By David Michael Green 

IT WOULD BE A GIGANTIC MISTAKE to believe that Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid or anyone else of prominence in today’s Democratic Party actually gives a damn about the fate of the American people.

But it’s not such a stretch to imagine that they might care about their own political careers. I think the Founders of the American republic had this in mind when they wrote their blueprint for representative government, in which a politician’s fate would be tied to their popularity with voters.

Of course, it doesn’t entirely work that way so much anymore because of the influence of big-monied players, but if it did we’d still be left with another big problem: These idiots don’t even know how to save their own skins by governing well. Few things have amazed me more over the last year than how incompetent President Obama has been, given the exemplary skills of Candidate Obama, who ran a near-perfect, textbook campaign.

The Obama Crew: One of the deadliest political teams in history: cowardly, cynical, clumsy, corrupt— and too deeply wedded to the status quo to grasp the huge opportunities history laid in front of them. What’s more, they may have buried the idea of serious reform and the left for a whole generation or beyond.

So, Barack Baby, I know you couldn’t care less about the American public, but just in case you might still care about your own legacy and perhaps even winning a second term, might I be of some assistance?

Here, for your reading pleasure and educational benefit is The Complete Idiot’s Guide To Governing (and you are a complete idiot when it comes to governing). I’ve laid it all out for you. You don’t even have to take notes.

FIRST, PICK AN ISSUE THAT PEOPLE CARE ABOUT. Is the American health care system a problem for this country, especially in the long term? You betcha. But most people are not very focused on health care right now. They are, on the other hand, really, really focused and fearful about their jobs. Such economic insecurity is not just “this year’s issue”, like say the war was in 2006. This is existential. People are staring out over the edge of a cliff and down into their own personal abyss. You cannot address ANY other issue under circumstances like that. Even in normal times, people “vote their pocketbook”, let alone during the Great Recession. Nobody gets out of a Poli Sci 101 class without learning that simple fact. So how did the president of the United States get all the way to the White House without doing so? Barack Obama has spent virtually all of his political capital, and that of his comrades in Congress too, on an issue way down in priority for most Americans right now, while almost entirely ignoring the single thing they are obsessed about. This would be like, say, invading Iraq in response to an attack launched at you from Afghanistan. I wonder how that would work out for a president?

David Axelrod: reputedly a sharp political strategist. If so, Obama is not listening.

SECOND, STAKE OUT THE HIGH MORAL GROUND. If you’re trying to do something as president – and especially if you’re trying to do something big – you have to be bold and you have to sell it bold. There needs to be a big problem to be solved. You need to be offering a big solution to the problem. Your position has to be the only morally defensible one. It doesn’t hurt if you can identify some sort of enemy, too. You have to get people excited, motivated, passionate and afraid to not get on board with your solution. That will not happen if you offer them half-measures backed by a wimpy lack of conviction. Imagine if Roosevelt had gone to Congress on December 8th, 1941 and said, “Golly, those darn Japanese can be mean sometimes! I urge your support for sending them a telegram strongly protesting their attack on Pearl Harbor.” Would that have motivated a nation to the sacrifices necessary to win World War II? Would that have mobilized America? What if LBJ had said that institutionalized racism is unfortunate, and what we must do about it is make discrimination illegal. On Tuesday afternoons and all day Sunday, that is. Would that have given him the wind necessary to fill his legislative sails and better the country in ways that few presidents have ever matched? Call me crazy, but I’m guessing not.

THIRD, KEEP IT SIMPLE AND PRINCIPLED.Legislating properly involves attention to detail, and I certainly don’t subscribe to the latest regressive appeal to the stupidity of their tea party mobs that slams Obama’s health care bill for being 2000 pages long. Just because people who get their politics from Limbaugh and Beck need stuff dumbed down in order to assuage their own wholesale inadequacies, I sure don’t want my government governing on that principle. That said, sometimes complexity in legislation means that one is tying oneself in knots, trying to avoid the simple and obvious solution to a problem. And it is always the case, even when bills must legitimately include boatloads of detail, that they should nevertheless be rooted in simple, easily-extractable, foundational first principles, and that these should form the narrative core of how the legislation is marketed to the public. At the end of the day, if you can get across to people that your bill will accomplish one, two or three really important, basic and necessary objectives, they won’t care how many pages it runs. If you can’t do that, on the other hand, they also won’t care how many pages it runs. They’re not going to support your crummy law, regardless.

FOURTH, USE THE BULLY PULPIT.One of the things that astonishes me about the Obama team is how little they understand the modern presidency. It seems so clear what you need to do, because we’ve seen it done so many times, and we’ve seen it not done. FDR, LBJ, Reagan and Lil’ Bush all more or less got what they wanted as president because they understood these simple principles, while Clinton and Carter and Poppy Bush and Ford were Potemkin presidents because they didn’t. One of the key aspects of the formula is using the president’s most important single power, the bully pulpit. This means that you have to talk about your bill incessantly. You have to talk about it with great gravitas. You have to persuade. You have to go over the heads of Congress, to the people, and get them to lean all over Congress like your cousin Eddy with the big coke habit who is constantly hitting you up for money. You have to put the fear in the bellies of members about what it will cost them to be on the wrong side of public opinion. You have to be incessant. The model is not only crystal clear, but entirely proximate in time. Think of the obsessive full-court-press campaign that the Bush administration ran to sell the Iraq war just back in 2002 and 2003. Big speeches. Loads of public appearances. Top administration officials on every broadcast, every day. Relentless beating of the same drum. No distractions with other issues. Message coordination with sympathetic pundits, public intellectuals and activists from outside the administration. Total media domination. Strident, urgent exhortations. Intimidation and delegitimation of anyone who dared oppose the policy. And so on. Ironically, Obama has never come close to mounting a public campaign for solutions that people actually desire that would equal one-tenth of the intensity that Bush brought to the party when he took policies the public didn’t want and jammed them down their throats until they begged for more.

The healthcare "reform" battle is a classic example of how the fabled Obama crew has completely mangled a great opportunity.

FIFTH, LEAN ON YOUR OWN PARTY. Some of my favorite photos from recent history are of LBJ applying “The Johnson Treatment” to members of Congress and others who needed a bit of course correction. This hulking president would get right up in their faces, towering over them, and causing political figures normally otherwise possessed of quite healthy egos to arch themselves over backwards in obeisance, and presumably also to minimize the amount of LBJ’s spittle that ended up on their foreheads. The guy knew how to intimidate you. He knew how to stroke you. He knew how to threaten you. He knew what you cared about. He knew your pressure points. He knew how to appeal to your sense of history. He knew how to take advantage of your pettiness. He knew how to twist your arm. And, if you were dumb enough to make it necessary for him to do so, he knew how to rip it right out of its socket. Mostly, he just knew how to pocket your vote. And so that’s what he did. Over and over again. Barack Obama, on the other hand, is the polar opposite of LBJ. He is not only being dictated to by Congress, rather than the other way around, but he actually set it up that way. He’s getting the LBJ treatment from punks on Capitol Hill, rather than giving to them. He has stood for nothing in his negotiations on major bills, and that is precisely what he has in his pocket so far as he slinks back home, beat and bruised, wobbling down Pennsylvania Avenue. You wanna win? You gotta discipline your own troops first.

SIXTH, MAKE THE OPPOSITION PAY. Right now, regressives are taking the most outrageous pot-shots at Barack Obama, Democrats in Congress, and all of their legislative initiatives. And why shouldn’t they? No one ever calls them on it. No one ever makes them pay for it. No one ever fires back. No one ever ridicules them when they say ridiculous things. No one ever shames them. No one ever puts them on the wrong side of history. This is a real bad governing posture, made all the worse because of who we’re dealing with here. Regressives tend to have the worst instincts imaginable, just on their own. They’re the most frightened people in the world, and they’re therefore capable of anything, including lies, smears, dirty tricks, cheap attacks, personal destruction and ruining the country they claim incessantly to be so patriotic toward. They look at thugs like Limbaugh or Rove as role models, rather than as the escaped felons that they actually are. They are more than a problem, just left to their own devices. You cannot add to the problem by incentivizing their criminal behavior. Anybody who wants to govern effectively needs to make opponents pay for their opposition. Obama and the Democrats in Congress, on the other hand, have made opposition to them pay off for their opponents. A year ago, the Great-big Old Pigs party was so smashed to bits from its own insane politics, it looked like the thing could seriously be toast. Now, they are right back in contention, and poised for smashing victories in the next two election cycles. All because they called Democrats socialists, fascists and granny-killers, and no one ever made them eat their scorched earth destructive lies.

SEVENTH, BET THE FARM. If you’re pushing some big legislative package, you might as well act like you’re betting the farm, ‘cause you are. Look at the Democrats today. They’ve hardly made the slightest case for the urgency of their stimulus or bail-out or health care legislation. They’ve hardly telegraphed to anyone that these are all-in questions, for which they’re willing to risk a lot, and punish a lot. And yet they are, in fact, high-stakes gambles, regardless of how Democrats treat them, because their opponents have made them that. The Dumb Dems have therefore managed to realize the worst of all worlds. Whether they like it or not, they live or die on the hill of these bills. But mostly die. Their legislative agenda has been so badly botched that it is hard to say now which will cause them more damage with voters, passing a health care bill or failing to. The worst possible approach here is to take half-measures and let your opponents turn them into full ones. It’s lose-lose scenario, well fit for chumps like those in today’s Democratic Party. Instead, someone who really understands how all this works would’ve raised the stakes, right from the get-go.

And that’s it, folks. That’s how you govern in Washington. That’s how you win.

On the other hand, if being a crash-test dummy is more to your liking, there’s a formula for that too. What you do is pick the wrong issue, take some mealy-mouthed embarrassingly nothingburger position on it, make your pitch incredibly complex so the public neither understands it nor can rally behind any core moral principles, fail to use the bully pulpit to sell it, don’t lean on your own party to fall into line, don’t make it expensive for your opponents to trash you and your bill, and let them define the stakes.

Maybe you’ve seen that approach before, eh? Like every morning of this last year, when you open your newspaper, perhaps?

All evidence suggests that Barack Obama is a pretty smart guy. And, unless he’s some sort of alien pod-growth creature, he’s lived through the same epoch of American history I have.

You just wouldn’t know it, though, watching him in action.

He’s an awfully nice guy. He seems like a good father. Maybe he’s even a swell dancer, too. I dunno.

He just doesn’t know squat about how to govern.

David Michael Greenis a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York. He is delighted to receive readers’ reactions to his articles (mailto:dmg@regressiveantidote.net), but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond. More of his work can be found at his website, http://www.regressiveantidote.net/

The struggle is old, and it has taken many phases, but, as Marx and Lenin predicted, we have reached the end of the line, and could be facing the most decisive battle of all. We must choose between a highly seductive barbarism or true civilization grounded in social justice and a permanent peace with the natural world.

BY GUI ROCHAT [print_link]

C L A S S   W A R F A R E  has been a feature of the American Republic since its inception. It was played out in the Constitution where white men of property were given equal rights to each other, while excluding women and all other-than-white races. It then permeated the South where genteel ladies and suave gentlemen had their leisure on the extortion of labor from the ‘lower’ classes, i.e. enslaved Africans and poor white sharecroppers. From time to time the class war was exposed whether it was as a race war (John Brown) or a true class war like the revolt of the laborers in Rockefeller’s Ludlow mines in 1914. The victory of the corporate empowerment legislation in 1885 rested on giving incorporated  businesses full autonomous personhood, which made them legal entities that could sue any individual as well as another corporation and not be held responsible under Federal law, in sum a highly protected, privileged “citizen”.

IMAGE: Class warfare is inherent in class-divided society. It was alive and festering more than 100 years before Christ in Rome, where the noble Gracchi brothers (Tribunes Tiberius and Gaius) attempted far-ranging reforms in favor of the people.  Both were eventually assassinated by plutocratic factions who also exacted a vicious, bloody revenge on their supporters.

Because the corporations developed into instruments for control by the powerful rich who were their major shareholders and were shielded by limited liability, they became the prime players in the political commerce of lobbying at the Federal level.

The recent Supreme Court ruling finalized this transfer of democratic powers to the corporations by allowing them to buy openly into their candidates for public office. The modern corporation is the expression and the instrument of social power as a monolithic hierarchy containing a widespread number of wage slaves, supervisors, managers, then fewer assistant vice-presidents, vice-presidents and a much more restricted number of top executives and finally a president, all overseen by trustee directors.

Structurally, nothing much has changed from Pharaonic society in ancient Egypt, equally dividing the plebes from the administrators and the court, while the burial structure of the pyramid was in itself an expression of the Pharaoh as a lone leader who oversees the whole system. Capitalism is based on a bundling of forces which always means a pyramid-form of control by the few over the many. It is clearly visible in the Federal government where the corridors of power become symbolically ever narrower, from the populous house to the exclusive senate, the small cabinet and finally ends with the president as a sort of ultimate super being.

In fact the contemporary political structure of the U.S., like the corporation or ancient Egypt, is built up as a concentration of powers towards the top by a diminishing number of elected officials, and is by and in itself inherently anti-democratic. Likewise one should also remember the step pyramids of Mesoamerica where the hapless victim was dragged up higher and higher to be ultimately sacrificed at the apex by priests. That is true power and it has slowly invaded all societal systems built up by human beings. Factually the class wars have survived ancient imperialisms and feudalisms and they may survive capitalism as well. Class wars have always used these societal organizations to reach their goal of separating the mass of humanity from the directors of society, whether it was a pharaoh, emperor, king or president.

IMAGE (BELOW right): The frequently slandered Julius Caesar was also murdered by aristocratic plotters for attempting to reduce the privileges of the ruling circles. His real story is not to be found in the pages of mainstream historians

In the United States, as soon as all the territories, villages and small towns became part of the Federation in 1776, they lost all traces of genuine independence and democracy. The wars against the original inhabitants became combined into more cruel state-organized attacks and the first steps towards expansive imperialism were taken, while the very large landholdings of the political and military leaders, who became known thereafter by the bowdlerized term ‘Founding Fathers’ guaranteed them full participation in governing. Thus the major underlying factor of class warfare was glossed over at the very inception of the new utopia, a fact replicated in most modern bourgeois democracies. In Soviet Russia too, a new privileged (in relative terms) stratum arose from the ranks of managers, artists, scientists, top military leaders and technocrats (the Apparatchiks). The new formation was denounced as a de facto “class” mimicking the attitudes of capitalist bosses, but this is an exaggeration.  The class perquisites that separated the Soviet “ruling class” (70:1) from line workers were certainly substantive in their society, but ludicrously small by Western standards of inequality, where it’s not unusual to find income differentials ranging from many thousands of dollars to just one dollar for the folks struggling in the lower ranks. And the gulf is even bigger when we examine wealth itself. Further, these officials could NOT pass their acquired advantages to their kin by right of inheritance, a distinguishing fact of all property-owning classes. Still, while abuses multiplied as entrenched privilege contravened the ideals of communism within the USSR, in the “democratic West the notion of limitless privilege, exploitation of others, and endless accumulation remained totally legal and societally sanctioned under capitalism.

Class war may take subterranean forms

The class war by the elites against the populace if not always physical, is relentless and violent, but it certainly guarantees that they can get away with domination in a rational and emotional sense. This is possible because the power holders know that their control is ephemeral, unless protected by an ideological curtain. It rests on general consent (the most effective method of domination, hence the need to constantly fabricate a spurious consensus) only as long as populations are willing to allow for gradations in access to resources and power. This obviously remains true in what we have been indoctrinated to recognize as democracies, but it is also traceable in relations between nations whereby the few richest and strongest control the many smaller countries that lack the means to refuse their dominance, despite the fact that these have often a far larger combined number of inhabitants (the British Raj comes to mind, among other cases). All of gradated, class-divided society is riddled with oppression, as is all of international politics.

The major boss nation is the United States, which from its inception geared itself to become the ultimate force in the world and the means to reach that status—as has been true for all empires—has been physical and economic warfare. Today, the rape of the world is proceeding via the central United States banking system in the hands of its financiers collaborating with the government (the justly hated financial oligarchy). This cabal— and one can certainly name it as such—works by guaranteeing the world that all investments in the United States are safe and profitable. This is pure bluff and clever marketing because there are no guarantees except the productive power of the population itself, which is the true capital of any country and in fact everywhere in the world. But this knowledge is of course carefully hidden from the subject public, while its rulers and administrators parade as if they were in fact the productive factor, which they never are; on the contrary  they clearly form the exploitative classes.

Revolts in the subjugated countries have little effect because the center of power lies elsewhere, not in the victims’ territory but in the dominating country in heavily fortified governmental committee chambers and in many electronically barred from the public military installations. Never before in history has power been so concentrated and so well  safeguarded in military and economic centers and securely protected by a now immensely overdeveloped media.

Looking back on the class wars in the twentieth century one can see that every effort was directed to undermine and destroy all popular movements with singular fervor. The main problem for the power holders is the huge increase in populations to be controlled and especially in the twentieth century many techniques were developed for that purpose such as human engineering and intense governmental support for the newest communication techniques. Control over power becomes ever more complicated as people of different cultures need to be integrated into the oppressive system. To encourage that, the three Western fascist countries in the twentieth century became ultra-nationalist.  While the more advanced choice here fell on Obama in order to calm down potential black and liberal unrest, government policies remain almost exactly the same as they were from Reaganite “destructionism” onward.

Systemic resilience

IMAGE (left): The Paris Commune—the first effort to do away with the state— lasted barely two months in 1871, but its significance has never diminished. Its lessons are still being debated among social reformers and revolutionists. One of the probable lessons suggests that spontaneous revolts without the benefit of an overarching strategy, a defensive and coordinating mechanism and no clear programmatic goals can lead to painful defeats. (Photo: Dead communards.)

Nevertheless by their speed and malice, and by the quickly organized reactionary counter measures unleashed on a still largely atomized population, we could see the centers of power had perceived the period as one capable of threatening their hold on power. Social unrest is frequently a catalyst for unmasking power and if strong enough will dislodge the political retainers of the entrenched elites. The power holders themselves may not be affected, because human society is constructed as an near immovable pyramid. However a temporary disconnect could well be brought about in the dysfunctional political structure. It could cause a more rational manner of being governed though maybe not ever reaching the ideational goals of true liberty, equality and fraternity.

The nineteen sixties young were pushed by a desire not to conform, not to perform and not to be caught in the fake machinery of progress and this remains a powerful motive for turning away from political bondage. The economic ties that hold the young and the whole populace in submission are by now far stronger and better organized than in the sixties (credit and tuition debts, mortgages, lack of political organizations with a credible agenda among the masses, etc.), but so are the unavoidable leaks in the heavy propagandist veils of the media. It is now much easier to see the gears of exploitation moving than fifty years ago. That is where the strength of a progressive movement may come from, a refusal of the usual obeisance to artificial, read consumerist societal rules. The bourgeois ethic that is seemingly so heavily entrenched in the present-day social fabric is just a superficial requirement for survival, because it only functions to promote addictive spending, a fact which was already fully grasped by the rebelling youth of the sixties.

The intensity and the ferocity of the perennial class wars should never be underestimated and the only way to resist is to refuse completely. As soon as small accommodations are given to oppressive rules, one loses the advances that resistance has offered. This will not be easy and it is an enormous task to convince others that non participation in the usual social commands is a strategy worth adopting. But few other choices remain viable within the present state’s totalitarian structure and strength always lies in large numbers, not in individual or small group “voluntarist” actions.  Meanwhile, freedom through resistance is well expressed by Emma Goldman: “If I can’t dance to it, it’s not my revolution”. Some rebellions may well arise spontaneously (as we witness in Greece these days) but, devoid of a strong organization and clear programmatic goals, they will stand little chance of really effecting systemic change. Accommodations, yes, especially if they are transient, as a way of defusing a flammable situation.

The young from every background have by now no control over their own lives nor do they possess the political power to direct their own future. That needs to be made abundantly clear to them by those progressives with access to large numbers of the young and the fact explained that unless they act, they will lose whatever choices they still have.

GUI ROCHAT is a Senior Editor with Cyrano’s Journal Online and The Greanville Post.com. He makes his home in New York City.

By: Dave Lindorff, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

 

(Photo: TSgt Laura K. Smith / U.S. Air Force; Edited: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t)  [print_link]

Dateline: Wednesday 10 March 2010

The stated goal of the US-led war in Afghanistan, according to the Obama administration, is to defeat the Taliban and establish a stable democratic government over the entire country. Critical to that goal is establishing a professional Afghan Army and police force that is not corrupt and that has the respect of the Afghan people.

But reports out of Canada suggest that, far from creating such a military and police force, the so-called International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF) is turning a blind eye to the thuggish criminality of those organizations, both to avoid growing opposition in ISAF member countries and to avoid offending those organizations in Afghanistan.

The issue in question is routine rape of children by Afghan soldiers and police operating on Canadian-run bases in the Kandahar region.

As reported last fall in the Ottawa Citizen newspaper, Canadian military chaplains and some soldiers have been complaining as far back as 2006 that Afghan security forces have been sexually assaulting young boys on their base. These military whistle-blowers charge that the military brass has been ignoring or burying their complaints, fearing the bad publicity they could generate.

Kudos to the Canadian grunts, MPs and chaplains who found the sexual abuse of children more than they could stomach, and who brought their concerns to public attention at home in Canada when their own commanders sought to cover it up.

This leaves us with two possibilities:

1. US soldiers and marines are just not as willing to go outside the chain of command and go public with their complaints, or

2. The US media are not interested in investigating this kind of story. It involves only Afghans, and who cares about Afghans? What American journalism covers is Americans. (Remember the big spate of stories about the sex escapades of guards at the US embassy in Kabul?)

This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

Dave Lindorff is a Philadelphia-area journalist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). His work can be found at www.thiscantbehappening.net. Lindorff may be reached at dlindorff@yahoo.com

•••

KICK-OFF COMMENTS

Your story would be more

Wed, 03/10/2010 – 16:57 — US Military Veteran (not verified)

Interesting comment. I

Wed, 03/10/2010 – 18:30 — Dave Lindorff (not verified)

Dave Lindorff
www.thiscantbehappening.net

Of course there are cases of

Thu, 03/11/2010 – 00:17 — jack kane (not verified)

Of course there are cases of child rape over there. But so what? The major point is that for 8+ years Nato troops and planes, funded by the civilized Western taxpayers, have been slaughtering and massacring innocent people over in the primordial mountains of Afghanistan.
Naturally, there have been rapes, murders, suicides, decapitations, poisonings, dismemberment, knifings, torture, and other vile acts, inflicted by the remorseless invaders. This is how war works.
The only people to profit from the war have been the usual suspects from the military-industrial-congressional-complex.

And YOU and I are paying, voluntarily or not, for all this madness.

I recall a report on the

Thu, 03/11/2010 – 02:33 — Anonymous (not verified)

Empire, Oligarchy and Democracy

Dateline: March 1, 2010  [print_link]

Deepening inequality, unravelling democracy and wars without end: welcome to the best of all possible worlds

By Ralph Nader

 



Goldman Sachs' CEO Lloyd Blankfein. Emblematic of the power behind the throne.

THE TWIN SWELLING HEADS of Empire and Oligarchy are driving our country into an ever-deepening corporate state, wholly incompatible with democracy and the rule of law.

Once again the New York Times offers its readers the evidence. In its February 25, 2010 issue, two page-one stories confirm this relentless deterioration at the expense of so many innocent people.

The lead story illustrates that the type of massive speculation—casino capitalism, Business Week once called it—in complex derivatives is still going strong and exploiting the weak and powerless who pay the ultimate bill.

Titled “Banks Bet Greece Defaults on Debt They Helped Hide,” the article shocks even readers hardened to tales of greed and abuse of power. Here are the opening paragraphs: “Bets by some of the same banks that helped Greece shroud its mounting debts may actually now be pushing the nation closer to the brink of financial ruin.”

“Echoing the kind of trades that nearly toppled the American Insurance International Group /AIG/, the increasingly popular insurance against the risk of a Greek default is making it harder for Athens to raise the money it needs to pay its bills, according to traders and money managers.”

“These contracts, known as credit-default swaps, effectively let banks and hedge funds wager on the financial equivalent of a four-alarm fire: a default by a company, or in the case of Greece, an entire country. If Greece reneges on its debts, traders who own these swaps stand to profit.”

“It’s like buying fire insurance on your neighbor’s house–you create an incentive to burn down the house,” said Philip Gisdakis, head of credit strategy at UniCredit in Munich.

These credit-default swaps increase the dreaded “systemic risk” that proliferates until it lands on the backs of taxpayers, workers and savers who pay the price. And if Greece goes, Spain or Portugal or Italy may be next and globalization will eventually bring the rapacious effects of mindless speculation to our shores.

Greece got into financial trouble for a variety of reasons, but it was widely reported that Goldman Sachs and other big banks showed them, for generous fees, how to hide the country’s true financial condition. Avarice at work.

Note two points. These derivatives are contracts involving hundreds of billions of dollars and are essentially unregulated. These transactions are also essentially untaxed, unlike Europe’s value added tax on manufacturing, wholesale and retail purchases. The absence of government restraints produces unlimited predation.

Both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama believe they have unbridled discretion to engage in almost any overt or covert acts. That is a definition of Empire that flouts international law and more than one treaty which the United States helped shape and sign. ..Equipped with remote and deadly technologies like drones flying over Pakistan and Afghanistan by operators in Nevada, many civilians have been slain, including those in wedding parties and homes. Still, it is taking 15,000 soldiers (U.S. and Afghan) with the most modern armaments to deal with three hundred Taliban fighters in Marja who with many other Afghans, for various motivations, want us out of their country. Former Marine Combat Captain Matthew Hoh described these reasons in his detailed resignation letter last fall.

As astute investors in the real economy have said, when money for speculation replaces money for investment, the real economy suffers and so do real people. Remember the Wall Street collapse of 2008 and who is paying for the huge Washington bailout.

The other story shows that the Presidency has become a self-driven Empire outside the law and unaccountable to its citizens. The Times reports “how far the C.I.A. has extended its extraordinary secret war beyond the mountainous tribal belt and deep into Pakistan’s sprawling cities.” Working with Pakistan’s counterpart agency, the C.I.A. has had some cover to do what it wants in carrying out “dozens of raids throughout Pakistan over the past year,” according to the Times.

“Secret War” has been a phrase applied numerous times throughout the C.I.A’s history, even though the agency was initially created by Congress right after World War II to gather intelligence, not engage in lethal operations worldwide.

Unrestrained by either Congress or the federal courts, Presidents say they can and do order their subordinates to go anywhere in the world, penetrate into any country, if they alone say it is necessary to seize and destroy for what they believe is the national security. American citizens abroad are not excluded. Above the law and beyond the law spells the kind of lawlessness that the framers of our constitution abhorred in King George and limited in our country’s separation of powers.

Because our founders would not tolerate the President being prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner, they placed the war-declaration and appropriations authorities in the Congress.

Both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama believe they have unbridled discretion to engage in almost any overt or covert acts. That is a definition of Empire that flouts international law and more than one treaty which the United States helped shape and sign.

Equipped with remote and deadly technologies like drones flying over Pakistan and Afghanistan by operators in Nevada, many civilians have been slain, including those in wedding parties and homes. Still, it is taking 15,000 soldiers (U.S. and Afghan) with the most modern armaments to deal with three hundred Taliban fighters in Marja who with many other Afghans, for various motivations, want us out of their country. Former Marine Combat Captain Matthew Hoh described these reasons in his detailed resignation letter last fall.

Mr. Obama’s national security advisor, Ret. General James Jones estimated that there are about 100 Al Qaeda in Afghanistan with the rest migrating to other countries. And one might add, those whose migrate are increasing their numbers because they cast themselves as fighting to expel the foreign invaders.

So many capable observers have made this point: occupation by our military fuels insurgencies and creates the conditions for more recruits and more mayhem. Even Bush’s military and national security people have made this point.

The American people must realize that their reckless government and corporate contractors are banking lots of revenge among the occupied regions that may come back to haunt. We have much more to lose by flouting international law than the suicidal terrorists reacting to what they believe is the West’s state terrorism against their people and the West’s historical backing of dictatorships which oppress their own population.

America was not designed for Kings and their runaway military pursuits. How tragic that we have now come to this entrenched imperium so loathed by the founding fathers and so forewarned by George Washington’s enduring farewell address.