The State of the Republicans: 2013

The end of the Romney campaign ushered in a new era for the Republicans…. apparently. They insisted they must change. Their appeal must broaden. Their hate-filled, politics of over-the-top Glenn Beck style fear had to go. They had to be presentable. Change or die! The old days of a Party of old, white, male, Christian, heterosexual, angry-at-everyone-who-isn’t-EXACTLY-like-them, funded by big corporations had to go. And so we were informed that a new breed of Republicans would appear. Ready to present a reformed GOP to the electorate. They were radically different from their predecessors.

So how’s that going?

Well, in November 2012, the residents of Texas’ first district re-elected Louie Gohmert for a fifth term in the House of Reps. If the Republicans are intending to break from the past, surely we’d expect Gohmert to perhaps be a little more moderate than his more radical Tea-Party-esque contemporaries. That’s what we’d expect. However, when asked about his opposition to any gun control legislation, Gohmert gave this rather odd answer:

“In fact, I had this discussion with some wonderful, caring Democrats earlier this week on the issue of, well, they said “surely you could agree to limit the number of rounds in a magazine, couldn’t you? How would that be problematic?”

And I pointed out, well, once you make it ten, then why would you draw the line at ten? What’s wrong with nine? Or eleven? And the problem is once you draw that limit ; it’s kind of like marriage when you say it’s not a man and a woman any more, then why not have three men and one woman, or four women and one man, or why not somebody has a love for an animal?

There is no clear place to draw the line once you eliminate the traditional marriage and it’s the same once you start putting limits on what guns can be used, then it’s just really easy to have laws that make them all illegal.

- You read right. In a discussion about gun control, Gohmert managed to take a shot at same-sex marriage, by employing the insufferably weak slippery slope fallacy. I cannot work out which is more impressive; his ability to link gun control and same-sex marriage… two completely separate issues that in no way overlap, or his intense lack of sensibility in recognising that there is no reason to believe a slippery slope with either of the issues he’s commenting on. I could equally say “If we let women vote, what next, letting camels vote?” or “If we ban cocaine, why not ban cough medicine? Where does it end!!” It’s absurd and it is baseless. He isn’t the only Republican to use this fallacy recently. John Cornyn, the new Senate Minority Whip said:

“It does not affect your daily life very much if your neighbor marries a box turtle. But that does not mean it is right…. Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife.”

- Yes. the Republican Senate Minority Whip has just compared a loving couple wishing to express that love via marriage, and wishing only to be considered equal under law….. to a man marrying a turtle. That’s the standard of top Republicans in 2013.

Back to Gohmert. The man who tried to link gay marriage to gun control, also claimed that the liberals are going to make Churches:

….hire whatever Satan-worshiper, whatever cross-dresser you think might be immoral, that’s against your religious belief. You are going to be forced to abandon your religious beliefs, and we’ve been seeing that with some of the requirements under Obamacare.

- Yes! Someone had to say it! Obamacare is simply a mask to make Churches hire cross-dressing Satan-Worshippers! It’s SO obvious. Wake up America!
The fact that this man gets the privilege to vote on gun legislation; a vote on the safety of your children in school, would be laughable if it weren’t so utterly terrifying.

Bobby Jindal won a 2nd term as Louisiana Governor in 2011. Since then, he’s been rather excitable at promoting misleading figures to promote an agenda of fear. Whilst one fifth of all residents of Louisiana lack health insurance, Jindal refuses to expand Medicaid expansion, claiming it would cost Louisiana $1bn over the next ten years. Quite where he gets this figure from, I’m not sure. Especially given that a Department of Health Report noted that Louisiana would actually save around $400mn over the next ten years, by expanding Medicaid. He appears to have invented his own figure, to scare people. Despite this, and despite a petition signed by…

Advocates for Louisiana Public Healthcare.

Advocacy Center.

Capitol City Family Health Center.

Capital City Alliance.

Citizens United for In-Home Support.

Coalition of HIV/AIDS Nonprofits and Governmental Entities.

Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation, Harvard Law School.

Children’s Defense Fund-Louisiana.

Children’s Bureau of New Orleans.

DEAF Louisiana.

Doctors for America.

Depression & Bipolar Support Alliance, Northeast Louisiana.

Health Law Advocates of Louisiana.

HOPE For Homeless.
Along with 30 other groups, and countless more individual signatures….. Jindal refuses to expand Medicaid.

And then there is the apparent darling of the Republicans new bid for power in 2016; Marco Rubio.

“We’re bound together by common values. That family is the most important institution in society. That almighty God is the source of all we have.”

- Here, Rubio is subtly promoting the myth that America was founded a Christian nation, and that religion must be considered part of the fabric. A subtle hint that non-belief, cannot be considered an American value. Thus, in a single, tiny quote, we see the saviour of the Republicans alienate anyone who isn’t slightly obsessed with ‘God’ being a key component to Patriotism. So that’s 15% of Americans who claim no religion. That’s a lot of people to alienate, for a man promoted as the key to solving the Republican Party’s problem of appealing to minorities. Rubio is following the conservative trend of telling people who should and shouldn’t qualify as ‘American’. This in itself, is divisive.

Rubio also still appeals to tradition when dealing with same-sex marriage, insisting that marriage cannot be redefined. Seemingly ignoring all evidence that the current definition of marriage, is just one that has evolved over time, based on modern Christian understanding of the term, and differs from other cultures entirely. So, that’s gay people alienated, as well as non-believers.

Brand new Senator for Senator for Arizona, assuming office in 2013, Jeff Flake also doesn’t like the idea of two people in love getting married. Whilst despising ‘big government’ and the intrusion of the State into people’s lives, Flake voted in favour of a Federal Marriage Amendment, Constitutionally banning same-sex marriage. For someone so obsessed for getting government out of people’s private lives, Flake seems more than happy to use government power to ban love.

Back to Rubio. As well as not particularly liking gay people, Rubio voted against the Violence Against Women Act, stating:

“I have concerns regarding the conferring of criminal jurisdiction to some Indian tribal governments over all persons in Indian country, including non-Indians.”

- Essentially, a non-Native American male being tried under the law for sexually assaulting a Native American woman, concerns Rubio, because he doesn’t trust Indian Tribal Governments. And yet, he puts his full faith in the States to fund programs properly:

“These funding decisions should be left up to the state-based coalitions that understand local needs best.”

- So trustworthy are local areas in dealing with domestic abuse cases, that due to budget cuts, the Topeka, Kansas City Council and Mayor actually repealed the Domestic Abuse law, in a bid to start a bit of a war with the County Prosecutor. This came about after Shawnee County D.A Chad Taylor, moved to stop investigating domestic violence entirely due to budget cuts. This meant that the City of Topeka would have to take up the cases, which they couldn’t afford to do either. So their Council voted to repeal the domestic abuse act. Which, forced it back into the hands of Shawnee County. Taylor said:

“My office now retains sole authority to prosecute domestic battery misdemeanors and will take on this responsibility so as to better protect and serve our community. We will do so with less staff, less resources, and severe constraints on our ability to effectively seek justice.”

Rita Smith, executive director of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence said:

“I really do not understand this. It’s really outrageous that they’re playing with family safety to see who blinks first. People could die while they’re waiting to straighten this out.”

- All of this comes down to budget cuts. Shawnee County DA Chad Taylor refused to prosecute domestic violence cases, after facing a 10% budget cut, despite half of all cases being domestic abuse cases, which increased substantially in the past three years, without any extra funding from the County. How very trustworthy! Interestingly, Rubio voted against the Budget Control Act in 2011, and the Fiscal Cliff 2012. Rubio evidently trusts the localities to make funding decisions, which is much easier, if those localities don’t have any funds in the first place.

Rubio isn’t the only Republican with odd reasons for voting against the Violence Against Women Act. Steve Stockman, Representative of Texas’ 36th District announced his shameful reasons for voting against:

“This is a truly bad bill. This is helping the liberals, this is horrible. Unbelievable. What really bothers—it’s called a women’s act, but then they have men dressed up as women, they count that. Change-gender, or whatever. How is that—how is that a woman?”

Stockman also voted to repeal Federal laws that ban guns in schools. Why so? Well, given that among his campaign contributors are the ‘National Association for Gun Rights’ and ‘Gun Owners of America’, it perhaps isn’t that surprising that Stockman feels the need to put their interests above the safety of children. Just to make sure we all understand where his allegiances lie, here is incredibly ridiculous, almost comical campaign bumper sticker, tweeted for the World to see, by the man himself.

- I’m not sure if Stockman is calling for semi-automatic rifles to be inserted into the vaginas of every pregnant woman. I wouldn’t be surprised.

The scientifically illiterate are still abundant in the Republican Party. Marco Rubio once announced that he didn’t know if the Earth was made in 6 days or not, and that we’re never likely to know. But Georgia’s 10th District Rep. Paul Broun (planning to run for Senate in 2014) and, quite horrifyingly, serving on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology once took Rubio’s toying with Creationism one step further:

Earth is about 9,000 years old, it was created in six days as we know them”

- Broun also said of embryology, genetics, evolution, and the Big Bang theory:

“they’re lies straight from the Pit of Hell … lies to try to keep me and all the folks who are taught that from understanding that they need a savior.”

- Broun also said of climate change:

“Scientists all over this world say that the idea of human induced global climate change is one of the greatest hoaxes perpetrated out of the scientific community. It is a hoax. There is no scientific consensus.”[

- Echoing his scientific illiteracy, Broun gives us enlightening views on politics, when brief mention of a National Security Force by President Obama, before the 2008 election:

“It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he’s the one who proposed this national security force, I’m just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may _ may not, I hope not _ but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism. That’s exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it’s exactly what the Soviet Union did. When he’s proposing to have a national security force that’s answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he’s showing me signs of being Marxist.”

- Yes. A US Representative, thinks the Earth was made in 6 days, evolution is a lie from the pit of hell, climate change isn’t man made, and convinced President Obama was going to create his own Hitler Youth, to take over America and create a Marxist haven.

Now to move on from bat-shit crazy, to slightly less crazy, Paul Ryan. The spritely Paul Ryan. You may think he’s irrelevant as a symbol of this great new era for Republicans, given that his ticket lost the Presidential election. But let’s not forget that Ryan is the Chairman of the House Budget Committee, in 2013. A pretty important position. He’s also Wisconsin’s 1st District House Representative. He looks young, he seemed fresh, he wasn’t the grey haired typical old Republican. Nor was he the gun tottin’ Sarah Palin slightly vacant Republican. He was paraded on the networks as a hero of fiscal conservativism, brave to speak out against Obama overspending! His brand new House Republican Budget released in March this year, which the brave, fiscally conservative hero claims will:

“end cronyism, eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse and returns the federal government to its proper sphere of activity”

- So it is worthwhile to note that the anti-big government, pro-deficit reduction Paul Ryan voted for the two Bush tax cuts (both considered a great failure, and added significantly to the deficit), the $700 bailout of the banks, and the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit, whilst voting against Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Most of Paul Ryan’s economic voting record, has added significantly to the National deficit.
His House Republicans Budget, unveiled by Republicans on March 12, noted that $931 billion of the creatively accounted $4.6tn apparently savable over the next ten years, will come from counting the savings from ending the Iraq and Afghanistan wars…. wars that Paul Ryan voted for in the first place. Economically, Paul Ryan doesn’t know where he stands.
Socially, despite absolutely no evidence to back up its claims, in 2009 Paul Ryan cosponsored the ‘Sanctity of Life Act’. A very odd little Act that sought to protect fertilised eggs, stating that the eggs:

“shall have all the legal and constitutional attributes and privileges of personhood”

Ryan also believes that abortion, in all cases, including rape and incest, should be made illegal, and States given the right to criminally prosecute women who have abortions, including for rape and incest.

Before being elected as Senator for South Carolina in 2013, Tim Scott was House Representative for South Carolina’s first district. During his time in the House, Scott cosponsored a truly horrifying Bill that would deny food stamps to poorest families, if a family member was taking part in strike action. The right to strike – a key component of a democratic society – used by the weak against the powerful, used to secure freedoms and security for generations, Tim Scott voted to essentially end. Threatening the poorest people in society; you either strike, or you eat. Scott is also convinced that the private health care system in the US is the greatest in the World, and that the Health Reforms of 2010 should be repealed. This is no surprise given that one of his main campaign contributors, has been Blue Cross/Blue Shield, the health insurance company. Among other campaign contributions, he has received donations from Goldman Sachs. Tim Scott is a politician, for the wealthy, by the wealthy. The Insurance Industry Candidate.
Speaking of complete contempt for the less wealthy, Mark Meadows, a member of the January 2013 intake for The House, and Tea Party favourite, representing North Carolina’s 11th District voted against the Sandy Relief Fund.

Dean Heller, the Senator for Nevada, who will hold that position until 2019, voted against the Health Care Reform, and against Fair Minimum Wage Act. Heller has also voted against subsidising renewable energy, whilst voting to support development of oil, gas and coal…. two of his top campaign contributors, are Alliance Resource, and Murray Energy…. two coal companies.

So, gay marriage leading to marrying an animal, Church’s having to hire crossdressing Satan-worshippers, manipulating figures to suit an agenda, a refusal to expand Medicaid to help the most vulnerable, evolution a myth from the pits of hell, refusal to protect victims of domestic abuse, including transgendered people, a desire to see women who have been raped imprisoned for having an abortion, guns in schools funded by the gun lobby, Obama trying to raise an army to enforce a Marxist Utopia, anti-renewable energy, candidates wishing to disenfranchise poor people and their right to strike, and wishing to repeal health reform whilst taking campaign contributions from the wealthiest insurance companies in the country.

This new Republican breed sound, and act, and speak, eerily familiar to the old breed.

Why the Republican Party lost

Ohio. An important State for any Presidential candidate to win. No Republican has ever won the White House without winning Ohio. And so you’d expect Republicans to be a bit less malicious in their campaigning tactics when trying to win over potential key voters. And yet, in 2010 Medina County Republicans put out this leaflet. You should probably cast your eyes down to the most telling part, and the epitome of the problem with the Republican Party today:

- Not only is the problem in the horrendous sexism, but it’s also in that…… it isn’t surprising.

Republicans are reeling, trying to figure out what went wrong. From calls that the Romney campaign was not right winged enough; to calls that the Romney campaign was not moderate enough; to calls that Obama rigged the election. To Karl Rove not convinced that Obama actually won the election; To calls that Republicans need to appeal to minorities more. All of which do not address the actual problem; the Republican Party has an ideology problem, both economically and socially. Appealing to ‘minorities’ means nothing unless the underlying bigotry and ignorance is addressed. Cloaking inherent racism, sexism and homophobia behind more creative language hides nothing. The country is more liberal than they think. It is not a suspicious, homophobic, sexist country of multimillionaires.

In the UK the Conservative Party is quite generally known as the Nasty Party. They alienate, they belittle, and they discriminate. They open their mouths to say pretty vicious stuff, and nothing else. The Republicans are no different.

The fact that Republicans manage to attract any female voters strikes me as incredible. Republican news anchor Ann Coulter, reflecting a general Republican anti-women stance once said:

“If we took away women’s right to vote, we’d never have to worry about another Democrat president. It’s kind of a pipe dream, it’s a personal fantasy of mine, but I don’t think it’s going to happen. ”

- Even female Republicans, are anti-women. This is a paradox of right winged America. They seem to insist as much as possible that they are true Patriots. Real Americans. Defenders of the Constitution. And yet, they apparently call for secession whenever a democratic decision does not go their way, they call for the right to vote for women to be revoked, and then they completely ignore the distinct separation between Church and State as laid out by the Founders and their enlightenment thinking, with things like this…..

“We’re bound together by common values. That family is the most important institution in society. That almighty God is the source of all we have.”

This is Marco Rubio. Apparently, he is the Republican answer to appealing to alienated minorities. Here, he is promoting the myth that America was founded a Christian nation, and subtly hinting that non-belief, cannot be considered an American value. Thus, in two quotes, we have seen both women and atheists alienated. So that’s 155.6 million women, and 15% of Americans who claim no religion. That’s a lot of people to alienate. Rubio is following the conservative trend of telling people who does and doesn’t qualify as ‘American’. This in itself, is divisive. It works against the Republicans, because not only are their policies seen as having racist, sexist undertones; the rhetoric confirms it. They are shooting themselves. Rubio is also reflecting the Biblical free will myth. In the Bible this myth is simple; you are free to believe in the Christian God, but if you choose not to, you will be punished for eternity. Suddenly there is force, which means there is no freedom in choice. Republicans are similar. You are FREE in America to believe whatever you wish. But if you don’t believe what Republicans tell you, then you’re not American.
We’re not finished with Coulter yet. She of course, can alienate more people pretty quickly. On the subject of 9/11, Coulter needlessly and baseless-ly said:

If Chicago had been hit, I assure you New Yorkers would not have cared. What was stunning when New York was hit was how the rest of America rushed to New York’s defense. New Yorkers would have been like, “It’s tough for them; now let’s go back to our Calvin Klein fashion shows.”

- So now, that’s women, Atheists and the entire State of New York.
It may be unfair to pick on Coulter. She is not representative of the Republican Party. She describes herself as conservative, which of course the Republicans are also. But she isn’t a Republican congress person or Presidential candidate. She says ridiculous shit, because she has books to sell. She perpetuates stupidity, for financial gain. It isn’t Patriotism it is right winged anti-democratic solypsism, with its very very narrow understanding of what is decent and correct. The abusive levels these people will stoop for commercial purposes is possibly more telling that their disturbingly outdated views themselves.
Another commercial bigot, is Rush Limbaugh. On the subject of women, Limbaugh said:

“So Miss Fluke and the rest of you feminazis, here’s the deal. If we are going to pay for your contraceptives and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch

- Wealthy white conservative attitudes to women are simply a reactive response from a modern liberal inclusive culture that they very much dislike, because it threatens their unjustifiably privileged position in life.

We can however find just as much disturbing sentiment from Republicans in congress and Presidential candidates pretty easily, along with groups that support and fight for them. They are very dogmatic. Like a religion that never updates with the times. The Republicans, are a religious ideology unto themselves.

The Republican controlled State Senate of North Carolina voted to define marriage as between a man and a woman. Their main support group, “North Carolina Values Coalition”, whose benevolent overlord Tami Fitzgerald said this:

“the people of North Carolina would rise up and vote to keep the opposition from redefining traditional marriage.”

As i’ve noted before, using the term ‘traditional marriage’ comes with an intense amount of problems. Hopefully (and I will email and ask them this) they are going to be consistent and support Biblical marriage in its entirety. As I noted in a previous entry:#

Republicans must be against marriage, if the woman isn’t a virgin. As advocated in Deuteronomy 22:13-21.
Republicans must support the right for a man to have multiple concubines as justified in 2 Sam 5:13 and
2 Chron 11:21.
Republicans must support the right for a man to marry his kidnapped captive (though, only after shaving her head, obviously) as permitted in Deut. 21:11-13.
Republicans must support the right for a man to trade his wife, as property. As advocated in RUTH 4:5-10.
Republicans must support the right for a man to marry his rape victim, if he pays for her: Deut. 22:28.
Let’s be consistent Republicans!

- I look forward to seeing the bigoted bullshit of Tami Fitzgerald support the right for a man to trade his wife as property. Though, judging by Republican attitudes to women, it wouldn’t actually surprise me.
Her organisation went on to just invent ‘facts’:

“….the overwhelming body of social science evidence establishes that children do best when raised by their married mother and father.”

- This simply isn’t true. Along with the idea that sexuality is a choice, or can be cured this is an assertion completely discredited by the American Psychological Association. Here:

Do children of lesbian and gay parents have more problems with sexual identity than do children of heterosexual parents?For instance, do these children develop problems in gender identity and/or in gender role behavior? The answer from research is clear: sexual and gender identities (including gender identity, gender-role behavior, and sexual orientation) develop in much the same way among children of lesbian mothers as they do among children of heterosexual parents. Few studies are available regarding children of gay fathers.

Do children raised by lesbian or gay parents have problems in personal development in areas other than sexual identity?For example, are the children of lesbian or gay parents more vulnerable to mental breakdown, do they have more behavior problems, or are they less psychologically healthy than other children? Again, studies of personality, self-concept, and behavior problems show few differences between children of lesbian mothers and children of heterosexual parents. Few studies are available regarding children of gay fathers.

Are children of lesbian and gay parents likely to have problems with social relationships?For example, will they be teased or otherwise mistreated by their peers? Once more, evidence indicates that children of lesbian and gay parents have normal social relationships with their peers and adults. The picture that emerges from this research shows that children of gay and lesbian parents enjoy a social life that is typical of their age group in terms of involvement with peers, parents, family members, and friends.

Are these children more likely to be sexually abused by a parent or by a parent’s friends or acquaintances?There is no scientific support for fears about children of lesbian or gay parents being sexually abused by their parents or their parents’ gay, lesbian, or bisexual friends or acquaintances.

- So, what we are saying is that Tami Fitzgerald is simply homophobic. Her baseless bullshit is nothing but prejudice dressed up as reason. To ban two loving people from marriage, on the grounds of nothing but a book of fairy tales and private prejudice, is disgusting.
Similarly, Paul Ryan said that Mitt Romney would be a great “defender of marriage”. Against what? We all know he means against gay marriage. Which suggests he means that a gay couple willing to get marriage, let’s say, these two sweet old ladies, Cathy Glass and Carmeh Lawler….

….. are trying to ‘attack’ …. ‘traditional’ marriage. The language is important here. ‘Attack’. It suggests there is a purpose behind the desire of Cathy and Carmeh to get marriage… who have been together for 30 years….. other than just for love. Again, the prejudice is disgusting. The Republicans are on the wrong side of history, again. The opposition to gay equality will be viewed in much the same way as the opposition to civil rights 50 years ago is now viewed. Regressive, bigoted, hate filled and wrong.

So far….

Women.

The entire State of New York.

Atheists.

Gay people.

Children of gay parents.
Republicans are really racking up the list.

Of course we know Republicans main claim this election was to be on the side of the middle class. The mask slowly begins to slide when you note the way that Republicans have dealt with labor unions in the GOPs quest to turn Capitalism back to the industrial revolution. Firstly, we should take a look at the advancements made by labor unions and we should also note that these advancements were certainly not made with the support of people like Mitt Romney…
End of child labour; healthcare insurance; collective bargaining for wages; minimum wage; paid over time; 8 hour work day; outlawing of job discrimination based on race, colour, sex, or national origin; workers comp benefits for people injured at work. All of these gains would be entirely erased tomorrow, if Romney’s entitlement society for the wealthy were to prevail. They certainly had to be fought for.

So how to Republicans treat unions? The Republicans in 2011 voted through a number of bills with the express intention of weakening unions. Given that their main donors are massive corporate entities famed for shipping jobs abroad and keeping wages as low as physically possible, it isn’t a surprise. But these were not all bills designed to attack union leaders, or excessive union power (of which, there isn’t any). These were bills strictly designed to make it more difficult for workers to join unions in the first place. And it is all hidden behind the idea that only big business has a workers best interests at heart. Rep. Tim Walberg of Michigan said that unions:

“….taken actions that directly oppose American job providers.”

- The problem is, those ‘job providers’ main concern is profit, not person. Unions provide the person, not profit counterbalance. They are essential. To undermine unions, to underfund unions, to make it difficult for people to join unions – the very backbone of the middle class – is, well, a Corporate/Romney wet dream.
If we were to travel back to the 1950s labor unions were a positive part of everyday life. Corporations and unions acted together in a balanced way, as to be beneficial to everyone. Around the 1970s, that changed, and corporate America took on unions viciously. Mainly Republicans. And mainly for two reasons; large Corporate backing demanded it, and it weakened the Democrat Party. Interestingly, the media helped to distort or ignore the viewpoint of organised labor…. On the subject of the Delphi buyout, Progressive Review published how many paragraphs in the Washington Post, Detroit News and NY Times you had to read before reading the viewpoint of a union;
NY Times: 26 paragraphs.
Detroit Times: 22 paragraphs.
Washington Post: 11 paragraphs.
There has been a concerted effort to undermine unions for the past thirty years, and a Republican Party will not stop until unions have virtually no power. For some reason, even after the biggest economic crises bought on by deregulated greed of the ‘job creators’… the Republican Party is insistent that these people are our saviours.

Interestingly, nations with the highest Union membership; Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway, and Belgium….. all came out of the economic crises, pretty strong. And Denmark, Finland and Norway all came top of the UNs ‘World Happiness Report’, which takes into account job security, quality of work and life, and opportunities. Also, they are the most Atheist countries in the World, and have universal healthcare. I’m afraid the US comes in at 11th place. Perhaps looking to that EVIL SOCIALIST EUROPE! for inspiration isn’t all that bad an idea afterall.

Federal Judge James Leon Holmes, nominated by the Bush administration, once said of rape:

“Concern for rape victims is a red herring because conceptions from rape occur with approximately the same frequency as snowfall in Miami.”

- That’s right. He made a joke. He of course is only one of many Republicans who don’t particularly like rape victims. And it isn’t a new phenomena of stupidity either. In 1995 Republican Rep. Henry Aldridge told the House Appropriations committee:

“The facts show that people who are raped — who are truly raped — the juices don’t flow, the body functions don’t work and they don’t get pregnant. Medical authorities agree that this is a rarity, if ever.”

- There’s that appeal to ‘facts’ again. Republican facts. Not regular ACTUAL facts. And what was the context? That’s right, cutting funds to help poorer women get access to abortion. A disgusting manipulation of facts, to achieve a disgusting end. In fact, all medical institutions entirely refute the extraordinary claim Aldridge made here.
We all know that this line of reasoning is still alive, after over fifteen years since Aldridge made his ridiculous statement. Todd Akin said:

If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something.

- I’m not sure what qualifies as ‘legitimate rape’, other than exposing Akin’s own prejudicial lack of trust in women. And also, AGAIN with the inventing ‘facts’. Really, stop that!
The Republican position on ‘life’ seems to be pretty clear.

Onto race.
Usually I am not surprised by Republican racist quotes. But I must confess, this one shocked me. Arkansas State Rep. Jon Hubbard wrote a book in which he refers to slavery as:

A blessing in disguise.

He goes on to say that it is a blessing, because African Americans were:

“Rewarded with citizenship in the greatest nation ever established upon the face of the Earth.”

Rewarded! He actually said that. Rewarded. By their superiors.
And so it goes on….
Kansas State Senate Speaker Mike O’Neal sent an email to House Republicans which referred to Michelle Obama as “Mrs YoMamma”. This is the same Mike O’Neal who sent an email to friends regarding the President, quoting a Biblical passage which states:

7 When he is judged, let him come forth guilty,
And let his prayer become sin.
8 Let his days be few;
Let another take his office.
9 Let his children be fatherless
And his wife a widow.
10 Let his children wander about and beg;
And let them seek sustenance [a]far from their ruined homes.

He isn’t the only slightly insane racist Republican. Marily Davenport, an elected member of the Orange County Republican Party and central committee sent an email with the title “No birth certificate… now you know why!” with this picture attached:

- As well as this blatant racism, there is an underlying and subtle institutional sentimental racism behind certain Republican shows of disrespect from the moment Obama was elected. From heckling him in Congress, to refusing to meet at the White House for budget negotiations, to storming out of negotiations, to John Boehner being the first Speaker in history to deny the President’s request on a specific date to address a joint session of Congress. There is a mass of disrespect, as if the President simply isn’t worthy of their respect.

During the 1970s, the Nixon Administration employed the Southern Strategy in order to win over white voters who traditonally voted Democrat in the past, by appealing to Southern racism. The Nixon strategist who came up with the Souther Strategy, Kevin Phillips, in 1970 said this:

From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don’t need any more than that…but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That’s where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.

- This has been the position ever since.
The Senator for South Carolina Lindsey Graham in 2012 echoed the Southern Strategy of the Nixon years with this little gem of racist wisdom:

“The demographics race we’re losing badly. We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.”

Though it is now masked more creatively; economic opposition to affirmative action. Or Bill O’Reilly’s underhanded racist and sexist remark that:

“The white establishment is now the minority, and the voters, many of them, feel that the economic system is stacked against them and they want stuff. You are going to see a tremendous Hispanic vote for President Obama. Overwhelming black vote for President Obama. And women will probably break President Obama’s way. People feel that they are entitled to things and which candidate, between the two, is going to give them things?”

…. the stoking of the racist flames for electoral purposes is still a strong tactic of the Republican Party. O’Reilly went on to say that 20 years ago a candidate like Romney would have beaten Obama. And it’s true. We were still getting used to the idea of Neo-liberalism. Everyone loved it. It was going to trickle wealth down. Everyone was going to benefit. Communities would be lifted out of poverty…blah blah.. utter bullshit. We now know what that economic plan actually achieved; the wealthy like Romney got wealthier, exported jobs oversees, put most of their money into off-shore accounts to avoid actually having to help sustain a social safety net and ladder for others to climb, and then investing in destructive stock market deals that eventually collapsed and plummeted America into a deep recession. The only people who actually believe they are entitled to government handouts, are the very wealthy who for some odd reason have it into their minds that they made their wealth themselves, did not require a stable infrastructure of roads, policing, fire protection, schooling, health protection etc as a framework for wealth to be amassed, and so now having taken everything the well funded system offered them, insist they should not have to pay back into it to sustain it for the next generation. This is the entitlement society.

And do we really believe that Goldman Sachs, Adelson Drug Clinic, Bain Capital, Crow Holdings, Las Vegas Sands and other top corporate Republican Party donors didn’t want ‘stuff’ had Romney been elected? Did they simply donate out of the goodness of their heart? Las Vegas Sands spent $20,512,550. Pretty sure they could have ‘created’ thousands of jobs with those wasted funds.

We know that the by-product of tax cuts for the wealthy, especially in the south, is that African Americans get hit the hardest. From the 1960s to today, blatant racism through political process is deplored. So there are more abstract ways to achieve essentially the same racist policies based on white privilege. There is the subtle hint by people like O’Reilly that minorities like African Americans are the problem, due to Welfare. And so cutting entitlements and safety nets certainly has a racial element. We forget that the very reason welfare payments have risen, is because poorer African American communities were targeted for sub-prime mortgages that eventually pushed millions of people out of work, and unable to find work. This has nothing to do with a ‘culture of dependency’ it is simply a safety net for when the very Social-Darwinist system that people like Romney advocate so vehemently, fails miserably, but does not affect those who amassed fortunes when times were good.

As I noted in a previous article on race in America today:

Public Policy Polling of Raleigh North Carolina, found that 46% of Republican voters in Mississippi think interracial marriage should be illegal. 14% said they weren’t sure. I cannot comprehend that number. It does indeed show that race is an issue, and specifically with Republican voters.

- Whilst it is more subtle racism, the Republicans still give of the atmosphere of racism.

And of course, it is impossible not to mention Mitt Romney’s description of half the American electorate being those who want to live of the Government.

So, that’s

Women.

The entire State of New York.

Atheists.

Gay people.

Children of gay parents.

Anyone in a Union.

Anyone who has had an abortion.

Anyone who isn’t white.

Anyone who isn’t rich.

And then there is of course… appealing to irrational fear. Evolution will end my religious freedom ARGH!!! Gay people will end my religious freedom also ARGH!!!! Universal healthcare will kill my nan ARGH!!!! Putting top rate of tax back to what it was before Bush IS COMMUNISM ARGH!!! They are taking away my freedom!! ARGH!!! And you ask “How are they taking away your freedom” to vacant expressions from empty heads who simply repeat what Fox News has told them. Thinking people do not like being associated with a party of irrational fear.

The most disturbing thing about the Republican Party is their outward claim to be the party for freedom, liberty and individual rights, yet their complete abhorrence of anyone who isn’t like them. They are therefore willing to restrict the most fundamental rights; love, marriage, control of ones own body, as well as opportunity. To achieve this, there are three points of attack:
1. Subtly claim that the privilege currently given out to white, rich, heterosexual, christian males may be under threat. Offer no evidence for this. For example, there is no reason for anyone to believe that allowing Cathy and Carmeh to marry would somehow destroy Bill O’Reilly’s marriage.
2. Link it to “Being American”. Again, pose the anti-thesis of this line of reasoning, as ‘anti-American’. As if your life, or your freedoms are under threat.
3. Read selected Biblical passages. Ignore all context of passage, ignore surrounding passages, ignore all passages that you do not like.
4. Know that your audience is probably too busy to look up the evidence for what you’re saying, so just say every so often “the research is clear!” and apply it to your argument. Whether it’s clear or not.
They are willing to invent ‘facts’ and distort scientific research for their own horrid little bigoted agenda. It isn’t that they don’t know how to talk to minorities; it is simply that those minorities have long been defined as the enemies of America, by a very hostile Republican Party.

To appeal to a wider audience, they can’t just change Republican Party rhetoric to be a bit less vicious. They must change their fundamental principles. The idea of what an “American” is, they must no longer be so arrogant as to claim a monopoly on. They cannot keep up attacks on unionised labor. They must not speak of women as if they are 2nd to men. They must not allow Christian fundamentalism to take over the party. And most of all, they must not act and speak like they are the landlords of America, simply allowing African Americans and Latinos to live in their US. They must, in short, completely change. I am going to say this will take far longer than four years.

Election Day 2012

It is telling, just how desperate Republicans have become at this time, when ex Republican presidential candidate, endorser of Santorum, and ex-Reagan secretary for Planning and Budget in the Department of Education posts an article on his facebook wall accusing Obama of being a Marxist simply for using the term ‘Forward’:

The intense lack of focus on issues, on offering any sort of solutions is telling. Bauer offers nothing. No new ideas, no ingenuity. Simple, and ridiculous weak attacks on wording.
Bauer is a Christian. Deeply Christian. He believes secularism is destroying Christian values. In an article for ‘Campaign for Working Families’ Bauer states:

“The removal of the only reference to God from the Democratic Party platform is telling. Under Barack Obama the Democratic Party has become more secular and more hostile to faith-based voters. On issues ranging from the sanctity of life to traditional marriage, Obama’s Democratic Party has embraced positions contrary to the values of heartland America, values rooted in our Judeo-Christian traditions and expressed in our founding documents. Values voters will respond in November.”

Now, leaving aside the fact that America’s founding documents are a symbol of secularism and the Enlightenment… not Christian values; if we’re judging people by their wording, as Bauer did by posting that article, he must be consistent, here’s a speech from Hitler, in 1933:

“Today they say that Christianity is in danger, that the Catholic faith is threatened. My reply to them is: for the time being, Christians and not international atheists are now standing at Germany’s fore. I am not merely talking about Christianity; I confess that I will never ally myself with the parties which aim to destroy Christianity.”

- Sounds a lot like every speech Bauer ever makes. If he has the nerve to suggest Obama is a Marxist because he used the term ‘forward’ in his campaign, then we must be consistent and say that Gary L Bauer is a Nazi. Probably Hitler himself. See how easy it is? This has been the Republican strategy for about four years.

Onto the main topic of this article.
Today is election day in the US. And whilst most of the World cannot fathom why any reasonable human being would vote for a bigoted and economically illiterate Romney Presidency; the polls are pretty even. I even heard a suggestion that New Hampshire might be the State to play kingmaker.

I laid out in a previous article Why the Romney economic plan based on ‘job creators’ is a manipulation of fact and devoid of all reason. Today i’d quite like to lay out the accomplishments of President Obama. We know he hasn’t always been the President that expectation demanded of him back in 2008, but that’s not to say he hasn’t achieved a heck of a lot of good, and progress in the past four years despite two years of Republican (and right winged Christian) attempts to derail his agenda at every possible opportunity; usually without regard for the national interest.

Obama’s biggest achievement must be the Healthcare Act. Now that the fear has died down… fear created and perpetuated by a Republican Party that consider anything slightly left of Mussolini to be “Socialism”, people seem to be starting to like the idea of ‘Obamacare’. Of course, it isn’t ideal. The ideal is universal healthcare. We can bicker about “Omg it’s socialism!!!” all we want. We can even bicker about if government is capable of providing healthcare, on a very fundamental basis if we want. But we must look at the facts. Here is what the World Health Organisation says about two systems. The American private insurer system (before Obamacare), and the British National Healthcare system.

Life Expectancy M/F
USA: 76/81
UK: 78/82

Distribution of causes of death among children aged <5 years (%)
USA – Injuries: 22
UK – Injuries: 4

Case detection rate for all forms of tuberculosis (%):
UK: 94
USA: 89

Under-five mortality rate (probability of dying by age 5 per 1000 live births):
UK: 5
USA 8

Adult mortality rate (probability of dying between 15 and 60 years per 1000):
UK: 77
USA: 106

Per capita total expenditure on health at average exchange rate (US$):
UK: 3285
USA: 7410

General government expenditure on health as a percentage of total government expenditure:
UK: 15.1%
USA: 18.7%

A quick analysis suggests that the UK pays less per capita, our government spends less on our health system than the US, and yet we have “Socialised” healthcare, we’re living longer, and our children are less likely to die at a young age. And yet, all of this is grossly overlooked in favour of ideological dogma regardless of how backward, and ultimately deadly it is. And it isn’t just the UK, look to Sweden, Norway, and any other industrialised, civil society with a universal healthcare model, and you will see similar results. A private healthcare system is not only horrendously barbaric, it doesn’t work.
Obama has made progress in correcting that problem.
For all their concern about the deficit, Republicans choose to ignore the FACT that the Congressional Budget Office stated that ‘Obamacare’ will reduce the deficit. Here, see for yourself: CBO Report. To repeal it, would cost around $230bn. Another CBO report states that in the next ten years, ‘Obamacare’ will cover a further 33,000,000 Americans who otherwise would have no coverage (the very idea of not being covered for healthcare, baffles and disgusts me). Here, see for yourself CBO Report. NOT ONLY THAT but ‘Obamacare’ incentivises small businesses by offering a 50% tax credit, if they insure their workers.
Republicans adding to the deficit, whilst making life harder for average people, whilst enriching wealthy insurers, whilst ignoring small businesses? SURELY NOT!

Republican interest and ‘disgust’ at the size of the Obama stimulus slowly verge on hypocritical when we see who was actually anti-stimulus. Take this man, for example:

This is former House of Reps Republican in Delaware, Mike Castle. He voted to kill the stimulus bill, the health reform bill, financial regulation reform etc etc etc. On the stimulus package, Mike Castle said this:

“We cannot spend our way back to economic prosperity,”

He hates the idea of a stimulating the economy! Doesn’t think government should stimulate the economy. So, obviously he’s going to be consistent in his condemnation, right? Well, no.
… Castle then accepted $5,230,610 of stimulus money, stating:

These grants, totaling more than $5 million, will help the invaluable organizations and programs which are working to help the homeless, hungry, and those facing economic hardship throughout the State.

- Suddenly, government CAN help to eleviate poverty, and hunger, and provide help to the most vulnerable. Republicans oppose programs in order to entice their over privileged support base, and then cowardly support the program when it might win them some votes among the less wealthy in their constituencies.

Every Romney/Republican Speech is a vomit inducing display of feigned patrotism. …. “What would I do?.. Well i’d make America great again!” It seems, if you lack any detailed plan for running the highest office on the planet, then the next best thing is to win over idiots, with sentimental nonsense.

Economically, whilst it’s slow, the US economy is growing. If we contrast that with the austerity lead (Romney-esque) governments across the World, we see a different story. Austerity has failed everywhere. The UK has had to endure three years of it, and so far we’ve had another huge recession (the biggest since the 1950s) no growth over the entire year, and horribly stagnating wages. It fails. The opposite is true of the Obama economy. It is moving in the right direction. If you think slow Keynesian inspired growth is bad, then you’re REALLY going to hate Romney inspired recession.

Taxes too high? Well, if you’re a Republican prone to ‘make shit up’ then yes. But, if you rely on evidence, as the Washington Post did, you will see that:

“A USA Today analysis found last year that if we include everything — federal, state, and local taxes, including income, property, sales, and other taxes — the percentage of personal income that’s paid in taxes is still at its lowest level since 1950.”

And since when has it become acceptable, and in fact, preferable, for a ‘business minded’ person to be a President? Businesses are run for profit. People are very much a secondary concern. Democratic accountability does not exist in a business setting. I cannot vote for who runs the gas and electricity companies. I can move to another. Yet, there are very few, and all of them offer poor service. The object is money. It is profit. People become statistics. The interest of business leaders, is to enrich themselves. They are economically illiterate, and dangerous. Their word, it seems, is taken as gospal. This couldn’t be proven any more than in the UK. In 2010, before the general election, 35 of the Nation’s top business leaders signed a petition in support of the Chancellor George Osborne’s austerity plan. They said, quite amusingly:

There is no reason to think that the pace of consolidation envisaged in the Budget will undermine the recovery. Business is amoral. It is regulated it prevent it becoming immoral. Business minds are self interest. This, of course, is not always a terrible thing. A majority of the time, it works. But at its most fundamental, it is dangerous.

The private sector should be more than capable of generating additional jobs to replace those lost in the public sector, and the redeployment of people to more productive activities will improve economic performance, so generating more employment opportunities.

- Two and a half years later, the ‘pace of consolidation envisaged in the Budget’ has absolutely choked off recovery. The private sector has not generated any additional jobs. We hit another recession. And wages stagnated. This is the legacy of listening to those with a ‘business’ mind when it comes to national governance.

The repealing of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell must rank up there with great liberal policies, alongside civil rights legislation of the 1960s (which of course, conservatives opposed). Obama also admitted, tacitly, that he is no longer opposed to gay marriage. This was a risky move, but showed courage and conviction, when faced with such hostile bigotry. Whilst in Michigan, I saw a Republican billboard with “Obama supports gay marriage, and abortion…. do you?” And I thought…. Yes. I do. Because i’m not a crazed Christian bigoted fundamentalist from the 4th Century. To prevent full rights to loving couples, based soley on a very fundamental and selective view of a Biblical passage is so thoroughly beyond the realm of reason, it should be ridiculed, and argued against, and kept as far away from public policy as possible. If we are to continue to believe that the concept of marriage is based entirely on Biblical principles, then, like with Bauer, we must be consistent:
Republicans must be against marriage, if the woman isn’t a virgin. As advocated in Deuteronomy 22:13-21.
Republicans must support the right for a man to have multiple concubines as justified in 2 Sam 5:13 and
2 Chron 11:21.
Republicans must support the right for a man to marry his kidnapped captive (though, only after shaving her head, obviously) as permitted in Deut. 21:11-13.
Republicans must support the right for a man to trade his wife, as property. As advocated in RUTH 4:5-10.
Republicans must support the right for a man to marry his rape victim, if he pays for her: Deut. 22:28.
Let’s be consistent Republicans!

Gaddafi. Bin Laden. Weakened Mubarak’s position by telling him to reform, or step down. Has not jumped into conflict with Iran, relying instead on diplomacy, but also strong with providing sanctions on Iran by signing into law a bill to punish companies aiding Iran’s petroleum sector.

Between 2010 and 2011, Obama increased Department of Veterans Affairs budget by 26%. Conversely, Paul Ryan suggested cutting aid to Veterans who do not suffer from combat caused medical problems. Essentially, Republicans (strong national defence) are happy to use you to defend the country, and then forget about you when you get home, and paint you as a drain on the economy. Let’s not forget that those cuts to Veterans benefits would be paid for, by a massive tax cut for the wealthiest.

Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure Act, EPA restrictions on toxic pollution. Omnibus Public Lands Management Act expanding wilderness protection. Cancelled anti-ballistic missile systems set to be placed in Czech and Poland, saving $1.4bn. Kickstarted renewable energy research through stimulus funding on unprecedented scale. Used diplomacy to convince BP to put aside a $20 billion fund for victims of Gulf oil spill, without any power to force them to do so. Children’s Health Insurance Authorization Act provides coverage for 4 million more children by raising taxes on tobacco. And for me, one of the most overlooked and yet most vital advancements the US has to thank President Obama for, is the ending of Bush-era restrictions on stem cell research. This is perhaps the most important scientific area of research at the moment. For Republicans to deny it, is a disgrace.

President Obama has achieved a lot in four years, despite Republicans opposing absolutely everything, and ensuring the word ‘Socialism’ is forever attached to anything Obama says or does. It is of course a basic misunderstanding of what Socialism is. The definition becomes irrelevant because the word is enough to strike irrational fear. The use of terms like ‘Socialism’ or the obsession with dethroning the President by suggesting his isn’t American, or any other empty attack point goes to prove nothing more than the fact that the Republican Party has absolutely no solution for any problem. It just wants power.

I cannot believe a country that has come so far forward in four years, would elect to fall twenty years into the past.
This is why I am certain President Obama should be given four more years.

EDIT: And has now been given four more years. Excellent choice America.

Racism in America: Today

When the United States was beginning to form, there was a hierarchy of oppression that kept everyone subservient to someone above them. The King of England demanded goods from the Jamestown white elite who exploited and controlled the white frontiersman who, in order to appease the elite with money and land, slaughtered Indigenous people and brutalized African slaves. Many whites joined Indigenous and African rebellions. The white elite worked to stop this because they knew such an alliance would become too powerful and would succeed at overthrowing the control that the elite and the King had. So in order to separate the whites from everyone else, they started giving more privileges (land and better treatment) to the white servants. This worked. The working class whites effectively abandoned the movements for change and to this day these groups have problems working together.
- Howard Zinn, 1980.

46% of American Republicans in the State of Mississippi believe that interracial marriage should be illegal. I will elaborate on and explain this later.

After my blog on the racism of Abraham Lincoln, I wondered whether race is still a divisive issue today as it has always been, in America. In the UK, race is still an issue, though it is far more subtle and much less noticeable, but it exists nonetheless. There isn’t this notion of white supremacy, nor do we have the history of the “founders” being slave owners or massive racial segregation up until very recently. We don’t have a KKK equivalent and we didn’t fight a civil war to protect the rights of States to own slaves. Race is certainly a problem in the UK though. We tend to become far more Nationalist during times of economic hardship and the need to blame immigrants or anyone who doesn’t happen to fit the narrow band of what it means to be “British” becomes an almost accepted narrative. Political parties push immigration reform to the top of their agendas, giving credit to such racial tension. Race is used as a divisive mechanism to subvert attention away from a failing class system.

Here in the UK, with talk of economic austerity, it was only a matter of time before the issue of race was introduced into the equation. We know that poorer areas like inner city Liverpool, Manchester, and Hackney are going to face the toughest council cuts. Low socio-economic areas are predominantly mixed race or black and Asian. So it was only a matter of time before David Cameron would bring race into the mix. He then suddenly made a speech against multiculturalism, in which he mentions the words “islam” and “muslim” 36 times, and “Christianity” once. Race is yet again being used as a divisive wedge.

Back to the USA, and the 19th Century, before the Civil War. It has long been argued by the rather hermetic Southern America that the Civil war was a war between the States (the South) and the big bad Federal Government (the North). Yes. The States rights to own and perpetuate slavery. The charge against a big bad Federal Government invading the lives of its citizens does not hold up when you look at the evidence, and is actually rather rudimentary.

The American lawyer and journalist William Walker, in 1854, after a failed attempt to set up a Republic of Sonora in Mexico, with the intention of it becoming a State of the Union; invaded Nicaragua for control of a vital trade route between New York and San Francisco. He succeeded in his efforts, and took control of Nicaragua, renaming it “Walkeragua” (seriously, i’m not making this up). In 1856, President Franklin Pierce, officially recognised Walker’s regime in Walkeragua as legitimate. His regime began to Americanise Walkeragua, by instating slavery, using American currency, and making English the official language. He advertised his new Country to American Southern businessmen by advertising the fact that his new quasi-State was pro-slavery and would remain so. By the time Walker revoked Nicaragua’s 1824 Emancipation Act, the rest of Latin America took note, and invaded. He fled and was bought back to the U.S where he was welcomed as a hero of the South. As “States rights” go, invading another sovereign nation and revoking its anti-slavery laws, is about as big and as bad as a Federal Government can get. He died before the Civil War kicked off, but the South referred to him throughout the Civil War as “General Walker“. The South did not just fight to preserve the institution of slavery, they wanted to expand it, on a grand scale, to the point where Senator John Crittenden of Kentucky proposed that the 36°30′ parallel north be a line that separates the northern free states, and the southern slave states, all the way down to the tip of South America. American racism has always been rife.

In 2011, membership of white supremacist organisations has increased tremendously. According the the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks white supremacist organisations in the US, the number of members is up by 48% since 2000. Jeff Schoep, head of the National Socialist Movement (the Nazi Movement) in America, who the FBI classify as terrorists, said:

“The immigration issue is the biggest problem we’re facing because it’s changing the face of our country. We see stuff in England and Spain like this. … They are turning those countries into a Third World ghetto.”

Well, I live in England, and he’s right!!! Here is the River Thames in Central London a few years back:

Here is the River Thames in Central London today:

Sad times.

The largest white supremacist group in America; Stormfront have a website with a forum, which includes systematic attacks on white jewish people. They appear to use “Jew” as a term of race. White, black, Jew. On a discussion about the economic crises, a member called “Crowstorm” whose nationality he has set as “Jewnited States of America” says this:

The problem is, Jews look White so when people see a Jew do evil, they don’t say “look at the evil Jew”… no, they say “look at that evil White man.

- It is an odd statement to make for a variety of reasons. First, a Jewish person is not the colour “Jewish“. It isn’t white, black, jew. If he’s a white man and Jewish, then he’s a white Jew. Jewish is not a race. But not just that, but race itself is not biological. It doesn’t exist. It is a fantasy. An abstraction. Like Nationality and Religion. All man made abstractions, meaningless nothingness used to create tension between low socio-economic groups to ensure disunity. If poor white people are blaming poor black people for all the trouble in New Orleans after Katrina hit, then their attention is on each other, and not on the very rich folk in Washington (both white and black) who washed their hands of the plight of anyone who isn’t a very wealthy lobbyist decades ago. And lastly, no one says “look at the evil white man”, because for the vast majority of people, race isn’t an issue; if you’re evil, I don’t care what colour you are.

Another quite extraordinary post on Stormfront was from a school teacher who taught apparently in black schools. Here are some of the quotes from it:

I was away about two minutes but when I got back, the black girls had lined up at the front of the classroom and were convulsing to the delight of the boys.

Many black people, especially women, are enormously fat.

Blacks, on average, are the most directly critical people I have ever met: “Dat shirt stupid. Yo’ kid a bastard. Yo’ lips big.” Unlike whites, who tread gingerly around the subject of race, they can be brutally to the point.

When a black wants to ask, “Where is the bathroom?” he may actually say “Whar da badroom be?”

Many black girls are perfectly happy to be welfare queens.

There is something else that is striking about blacks. They seem to have no sense of romance, of falling in love.

Pregnancy was common among the blacks, though many black girls were so fat I could not tell the difference.

My white students came back with generally “conservative” ideas. “We need to cut off people who don’t work,” was the most common suggestion. Nearly every black gave a variation on the theme of “We need more government services.” One black girl was exhorting the class on the need for more social services and I kept trying to explain that people, real live people, are taxed for the money to pay for those services. “Yeah, it come from whites,” she finally said. “They stingy anyway.”

It is impossible to get them to care about such abstractions as property rights or democratic citizenship.

- The “teacher” goes on to say he doesn’t understand why his black students think he his a racist. Surely it isn’t racist to think that black students are inherently lazy, fat, illiterate, racist, anti-democratic, communist sluts who just don’t understand why being indoctrinated in Conservative ideology is a wonderful learning experience and are incapable of love?

The days of burning crosses and wearing silly costumes are over. White supremacists tend now to fight their cause with mainstream language like “We just want to protect our children and live in a safe environment“, the language is manipulative because they are simply masking the fact that they blame anyone with slightly darken skin for why their neighborhood isn’t safe.

A study by the American economic review between July 2001 and May 2002 entitled “Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination.” , found that job applicants with a white sounding name are 50% more likely to be asked back than an applicant with a white sounding name. The researches sent out 5000 applications in sales, marketing, clerical and customer service positions. The names they used were a mix of white sounding names, and black sounding names. The report showed that white applicants with stronger resumes than other white applicants received 30% more callbacks, whereas black applicants with stronger resumes than other black applicants received just 9% more callbacks. It proved that regardless of credentials, black applicants were 50% less likely to get a callback than a white applicant.

Institutional racism is particularly subtle, and so less noticeable. If you are black, you are three times more likely to be pulled over in your car and searched for drugs than if you’re white, despite the fact that if you’re white, on the few occasions when you are pulled over you are four times more likely to have drugs on you. If you are white and you drive past the police without them pulling you over, you are experiencing the privilege of being white. The war on drugs then, is not a war on drugs, if it were, those statistics would be a hell of a lot different. The war on drugs would go where the drugs actually are, not where the people with dark skin are. It is a racist institution.

Christopher Columbus is hailed as the founder of America. He has a day named after him. It is not taught in any history class at American schools the true horror that started the day that Columbus found an island in the Lucayan Archipelago in the Bahamas that he named San Salvador, though it was actually already named, by the population who lived there, as Guanahani. Within years, Spanish adventurers had captured thousands of the native Taino population, enslaved them, and took their women captive as wives/sex slaves. The Spanish had utterly devastated the Taino population by the turn of the 16th Century. Epidemic disease brought by the Europeans was bad enough, but the Spanish settlers placed too much strain on local crop farmers, and the survival of the Spanish was considered more important than the survival of the Taino’s and so the food naturally ended up in the hands of the Spanish. Columbus when he landed, wrote of the natives:

“We can send from here, in the name of the Holy Trinity, all the slaves and Brazil wood which could be sold.”

- We know what he had planned. Nicolas Ovando, the governor of the Indies from 1501 to 1509, decided he needed to ensure the Taino’s knew their place once and for all. He did this by inviting the much loved Taino queen Anacoana and local tribal chiefs to a dinner to celebrate his governorship. When they were all in the room, the Spaniards set it on fire, killing most of those inside. The ones who got out, were tortured for days on end and then killed. Queen Anacoana was tortured and hung. By 1510, the Taino’s were virtually extinct.

To be honest, there really isn’t much you can celebrate about Columbus. Apart from bringing with him the biggest genocide in history, he was a rather simple man. He believed Cuba was in Asia, that he hadn’t discovered a new land, that the entire continent of South America was an Island, and to pay his debt to the Spanish crown he raped his way across Central America taking as many as 1200 women and children slaves for Europe; children who had, without a second thought, been stripped away from their families. But don’t take my word for, take it from the man himself:

“We shall take you and your wives, and your children, and shall make slaves of them, and we shall take away your goods, and shall do you all the mischief and damage that we can, and we protest that the deaths and losses which shall accrue from this are your fault .”

I cannot think of a worse man to idolise.

Back to the present day, as if Stormfront and institutional racism and selective history aren’t enough to convince a person that racism is deeply ingrained in the American psyche, certain lovely little advertisements have deep racist connotations, still.

Aunt Jemima, a trademark for breakfast food owned by Quaker Oats is still going today. Aunt Jemima represents the notion of a good little black ex-slave girl who just loves her servile role as servant to a white middle class consumer.

Equally as subtle, is Uncle Ben’s rice. It would be ridiculous for a company now, to have as its fictional spokesperson, a black man using the name “Uncle” which was a term used by the children of white slave owners to refer to their slaves. If a newly formed rice company were to say “Well, you know that we white people used to ship Africans in to farm our rice fields, as slaves? Well why don’t we make our spokesmen black?” they would be lambasted as a hugely racist company. But Uncle Ben is a tradition, and so it appears acceptable, though the stereotype behind it perpetuates the racist sentiments it subtly encourages. This kind of subtle cultural racism has not gone unnoticed. In an episode of the Sopranos (the greatest show on TV) Tony warns a black guy away from his daughter. Tony then has an anxiety attack when he sees a packet of Uncle Ben’s.

Public Policy Polling of Raleigh North Carolina, found that 46% of Republican voters in Mississippi think interracial marriage should be illegal. 14% said they weren’t sure. I cannot comprehend that number. It does indeed show that race is an issue, and especially with Republican voters. There is still the essence that the white race is superior and should be protected. This sentiment has found its outlet with the Tea Party movement of recent months. Whilst Glenn Beck spews his bullshit, insisting on top rated “news” channel that Obama has a deep seated hatred for the white race, his equally as vacant and mind numbingly moronic viewers stalk the streets with signs like this:

And this:

And this:

And this:

And this:

Now I wouldn’t immediately jump to the conclusion that the Tea Party is an inherently racist organisation, it is mainly a vehicle to promote the incoherent ramblings of an uneducated economically far right puritanical Republican group wholly run by Corporate America to advance its interest at the behest of even the idiots who indirectly fight for the rights of Corporate America, now slowly morphed to include racism as part of their base.

It is sad to see notion of race being such an issue in 21st Century America. One would have hoped that the social wedge of racism, placed to draw attention away from class and a deeply unequal wealth system would have crumbled away, or intellectually and politically dismembered for the disease that it is. Race is not real. Class is.

The Corporatocracy

In 2010 the U.S Supreme Court over turned limitations to Corporations financing political broadcasts in the U.S. They argued that to limit financing from Corporations would be an attack on their first Amendment rights. They didn’t however set how why they have defined Corporations as some kind of living organism that has political rights in the first place. It is a worrying precedent. It means all of a sudden that Corporations are like people. Only richer and more powerful, with very different interests. People tend to vote for safe jobs, better healthcare, safe products, and a decent level of funding for education. Corporations want weak labour laws, low Corporate taxes, and regulations (safe products?) as minimal as possible.

A lifeless, soulless, dead entity like a Corporation, having the rights assigned to people, is an awful step in the wrong direction. Should a Corporation like ITT have rights, in the US? ITT owned 25% of Focke-Wulf, the manufacturer of the Luftewaffe Nazi aircraft that was used to shoot down American airplanes during the war. It then won $27,000,000 in compensation after the Allied’s bombed the Focke-Wulf factory during the war. ITT also made radar and radio equipment used by the Nazis. ITT were funding the killing of Allied troops. ITT also helped to fund Pinochet’s control over Chile. One of the most evil dictators in the World. Colonel Sosthenes Behn, the head of ITT during the war, was laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery for his service to the Country.

Exxon, whose named used to be Standard Oil of New Jersey, are responsible for shipping oil to the Nazis, even after Pearl Harbour. They also contributed, through a bunch of subsidiary companies, to Himmler’s personal fund. They now have the same rights as US citizens.

Profit before people.

The 2010 ruling means that climate change takes a back seat because it isn’t in the interest of oil companies. That the 1% of scientists who dispute man made climate change will be the only ones who are listened to. American Petroleum Institute, whose members include Exxon, have began to finance mainly Republican candidates this year. Martin Durbin, API’s executive vice president for government affairs quite openly said:

“At the end of the day, our mission is trying to influence the policy debate.”

Koch Industries Inc, gave $1.79mn to candidates. 90% of those candidates were Republicans. This of course comes as President Obama proposed ending subsidies for Gas and Electric companies by 2012. Apparently those companies aren’t happy that their Welfare cheque is about to be scrapped. A Welfare cheque that adds up to over $45bn. Their Republican bitches will of course defend them. But no universal healthcare! Healthy citizens = bad. Rich oil companies = great.

Republicans in the US House of Reps voted to cut off all funding to the UN Climate Change panel, the IPCC, because according to Blaine Luetkemeyer, a Missouri Republican:

“The IPCC is an entity that is fraught with waste and fraud, and engaged in dubious science, which is the last thing hard-working American taxpayers should be paying for”

The idea that it is “dubious science” is laughable. And the phrase “hard working Americans” is an empty one. Those same hard working Americans, I doubt want to see their money going to a mass of Corporate tax cuts either. Blaine Luetkemeyer’s claim of “dubious” apparently isn’t without irony, given that in 2004 he introduced a bill, based on Biblical principles, to the Missouri State Legislature, to define marriage as between a man and a woman. All for personal “freedom” as long as he gets to define what “freedom” means.

One the “dubious science” claim surrounding Climate Change, it always seems to come from Republicans. So I wondered why that could be? And then I found this. It shows Oil company contributions for 2010, and which Party – Republican or Democrat – those funds went primarily to. I think it’s pretty conclusive.

Roy Blunt, the United States Senator, from Missouri and whose campaign funds came mainly from big oil ($293,400 altogether) opposes cap and trade and supports drilling for oil on US coastlines. The League of Conservation Voters, who work to turn environmental issues into national priorities said that Blunt is:

“In his twelve years in office, Rep. Roy Blunt has taken good care of Big Oil by maintaining their costly tax breaks while continually voting against opportunities to create clean energy jobs, reduce pollution and improve fuel economy for Missourians,”

One wonders who runs the World? What a wretched democracy we all seem so proud of.

America is not the only country who laughably refer to their Corporatocracy as a Democracy. Britain is just as bad. Our Tory Government is funded heavily by the financial sector and very wealthy individuals. Apparently there is no money left to pay for the care of disabled people, or to keep arts centres open. But there is money, for a 83% tax payer owned bank to offer its CEO a £4.5mn bonus in shares, on top of his 3.2mn bonus for 2010. There is enough money to give one man, a bonus (on top of his salary) of £7.7mn. We are still an economy controlled by the Financial sector. It is not Capitalism.

The Municipal Governing Body of Greater London is the City of London Corporation. It’s main control is over the City of London financial district. There are residents whom live there, but their vote is not very important, given that the majority of the votes for that region, are given to Corporations. They are called “non-residential voters”. Corporate voters. A Corporation may appoint a number of people to cast votes on its behalf based on how many employees it has. The employees don’t get a say, the CEO gets the vote. Those who are appointed voters can vote twice. Once for their Corporation and once for their own vote. Residents of the area can only vote once. It is one big Corporatocracy. The Republicans over in the States would be proud. They’d some how manage to refer to it as “freedom” and “giving power back to people“.

Corporate regulation is essential. Corporations have one legal requirement: profit. Humans, i’d argue are motivated not just by profit, but also by compassion, loyalty, doing the right thing, the advancement of the species and survival. Corporations, by law, must ignore all that stuff if it conflicts with their ability to make profit, and that is a dangerous thing.

Today we learnt that the Tory Government’s next line of attack against its much hated public sector (which, again, remember did no wrong, and caused no problems itself) is the attack on public sector pensions, because they are unfair in relation to private sector pensions. Well, instead of forcing equal misery across the public sector to match that of the private sector, why don’t you make the private sector pay up more?

Damn right i’m a Marxist, especially in this climate of horrendous shock right winged economics.

Let’s stop referring to Corporatocracy as Democratic.
Let’s stop referring to Corporatocracy as freedom.
Let’s stop blaming government for failings, when Government is pretty much owned by the Corporate World.

The point is, Corporations do not deserve rights. They are not people. Government is supposed to work for the people, not for the very wealthy, and at the moment there is no government in the Western World that is not wholly run for the benefit of the very wealthy. It is not democracy. It is not at all what the Founders envisaged.

A place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes

Born like this
Into this
Into these carefully mad wars
Into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness
Into bars where people no longer speak to each other
Into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings
Born into this
Into hospitals which are so expensive that it’s cheaper to die
Into lawyers who charge so much it’s cheaper to plead guilty
Into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed
Into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes
- Charles Bukowski

Whilst David Cameron continues to sell arms to violent nations, ignoring the fact that hundreds of fellow Brits are stranded in Tripoli, I thought I’d give you a bit of context on how Tories tend to view those who don’t own a great deal of wealth. Tory Peer Lord Lang, The Chairman of the Advisory Committee on Business appointments has announced that the committee that looks into business employing former ministers, said that he would only accept people to his panel:

“who had experience and proven success in a relatively important profession or trade – somebody who had achieved distinction – rather than a waitress or bus driver.”

- A beautifully elitist attitude if ever I saw one.

One should also bring into view, the alleged fraudulent behavior of Lord Lang in the past. He is a part-time director of Marsh & McLennan, a US company, and the World’s biggest insurance brokers. In 2004 they settled out of court, for massive fraud. They had moved clients toward insurers who Marsh and McLennan had payoff agreements with. They also solicited rigged bets for insurance contracts from those insurers. The CEO resigned and they settled out of court.

Another bad news week for the economic situation. Osborne must be wondering how long he can keep saying “obviously these figures are concerning” before he starts to realise he’s absolutely to blame.
Firstly, over here in the U.K, the government and it’s slightly more mental-than-usual support base spent Monday singing the praises of the horrifically dogmatic Libertarian George Osborne because public sector net borrowing showed a £3.7bn surplus. Rising VAT and raping public services of all funds brought in more money? Who’d have thought it!!! Of course there would be a surplus rise. I am not sure why that’s even news. I don’t think that most Tory supporters understood the point of public sector net borrowing and how it is funded.

This is evident with today’s announcement, that the UK economy shrunk worse than expected in the final sector of 2010. Initial reports said the economy shrunk by 0.5%. Comically, Osborne (remember, this man is our Chancellor) blamed the snow. Now it turns out the economy shrunk by 0.6%. If you look at the ONS figures from 2008 recession, to now, it tells quite an impressive story. Recession struck, and GDP fell massively. From 2009 to the end of 2010, the economy was growing and actually recovering substantially. And then Tory policies took hold, and the economy is shrinking again. The ONS figures show that if we don’t experience some sort of miracle bounce, we are about to hit a double dip recession very soon.

To give you a bit of context, since mid-2010, construction output has fell 2.5%, household expenditure fell 0.1%, utilities output fell by 4.6%, mining output fell by 4.5%. Here is the graph:

Anyone who looks at this graph and believes the Government know what they’re doing, is seriously deluded.
If you look at employment figures, they were recovering up until the last quarter of 2010. Now, they are worsening. It isn’t surprising given that the Government has decided to kick another 40,000 people out of work at the NHS. The cutting of simply back office staff (as if that’s a good thing anyway) is ridiculous, it will hit front line services.

Predictably Danny Alexander at the treasury couldn’t answer why the situation was worse than previously expected, without starting his sentence with “Well, we inherited…blah blah utter bollocks“.

This of course wont affect Gideon Osborne, who is a trust fund baby. He will never be insecure. He will never struggle. This is because Osborne is set to inherit a 15% stake in a wallpaper and fabrics company called Osborne & Little. He is worth £4,000,000. Despite this, he flipped his second home in order to pay less capital gains tax. The Lib Dems found that Osborne owed £55,000 in Parliamentary expenses abuses on his second home. Quite comically, he spent £47 of taxpayers money on a copy of a DVD of his own speech on “value for taxpayers money“.

As the misery is spreading, due to the less fortunate being expected to pick up the bill for the extravagances of the very fortunate, there is wonderful news for the banks. RBS, despite recording a loss of £1.1bn, gave out bonuses close to £1bn for 2010. Apparently nothing has changed since 2007. But then it isn’t surprising, we apparently as a nation collectively decided that to beat right winged economics and its massive failings, we need more right winged economics.

This is even more evident in the U.S. After the Republicans in Congress decided they will be forcing through some incredibly steep spending cuts, and a very weak Obama tacitly accepting, the Wisconsin assembly have voted to strip public workers of their collective bargaining rights.

What a horrible World we live in, when we decide it is more important for the owners of capital to treat humanity as a commodity, than it is for those people to live securely.

Essentially, what the Governments of the UK and US are telling us, is we do not understand what is best for us. What is best for us, apparently, is letting the private sector exploit as much as it wants, without us being able to stop it. They have cleverly managed to take a crises caused by Neoliberalism, and use it to push through some of the most Victorian style Neoliberal reforms we’ve ever had the misfortune to have forced upon us. The market doesn’t set wages. The base rate is set by very greedy employers. For this, unions are essential. I would urge all public sector workers in Wisconsin to collectively walk out. Let’s see just how unimportant Republicans think you are then.

Don’t let them tell you it is democratic. Being controlled by one CEO whom you cannot overthrow no matter how much you value your 2nd Amendment right to bare arms against tyrants, a CEO who is not accountable to you and whose main function is profit; being controlled by him, is not democracy and it is not freedom. It is Corporate tyranny.

Meanwhile David Cameron gave us his multiculturalism is dead speech, in which he mentioned the words “muslim” and “Islam” 36 times, in a 20 minute speech. Racism has always been a tool used by the fortunate to stifle collective action.

Thomas More once commented that

In fact, when I consider any social system that prevails in the World, I can’t, so help me God, see it as anything but a conspiracy of the rich to advance their own interests under the pretext of organising society. They think up all sorts of tricks and dodges, first for keeping safe their ill gotten gains, and then for exploiting the poor by buying their labour as cheaply as possible.”

When you analyse the rhetoric, it would appear that Thomas More was correct. The pretext of organising society after the financial crash has run thusly:

The Financial institutions should be bailed out.

The Public Sector should pay for the failings.

People will lose their jobs as a result of cuts.

Benefits for the unemployed must be cut, even as six people chase one job.

Help the one person who gets the job, fuck the other five.

Massive tax cuts for the wealthy.

Play on racial tensions.
One wonders how it has managed to get to this point. But it isn’t new. Racism has always been played upon, during time of crises.
During the American Civil War, very wealthy white Southerners managed to convinced poor white Southerners to go and fight for their right to keep black slaves. Why? How were they convinced that slavery would be beneficial to everyone? Well, they weren’t convinced. Racism was played up and the economic consequences were played down. If you convince a bunch of poor white people that those who are “racially inferior” want to be treated equally, and how they will infiltrate your kids school with their “barbaric culture”, you are very carefully constructing a social narrative that ignores the fact that the rich white folk, simply want slavery to save money on labour costs. If you can employ a black slave to do your work for free, you’re not going to employ the poor white person, regardless of how low you’re allowed to pay him. Slavery screwed over poor white people and poor black slaves. The only people who benefited, were the rich white people. And yet, poor white people were willing to die to perpetuate a system that held them back.

This critique can be applied today. Somehow workers have been convinced, through constant negative media attention, that Unions are a great evil that need to be purged. It’s madness. During the British Airways strike, the media and so the mindless public at large took the line that the Union was to blame for the problems. The management who were screwing over both the workers and the customer were largely treated like the victims. The CEO of BA Willie Walsh had recently been forced to make BA pay the largest fine in Aviation history, after he was found guilty of price fixing. Somehow, the wealthy have managed to convince the workers that it is in their best interests, not to fight for better pay, and better conditions, and health benefits. We have been convinced, that exploitation and overbearing tyrannical management, is great for everyone. It is very U.S orientated approach to society. Which is kind of funny. America has weak unions, and strong anti-union laws. You’d think, under the rhetoric and the narrative that unions are a great evil, that America would be a pretty happy society…

The Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development conducted vast research into which countries people feel the happiest living in. It is all subjective, the people were asked if they thought their lives were predominantly affected by positive or negative experiences. Sample questions included:
Did you enjoy something you did yesterday? Were you proud of something you did yesterday? Did you learn something yesterday? Were you treated with respect yesterday?
They quizzed 1000 15-100 year olds, from 140 Countries.
Surely, with all that Capitalism and so little union involvement, America should be steaming ahead? Far ahead of those EVIL SOCIALIST OPPRESSIVE EUROPEAN States weeping uncontrollably in their Government-run lives, right?

As of 2009, here is the top ten happiest Countries out of the 140 polled:

1. Denmark
2. Finland
3. Netherlands
4. Sweden
5. Ireland
6. Canada
7. Switzerland
8. New Zealand
9. Norway
10. Belgium

Their governments probably forced them to be happy, whilst talking through the Telescreen in the wall. Note that Canada is sixth.

Perhaps it is all because whilst the happiest people in Denmark enjoy their EVIL SOCIALIST Government forced happiness, the US citizen, in his plethora of freedom, is working hard!!!
Well, no.
Firstly, Denmark’s unemployment rate is at 2%. Far far below the UK and US levels.
Secondly, 9th place in the list, Norway has GDP per capita nominal of $84,543. Denmark has GDP per capital nominal of $55,113.The US has GDP per capita of $47,132. The US lags behind Sweden and Switzerland on this as well. The UK meanwhile lags behind Belguim, Singapore, Belguim, Japan. All figures from the IMF.

As far as public debt goes (Osborne always mentions, as do most Tories, just how badly in debt we are, verging on Greece) as of 2009 figures, according to the CIA’s World Factbook, the UKs public debt as a percentage of GDP is 68.10%. Greece’s is 144.0%. Here is the list of Countries in between the UK and Greece, for public debt, along with their debt as a percentage of GDP:

Iceland 123.80, Jamaica 123.20, Italy 118.10, Belgium 102.50, Singapore 102.40, Ireland 98.50, Sudan 94.20, Sri Lanka 86.70, France 83.50, Portugal 83.20, Egypt 80.50, Dominica 78.00, Nicaragua 78.00, Israel 77.30, Germany 74.80, Malta 72.60, Hungary 72.10, Austria 68.60, United Kingdom 68.10.

Perhaps the UKs GDP itself is awful? What with Labour OVER SPENDING!!!!!!!!!!1111
Oh wait, no, we have the sixth largest economy in the entire World. Our little island, is the sixth largest economy in the World. Greece, is 31st.

Perhaps our debt is the worst we’ve EVER known? It must be pretty bad if we’re privatising absolutely everything and kicking thousands out of work?

Okay that’s only 100 years.
What about in the larger context?

So it turns out the Nation’s debt, is still at one of it’s all time lows. Which begs the question, why do we believe the bullshit that has spread? The bullshit of a dire economic situation, is used purely to further the cause of an ideological attack, and nothing else.

It is amazing. We are further empowering the financial institutions that are responsible for the problems. None of them have faced criminal charges. In the 1970s the power of the labour movements was clearly defined as the problem. Today, the problem is clearly the power of finance capital. And instead of putting a foot down and regulating the power of finance capital, we are loosening the chains even greater. Crises in this case, is inevitable. We will have another crash. But whilst we have a politics (not a democracy) funded and run by the very very wealthy, there can never be change.

Private funding of political parties and inherited wealth from Stock Market speculation, are the great evils and the most anti-democratic and dangerous ideals of our generation.

Politically, the left is week. They are in a daze because they have spent the past ten years being the Right. Ed Balls, Labour’s Shadow Chancellor cannot complain, he spent his years in office given up economic power to the financial sector. It is as if the political left (I make a distinction between the left, and the political left, because the political left is really the centre-right) doesn’t understand why its unwavering support for Thatcherite policies, has failed so miserably. It is odd, because our Political Left is still scared of certain lexis. Socialism is considered a dirty word and Capitalism is considered a golden word. Why? Capitalism failed everyone other than the very wealthy. Labour politicians do not like to be seen to align themselves with unions? Why Tories have no problem aligning themselves with greedy tax avoiding billionaires who endulge in questionable and often unethical business practices. Those businessmen represent a very narrow group of people. Unions represent thousands upon thousands of people who would be far worse off without the many industrial gains that have been made over the past century, thanks to collective bargaining.

We need a strong united academically gifted Left for the theory, and a strong united working people’s party for practice. Note, this does not mean a local Socialist party….. they are all, as far as I can see, still living in 1917.

So it turns out, all is not as dire as it seems. The multiculturalism card, I maintain, is being used to ensure a division between the lower classes who will be losing out whilst the rich class will benefit greatly. If we are inspired to concentrate on Nationality and Culture rather than the fact that the Polish worker, the Pakistani worker, and the British worker are all being massively screwed over, we wont rise up and fight back. Attacks by Unions as being attacks on the British public will be further propagated. As if it is their fault. It is a smoke screen designed to make us forget about the fact that the very people and the very economic ideology that got us into this mess, are going to be the ones who benefit the most.

The Big Society will rescue us though, so it’s okay.
(ignore the fact that according to Voluntary Sector Cuts, £53,000,000 has been cut from their budgets).

Student strikes.
General strike.
Union united.
Mass protests and rioting.

Libertarianism must be fought against as if it is a foreign invader. Our children do not need to be born into “a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes“.

Imagine

John Lennon was killed thirty years ago today by Mark Chapman.
Lennon is one of my musical heroes. An icon. A voice of the political left. Not an academic, or an economist. Not involved in the bullshit of party politics. He simply expressed a sentiment shared by a large number of those of us on the Left, and he amplified it, because he had the means by which to do so. Musically, a true artist.

“Our society is driven by neurotic speed and force, accelerated by greed and the frustration of not being able to live up to the image of men and women we have created for ourselves – an image that has nothing to do with the reality of people.

“We’re one world, one people, whether we like it or not. We can pretend we’re divided into races and Countries, but the reality is that it is one World and it is one people”

There is no artist today who could manage to have their song sung in unison by thousands of people marching on Washington DC. Especially one from a little house in Liverpool.

Whatever you think of John Lennon’s music, it is necessary to say that he had a profound influence on music, and on the political left within the music industry. And The Beatles, along with The Kinks, The Rolling Stones, and The Who defined London in the 1960s. They made Abbey Road; a long, uninteresting road just north of St John’s Wood Tube Station, a cultural landmark. They massively influenced artists and bands popping up fifty years later. And Lennon outshone the other Beatles when they finally split. Even so far as the fact that the FBI kept tabs on him and President Nixon tried to have him deported because the White House believed Lennon might be a threat to the President’s re-election.

In order to help save John from being deported, Bob Dylan wrote a letter to the Immigration and Neutralisation Service, with:

John and Yoko add a great voice and drive to the country’s so-called art institution. They inspire and transcend and stimulate and by doing so, only help others to see pure light and in doing that, put an end to this dull taste of petty commercialism which is being passed off as Artist Art by the overpowering mass media. Hurray for John and Yoko. Let them stay and live here and breathe. The country’s got plenty of room and space. Let John and Yoko stay!

Our artists today, are a little too worried with upsetting their record label.

Imagine no religion.
Imagine no countries.
Imagine no greed or hunger.
Imagine no possessions.

One of a kind.
John Lennon
1940-1980

The Mid Terms and Healthcare

The man in the photo above, is a real life American idiot. They aren’t uncommon. They are like a plague. And that plague came out to vote yesterday.

So America has decided that the eight years in which the Republicans absolutely raped the World, didn’t happen. The mid-terms have seen a major shift to the Right in American politics since 2008. Which amazes me. The Democrats got pretty destroyed. It is likely that the Republicans are going to assume that their new found control of the House means they have the mandate to push through legislation surrounding budget cuts, tax breaks for the wealthy, and an attempt to roll back Healthcare reform (they don’t seem to care that 35,000,000 people are now insured; only that it might hurt the profits of major insurance companies). Of course, mandate doesn’t bother them considering they have spent the past two years making life as difficult as possible for a Party who were elected to attempt to clean up the mess the previous White House left.

Obama has been weak. Very weak. The rhetoric of change didn’t exactly pan out that way. He isn’t all that different from the last lot. His failure to close Guantanamo, is refusal to back same sex marriage, his continued wars in the Middle East, and his utter failure to do anything significant with the banking sector has been his undoing. He isn’t Socialist, he isn’t really all that Left. He’s firmly in the centre. He just has an opposition who seem to think anything Right of Reagan = Stalin.

One attack point throughout the past two years has been the Healthcare bill. Now, according to a Harvard study in 2009, there were found to be more than 44,000 deaths associated with those who have no health insurance. By 2019, it is reckoned that a further 30,000,000 people will now be insured thanks to the Healthcare Bill. 62% of all 2007 bankruptcies were due to the inability to pay medical costs. The wonders of Capitalism. All this talk of death panels and the evils of the UK’s National Health Service sparked Tea Party arseholes to go out in the street and demand NO SOCIALISM! The problem is, that the UK’s National Health Service, according to the World Health Organisation, is 20 places in the World Rankings, higher than the U.S. The UK also has a far better child mortality rate, we pay less, and our life expectancy is better. So whilst those in the Tea Party continue to be nothing more than an uneducated mouthpiece of the insurance industry, we in the UK will continue to enjoy our evil Socialist healthcare, whilst living longer. The Government did not take over healthcare in the US. The US remains the only apparently civilised country that does not provide universal healthcare. Those of us who live in Countries that do have a universal healthcare system, would never elect a party to government if they ever spoke of privatising it. The NHS is a National treasure.

Healthcare is essential. It should be a right. Not a luxury. To be told by an insurer that you are not eligible because you have a pre-existing condition is grotesque. I cannot imagine the American public would be too keen on the idea of having to pay for fire insurance. When their house is burning down and the fire engine turns up, having to check your papers are in order and your payments have been kept up to date before they rescue your screaming child.

It makes me wonder, how do very wealthy businessmen in the insurance industry, who really couldn’t give a damn about the health of their customers, manage to coerce a mass of ordinary people who might benefit from the Healthcare reforms, to fight their corner?

It isn’t a new phenomena. The rich have always managed to make the poorer folks fight for them. This is how wars work. Invoke a sense of Nationalism. Refer to them as ‘fighting for our freedom’. Emotive language always does the trick. Make them believe there is a common enemy. Communists, Muslims, Gay people, Atheists etc. You can trace it back to the days of the Founding Fathers. Hamilton described the public (those who were less wealthy and of less importance than he) as a “great beast”. The idea of an electoral college was installed because people like Madison did not believe the public could be trusted. But somehow, they managed to get widespread support; based entirely on being anti-British.

The Civil War days were not much different. The wealthy managed to make the poor white folk believe that if slavery were abandoned, the jobs market would be flooded and the black folk would take all their jobs. The irony was, that the black folk already had the jobs, because they were slaves, and so weren’t paid anything. The real issue was that the rich white folk would rather keep paying the black slaves nothing, and the white folk as little as possible. Both the black and white poor folk, were being massively abused, and yet the poor white folk fought for the benefit of the rich white folk. It made no sense. But they were heavily manipulated into doing so.

A similar thing happened with healthcare. This notion of “big socialist government” was thrown around constantly. The Bush Administration spent eight years focusing on making the spread of false fear an art, and it seems to have continued. Glenn Beck on Fox News within the space of about a week managed to refer to Obama as a Socialist, a Muslim, a Terrorist, a Fascist, a Marxist, and Foreign. Probably Gay as well at some point.

This, coupled with the fact that major Health insurers (the modern day slave owners) ensured fear was rampant meant that an easily manipulated population believed they were on the verge of becoming the USSA. The second largest Health insurance provider in America is UnitedHealth Group. In 2009 they issued a letter subtly urging its staff to attend rallies against the healthcare bill and lobby local representatives.

Reps. Michele Bachmann and John Kline, and Gov. Tim Pawlenty, all Republicans, referred in 2009, to a group called Lewin, as ‘independent and non-Partisan’ when they used Lewin (who specialise in economic analysis of Healthcare in the US) research to support their opposition to the Healthcare Bill. Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House Republican whip referred to Lewin Group as “the nonpartisan Lewin Group” when backing up his arguments against the Healthcare Bill. Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee referred to Lewin Group as an “independent research firm” and Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah said that Lewin Group is “well known as one of the most nonpartisan groups in the country”. The problem is, Lewin is owned by UnitedHealth Group. The research spouted by Republicans, actually comes from a Company who spent time and money circling an email to its employees encouraging them to attend rallies and events against Health Reform. In what universe would you have to be living on to suggest that they are “non-partisan”.

Chuck Grassley, the most senior idiot Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, stated of Ted Kennedy:

“I don’t know for sure, But I’ve heard several senators say that Ted Kennedy with a brain tumour, being 77 years old as opposed to being 37 years old, if he were in England, would not be treated for his disease, because end of life – when you get to be 77, your life is considered less valuable under those systems.”

The phrase “I don’t know for sure” saves him from utter embarrassment when he is shown to be completely lying. I say this, because my grandma is 84 and currently in hospital, very ill. My dad came home today and said the nurses and the doctor, are amazing. The nurses are around her all the time, and keep mentioning her kids and her grandkids to try to keep her mind as active and alert as possible. The most senior Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, is propagating a rumour that the NHS does not treat the elderly. It is bullshit and he shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it. It is just another tactic to fight the reforms. Obama must be banging his head on his desk wondering why he ever applied to be the President of a country full of lunatics.

We need to be clear; Republicans do not care about making sure people are healthy and fit. Republicans are just trying to protect the obscene profits of the insurance industry.

It isn’t just Republicans though, that are ultimately the bitches of the insurance industry. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Democrat Senator Ben Nelson, raised more than $2 million from insurance and health care interests in his three campaigns for federal office. He has received $1,195,299 from insurance interests, $399,345 from health professionals, $258,483 from the pharmaceutical industry, and $195,138 from hospital and nursing home interests. UnitedHealth, spoke of earlier, donated $25,000 to Nelson. It is no surprise then, that Nelson voted against the Health Care legislation.

The race to be the next California Insurance Commissioner is also interesting. The Republican nominee, Michael Villines says he does not take contributions from insurance companies. According to filings with the Secretary of State, a PAC spent $280,000 running ads and a campaign entirely against the Democrat, Dave Jones. The contributions may not have gone to Villines personally, but they are being used to get him elected, mainly because he his massively against healthcare reform. Villines also managed to transfer $50,000 worth of contributions from the insurance industry, from his 2014 Senate campaign fund, to his Insurance Commissioner fund.

Data according to the OECD shows that in comparison to Australia, UK, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Norway and Sweden, the USA ranks bottom when it comes to life expectancy, infant mortality, Per capita expenditure on health, Healthcare costs as a percent of GDP, % of government revenue spent on health, and also quite amusingly; % of health costs paid by government. Perhaps there is a bit of a link there. Perhaps government run healthcare isn’t as evil as the American Right like to suggest.

The Republicans have said they will argue that the healthcare bill is unconstitutional and try to repeal it. Apparently going to war on the base of a lie is perfectly acceptable and constitutional. Apparently having a worse child mortality rate than Singapore is perfectly acceptable and constitutional. Apparently idolising Reagan; a man who illegally sold arms to both Iran and Iraq, whilst using drugs cartels to transport weapons to right winged terrorists in Latin America, is perfectly acceptable and constitutional, but trying to help the millions of Americans who are denied healthcare by the cancer of society; health insurers, is evil and socialist and unconstitutional.

America has just elected a House of Representatives whose majority are a party almost entirely in the pocket of insurance companies, and who light the fuse that started the entire financial crises in the first place. America never fails to amaze me.

The power of rhetoric

When I was a toddler, I decided normal human words were not good enough, and so I invented my own words, for reasons I am unable to provide an adequate reason for. The remote control for the TV, I referred to as an ‘Ah Ah Ah’. My dad still calls it that. A spider, was a buru. And Santa, was Ge-a. I do not understand what made me see a spider, and say “Oh, there’s a buru.” It isn’t even like I attempted to say spider, and got it wrong. Buru sounds nothing like spider. There is no species of spider called a Buru. In fact, Buru is a tiny island in the Maluku Province of Indonesia.

In my defence, I was creating my own language. I didn’t need your English bullshit language, in which the plural of house is houses but the plural of mouse isn’t mouses. I wonder, how far would I have gone, had I not been taught English as soon as I started school? Would I have came up with my own vocabulary? Would I have came up with my own words, for situations that even the English language doesn’t have words for? I would absolutely love a word for the fact that the only door in the history of the World that doesn’t have a top or a bottom, is a door to a public toilet cubicle; the one door you want a top and bottom to exist, through fear that a friend might appear over the top, with a Phone camera, and ending in you having to close your facebook account. Surely that situation is enough to warrant a word? I would have came up with a name for that situation, had I been able to develop my own language.

Instead, I would just make my dad sing ‘heartbeat’ from behind the door, whilst he held my baby sister above the door, so it looked like she was really tall and singing. I was 2. Apparently, I found it fucking hilarious.

I was awesome.

Anyway, the point of this blog is the power of the spoken word. The Greeks and the Romans knew exactly how important it was. It was a tool used by the political and religious classes, to manipulate the population into doing exactly what they wanted. Cicero perfected the art of rhetoric. The three main devices used by the Orator, are pathos, logos and ethos. They are all features of manipulation. Pathos is defined as an appeal to the emotion of the audience. Logos refers to reasoning and logic. Ethos means to appeal to an audience’s sense of National pride, or Religious beliefs, or a Political ideology…. in other words, appealing to an abstract sense of community.

We see it politically all the time. John McCain during the run up to the 2008 Presidential Election gave a speech against Universal Healthcare in which he claimed that the British NHS refuses to treat patients over 75. Gasps of shock from the audience resonated throughout the hall. Political rhetoric that is simply untrue. I know it was an horrendous lie, and a manipulation of the audiences naivety, because my 83 year old grandma was being treated by the NHS, on that very day. To get away with such a ridiculous lie, and not be booted out of politics for it, shows just how nonchalent we have become politically. We don’t bother to check our facts, we simply wait for a politician to tell us. And the politicians know how useful this tool has become.

The Conservate-Lib Dem coalition defends every pointless cut it makes, by starting the answer with “as a result of the legacy of debt left by Labour”. Seriously, when you see a Tory or Lib Dem being interviewed, see how long you can count before they mention the “legacy of debt“. Simon Hughes of the Lib Dems got to 23 seconds today. Record! It is an attempt to justify, what they clearly are not comfortable justifying using the truth; their own ideology. BBC News asked a guy in a pub, what he thought so far of the Coalition. He said that they need to desperately get the debt reduced quickly. The journalist asked him why he thought that was. He couldn’t answer. Now, to me that suggests that he had simply heard time and time again the right winged rhetoric of the Tory Party, and thinks he sounds intelligent, if he simply repeats it. It shows that the Tories really did win the political discourse war, not with reasoned debate, but with easy terms, idiots can understand. He doesn’t bother checking facts for himself. Given that the Tory Party won the most seats at the election, it suggests that a large majority of people who will be badly hit by the cuts to public services over the next few years, voted Tory because they kept hearing the apocalypse-type rhetoric that public spending needed cutting immediately, or we’d all die. The Labour Party were useless at providing a differing opinion; a progressive narrative, and they paid for it. The current Labour leadership battle is nothing of any worth. The same centrist politicians who have been on the scene for at least the past five years, using the same rhetoric they use to win votes rather than challenge the centre-right monopoly on political and economic discourse that has become prevalent in recent years. None of them seem to be real progressives. On subjects like immigration for example, they pander to the Right and the media perception. It is a supremely complex issue, that deserves more than one view that only ever says there is a huge problem. They aren’t putting forward different, progressive views, or challenging the mainstream opinion. They are pandering.

On immigration, from both sides of the political scale, all we hear is that it is a problem. Immigrants are labelled illegal and dangerous. They apparently take our jobs and the only way to deal with it, is to ‘secure the borders’. That isn’t progressive. That is simply tying a weak bandage over a very deep wound. To truly deal with immigration, you have to work internationally to find out why mass migration occurs. Firstly, you have to accept that if your borders are open to capital and goods, closing your borders to labour is always going to cause huge Global inequality. Capitalism and Nation States are vastly incompatible. You need to truly be committed to eradicating poverty. You have to work internationally to force working standards across the World based on human rights. You have to allow smaller producers a better chance at survival against huge Western Corporations. You have to spread democracy that isn’t just about creating puppet governments who will open native markets to America business interests. There has to be a joint effect across the World, to fight global inequality. Then, migration will fall. Guaranteed.

What worries me, is that there has been an obvious systematic attempt to undermine all sections of the public sector, whilst keeping the failings of the private sector as quiet at possible. The vast majority of the British Public quite obviously felt uneasy at this, and didn’t buy into it at first, because during the most unpopular Labour government in generations, the Conservatives STILL didn’t manage to secure a majority. I would argue that they have no mandate to push through tough cuts now. The Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party both ran their election campaign on the idea of slower and less vicious cuts that the Tories proposed. The combined votes of the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrat Party added up to just over 15,000,000. The Tories vote count, was just over 10,000,000. Therefore, 5,000,000 more people in the UK wanted slower and less vicious and less deep cuts than is now happening. We are hardly a beacon of democracy right now. So the idea that the British public felt that Labour had forced this horrendous debt that needed cutting deeply, immediately, was wrong.

The rhetoric works. The constant “We’re all in this together” from George Osbourne makes me squirm, and yet apparently people lap it up. I cannot understand why.

The reason people are so easily political manipulated, is because we simply don’t have time to understand and investigate for ourselves. We rely on what the politicians tell us around election time, and the Party with the loudest voice becomes the voice of truth, which is surely a logical fallacy. The loudest voices in the corridors of Whitehall, are those who represent money interests. Rich interests. Therefore those who tax avoid will always be less important to the political classes, than those who have no voice yet scrounge a few extra pound every month in benefits. And then the rhetoric starts. You’re an evil socialist if you think differently. You’re a communist if you suggest Big Businessmen should express some responsibility and not walk away with millions upon millions in bonuses whilst making thousands of workers redundant. It stinks of bullshit. Joined with our lack of time, and our indifference toward the continuously projected rhetoric (I believe it’s known as an appeal to ridicule), we are also……ya know……like……. totally……. like……….not bothered…….ya know………. because….. like we just…………want to……….get well drunk and stuff……..like……yeah? The poet Taylor Mali sums up what I am getting at beautifully, with:
<blockquote>
“And so actually our disarticulation . . . ness
is just a clever sort of . . . thing
to disguise the fact that we’ve become
the most aggressively inarticulate generation
to come along since . . .
you know, a long, long time ago!”
</blockquote>
An inarticulate mass, is a disinterested mesh of people whose lives consist of jobs they don’t like, long hours they wish they had more to themselves in their short lives, and one holiday for two weeks a year to look forward to and nothing else. It is no wonder we allow Politicians to presume to tell us that things will get better when they are in power. We will never be happy because our economy which is based almost entirely on consumerism (hence the easy credit bubble) ensures that we believe we will only be happy if we buy more shit we don’t need. Happiness can never depend on how much you own, only on how little you need.

I wonder if those poorer people who voted Tory know that the Tories wanted to ride the recession out with no stimulus or help for them. A large majority of them would have lost their jobs, and their homes had the Tories been in power. Not only that, but David Cameron voted against minimum wage legislation. He didn’t want minimum wage. I wonder if those poorer people knew that before they voted for him. The rhetoric worked, because it was the loudest and most coherently constructed. It didn’t matter that it was full of illogic and lies, because there was no opposite coherent message to counter it. And it has been that way for generations. Before elected politicians; we had Kings and Nobles; Cardinals and Popes who had supreme power, and they used Religious rhetoric (the Pope still does) to scare, and coerce, and manipulate at will. No one opposed it, because to do so would have meant certain death for heresy.

In 1517, Pope Leo X offered to sell pardons for sin, in exchange for a lot of money, in order to build St Peter’s. So poorer people, thought this was an easy way to heaven. It was actually just a way for the Catholic Church to build it’s power, and actually quite a novel way, given that it had spent the previous few centuries building it’s power, on violence and blood.

Skip a few centuries down the line, and the Pope has the nerve to refer to people like me as being a problem because I don’t believe in Organised Religion; whilst at the same time, telling people in AIDS ridden African Nations that hang on his every word, that condoms actually spread AIDS, and that God doesn’t accept condom use. Church rhetoric is far more dangerous than political rhetoric, because people do not do there own research, or think for themselves when it comes to politics or the Church, the difference is that the Church promotes ignorance, and unquestioning acquiescence.

World War II was the era of big, lasting, epic speeches filled with manipulative rhetoric. Hitler was arguably the king of propaganda through speech. He managed to turn an entire Nation against a minority, in much the same way as the American Right are doing with Islam right now, only better. Churchill was an excellent speaker. In a speech to the House of Commons in 1940 he said:
<blockquote>
You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy.
<blockquote>

What Churchill decided to ignore, was that he was correct in referring to the Nazi regime as a monstrous tyranny, the British were at that time an Empire ourselves. The lands we owned were won by enslaving populations, murder and rape of the land. The reason I, and the rest of the UK is in a strong economic position in relation to most of the World, is due to the fact that we had a solid grounding based on exploitation that was still going on quite horrifically in Churchill’s time, and of which he was a supporter. We carved up Africa into Nations, based not on the hopes of the population, but on what best suited our imperialist vision and that of France.

We are made to believe that one ruler in government, telling us how to run our lives, is bad. It is big bad intrusive government; tyranny. But, when big business does it, and when our workplace tells us what it means to look and act in an abstract concept of “professional”, how to talk, how our faces should look, what jewellery we can wear, it is perfectly fine. It is the height of human freedom. When we work hard and government taxes us, we consider it to be a great evil. When business takes the money we have earned in a shift, and the majority goes to the man at the very top whilst we receive the bare minimum; it is great, it is ‘free’. Business is in essence, pretty totalitarian. It is a dictatorship. It is lots of little Stalinist states run by megalomaniacs. It certainly isn’t freedom.

In Australia, all I heard from Tony Abbott, was “Omg Labor’s debt is awful ARGH! Vote for me, to save you all from economic ruin“. The problem was, within three minutes of research, one comes to the inevitable conclusion, that the right winged Mr Abbocare if the way we carved up the map of Africa would provoke countless tribal wars and ethnic cleansing over the decades, we cared only for what suited us economically. If Africans suddenly rose up and wanted out of British control, we suppressed them with violence. We favoured dictatorial ethnic minorities in African nations because they had vicious hierarchical systems and so could be brought on side to help the Colonialists; the Fulani in Nigeria is a good example of this at work. The entire Empire, even during Churchill’s time, was based on the idea of social darwinism; we believed we were superior to the Africans and so had every right to exploit them. Would Churchill not consider this a ‘monstrous tyranny’ also?

Cicero would not be proud of the American Right Wing. The Tea Party brigade. The Glenn Beck obsessed idiots. They are playing the rhetoric game all wrong. It is not subtle, or intelligible, or even well crafted manipulative bullshit. It is just utter bullshit. Almost laughable. The Tea Party brigade have referred to Obama as a Nazi, a racist, a Communist, a Socialist, an immigrant, and an anti-American terrorist sympathiser. It stinks of bitterness, because this level of anger was never thrown at the most evil and horrific President America has had, well, ever: Bush. They seemed to keep quiet then. It feels simply that big business has funded a campaign to suggest that any universal benefit to the entire population that inevitably bites into their immense profits, is only turn America into some new USSR. It isn’t. But the voice of the enraged Right Wing is the loudest, and so history is rewrote to the will of the loudest.

The American Right Wing has a thing about rewriting history, in their favour. Any fact that seems to contradict them, they suggest is just Marxist propaganda. In Texas, the school board voted in favour of a curriculum that teaches the superiority of American Capitalism. No economists or historians were asked for their opinion on the curriculum. It will also try to inject creationism into science teaching. This annoys me the most. Purely because evolution is not a Right vs Left issue. It is fact. It is like trying to suggest in a school text book that actually, gravity might not exist at all. The religious fundamentalists do not seem to be able to differentiate between the word ‘theory’ in every day use, and ‘theory’ in scientific use. ‘Theory’ in scientific use is the explanation to explain the fact. So, gravity is the fact – that everything falls to earth if you drop it. Einstein’s theory, is currently what we use to explain why that happens. Similarly, evolution – being the idea that we are all descended from a common ancestor, is the fact. The theory that we currently use to explain it, is Natural Selection. In fact, the entire field of modern biology and medicine, is based on this. So when those board of education members get sick, they should perhaps pray instead of being treated by evil leftie evolutionary heretic doctors. To implant their skewed understanding of the World into a text book, for future generations to be indoctrinated with, is surely wrong at best, and pretty damn abusive at worst.

Southern America during the Civil War managed to convince very poor people, to fight for the right of their rich counterparts to own slaves. They billed it as a war over States rights. Yes, States rights to own and exploit black people. It’s odd because the North wanted slaves to be free. For some reason, southerners believed this would flood them out of the jobs market, and black people would now take all the work. The irony of the situation is that the black slaves already had their jobs. If i’m a rich man in Southern America and I can get a black slave to work my land for free, or pay a poor white man to do it, i’m obviously going to pick option one. So i’m so far unaware of why poor white people were so up for fighting on the side of the rich white folk. I’d suggest it was purely racist reasons. A form of racism that was created specifically to stop the poor white folk from joining hands with the poor black folk and fighting these rich bastards who held them both down.

President Bush spent eight years telling Americans that if they didn’t support the horrific imperialist ideals of the Republican administration, the torture, the innocent deaths and the illegal expensive wars; they were un-American. And now, we have a generation of Americans who seem to think that keeping quiet and waving a flag chanting U.S.A whilst their President wastes billions of killing innocent people in multiple countries, is the American way; but trying to correct a healthcare system that benefits no one but insurance companies, is un-American and Marxist. The power of rhetoric.

I have a new policy, of assuming that all politicians are the pocket of business and so will never say or do anything to benefit the population. That all business men are bastards from the day they are born, and have some kind of deeply totalitarian needs. And that spiders should be renamed ‘buru’.

Fox calls UK election!

It is 2:20am, and we in Britain are in the midst of the results of the election. It looks as if it is going to result in a hung Parliament, which may result in a Liberal Democrat/Labour coalition (hopefully). The BBC, ITV and SKY all will not call it. They keep saying it will most likely be hung, and that despite all the money that Lord Ashcroft has spent on the Conservative campaign, they are not gaining the seats they REALLY targeted, such as Tootin.

However, our crazed right winged friends over in the USA have a different story. They have called it for the Conservatives by a huge majority.
Sean Hannity on Fox News just this second said:

“It looks as if the Tories lead by David Cameron are running to victory, a clear message to the World that England is rejecting Socialism.”

It feels odd to actually be on the receiving end of Fox bullshit. We see it aimed at Obama constantly from Fox, but we in England are usually free from their nonsense. Tonight, it is new. For three reasons.

Firstly, it doesn’t “look like David Cameron is running to victory” in the slightest. In fact, given how unpopular Gordon Brown is, it must be a complete embarrasment to the Tories that they STILL aren’t able to gain a majority. Against Gordon Brown, an Arab yelling “DEATH TO THE WEST” could have won. David Cameron has taken a poll lead of 19, to 5. That isn’t “running away” with the election, to anyone else other than Fox.

Secondly, people aren’t rejecting Brown out of a hatred for Socialism. In fact, we kind of like our Socialist traditions. If the Conservatives had said “We plan to privatise the National Health Service”, they’d have lost the election quite horrendously. People are rejecting Gordon Brown because they want a change. They see Brown as the PM who presided over the worst recession in decades. They see Brown as being the PM who allowed the Banks to have a free ride, without Government regulation. So in fact, it’s lack of Socialism, lack of Government oversight, especially over immigration and the financial system, that has drove voters away. I guarantee, people did not choose to vote Conservative lightly. We in the UK, are not like the USA, we do not have this irrational love affair with the free market, we are very suspicious of the markets.

Thirdly, if the Conservatives do not gain an overall majority, it means that more people voted Labour and Lib Dem collectively, than voted Conservative. Which means more people voted for Left and Centre-left parties, than voted Right winged parties.

This election is not an outright attack on Socialism. In fact, it’s actually quite offensive to those of us on the Socialist Left to refer to the Labour Party as Socialist. They haven’t been Socialist in over a decade at the very least. A lot of voters, will not vote Labour this time, because of their abandonment of Socialist values.

Fox are actually using the UK, to scare the US. It’s fucking abhorrent that they are allowed to do that. Hannity said it will send a message to President Obama that the World does not want his brand of Socialism. That isn’t the case at all. If you ask any Brit, they will tell you they despised George Bush, they despised Sarah Palin, and they did, and still do, love Barack Obama. It would be almost unanimous support for Obama. In fact, if you ask the population of the UK, what they think of Fox, they would just laugh at you.

Back into the land of the normal people, and away from the crazed right winged American idiots, I do envisage a Hung Parliament. Oddly, because Labour are doing far far better than expected, the Tories are not doing as well as expected, and although I voted Liberal Democrat, they appear to be doing horrendously, which has shocked every media network across the UK.

Economically, i’ve always wondered why people vote Tory, especially after a crash. Individualism vs Collectivism aside, it is financial deregulation started during the 1980s, along with building society sell offs and the removal of reserve assett ratios, that lead to the banks to build an economy based on speculation. Which, caused a sort of financial time bomb. The reason it this was the case, was because of lack of oversight. Now, the Conservative principle, is to remove oversight from the markets. Surely tighter regulation on the financial sector, promotion of responsible social Capitalism, as opposed to all out economic war, further promotion of toxic gambling and failure to do anything about ending this whole obsession with consumerism to the point where even toxic bank assets are for sale (see Goldman Sachs) is the way forward?

The deficit has not been caused by excessive government spending. The deficit has been caused by an out of control financial sector, that got it’s right to be out of control, from the Conservatives. Surely you have to spend a lot when the private sector fucks up, to keep infrastructure in place and keep interest rates low, but more importantly; to keep people in their homes and jobs? Otherwise, you are throwing people onto the scrap heap. The recession of the 90s, under the previous Conservative Government saw homeless rates double, and suicide rates shot up, because of the lack of help people were getting. How is that the right way to go about recovery? I don’t care if recovery takes a little longer, as long as people’s necessities are protected. The Conservatives do not believe in those basic protections.

The Conservatives blame government spending fully for the problems. They seem incapable of accepting that the deregulated financial sector is the reason the government had to spend more in the first place.

By punishing the public sector, for the failings of the private sector, whilst simultaneously ignoring the problems in the private sector, you are simply putting a weakly tied bandage onto a system that will inevitably fuck up again in a few years time.

It amazes me that the slightly manipulated political discourse of this election has it that the “Welfare State” is the parasite of the economy. It wasn’t the Welfare State that fucked up.

By spouting about deep public service cuts, what they are essentially saying is the public should pay for the gambling debts of the City of London, which were encouraged by both the Conservatives and Labour over the past thirty years.

David Wearing a PhD researcher in Political Science at the School of Public Policy at the University College, London said quite rightly:

” What we are witnessing here is a unique form of bank robbery: the banks robbing the public of tens of billions of pounds, with our elected politicians driving the getaway car.”

I hope tonight results in a Hung Parliament, and a Lib Dem/Labour coalition. Anything to keep the Tories out.

Never be tired of England

Happy St Georges Day.
Did you know that King George III never formally acknowledge the independence of the USA? Therefore, we still own it. Nor did we agree to the full independence of Australia (The Australia Act of 1986, I choose to ignore). Therefore, we still own that too. And when I get there in July, I will proclaim myself Governor of Australia for Her Majesty The Queen. We’ll forget this silly “independence” thing in no time.

The Daily Mail in it’s quest to tarnish Nick Clegg as some great evil, had this to say earlier this week:

“His wife is Spanish, his mother Dutch, his father half-Russian and his spin doctor German. Is there ANYTHING British about Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg?”

It’s amazing isn’t it?
Nick Clegg, the posh English intelligent Lib Dem leader, is apparently an evil foreigner, despite the fact, that he was born….. in Berkshire.
Given that the husband of the Queen is a relative of the Russian tsars, I hope the Daily Mail will soon begin an anti-monarchy quest.

Today is St Georges day.
It is beautiful outside.
I have sat in my garden with a book and a drink sat by me, for most of it.
The reasons I do not fly the St Georges cross flag is something I dislike about the way it has been manipulated. St Georges cross and the Union Jack have been hijacked by the far right in recent years, to show that they aren’t too keen on muslims. It is used by those who keep claiming muslims are out to destroy England, rape your children, punch your grandmother in the face, and ban Christmas. It is from those who use the phrase “it’s political correctness gone mad” to cloak their inherent stupidity and ignorance. “You know, you can’t even smear shit into a a pakistani man’s face in the shape of the cross of St George whilst telling him to fuck off out the Country any more, without the politically correct bias liberal media telling you it’s racist. It’s political correctness gone mad!!!” I don’t want to associate myself with that type of person. Anyone who associates England with “the white race” is disgusting, in my view.

But I do love this country. In fact, I absolutely adore this country. I do not appreciate the far right telling me that I hate this country, simply because I am not a nazi. I do not believe in a singular concept of “Englishness”. My views on Englishness, are pretty post-modern in that respect. I love this country, for my own reasons, which I will now list.

I love the English summer time. I love traditional English seaside holidays. I love the sound of English amusement arcades on the seafront. I love Tudor history. I love being in the city centre for Diwali celebrations. I love the English countryside. I love standing in the sea on the English south coast despite it being freezing. I love the scent of England in the early summer mornings. I love English Christmas, the food, Morcambe and Wise, and bucks fizz. I love red post boxes. I love the majority of the people who are always polite, friendly, and tolerant. I love that I am the grandson of a World War II navy veteran. I love eccentric Brits. I love Camden. I love not understanding a word the speaker says over the tannoy at a local Tesco. I love Newstead Abbey. I love Bradgate Park. I love feeding ducks. I love those little green or red or blue or yellow arm bands the local swimming pools give you, to let you know when your time in the water is up. I love how we are a mash of cultural differences and historical struggles. I love how we cannot go a day without at least one cup of tea. I love Brit pop! I love getting into bed, under a huge new duvet on a freezing winter’s night. I love wearing an England football shirt throughout the World Cup and Euros every couple of years. I love reading the papers before the World Cup that tell me that Wayne Rooney is at his peak. I love not understanding why our clocks go forward and backward every now and again. I love trilby hats. I love speakers corner. I love hearing the sound of an ice cream van. I love that we are part of Europe. I love Devon and Cornwall. I love our charity days like Red Nose day and Children in need. I love the National Health Service. I love that we are a country that still cares for it’s sick and injured. I love that we are a nation of compassion and acceptance rather than distrust, dogmatic individualism and miserable hatred. I love great British comedians like the Pythons, and Spike Milligan and comedies like Blackadder and Only Fools. I love our sense of humour. I love our sarcasm. I love talking to random people on the park when i’m taking the dog for a run. I love our political music like The Clash and The Jam. I love London. I love bike rides around England. I love black cabs. I love that on one long road just outside of Brighton there is a church, a mosque, a synagogue and a gay bar a little further down, and no problems arise. I love that we have minimum wage. I love the BBC. I love how overly excited our papers get when Wimbledon begins. I love our poets like Wordsworth and Byron. I love that Darwin was English. I love traditional English breakfasts. I love that we do not care what our leaders’ religious beliefs are. I love random games of football on the park. I love our regional colloquialisms. I love the words of Shakespeare and Milton.

I highlighted “I love how we are a mash of cultural differences and historical struggles” because I think it raises an important point. We have never been a single culture, that is now being “eroded“. You cannot erode something that is not static. We have always been a mash of cultures constantly updating and changing. There have been times when those in control or those sporting racist and xenophobic views have tried to impose uniformity, but Britain is great because we have always rejected uniformity in that sense. I will give you an example.

For the majority of English history, since the year 0, this country has been Catholic. Our history, is Catholicism.
Before the 1530s, England was a Catholic nation. The Catholic church was a predominant feature of every community within England. It’s Latin mass, it’s imagery and it’s elaborate dressings along with it’s rituals and rites were what defined England. We weren’t really a nation state at all. We were a vassal of Rome, in all honesty. Given that our own King could not divorce without the permission of the Pope, suggests that ultimately, control lay with Rome. The English people liked it that way. That was England. That was our culture.

During the Reformation Parliaments of the 1530s, the preambles to the statutes written by Thomas Cromwell, try to rewrite this culture, to suit their own needs. The break from Rome and establishment of an English Church would have been massive. Within the space of three years during the 1530s, the entire English system of power, law, and the basis of community had changed beyond recognition. The Henrician church and the Roman Catholic Church were vastly different systems of control and belief.

According to historian Sir William Holdsworth:

“The preamble to the Statute of Appeals is remarkable.. because it manufactures history upon an unprecedented scale.”

Anyone who happened to disagree with the King’s god-given right above the Pope, to be “Supreme Head of the Church in England“, was swiftly and quite horrifically dealt with. It did not bother Henry or Cromwell or Cranmer or any of the other reformers within Court, that the vast majority of the English public, did not believe the King had power above that of the Pope. English culture, for over a millenium, put the Pope as their true ruler, and no one else. Catholicism, (which by the way, was brought to us by immigrants – the Romans, after Claudius invasion of the Country) was so ingrained in the minds of the public, that people like Thomas More were willing to die for their opposition to Cromwell’s reform, rather than betray their beliefs.

The preamble by Cromwell, to the Act of Supremacy of 1534 intriguingly tries to force opinion again, rewrites history, imposes the Act as objective truth (so much so that the accompanying Treason Act made it punishable by death to say the King was not Supreme head of the Church, or talk about the Pope being Head before him), and one wonders whether Cromwell would have gone this far, had the Pope granted Henry his divorce from Catherine in the first place:

“Albeit the king’s Majesty justly and rightfully is and ought to be the supreme head of the Church of England, and so is recognized by the clergy of this realm in their convocations.”

I cannot express just how momentous a change this Reformation Parliament truly was. We were now completely cut off from the Church in Rome, and therefore, cut off from Europe in it’s entirety. Propaganda from the government of Henry made it an offence to be Catholic.

A little over fifteen years later, after Henry had backtracked a little, adding more confusion to what it meant to be English; his son Edward was a child, and only allowed to read books by Protestant writers. He grew up anti-Catholic. When the Duke of Northumberland became the defacto King whilst Edward was still too young, the first thing he did, was rid the council of anyone who still held even slightly Catholic views. After Edward died, Mary then tried to revert back to Catholicism and rejoin the jurisdiction of Rome. Elizabeth, after Mary, settled the dispute, and created a settlement that held mainly Protestant beliefs, but incorporated Catholic beliefs too, although the authority of the Pope was still denied.

The point of this, is that we have never been one single minded Nation. We have always been a mesh of different beliefs and forced uniformity. Catholics viewed Protestants with suspicion in the same way that those racists who claim to be pro-British now view Islam. Irrational fear. There is nothing English about it. We have always updated, and we have always been in a constant state of change, there is no single identity. English culture is created by it’s people, and it is changed and updated with every passing generation. The people can be Catholic, Pagan, Protestant, Muslim, Hindu, Atheist, Sikh, Black, White, Asian, Gay, Straight, fat or thin. It doesn’t matter. That is what makes Britain great, and it is the one thing I love most about this country.

The Reagan Legacy

Ronald Reagan, in my estimation, was a nightmare. He is adored as a grandfather like figure who transformed America, whilst his equally as evil minion, Thatcher “transformed” Britain. A Corporate bitch at best, a war criminal for what he did with Guatemala at worst. Reagan once commented on Guatemala:
“President Ríos Montt is a man of great personal integrity and commitment. … I know he wants to improve the quality of life for all Guatemalans and to promote social justice.”
President Rios Montt, staunch anticommunist, and funded almost entirely by the Reagan administration, was according to a Roman Catholic investigation, guilty of commanding widespread torture, rape, political murders and genocide against the indigenous population if they happened to show left wing sympathies.
Greg Grandin, a reputable historian found that:
“In Nicaragua, the U.S.-backed Contras decapitated, castrated, and otherwise mutilated civilians and foreign aid workers. Some earned a reputation for using spoons to gorge their victims eye’s out. In one raid, Contras cut the breasts of a civilian defender to pieces and ripped the flesh off the bones of another.”
Quite ironically, one of America’s most wanted terrorists, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, was funded almost exclusively by the Reagan administration, whilst also given full immunity for cocaine trafficking, people trafficking and other horrific offences, purely because he didn’t really like the Soviets either.

Whilst Reagan was quite happily knowingly funding rape, death, and genocide over in Latin America; back in America he was launching an all out assault on organised labour. His Chief of Staff (ex-chairman of Merrill Lynch, and vice chairman of the New York Stock Exchange) Donald Regan helped build policy around this new Neoliberalist ideal. In 1981, air traffic controllers went on strike to demand better working conditions. 12,000 in all. When 12,000 people go on strike, ones instant reaction is that perhaps management isn’t all that great. 12,000 people are not holding the industry to ransom; the management is holding the people to ransom. Reagan didn’t see it that way. He had them all fired. As a result, management could now just replace striking workers, meaning workers didn’t dare speak out against poor working conditions. Which meant that management could do whatever the fuck they wanted. The median real wage did not grow, during the entire 1980s. But, the gap between rich and poor more than doubled, and the homeless rate was at the highest in decades. As a result of his tax cuts for the rich, the deficit reached record highs. After forcing a recession on the American public, he then managed to cut Federal low income household funds, by 84%.

What about the middle class? According to research undertaken by Wallace Peterson, author of “The Macroeconomic legacy of Reaganomics“, The middle class share of the economy in 1980 was 61.7%. In 1985, that had shrunk to 58.2%. Similarly, the poverty rate under President Carter reached a peak of 12.1% before falling to 11.9% by the end of his term in Office. Under Reagan, between 1981-1986, the poverty rate shot up to 14.7%. Unemployment under Carter started falling and finished at 7.5% by the end of his term. Between 1981-1986, under Reagan, unemployment shot up to 8.1%.
Under Obama, the unemployment rate has dropped from 10% to 9.7%, whilst U.S. Department of Commerce states that 4th quarter GDP growth went from 5.7% to 5.9%, the best rate of growth in seven years. Obama doesn’t have Fox News on his side, Reagan still does. That’s the difference.

What Reagan essentially did, with his ideal of cutting the size of government and slashing aid to those who needed it most, was to bankroll the rich, spit on the poor, create a new class of homeless people, and use this new smaller government (which in fact, had more federal employees than any government before it) to undertake the task of destroying any left wing opposition in Latin America. That was the American Government’s new mission. Constitutional? Apparently so, if you ask Republican America.

Economist Mark Weisbrot is quoted as stating that Reagan’s economic policies were “mostly a failure”. Free-market-failure-denial-sufferers, will never accept that Reagan was an utter failure. Weisbrot goes on to point out that: “The median wage was flat, and there was a massive redistribution of income, with wealth going to the top one or two percent of the population“

Was he the most popular President of the past century as some conservatives would have us believe? No. He never reached the 90% approval rating that even George W Bush and his father achieved, and Bill Clinton managed roughly the same rating during his two terms, surpassing Reagan in the second half of each of their terms.

The hysteria about the debt and stimulus across the U.S, is crippling the recovery. America needs more stimulus. As does Britain. It didn’t go far enough. What the World doesn’t need, is another Reagan or Thatcher propagating the rumour that neoliberalism is the only way out of recession, because for millions upon millions of people, it certainly isn’t. During a recession of such huge proportions, a lack of easily affordable healthcare (a universal system), lack of a safety net, and lack of foreclosure federal help, means the majority is far more at risk from financial ruin and psychological depression. One of the many reasons i’ll never vote Conservative.

Reagan’s legacy was one of homelessness, selfishness, arrogance, lack of compassion or empathy, hate, Corporate greed, death, and misery. All in the name of an economic policy disastrously known as “trickle down”. History will remember both him and Thatcher as little beacons of horror and misery. That’s all.

Obama now needs to man up, recognise that he’s President, recognise that the Democrats control Congress, and make sure the Republicans – as well as being a laughing stock for the entire World – know that they are largely irrelevant now.

Tea Bagging

Somewhere between 1500 and 1600, an unknown Author penned The Voynich Manuscript. It has over 250 pages, is incredibly detailed, and has many illustrations to accompany the writing. The one problem is, no one knows what it says. Its language, its place of origin, as well as its author, are completely unknown. Top cryptographers spanning the last century have been unable to decipher the manuscript. It remains one of Humanities great secrets. It is not a coded manuscript, because the writing flows beautifully, like elegant prose, which suggests the author knew what he/she was writing, as it was written. A mysteriously unknown language, that perhaps, we’ll never know.

That being said, the Voynich Manuscript is not even half as baffling as the current American “Tea Party” movement. Essentially, what the tea party movement is, for those of you who are unaware, is a group of redneck protesters who think they know how to run a Country far more impressively than the current administration. What is striking though, is that most of the tea party brigade themselves, don’t know what they’re angry about….

According to cbs, 44% of the Tea Party movement, believes that their taxes have gone up under Obama. Which, they haven’t. Somewhere along the line, these mad tea party people have decided that tax cuts, equals Socialism. Which, is doesn’t. So what do they want?

They want liberty for all!!!! – unless you happen to disagree with them. Or you’re gay. Or a left winger. Or you can’t afford healthcare. Or you’ve had an abortion. Or you’re from Mexico.

They are, for all intents and purposes, Neo-Cons. Which means, they are Reaganite Republicans. They seem to have an issue with the idea of universal Healthcare (We in the UK have universal healthcare – mainly because we still care for our sick and injured – and our standard of health is ranked 18th in the World by the World Health Organisation, whilst America is ranked 36th. The USA also spends more than the UK on healthcare, and has a higher infant mortality rate, and a lower life expectancy than the UK…. but still, they insist Socialised healthcare is bad…….. although socialised policing, fire protection, and road building, they don’t seem to have a problem with) They are also, very undemocratic by nature.

The Tea Party Website, has the following to say…
“ Our mission is to attract, educate, organize, and mobilize our fellow citizens to secure public policy consistent with our three core values of Fiscal Responsibility, Constitutionally Limited Government and Free Markets.“
All Right Winged proposals. Why do these people assume that the entire Country wants to live in a Right Winged Nation? They may as well just say “We want a Constitutional amendment banning any political party unless they’re Republicans and very Right Winged…. oh and the gays aren’t allowed to marry either, they’re all icky and stuff… oh and God is real“. Not everyone puts all their faith in a free market system.
Constitutionally limited Government is also an interesting point. Why is this being raised now? Why not under Reagan? Reagan increased the number of Federal Executive Employees by 0.10% during his two terms in Office. In fact, he was the only President to increase the number of Federal Executive Employees, from the era of Kennedy, to Obama. The guy who shrunk Government the most, since the 1960s…was Bill Clinton. A Democrat. The number of Federal Employees is at its lowest, in over 70 years. So where is this huge scary socialist government?

Fiscal Responsibility? Were these Republican homophobic racist redneck idiots Tea Party attendees asleep over the past eight years? Record deficits under Bush. Where was the complaining then? Why aren’t they complaining about the amount of money being spent on defence? I’d guess it’s because the Right Wing says it’s acceptable to spend tax payers money bombing Nations and torturing on the basis of a lie…….. but if that money was being offered to help sick people get treatment, they take to the streets to complain.
And how ironic it is that fiscal responsibility, includes paying Sarah Palin, the laughing stock of America, £100,000 to read notes off the palm of her hand live on TV. Very responsible. Palin went on TV, to announce that Republicans had defeated Democrats “3-0″ in elections in New Jersey, Massachusetts and Virginia recently. “3-0″ she proudly exclaimed. Clearly the lady who can see Putin from her house in Alaska chose to ignore Bill Owens win in New York, the first time a Democrat had won that district in over 140 years recently. Or John Garamendi’s California 10th Congressional District win. Or Terry Mills’ winning Kentucky’s 24th State House district. 3-3 so far. Scott Murphy wins in New York. 4-3 Democrats. But then, do we really expect more from a woman who made numerous complaints about Obama using a teleprompter, whilst she herself had notes written on her hand to prompt her throughout the night? Perhaps if George Bush had used a teleprompter once or twice, he wouldn’t have single handedly turned the GOP into a party of the mentally disabled.

“A free market is the economic consequence of personal liberty.“
Why are they posing subjective opinion, as objective reality? There are millions upon millions of us who would disagree with the statement they make there. Millions of Americans would disagree. How democratic is it, to suggest these people should be shut out of Political America?

“The founders believed that personal and economic freedom were indivisible.”
No they didn’t. American Capitalism put huge limitations on Corporations. Limitations that no longer exist today. If Obama were to suggest reintroducing these limitations, Well, Glenn Becks head might explode in a fountain of “OMGZ COMMUNIZM IS HERE!!!!!!!!!” rage. Corporate charters had fixed periods of time to operate. If Corporations were thought to cause harm to the public good, they’d have their licence revoked. Corporations had to obey certain operational duties that fulfilled their charter pledges. If they failed to, they’d have their licence revoked. Owners of Corporations could not own stock in other Corporations, because they were only allowed to be in business in order to fulfill the role they had been set up to fulfill, and nothing more. They were not allowed to interfere with elections, or influence public policy in any way. In fact, incorporation was only available to those who wished to set up a company that would benefit the public, rather than for mere profit. Corporations could not make any long term decisions, without the agreement of legislators.
These rules were employed across State governments, and because the founders feared another East India Company emerging, they were always very suspicious of unchecked free markets. So no, the founders did not believe that personal and economic freedom are indivisible.
In fact, early America, the colonies, was a very egalitarian, community based, supportive economy.

The Tea Party movement takes the Founders sentiments out of context. It would be easy for me to start a Socialist movement and claim the Founders were Socialist, given their apparent adversity toward the power and wealth of Corporations. But it’d also be naive of me. The truth is, opinion among the founders was deeply divided. Capitalism was still a very young idea. Socialism, was a very young idea. They had no evidence as to which system is better….. neither do we, now. They could only work with what they knew at the time. And what they knew at the time, can not, in any such way, apply to what we know today.

James Madison, arguing in Federalist Papers Number 10, stated that a strong central government was needed to protect citizens against controlling, partisan, extreme factions. Madison says:
“By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”
No one is suggesting that the Tea Party brigade are not entitled to their opinion. They are. Regardless of how abhorrent I find their views, they are entitled to them. But, to suggest that the USA was built on their views, is strictly not true. It’s a manipulation of the American sense of Patriotism. Madison warned against these people.

I don’t want to be the one who suggests racism has a part to play in this, but right from the word go, the far Right had decided Obama was the worst President in history. They wanted his birth certificate, they called him a muslim, they said he was a terrorist sympathiser, They said he was indoctrinating kids when he spoke at their school. They said he hated the white race. And now, they’re attacking him, because he bailed out a failed Capitalist system.
The Tea Party brigade is not fighting for American values. The Tea Party brigade is fighting for insurance companies, who are without a doubt directly responsible for the deaths of thousands upon thousands of people who simply couldn’t afford to pay their health insurance needs.

The irony of the situation is that whilst these idiots have such distrust in Government and such trust in the free markets; the free markets have allowed a situation to arise in which Government is effectively fun by big business. The Republicans attempting to tell people what it is to be a “Patriot” in terms of political and economical opinions, is so horrendously manipulative, but vaguely familiar. One recalls the Republicans during the early months of the Iraq War making everyone aware that if you didn’t support the War, you weren’t a Patriot. Fox News referred to Anti-war demonstrations in 2003, as those of the “loony left“, yet referred to the tea party demonstrations of 2009, as “true Patriots”. It’s despicable. But then, that’s the nature of the right wing.

I have no idea why anyone takes the far right seriously; they shouldn’t be trusted with a pair of scissors. And whilst they are certainly less understandable than the Voynich Manuscript, the Republican supporting rednecks who are still ridiculously bitter than they aren’t in a position of power any more, should DEFINITELY be allowed to keep their signs…………..

“We own you!!”

The Free Market is an interesting concept. Mainly, in that, it doesn’t work. The financial sector recently offered the best evidence into why greed isn’t always good, and why greed doesn’t benefit society, and why short selling and derivative betting isn’t productive in the long run. Banks, don’t seem to have learnt a thing since 2008, when Lehman’s collapsed. In fact, neither do Governments. Surely further regulation is required? Surely protecting the consumer from a continuously shrinking market, dominated by only several huge multinationals, is required more than anything? Because when you deregulate further, the consumer and ultimately society suffers, but it’s hidden away from us, because those with the money and the power benefit.

I, like most people, have store cards. It’s a wondrous way for the consumer to fall into debt, whilst shareholders for the company, make a fortune. Saying that, I knew that store cards are a bit of a con, and I went for it anyway. I was 18, and a little bit hungry for MORE of everything. One of these cards that I own, is for the clothing store River Island. The store cards and payments were controlled through GE Money, a part of GE Capital Bank Limited. On January 7th, 2009, GE Capital Bank Limited was bought out by Banco Santander SA.

Here’s where the free market system starts to play games with consumers.
Whilst with GE Capital Bank, the interest rate on my River Island Card, was sold to me at 16.620%, which in itself, is extortionate. Today, I received a letter informing me that my interest rate, under new management, was now 21.659%. I’m locked into this agreement. I didn’t sign anything to say that’s perfectly acceptable. I was told my interest rate would be at 16.620%. I have no choice now. I have to pay an extra 5%. There is no “choice” in this. I can’t switch to someone other than the increasingly strong and wealthy Santander.

This begs the question, why would Santander put interests rates on store cards up by 5%, when the base rate is so incredibly low? The only reasonable conclusion I can possibly come to, is that they know we’re locked into an agreement, they know base rates are at the lowest they’ve been for a very long time, they know how rich and powerful they are, and they want more wealth and more power.

The letter continues…
“Why has your rate changed“
Ah here should exist the answers to all my questions. Surely this next sentence will just read “Firstyly, because…. we own you! ahahaha. And secondly, because we’re quite greedy, and I want a new Yacht.“
Actually, what it does say, is a much more elaborate version of what I just assumed they’d write…
“We are committed to responsible lending and so we regularly review our customers’ accounts using our own internal data.“
Firstly, I didn’t want Santander to have my internal data, nor did I know they did have it, until almost 9 months after they acquired it.
Secondly, committed to responsible lending, by encouraging forcing me into much more debt than I was originally paying? REALLY?
Thirdly, what they’re trying to say is, over the past couple of months, i’ve been paying less per month, because financial troubles mean I need to save a little bit more…….which they don’t like…….so they increased my interest rate to force me to pay more….. which I can’t afford. Lower rate increases will affect those who have the money to pay more. Higher rate increases will affect those of us who can’t afford it. This will obviously please Conservatives and Republicans everywhere.

So, I decided to give “Tim Woods” the guy who signed my letter, the “Head of Customer Services, Santander Cards” a call. A lady answered and I asked to be put through to a Mr Tim Woods. She said “Oh no we can’t do that“. So I told her I wasn’t happy with this new interest hate hike that I had no say over. She told me she could explain this, and pretty much just said what was already written on the letter. So I asked again, to be put through to Mr Tim Woods, to which she replied “he doesn’t take calls“. The head, of customer services, doesn’t deal with customer services apparently. But he’s more than happy to deal with customer services, when it makes him a lovely bit of extra money, by signing my letter.
Whether it’s legal or not is irrelevant. I’m just not entirely sure how one can justify a 5% interest increase, when base rates are at their very lowest, and your company is making a fortune. At some point, a board of directors must have got together round a table, and agreed that putting their rates up by 5% on accounts that are struggling recently, is a great idea. It is that way of thinking, that bewilders me. It is exactly the reason that free markets do not work.

These are simple things that need to change. We as consumers (including me) need to get out of the habit of “owning” whatever we can. Home ownership causes misery. The culture of “you MUST own your own home!!!” needs to end. It has become an obsession. And if it doesn’t end, this kind of crises will never cease, there will always be problems. Secondly, if you’re “head of customer service” try to provide a service….to customers, rather than to the company. And lastly, the banks, and financial sector, which was deregulated largely in the 1980s by the Thatcher government, needs to be much more heavily regulated. It is the only way these immoral idiots are ever going to contribute a decent service to society, rather than to the board or shareholders.

Senatus Populusque Americanus

It would be naive to think that on the surface, the United States model is entirely original and without precedent. From the architecture of the Government buildings, to the idolising of it’s founders, the influence of the Roman Republic can be seen throughout American politics. From it’s conception in the late 18th Century, America has retained much of it’s Roman influence. John Adams modelled his own style of writing on the great Roman Orator Cicero, often quoting him. Adams viewed Cicero’s political decline, as a mirror image of his own. Madison, Jay, and Hamilton – Romulus and Remus’ American counterparts – wrote a collection of 85 essays promoting the new U.S Constitution, they signed it using the allonym, “Publius” after Publius Valerius Publicola, the joint first Consul of the newly found Roman Republic, in 509bc. The Plebian Council of Rome acted as an dubiously elected House of Representatives, the Tribune could propose legislation and call the Senate, a Speaker of the House, if you will. The Roman Senate, acted almost as a supremely powerful Senate, filled with members of rich families (The US Senate, in 2003, was found to have 40 millionaires). The business class of the day, the Equites, grew ever more rich and politically influential as the territories and provinces increased (similar to the advancement of Oil opportunities with the “liberation” of Iraq). Whilst the Tribunes did indeed work in favour of the public (Tiberius Gracchus for example), the shadowy Equites influenced policy from behind the curtains.

Split powers, term limits, the veto, and the Senate itself are all aspects borrowed from America’s imperial predecessor. Of course there are substantial differences between the two (party politics isn’t particularly Roman, the two consuls of the Senate was not adopted in America), which is more down to the problems facing the founders in 1776, their need to create something different, something that broke away from previous English rule, but did not emulate to the core, the failings of previous Republican systems, such as the Republic of Rome. The Roman system was, after all, original and so had many, many flaws. Ultimately, the Roman Republican, the principle of the SPQR on which it stood, crumbled into Empire, because the Republican system of checks and balances just could not cope with such a widespread Empire.

The importance and the Patriotism of belonging to a particular National identity, the largely insular attitudes, their belief in the Republic, their military might, and their insistence that their way is superior and so should be spread across the World, their international cultural influence; all are derived from Rome, and passed on to it’s successor, a contemporary Renaissance, if you will, the United States of America.

There is one less obvious claim America has to be the new Rome.
Stoic Philosopher Panaetius left Athens and headed for Rome, with his new powerful friend; Roman Consul Scipio around 138BC. Earlier Stoics and Romans had decided long ago, that true Virtue came from knowledge, and so only the wisest of men could be considered virtuous in the eyes of the Gods. Panaetius introduced a new idea into the Roman every day life. He would offer help and teachings to those people who requested a life of virtue, he would provide the knowledge needed, he would be the way. And so suddenly, the idea that anyone could potentially become a supremely virtuous human being, in the eyes of the Gods, gave Politicians who sought advice from the teachings of Panaetius, a divine purpose for their serving in Rome. They would insist that the God’s had empowered them, which ultimately gave them much control over the public. This, directly influenced the notion a century later, that Caesar had a divine calling to “save” the Republic. Cicero drew heavily on the teachings of Panaetius. Suddenly individual “virtue” in the eyes of the population, became more important than the protection of the Republic.

In 2005, George Bush claimed the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the disastrous wars in which thousands upon thousands of innocents have died, was a “calling from God“. He is quoted as saying “I am driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, ‘George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan’. And I did. And then God would tell me ‘George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq’. And I did.” A grotesque manipulation of the emotions of Christendom in it’s entirety. Those soldiers, those innocent Iraqi’s appear to have died for a reason none of us are aware of. Perhaps a lavish extension of Western Oil investment opportunities, perhaps the need to revert Iraq back to trading Oil in U.S Dollars. Certainly not a “war on terror“, certainly not a vengeful attack for the horror of 9/11. They died, because Bush thinks he’s ordained by God? The idea that the most powerful man on the Planet, turned the Republican White House into a Theocratic mess, by claiming he felt he had a calling from the mythical God of the Christian faith to destroy a Nation, is no different to Julius Caesar embarking on a mission from the Gods of Antiquity, to “save the Republic“.

Ex-White House Press Secretary, under Lyndon Johnson, Bill Moyer said:
“What is unique today is that the radical religious right has succeeded in taking over one of America’s great political parties. The country is not yet a theocracy but the Republican Party is, and they are driving American politics, using God as a battering ram on almost every issue: crime and punishment, foreign policy, health care, taxation, energy, regulation, social services and so on.“

Suddenly, politicians of a particular persuasion, simply because they consider themselves Christians, have decided that morality comes directly from their apparent virtuous Godly knowledge, and that the rest of us just aren’t privy to their misguided “wisdom“. They try to discredit the faith of opponent politicians, purely for their own political ends. They embarrass themselves and then say “Several years ago, I asked for and received forgiveness from God“, which translates to “I forgave myself, and that’s all that matters“. Republican Congressman Trent Franks, whilst trying to justify torture, starts with a quite depressingly inaccurate claim that “America’s distinguishing hallmark, its bedrock foundation, is that we hold to the self-evident truth that all men are created by God”.
Republican appointed Supreme Court Justice Scalia, is quoted as saying “..Government…derives its moral authority from God.“.
The Anti-Abortion lobby use phrases like “We will not stop until this nation once again honors God—or we die trying“, Theocracy by any means necessary? Why do you need to include an unprovable God in your argument?

The concept that as a politician, you are doing the work of God, or that your playing a part ordained by God, is an incredibly powerful concept. The race for the Minnesota Senate seat between Republican candidate Norm Coleman and Democrat candidate Al Franken, took a turn to the Religious Right, when Coleman stated “God wants me to serve“, as if to suggest a vote for Franken, would be a vote against God.
Gary Mcleod, running for House of Representative seat against Jim Clyburn, in South Carolina’s Sixth Congressional District, writes on his home page “Socialism is immoral because it requires the violation of God-given property rights“. A horribly manipulation of Biblical principles to support Political gain.
Rumsfeld would send memo’s around, regarding the ongoing war in Iraq, filled with Biblical Quotes.
It is an incredibly manipulative environment, to bring Religion into the political landscape. It shouldn’t happen. One disgruntled blogger writing on the Huffington Post site, suggests that the Republicans just cut out their religious dogmatic nonsense, and run God for President.

The use of Religious propaganda and manipulation was utter nonsense during the height of the Roman Empire, it similarly possesses the same utter nonsensical “qualities” during the height of the American empire. The influence of the fallen Rome, is far more widespread than may seem on the surface.