Obama’s Veepstakes: The REAL Dream Team

by Cameron Salisbury

 

 

Now that the national guessing game has turned to Obama’s vice-presidential possibilities and commentators everywhere are discussing their lists and preferences, it’s time for some serious vetting.  Despite the competence and accomplishments of those on the lists, many are obvious nonstarters. 

 

Hillary, for example.  A few months ago the media was propelling her as almost a sure thing. They gleefully proclaimed, over and over as they are wont to do, that her addition to the ticket would combine her strengths with Obama’s. A Dream Team! What’s not to love? Little has been heard of this inspiration since Jimmy Carter matter-of-factly noted the obvious:  it would also combine their negatives.

 

Onward.

 

General Wesley Clark makes a lot of lists.  However, the fact that he’s a four-star general and a Rhodes Scholar can’t compensate for the awkward feel he brings to the Democrats.  Although he’s now a convert to the progressive cause and has been a good friend and supporter of Hillary, he’s made statements in the past that sounded right-wingish and his opinions on a number of issues when he ran for president in 2004 were muddy.  Despite his keynote address at YearlyKos, we might be pardoned for wondering who he really is. 

 

Kathleen Sebelius, twice elected Democratic governor of red-state Kansas, also seems to make everybody’s list.  She has done tough-minded work for conservation and civil rights in her state against pressure from a Republican legislature. But given a national audience after Bush’s 2008 State of the Union address, she failed to cash in on the golden opportunity.  The image left in the mind of the viewing public was not of strength, resolve or the vice presidency.  Stuff happens.

 

Janet Napolitano (AZ) has been another noteworthy Democratic governor in a red state.  Despite her resume, it doesn’t seem reasonable to expect that the addition of a female, any female, to the ticket with a black man is going to boost Democratic chances.  Remember the misogyny on display during the primary season?  Ms Napolitano is only 50.  We should see more of her in the future but now is not her time.

 

Senator Joe Biden and former governor Bill Richardson suffer from the same electorally fatal condition:  Failure to excite.  Biden is one of the more hawkish Democrats, which will not play any better in the national election than it did in the primary season. 

 

Richardson makes much of his Latino roots, ignoring the immigration hot button and seeming not to understand, as Obama does intuitively, that ethnicity is not a suitable qualifier for national office.  Further, he publicly and unnecessarily betrayed his good friend Hillary by endorsing Obama, and Hill’s supporters have long memories. Richardson seems to lack good judgment at crucial intersections.

Several lists contain the name of Senator Evan Bayh, (IN) for reasons that are entirely unclear.  He’s another legacy politician – the son of long-time Indiana Senator Birch Bayh.  He likes tax cuts and the Wall Street Journal likes him, leading some to wonder if he is actually a closet Republican. If he left his senate seat, a Republican in his very red state would be selected to replace him, jeopardizing the Democrats majority in the senate, such as it is. Worse, he and Obama seem to share little of the same vision.  

 

Another you’ve-got-to-be kidding prospect who makes a surprising number of lists is Senator Chuck Hagel (R,NE).  His main qualification seems to be his strong anti-war position which apparently compensates in some minds for his solid Republican  credentials.

 

With Senator Jim Webb (VA), we’re getting closer.  Senator Webb is a charismatic, no-nonsense, don’t-b.s.-me, type that Democrats have hungered for. He is pro-choice, pro-prison reform, and supports same sex unions.  He is nearly as disdainful of John McCain as he is of George Bush and Little George’s war. So far so good.  But if he were Obama’s running mate, Republicans would make sure that he answered for his past misogynistic comments at a time when plenty of women are incensed over the treatment Hillary received during the primary.  Webb has said that “women can’t fight” because they are biologically unsuited for combat; he called the Naval Academy “a horny woman’s dream”; he derided the Navy’s attempt to clean up its act after the infamous 1991 Tailhook sexual harassment scandal.  Jim Webb for Secretary of Defense, maybe, but not for vice president. 

 

And now for the real contenders:  Senators Sherrod Brown (OH) and John Edwards (NC).  Both are economic populists, opposed to the war and against free trade as it is now engineered.  If Sherrod Brown stepped down from the senate, the Democratic governor of Ohio could appoint another Democrat to replace him. Not to mention that Ohio is a delegate-rich state.  But few outside of the Beltway and Ohio have heard of him.  To make him a positive addition to the national ticket would require some effort.

 

John Edwards, on the other hand, is a known quantity. As a result of the polling that was done during his losing presidential campaign, we know that Edwards has the priceless advantage of being both well known and well liked. The polls repeatedly showed that he was the single Democratic presidential candidate who could beat any Republican challenger, any day of the week, across the board – a remarkable fact that the media never saw fit to mention in their public relations blitz for Hillary and Obama.

 

Obama is currently looking unbeatable.  His choice of a running mate may be almost irrelevant to his chances of winning the election, which gives him the opportunity to create a ‘dream team’ to run the country based on his own political and economic vision.  He doesn’t have to compromise by slotting a running mate to attract the greatest numbers of delegates or for the sake of symbolism.  Adding a John Edwards, or even a Sherrod Brown, to his ticket would help to reassure his base of his real intentions as he tacks to the right on more and more issues, like NAFTA, gun control, wiretapping and campaign financing. 

 

In fact, at the rate he’s now modifying his positions, he may need all the help he can get by Election Day.

 

Bashing Hillary; Electing Obama

by Cameron Salisbury

 

I’m sick to death of the Hillary bashing so I can imagine how her supporters feel.

 

The blatant sexism, poor judgment and self satisfied insolence of media commentators from both the left and the right, TV and radio, is matched only by the blatant sexism, poor judgment and self satisfied insolence of the progressive blogosphere. With two viable presidential candidates who enjoy broad national support, progressives should be thanking providence. Instead, we’ve gone out of our way to throw away all claim to ethical or intellectual high ground.

 

The 2008 Hillary bashing sounds a lot like the 2000 Gore bashing, except that Gore’s trouble came largely from the terminally myopic arrogance of the national press in league with the far right. Hillary, on the other hand has to deal with those and everyone else, too, including us. 

 

Regardless of our own personal candidate of choice, we could react generously and applaud her candidacy, or, if we can’t bring ourselves that far, to give  reasons for our disengagement. Instead, the progressive blogosphere, much like the mainstream media, is full of snide, rationale-free invective, which is also known as misogyny. 

 

Despite the fact that many of us think she has lost her way on some issues, she deserves respect for her sound record of liberal leadership and for being an intrepid trail blazer for women. She has kept the faith with us better, on most days, than we have with her.  Her voting record is among the most liberal in Washington, far more liberal than Edward Kennedy’s (http://www.nationaljournal.com/voteratings/sen/lib.htm.) 

 

 Much has been made of Hillary’s so-called name calling of her opponent, another example of what for her is a treacherously uneven playing field. Every one of her comments about Obama has been fact-based.  She has said nothing that comes close to the mindless venom that has been directed at her. 

 

To prove that there are female misogynists, a woman at a McCain rally called Hillary a bitch.  To show that he was on her side as a misogynist, Senator McCain tittered in apparent agreement, although you probably can’t expect much from a man who calls his wife far worse in public.

  

Hillary didn’t deserve to be called a monster by an Obama campaign aid. 

  

She didn’t deserve to be compared to Tonya Harding by an apparently deranged questioner at a Democratic rally.

  

She also didn’t deserve her remarkable array of false friends. She has been gratuitously and  publicly betrayed by Ted Kennedy and Bill Richardson, as well as by NARAL for whom she’s has been stalwart.  It’s hard to imagine any competent, qualified and viable male candidate getting the same treatment from either gender. 

  

Recently, when giving reasons for ignoring the pundits who  have been calling for her withdrawal since February, she mentioned campaigns that went into June including her husband’s and Bobby Kennedy’s race that ended in his assassination.  The mention of the word ‘assassination’ was certainly ill-advised and she apologized immediately, but that wasn’t good enough because no one else in history has ever said anything they instantly regretted.

  

Dunderheads in both the media and in the blogosphere have said that she really meant that Obama should be assassinated.  Where do these people come from?   Obama brushed it off as did Bobby Kennedy, Jr.  Even conservative  NY Times columnist David Brooks said that the reaction to her statement has been overblown and small minded.  David Brooks, for godsakes!

  

No one in the media or among progressives seems to consider the favor Hillary has done Obama just by staying in the race.  Had she allowed herself to be railroaded out of the campaign by the mindless hatred that came from all sides, we would never have learned so much about Obama.

  

In January, Hillary was the media’s clear favorite with lots of campaign financing, nearly 100% name recognition, and  a double digit lead in the polls. The election was hers to lose, they said. 

   

By February, in what surely must be one of the fastest and most ill-considered u-turns in pundit history, the same talking heads had begun saying that she should abandon the race - for the good of the party, of course. 

  

Lucky for Obama, she’s bright enough to recognize bad advice when she hears it.

    

For many people, Obama is an acquired taste. To know him is often to like him but how would that have happened if he was alone in the field and talkng to himself?  As the race has gone on, the polls have shown increasing numbers of people who like his manner, like what he says, and who plan to vote for him.  

  

They were converted by time, the time to learn about him, time that was given to them by a campaign that was not foreshortened by a  media stampede.

 

But Hillary has also done the rest of us a favor by refusing to abandon the race.

 

By staying the course, she has involved the entire country in the election process, a novelty in the day when winners can and have been announced before the polls close. She’s made voters feel as though they mattered and that politics had a place for them –at the ballot box. 

 

I wish I wasn’t the only one saying,  “Thanks, Hillary.”

 

Texas Polygamy: Punishing the Victims

 by Cameron Salisbury

 

My Texas friends tell me that their Great State has the biggest of … well, you name it. Given the events stemming from the raid at the polygamous compound early in April, I’m ready to concede the point. It’s hard to conjure up a bigger mess, socially, legally and politically, than Texas has on its hands right now.

 

The facts so far: 1) the charges made by a person who anonymously claimed to be a 16-year-old domestic abuse victim living in a polygamous FLDS compound in Eldorado, Texas, cannot be confirmed, and 2) the Department of Public Safety and the Texas Rangers forcibly removed 463 children from their homes and their parents claiming child abuse with no proof that the taken children had been abused. The first event was used to justify the second, with no compelling, or even logical, evidence that there was a connection between the two that would justify a quasi-military action by Texas law enforcement against its own citizens.

 

Hundreds of attorneys arrived in Eldorado from every corner of the state to be part of the action, which makes you wonder how they occupy themselves on slow news days. Already the court calendar has been pushed back to give the attorneys time to review the documents prior to defending their bewildered young clients.

 

The judge’s docket is jammed to eternity and beyond with the caseload that the CPS pieced together out of what appears to be little more than their own prejudice and from which they now cannot easily back away.

.

Hundreds of children have been bussed to foster homes far from their parents, in a statewide diaspora of trauma, inhumanity and grief palpable to anyone who witnessed those televised scenes. If the legal system moves with the glacial pace for which it is known, and if the authorities in Texas cannot bring themselves soon to admit their poor judgment, many of those children could grow up without their parents.  

 

Legally, children cannot arbitrarily be taken from parents even in the Bible Belt, even by the Texas Rangers, even if the local cowboys decide to use the ‘best interest of the child’ defense.  Sooner or later someone will have to explain why the best interest of the child doesn’t include staying with mothers who have been accused of no crime, and how inflicting such pain on children and parents can be good for anyone. With no clear basis for the actions of the CPS and the local police, with CPS patting itself on the back and giving interviews to showcase their cultural sensitivity, there is talk of releasing children for adoption, and people state-wide are lining up.

 

All of this without admitting, much less addressing, the real issue, and it isn’t child abuse.

 

It’s polygamy. 

 

Polygamist males, for whom the institution exists, can’t legally marry more than one woman, no matter how much they yearn to sleep with lots of girls and show off their virility by having lots of kids.  The solution for a polygamist sect is ‘celestial marriage’, a union entered into with church, but not state, sanction, as many times as a guy could wish.  Voila. Lots of sleeping partners, lots of kids, and, since the sect gets Medicaid and other government assistance for single mothers and their kids, no need to support any of them.  What more could a fixated adolescent want? 

 

The women are indoctrinated from birth to subvert their own autonomy and by the time they get to puberty they know that they will be expected to also surrender their bodies and marry – ‘celestially’, of course – an older man. Mothers encourage early marriage and rationalize it as being good for the girls, much as the mothers on another continent sanction the genital mutilation of their daughters.

 

There is plenty about the sect’s way of life that seems repellent, even bone-chilling, to many of us, but for several years after the FLDS compound was built, there was nothing happening that authorities could latch on to as illegal.  They must have waited impatiently for a reason to storm the compound, and finally, tenuous as it was, they got it.  It came in the form of anonymous calls from a woman who has not been found, detailing abuse that cannot be confirmed, in a compound where she did not live.  

 

With 31 teens pregnant or parents themselves among the compound’s 14 to 17 year old girls, it seems likely that the locals, their law enforcement, their child protective services, their jails and their media will have enough scandal to keep them all riveted for a long time. 

 

As the children of FLDS grow up, attorneys will be debating and appealing the tar babies of this episode:  religious freedom, privacy rights, parental rights and civil rights.  It will cost taxpayers a lot.

 

It could have been so much easier, cheaper and less harmful to the victims if authorities simply shifted their attention from the group’s adolescent girls to the adolescent boys. When the children boarded the busses that would take them from their home, the small number of boys among the 400-plus children was shocking. There is a reason for that.

 

Polygamous sects sponsor another crime that is not nearly as salaciously gripping as sex abuse but is equally illegal: Child abandonment. 

 

In order for the sect’s middle aged men to have flocks of wives, male children must be cast out when they reach adolescence. These boys are also the victims of polygamy. If states with polygamous settlements simply prosecuted parents who threw away their underage teens, to either fend for themselves or become wards of the state, polygamy would lose an important supporting pillar.

 

The raid on the FLDS compound had all the markings of a Ruby Ridge or a Waco, without the fatalities, at least so far. Each of these groups had a deep distrust of the government, and in each case the government proved the misgivings of these U.S. citizens well founded. 

 

It’s far past time that local and federal law enforcement created and then adhered to stringent guidelines when dealing with sects.  Its also past time that the criminal justice system enforced all child protection laws, not just those that are the most titillating.

 

 

Economic and Fiscal Impact of Immigration: American Taxpayers Taken to the Cleaners

by Frosty Wooldridge Page 1 of 1 page(s) http://www.opednews.com

Illegal alien migration into the United States costs American taxpayers $346 billion annually, as reported by the National Research Council. While employers of illegal aliens rake-in billions of dollars, the US citizens subsidize what may be called organized “Slavery in 21st Century America.”

While Congress facilitates outsourcing, insourcing and offshoring of American jobs by the thousands weekly, that same Congress imports 182,000 legal immigrant monthly who need jobs. Another estimated 100,000 illegal aliens arrive each month without jobs. All those immigrants seize jobs from American citizens at slave wages.

What happens to the American taxpayer?“Immigrants are poorer, pay less tax, and are more likely to receive public benefits than American citizens,” said Edwin Rubenstein, reporting on the National Research Council’s new book: “The New Americans: Economic, Demographics and Fiscal Effects of Immigration.” The Social Contract Winter 2007-08. www.thesoicalcontract.com

The NRC found that the average immigrant household receives $13,326 in federal welfare and pays $10,664.00 in federal taxes. Thus, American taxpayers shell out $2,682.00 for each immigrant household.

In addition, the report showed that immigrants affect 15 different executive agencies of the U.S. government. Earned Income Tax Credit—fraud is rampant and IRS does little to verify existence of children.

Clean Air and Climate Change—these goals are unattainable as long as US population grows—driven by unending immigration.

Emergency medical treatment—US taxpayer money provides $250 million a year to help hospitals defray costs for illegal aliens.

Bureau of Land Management—the Interior Department spends $1 million to mitigate environmental damage done by illegals crossing US southern border.

Migrant educational grants—intended to help states educate children of illegal workers. More fraud from over-counting.

Office of Foreign Labor Certification—immigrant workers depress wages for US citizens resulting in declines in federal revenues at $100 billion annually.

As shown on CBS with Katie Couric this past week, 300,000 pregnant Mexican women cross the border to birth their babies, known as ‘anchor babies’, in American hospitals at an average cost of $6,000.00 per birth with no complications. If the child suffers heart defects, Downs Syndrome, Autism or any other problems, the costs jump to $500,000.00 with long term care into the millions of dollars. All footed by the America taxpayer!

Not mentioned in Couric’s report, that child enjoys free breakfasts and lunches through 13 years of publicly funded education at an average cost of $7,000.00 per year. Additionally, American taxpayers foot the bill for all medical and housing assistance for the child and mother. More hidden costs add up with ESL classes to teach the child English. Connecticut alone suffers 120 languages in their schools while Colorado suffers over 40 foreign languages that cripple their classrooms.

The list of expenses paid for by American taxpayer soars with time and numbers of illegal aliens. Additionally, legal immigrants sponsor their relatives in chain migration and family reunification at US taxpayer expense.

These immigrants take American jobs while they burn American taxpayer funds for immigrant welfare. This all happens while the US national debt approaches $10 trillion. Immigrants flood into this country while jobs cascade out to China where we owe $1 trillion in T-bills as of 2008. Additionally, we suffer a $700 billion annual trade deficit.

Once those illegal aliens hit this country, half of them work off the books and do not pay $401 billion dollars annually, according to the 2005 Bear Stearns Report. Additionally, they form the second largest underground economy in the world. Both legal and illegal immigrants send $80 billion back to their home countries in cash transfers on untaxed money.

When does it end? Not any time soon! Who pays? You do! Like the proverbial golden calf, the United States taxpayer bleeds to death daily while our president and Congress fiddle, faddle and scratch their generous rear ends while they facilitate the death of America’s middle class.

Our politicians create the problems they campaign to solve; but once in office, as John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have proven with their time in the U.S. Senate—they work more against Americans than for them. The proof in the aforementioned report is, as they say, “in the pudding!”

Final note: I am looking for thinkers, writers and advocates to add to my monthly “Master Mind Think Tank.” In reality, our politicians create the problems that they campaign to solve. They never solve them; thus we spiral into deeper national chaos. I need new ideas and new creative thinkers to help me bring our most pressing issues onto the front burner: overpopulation in America caused by ceaseless legal and illegal immigration. As you know, the recent PEW report shows immigration adding 100 million people to our country in 30 years. We need to stop it and we need to stop it now. Join me in saving our civilization. frostyw@juno.com

Take action: www.thesocialcontract.com ; www.numbersusa.com ; www.fairus.org ; www.populationmedia.org ; www.

www.frostywooldridge.com Frosty Wooldridge Bio: Frosty Wooldridge possesses a unique view of the world, cultures and families in that he has bicycled around the globe 100,000 miles, on six continents and six times across the United States in the past 30 years. His books include, “HANDBOOK FOR TOURING BICYCLISTS”; “STRIKE THREE! TAKE YOUR BASE”; “BICYCLING AROUND THE WORLD”; “MOTORCYCLE ADVENTURE TO ALASKA: INTO THE WIND-A TEEN NOVEL”; “AN EXTREME ENCOUNTER: ANTARCTICA”; “IMMIGRATION’S UNARMED INVASION: DEADLY CONSEQUENCES.” www.frostywooldridge.com

 

Indestructible Food: With Love from America, Inc.

There can be no doubt that the United States has one of the most legally polluted food supplies in the Western world. Antibiotics and hormones have long been allowed in chicken and cattle feed, a practice forbidden in Europe. Plastics, which release compounds that interfere with normal cell division, are present in baby bottles, soda cans, and milk and water bottles We have more additives of all kinds: preservatives, dyes, color enhancers, taste enhancers, texture enhancers, sugar substitutes, emulsifiers, thickeners, all labeled ‘GRAS’, generally regarded as safe, by the porous safety net charged with protecting our food supply: the Food and Drug Administration.

Especially since about 1970, as more chemicals and other ‘enhancements,’ like genetically modified ingredients, have inundated the grocery store, other things have also been happening. Consider that, with no known cause: A girl entering puberty at age eight is no longer considered an anomaly; the U.S. no longer grows the tallest people on earth- in fact, we aren’t even in the top 5; our life expectancy has fallen behind many other nations; we are among the heaviest people on earth; the rate of the devastating condition known as autism is mushrooming.

There is no research linking these facts to our food supply because there seems to be no research whatever on the impact of a degraded food supply on human health. But the incidental evidence is causing plenty of unease. The legal contamination of the food supply has now reached levels where no one can predict the outcome, and the adulteration just keeps on coming.

Like genetic modification. GM tampering can produce plants with ingrown pesticides, herbicides, color enhancers, preservatives or other. The possible results of manipulating a plant’s (or an animal’s) DNA are limited only by the creativity of the scientist, the money and motivation of Big Agra, and the unwitting compliance of the uninformed consumer. The United States produces more genetically engineered crops than the rest of the world combined, and, unlike 35 other nations, requires no labeling.

Since virtually all corn and soybeans grown in the U.S. is now genetically manipulated, frankenfood is a staple in all but the most obsessively organic kitchens. It is now estimated that approximately 70% of everything in the grocery store contains genetically modified ingredients. That includes a clear, sweet, inexpensive sludge with an infinite shelf life that has almost replaced sugar in processed foods made in the U.S.: High Fructose Corn Syrup.

HCFS is insidious not just because it contains genetically engineered ingredients of unproven safety, and not because of the unnerving list of health consequences seen in animal research, but because it bypasses the satiety center in the brain. We can eat almost all the pastries, pies, cakes, soda and candy we like without getting that full feeling that shuts down our compulsion to eat. We and our kids get rounder and sicker.

We are consuming literally tons of other concoctions from the chemistry labs run by agribusiness that they would prefer we know nothing about.

For example, have you noticed the other worldly quality of ground meat these days? It can now last for months without losing that fresh pink glow.

That’s because of yet another hushed innovation of the food processing industry. The use of gases like carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide to preserve meats poultry and fish is rapidly gaining ground and may soon replace safe and effective, and preservative-free, vacuum packing. The healthy pink patina these gases give meat lasts far into the future, like Styrofoam. This poses a question about the safety of the meat at the end of, say, three months. Does that deathless fresh color cover up organisms we’d rather not eat? The European Union has banned this method of preservation also.

Irradiation, another method of creating indestructible meats, fruits and vegetables, may soon be coming to a store near you, after agribusiness finishes pressuring the FDA into sanitizing the name of the process into something that consumers are more likely to buy. They prefer ‘pasteurization.’

Since zapping edibles with radiation kills germs and any other malfeasants that may be lurking about, food items become ‘sterilized’ quickly and cheaply. And by the way, it relieves Big Agra of the responsibility for producing clean food. The filth they leave in the food will be germ free filth.

Possibly best of all for Big Agra, radiation increases the life expectancy of a food to what seems like eternity, another bonanza to the corporate bottom line and something the FDA lists as a benefit.

The statement in the FDA’s 2004 report that radiation induces “chemical changes [that] can ultimately have biological consequences” is neither explained nor integrated into their contention that irradiation “causes little change in the composition of food beyond that which would occur from cooking.”

Although research has been done on the impact of GM, gas and irradiation on the vitamin content, taste and texture of foods, I could find no evidence that the impact of changes to the architecture of food on the people who will consume it has even been seriously considered, despite clear evidence from laboratory testing that all may not be well in the land of falsified edibles.

Genetic engineering, irradiation and gas all work their magic by changing the molecular structure of food. The low-profile adoption of new, unadvertised, untested and often unlisted, potential toxins in the food supply, lobbied hard by corporations and decreed harmless by the FDA, is a walk into the unknown.

by Cameron Salisbury

 

The Reckoning: The U.S. As A Banana Republic?

by Cameron Salisbury

Someone finally said the obvious right out loud. A talking head on the PBS News Hour told Jim Lehrer that Americans must get used to a lower standard of living. In the years since globalization made corporate competition synonymous with exporting American jobs, closing factories, removing tariffs, and importing low paid H1-B workers to replace U.S. citizens and reduce wages, the downward spiral has picked up steam.

The approaching abyss had been held at bay by the now defunct mortgage-securitization bubble. Homeowners were encouraged to treat their houses like a piggy bank, refinancing at ever higher valuations and lower interest rates to maintain life styles that they could no longer afford on their receding incomes. Much of that liquid equity was transferred to China and other third world countries to buy the goods that free trade produced at bargain prices and that a hollowed out U.S. manufacturing sector could no longer produce. More than one economist declared the U.S. bankrupt in all but name.

As households and the nation slid ever deeper into debt the pundits blamed the free-spending U.S. consumer for problems that government policies had caused.

Armageddon, no longer invisible in the distant fog, was held back, at least temporarily, by sheer terror in the rest of the world at the dimensions of the U.S. fiscal mess.

The regulatory safety net, created during FDR’s New Deal, for decades provided the underpinning for sane capitalism and general prosperity. The dismantling of financial sector regulation was bought and paid for by the same rootless, multinational corporations that lusted after cheap foreign labor and the elimination of import penalties.

The stock market briefly climbed to over 14,000 before the house of cards crumbled, right on schedule, as the irresponsibility of Wall Street and Congress settled in. All those no-documentation, no down payment, adjustable rate home mortgages imploded in slow motion, one foreclosed home, one “high grade” investment, at a time.

As foreclosures annihilated neighborhoods and cities, Bear Stearns went on life support; hedge funds and airlines struggled, with mixed results, to avert collapse; 232,000 U.S. workers lost their jobs in the first 3 months of 2008, and CEOs, true to form, walked away with millions.

And then, playing their accustomed role in the repeating drama of corporate financial malfeasance, the U.S. government stepped in to bail out – ok. You know who, and it wasn’t the taxpayer. Corporations that had spent millions in tax sheltered lobbying expenses to effectively destroy the regulatory safety net couldn’t make their way to the taxpayer trough fast enough. For the good of the country, of course.

While corporate titans saw the American worker as their opponent in a zero sum game, our government acted as their enablers. The collusion of our elected representatives with their corporate financiers in the hollowing out, selling off and mismanagement of a once vibrant economy has been a sad, and possibly final, chapter in the American success story.

As Jim Lehrer’s guest implied, what comes next may be a standard of living that none of us could have imagined – except those who have spent time in a third world country.

Take Ecuador, for example.

I visited Ecuador not long ago when my daughter was in the Peace Corps. I knew before I went that it was a poor country and that the water was undrinkable. But nothing, not the guide books, not the internet, not descriptions from previous visitors, prepared me for the shock of living, even temporarily, in a culture where government services are virtually nonexistent, and where 80% of the population is officially classified as poor (WHO/UNICEF.)

In real terms, here’s what that means:

–Even in urban areas, where the majority of homes have water connections, it is available only 50% of the time and the quality is always iffy. Ditto for electricity. In many areas, the day ends when the sun goes down.

–The lack of water treatment facilities means, among other things, that toilet paper cannot be flushed away. It is kept in the home for later disposal.

–Women in much of the country wash clothes by hand in a concrete tub. I actually saw a woman using a rock to clean clothes.

–Trash is everywhere. One of the first things visitors notice is the ubiquitous filth.

–Streets are filled with whisper-thin stray dogs and cats.

–In very poor barrios there are no trees or grass or flowers to be found. Just dirt or mud, depending on the weather.

–Car and bus drivers are supposed to be licensed, but with few police and effectively no traffic control, no one knows how many actually are. Obeying traffic signals is a matter of personal preference. Car insurance is a luxury and “not required” as one official told me. Remember this the next time you read about yet another bus accident in Central or South America, where a bus tumbles off a highway and down a mountain, killing everyone on board. Traffic accidents are a leading cause of death in much of the third world.

–Unfinished buildings are everywhere, frozen in time, awaiting further funds from adult children working in the U.S. or Spain. An estimated one in ten young Ecuadorians has emigrated for work reasons, often, tragically, leaving their own lost children to the uncertain mercies of friends or family.

– The relative opulence of a home is often a testament to the number of children a family has working abroad. The poorest of the poor live in shacks made of cane sugar stalks.

– It’s not unusual to see visitors walking along looking at their feet. That’s because the sidewalk is uneven and holes, including sewer holes, as well as sudden mountains of pavement, can appear unexpectedly. Roads can be so rutted that taxis refuse to navigate them.

–People get around by bus. Driving a bus is an entrepreneurial activity for upwardly mobile families in Ecuador. A family saves up enough to buy a second hand bus and they’re in business: the dad drives and the kids go along for the ride and collect the fares. Mom is probably at home managing the small store that is the front room of their three room house. The store sells to their neighbors whatever vegetables the family has raised and other small items, like cigarettes at three for a dime or bottled water for 25 cents.

–I saw police (or were they soldiers? Hard to tell when the military and law enforcement are interchangeable) only twice during the time I spent in Ecuador. They were standing guard outside banks, state of the art weaponry at the ready. What little law enforcement exists seems there to protect the property of the rich.

–Criminal activity is a constant concern. Barred windows appear in all areas of the country and among all types of homes. In my daughter’s travels, she found that armed robberies on busses were rather routine, which accounts for the fact that many busses have a barrier behind the driver separating new and possibly dangerous arrivals from seated customers.

–Typical for third world countries, public education is limited. It is usually only the families who can pay whose children attend school. Huge numbers of families can’t afford tuition or uniforms or books, children may go to work before their teens, and the country remains impoverished.

–A few thousand of Ecuador’s estimated 13 million citizens are tall and white and Spanish, unlike the majority who are Indian or mestizo (mixed race). They are the upper class, and for many decades, they were the ruling class. Today they live behind tall barriers in exclusive enclaves, and they trust no one from outside with so much as their phone numbers. They hire body guards, send their children to be educated in the U.S., and remain active in politics in this politically unstable region.

–Since precise statistics are unavailable and most estimates in the third world are essentially guesses, no one knows the true extent of unemployment in Ecuador. Nevertheless, we observed massive numbers of people, with neither education nor skills nor available jobs, who simply stayed at home every day. We were awed by the lack of productivity in much of the country.

My daughter made good friends in Ecuador with people who were, in many ways, very much like us. Their ability to stay in touch after her tour ended was nearly impossible, however, since the mail system in Ecuador is close to nonexistent and because the overwhelming majority are too poor to have good access to telephones or computers. Even if they did, those living in or near poverty spend most of their time on tasks necessary to their survival.

Concerns with public health and safety are ample reasons to hope the U.S. doesn’t descend too far into the approaching abyss. But there is also much to recommend this other world. Families are strong, neighborhoods are stable. Life is simple, ads for the latest trinkets are nonexistent, and no one worries about keeping-up consumerism.

As U.S. citizens travel the economic path laid out by our multinational corporate government, we may all have reason to look for the bright side.

 

I Believe You, Hillary. Mostly.

As soon as you discarded the hard political patina, pulled back the veil and became a real, and really fatigued, person during ‘The Moment’ the day before the primary in New Hampshire, I knew you had it won.  George Stephanopolous is still probably saying that, by rights, you should have blown it beyond recovery and the talking heads are still debating the polls.  They should all move on.

First, about those polls.  There were eight of them by respected organizations.  They all said the same thing, that Obama was going to win handily.  The chance that those professionals erred in unison is nonexistent this side of Never Never Land.  When the polling closed two days before the election, Hillary was going down.

Neither the polls nor the pundits bargained on Hillary morphing into a real person in front of the cameras a day later, someone doing her best to deal with vulnerability and disappointment, someone who was sincere, misunderstood, sad, and tired.  She became everywoman.  Her success, viscerally, became theirs and they voted for her in massive numbers, propelling her to a decisive victory and everyone else into a polling nightmare. 

See?  I do understand.  Now let me tell you why I’m containing my own enthusiasm.

In all honesty, your Senate voting record in total has been clearly liberal. You can be counted on to advance positive education initiatives; you have said that free market capitalism should be controlled; you are in favor of improving access to health care; of better protection for the environment; of restrictions on gun sales; of internet neutrality; of stem cell research without government imposed restrictions.

You stand on other issues is cloudy.  Prayer in schools, for example.  That seems to be both yes and no.  And Social Security?  You will convene a committee to look at it.  That sounds like a cop out at a time when we need specifics.

And then there are those staggering failures.  Not only did you effectively vote for a war of choice against a third world country and for continuing to fund that war ad-nauseam, but you defended those votes far beyond any semblance of reason.

You are an ardent supporter of our current, disastrous, Middle East policies.

You want to continue the Cuban embargo – which benefits ….  Ok.  Who?

You sponsored a flag burning amendment. 

You voted for the Kyl-Lieberman resolution, giving the Bush administration another go-ahead for the same insanity in Iran.

You voted to loosen wiretapping restrictions.

You voted in favor of the Patriot Act. Twice.

And you voted in favor of a bankruptcy bill that penalized the poor and gave a bonanza to credit card companies.   It was the same bill that your husband had vetoed, at your urging, during his administration.

Can you see why people view you with distrust?

The problem, as I see it, is your fund raising.  You are queen of the war chest. None of your opponents has been able to match those tens of millions of dollars that corporations and individuals have handed to your campaign. Those donors really, really, want you elected.  In ways that mattered, you performed admirably for them as a senator and they will expect even more from you as chief executive of the nation.  You have given neither them nor us reason to believe that their expectations will not be realized. 

In short, you have failed to convince many of us that you would be on our side when it counts.  And when you’re chief executive, it counts everyday.

Fund raising is a double edged sword when you can’t please your donors and your constituency at the same time.  So far, your donors have been unyielding and a large part of your constituent base seems unforgiving.

Unless the aura of your New Hampshire performance carries over until November, it could turn out to be a tough way to win an election.

  

by Sandy Jewell.   For more, go to www.opedinfo.com.