By Kevin Blackistone

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- There is a scene late in the movie Secretariat where the horse's eventual biographer, the great turf writer Bill Nack, who then was a "Sports Illustrated" reporter, is portrayed leaping up and down cheering for the horse from the press tribune as Secretariat thunders to Triple Crown victory.

One of the cardinal rules of the vocation of sports reporting is that there is no cheering in the press box, and the scene made me wonder whether the filmmakers, who played with the facts of Secretariat's life, misrepresented Nack, too.

But in the aftermath of Keith Olbermann's faux pas and the spirit of full disclosure, I must admit: I was jumping up and down Saturday evening in the Churchill Downs' press tribune cheering for Zenyatta as she thundered down the stretch closing on the leaders after the track announcer pronounced her "dead last" at least twice in the first half of the two-minute Breeders Cup Classic. I'm not ashamed, either.

The race record showed in the end that Zenyatta -- the six-year-old mare who captured the imagination by entering the Classic, her career-ending race, 19-0 -- lost by a head to Blame. But the manner in which she so nearly won made for the most exciting sporting event I've ever witnessed in person.

In fact, if every major horse race promoted to the public were as great as the 2010 Breeders' Cup Classic, the sport of thoroughbred racing wouldn't be talked about as a dying sport. It would be thriving. Tickets to big days like Saturday's would be on the scalper's market. TV ratings would be through the roof. All because of the way Zenyatta competed and nearly did what was thought to be impossible. For that alone she should win Horse of the Year.

"I take no pride in beating Zenyatta," Seth Hancock, the head of Claiborne Farm, which owns Blame, said afterward in a voice quivering with emotion. "She is what she is. She's awesome. She's been great for racing.

"I'm sorry that we had to beat her, because she's something special."

It wasn't just her perfect record that elevated her above the rest. It was her demeanor, her star power.

When I first saw her Friday morning being paraded around her barn, she stopped a couple of times, raised her head above her tall body and surveyed the audience she'd attracted, seemingly making eye contact with each of us looking on. Digital cameras were raised to capture the moment. She appeared to oblige before moving on.

After she was bathed down out back of her barn, where a chain-linked fence and barricades kept the curious at bay, she was allowed to walk closer to her admirers and appeared to enjoy it.

By the time she was brought to the paddock early Friday evening to prepare for the Classic, there was a mob waiting and cheering. Flash cameras popped. Little girls squealed. Men looked on in awe at a filly that was as big as a small Clydesdale, just over 17 hands.

Zenyatta made for imagination, which is what horse racing's most compelling stories -- Secretariat, Man O' War, Seabiscuit – are all about.

If there was one thing people around horse racing's most famous track chatted quietly about the past few days it was their fear that Zenyatta would not live up to her legend and that her legend would be exposed as some sort of fraud. They worried that the toughest field she'd ever been in would blow her away. For most of the observers, it was a foregone conclusion that she wouldn't win. They were just concerned about how much she'd lose by.

Even in the barns, competing trainers openly doubted her bonafides -- an unprecedented undefeated record after 19 races -- as the horse to beat. She'd run mostly in California and on synthetic surfaces, they pointed out. She'd raced mostly against other girls. Her last-to-first style wouldn't work on the dirt at the Downs, they whispered, because she'd never had to deal with so much muck flying back up in her face.

And right out of the gate Saturday, those worst fears looked to have come true.

"Zenyatta is dead last," the track announcer said when he first called her position.

A collective sigh cascaded down the press tribune and washed over the stands. It was as if in a few seconds the life breath of the Classic was lost with Zenyatta, whom most everyone had come to see attempt history, looking to be out of her class.

"I was just having a rough time of it going underneath the white wire the first time," her jockey, Mike Smith, explained, his eyes watery with tears. "She just wasn't leveling out like I wanted to. The combination of the dirt, of course, hitting in her face was a lot of it. She just wasn't used to it. Just left her with too much to do."

Things didn't appear to get much better down the backside, but she did close the gap a little on the herd.

But on the turn to home, Zenyatta's magic awakened.

She dropped to the inside, then swung to the outside and started passing horses one by one. The life that was sucked out of the stands earlier was resuscitated. The track announcer pronounced Zenyatta back in the race and it was the last time he was audible until the winner hit the wire.

Down the home stretch Zenyatta closed on Blame with a rapidness that made Blame look like he was a rock rolling back downhill. A fever pitch took over the Downs, and then two absolutely amazing things happened.

With what looked like her next to last lunge, Zenyatta completed her improbable comeback. She appeared a nostril ahead of Blame as the photo-finish camera was exploding.

Then Blame took his ultimate lunge. Zenyatta's head went back to gather herself. And Blame hit the wire first by his nostril.
Zenyatta's loss felt like a win.

"It hurts more than you, than I can explain," Smith said later, sitting alone at a podium, softly pounding the table with a fist as tears rolled from his eyes. "It was my fault. She should've won."

I'm not certain that she didn't win what was most important.

For outside the chain-linked fence on Longfield Avenue behind her barn when Zenyatta made it back was a throng of fans, old, but certainly new, too, chanting, "Long live the queen."

We won't soon forget.

 Copyright, 2010, Fanhouse.  All rights reserved.

 

Democracy Is Messy

A week or so ago I made a comment at mommachatter's right-wing blog that was totally ignored.  Somehow that bothers me.  Here it is.  Maybe someone will have a comment.

**********************

 

The Election Results

Fairly disastrous.  Here in Florida, we have a Tea Partier named Sen. Marco Rubio, and there's a serious possibility that Alex Sink is losing the governor's race to Republican Rick Scott, and in order to avoid being sued for libel, I am withholding what I think I know about Scott's resume.

John Boehner of Ohio is going to be Speaker of the House, heaven help us, but I guess we know that going into yesterday's elections.

I don't think the Senate numbers are determined yet.  I'm not happy with the job Nevada's Harry Reid has done as majority leader in the Senate, and he may or may not have survived his own race with Sharron Angle.  A few races are still up in the air, including that one. 

Welcome to gridlock.  It's hard to imagine anything useful getting done by Congress over the next two years.  President Obama is sure to veto any reckless legislation that comes to his desk, and of course the scariest prospect is that current voter sentiment will carry over to 2012 and if that happens, I'm hard put to remain my usual optimistic cheery self.

Here's what analyst Michael Cohen has to say today.

****************************************************

Opinion: America's Misplaced Anger

Michael Cohen Contributor

AOL News

(Nov. 1) -- The American people are mad as hell, and they aren't going to take it anymore. They're tired of billion-dollar bailouts that have bankrupted the country. They are tired of Democratic politicians who are raising their taxes. They are tired of a Congress that has basically done nothing over the past two years.

Come Tuesday, these angry voters are going to shake up Washington, by voting for a Republican Party committed to reversing the failed policies of the Democratic Party. Sounds like a pretty good list of complaints, right?

There's one problem. It's simply wrong.

In reality, bank bailouts have actually turned a healthy multibillion-dollar profit. The economy has expanded over the past five quarters. And since Democrats took control of both Congress and the White House in January 2009, 95 percent of Americans have seen their tax burdens go down. Yet according to a recent Bloomberg poll, Americans (by a 2-to-1 margin) believe the exact opposite.

What about Congress? Here again, Americans have very little sense of what their representatives have actually done. Over the past two years a Democratic-controlled Congress passed comprehensive health care reform, reformed the student loan program, overhauled the financial system and passed a nearly $800 billion stimulus measure. In short, the 111th Congress has been among the most productive in recent American history.

Yet 72 percent of Americans believe that Congress has either accomplished the same as previous Congresses or less than usual. Even among self-identified Democrats, only four in 10 think that this Congress has gotten more done than previous ones.

It's a shocking commentary on the state of American democracy when so many Americans are singularly uninformed about the workings of their own government.

Of course, it's one thing that Americans don't have a clear sense about what is happening in Washington, but it's quite another when it leads to voting decisions that don't even reflect their interests.

Here is where the gap between anger and reality is perhaps most pernicious -- and even counterproductive. The policies enacted by Democrats have -- whether one agrees with them or not -- created nearly 3 million jobs, expanded guaranteed health coverage to 30 million Americans and prevented a full-fledged economic depression from taking root. The controversial decision to provide bailouts to American automakers undoubtedly saved millions of jobs and prevented the Midwest from being plunged into a full-scale economic meltdown.

Of course, the obvious rejoinder to this list of accomplishments is that the country is still mired in a jobless recovery with nearly 10 percent unemployment. As the argument goes, the measures that Congress has enacted are having little actual impact on the lives of ordinary Americans. And the blame for this is falling mainly on the incumbent party, the Democrats.

But even if one is congenitally opposed to deficit spending, it's hard to quibble with the notion that the Democrats' efforts to pass a stimulus bill last January were geared toward creating jobs and spurring economic growth. One may feel that only the free market can provide for Americans' health care needs, but there is little doubt that the comprehensive health care reform bill passed last March was focused on expanding health insurance coverage for millions of Americans.

In short, the policy agenda -- whether one opposes it or not -- has been tailored to relieving the economic burden on the American people.

It's pretty difficult to make the same argument about Republicans, who have uniformly opposed any Democratic effort to help those in economic need. Bills to extend unemployment benefits and increase payments to states in order to protect jobs and critical social services or focus on job-creating infrastructure projects -- all of which are supported by a majority of senators -- have been repeatedly and flagrantly filibustered by Senate Republicans.

Sponsored Links Serious GOP alternatives on health care or growing the economy are nearly impossible to identify. And the policy prescriptions of the GOP, like cutting spending or cutting taxes, would harm the economic recovery and further blow up the federal budget deficit -- which has been the nominal excuse for why Republicans are opposed to any other form of government intervention in the U.S. economy. This is not to mention the fact that the centerpiece of the Republican agenda (extending the Bush tax cuts) is opposed by a majority of Americans.

Indeed, recent comments by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell suggest that growing the economy is of minimal interest to Republicans. "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Barack Obama to be a one-term president," McConnell has said.

Yet come Tuesday evening, it is very likely that this is the party to which the American people will turn to lead them out of their current economic malaise. Now that's something worth getting angry about.

Copyright, 2010, AOL News.  All rights reserved.

Here is a chilling analysis offered on a recent Huffington Post.  The author is Michael Brenner.

I seriously disagree with his arguments and conclusions, but a tiny part of my brain is trying to tell me I'm just in denial.

The article is dated Oct. 25, 2010, and titled "Nov. 2 -- For Whom the Bell Tolls."

 

By Michael Brenner

 

 

The election is sounding the death knell for a decent America. A country where the enlightened consensus of the postwar decades is restored; a country where reciprocal obligations are woven into the fabric of our public institutions; a country where justice for all is more than a phrase in the Pledge of Allegiance; a country where there is a measure of honesty and integrity to our public life; a country where plutocracy is rejected and kleptocracy is unimaginable; a country that doesn't torture, that doesn't torture itself with inflated fears; that respects its civil liberties; that shuns imperial ambition and pretense. This is the America so many expected would be served by a President Barack Obama. It hasn't worked out that way. The principal reason is Mr. Obama himself.

It makes little difference whether the Democrats retain a thin majority in one House of Congress or other. The Republicans will rule the roost with an active assist from their soul brothers burrowed across the aisle. Yes, the subpoena power counts for something, as does the processing of presidential nominees. On legislation, the future is preordained. Anything smacking of progressive thinking is dead. Obama's enemies will be more emboldened; his sympathizers more demoralized. Moreover, the White House will pursue its well established policy of seeking common ground somewhere between Sarah Palin and Olympia Snowe. The crucial concessions already have been made in heart and mind.

The chatter and clatter of the artless spectacle that our politics has become conceals this stunning truth. We have missed an historic opportunity to reverse America's steady descent into Reaganism. There was an epochal chance to forge a new political reality based on progressive principles with a generation of young voters as its base. Three factors created this opportunity. The Republican party had lurched far to the right with its embrace of America circa 1928 as its model, thereby estranging its traditional moderate (true) conservatives. That is one. Its philosophies of ruthless individualism, free market fundamentalism and government be damned had been discredited in dramatic fashion by events that hurt most Americans. That is two. It had proven itself at once corrupt and incompetent at home and abroad. That is three. Katrina, the Iraq fiasco, rampant criminality inside the government and the pernicious effects of stagnant incomes for salaried Americans over four decades had broken the hold that Republican ideas had on the popular mind. The financial meltdown of 2007-2009 that shook national self-confidence to its foundations brought into sharp focus all of the above. The wave of anxiety that it provokes made people amenable to a fresh way of thinking about how to conduct our public affairs. The 2006 election was the first political fallout. Obama's election in 2008 confirmed that the mood of the times even overrode our latent racism.

The upshot was that in January 2009 the pieces were in place to push the Republicans into the political wilderness for a generation. The party's capture by its most obscurantist elements made realization of that prospect easier and more durable. This year's election should have been shades of 1934 when the Roosevelt led Democrats greatly increased their Congressional majorities - or at least 2002 when Republicans gained seats. Instead we are seeing a reprise of 1994. Only the perverse genius of the Obama led Democratic Party could make possible this drastic reversal of a powerful political logic. What should be an historic turning point in the direction of good governance for all our citizens now is about to be a turn toward a radical and reactionary regime far more toxic than anything we have experienced to date. The passions of a troubled country that have given impetus to a reform agenda are now tearing that agenda apart. The national crisis that coincided with Obama's entry into the White House was a godsend for liberals. It has been turned into a curse.

This is a harsh indictment. The uncomfortable truth, though, is that the alternative explanations for what has befallen us are lame. Let's look at them in turn. First is the simplistic notion, recently voiced by a self-serving Rahm Emanuel, that the discontent in the American body politic had been brewing for a long time and it was just bad luck that Obama and the Democrats happened to be in control when it erupted. In fact, it was those very discontents that carried Obama into office and padded Democratic majorities in the Congress. The momentum was all theirs; the wind was at their back. Tragically, they lacked the insight and political skill to take advantage of it. Second there is the argument that the Obama administration was hamstrung by the implacable opposition of an obstructionist Republican Party dedicated and united to preventing it from governing.

True -- but that should have been seen as opening the way to driving the final nail into their coffin. Doing so would have meant drawing clear lines between the enlightened policies and programs the times require and the Republicans' discredited philosophy. It would have meant opening as much distance as possible between the White House and the special interests which own the Republican Party and use it as their paid agent. It would have meant a campaign to rouse and mobilize the American people behind Obama led Democrats in a struggle for the nation's political soul. It would have meant calling out the Blue Dogs and using every bit of leverage available to force them to choose between accepting White House leadership or facing the ire of a wrathful electorate. It would have meant calling the Republicans bluff on threatened filibusters by raising the stakes while attacking their most vulnerable members rather than cosseting them. It would have meant calling out the Tea Party rabble rousers and enablers for what they are while shrinking the pool of their possible recruits by tapping and channeling the free floating angst abroad in the land.

As to the obtuse media who have spotlighted the radical right and routinely give the lies of Republican leaders a pass, the cynical truth is the American media today exist to be used. The White House is in a better position than anyone to meet their needs for a story line, for celebrity, for sound bites. If it doesn't satisfy their needs, the other guys are only too happy to step in.

The final exculpatory argument for refraining from an indictment of Obama and his entourage is that no one could have done better in the face of the unrelenting, vicious attacks on him. It often is coupled with the specious line that we should concentrate our criticism on Bush instead since he was the cause of so many of the country's ills. Well, you don't grade Presidents on a curve when the fate of the Republic is at stake. You don't ignore the opportunity that severe challenge opens. You don't forget how a Roosevelt used his enemies' venom to his advantage. You don't let the color of a President's skin enter into how you assess his performance as Chief Executive.

To seize that historic opportunity would have required from Obama conviction, courage and a sense of history. All are absent from his thinking and public persona. He is portrayed in a recent New York Times magazine article as having few if any regrets about how he has conducted himself. He apparently feels that he is a victim of circumstances beyond his control. He still approaches associates and problems with the instinctive confidence that he is the smartest person in the room - so we are told. Let's look at the record.

Obama was not the smartest man in the room when he swallowed whole the Rubin-Bernanke-Summers line that restoring financial supremacy to the biggest players on Wall Street was tantamount to restoring financial stability and the absolute precondition for economic recovery. He wasn't the smartest guy in the room when he declared that Lloyd Blankfein and Jaime Damon were 'very savvy businessman' who deserved every dollar they took; when he reneged on his pledge to push legislation that would have restored to home owners the right to renegotiate mortgages in bankruptcy court; when he cast Paul Volcker into the outer orbit of his administration. He was not the smartest guy in the room when just last week he dismissed massive bank foreclosure fraud as "honest mistakes and errors."

Obama was not the smartest man in the room when he made a secret pact with the health insurers to kill the public option as their price for acquiescing in a deal that saw their stock prices spike; when he struck another shadowy deal with Big Pharma to kill proposals to allow the government to bargain over drug prices; when he made health reform hostage to the bipartisan 'gang of six' conservative Senators from the boondocks led by Max Baucus, the bought agent for the health care industry. He wasn't the smartest person in the room when he pursued the same futile strategy on finance reform by sponsoring the mixed marriage of Senators Dodd and Coburn. Obama wasn't the smartest guy in the room when he appointed a Presidential Commission on Social Security stocked with devotees to the 'cut-it-back' cult - this after trying to sneak through Congress a bill that would have compelled the legislature to vote up or down the whole package of its predictable recommendations. He was not the smartest guy in the room when he took a hands-off attitude toward the BP oil spoil.

Obama was not the smartest person in the room when he convinced himself that a firm commitment to escalation in Afghanistan was a stepping stone to the White House. He wasn't the smartest guy in the room when he allowed Secretary Gates and General Petraeus to sell him their pie-in-the-sky scheme for victory in Afghanistan; when he tried to square circles by linking an increase in troops to a fixed deadline to begin withdrawal; when he fostered the illusion that we could dictate our terms to Karzai and Kayani.

Obama was not the smartest person in the room when he dispatched Robert Gibbs to publicly insult in vulgar language the people who elected him. He surely wasn't the smartest guy in the room when he sought out the smug, foul-mouthed Rahm Emanuel to be his trusted White House lieutenant; Rahm Emmanuel the consigliore cum hustler whose machinations spawned those politically suicidal actions; Rahm Emanuel the designated 'fixer' who did more to break the Obama presidency than anyone save the President himself. Nor was Obama the smartest guy in the room when he shunned his electoral network of grass roots -- and young -- activists while cultivating all the Washington power brokers against whom he'd run.

Political considerations rightly figure in most White House policy judgments. Expediency does at times dictate bowing to them. But this President routinely has taken actions against the grain of good government, betraying his backers and losing his credibility in the process, that have exacted such heavy political costs as to run his presidency onto the rocks. That is the signal failure of an administration that has marooned its friends and allies, curried favor with the opposition and passively accepted abuse from them, all based on a disastrous political calculus that leads inexorably to next Tuesday's shipwreck.

This blunt truth returns us to the question of how devoted BaracK Obama actually is to the success of the Democratic Party, its stated program and its voting constituents. One hears reports of sighs of relief in the White House now that it no longer will be required to reconcile the demands of 'professional progressives' with the relentless pressure of the right. The bipartisanship that he so avidly sought now will be imposed on him by congressional arithmetic, on the stringent terms of the Republicans and their blue dog auxiliaries. The nonchalance with which this outcome is anticipated strongly suggests two awkward conclusions. One, Obama believes deep down that the locus of American public life does not coincide with the locus of sentiment within the Democratic Party; and, two, that there really isn't anything that terrible about conforming to that reality. "In Losing, There May Be Winning," as yesterdays NYT's headline complacently reassures us.

The White House mood on the eve of the pending rout is pictured as resigned - a shrug of the shoulder 'that's life' bordering on the blasé. This tepid attitude has been on display throughout the campaign. When Joe Biden mustered the courage to condemn the Republicans for their embrace of the Tea Party crackpots, he was immediately reined in. There were mutterings about not irritating the far right further lest they really get ticked off -- and, presumably, would never consider voting for Obama in 2012.

Obama's public life, as we know it, has followed one deeply etched pattern that allows for only mode of conduct. It is a true expression of who he is - at heart, a deeply conventional person who has learned how to profit from his exceptionality. A creature of his times, the embodiment of generation 'X' that came of age during the Reagan era and inhaled its mixture of sanctimony and selfishness.

These are its core ingredients. Always portray yourself as a traveler on the high road who looks with disfavor on those who follow the grubby path of partisan mean spiritedness. Make much of an ideal world in which all walk hand-in-hand on that high road headed toward an undefined better tomorrow. Cultivate via rhetoric laced with the occasional theatrical gesture that you identify with the weaker and the marginal, e.g. African-Americans, the unprivileged, the uninsured, women, gays. Never alienate the establishment in the process. For the establishment is where American strength and the ultimate source of legitimacy for all serious matters lies. Make your pitch to the former so as to position yourself to reach your goal. Play it in contrapuntal fashion with the theme of promoting one harmonious family -- of Harvard Law School rebels and its mainstream, of the Chicago business establishment and inner city minorities, of good government Illini and the party machine, of Progressive Democrats and the Senate power brokers, of the idealistic kids who backed you and the hustlers you surround yourself with.

Once you reach your goal, whatever position you're grasping for, quietly shed your more passionate supporters whose conviction is as embarrassing and alien to you as is a true reform agenda. Make peace with the powers that be. All the while cultivate, albeit sotto voce, your image of someone deserving respect for your brains and for having overcome adversity. Thereby, you entice the world to overlook your contradictions and self-centeredness -- especially since you are so manifestly a great guy and you're black. The latter element is particularly helpful in dulling the skeptical inclinations, such as they are, of liberals and blurring the vision of all. It is an ecumenical approach - all are welcome in the congregation of celebrants for the phenomenon that is Barack Obama.

In the avidly sort position, you do a competent job but never get out on the limb. You're the conciliator, the above the fray man even while espousing the creed of betterment and improvement. Legislative life best suits you. There is more room for maneuver; you're not held accountable for actually running anything; your accomplishments can be fudged. Then you find yourself President of the United States of America. A different modus operandi is called for. But you can play only the one role. It is you and you are it.

There is something abnormal going on here. The world is supposed to accommodate itself to me; I don't adjust to it. Certainly not as to style and mode of address. The opposition doesn't even pay lip service to the lofty ideals I pronounce. It spurns the hand of bipartisanship that I extend in good faith since, in truth, I feel that they may be almost as close to what's right as are my supporters. ("My administration claims no monopoly of good ideas.") The Fox crowd call me dirty names; they race bait. (That was beyond the pale at Harvard Law School, in Chicago's corporate world, in the Springfield Sate House, in the Senate). So I'll just keep doing my thing - my way. I'll play up to the establishment powerhouses - the Wall Street barons, the health industry moguls, the Pentagon brass, the CIA mandarins. In the past, they've always seen it in their interest not to embarrass or hurt me; I've always made sure that there was something for them in my successes. I'll just have to call a success whatever comes out of this strange new reality and distance myself from the nastiness all around me. Nobody could have done as well as I have. Anyway, I'm above it all; I'm better than all this. I plan to take up my option on the White House through 2016.

Copyright, 2010, The Huffington Post.  All rights reserved.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Secret Big-Money Takeover of America

by

 

Robert Reich

 

Not only is income and wealth in America more concentrated in fewer hands than it's been in 80 years, but those hands are buying our democracy as never before -- and they're doing it behind closed doors.

Hundreds of millions of secret dollars are pouring into congressional and state races in this election cycle. The Koch brothers (whose personal fortunes grew by $5 billion last year) appear to be behind some of it, Karl Rove has rounded up other multimillionaires to fund right-wing candidates, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is funneling corporate dollars from around the world into congressional races, and Rupert Murdoch is evidently spending heavily.

No one knows for sure where this flood of money is coming from because it's all secret.

But you can safely assume its purpose is not to help America's stranded middle class, working class, and poor. It's to pad the nests of the rich, stop all reform, and deregulate big corporations and Wall Street -- already more powerful than since the late 19th century when the lackeys of robber barons literally deposited sacks of cash on the desks of friendly legislators.

Credit the Supreme Court's grotesque decision in Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission, which opened the floodgates. (Even though 8 of 9 members of the Court also held disclosure laws constitutional, the decision invited the creation of shadowy "nonprofits" that don't have to reveal anything.)

According to FEC data, only 32 percent of groups paying for election ads are disclosing the names of their donors. By comparison, in the 2006 midterm, 97 percent disclosed; in 2008, almost half disclosed.

Last week, when the Senate considered a bill to force such disclosure, every single Republican voted against it -- thereby revealing the GOP's true colors, and presumed benefactors. (To understand how far the GOP has come, nearly ten years ago campaign disclosure was supported by 48 of 54 Republican senators.)

Maybe the Disclose Bill can get passed in lame-duck session. Maybe the IRS will make sure Karl Rove's and other supposed nonprofits aren't sham political units. Maybe pigs will learn to fly.

In the meantime we face an election that marks an even sharper turn toward plutocratic capitalism than before -- a government by and for the rich and big corporations -- and away from democratic capitalism.

As income and wealth has moved to the top, so has political power. That's why, for example, it's been impossible to close the absurd tax loophole that allows hedge-fund and private-equity managers to treat much of their income as capital gains, subject to a 15 percent tax (even though they're earning tens or hundreds of millions a year, and the top 15 hedge-fund managers earned an average of $1 billion last year). Why it proved impossible to fund expanded health care by limiting the tax deductions of the very rich. Why it's so difficult even to extend George Bush's tax cuts for the bottom 98 percent of Americans without also extending them for the top 2 percent - even though the top won't spend the money and create jobs, but will blow a $36 billion hole in the federal budget next year.

The good news is average Americans are beginning to understand that when the rich secretly flood our democracy with money, the rest of us drown. Wall Street executives and top CEOs get bailed out while under-water homeowners and jobless workers sink.

A Quinnipiac poll earlier this year found overwhelming support for a millionaire tax.

But what the public wants means nothing if our democracy is secretly corrupted by big money.

Right now we're headed for a perfect storm: An unprecedented concentration of income and wealth at the top, a record amount of secret money flooding our democracy, and a public in the aftershock of the Great Recession becoming increasingly angry and cynical about government. The three are obviously related.

We must act. We need a movement to take back our democracy. (If tea partiers were true to their principles, they'd join it.) As Martin Luther King once said, the greatest tragedy is "not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people."

What can you do?

1. Read Justice Steven's dissent in the Citizens United case, so you're fully informed about the majority's pernicious illogic.

2. Use every opportunity to speak out against this decision, and embarrass and condemn the right-wing Justices who supported it.

3. In this and subsequent elections, back candidates for congress and president who vow to put Justices on the Court who will reverse it.

4. Demand that the IRS enforce the law and pull the plug on Karl Rove and other sham nonprofits.

5. If you have a Republican senator, insist that he or she support the Disclose Act. If they won't, campaign against them.

6. Support public financing of elections.

7. Join an organization like Common Cause, that's committed to doing all this and getting big money out of politics. (Personal note: I'm so outraged at what's happening that I just became chairman of Common Cause.)

8. Send this post to your friends (including any tea partiers you may know).

Copyright, 2010, The Huffington Post.  All rights reserved.

Robert Reich is the author of

Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future, now in bookstores. This post originally appeared at RobertReich.org

 

 

 

Arianna's "Half-True" Verdict
From PolitiFact

I get the Huffington Post daily in my email inbox, but I hardly ever have time to read the articles.  Such is life in the life of a busy busy person.

This particular article by Arianna Huffington is to good not to reprint.  I just got lucky and happened to read this one.  It's beautifully eloquent.

**********************

by Arianna Huffington

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Whenever I speak about the future of media, I get the most positive reaction when I talk about the urgent need to create an

online tool

that makes it possible to instantly fact-check politicians and commentators as they speak (a bubble pops up, containing the actual facts supporting or contradicting what's been said). Truth 2.0.

That's why I had such high hopes when it was

announced that PolitiFact.com, the Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking project of the St. Petersburg Times, was going to evaluate the truthfulness of statements made each Sunday an ABC's This Week. It wasn't going to be instant, but it was a step in the right direction.

Then my dust-up with Liz Cheney on the show last month was given the PolitiFact treatment -- and I saw firsthand why the pursuit of Truth 2.0 is going to be harder than we think.

PolitiFact's finding that my statement that Halliburton had defrauded American taxpayers of "hundreds of millions of dollars in Iraq" was "Half True" -- after first documenting example after example of why it was completely true -- was an object lesson in equivocation, and a prime exhibit of the kind of muddled thinking that dominates Washington and allows the powerful to escape accountability.

Despite the ludicrousness of the Half True rating -- and since I was in the final throes of finishing my new book -- I let it stand, feeling that the absurdity of PolitiFact first making my case for me, then falling back on the safety of a split-the-baby conclusion spoke for itself.

Then, over the weekend, I read this entry

detailing PolitiFact's readers' reaction to the Half True finding. Rummaging through its Mailbag, PolitiFact quoted three readers who said I was right (while castigating the site for "rhetorical tap-dancing" and "falling victim to the ills of pious fairness"), one who said I was wrong, and one who thought Half True was "right on."

Because this kind of hedging-your-bets thinking runs rampant in our media and political circles, and allows the corrupt no-accountability status quo to continue wreaking havoc on our country -- and with my book at the printers, and a long weekend on my hands -- I've decided it's worth returning to the scene of the crime to do a little CSI exam of the evidence and see what we can conclude from PolitiFact's head-scratching conclusion.

First, a quick refresher on the incident that started things. While discussing the connection between the Bush-Cheney administration's lax approach to regulation and the BP disaster in the Gulf, Liz Cheney and I had this exchange:

Me: Right here we have the poster child of Bush-Cheney crony capitalism, Halliburton... They, after all, were responsible for cementing the well. Here's Halliburton, after it defrauded the American taxpayer hundreds of millions of dollars--

Cheney: Arianna, I don't know what planet you live on --

Me: -- it's involved again.

Cheney: -- but it's not -- it's not facts.

Me: I'm living on this planet, you're living in a planet that is --

Cheney: Arianna, what you're saying has no relationship to the truth. No relationship to the facts.

Notice that Cheney didn't just deny what I said -- she acted as if this was the first she'd ever heard of it. If ABC had had a fainting couch on the set, no doubt Cheney would have taken to it, so shocked -- shocked! -- was she to hear the charge that Halliburton might have been involved in some malfeasance in its glorious history of serving our nation.

At the end of the exchange, I mentioned how glad I was that PolitiFact -- with its motto, "Sorting out the truth in politics" -- would be fact-checking the show. Unfortunately, the "fact check" turned into a model of how to avoid the truth.

This is a favorite trick of those in positions of power: using ambiguity and complexity as a sort of chemical dispersant on the truth. Dilute it enough and it becomes unrecognizable.

This isn't to lump PolitiFact in with Liz Cheney, but its attempt to bend over backwards to find the comfort of the middle ground is part of the problem it was presumably formed to combat.

What makes this particularly troubling is that PolitiFact's "fact check" was well-researched and well-sourced. The truthiness part was that PolitiFact's facts clearly supported a conclusion different than the one its editors came to.

For instance, they noted how Halliburton's then subsidiary

KBR charged "inflated prices for gas"

(PDF). Or, as the House Oversight report put it: "...these unnecessary charges increased the costs to the government by $167 million, an increase of over 90%."

They noted how KBR billed for "meals it didn't serve," to the tune of, as

the Washington Post reported

, "$4.5 million more than was necessary."

They noted that "the Defense Contract Audit Agency found that $553 million in payments should be disallowed to KBR."

They noted that "the Defense Contract Audit Agency was recommending withholding $289 million in contract costs not yet paid and asking for the return of $121 million already paid."

They noted that, aside from all this, KBR has, in fact, been

officially accused of "fraud,"

for having, in the words of the Justice Department, "knowingly included impermissible costs" in its accounting to the government -- for which the Justice Department filed a civil fraud suit against KBR in April of this year. "This case is being brought as part of a National Procurement Fraud Initiative," says a release by the Department of Justice.

And all of this happened right here on the planet I'm living on. And yet, when it came time to draw the obvious conclusions from all the facts that it had just marshaled, PolitiFact backed off. After all, certain things are just not said in polite society. Even after you've just said them.

So the "rhetorical tap-dancing" began:

"In evaluating Huffington's statement," said PolitiFact, "we're most bothered by her use of the word 'defrauded.' Some of the overbilling in Iraq appears to have been done from haste or inefficiency, or even in a desire to please military officials in the field without regard for cost. Whether the waste in contracting constitutes fraud is still being examined."

Yes, of course, there's always something "still being examined," but can't we simply say what we know we know? There are, as Don Rumsfeld told us, "known knowns." But these are the things never to be mentioned in front of the kids -- i.e. the American public.

A few graphs later it got even worse:

"Certainly there have been hundreds of millions of dollars that Halliburton's KBR attempted to charge the government that have been denied," conceded Politifact. "There's also much evidence that makes us believe that hundreds of millions of dollars were lost to waste and inefficiency, not deceitful fraud."

Really? "Hundreds of millions" lost due to "waste and inefficiency"? Sure, no program is perfect, but when "hundreds of millions of dollars" just disappear, they don't fall between the sofa cushions. And why is it that all of Halliburton/KBR's "inefficiency" somehow redounded to the company's benefit and not the government's? In any case, the best defense PolitiFact could muster is that Halliburton/KBR was only a little fraudulent, and simply hugely, massively, and spectacularly incompetent. Thus, my statement was adjudicated Half True.

If only PolitiFact had been more willing to heed the facts established by its own report. And there were plenty of other facts PolitiFact left out. Like the details in

this

2006 Washington Post story:

"Halliburton had exclusive rights to provide the military with a wide range of work that included keeping soldiers around the world fed, sheltered and in communication with friends and family back home. Government audits turned up more than $1 billion in questionable costs. Whistle-blowers told how the company charged $45 per case of soda, double-billed on meals and allowed troops to bathe in contaminated water."

Or the 2004 GAO

report

(PDF) that found "significant problems in almost every area, including ineffective planning, inadequate cost control, insufficient training of contract management officials, and a pattern of recurring problems with controlling costs, meeting schedules, documenting purchases, and overseeing subcontractors."

Again, a "pattern of recurring problems" that always seemed to end with taxpayers getting the short end of the stick. Strange that such innocent incompetence only worked in one direction.

Then there was

this

, from Media Matters: "DOD audits of Halliburton's Iraq and Afghanistan contract found at least $1.4 billion in questioned and $441 million in unsupported costs." And this: "DOD audits noted 32 examples of suspected 'fraud or other suspected irregular conduct' by Iraq and Afghanistan contractors, the 'vast majority' of which were from KBR.'"

Keeping track of Halliburton's "waste and inefficiency" is such a monumental task there's a website,

Halliburton Watch, devoted to doing only that. Its founder, Charlie Cray, isn't afraid to describe

what PolitiFact seemed so reluctant to: "We've got a recidivist corporate criminal, basically, with a long track record of violations and seeming impunity from significant enforcement consequences for their most egregious transgressions."

If you're a mom and pop store owner and you jack up the cost of a bottle of water after an earthquake, you'll be charged with price gouging, yet what Halliburton does gets excused in a fog of manufactured ambiguity, complexity, and talk of "withholding conclusion due to pending litigation."

There are two other words for what Halliburton did besides fraud: war profiteering. When "hundreds of millions of dollars" just disappear, while teachers and policemen are getting laid off, perhaps it's time for a two-fisted investigation like the one Sen. Harry Truman spearheaded during World War II. But that's not the way of Washington these days.

Which is why I'd like to borrow two of the busiest letters of the day, and take this BP: Beyond PolitiFact. In the end, this is not about me, or Liz Cheney, or even Halliburton. It's about our accountability double standard. It's actually not that complex, nor is it ambiguous. It's plainly obvious and the American people know it. And the refusal of our political and media leaders to acknowledge it is contributing to the widespread anger and cynicism sweeping the country right now.

In 2006, AIG paid $1.6 billion to settle

charges of accounting trickery

but was allowed to do so without admitting wrongdoing. Two years later, taxpayers ended up getting stuck with a $182 billion bill for bailing the company out. Nothing, it seems, gets a company like AIG or Halliburton tossed out of Washington's good graces -- their survival is, of course, made much easier when obviously fraudulent behavior is masked with euphemisms like "waste and inefficiency."

We're seeing this pattern repeated with BP. The company has

an atrocious safety record. In the last three years, BP racked up 760 "egregious, willful" safety violations, defined by OSHA as demonstrating "intentional disregard for the requirement of the [law]" or "plain indifference to employee safety and health." That accounted for an astounding 97 percent of the "egregious, willful" violations OSHA handed out during that time. And more than 40 BP workers have been killed in three separate on-the-job disasters, including the 11 who died on the Deepwater Horizon. But the company's officers are much more likely to be handed bonuses than jail sentences.

As long as we allow truth backed up by a mountain of evidence to be, in the name of "pious fairness

," downgraded to Half True, that's the way the planet we're all living on is going to continue to operate. And that's a fact.

Copyright, 2010, The Huffington Post.  All rights reserved.

 

Reprinting an Article
on Nigel Richards

written by Tim Hume
of New Zealand's
Sunday Star Times

He's the Kiwi world champion you've never heard of, and that's just the way the 'Tiger Woods of Scrabble' likes it. Tim Hume reveals the brilliant and enigmatic Nigel Richards.

IN THE eyes of Aucklander Howard Warner, the most internationally dominant New Zealander in any sport over the past decade is not Valerie Vili, not Mahe Drysdale, not even Beef and Lamb. That accolade rightly belongs to Nigel Richards, a spindly 43-year-old Peter Davis lookalike whose brilliant, mysterious mind has made him a superstar of the world Scrabble circuit.

"Without a doubt he's the greatest player in our sport, ever," says national Scrabble representative Warner, who, like many serious exponents of the game, considers it a sport.

He has roomed with and squared off against Richards at international tournaments. "I can't think of any other New Zealander who's been so indisputably the best in the world at what they do, for so long. He's like a computer with a big ginger beard."

Many modern sporting celebrities are freakish physical specimens: Michael Phelps with his rowboat oars, Lance Armstrong with his horse's heart. Richards' biological advantage comes in the form of the distinctive mental circuitry which has made him the great enigma of the Scrabble world.

"You go to international tournaments and everyone's sitting around at the end of the day telling Nigel-stories," says Warner. "Of course, he's never there, so the legend grows."

Richards is notoriously reclusive. Tournament profiles typically list his age, occupation, and place of residence as "not disclosed". Even his mother, Adrienne Fischer, is uncertain exactly what his job entails, although it is something to do with closed circuit televisions and security in Kuala Lumpur, where he has lived since leaving his home town of Christchurch in 2000.

He is monklike in his personal habits. "There's not a lot of excess in the way he conducts himself," says Warner. He's vegetarian, doesn't drink or smoke, and is frugal, wearing the same modest clothes and oversized glasses he has for years. He has no interest in television, radio, current events.

"If you asked him how the Crusaders went, I don't think he'd know who they were," says Fischer. "I don't think he's ever read a book, apart from the dictionary."

Richards' only two interests are obsessions: Scrabble, and cycling. He cycles 600km a week, including long rides before the 8am start of each day of tournament play. Everyone in Scrabble knows the story of Richards' first appearance at a New Zealand championship, when he knocked off his job in the Christchurch City Council's water department at 5pm, cycled for 14 hours to Dunedin in atrocious conditions overnight, played all his games over the weekend, then cycled home having won his division, spurning offers of a lift.

 

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While for most people, Scrabble is a wholesome if unenthusing family pastime, for thousands around the world it is serious competitive sport. Two colourful international circuits tour North America and the rest of the world, populated with eccentrically gifted players who devote their days to programming dictionaries into their brains. (There are about 140,000 words up to nine letters long which are acceptable on the "world" circuit, about 40,000 fewer on the North American tour.) For all the feistiness of the competition, the financial stakes are not high. "No one expects to make money in Scrabble," says Paul Lister, president of the New Zealand Association of Scrabble Players. Yet Richards, who won the European Open in Malta last month with several rounds to spare, has made about $200,000 over the past 12 years.

For top-flight players, definitions of words are immaterial; they earn no points, and simply take up valuable mental bandwidth. Words are strings of letters, mathematical possibilities. The centre of the world game is South-East Asia, where the shaky English exhibited by many top players is no barrier to success. Warner estimates the average English speaker has a working vocabulary of 5000-6000 words; he himself would know about 70,000. Richards, who has an uncanny natural ability to store words in his head and pluck them out at will, would know double that.

Richards is the only player to have held both the North American and world champion titles concurrently. "To play in America he has to unlearn 40,000 words for the tournament, then input them back in his memory banks when he's done," says Warner. "It's incredible. Most of the North Americans don't bother trying; to Nigel, it makes no difference."

Michael Tang is the Malaysian organiser of one of the world's biggest Scrabble tournaments, the Causeway Challenge. He says Richards is the biggest drawcard at the event. "He's considered the Tiger Woods of Scrabble."

Comparisons are consistently made to chess prodigies like Garry Kasparov and Bobby Fischer, for the seemingly unparalleled breadth of his word knowledge, his ability to punish opponents with massive scoring plays, his robotic demeanour. "He's what we call a freak," says Tang. At tournaments like the King's Cup in Thailand (the Thai King is an avid player), thousands of fans turn up to watch, and Richards is often mobbed, something he finds exceptionally difficult to deal with.

The king of Scrabble is a man of surprisingly few words. He cuts an awkward figure following his tournament victories, preferring to slip off as soon as possible rather than engage in celebrations or dissections of the matches. Richards lives alone, and seems to have little need of human contact. "He's always been like that, happy in his own company. He hasn't particularly needed other people around him," says Liz Fagerlund, an Auckland Scrabbler who is one of Richards' closest friends. "People, when they first meet him, probably think he's shy; I think it's more he's not into making small talk."

"While he doesn't go out of his way to have a social life," says his mother, "he's not unsociable."

INDEED, RICHARDS is widely admired on the circuit for his gentlemanly approach to the game, in contrast to some of the blowhards with whom he sometimes shares the podium. Win or lose, he betrays no emotion. Stefan Fatsis, a Wall Street Journal reporter and author of Word Freak, a bestseller on the carnival of misfits that is the American Scrabble tour, rates Richards as among five inseparable all-time greats of the game. He says Richards stands out most of all for his unflappable, "zen-like" approach to competition.

"Once the word is played, it's played, and there's nothing you can do to take it back. It's really reassuring in this world of hyperactive and emotional minds to see someone who has this complete sense of calm and sangfroid about his ability.

"He's the best in the world at what he does, yet there's no bravado, no ego, no aggression. He just plays the game then rides his bike off."

In an excised section of his book, Fatsis relates an encounter between Richards and an American Scrabble great, who told the New Zealander: "I can never tell whether you won or lost."

"That's because I don't care," replied Richards.

Richards' talents have drawn attention from women on the circuit. "There are certainly women in the Scrabble world who are fascinated by him, despite the fact he's no Dan Carter," says Warner. "Some women find a big brain sexy."

He is as indifferent to their interest as he is to everything other than Scrabble and cycling. The only thing that gets him riled are journalists.

"That's the only time he'll show any emotion and get a little annoyed, because he doesn't like the fuss," says Warner.

He and Richards' other friends are amused at the naivete of a reporter seeking to talk to him. Richards doesn't respond to a request for an interview.

EVERYONE SAYS Richards' talent is the product of a brilliant mathematical mind that is somehow "wired differently", although no one is sure quite how. "When he was learning to talk, he was not interested in words, just numbers," says his mother. "He used to point to the calendars. He related everything to numbers. We just thought it was normal. We've always just treated Nigel as Nigel."

Despite early indications of his special talents, Richards stayed in mainstream schooling, attending the low-decile Aranui High then completing his education at Lincoln High, when his family moved to Burnham Military Camp for his stepfather's career. He spent a lot of time on his own, playing video games. "He never went to discos," says Fischer. He got a scholarship to university, but never went, taking a job at the post office instead.

Richards didn't play Scrabble until he was 28. His mother introduced him to the game, frustrated that his card-counting had turned their Sunday games of 500 into a no-contest. "I said, 'I know a game you're not going to be very good at, because you can't spell very well and you weren't very good at English at school'." Despite his poor affinity with language, he turned out to be a prodigious talent, and in 1997 won the national champs on his first attempt.

Richards provided an insight into his mind by revealing his studying technique to Fatsis. He compiles dense word lists, scanning through them along with a dictionary, and somehow the words stay in there. "I just have to view the word," he told Fatsis. "As long as I've seen the word, I can bring it back. But if I've only heard it or spoken it, I can't do it at all."

But that is only half his gift, says Fatsis. "I've never been around a player who had such a facility with recall. It's one thing to be able to have a photographic image of a page of the dictionary inside your head. It's altogether another task to look at the seven tiles on your rack and look at the letters already played on the board and decipher the riddle contained in them. Nigel has it all."

Warner believes Richards has an eidetic, or photographic, memory.

"He told me whenever he looked up a word in his memory banks, he would see its position," he says. "That's an extremely rare mathematical mind.

"It's uncanny playing him. He doesn't give anything away. You had a sense his eyes were rolling around in his head, as if they were scrolling through a computer screen."

Warner and others were surprised when, in 2000, Richards upped sticks and took a job offered by a Malaysian Scrabble aficionado. "He doesn't like spicy food, and he loved the outdoors here," says Warner. It hasn't all gone smoothly. Richards has kept to his cycling regimen in Kuala Lumpur, leading to a number of traffic accidents, and the lack of a New Zealand ranking saw him disqualified from international competition for several years, until a "Nigel clause" was instituted, which allowed him to represent his country in perpetuity.

But ultimately, says Warner, Richards has benefited being closer to numerous major competitions; perhaps, too, the character of Malaysian life – "people there are friendly, but private" – suits him.

His increased involvement in international competition since the move has raised the bar in the sport. "Ganesh [Asirvatham, a Malaysian who has become one of the world's top players] took a year out in his life to do nothing but word learning to try to catch up with Nigel," says Warner. Asirvatham eventually became one of Richards' biggest rivals, besting him for a streak, until Richards regained the upper hand and Asirvatham dropped out of competition.

Richards keeps performing. "He's been at the pinnacle for 12 years now," says Warner. As a man of such rigorous habit that seems unlikely to change.

"We probably assumed he would have dropped out some time ago, because he's done everything. But no. He just seems to love the challenge of playing. It doesn't matter to him if he wins or loses tournaments. He just likes to be in the moment, playing the game."

 Copyright, 2010, Sunday Star Times.  All rights reserved.

Shorting the Middle Class:

The Real Wall Street Crime　

 

(by Arianna Huffington, April 19, 2010)

　

The press is all abuzz with news of the SEC suing Goldman Sachs for fraud. While this is certainly big news in itself, even more important is what it says about what the financial elite has been doing to America for the last 30 years: shorting the middle class.

The SEC's action is a perfect moment for us to look at the bigger picture of how the American people were sold on the promise of never-ending prosperity while Wall Street was overseeing a massive transfer of wealth from the middle class to the richest Americans.

The results have been devastating: a disappearing middle class, a precipitous drop in economic and social mobility, and ultimately, the undermining of the foundation of our democracy.

Thirty years ago, top executives at S&P 500 companies made an average of 30 times what their workers did -- now they make 300 times what their workers make. And between 2000 and 2008, the poverty rate in the suburbs of the largest metro areas in the U.S. grew by 25 percent -- making these suburbs home to the country's largest and fastest-growing segment of the poor.

The human toll of the shorting of the middle class is brought to life on sites like Recessionwire.com, LayoffSupportNetwork.com, and HowIGotLaidOff.com where the casualties of Wall Street's systemic scam share their personal stories.

Looking through these sites, I came upon a story that struck me as emblematic of where America's middle class finds itself these days. It feels like a dark reboot of the American Dream. Think Horatio Alger rewritten by O. Henry.

It's the story of Dean Blackburn of Alameda, California. The first part of his life was a classic American success story. Raised in Minnesota by a single mom, a teacher, he was "middle class by default." Through a combination of smarts and hard work, he made his way to Yale, then took a succession of jobs in the growing Internet world that had him steadily progressing up the economic ladder.

Then came February 2009, when he was laid off on the last day of the month. His boss chose that day because it meant the company wouldn't have to pay for another month of his health coverage. "Looking back on it," he told me, "that hurt more than the layoff itself -- just knowing that the president of the company was exactly that calculating and that unfeeling about my own, and my family's wellbeing." The timing, Blackburn continued, "put those 'family days' and company picnics in a weird new light."

Fourteen months later, he is still looking for a new job. As he, his wife, and their 2-year-old daughter deal with the immediate financial struggles his extended unemployment has brought, Blackburn has become acutely aware of the broader implications of the shorting of the middle class. "Ultimately," he says, "it's not about a dip in corporate profits, but a change in corporate attitude -- a change that means no one's job is safe, and never will be, ever again."

It's one of the reasons he's decided to try to start his own company, NaviDate, a data-driven twist on online dating sites: "It's no longer a trade-off between doing what you love and having stability. Stability is long gone, so you better do something you love!"

Achieving middle class stability and having your children do better than you, the way you had done better than your parents, has always been the American Dream, but, as Blackburn notes, mobility now is increasingly one way: "The plateaus of each step, which can be a great place to stop a bit and catch your breath, are gone. Now, it's climb, climb, climb, or start sliding back down immediately." The result: "the odds are you're going to wind up at the bottom eventually, unless you get lucky."

Luck. That's what the American Dream now rests on. It used to be about education, hard work and perseverance, but the system is rigged to such an extent now that the way to keep your head above water is to get lucky. The middle class life is now the prize on a scratch-off lottery ticket.

In November 2008, as the initial aftershocks of the economic earthquake were being felt, David Brooks predicted the rise of a new social class -- "the formerly middle class" -- made up of those who had joined the middle class at the end of the boom only to fall back due to the recession. "To them," he wrote, "the gap between where they are and where they used to be will seem wide and daunting."

But, in the year and a half since Brooks wrote this, the ranks of the formerly middle class have swelled far beyond those who joined at the tail end of the boom.

The evidence that the middle class has been consistently shorted is so overwhelming -- and the results so potentially damaging to our society -- that even bastions of establishment thinking are on alert. In a new strategy paper, The Hamilton Project -- the economic think tank founded by Robert Rubin (a big beneficiary of the shorting of the middle class) -- argues, in the Project's own words, "that the American tradition of expanding opportunity from one generation to the next is at risk because we are failing to make the necessary investments in human, physical, and environmental capital."

Of course, it's even worse than that. We are actually cutting back on our current investment in people (see the human cost of massive budget cuts in education, health care, and social services in state after state after state -- all across America).

After reading the details of the SEC's filing against Goldman Sachs, it's hard not to come away thinking: "Why would anyone ever do business with that firm again?" Likewise, after even a cursory examination of the treatment of the American middle class by the Wall Street/Washington class over the past few decades, one should also wonder why anyone would ever do business with that crowd again. And yet, there they are, still running things at the Treasury, the Fed, and the National Economic Council.

The urgent need for the reorganization of our financial system goes far beyond the upcoming debate on new financial regulations. And it goes far beyond the media's right versus left framing. It's a question about the future of our country, and whether we are going to stop the slide toward a Third World system in which there are just two classes: those at the bottom and those at the top.

A lot of people at the top of the economic food chain have done very well shorting the middle class. But the losers in those bets weren't Goldman Sachs investors -- they were millions of hard working Americans who had heard the pitch and bought into the American Dream, only to find it had been replaced by a sophisticated scam.

Copyright, 2010.  The Huffington Post.  All rights reserved.

A Column Written by

Robert Creamer

April 27 (or 28), 2010 (Huffington Post)

You it see all too often -- a grisly news story about a kid who runs his car off a cliff. We ask, "How could he have done it, how could he have been so reckless?" The answer invariably comes back: because he was drunk.

The same thing just happened to the Republicans in the Senate. Last night, to a person, like lemmings, every Republican Senator followed their leadership over a political cliff. They all voted against even debating a bill to hold the big Wall Street banks accountable. And the reason: they were drunk on Wall Street money.

It's really quite remarkable. Polls show two-thirds of the electorate strongly in favor of legislation to hold the big Wall Street banks accountable. And its not surprising, since most Americans believe -- correctly -- that the recklessness of the big Wall Street banks cost eight million Americans their jobs -- and cost millions more their savings and pensions.

Americans are furious that -- after coming with tin cups in their hands to the taxpayer, and receiving the largest bailout in world history -- these same huge banks are gorging themselves on billions in profits. They are furious that their CEO's and traders are stuffing ten-million-dollar bonuses in their pockets and flying off to celebrate in the South of France, while millions of Americans are still struggling to replace the jobs that these "masters of the universe" destroyed.

Remember that this vote comes in the midst of daily news stories about how the Big Kahuna of the Wall Street banks -- Goldman Sachs -- made billions by betting against the American housing market, and selling investors securities that were selected to fail.

The thing that is so outrageous to most Americans about the Goldman Sachs story isn't their guilt or innocence of securities fraud. The whole story puts on public display what these big Wall Street banks actually do for a living. They don't make loans to businesses or individuals -- they gamble. People ask themselves, "We bailed these guys out so they could keep on gambling?" Might as well have bailed out a bunch of casinos or racetracks.

So in the midst of all of this, the Republicans vote as a block against holding the big Wall Street banks accountable? Many Democratic strategists are gleeful. This is like shooting fish in a barrel. The Washington Post headline read: "Financial overhaul blocked by GOP."

You can generally count on politicians to do things that at least appear to be in their political interests -- but not when their judgment is distorted by drink. Not when they are so drunk on Wall Street's money.

Just two weeks ago, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell took Senator John Cornyn (the chief Senate Republican fundraiser) and went off to Wall Street to get their marching orders. Their big problem is that the transaction is right out in the open for everyone to see.

Let's face it, the spectacle of Senator Olympia Snowe being lead around with a ring in her nose by Mitch McConnell and his Wall Street buddies is just downright embarrassing.

And the unabashed hypocrisy of Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown -- who was elected as a tribune of the middle class -- bowing and scraping to Wall Street is politically suicidal.

Now Senate Majority Leader Reid has made clear that the Senate will continue to take cloture votes on this issue until Republicans come to their political senses and vote to allow debate on this bill.

The bottom line is this: in the end, the Senate will pass a bill to hold the big Wall Street banks accountable. They will pass such a bill because the public demands it, and because the Obama Administration and Democratic leadership understand they have such high political ground on this issue that they have no incentive to compromise on anything material.

So the only question for the Republicans is how long will it take for them to get tired of being publicly dragged, kicking and screaming, to support reform. The longer it takes, the more their marriage to Wall Street will be seared into the mind of the voters. So much the better for Democrats.

But for the country, it's a different matter. Way back in 2002, mega-investor Warren Buffet warned that the lack of regulation of Wall Street bets on derivatives were "financial weapons of mass destruction... and time bombs (threatening) the whole economic system."

In 2008, those bombs exploded, wiping out 8 million American jobs and trillions of dollars in savings. The fallout from that explosion devastated most of America.

But after their taxpayer bailout, Wall Street bankers went right back to building new financial time bombs and giving out billions in bonuses.

Today the rest of us are once again in grave economic danger from unregulated derivatives capable of destroying the U.S. economy all over again.

The timebomb Buffett warned us of is still ticking. Every day the Republicans delay, they put America at risk.

Copyright, 2010, The Huffington Post.  All rights reserved.

Robert Creamer is a long-time political organizer and strategist, and author of the recent book,

Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, available on Amazon.com

.

From the New York Times

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

October 6, 2009

Mind

How Nonsense Sharpens the Intellect

By

BENEDICT CAREY

 

In addition to assorted bad breaks and pleasant surprises, opportunities and insults, life serves up the occasional pink unicorn. The three-dollar bill; the nun with a beard; the sentence, to borrow from the

Lewis Carroll

poem, that gyres and gimbles in the wabe.

An experience, in short, that violates all logic and expectation. The philosopher Soren Kierkegaard wrote that such anomalies produced a profound "sensation of the absurd," and he wasn’t the only one who took them seriously. Freud, in

an essay called "The Uncanny,"

traced the sensation to a fear of death, of castration or of "something that ought to have remained hidden but has come to light."

At best, the feeling is disorienting. At worst, it’s creepy.

Now a study suggests that, paradoxically, this same sensation may prime the brain to sense patterns it would otherwise miss — in mathematical equations, in language, in the world at large.

"We’re so motivated to get rid of that feeling that we look for meaning and coherence elsewhere," said Travis Proulx, a postdoctoral researcher at the

University of California, Santa Barbara

, and lead author of the paper appearing in the journal Psychological Science. "We channel the feeling into some other project, and it appears to improve some kinds of learning."

Researchers have long known that people cling to their personal biases more tightly when feeling threatened. After thinking about their own inevitable death, they become more patriotic, more religious and less tolerant of outsiders,

studies find

. When insulted, they profess more loyalty to friends — and when told they’ve done poorly on a trivia test, they even identify more strongly with their school’s winning teams.

In a series of new papers, Dr. Proulx and Steven J. Heine, a professor of

psychology

at the University of British Columbia, argue that these findings are variations on the same process: maintaining meaning, or coherence. The brain evolved to predict, and it does so by identifying patterns.

When those patterns break down — as when a hiker stumbles across an easy chair sitting deep in the woods, as if dropped from the sky — the brain gropes for something, anything that makes sense. It may retreat to a familiar ritual, like checking equipment. But it may also turn its attention outward, the researchers argue, and notice, say, a pattern in animal tracks that was previously hidden. The urge to find a coherent pattern makes it more likely that the brain will find one.

"There’s more research to be done on the theory," said Michael Inzlicht, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, because it may be that nervousness, not a search for meaning, leads to heightened vigilance. But he added that the new theory was "plausible, and it certainly affirms my own meaning system; I think they’re onto something."

 

In the most recent paper, published last month, Dr. Proulx and Dr. Heine described having 20 college students read an absurd short story based on "The Country Doctor," by Franz Kafka

. The doctor of the title has to make a house call on a boy with a terrible toothache. He makes the journey and finds that the boy has no teeth at all. The horses who have pulled his carriage begin to act up; the boy’s family becomes annoyed; then the doctor discovers the boy has teeth after all. And so on. The story is urgent, vivid and nonsensical — Kafkaesque.

After the story, the students studied a series of 45 strings of 6 to 9 letters, like "X, M, X, R, T, V." They later took a test on the letter strings, choosing those they thought they had seen before from a list of 60 such strings. In fact the letters were related, in a very subtle way, with some more likely to appear before or after others.

The test is a standard measure of what researchers call implicit learning: knowledge gained without awareness. The students had no idea what patterns their brain was sensing or how well they were performing.

But perform they did. They chose about 30 percent more of the letter strings, and were almost twice as accurate in their choices, than a comparison group of 20 students who had read a different short story, a coherent one.

"The fact that the group who read the absurd story identified more letter strings suggests that they were more motivated to look for patterns than the others," Dr. Heine said. "And the fact that they were more accurate means, we think, that they’re forming new patterns they wouldn’t be able to form otherwise."

Brain-imaging studies of people evaluating anomalies, or working out unsettling dilemmas, show that activity in an area called the anterior cingulate cortex spikes significantly. The more activation is recorded, the greater the motivation or ability to seek and correct errors in the real world,

a recent study

suggests. "The idea that we may be able to increase that motivation," said Dr. Inzlicht, a co-author, "is very much worth investigating."

Researchers familiar with the new work say it would be premature to incorporate film shorts by David Lynch, say, or compositions by

John Cage

into school curriculums. For one thing, no one knows whether exposure to the absurd can help people with explicit learning, like memorizing French. For another, studies have found that people in the grip of the uncanny tend to see patterns where none exist — becoming more prone to conspiracy theories, for example. The urge for order satisfies itself, it seems, regardless of the quality of the evidence.

Still, the new research supports what many experimental artists, habitual travelers and other novel seekers have always insisted: at least some of the time,

disorientation

begets creative thinking.

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