Ed Schultz: “Step up, Democrats! The Republicans are out to kill the post office!” [VIDEO]


Darrell Issa: This smiling Republican creep, sent to Congress by misguided Californians, is leading the charge against the USPS.

By Patrice Greanville

MSNBC host Ed Schultz delivered one of the most impassioned and informed pleas for the survival of the USPS, currently under all-out dishonest attack (is there any other kind?) by the Republicans, a charge led by the contemptible Darrell Issa. The campaign—which in reality aims to further cripple unions in general and public employes in the particular— has advanced this far for the usual reasons:  Obama has remained passive and absent from this struggle, providing no bully pulpit leadership to fire up the public, which could have quickly turned the tables against the GOP in terms of public opinion; the head of the USPS itself is party to the “contract” on the post office he is supposed to defend; and a complicit Democratic party has done practically nothing to denounce and oppose the GOP moves. Meanwhile, with the corporate media indifferent to the issue, the livelihood  of hundreds of thousands of workers and millions of Americans hang in the balance.

The show aired on April 4, 2012. Given its importance to the nation, and the dismal unemployment levels, this is topic clamoring for better coverage in the mainstream press and this segment of Schultz’s provides the template for television.

The segment is so good that we almost forgive Ed for shilling so passionately for Obama.

It may be of interest to our readers that a spunky little company, Cranky Beagle, founded by activists (some associated with The Greanville Post) has created a very attractive collection of personal “political expression items” in defense of the USPS. The catalog currently lists T-shirts in several formats and colors, mugs, mouse pads, bumper stix, and many other products, many of them designed by Sarah Edgar.  A very hefty part of the revenues will be turned over to The Greanville Post, so this is your opportunity to send an indirect donation to TGP AND help yourself to a nifty item reflecting your convictions. Incidentally, Cranky beagle also produced a collection defending Medicare/Social security. If you have an elderly relative (or you yourself are approaching the golden years) make a statement with these items: Medicare and Social Security are NOT handouts!  Whatever you do, don;t just sit there, fight back!

 A sampler below:

     
     
     
     
 

The online stores can be found at two locations:

Cranky Beagle on Facebook (click on the STORE icon)

Cranky Beagle on Zazzle (Main location)

Thanks!

______________
Patrice Greanville is editor in chief of The Greanville Post.

 

 

 

 

 

_______________________________________________________________________________

ADVERT PRO NOBIS

IF YOU CAN’T SEND A DONATION, NO MATTER HOW SMALL, AND YOU THINK THIS PUBLICATION IS WORTH SUPPORTING, AT LEAST HELP THE GREANVILLE POST EXPAND ITS INFLUENCE BY MENTIONING IT TO YOUR FRIENDS VIA TWEET OR OTHER SOCIAL NETWORKS! We are in a battle of communications with entrenched enemies that won’t stop until this world is destroyed and our remaining democratic rights stamped out. Only mass education and mobilization can stop this process.

It’s really up to you. Do your part while you can. •••

Donating? Use PayPal via the button below.

THANK YOU.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________



Name the country: Stupid, prudish, hypocritical, and neurotic—from the start.

Editor’s Note:
By Patrice Greanville

Name the country:

The case of the aberrant (hypersexed) teachers

When it comes to mores, America can easily place as medieval. Its bluenose streak is legendary. 

A case in point is the [female] teachers —many of them pinup material by any standard—who have been accused of having sex with young males. The moral contradictions and the double standard in such cases grotesque, especially in a culture  where sex and its multiple titillations —from television to billboards—serve as the prime prop for a pervasive marketing system. But the anachronism of taking a young woman (or any woman for that matter) to court for having intimate, consensual relations with a very much willing young male is plain and simple Olympic-class idiocy.  Why, in most of the rational world young men actively seek, often with the encouragement of parents, any kind of initiation into the arts of intimacy with willing “adult” females. In old-fashioned class-divided nations such as those in the Mediterranean and Latin America, the lowly maid is usually the willing (or just as frequently unwilling) partner in such rites of passage. It’s so common as to be a staple plot-line in Mexican telenovelas. 

As usual, the situation in America is precisely the reverse: here healthy, middle class, educated women, for the most part highly desirable, offer themselves willingly to such youths. But here such natural and overwhelmingly harmless liaisons are deemed to be a crime worthy of lifelong stigmata. far too many prigs seem to forget that such activity—as advised by Wilhelm Reich—could serve to defuse a lot of male juvenile hooliganism. Not only that, but most women, even at their worst, can be a mighty civilizing force. Sex in and for itself among consenting partners (the youths involved were adolescents, some pretty long in the tooth, not infants) needs no defense—except in America, of course. The ludicrous dimension that such warped attitudes attain is difficult to believe. The latest eruption of this disgusting narrowmindedness involves a popular cheerleader.  As summed up in a satirical YouTube post (see below),

 

The absolutely deranged, intrusively petty and terminally twisted mindset of these people is as evident as it’s indefensible.  Who the hell writes these inane laws in the United States?  One would wish that such manifestations, while possible, were rare, but they are not.  Consider a similar recent case: 

Female gym teacher accused of sex acts with football players

Feb. 8, 2011 

MASON (Ohio)— A female Mason high school gym teacher is accused of having sexual misconduct with five students, most of them football players at the school.

A Warren County grand jury on Friday indicted Stacy Schuler of Springboro on 16 counts of sexual battery, a third-degree felony; and three misdemeanor counts of offenses involving underage persons.

Schuler, who will turn 33 next week, allegedly had sexual contact with the students on five different occasions between August and December, according to officials with the Warren County Prosecutor’s Office. She also allegedly bought alcohol for the students, according to the indictment.

Prosecutors said the alleged sex acts, mostly with football players at Mason High School, occurred off school grounds.

My, the poor babies! As if football players everywhere were not notorious for binge drinking, rough-housing and promiscuous sexuality!  Meanwhile, the press, conformity concubine that it is, talks glibly with a straight face about the “sexual assaults”, as if these females had actually committed serious violent crimes. The cases of Schuler and Jones are bad enough, but there are even more egregious cases. Just think of the even more bizarre case of Debra Lafave, whose incandescent, centerfold looks could have ignited a six-year old. 

Lafave’s witch-hunt

Debra Jean Beasley, better known under her former married name of Debra Lafave, (born August 28, 1980) was a former English teacher at Angelo L. Greco Middle School in Temple Terrace, Florida. She pleaded guilty in 2005 to “Lewd or Lascivious Battery” (sic). The charges stemmed from a sexual encounter with a 14-year-old student in the summer of 2004. Horror of horrors, according to the indictment, “Lafave had oral sex and sexual intercourse with the student on four different occasions.” In France and Italy and other civilized nations she might have been given a medal for providing sexual relief to an adolescent.  Alas, not here. In short order her career was over, and jail loomed large. According to the Wiki,

“Investigating officers pursued the case after being notified by the 14-year-old boy’s mother.[6] Officers tape-recorded conversations between Lafave and the boy, then arrested her at their next meeting. Two separate sets of charges were filed, because the alleged incidents occurred in two different counties. A trial date was set after the defense would not agree on a plea bargain that involved prison time.

Shortly before the trial was scheduled to begin, the boy’s mother learned that it was to be covered by Court TV and agreed to a plea bargain with no prison time in order to avoid her young son having to testify in court.[7] Lafave pleaded guilty under the agreement and was sentenced to three years of Community Control (house arrest), seven years of probation, and forced to register as a sex offender, along with various other requirements.[8] There was widespread skepticism as to whether a man guilty of lewd or lascivious battery would have received similar treatment.[7][9]

On December 8, 2005, the judge in the second county refused to accept plea-agreement terms that included no prison time and set a trial date for April 10, 2006. The prosecutor in that case later dropped the charges.” (1)

 

The imbroglio’s burden and endless disruptions forced Lafave to admit that her actions had been the product of a medical condition, thereby consecrating the notion that such absurd persecution was actually a triumph for normalcy. Those acquainted with American culture know that many stupid and even criminal behaviors are “forgiven” provided the defendant “medicalizes” his affliction. Indeed,

“Lafave later attributed her indiscretions to bipolar disorder, which is associated with intense and irregular mood swings, and with hypersexuality and poor judgment during manic episodes.[14] (See Wiki entry footnote)
Patrice Greanville is editor in chief of The Greanville Post. He obviously thinks women are terrific, at any age. 

(1)  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debra_Lafave

 

 

 

 

 

_______________________________________________________________________________

ADVERT PRO NOBIS

IF YOU CAN’T SEND A DONATION, NO MATTER HOW SMALL, AND YOU THINK THIS PUBLICATION IS WORTH SUPPORTING, AT LEAST HELP THE GREANVILLE POST EXPAND ITS INFLUENCE BY MENTIONING IT TO YOUR FRIENDS VIA TWEET OR OTHER SOCIAL NETWORKS! We are in a battle of communications with entrenched enemies that won’t stop until this world is destroyed and our remaining democratic rights stamped out. Only mass education and mobilization can stop this process.

It’s really up to you. Do your part while you can. •••

Donating? Use PayPal via the button below.

THANK YOU.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________



Uruguay: The Right to the Truth

by Rosario Touriño
(North American Congress on Latin America)
Thank you, NACLA


Open Forum

On May 20, the Uruguayan Chamber of Deputies voted down a proposal to annul a law that protects former members of the military and police from being prosecuted for human rights abuses. Under the country’s dictatorship (1973–1985), the Uruguayan Armed Forces disappeared about 300 people and imprisoned an estimated 8,700 political prisoners, most of whom were tortured, according to the Uruguayan Peace Commission and the Peace and Justice Service in Latin America. The debate over the law, known as the Law on the Expiration of the Punitive Claims of the State, has ripped apart the ruling Broad Front (FA) coalition—with members of the Communist Party and the social-democratic New Space party clashing with the Popular Participation Movement (MPP) and the Progressive Alliance. The latter two currents sided with President José Mujica, who urged the congressional deputies not to annul the law because it would undermine the results of two popular referendums already held on the issue (1989, 2009), in which voters upheld the amnesty law. The congressional move to annul lost by one vote. The request by Mujica—a former political prisoner and torture survivor—shocked many who hoped that former members of the dictatorship would finally be brought to justice.

The history of the repression goes back at least to 1972, when President Jorge Pacheco Areco decreed a state of “internal war” and authorized the use of “necessary means to repress the actions of individuals or groups who conspire against the homeland in whatever way.” With support from death squads and U.S. police training, the Uruguayan military unleashed a bloody campaign of mass arrests, forced disappearances, and torture against the National Liberation Movement (MLN), an urban guerrilla group commonly known as the Tupamaros, as well as against the general population. The dictatorship was formally installed the following year, when President Juan María Bordaberry dissolved the General Assembly. By then, the Tupamaros had already been largely defeated, yet the repression continued. 

With the return to democracy, the Tupamaros joined electoral politics in 1989, co-founding the MPP, a member group of the FA coalition. Led by Mujica, a former Tupamaro, and composed of other radical groups like the Socialist Workers Party and the Party for the Victory of the People, the MPP quickly grew into the largest, most popular current within the FA. With the MPP’s support, FA candidate Tabaré Vázquez was elected president in 2004. Just three months into his term, Vázquez announced that excavations would begin in police barracks to look for the remains of the disappeared. This move built off of the work done by the Peace Commission, established by President Jorge Batlle in 2000 to investigate the dictatorship’s abuses. But the struggle to recover the truth continues, as the theory of “two demons”—in which responsibility for the violence rests equally on the shoulders of Communist subversives and the dictatorship—appears to have been recently revived.

The following is excerpted from an interview published in the progressive Uruguayan weekly Brecha. Interviewed are Ignacio Errandonea, Gimena Gómez Gadea, and Eduardo Pirotto, members of the Mothers and Family Members of Disappeared and Detained Uruguayans (MFUDD), an organization formally founded in 1983. According to Brecha, Errandonea has fought for decades to discover the fate of his brother Juan Pablo, who was kidnapped in Buenos Aires in 1976. Gómez has likewise been searching to know what happened to her aunt Nelsa Zulema Gadea Galán, a student activist who was kidnapped in 1973, in Santiago, Chile. Pirotto has worked with the organization since 2000, compiling testimonies.

This interview was originally published May 20, the day that the Uruguayan congress failed to annul the amnesty law, which is also the day of the yearly March of Silence for the disappeared. Editing and translation by NACLA. Reproduced with permission.

________________________________

How do you see this particular moment of crisis in the FA and the widespread confusion caused by the amnesty law?

Gimena Gómez: It’s worrisome, and that’s why we issued a communiqué.1 We believe that the very essence of the issue is being blurred. [The congressional deputies] ended up debating over this or that person’s reaction, over measures considered unconstitutional, and not the heart of the issue. That’s why we wanted to come out and contribute something in-depth for those participating in the debate and for the population. Even we had for a moment lost the focus of the discussion. 

 

You have emphasized the need for truth, something that few people speak of. The investigation into abuses committed under the dictatorship seems to have been permanently left off the public agenda.

Ignacio Errandonea: We work with a concept of impunity that goes beyond the amnesty law, which is the most visible legal aspect. Impunity is much more global. In the law itself, Article 4 demands that the Executive Branch investigate human rights abuses. [Former Uruguayan president Julio María] Sanguinetti did the ridiculous by naming a military prosecutor to this position [in 1987]. That’s like having [Uruguayan bank embezzler Juan Peirano] investigate whether they bankrupted the bank or not . . .

They could have found the truth, but they didn’t because they have not exerted even the tiniest effort to find it. Under Batlle, with the Peace Commission, there were some good intentions, but they were very timid. Later came the efforts under the Tabaré Vázquez government. He ordered the Armed Forces to investigate, and they lied to him like a dog. We told the presidential office that they had lied, we proved the lies, and nothing happened. I mean, they made it so that the Armed Forces are institutionally a separate entity. If I lie while under oath, I am punished. But the military lies and nothing happens. There are archives from the Armed Forces’ intelligence services, but they don’t open them and you can’t touch them.

 

During the previous period [under the Vázquez administration], there were excavations in military buildings. What happened with these investigations under the present government?

Gómez: Yes, they are still excavating. The issue is that there was a timid period that was begun with the Peace Commission’s tepid announcements, which achieved something important: For the first time an official government organ said that there was no war in the country and dismantled the theory of “two demons.” The current debate has carried us back to before Batlle, because it has rejected what was already politically and scientifically settled: that there was no internal war and that what you had instead was state terrorism.

 

And what do you attribute the current situation to? Could the presence of MLN members in high levels of government have something to do with it?

Errandonea: I think there are members of the Popular Participation Movement who aren’t comfortable with a part of the MLN that is a little near-sighted, that understands that the government waged war against them but forget that there was also a war on the Uruguayan people. The declaration of the internal state of war meant repression for everyone. We were arrested right and left without having anything to do with the MLN. The dictatorship was created after the Tupamaros’ military apparatus was already defeated. For me there is a misunderstanding over what happened historically. And I can’t understand their perspective. From a human point of view, they are very close to us, but as a political power, they don’t exercise it to find solutions. We have already had six interviews with the presidential chief of staff. We came to some basic agreements to create a small investigative commission, but so far nothing has materialized. We need a presidential decree. 

 

And this commission hasn’t been formally created?

Gómez: The Secretariat for Continuing the Peace Commission was created [in 2003] to continue the work of the Peace Commission. It was in this framework that work was done during the Vázquez administration and the excavations in the military barracks began. However, the secretariat lapsed at the end of his term. This office is now working at about 20% of its capacity. It has no powers to move. What we ask is that it be restructured and strengthened, because if we don’t give this issue a big push, it is going to go on forever. Finding the remains is important to us as individuals, but the truth, justice, and the cleansing of the Armed Forces are fundamental for all of society to grow and progress. 

Eduardo Pirotto: I am convinced that in a few short days we have actually lost ground at the root of all of these problems that have cost us blood, sweat, and tears. The Latin American Federation of Associations of Family Members of Disappeared Detainees (FEDEFAM) has done a lot in the United Nations to enshrine the right not to be disappeared. Lately this has been made almost inconsequential, and I think it has something to do with these [former Tupamaros] on the government staff who feel as though they are morally superior. They can say, “I was a combatant.”

 

There are those that say that your organization, MFUDD, hasn’t supported legal action because it works more in the area of the truth than in justice. In other words, that you believe more in promoting investigation through political negotiation rather than through the judicial process.

Errandonea: We have always been rooted in the truth, justice, memory, and “never again.” We try to work in all of these areas. In terms of the truth—and this is my personal opinion—I come from a place of believing that we are not going to get the truth from the accused. The justice system in this country doesn’t have the technical means to act. Even if they give the judges all of the archives and the boxes they have found, they wouldn’t be able to use them, because they don’t have the means to digitize them. We have wagered on obtaining the truth through other means. Yes, we have discussed if every case should be brought to trial, or where to find the truth, but they are different ways of looking at the problem. 

But the theme of the truth for us goes much further. I know my brother Pablo is dead, but he is also disappeared. I can’t be 100% sure, and I can’t resolve this pain if I don’t have the truth. And this urgency over the truth happened to my mother. In 2006 we had a meeting with then chief of staff Gonzalo Fernández, who said, Yes, the military lied to us, but what do you want? Do you want us to torture them? My mother, who was already old, told me [his voice shaking], I’m going to have to look for Pablo someplace else, because here . . . and the next day she passed away.

Something similar happened with Luz [Ibarburu, co-founder of MFUDD]. We had a meeting with the Ministry of Defense in which they told us that there was nothing they could do. She left completely demoralized, and within a few days she died. There is a part of this emotional experience that can’t be expressed in words and that isn’t understood from the political point of view. Often the government doesn’t understand this need for the truth. I always tell Chief of Staff Alberto Breccia: [MFUDD co-founder] Luisa [Cuesta] is 90 years old. How many more elders are going to have to die without knowing what happened to their sons and daughters?

Rosario Touriño is a journalist who writes for the Uruguayan progressive weekly Brecha (www.brecha.com/uy)

1. Madres y Familiares de Uruguayos Detenidos-Desaparecidos, “Aportes de Familiares y su profundo y meditado sentir,” May 11, 2011, familiaresdedesaparecidos.blogspot.com.

 

 

 

 

 

_______________________________________________________________________________

ADVERT PRO NOBIS

IF YOU CAN’T SEND A DONATION, NO MATTER HOW SMALL, AND YOU THINK THIS PUBLICATION IS WORTH SUPPORTING, AT LEAST HELP THE GREANVILLE POST EXPAND ITS INFLUENCE BY MENTIONING IT TO YOUR FRIENDS VIA TWEET OR OTHER SOCIAL NETWORKS! We are in a battle of communications with entrenched enemies that won’t stop until this world is destroyed and our remaining democratic rights stamped out. Only mass education and mobilization can stop this process.

It’s really up to you. Do your part while you can. •••

Donating? Use PayPal via the button below.

THANK YOU.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________



THE BLAZE: Filthy Reichwing Site of the Day

 

___

theblaze.com

By P. Greanville

As usual, the Wiki is much too polite in its impartiality to call this website for what it is: an insidious, fetid outgrowth of one of America’s most malignant media creatures: Glenn Beck.  The site is elegantly designed and amply supported by tons of advertisers, thereby providing stylistic comfort to the incautious.  This fact scarcely surprises us since such media turds always seem to swim in dough and enjoy the tacit support of powerful figures in the plutocracy.  We’re calling the site insidious because its contents are being obviously modulated to tone down Beck’s customary fascistic lunacy and complete disregard for truth. Below a few excerpts from the Wikipedia:

Mercury Radio Arts, three days after Beck’s widely publicized Restoring Honor rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D. C. Beck has promoted The Blaze as an alternative to “mainstream media outlets,” which Beck says are “distorting facts to fit rigid agendas.” Beck was quoted saying that The Blaze will feature “breaking news, original reporting, insightful opinions and engaging videos about the stories that matter most” and that “we will examine our culture, deal with matters of faith and family, and we won’t be afraid of a history lesson.”[3] The site is reportedly modeled after The Huffington Post, and has been compared to that site by Matt DeLong of the Washington Post and Steve Krakauer of Mediaite.[4][5]

Mercury Radio Arts, launched news segments branded The Blaze on the live streaming video network GBTV on September 12, 2011.[6]

Development

Scott Baker, with its associate editor/video producer Pam Key and with Jon Seidl and Meredith Jessup as reporters. Key is known for her blog, Naked Emperor News: Smoking Gun Video and Images. Baker is a former Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, broadcast journalist who previously worked at The Huffington Post and Breitbart TV. Seidl, of the Manhattan Institute, previously worked at the American Spectator. Jessup previously worked at Townhall.com. Journalists joining The Blaze later included S. E. Cupp, David Harsanyi and Billy Hallowell.

Goldline International,[3] and its lead story dealt with allegations that Education Secretary Arne Duncan encouraged Education Department employees to attend Al Sharpton‘s counter-rally in Washington, which took place on the same day as the Restoring Honor rally and at which Duncan spoke.[4] Another story, criticizing Feisal Abdul Rauf, featured the headline “Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the man behind the Ground Zero mosque, claims to be a Jew, Christian, and a Muslim. But some say that’s impossible.”[7]

In January 2011, Betsy Morgan became president and Kraig Kitchin director of sales. Morgan had helmed the Huffington Post until 2009. Kitchin had formerly been the president of Premier Radio.[8]

The appointment of Betsy Morgan, incidentally, underscores the notorious amorality of most top media honchos and, perfectly reflecting the larger corporate culture whence they come, their interchangeability.  After all, this is a woman who until 2009 was helming the Huffington Post, which, while no fulgurant radical haven, pretended (and still does) to solid liberal credentials. Money talks, I suppose.  But it gets juicier. Reported SocialTimes.com (5.1.2011):


Betsy Morgan has been named president of Glenn Beck‘s Web venture, The Blaze. Morgan, who spent 10 years at CBS News before jumping to HuffPo, departing there in June of 2009, will now be tasked with growing the news and information site geared toward Beck’s radio and TV community. (Bold ours)

Does Betsy and her fellow corporate careerists ever ever consider what they’re helping to grow and strengthen?  That it’s precisely toxic information manure like that disseminated by the likes of Glenn Beck that continues to deepen an already quasi terminal ecopolitical crisis? 

I think we know the answer to that, so save the saliva. But for the record, here’s some insights, courtesy of an interview by corporate watcher Jeff Bercovici, who toils at Forbes.  In a piece aptly headlined, Ex-Huffpo CEO Betsy Morgan on What Drew Her to Glenn Beck, he asks, 

Why did the former Huffington Post CEO cross the political road? For a chance to work with Glenn Beck, who might just be the biggest multimedia personality since Oprah Winfrey and Martha Stewart. Betsy Morgan, who ran Huffpo from 2007 to 2009, has signed on as president of The Blaze, Beck’s four-month-old news website (or, as it styles itself, “information network”). I talked to her about why she wanted to work with the Fox News star, how The Blaze’s launch has gone so far, and why she cares more about Beck’s brand than his politics.

Mixed Media: Congratulations. This news seems to have a lot of people in a tizzy. No one can seem to wrap their heads around the idea of the former chief of the Huffington Post, the liberals’ favorite site, joining up with Glenn Beck.

Betsy Morgan: I’m always about the unconventional.

MM: Do you see The Blaze as having Huffpo-sized potential? Will we be talking about it as a $450 million company in a few years?

BM: Well, I didn’t put that valuation out there on HuffPost. I think what’s really interesting to me about this audience and this brand, and it’s very different, obviously, than the one Arianna and I built, but it’s a very substantial community, and it’s a community that interacts with each other and is social. And that community exists because of Glenn and what he’s on on radio, on TV, in print. He’s built an amazing multimedia empire in a short amount of time. What’s intriguing to me from a business perspective is bringing that community together online.

Yea,, yea, Bla, blah, blah, blah and so on and so forth. By the way, isn’t this media insider talk soooo anodyne and apparently also self-empowering? This is how people approaching the corporate pantheon learn to talk: by aseptically expunging all possible emotion that might give the “enemy” a handle. That it’s also the essence of egostistical banality doesn’t seem to bother them. But then again, as Scott Fitzgerald might have pointed out, the big media players are not like you and me.

In any case,  it’s all about building a brand. How much more innocent can you get?

—Patrice Greanville is founding editor of the near bankrupt The Greanville Post. He certainly doesn’t swim in dough.

_________________

 

 

 

 

 

 

_______________________________________________________________________________

ADVERT PRO NOBIS

IF YOU CAN’T SEND A DONATION, NO MATTER HOW SMALL, AND YOU THINK THIS PUBLICATION IS WORTH SUPPORTING, AT LEAST HELP THE GREANVILLE POST EXPAND ITS INFLUENCE BY MENTIONING IT TO YOUR FRIENDS VIA TWEET OR OTHER SOCIAL NETWORKS! We are in a battle of communications with entrenched enemies that won’t stop until this world is destroyed and our remaining democratic rights stamped out. Only mass education and mobilization can stop this process.

It’s really up to you. Do your part while you can. •••

Donating? Use PayPal via the button below.

THANK YOU.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________



Ayn Rand’s Nightmare is Today’s Wall Street

Occupy Wall Street Must Battle 70 Years of Corporate Propaganda


Ayn Rand: Priestess of naked capitalism. For reactionaries and corporadoes, the ghoul that keeps on giving.

by PAM MARTENS

The high priestess of corporate deregulation and free markets, Ayn Rand, wrote a novella in the 1930s.  It was published in the U.S. in 1946 under the title, Anthem, by a corporate front group, a precursor to today’s astroturf groups.  Anthem is currently being pumped into high schools across the U.S. and Canada with financial inducements to both teachers and students by a corporate funded nonprofit that has the financial support of some of the largest hedge funds in the U.S.

What has happened today, however, proves that in a country dominated by powerful multinational corporations, Rand not only had the wrong target of big government in her cross hairs but the despotic enemy became the very deregulated market she helped design with acolytes like former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan and her corporate cronies.

The epicenter of the “free market” – Wall Street – which has had 70 years of corporate propaganda chipping away at its government restraints, is the modern day embodiment of every demon Rand feared in her copious journals and books.  Not only are Wall Street workers muzzled but they must profess written loyalty to their masters who characterize them as mere numbers rather than humans.

Employees for the major Wall Street firms must sign away their right to access the nation’s courts in any dispute with their employer.  A crony-run arbitration system that relies on “equity” rather than the rule of law replaces the taxpayer supported court system where the jury is randomly selected from a large pool. The U.S. Supreme Court has enshrined Wall Street’s ability to serve as judge and jury in multiple decisions. Congress has failed to get a bill out of committee to outlaw these kangaroo courts in two decades of documented abuse.

One of the largest Wall Street firms requires workers to sign that they have read and understood the following statement in order to remain employed at the firm.

Read that last sentence carefully.  The business judgment of Firm management has just wiped out two centuries of legal precedent and case law.  These are the same firms that are regularly paying $550 million, $300 million or $1.2 billion to regulators because they, apparently, have no lawful judgment and even less business judgment.

Wall Street workers must routinely sign non disparagement agreements – they can’t say anything bad about their employer, during or after their employment.  The employee is further bound under a gag order not to disclose anything “proprietary” at the firm – all trade secrets, interpreted by Wall Street firms to include corruption, is under a confidentiality order.

The individualists that Rand assured us would be released to think and create through the beneficence of the corporate world is instead tethered and ham strung to a Wall Street that operates outside the reach of courts or the law.

If a stock broker determines that the best interests of his or her clients are not being served and wants to move the clients to a new firm or go independent, the big Wall Street firm reserves for itself, but not the employee, access to the nation’s courts.  The firm will ask the court, and likely get, a temporary restraining order (TRO) that bars the broker from contacting those clients – on the basis that the list of clients was a proprietary list taken inappropriately from the firm (even when the broker brought those clients to the firm).  The threat of this tactic is enough to keep many brokers stuck at firms with corrupt practices.

The final assault on any individualism is the growing tactic by Wall Street branch managers to pressure stock brokers to operate in a team – Rand’s collectivist nightmare incarnate.  The stated reason is to provide better coverage to the client but one suspects the primary reason is to  keep the clients at the firm if one or more members of the team is fired.

According to the trade magazine, Registered Representative, in 2006 Merrill Lynch crafted a loyalty statement that it wanted employees to sign.  The questionnaire asked: “Have you told any firm that you intend to join the firm?” And, “The firm would like you to remain in our employ. Will you make a commitment to stay?” The form asked the broker to sign the statement and return it to management.

How did Ayn Rand get it so wrong?  Or was she just a corporate propagandist? There is growing evidence of the latter.

On February 13, 1946, Rand wrote to Leonard Read, suggesting that he arrange for the publishing of Anthem.  Read had become the head of the western division of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in the 1930s and assumed the leadership of the LA branch and its 10,000 members in 1939.  The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has evolved today as the pit bull for corporate interests and a major player in writing amicus briefs to strip workers of their rights to access the nation’s courts.  Today, the organization says it represents three million businesses.

In the letter to Read, Rand explains:

“I don’t want to issue ANTHEM as a regular book now, because it is only a novelette and not big enough to follow THE FOUNTAINHEAD. But when you asked, in your letter: ‘Why don’t we get it published?’ – did you mean as a pamphlet – specifically by The Pamphleteers?  I think that might be a very good idea – if a fiction story fits in with The Pamphleteers’ program.  Perhaps you might even be able to arrange to sell it, as a pamphlet, in bookstores and, if so, might get quite a large sale on the strength of my following.”

The Pamphleteers published Anthem in 1946. In the book, Invisible Hands: The Businessmen’s Crusade Against the New Deal, Kim Phillips-Fein writes that another notable event happened in 1946.  Read reached out to David Goodrich, President of the B.F. Goodrich Company, and the first free market think tank in the post-war period was founded: the Foundation for Economic Education.  According to Fein, initial funding of $10,000 each came from ConEd, General Motors, U.S. Steel and Chrysler.  Many of the same individuals involved in The Pamphleteers were involved in the Foundation.

The Foundation for Economic Education still exists today. Its web site says its mission is “to offer the most consistent case for the ‘first principles’ of freedom: the sanctity of private property, individual liberty, the rule of law, the free market, and the moral superiority of individual choice and responsibility over coercion.”  The web site carries the February 13, 1946 letter that Ayn Rand wrote to Leonard Reed.  In addition to linking Rand to a corporate agenda financed by the biggest corporations of then and now, the letter reveals Rand to be working on a movie screenplay to characterize the dropping of the atom bomb on Japan as a marvel of American business ingenuity.  Rand writes:

Even more convincing that Rand was willing to serve in the role as first lady of corporate propaganda is the screenplay treatment she wrote for this atom bomb film.  In 1997, fifteen years after Rand’s death, the book, Journals of Ayn Rand, was published.  It contains her movie treatment titled “An Analysis of the Proper Approach to a Picture on the Atomic Bomb.” The treatment is marked “Confidential” and warns her studio bosses “Do not be afraid of Part I.  It is not intended to be included in the picture.  It is merely a preliminary discussion…” Part I shows Rand to be a master of propaganda technique:

 “…if greatness, nobility, patriotism, and the salvation of mankind are not mere sentences to spout in public, if we mean any small part of it – this picture could be an opportunity seldom offered to any man.  It could be truly an immortal achievement, an event of historic importance and a great act of patriotism.

“…we cannot do this by merely tacking on a few cheap speeches about freedom, worded in such a general way that it can mean anything or nothing.  Our theme must be explicit, clear-cut and expressed not in speeches, but in action.  It must be integrated into the structure of our story…

“In presenting the strictly factual history of the bomb, we will not be able to avoid a slant of unintentional propaganda, one way or the other…We have to exercise choice in what we select to present…For instance: it is a fact that Roosevelt gave to the scientists the funds necessary for their experiments.  How are we going to treat this point? If we show or imply that that was the crucial factor in the creation of the bomb, we throw at the world the most powerful piece of propaganda for Statism that could be devised.  We tell the audience, in effect: ‘See what a strong government can do.’ ”

According to Greg Mitchell, in an article for The Nation in September 2011, Rand’s screenplay, which was being developed for Hal Wallis, was melded into a different screenplay being written for MGM and released as The Beginning or The End.  Mitchell’s research concluded that “MGM had made a deal with Wallis to make sure there was no rival project.”

Today, the Ayn Rand Institute, a nonprofit funded by corporate foundations and hedge funds, makes sure Rand’s work remains a source of propaganda for the next generation.  According to the Institute’s web site, it has donated more than 1.4 million copies of Ayn Rand novels to 30,000 teachers in 40,000 classrooms across the United States and Canada.

An email to Canadian teachers reads as follows:

E-mail from: jeriksen@aynrand.org

Contact Name: Jason Eriksen

“Ayn Rand’s novels are inspiring and intellectually challenging. But they can also be financially rewarding for high school and college students. The Ayn Rand Institute sponsors annual essay contests that offer 680 prizes and over $99,000 in prize money every year.”

Another email to a group of U.S. teachers promises that “Teachers who have their students submit essays to our contests receive nice gifts from us as well.”

The tentacles of the Ayn Rand propaganda machine and the Foundation for Economic Education, still housed on the seven acre, 19th century estate it bought in 1946 in Irvington, New York, are linked to the ever sprawling Kochtopus – the political strategy and money machine headed by oil billionaires, Charles and David Koch.  Two members of the Board of Directors of the Foundation for Economic Education (as listed on its most recent tax return of 2009 available at www.GuideStar.org) are Frayda Levy and Ethelmae Humphreys.  Both Levy and Humphreys have attended the secret retreats hosted by the Koch brothers. Levy serves on multiple right wing boards, including Americans for Prosperity (according to its 2009 tax return) which is funded by Koch money and supports the Tea Party. Humphreys has been involved with the Kochs for decades.

Humphreys is Chairman of TAMKO Building Products, one of the largest independent manufacturers in the U.S.  In 1984, her deceased husband, Jay Humphreys, together with Charles and David Koch, and Richard Fink, a current executive of Koch Industries, founded Citizens for a Sound Economy, the precursor to Americans for Prosperity Foundation.

Three Board members of the Foundation for Economic Education (according to its 2009 tax return) – Donald G. Smith, William A. Dunn, and Ethelmae Humphreys – also serve on the Board of the Cato Institute, a rabidly pro-business think tank.  The Cato Institute, a tax subsidized nonprofit, has recently been exposed as having capital stock with Charles and David Koch owning 50 percent of the shares outstanding.  The Koch brothers have filed a lawsuit to become the majority owners as a result of the death of another owner of 25 percent of the stock.

Levy’s husband, Kenneth, as well as Smith and Dunn, are all involved in investment companies.  The Koch brothers’ majority owned Koch Industries has a division involved in trading commodities and other securities.

For Occupy Wall Street to succeed in realigning our democracy, it will need to occupy the nonprofit world of corporate propaganda.

Russ Martens contributed research for this article. 

Pam Martens worked on Wall Street for 21 years. She spent the last decade of her career advocating against Wall Street’s private justice system, which keeps its crimes shielded from public courtrooms. She maintains, along with Russ Martens, an ongoing archive dedicated to this financial era at www.WallStreetOnParade.com. She has no security position, long or short, in any company mentioned in this article. She is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, forthcoming from AK Press. She can be reached at pamk741@aol.com

 

 

 

 

 

_______________________________________________________________________________

ADVERT PRO NOBIS

IF YOU CAN’T SEND A DONATION, NO MATTER HOW SMALL, AND YOU THINK THIS PUBLICATION IS WORTH SUPPORTING, AT LEAST HELP THE GREANVILLE POST EXPAND ITS INFLUENCE BY MENTIONING IT TO YOUR FRIENDS VIA TWEET OR OTHER SOCIAL NETWORKS! We are in a battle of communications with entrenched enemies that won’t stop until this world is destroyed and our remaining democratic rights stamped out. Only mass education and mobilization can stop this process.

It’s really up to you. Do your part while you can. •••

Donating? Use PayPal via the button below.

THANK YOU.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________