by
Edward Herman | 02.19.2008
Bush Subverting Constitution, Carrying Out a Class War as Well As Committing War Crimes, But Still Calling the Shots and Getting Criticism Lite;
Glossing Over
Green Zone Gang Rape (
style="font-weight: bold;">Cyril Mychale
style="font-weight: bold;">jko
style="font-weight: bold;">); Kevin Ferris Watch; Satullo’s
(Mis)-Take on
Social Security (Edward Herman; Richard DuBoff)
style="font-size: 12pt;">
style="font-size: 12pt;">
style="font-size: 12pt;">
style="font-size: 12pt;">The Inky editors continue to
fail to give adequate
attention to the constitutional crisis the Bush administration has
brought
about, dramatized by lame duck Bush’s new attempt to use “signing
statements” to nullify congressional legislative intentions. As
face="Courier New" size="2">
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: "Courier New";">
Elana Schor, of The
Guardian
Unlimited UK, reports, "George Bush has resumed his practice
of
disregarding portions of new laws, quietly reserving the right to build
permanent
military bases in Iraq, keep Congress in the dark on spying activity
and block
two accountability measures aimed at private security firms accused of
wartime
abuses." (“Bush Trying to Sidestep Congress on Permanent Bases
Question”:
href="http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/013008N.shtml"
_base_target="_blank">http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/013008N.shtml.)
Dave Lindorff puts its more forcefully: “Let
me say
that
again. The president states in writing that he is not going to obey and
will
not be bound by four parts
of a law
duly passed by the Congress.” (“The Crime of the Century:
Time for Congress to Stand Up,” Jan. 31, 2008).
style="font-size: 12pt;">
style="font-size: 12pt;"> More recently, Attorney General
Mukasey told the House
Judiciary Committee that he would not enforce a contempt of
Congress
citation against Harriet Miers and White House Chief of Staff Josh
Bolten for
refusing to testify before Congress. This denies congress its subpoena
power
and right to call witnesses, and if allowed to stand makes the
administration
immune to accountability. As Representative Robert Wexler stated
following this
Mukasey performance, “Alberto Gonzales may be long gone, but the Bush
Administration continues its executive overreach with the new Attorney
General… Our Constitution is under threat and the most basic principle
of
checks and balances is being undermined. Not since Watergate has a
president so
openly disregarded the will of Congress.” For this exchange and
Wexler’s renewed call for impeachment hearings, ignored by the Inky
editors,
see:
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7M9sjRLCtQ" _base_target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7M9sjRLCtQ;
see also
href="file:///C:%5CDocuments%20and%20Settings%5Ceherman%5CMy%20Documents%5Cwww.wexlerwantshearings.com"
_base_target="_blank">www.wexlerwantshearings.com.
style="font-size: 12pt;">
style="font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">Bush Gets Criticism Lite
style="font-size: 12pt;">
style="font-size: 12pt;">This might seem like a wild statement given
the fact that the lame duck
has certainly been criticized for mismanagement in Iraq,
New
Orleans/Katrina, and on other fronts. But this criticism of Bush has
come late
and has been extremely light given the crimes and errors. Recall that
Clinton
could be impeached based on a single lie based on personal
behavior—while
Bush can lie every day with impunity—the Center for Public Integrity
has
just issued a list of 935 Bush administration lies just bearing on the
run-up
to the Iraq invasion-occupation, and these are consequential lies, but
impeachment is still “off the table” for Pelosi, and for the Inky
editors,
who urged Clinton’s resignation back in 1998.
style="font-size: 12pt;">
style="font-size: 12pt;">The Inky editors
recently
commended a judge for giving
Jose Padilla a 17 year prison term instead of the possible longer term
demanded
by the prosecution (ed., “The Padilla Sentence: All rise…,”
January 24, 2008), although he carried out no act of violence and
injured
nobody, and was incarcerated for years under conditions that drove him
out of
his mind and should have caused a court of integrity to dismiss the
case. But
what about an individual who took his country into a war in violation
of the UN
Charter, based on lies, with enormous casualties and
destruction, an
action that
the Nuremberg Tribunal called the “supreme international crime”?
That’s Our Leader, the Decider. But the idea of criticizing him as a
war
criminal, and one a wee bit beyond the Padilla class, is of course
outside the
orbit of permissible thought for the Inky editors, as well as for
most
editors
in the mainstream. He is still entirely respectable, even if a
failed
president. This is fundamental to criticism lite.
style="font-size: 12pt;">
style="font-size: 12pt;">But each week Bush commits acts against the
public interest that
should cause the media to raise cain, yet they treat these acts
with
mild
criticism if at all. His administration continues to attack the
environment on
a regular basis. Most recently, according to an
Associated Press
report, "More than three million acres in Alaska's Tongass National
Forest
would be open to logging under a federal plan that supporters believe
will
revive the state's struggling timber industry." “Plan to Allow
Logging in Alaskan Forest”
href="http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/012708F.shtml"
_base_target="_blank">http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/012708F.shtml.
The Inky reached this solely with a tiny back-page news item under In
the
Nation (“Plan would allow logging in Alaska,” Jan., 26, A4).
style="font-size: 12pt;">
style="font-size: 12pt;">Bush continues to inflict
pain on the little people, week after week. Darryl Fears reports in the
Washington Post, that,
"The Bush administration
wants Congress to thwart a plan to give thousands of federal crack
cocaine
offenders a chance to marginally reduce prison sentences that are a
hundred
times more severe than those meted out for powder cocaine offenses."
(“Bush
Administration Decries Crack-Sentencing Reductions”:
href="http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/020708C.shtml"
_base_target="_blank">http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/020708C.shtml).
The media low-keyed the Bush effort to avoid helping those who
most
need help
and whose benefits would have provided the most stimulus in the new
stimulus
plan—he succeeded in preventing an expansion of food stamps and
extended
benefits to the unemployed.
href="http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2008/01/25/do_food_stamps_make_you_fat/print.html"
_base_target="_blank">http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2008/01/25/do_food_stamps_make_you_fat/print.html.
This is a class war administration, and a cruel one.
style="font-size: 12pt;">
style="font-size: 12pt;">Even veterans keep getting creamed by the
Bush administration, but
Kevin Ferris and the Inky editors hardly notice,
although this
brings us once again into the land of Franz Kafka, where the “support
our
boys” faction plays dumb when the boys who have fought are mistreated
by
the chicken hawks. What a powerful editorial or Commentary column could
be
written on this hypocrisy of concern for our boys, on the one hand, and
their
neglect and mistreatment in the real world, on the other hand. (See Bob
Egelko
in the San Francisco Chronicle
on “Bush Administration Argues Veterans Not Entitled to Mental Health
Care”:
href="http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/020708HA.shtml"
_base_target="_blank">http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/020708HA.shtml).
style="font-size: 12pt;">
style="font-size: 12pt;">David Cay Johnston, a reporter for the
style="font-style: italic;">New
York Times, has a section in his recent book
style="font-style: italic;">Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans
Enrich
Themselves At Government Expense (And Stick You With The Bill),
on
how George Bush got rich, which was by using his political influence to
get the
state of Texas to give the Texas Rangers baseball team eminent domain
rights
for land for a baseball stadium. This was a huge subsidy, at the
expense of
private land-holders. As Johnston stated on Democracy Now!, “
lang="EN">The value of this subsidy, according to Ray Hutchison, who
is the
husband of Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, is a prominent Republican
insider in
Texas and is the leading authority on municipal bond finance in Texas,
was
$202.5 million. The profit that President Bush and his partners made
when they
sold the team was $164 million. What does that tell you? Every single
penny of
additional money President Bush got from that investment, his gain,
came from
the taxpayers. He did not add one cent to the value of that team
through his
skill as an MBA manager.”
href="http://www.democracynow.org/2008/1/18/free_lunch_how_the_wealthiest_americans"
_base_target="_blank">http://www.democracynow.org/2008/1/18/free_lunch_how_the_wealthiest_americans.
style="font-size: 12pt;">Wouldn’t this make a great story for the
Inky, showing that Bush,
that great proponent of free enterprise and enemy of government
largesse—at least for ordinary folks—got rich by manipulating
government and “creating value” for his partnership at the expense
of local owners and the taxpayers (who had to pay a higher sales
tax
to fund
the stadium)?
style="font-size: 12pt;">But the Inky hasn’t picked this up, and does
not review books
like Johnston’s.
style="font-size: 12pt;">
style="font-size: 12pt;">Why is Bush criticized so lightly relative to
his crimes? I think it is
because the business community favors him and the Republicans as their
best
representatives in the class war, and the rightwing, which is supported
and
protected by the business community, is now so powerful in the media
that it
can frequently set the agenda and regularly cow the “liberal
media” into caution, centrism, and efforts to show that they aren’t
too liberal. The Pentagon-contractor-pro-Israel
lobbies, which
overlap with the previously mentioned forces, also like Bush and push
for
military solutions and power projection in international affairs.
style="font-size: 12pt;">
style="font-size: 12pt;"> People of more generous spirit in the
mainstream media are very much
constrained by these forces. The result is a double standard that can
be
dramatic, as shown in the amazing success of the Swift Boat Veterans in
denigrating John Kerry, a man who at least went to Vietnam and fought,
and the
failure of the mainstream media during that same election to report on
and
criticize George Bush, who evaded Vietnam service, got a privileged
assignment
to the Air National Guard, and failed to meet his legal obligations in
that
alternative service. It is this double standard, which seems to be
built into
the media and power structure, that has given Bush this freedom from
deserved
crushing criticism and a much belated criticism lite. (For a good
analysis of
the Kerry-Bush service comparison, and the systematic media bias in
favor of
the Republicans, see Eric Boehlert,
style="font-style: italic;">Lapdogs:
How the Press Rolled Over for Bush [Free Press: 2006].)
style="font-size: 12pt;">
style="font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">Inky glosses over "Green
Zone" Gang Rape (by
style="font-weight: bold;">Cyril Mychale
style="font-weight: bold;">jko
style="font-weight: bold;">)
style="font-size: 12pt;">If
href="http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/12/10/5749/"
_base_target="_blank">a
woman working in Iraq for "the Pentagon's largest
military contractor" (a subsidiary of Vice President Dick Cheney's
Halliburton until last year) was drugged, gang-raped, held captive in a
shipping container, and evidence surfaced that U.S. Army personnel may
have
conspired with the company in a potential cover-up—is this newsworthy?
style="font-size: 12pt;">For editors at the Inky, not
really: A story like this
only warrants enough space for a
href="http://www.philly.com/inquirer/world_us/12653926.html"
_base_target="_blank">news brief
totaling a whopping 65 words.
style="font-size: 12pt;">Jamie Leigh Jones, a 23-year-old Texas woman,
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2WyitSWa0Y&feature=related"
_base_target="_blank">testified
before a House Panel in December explaining to members of Congress how
she was
gang-raped by her co-workers at KBR (a former Halliburton subsidiary)
back in
2005 while stationed in the "Green Zone." She also told lawmakers how
an Army doctor performed a rape kit on her, determined that Jones had
been
raped both vaginally and anally, and told Jones that she was "quite
torn
up down there." Remarkably, the doctor then handed the rape
kit to KBR security personnel and handed Jones back over into their
custody.
style="font-size: 12pt;"> The Defense Department's Inspector
General
is now
href="http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5439144.html"
_base_target="_blank">investigating
to determine why the U.S. Army turned over the physical evidence of the
rape to
the company. The rape kit conveniently disappeared, until being
uncovered
recently by an agent with the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic
Security.
Somehow photographs and doctor's notes from the kit have gone missing.
"With
a $400 billion budget, you would think that the Defense Department
would have
the resources to protect Americans overseas and maybe even have a
little left
over to investigate allegations of criminal activity as well," remarked
Rep. Ted Poe, R-Humble, who helped rescue Jones from her captors after
receiving a call from the woman's father.
Both
Poe
and Jones have said that several other women have come forward alleging
cases
of sexual harassment and assault. Jones
href="http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/texas/txedce/1:2007cv00295/103217/7/"
_base_target="_blank">filed
a lawsuit in federal court against Halliburton and its
then-subsidiary KBR.
Meanwhile, the Inky's silence on the matter protects the culture of
impunity in
Washington and Iraq for our country's mercenaries and
contractors.
style="font-size: 12pt;">
style="font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">Kevin
Ferris Watch
style="font-size: 12pt;">
style="font-size: 12pt;">Kevin Ferris may have
temporarily run out of war-supportive soldiers and their families
to
write
about, or perhaps his latest is in the interest of diversity, but it is
a
beauty! In his “None of your business: A courageous Canadian
publisher
tells the thought police to buzz off” (January 27, 2008),
Ferri gives
his nomination for Profile in Courage award to Ezra Levant, for having
the
courage to publish those Danish-originated cartoons of the
Prophet
Muhammad that
had created quite a furor back in 2005. As a result of this publication
Levant
was subject to a human rights complaint in Alberta Canada and was
interrogated
by a government human rights commission. This was actually a
tremendous
windfall of Levant, who got a huge amount of free publicity at no real
cost to
himself.
style="font-size: 12pt;">Ferris does quote a
critic of Levant who calls him a “crummy far-right propagandist,”
but Ferris doesn’t mention that the bold Levant is noted in Canada for
being opposed to affirmative action, minimum wage laws, trade unions,
government
pensions, and anything helpful to ordinary citizens, and that he loves
George
Bush and calls upon Canada to give “allegiance” to Bush and his
militarization program. This last would warm Ferris’s heart and show
that
Levant was worthy.
style="font-size: 12pt;">
style="font-size: 12pt;">The bold Levant
picked out, from all the possibilities to display his courage, a figure
and
symbol of a group whose members have been demonized in the West and
against
whom the West is crusading and engaging in a “clash of civilizations.”
Ferris’s notion that trashing Islam and Muhammud in Canada (or the
United States) is a bold act, is comic—it is like saying that insulting
Saddam
Hussein or Hugo Chavez was a mark of courage. This kind of
nonsense,
that
would be unworthy of publication in a high school newspaper, should
embarrass
the Inky editors.
style="font-size: 12pt;">
style="font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">Satullo’s
(Mis)-Take on Social Security (Two Comments)
style="font-size: 12pt;">
style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Part 1,
Edward Herman:
style="font-size: 12pt;">
style="font-size: 12pt;">Former editor
and now columnist Chris Satullo has long been noted for his need to
prove his
“balance” and “not-too-liberal” credentials by
castigating the left (or Democrats) as well as the right (or
Republicans) on
any issue he addresses. He is at it again in his article “That Social
Security crisis? Many happy returns” (February 12, 2008), where he
lambastes
Bush for his “wild exaggeration” of Social Security’s fiscal
woes, but then offsets this with the “equal and opposite
hyperbole
from
his foes on the left, as they pretended Social Security was doing
just
swell.” But Satullo doesn’t know what he is talking about. Once
again he claims that the flood of baby boomers is going to overwhelm
Social
Security. But then he notes that Social Security tax revenues will
cover all
outlays till 2018, and that the “scarier milestone looms somewhere in
the
2004s, when the trust fund will dry up and the program will lack funds
to pay
full promised benefits.”
style="font-size: 12pt;">
style="font-size: 12pt;">But the 2040s is a long
way off, and after the trust fund is exhausted payments from
the Social
Security tax collections will allow it to pay claimants for many years
at
levels that exceed those today, even if short of the full amount that
would be
paid in accord with upward adjustments tied to wage rates.
Furthermore,
even the 2040s number assumes a conservative rate of productivity
growth—a less conservative assumption pushes the full pay system
out
to
2052 or beyond. Satullo then talks about the “fixes” for that
“crisis”
that will strike us 30 or more years in the future. He mentions: “raise
the income limits for the FICA tax; trim or means-test benefits; let
Social
Security seek higher yield investments; fold government employees into
the
program; or (drum roll) raise the full retirement age above 67.”
But
this is hogwash. It has been shown that even on the conservative
productivity
growth assumption, a raising of the income cap limits for the FICA tax
plus an
increase in the Social Security tax by a smaller amount than it was
raised in
1983 would preserve benefits indefinitely. So there is no crisis either
now or
into the foreseeable future.
style="font-size: 12pt;">
style="font-size: 12pt;">Satullo spends quite a
few words talking about the merits of raising the retirement age
above
67—discussed
by Richard DuBoff below--but this is just hot air given that simple
small
changes will preserve the system intact and this retirement age
adjustment will
not be needed as far as we know in our lifetimes and beyond. But
gosh,
one has
to write a column on something, and the Social Security crisis is
accepted as a
reality, even if a little distant, in the mainstream, so one can get
away with
this even if one is talking malarkey.
style="font-size: 12pt;">
style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Part 2,
by Richard B. DuBoff:
style="font-size: 12pt;">
style="font-size: 12pt;">Chris Satullo
(“That Social Security crisis? Many happy returns,” Philadelphia
Inquirer February 12, 2008) believes that life expectancies for
American
workers are increasing by so much that we might raise the retirement
age for
Social Security benefits without imposing hardship on anyone. All the
more
reason to do so, he claims, because “hard times” will descend upon
Social Security ten years from now when it will "collect less dough
from
American paychecks" than it will be forking out for Social Security
benefits, thus drying up the trust fund and running out of money to pay
promised benefits.
style="font-size: 12pt;">
style="font-size: 12pt;">One wonders if Satullo
knows, or remembers, that the full retirement age for receiving Social
Security
benefits has already been raised, from 65 to 67 years of age beginning
with
people born in 1938 or later. This increase in retirement age, and cut
in
benefits, was pushed though 25 years ago by the Reagan administration,
with the
help of some organizations and individuals who later regretted the
move, and
joined many others in preventing George Bush II from
privatizing--destroying--the Social Security system in 2006 and 2007.
Now Satullo
enlists in the ongoing fight to cut back Social Security by other means.
style="font-size: 12pt;">
style="font-size: 12pt;">More people on average
are living long enough to make it past retirement thresholds of 62 or
65 or 67
years of age, but they aren't necessarily living to be much older than
in the
past. While the life expectancy at birth--77.8 years in 2004--grew by
0.11
years annually between 1960 and 2004, the life expectancy at age
65--83.4 in
2003--increased by only 0.06 years annually. Furthermore, Social
Security's
trustees expect the life expectancy at age 65 to increase only at about
0.05
years annually for the next 75 years. To cut benefits and make up the
shortfall, the normal retirement age has to go up faster than these
rates.
style="font-size: 12pt;">
style="font-size: 12pt;">Consequently, a higher
retirement age means significantly fewer retirement years, or, if a
worker
retires early, a substantial benefit cut. Given the slow advance of
life
expectancy above age 65, it would take decades to bring the average
number of
retirement years back to where it is now if retirement ages are raised
by as
little as two or three years.
style="font-size: 12pt;">
style="font-size: 12pt;">The pain will be felt by many
workers, disproportionately so by those who have always needed Social
Security
the most. Well below average life expectancies at every step up
the
ladder are
experienced by low-income men and women and especially by
African-American
males.
style="font-size: 12pt;">
style="font-size: 12pt;">Are American workers now
enjoying so much time away from their jobs during their working years
that they
will need less retirement time during their senior years? One almost starts
laughing when even thinking of such a question. Satullo, not to
say
the rest
of us, knows that American workers spend more time on the job than
their
counterparts in all other high-income nations, and that they manage to
get very
little if any vacation time. In 2007, more than 25 percent of American
workers
got no paid vacation at all, while 43 percent took not one week off. A
third
fewer American families take vacations together today than they did in
1970.
American workers receive by far the least vacation time among wealthy
industrial nations. One hundred twenty-seven countries in the world
have a
mandatory vacation law; the United States has none. And U.S. workers
who do
have paid vacation time are increasingly choosing not to take it,
probably
because of insecurity of employment and the feeling that they must stay
on the
job every minute they can to show their employers that they are
indispensable,
or perhaps indifferent their wage or salary level.
style="font-size: 12pt;">
style="font-size: 12pt;">One suspects that Satullo
knows full well that the financial “crisis” facing Social Security
ten and twenty years from now is a fraud merchandized since the 1980s
by the
resurgent right wing in the United States, and that he raises it in his
commentary to fudge the retirement age issue--probably because he has
not
thought about it seriously nor examined it for himself.
style="font-size: 12pt;">
style="font-size: 12pt;">Go to it, Mr. Satullo,
and let us know how you come out.
.jpg)
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