political, and military interests of the ruling elite. Whether invited in or not by domestic interests that have agreed to be junior partners, no country, no peoples, no government, can claim to be able to make decisions totally in the interest of their people, with foreign troops on their soil representing interests antagonistic to the national purpose.
Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers co-direct Popular Resistance. This article first appeared as the weekly newsletter of the organization.@MFlowers8.

Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218.  Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at] comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/


"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs

Why and How to Bring Environmental and Peace Movements Together

Friends,
I think this is a worthy read.  However, as someone who has failed miserably to bring the environmental movement into the peace movement, David Swanson does not provide an answer as to how to bring the two movements together.  Presumably, he would argue it will happen at the September conference.  I hope that indeed happens.
Kagiso,
Max
Why and How to Bring Environmental and Peace Movements Together
If war were moral, legal, defensive, beneficial to the spread of freedom, and inexpensive, we would be obliged to make abolishing it our top priority solely because of the destruction that war and preparations for war do as the leading polluters of our natural environment.
I happened to read a report this week from a U.S. environmental think tank that advocates for the U.S. military to blow up trucks full of oil and gas. The trucks belong to ISIS, and the argument is that bombing trucks does less damage than bombing oil wells, and that — if you add in vague social and economic factors rather ludicrously quantified with numerical pseudo-precision — bombing trucks does less damage than doing nothing. The option of working nonviolently for peace, disarmament, aid, and environmental protection is not considered.
If we don’t start considering new options, we’re going to run out of options entirely. The roughly $1 trillion that the United States puts into militarism each year is the number one way in which war kills and the source of an infinity of not-yet-considered options. Tiny fractions of U.S. military spending could end hunger, the lack of clean water, and various diseases globally. While converting to clean energy could pay for itself in healthcare savings, the funds with which to do it are there, many times over, in the U.S. military budget. One airplane program, the F-35, could be canceled and the funds used to convert every home in the United States to clean energy.
We’re not going to save our earth’s climate only as individuals. We need organized global efforts. The only place where the resources can be found is in the military. The wealth of the billionaires does not even begin to rival it. And taking it away from the military, even without doing anything else with it, is the single best thing that we could do for the earth. The U.S. military is the leading consumer of petroleum around, the third-greatest polluter of U.S. waterways, the top creator of superfund environmental disaster sites.
Pre-presidential campaign Donald Trump signed a letter published on December 6, 2009, on page 8 of the New York Times, a letter to President Obama that called climate change an immediate challenge. “Please don’t postpone the earth,” it said. “If we fail to act now, it is scientifically irrefutable that there will be catastrophic and irreversible consequences for humanity and our planet.”
Among societies that accept or promote war making, those consequences of environmental destruction will likely include yet more war making. It is of course false and self-defeating to suggest that climate change simply causes war in the absence of any human agency. There is no correlation between resource scarcity and war or environmental destruction and war. There is, however, a correlation between cultural acceptance of war and war. But this world — and especially certain parts of it, including the United States — is very accepting of war, as reflected in the belief in war’s inevitability.
Wars generating environmental destruction and mass-migration, generating more wars, generating further destruction is a vicious cycle we have to break out of by protecting the environment and abolishing war.
Toward that end, many of us are planning an event in Washington, D.C., in late September that will bring together leading environmental and peace activists. You are encouraged to sign up and participate in #NoWar2017: War and the Environment.
We’re also taking a flotilla for peace and the environment to the edge of the Pentagon in the lagoon off the Potomac River. If you don’t have a kayak we’ll get you one. Sign up here.
Peace and planet! No more oil for wars!
--
David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org.

Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218.  Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at] comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/


"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs

Woody Guthrie's Assault on 'Old Man Trump'

Published on Portside (https://portside.org)

Woody Guthrie's Assault on 'Old Man Trump'


Will Kaufman

Monday, September 5, 2016
The Conversation

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   Earlier this year, I wrote about [1] a cache of bitter writings by Woody Guthrie that I had discovered while conducting research for a book on the balladeer.
The invectives were directed against a man Guthrie had dubbed his “worst enemy”: Fred C. Trump, the landlord of the Beach Haven apartment complex in Brooklyn, where the Guthrie family lived from 1950 to 1952. Guthrie especially loathed the housing project’s de facto color line. (“Beach Haven looks like heaven / Where no black ones come to roam! / No, no no! Old Man Trump! Old Beach Haven ain’t my home!”)

   This summer, Judy Bell – for 50 years the indefatigable custodian of Guthrie’s songs at TRO-Essex music publishers – told me she had found in her files a typewritten lyric sheet of Guthrie’s. Yet another broadside fired at Donald Trump’s father, the discovery comes on the heels of a recent in-depth New York Times article [2] that details the “long history of racial bias” at the properties developed and owned by Trump Management.

‘Trump made a tramp out of me’

   Like so many memorable folk songs, Guthrie’s seven-verse diatribe is unashamedly simple, repetitive and formulaic. It describes the songwriter’s outrage over the exploitative rents charged at a publicly funded housing project meant for war veterans like himself:
    Mister Trump made a tramp out of me;
    Mister Trump has made a tramp out of me;
    Paid him alla my bonds and savin's
    To move into his Beach Haven;
    Yes, Trump has made a tramp out of me.

   Guthrie was spot on about Fred Trump’s profiteering. He may have been shy about the details [3]: the millions Trump earned from rental payments; his squirreling away five percent of Beach Haven’s development cost; the US$3.7 million worth of borrowed, unnecessary Federal building funds that had been earmarked for construction. But Guthrie instinctively knew that a raw deal was being played out at Beach Haven.

   His song reflects, too, what the popular music scholar Edward Comentale has called Guthrie’s “rambing, funny streak”: a highly self-conscious and stylized rhetoric characterized by “an embrace of poverty and even dereliction in opposition to the structures of pride and power.”
    Well, well, Trump, you made a tramp out of me;
    Well, well, Trump, you made a tramp out of me;
    You charge me so much it just ain't human,
    I've got to try to live with president Truman;
    Yess, Trump, you made a tramp out of me.

   Finally, it conveys something much more sobering. It offers a glimpse into the mind of a man who had received a chilling diagnosis from doctors at Brooklyn State Hospital on September 3, 1952, while still living at Beach Haven: “PSYCHOSIS ASSOCIATED WITH ORGANIC CHANGES IN THE NERVOUS SYSTEM WITH HUNTINGTON’S CHOREA.”

   At last there was an explanation for what had been a pattern of frightening and disorienting behavior in Guthrie: constant dizziness, which he and others had been mistaking for alcoholism; sudden, uncharacteristic outbursts of verbal and physical violence; a heightened, often embarrassing sexual disinhibition; and the gradual twisting and warping of his writings – what his biographer Joe Klein [4] calls a “linguistic anarchy” that “extended even to his address (Beach Haven became ‘Bitch Heaven’ in ‘New Jerk Titty’).”

   The Beach Haven period, which had proved so hopeful at its outset (with more living space for the family, some modest royalties for Guthrie’s songwriting, and an opportunity for his wife Marjorie to open a school of modern dance), ended after two years with the breakup of Guthrie’s marriage and alternating episodes of hospitalization, incarceration and drifting.

Beach Haven: A Jim Crow town

  Clearly, it was not Fred Trump who had “made a tramp” out of Guthrie. Yet equally clearly, Guthrie came to associate the name “Trump” with dispossession.
Even as he was being dispossessed of his own neurological and expressive faculties, he wrote from “Witchy Haven” to his close friend, activist and Klan infiltrator Stetson Kennedy, of “Mr Old Man Trump” and “his little pack of pets” preventing him from doing “one single ounce of work to nail or to build or to fix up the joint.”

And he wrote of something even worse: Fred Trump’s “color line.”

   “In addition to not being able to enjoy one single day of normal or natural life in Mr Trumps project of buildings here on acct of about ninety and nine clauses in his damnable old tenant’s contract, I find out that I’m dwelling in the deadly center of a jimcrow town where no negroid families yet are allowed to move in and to live freelike.”
    Guthrie lamented that he and his wife were forced to raise their children “under the skullyboned stink and dank of racial hate, jimmycrack Krow.”

Hence Guthrie’s parting shot at his landlord:
    Humm humm, Trump, you made a tramp out of me;
    Hummm, humm, Trump, you made a tramp out of me;
    You robbed my wife and robbed my kids,
    Made me stay drunk and to hit the skids;
    Yepsir, Trump, you made a tramp out of me.

   In late September of 1952, Guthrie hit the road alone, to California, partly to come to terms with the reality of his diagnosis. Marjorie was left to apply to Trump’s office with a request to suspend their lease. After receiving no reply, she wrote to Trump’s Beach Haven agent on December 4, 1952:

   “My husband after months of hospitalization and examination was declared incurable and is suffering from a fatal disease known as Huntingtons Chorea. We have three small children and since I now know that I alone will be responsible for them I feel it would be impossible for me to continue living in my apartment whose rental now becomes quite a hardship…. I believe I should be out within a week.”
To date, the archives have yielded no evidence of a reply, sympathetic or otherwise. Soon Marjorie and her three children – Arlo, Joady and Nora – left Beach Haven and moved to Howard Beach, Queens.

Guthrie’s lyrics resonate today

It is not surprising that Guthrie’s Beach Haven writings should have attracted so much attention in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. Some historical clarification is now in order. Journalist David Cay Johnston, for instance, writes in his new book “The Making of Donald Trump” that Guthrie “set his thoughts about Trump’s rental policies to a song he titled ‘Old Man Trump.’”

   In fact, Guthrie never wrote a song called “Old Man Trump.” The song of that name, recently published and recorded [5] by Ryan Harvey, Tom Morello and Ani DiFranco, is an amalgamation crafted by Harvey of verse fragments drawn from three separate archival sources (first published in The Conversation in January [1]). Nor did Guthrie use the phrase “Trump’s tower,” as Harvey and his colleagues sing it; Harvey has explained it was his decision “to throw in a present tense reference.”

   Guthrie’s Beach Haven writings have emerged at a time when his publishers, TRO-Essex, in partnership with the Woody Guthrie estate, are battling over the copyright [6] to Guthrie’s most celebrated anthem, “This Land Is Your Land.”
As Nora Guthrie has explained, “Our control of this song has nothing to do with financial gain…. It has to do with protecting it from Donald Trump, protecting it from the Ku Klux Klan, protecting it from all the evil forces out there.”

   Trump has a healthy track record in appropriating unauthorized songs for his campaign, much to their composers' outrage [7]. But looking beyond the current campaign: If the Beach Haven writings are anything to go by, should we ever hear “This Land Is Your Land” pumped into the elevators of Trump Tower or in the clubhouses of Trump’s golf courses, there is no scientific instrument that could measure the velocity of Woody Guthrie spinning in his grave.

  Will Kaufman is Professor of American Literature and Culture, University of Central Lancashire.

  In addition to all Woody Guthrie and Marjorie Guthrie correspondence and untitled writings copyrighted by Woody Guthrie Publications, Inc., the author gratefully acknowledge permission to quote from the following prose and lyric writings (all words by Woody Guthrie, © copyright Woody Guthrie Publications, Inc., all rights reserved, used by permission): “Beach Haven Ain’t My Home,” “Racial Hate at Beach Haven” and “Old Man Trump.” “Trump Made a Tramp Out of Me”: words by Woody Guthrie, © copyright WGP/TRO – Woody Guthrie Publications, Inc. and Ludlow Music, Inc. (administered by Ludlow Music, Inc.), all rights reserved, used by permission. Special thanks to Judy Bell at TRO-Essex and Kate Blalack at the Woody Guthrie Archives.


Links:


Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218.  Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at] comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/


"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs

Sunday, July 30, 2017

Fascism and the Denial of Truth: What Henry Wallace Can Teach Us About Trump


Fascism and the Denial of Truth: What Henry Wallace Can Teach Us About Trump
Sunday, July 30, 2017By Thomas J. Scott, Truthout | Op-Ed

Over 70 years after it was written, Henry Wallace's essay offers relevant insights into the rise of autocracy in the US.
Over 70 years after it was written, Henry Wallace's essay offers relevant insights into the rise of autocracy in the US. (Photo: Wikipedia)
What is a fascist? How many fascists have we? How dangerous are they? These are the questions that the New York Times posed to Henry A. Wallace, Franklin Roosevelt's vice president, in April 1944.
In response, Wallace wrote "The Danger of American Fascism," an essay in which he suggested that the number of American fascists and the threat they posed were directly connected to how fascism was defined. Wallace pointed out that several personality traits characterized fascist belief, arguing that a fascist is "one whose lust for money and power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends."
Wallace also claimed that fascists "always and everywhere can be identified by their appeal to prejudice and by the desire to play upon the fears and vanities of different groups in order to gain power." Fascists are "easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact" (my italics), he contended. Moreover, Wallace noted that fascists "pay lip service to democracy and the common welfare" and they "surreptitiously evade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extortion." Finally, Wallace identified that fascists' primary objective was to "capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they keep the common man in eternal subjection."
Wallace was writing in the context of an existential threat to democracy posed by Nazi Germany, Italy and Japan. However, his essay is prescient in that he identified the existence of a domestic form of American fascism that emerged from the political context of enlightened thought, rule of law and limited government. Wallace drew a clear distinction between European fascism and the kind of fascism found in the United States. Rather than resort to overt violence, American fascists would "poison the channels of public information," Wallace reasoned. Likewise, he argued that American fascism was generally inert, not having reached the level of overt threat that it had reached in Europe. Despite this, Wallace argued that American fascism had the potential to become dangerous to democracy under that appropriate context; one in which a "purposeful coalition" emerges based on "demagoguery."
British historian Karl Polanyi has written in his seminal book, The Great Transformation, that fascism can emerge in a society in reaction to "unsolved national issues." Party polarization and gridlock in the US have created unsolved issues concerning health care, immigration reform and the "war on terror." These volatile issues, in turn, have created the perfect political context for a demagogue to emerge in the United States.
With the election of Donald Trump, the purposeful coalition Wallace feared may have evolved. Trump is the first US president who has been seriously associated with fascist ideology. His coalition of white supremacists, xenophobes, plutocratic oligarchs and disaffected members of the working class have aligned with the mainstream Republican Party. The coalition's political philosophy, rooted in reactionary populism and "American First" sloganeering, has quickly led to the United States' systematic withdrawal from global leadership. Coupled with a disdain for multilateral collaboration, a rejection of globalization, and a focus on militarism and economic nationalism, Trumpism has taken the country down the perilous path of national chauvinism reminiscent of previous fascist states like Spain under Franco, Portugal under Salazar, or Peronist Argentina.
Unlike past Republican and Democratic presidents, Trump has disregarded long-standing traditions related to political protocol and decorum in the realm of political communication. He routinely makes unsubstantiated claims about political rivals, questioning their veracity and ethics. Trump's claim that the Obama administration wiretapped his phones during the 2016 campaign and that Obama refused to take action regarding Russian meddling in the 2016 election, as well as Trump's incendiary tweets about federal judges who ruled against his executive orders on immigration, suggest a sense of paranoia commonly associated with autocrats. Trump has demonstrated a fundamental ignorance of democratic institutions associated with the rule of law, checks and balances, and the separation of powers. Common to autocratic leaders, Trump sees executive power as absolute and seems confounded when the legislative or judicial branches of government question his decisions. Trump has seemed willing to ignore norms that are fundamentally aligned with US democracy: equality before the law, freedom of the press, individual rights, due process and inclusiveness.
Typical of all autocratic leaders, Trump has a deep-seated distrust of the media. Calling journalists "enemies of the people," Trump's incessant claims that media outlets like the New York Times and the Washington Post create "fake news" is a common attribute of authoritarian regimes. In response to investigative reports that are critical of his administration, Trump engages in systematic tactics of disinformation. Trump has refined the art of evasion through communicating a multiplicity of falsehoods as a means of obfuscating charges of abuse of power and political misconduct.
The biggest dilemma for an autocrat is confronting the truth. Systematic strategies to implant misinformation have historically provided significant political dividends for demagogues. From Trump's earliest forays in national politics, the truth was his biggest enemy. Trump discovered in the 2016 campaign that the perpetuation of lies and deceit could be converted into political capital. Lying on issues actually generated support from Trump's political base, many of whom were low-information voters.
The hope by many that Trump would conform to traditional political norms once elected proved to be a chimera. Trump has obliterated the Orwellian dictum that lies are truth; in Trump's worldview, truth does not exist. It is seen as a political liability. As president, the debasement of truth has become an important political strategy shaping much of his communication to the American public. Purposeful deceit has become one of the primary means by which Trump energizes and excites his supporters. It is the catalyst that drives their emotional connection to Trump, who is insistent on "telling it like it is" and fighting for "the people" as a challenge to the political elite.
For Trump, facts mean nothing. They are contrary to the desires of his political base. Connecting to his base is visceral; intellectualism is the antithesis of Trump's immediate political objectives. By denying the existence of truth-based politics, Trump solidifies his populist vision and perpetuates one of fascism's greatest mechanisms for acquiring absolute power: the force of emotion conquering the force of reason. As Timothy Snyder states in his insightful book On Tyranny, "To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so." Seen in this light, empirical evidence based on scientific investigation is superfluous; public policy is only useful when it is connected to human emotion and desire. This is all that matters in Trump's vision for the US. As such, facts and scientific research are a ruse, a tool of the elite designed to consolidate power over "the people" and discredit Trump's "America First" policies.
Truth is a necessity for democracy because citizens depend on truth-based decision-making to achieve reasoned judgments about public policy. In the Trump administration, the eradication of fact-based communication has normalized the denial of truth. As a result, democracy is clearly under siege. Henry Giroux makes an excellent argument when he writes, "normalization is code for retreat from any sense of moral or political responsibility, and it should be viewed as an act of political complicity with authoritarianism and condemned outright." All Americans should take heed of this point. History has provided ample evidence of how institutional and civic complicity with autocratic rule erodes democracy. However, history has also demonstrated how engaged citizens can mobilize to resist this erosion. As Snyder argues, in order to confront autocracy, citizens need to become aware that democracy can disappear and mobilize to stop such a disastrous turn of events. In the age of Trump, there is no time for complacency.
Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.
Thomas J. Scott is a writer from Minneapolis who writes on international affairs, globalization and education issues.
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Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218.  Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at] comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/


"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs

The Mooch, the Donald, and the Goldmanization of Government

Published on Portside (https://portside.org)

The Mooch, the Donald, and the Goldmanization of Government


Richard Eskow

Thursday, July 27, 2017
OurFuture.org

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    It’s true that most members of Trump’s team, including the president himself, could easily trade nicknames with Anthony Scaramucci. They’re all moochers. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos was tied to a student loan firm [1] and her department’s actions directly benefited the family of a senior DeVos aide, who resigned [2] after the conflict of interest came to light.

   There are serious questions [3]about Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin’s financial interest in the administration’s investigation of OneWest Bank. And virtually every senior Trump official stands to gain financially by his proposed tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires – an underlying conflict of interest that would let them “mooch” off the poor and middle-class families who would be hurt as a result.

  Trump himself is the Moocher-in-Chief, monetizing his presidency to the limits of the law and beyond. He even skimmed from a fundraiser [4] by holding it at a Trump Hotel so the family business could profit from it.

Enter the Mooch

   Of course, Anthony Scaramucci would only want to trade away his nickname if he were ashamed of it, but he shows no sign of shame. On the contrary, the brash, self-promoting huckster seems proud of his background as a Goldman Sachs banker turned hedge-fund super salesman.

   Scaramucci’s firm, SkyBridge Capital, isn’t even really a hedge fund. It’s more of a hedge fund retailer. Scaramucci closes the deal and then farms the money out to other funds to manage. The firm sponsors a schmoozefest called the SALT Conference [5] every year, where famous speakers talk while everyone in the crowd tries to hustle one another for business. Think of it as TED for greedheads.

   Celebrities like like Magic Johnson and Al “Say Hello to My Little Friend” Pacino have put in appearances at SALT. So have famous business people like Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and hedge-fund investor John Paulson, an early Trump backer who made billions off of the subprime lending meltdown.

  And in our “money talks” political environment, it’s not surprising that a number of politicians and officials have also wet their beaks at the Scaramucci trough, including Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Tim Geithner, and Tony Blair.

Money Talks

   It’s somehow fitting that a hedge fund investor who does no investing has now become the spokesman for a president who appears to do very little actual governing.

   What Scaramucci does very well, however, is promote Scaramucci. You might think that would make the vain showman who occupies the Oval Office jealous, but you’d be wrong. The Mooch’s antics make him Trump’s ideal Mini-Me. He’s another empty-hatted showboater, loudly distracting the audience from the pickpockets moving among them.

   But just to be on the safe side, Scaramucci professes his love for the president loudly and frequently.

The Fall Guy

   In his first few days on the job, Scaramucci has already shown his ability to dazzle and distract the press, turning attention away from the dirty dealing going on all around them. He has incited a showy feud with White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, for example, a headline-grabbing move in which he says that the man he once called a “brother” is really only a brother in the “Cain and Abel” sense.
If you’re not biblically inclined, here’s a quick reminder: Cain slew Abel.

   In a call to CNN that was described as a “meltdown [6],” Scaramucci accused Priebus of “leaking” his financial disclosure forms to the press, a move he had earlier characterized as a “felony [7].”

  Those forms are public, by the way, which means they can’t be “leaked,” and it is not illegal to cite them.

The Heel

   “Meltdown”? To this observer, Scaramucci’s antics look more like the over-the-top theatrics of the “heel,” or designated bad guy, in a wrestling match. (Wrestling impresario Linda McMahon [8] also works in the Trump White House.)

    It’s true that those financial disclosure forms reveal some serious ethical concerns arising from Scaramucci’s failure to divest his SkyBridge holdings before entering government, but a good heel is always willing to take a fall for the sake of the show.

    Hewing to bad-guy convention, The Mooch also unleashed a fusillade of vulgar language on The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza, [9] attacking Priebus and accusing presidential advisor Steve Bannon of attempting an anatomically impossible act of sexual self-gratification.

   In light of that publication’s illustrious literary history, Scaramucci’s foul talk to its reporter was the journalistic equivalent of passing gas in church.

   Scaramucci apparently also leaked a story to the press and then complained about the leak [10], an in-the-ring pratfall that seems to further reinforce the “heel” theory.

The Goldmanization of Government

It’s working. While the press was writing about The Mooch’s theatrics, less attention was being paid to the ongoing Goldmanization of Trump’s administration – a trend that poses a serious risk to the American people, and potentially to the global economy.

    America’s big banks have a stunning record of proven criminality, and Goldman Sachs is up there with the worst of them. Its rap sheet [11] of documented offenses includes securities fraud, investor fraud, insider trading, and subprime loan abuses. Goldman misled its own customers [12]and bet against them.

   A former Goldman trader wrote about its “toxic and destructive [13]” culture, and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein is widely believed to have perjured himself in testimony before Congress.  Following his committee’s inquiry into banking practices, Sen. Carl Levin [14] concluded that “Goldman clearly misled their clients and they misled the Congress.” The committee recommended that charges be brought against Blankfein, but the Justice Department declined to prosecute.

   Trump openly ran against Goldman Sachs, slamming both Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton for past associations with the firm.  And yet, Scaramucci is just the latest in a long list of ex-Goldmanites to join the Administration. They include Steve Mnuchin, Secretary of the Treasury; Steve Bannon, strategic advisor; Gary D. Cohn, Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors; and, Dina Powell, Deputy National Security Advisor. Trump also nominated Goldmanite James Donovan to be Assistant Treasury Secretary, but Donovan withdrew his name from consideration after meeting political resistance.

   This week Trump [15] said he’s thinking about naming Cohn, the former president of Goldman Sachs, to be chair of the Federal Reserve. “He doesn’t know this, but yes he is (under consideration),” Trump said.

The Goldman Agenda

  Cohn, like Mnuchin and other senior Trump officials, is singing from the Goldman Sachs hymnal. Lobbying reports compiled by Open Secrets [16] show that Goldman has already spent $1,430,000 [17] on lobbying this year, on subjects [18] that include tax policy [19] and weakening bank regulations [20].

   Cohn is one of six Republican officials and members of Congress [21] tasked with forging a “tax reform” plan, a job that aligns nicely with his former employer’s interests. The Republican House voted last week to repeal the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s new arbitration rule, scheduled to take effect in September, a move that also aligns nicely with Goldman Sachs’s interests. So does Treasury Secretary Mnuchin’s push to roll back the Dodd-Frank law.

   But then, is any of this really a surprise? By turning to Goldman Sachs to staff his administration, Trump has surrendered the nation’s economic policy to the Goldman agenda. He is turning the economy over to some of its worst actors, and all signs suggest that he’s not done yet.
There are, however, no confirmed reports yet that Trump plans to appoint Mr. Pink to a senior position in his administration.


Links:

[1] http://www.prwatch.org/news/2017/01/13207/betsy-devos-ethics-report-reveals-ties-student-debt-collection-firm
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-20/betsy-devos-hands-victory-to-loan-firm-tied-to-adviser-who-just-quit
[3] http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-trump-onewest-bank-20170630-story.html
[4] https://theintercept.com/2017/06/30/leaked-trump-tape-could-raise-diplomatic-political-problems/
[5] http://www.skybridgecapital.com/salt-conference/
[6] https://thinkprogress.org/scaramucci-cnn-meltdown-39c64badff56
[7] http://www.politico.com/story/2017/07/27/anthony-scaramucci-felony-public-disclosures-fbi-reince-priebus-241012
[8] https://www.forbes.com/sites/katevinton/2016/12/07/linda-mcmahon-wife-of-wwe-billionaire-vincent-mcmahon-is-trumps-pick-to-head-his-small-business-administration/#227095d71750
[9] http://www.politico.com/story/2017/07/27/scaramucci-declares-war-on-priebus-bannon-241051
[10] https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/policy-and-politics/2017/7/25/16026902/anthony-scaramucci-michael-short-fired-leaks
[11] http://www.corp-research.org/goldman-sachs
[12] http://articles.latimes.com/2008/nov/11/business/fi-goldman11
[13] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/opinion/why-i-am-leaving-goldman-sachs.html?pagewanted=all
[14] http://www.newser.com/story/116389/senate-probe-goldman-sachs-screwed-clients-lied-to-us.html
[15] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/07/25/trump-is-considering-top-aide-gary-cohn-as-his-fed-chairman/
[16] http://opensecrets.org/
[17] https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000000085&year=2017
[18] https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientissues.php?id=D000000085&year=2017
[19] https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientissues_spec.php?id=D000000085&year=2017&spec=TAX
[20] https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientissues_spec.php?id=D000000085&year=2017&spec=FIN
[21] http://www.politico.com/story/2017/07/26/tax-reform-plan-preview-240991

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