Category: BOUGHT POLITICIANS & PHONIES

Jill Stein: the country produces decent people, but we must create the political space.

Attacking the Messenger

by LAWRENCE DAVIDSON

Falk.

Prefatory Note: This is a valuable piece in the manner in which most valuable pieces written by liberals (in this case a “left liberal”) clarify almost as much as they confuse. What Falk and Davidson are saying is that an honest review of US foreign policy methods and objectives is long overdue. Who can disagree with that among relatively educated well meaning people? The problem starts with the context in which answers are sought.

•

Davidson asks, [w]ill continued unqualified U.S. support of Israeli oppression of Palestinians increase or decrease future violent anti-American episodes at home or abroad? Yet, this critical aspect of any response to terrorism has apparently never been performed. As regards the administration of George W. Bush, this comes as no surprise. Bush and his neoconservative supporters were (and still are) ideologically driven and so are incapable of the objectivity necessary for such a self-critical review. That is why Bush came up with a range of cockamamy reasons, including the famous “they hate our values,” for the 9/11 attacks. President Obama, on the other hand, seemed, at least at first, capable of corrective insight.

•

It’s useless to invoke meaningless categories like “ideologically driven neoconservatives” to explain the criminal nature of our foreign policy. Such utterances hide more than they reveal. How many angels can dance in the microscopic trench between “neocons” and “neoliberals”? Or, say, between neocons and pro-war liberals a la Hitchens? Long, long before there was any such construct, any such cabal, any such term, the US already had a criminal imperialist foreign policy. There has been a criminal foreign policy under practically all US presidents in the last 150 years (am being arbitrary here as we could go back much further and include the full-throttle war against the Plains Indians prosecuted under Republican sponsorship from 1860s as a form of subterranean subsidy to the transcontinental railroads, then the GOP’s chief financial backer ), the only difference being the degree and scope of lawlessness and violence.

•

The “best and the brightest” that pursued one of the most astonishingly barbaric sociocides in the 20th century, the American aggression of Vietnam (in the coattails of the already barbarous Korean War), were predominantly self-defined, card-carrying liberals, members in good standing of the Democratic party. They served Kennedy and then LBJ without missing a beat. And, as Profs. Davidson and Falk well know, the criminality was and remains •

Mistakes aside, their actions correspond exactly to the logic and momentum of the system in which they are embedded, the system which produces them and by which they profit handsomely in power and wealth. There is no need to invent fancy categories like “ideological neconservatives” to explain such reality. The facts—correctly interpreted— are more than enough. That said, Prof. Davidson’s article is a brave reminder of the situation we confront and as solid an alert as any. For that alone, he deserves our gratitude.
—Patrice Greanville

GO TO PAGE 2 TO READ IN PRAISE OF RICHARD FALK

In Praise of Richard Falk
by LAWRENCE DAVIDSON

Shortly after the 15 April 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, Richard Falk, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian territories, published an analysis of the episode entitled “A Commentary on the Marathon Murders.”

In this analysis Falk pointed out that there are “serious deficiencies in how the U.S. sees itself in the world. We should be worried by the taboo . . . imposed on any type of self-scrutiny [of U.S. foreign policy] by either the political leadership or the mainstream media.” This taboo essentially blinds us to the reality of our situation. Falk continues, “The American global domination project is bound to generate all kinds of resistance in the post-colonial world. . . . Especially if there is no disposition to rethink U.S. relations with others . . . starting with the Middle East.”

It seems obvious that if Washington wants to prevent future attacks, it is not enough to pursue alleged terrorists and beef up “homeland security.” It seems logical that one needs to also perform a foreign policy review, preferably in a public manner, to determine if any American policies or behaviors are unnecessarily provoking animosity. For instance, will continued unqualified U.S. support of Israeli oppression of Palestinians increase or decrease future violent anti-American episodes at home or abroad? Yet, this critical aspect of any response to terrorism has apparently never been performed. As regards the administration of George W. Bush, this comes as no surprise. Bush and his neoconservative supporters were (and still are) ideologically driven and so are incapable of the objectivity necessary for such a self-critical review. That is why Bush came up with a range of cockamamy reasons, including the famous “they hate our values,” for the 9/11 attacks. President Obama, on the other hand, seemed, at least at first, capable of corrective insight.

Back in 2009 Obama went to Cairo and made a speech which suggested that a rethinking of American relations with the Muslim world and the Middle East in particular, was in order. Yet the theory represented in the speech was never turned into practice. Why not?

Falk explains that “the strong push-back by Israel” caused Obama to backpedal. As a consequence the “politics of denial” continued. In Falk’s opinion, “As long as Tel Aviv has the compliant ear of the American political establishment those who wish for peace and justice in the world should not rest easy.”

Attacking the Messenger

When it comes to policies that might provoke terrorist attack, U.S. complicity in Israeli belligerency, racism and colonial expansion is just the tip of the iceberg. Washington’s mistakes go further. The unprovoked invasion of Iraq following years of devastating economic sanctions, the ill-conceived stationing of troops on Arabian soil, the unnecessary occupation of Afghanistan, and the collateral-damage-prone-tactic of drone warfare now actively pursued in places like Yemen and Pakistan have all, unbeknownst to the American public, seriously alienated hundreds of millions of people around the globe. It has driven some of this number to violent actions which, from their perspective, represent counterattacks and revenge.

Thus, looked at from outside of the self-justifying perspective of the United States government, everything Richard Falk says is accurate. However, from the inside of the official government worldview, Falk is a heretic and his message dangerous verbal poison. Therefore, the reaction of those dedicated to customary policies and alliances has been shrill.

For instance, Washington’s ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, said that she was “outraged by Richard Falk’s highly offensive Boston comments. Someone who spews such vitriol has no place at the UN. Past time for him to go.” Similar statements came from members of Congress who are collecting signatures on a letter demanding that President Obama “take action” against Falk. The British mission to the UN. released a statement to the effect that “this is the third time we have had cause to express our concerns about Mr. Falk’s anti-Semitic remarks.” This is an embarrassingly ignorant statement that confuses criticism of Israel with hostility to Jews in general. By the way, Richard Falk is Jewish. For its part, Israel has long barred Falk from even entering the Palestinian territories for which he has responsibility. Finally, Zionists have accused Falk of being “an anti-American and pro-radical Islam activist.” This is another statement that is both factually incorrect and ignorant, because Falk is a deeply knowledgable American trying to talk some sense to politicians leading the nation toward a dangerous cliff, and because it confuses criticism of Israel with supporting “radical Islam.”

The ugly fact is that, most Americans have been kept dangerously ignorant of the wanton damage caused by their government’s foreign policies, and those who would prevent them from knowing the truth are, at the very least, indirectly responsible for terrorist attacks launched in reaction to those policies.

Richard Falk’s crime is to be a person of note, an esteemed academic and a respected servant of the United Nations, who is trying to break through with the truth. It is all the more frightening to the U.S. and its allies that, in this effort, Falk has access to an independent platform. He regularly reports to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, where he has the ear of many of the 47 nations that make up this body. Unfortunately, the one group most in need of Falk’s wisdom, the American public, remains beyond the range of his voice.

If it could get away with it, the U.S. government would probably cart Richard Falk off to some hellhole prison, or keep him confined to some foreign embassy (as it has done to Julian Assange). However, despite disturbing signs to the contrary, Washington isn’t yet ready to take such actions against a man of Falk’s stature. However, do not mistake such forbearance for the mark of a mature and stable society. No. Such societies (just like mature and stable adults) are capable of self-criticism. At least at the level of leadership and media, the United States is not capable of such self-reflection and so its citizens are likely to be the last to know that much of the terrorism they fear is a product of their own government’s continuing barbarism.

Lawrence Davidson is professor of history at West Chester University in West Chester PA.

	May 6, 2013
THIS WEEK
The flacks at Fifth Third Bancorp — a 21,000-employee bank based in Ohio — must not, as they say, have read the memo, the memo on keeping a united corporate front against the 2010 federal law that requires companies to reveal the gap between what they pay their top exec and what they pay their workers.Corporate America has been waging, for three years now, holy war against this Dodd-Frank Act mandate. Having to compile pay gap data, business leaders bray, would impose a horribly onerous burden on corporate bean counters.But last week, flacks at Fifth Third Bancorp openly revealed the gap between their CEO and median worker pay, after a Bloomberg News story compared their CEO pay to the banking industry average. The flacks wanted to show their CEO wasn’t grabbing as greedily as the Bloomberg story suggested.In the process of making that point, these flacks quite plainly demonstrated the obvious: that corporations can easily, if they feel a need, supply the pay gap data the Dodd-Frank Act demands. In this week’s Too Much, more on our shameful corporate pay gap — and the tax loophole that keeps it growing.	About Too Much, a project of the Institute for Policy StudiesProgram on Inequality and the Common Good Subscribe to Too MuchJoin us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter
GREED AT A GLANCE
In a society that tolerates grand accumulations of private wealth, can public services — like public schools — survive and thrive? Americans who value public education have a new reason to worry: “parent trigger” laws. Journalist Yasha Levine has just detailed this new danger in a case study of the nation’s first public school privatized under “trigger” legislation. Under this “reform,” if enough parents sign a petition, they can have their local public school turned over to a private contractor. In Southern California, Levine found, a faux grassroots group bankrolled by the heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune engineered just such a petition, but only after subjecting parents to months of harassment and intimidation . . .A luxury car from Ferrari, many people believe, can help you look cool. A Ferrari, beware, can also make you a fool. Just ask Mohammed Nisham, an Indian mega millionaire now in hot water with police after he let his nine-year-old drive his Ferrari F 430, a speedster that retails north of $200,000. The boy’s mom doesn’t understand all the fuss. After all, she told reporters, her son has been driving the family’s Lamborghini and Bentley since he turned five. Meanwhile, stateside in Virginia, Governor Bob McDonnell has his own Italian luxury car issues. McDonnell has been caught accepting — and not reporting — exceptionally generous gifts from a well-heeled plutocratic patron. Among the unreported generous gestures: The patron let McDonnell drive his Ferrari . . .You don’t have to be a mountaineer any more to climb Mount Everest. You just need the $65,000 or so that will buy you the Everest “experience.” The “luxury adventurers” who pay that freight have come to expect the comforts of home as they ascend up Everest, everything from tea in their tents to Wi-Fi, and the Sherpa guides who escort them up have come to feel like servants. Late last month, growing resentment at this servant status exploded into a rock-throwing melee that almost turned deadly for three real mountaineers. Afterwards, one of the three told reporters that Everest’s “increasing numbers of well-heeled” climbers often don’t even bother to learn the names of the Sherpas who carry their huge luxury tents. Everest, he added, “attracts money,” and many Sherpas have become “angry at this financial gap on their mountain.”	Quote of the Week“A growing number of economists believe that our very high levels of inequality are not just whacking the incomes of the ‘have-nots’ but are slowing job growth as well.” Jared Bernstein, Where Have All the Jobs Gone?New York Times, May 3, 2013
PETULANT PLUTOCRAT OF THE WEEK
“Takers” bug Laurence Fink, the CEO of the giant BlackRock asset manager. That millions of Americans in their 60s take Social Security checks drives him nuts. These Americans, he believes, ought to be out working. After all, says Fink, most jobs no longer demand “backbreaking” labor. The CEO wants the retirement age raised to 70. But Fink, truth be told, takes a bit himself. His BlackRock, notes Institute for Policy Studies analyst Sarah Anderson, “raked in substantial taxpayer dollars” to manage toxic assets after the 2008 financial crash, and BlackRock last year rewarded Fink with $65 million in “performance pay.” Meanwhile, if lawmakers perform the way Fink wants them — and raise the retirement age to 70 — average Americans will suffer about a 20 percent benefit cut.	Like Too Much? Email this issue to a friend
IMAGES OF INEQUALITY
In America’s original Gilded Age, no homes glittered more than the mansions of Long Island’s Gold Coast. Some 500 estates stretched along the Island’s North Shore, the country homes of Wall Street’s grandest tycoons. One of the few that remain, Cobble Court, has just gone on the market for $16 million. Built in 1928, Cobble Court may well be the last hurrah of American plutocracy’s first edition.	Web Gem Rich Blocks, Poor Blocks/ This interactive mapping site uses U.S. Census data to break down disparities in wealth and privilege all the way down to the neighborhood level.
PROGRESS AND PROMISE
To Share Wealth, Share Rising ProductivityThe U.S. economy has become significantly more productive over the last 40 years. In fact, the nation’s productivity has doubled over that span. But American workers haven’t shared in the new wealth rising productivity has created, one huge reason inequality in the United States has skyrocketed. What to do? Jack Metzgar, a retired Roosevelt University scholar now with the Chicago Center for Working-Class Studies, wants the federal Fair Labor Standards Act amended to require that wage increases match productivity increases. In the decades right after World War II, thanks to the presence of a robust labor movement in America, productivity increases did translate into wage increases. If the sharing of U.S. productivity gains had continued after 1973 at pre-1973 levels, Metzgar notes, American workers would now be taking home another $20,000 a year.	Take Action on InequalityTell the lawmakers you elected to the U.S. House and Senate to fix the entire austerity sequester, not just the parts that inconvenience America’s wealthy.
INEQUALITY BY THE NUMBERS
	Stat of the Week Of the world’s 200 richest people, Bloomberg Newsestimates, at least a third “control part of their personal fortune through an offshore holding company” or other entity that helps make income more difficult to tax.
IN FOCUS
Hypocrites with Fat Wallets: They Want It AllAmerica’s top corporate executives love lecturing the rest of us about ‘fiscal responsibility.’ They want us to expect less from government. But they expect more, and a new report shows how they’re getting it.Last week, federal unemployment benefits for the 400,000 Californians out of work since last fall dropped almost 18 percent, a $52 cut out of an average $297 weekly check. Similar cuts have already started rolling out in other states.In all, 3.8 million long-term unemployed Americans will on average lose near $1,000 each by September 30, the date that ends the 2012 federal fiscal year.The direct cause of all these cuts: the “sequester,” the $85 billion in federal austerity budget reductions that kicked in this past March 1. Who deserves the “credit” for this meat-axe sequester? Credit the power suits who occupy Corporate America’s loftiest executive suites. These top corporate executives — organized in groups like “Fix the Debt” and the Business Roundtable — have been lobbying relentlessly for deep cuts in federal spending. Only significant cutbacks in programs near and dear to average Americans, these executives proclaim, can save the nation from debt disaster. But these same top executives, says a new reportreleased last week, are actually running up the federal debt — purely to enrich themselves. The giant firms these execs manage, details this new report from the Institute for Policy Studies and the Campaign for America’s Future, “are exploiting the U.S. tax code to send taxpayers the bill for the huge rewards they’re doling out to their top executives.” How huge do these rewards go? UnitedHealth Group CEO Stephen Hemsley, a “Fix the Debt” endorser, pulled in $199 million between 2009 and 2011. A convenient federal tax loophole — in place since 1993 — let UnitedHealth deduct $194 million of that windfall compensation on its corporate tax return. That deduction, in turn, saved UnitedHealth — and denied the federal treasury — $68 million, enough to extend full federal unemployment benefits for the rest of the 2013 fiscal year to over 65,000 jobless Americans. The loophole UnitedHealth so lucratively exploited lets companies deduct off their taxes every dollar of “performance pay” they shovel into their executives’ personal pockets. UnitedHealth, of course, hardly stands alone here. All American corporate and banking giants play the “performance pay” game. The 90 giant firms that belong to “Fix the Debt” play the game particularly well. Between 2009 and 2011, the deductions these 90 claimed for top executive “performance pay” added at least $953 million — and maybe as much as $1.6 billion — to America’s national debt. The U.S. tax code’s exceedingly bountiful “performance pay” loophole has its roots in an earlier epoch of American public outrage at excessive CEO pay. Back in 1992, Bill Clinton campaigned against over-the-top executive pay in his drive for the White House. Congress, just months after Clinton’s inauguration, would go on to pass legislation that lawmakers hailed as a check on CEO excess. The new law allowed corporations to deduct off their taxes no more than $1 million in compensation per executive. But the law had a huge escape hatch. Firms could exempt any “performance-based” pay from the $1 million limit. The predictable result? An explosion of “performance-based” compensation, particularly in the form of stock options, an explosion that would keep CEO pay soaring. CEOs had been averaging 42 times U.S. worker pay in 1982. By 1992, the gap had jumped to 201 times. The average gap today: 354 times. The “performance pay” loophole, the new Institute for Policy Studies and Campaign for America’s Future report stresses, has served “as a critical subsidy for excessive compensation.” “The larger the executive payout, the less the corporation pays in taxes,” the report explains. “And average taxpayers wind up footing the bill.” That footing would end if legislation Representative Barbara Lee from California has introduced ever became law. Her Income Equity Act would deny corporations a tax deduction on any executive compensation that runs over 25 times the pay of a company’s lowest-paid workers or $500,000. Interestingly, the Affordable Health Care Act enacted in President Obama’s first term sets a $500,000 cap, effective this year, on how much health insurers like UnitedHealth can deduct for executive compensation. With this cap now law for health care execs, notes the new Institute for Policy Studies and Campaign for America’s Future report, “taxpayers won’t have to worry so much about their hard-earned dollars going to subsidize fat paychecks for CEOs like Stephen Hemsley of UnitedHealth.” Like this article? Sign up to receive the Too Muchweekly in your email inbox. “But,” sums up the study, “taxpayers may want to wonder why — at a time of scarce government resources — their tax dollars are subsidizing fat paychecks at any American corporate giant.”	New Wisdom on WealthLynn Parramore, Interview with David Graeber on Democracy in America,Naked Capitalism, May 1, 2013. If we see democracy as more collective problem-solving than battle of rival interests, we can’t reconcile democracy with vast inequalities of wealth.Samir Sonti, Going Back to Class: Why We Need to Make University Free, and How We Can Do It,NonSite.Org, May 1, 2013. Care about how inaccessible public higher ed has become? Care even more about the inequality that keeps it that way.John Podesta, Inequality and Growth at Home and Abroad, Georgetown University Law Center address, May 1, 2013. The more unequal we become as a society, the harder to garner public support for investments in the commons that build the middle class. The latest review of Too Much editor Sam Pizzigati’snew book, The Rich Don’t Always Win: The Forgotten Triumph over Plutocracy that Created the American Middle Class, 1900-1970.
NEW AND NOTABLE
Just How Far Can Taxing the Rich Take Us?David Grusky, Taxing Away Illicit Inequality: A Conversation with Emmanuel Saez, Pathways, Spring 2013.This latest issue of the Pathways quarterly from the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality — nowavailable online — features a fascinating interview with Emmanuel Saez, the young Berkeley economist who now ranks as the world’s premiere expert on the historic trajectory of ultra-high incomes.Both Pathways editor David Grusky and Saez agree that much of our contemporary inequality reflects what economists call “rent-seeking” behavior. That is, many of our richest are getting richer by squeezing out monopoly profits or cutting corrupt sweetheart deals or looting their enterprises.But Grusky and Saez don’t agree on solutions. Saez believes that steeply graduated tax rates — the sort of rates we had in the middle of the twentieth century — can reduce “rent-seeking” behavior. Count Grusky a skeptic on that score. Count their dialogue a must-read for anyone interested in our ever-growing inequality — and how to reverse it.	Like Too Much? Email this issue to a friend
ABOUT TOO MUCH
Too Much, an online weekly publication of the Institute for Policy Studies \| 1112 16th Street NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC 20036 \| (202) 234-9382 \| Editor: Sam Pizzigati. \| E-mail: editor@toomuchonline.org \| Unsubscribe.

By Alex Lantier, wsws.org

Israel’s bombing of Damascus International Airport Thursday night and Syrian army targets across Damascus yesterday morning are unprovoked and illegal acts of war, abetted by Washington and its European allies as part of their escalating campaign against Syria.

Russian media reported that 300 Syrian soldiers had been killed and hundreds more wounded in Sunday’s attacks alone.

Israeli forces effectively acted as air support for US-backed Islamist opposition militias around Damascus. The opposition Damascus Military Council issued a statement shortly after the bombings Sunday calling on its fighters to put aside their differences and mount focused attacks on Syrian troops.

The attacks come amid a debate in Washington over how the Obama administration should escalate its war in Syria, given the failure of its proxy forces to topple the Syrian regime. The New York Times on Sunday described this as “the most urgent foreign policy issue of [Obama’s] second term.”

The methods being considered testify to the politically criminal character of the undertaking. They include either giving more weapons to the US-backed opposition, which is dominated by the Al Qaeda-linked Al Nusra Front, or initiating outright US hostilities. The latter option includes launching US attacks on Syrian aircraft and air defenses to set up a “no-fly zone” inside the country, or invading Syria with US troops based in Jordan or Turkey.

There is every indication that the Israeli strikes were a trial run for possible US air strikes on Syria. Though US and European officials have reportedly discussed launching attacks to start a no-fly zone, Washington has until now refrained from organizing them out of concern over Syria’s air defense systems.

Speaking on NBC News’s “Meet the Press,” US Senator Patrick Leahy (Democrat of Vermont) said the Israeli strikes were carried out with US-supplied F-16s, and that they proved the “Russian-supplied air defense systems are not as good as were said.” On the same program, NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell said that after the Israeli attacks, a no-fly zone in Syria seemed more likely.

Netanyahu: Except for his accomplices in Washington, London and Paris, as vile a creature as anyone can imagine.

Netanyahu: Except for his accomplices and sponsors in Washington, London and Paris, as vile a creature as anyone can imagine.

The Obama administration rapidly affixed its seal of approval on the Israeli strikes. US officials asserted without proof that the Thursday night strike targeted a shipment of Iranian missiles to the Lebanese Shiite organization Hezbollah, an ally of the Shiite-led regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. US-backed Syrian opposition sources said the massive explosions that shook Damascus Sunday morning were strikes aimed at Syrian army bases and the Jamraya military research facility, which allegedly develops chemical weapons.

From Costa Rica, where he was traveling on a three-day Latin American tour, Obama said: “The Israelis justifiably have to guard against the transfer of advanced weaponry to terrorist organizations like Hezbollah… We coordinate closely with the Israelis, recognizing they are very close to Syria, they are very close to Lebanon.”

Like the falsehoods used to justify the US invasion of Iraq, the rationalizations for war against Syria presented to the public are a mixture of unsubstantiated allegations and outright lies. Claims that there is evidence that Assad has used chemical weapons—based on allegations that opposition fighters have found or been poisoned by sarin nerve gas—are false. As one British official confessed yesterday, “It’s still completely unclear who used the stuff, in what quantities, and to what effect.”

The US reaction to the Israeli strikes do make one thing clear, however: after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Washington is moving to launch a new, large-scale imperialist war, this time against Syria. The consequences of launching such a war of aggression will be, if anything, even greater than the war in Iraq.

Already, the current US proxy war in Syria has set the Middle East aflame. Aimed at isolating and intimidating Syria’s main regional ally, oil-rich Iran, it is dragging Hezbollah into the fighting and leading to an outbreak of civil war in Iraq, where Sunni sectarian forces tied to Al Nusra are fighting the Shiite-led government.

By escalating the war in Syria, Washington threatens to unleash a broad regional war that could—if Assad allies China or Russia became involved—trigger a global conflagration.

The US war drive against Syria, carried out ten years after the invasion of Iraq, testifies to the bankruptcy of American democracy. Again, Washington is moving to launch a war in pursuit of its imperialist interests, showing utter contempt for the overwhelming popular opposition to such a war both in the United States and the Middle East. Polls show that 62 percent of Americans are opposed to further arms for the Islamist opposition; similar and even greater majorities in Middle Eastern countries oppose the US proxy war.

The Israeli strikes also put paid to the lies of supporters of the Syrian opposition, such as Gilbert Achcar of the pseudo-left United Secretariat, who recently dismissed criticism of imperialist involvement in the Syrian war as a “kind of conspiracy theory.” Since it supported the 2011 NATO war in Libya to remove Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, the pseudo-left fraternity has stepped up its activity as propagandists for imperialist wars for regime-change, waged in alliance with right-wing sectarian elements and reactionary regional powers.

Syria has been in Washington’s crosshairs for more than a decade, due to its ties to Iran and forces like Hezbollah. With the current war, the United States seeks to set up a protectorate in Syria that will be completely subservient to US policy.

There is virtually no popular support for a new Middle East war in the United States, where the same ruling elite that is waging war abroad is engaged in a ruthless assault on the working class at home. The drive to war in Syria is creating the conditions for an explosive conflict between antiwar sentiment based in the working class and the ever more reckless plans for military plunder of the ruling elite.

Alex Lantier is a senior political writer with wsws.org, an information resource of the Social Equality Party.

Tilting at the Wrong Windmills

Mark Sandford: a lying manipulative bastard, but still, no much different than the rest of his ilk polluting political life in the US. He's not the exception; he's the norm.

A lying manipulative bastard, but still, not much different than the rest of his ilk polluting political life in the US. He’s not the exception; he’s the norm. Problem is, the so-called Democratic “alternative”, isn’t.

by STEVE BREYMAN

The Colbert Busch campaign against Mark Sanford in the First District of South Carolina has to be the least strategic special election of the current season. If you’ve ever given a nickel to a Democratic candidate for Congress, you’ve been bombarded in recent weeks by frantic emails pleading for your spare cash, breathlessly announcing how close the race is, and cynically playing on your fervent desire to “seriously embarrass” John Boehner and Eric Cantor. And if those messages don’t separate you from some ‘disposable’ income, the operatives behind them can’t help but remind you that, yes, Colbert Busch is “Stephen’s sister!”

Mitt Romney won the district by 18 percentage points. The district is “ruby red.” A Republican from the district served in the House for the past 32 years. “Democrats 2014,” the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, “Left Action,” “House Majority PAC,” and the Colbert Busch campaign itself tell us that we “can’t trust” Mark Sanford, and that he’s “unfit for duty.” Duh. Sadly, Alternet and Mother Jonesrented out their email lists for use by the Democrats.

One might think that Boehner and Cantor could find a better candidate than Mark Sanford. The polls as of May 3, nevertheless, have Sanford tied with Colbert Busch at 46%. Sanford’s messiness hasn’t stopped a who’s who of South Carolina and national politicians from endorsing the disgraced real estate developer (including Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, Lindsay Graham, Boehner, Ron Paul, Rand Paul and Larry Flynt). Sanford held the seat from 1995-2001 before serving two terms as South Carolina Governor. While a Congressman, the Cato Institute crowned Sanford the most fiscally conservative member of the House. While In DC, Sanford joined “The Family,” that shadowy fellowship of conservative Christian lawmakers operating out of a townhouse on C Street (and that includes likeminded power players around the world, notably gay-baiting Ugandan President Museveni).

Governor Sanford could not get along with his own Republican-dominated state legislature; it routinely overrode the numerous vetoes. During his second term as governor, Sanford stupidly rejected stimulus funds from Washington with the state unemployment rate at 9.5%; the South Carolina Supreme Court forced him to reverse course and accept the funds (most of which, of course, came from taxpayers in blue states). Sanford’s life spiraled out of control after his bizarre week long disappearance in June 2009.

Sanford told his wife and children, his chief of staff, and his security detail that he’d spend the week hiking the Appalachian Trail. Instead, he jetted off to Argentina to meet his “soul mate,” Argentine former TV reporter María Belén Chapur (now his fianceé). Ambushed by a reporter at the airport upon his return, pressured by both friends and enemies with impeachment proceedings in the state legislature, and an awkward, tearful press conference or two later, Sanford admitted the affair, but did not resign.

Sanford’s wife moved out of the governor’s mansion, and divorced him. A couple months ago, in the midst of his electoral comeback, Jenny Sanford charged him with trespassing at her home for sneaking around without permission, contrary to the divorce decree to watch the Superbowl with one of their sons.

Wouldn’t it be great if Colbert Busch unseated Sanford? No. Why not? Because even if Colbert Busch beats Sanford this time, she’s sure to lose the next election. Remember Scott Brown—who took Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat for a partial term—in Massachusetts. The seat reverted to a Democrat after the national Tea Party wave ebbed, and strong contender Elizabeth Warren appeared. Remember Scott Murphy, the Blue Dog Democrat appointed to Kirsten Gillibrand’s House seat following her appointment to the US Senate seat vacated by Hillary Clinton. Murphy lost at his earliest opportunity to a just-retired career Army officer, a first-time Republican candidate new to the district. Gillibrand herself only held on to the seat, through one special and one routine election, because her voting record was nearly indistinguishable from that of a Republican.

This is not to suggest that left-liberal Democrats rather than Blue Dogs ought never challenge conservative Republicans in safe seats. Democrats of any hue have structural advantages over third party challengers like Eugene Platt, the Green in the Sanford-Colbert Busch race (who was shut out of the debate and ignored by the media). Long shot challengers can raise neglected issues, educate voters, and attempt to move the discussion leftward. It’s only to say that working folks aren’t represented well by Democrats-In-Name-Only. And that Democratic Party projects like the Colbert Busch campaign are a waste of scarce resources.

The ONLY reason Republicans control the House is because their brethren back home, state legislators and governors, conspire to draw district lines that favor the GOP. Had they any strategic sense, any concern for the long-run, the various Democratic outfits hawking Colbert Busch would concentrate their/your money, time, and grassroots organizing on fighting the right-wing procedural and financial sliminess that constitutes Republican campaigns today. What are the Dems doing at this very moment to stop the well-funded Republican efforts to institute voter ID requirements, carve up the Electoral College to insure victory, protect Citizens United, forestall public financing of campaigns, and solidify winner-take-all gerrymandering across the country? Not all that much except to ask adherents to sign petitions.

Steve Breyman served as campaign treasurer for a Green Party candidate in a New York State Senate contest, and as speechwriter for a New York Green Party gubernatorial candidate. While a Common Cause/New York Board member he testified before the New York State Assembly on behalf of a nonpartisan process to draw electoral district lines, and worked for public financing of campaigns. Reach him atbreyms@rpi.edu

The eternal question: to vote or not to vote

In Praise of Richard Falk [annotated]

Chronicles of Inequality [TOO MUCH, 6 May 2013}

The Israeli strikes on Syria

The Misguided Colbert Busch Campaign