Was Nader Right?

A recent article at Truthdig.com by Chris Hedges makes for a very interesting read, especially for Nader backers like me. The opening paragraph contends:

The American empire has not altered under Barack Obama. It kills as brutally and indiscriminately in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan as it did under George W. Bush. It steals from the U.S. treasury to enrich the corporate elite as rapaciously. It will not give us universal health care, abolish the Bush secrecy laws, end torture and "extraordinary rendition," restore habeas corpus or halt the warrantless-wiretapping and monitoring of citizens. It will not push through significant environmental reform, regulate Wall Street or end our relationship with private contractors that provide mercenary armies to fight our imperial wars and produce useless and costly weapons systems.

Hedges main contentions, especially with regard to the war in Afghanistan (and Pakistan by default) specifically and national security in general, not to mention Obama's decision to hire the same people directly involved in the financial meltdown, are correct. Since the election, I have been vindicated, at least in my opinion, in voting for Nader. Many people, especially one of the most influential scholars I have read, G. William Domhoff, argue that voting for third party candidates is a waste of time and only strengthens the party you are trying to challenge. This may be true, but as a matter of principal I could not vote for either Obama or McCain. Nader is the only candidate that spoke to what I wanted in a presidential candidate. I read a great book earlier this summer titled American Political Tradition by Richard Hofstadter and a quote from the introduction of his book seems quite appropriate here:

Societies that are in such good working order (such as ours) have a kind of mute organic consistency. They do not foster ideas that are hostile to their fundamental working arrangements. Such ideas may appear, but they are slowly and persistently insulated, as an oyster deposits nacre around an irritant. They are confined to small groups of dissenters and alienated intellectuals, and except in revolutionary times they do not circulate among practical politicians. The range of ideas, therefore, which practical politicians can conveniently believe in is normally limited by the climate of opinion that sustains their culture. They differ, sometimes bitterly, over current issues, but they also share a general framework of ideas which makes it possible for them to co-operate when the campaigns are over.

This is a great explanation as to why Nader was always disregarded as a "serious" candidate. Simply put, he talked about ideas and policies that were not to be discussed in front of "serious" candidates such as McCain and Obama, or even in the primary for that matter. Nader and his campaign were such a challenge to the Washington establishment, which the Democrats and Republicans both posture towards, that he was simply described as a radical outcast that could not be taken seriously. I mean think about it, Nader's primary issues were a) ending the corporate control of our government b) ending the illegal, deceitful, imperial wars our government has been engaged in for the past 8 years (this is a whole new post if we are talking historically) and c) enacting a single payer national health insurance plan. He was also a strong advocate of environmental regulation (i.e. corporate regulation) and enacting a living wage of $10 per hour for workers. What Democrat that voted for Obama is not for these policies?

It is painfully obvious who controls our government (not the people) that it is hard for me to support any of the two mainstream parties anymore, no matter how inspiring Obama's rhetoric is.

Fascinating Conversation

Glenn Greenwald Antiwar Radio with Scott Horton and Charles Goyette

NYT article: "Clinton Calls for Accountability in Kenya"

In another disgusting display of hypocrisy today, the New York Times reports Secretary of State Hillary Clinton "opened her seven-nation African tour in Kenya with an address to a major United States-African trade conference and other public events on Wednesday, in a visit intended to promote the broad themes of good, trade, food security and women's rights." Following the Kenyan presidential election last year, more than 1,000 people died in post-election violence as the major political factions contested the results. A state-run human rights agency in Kenya released a report implicating more than 200 suspected ringleaders of the violence, including many high-level government officials. Part of Clinton's message was devoted to upholding the rule of law by investigating and prosecuting those responsible for the violence. So far, Kenyan officials have been reluctant to open any type of inquiry into the violence, eliciting this response from Clinton:

"We are waiting, we are disappointed....I know this is not easy; I understand how complicated this is. How do you go about prosecuting the perpetrators without engendering more violence?"

It amazes me every time I read or hear American officials lambasting foreign governments for failing to uphold the rule of law, not governing transparently, and for creating a culture of impunity in which high ranking government officials and those with close connections to the ruling elite are immune from the law of the land. These criticisms, coming from the chief foreign policy representative of a nation in which the previous administration constantly and blatantly broke the law with impunity, are hard to take seriously, especially considering the obvious hypocrisies inherent in the message. How can anyone take Clinton, or Obama for that matter, seriously when high ranking government officials in this country break the law and get away with it?

John Talbot and Simon Johnson Exchange Email Part Two

Here is Simon Johnson's reply to John Talbot from the previous post. Equally important read. Johnson seems much more pessimistic about the threat to democracy that large financial and corporate interests have on our government and policy makers. Definitely worth a read.

From: Simon Johnson

To: John Talbott

Subject: Re: Taking Back the Country

John:

I admire your energy and focus in trying to mobilize a broader cross section of people against the big banks in particular and the way our political-financial system operates in general. I'm sure this is worthwhile and not at all a waste of time. Any efforts you or others put into educating people -- or enabling people to better educate themselves -- will surely pay off over time.

However, my sense of the political cycle around these issues is perhaps a bit different from yours. On the first round -- the crisis, immediate policy response and first-round "reform" efforts -- the big bankers have definitely won.

You were right when you argued way back that it would take a crisis before anyone really understood that we have a problem. But even so, most people still do not fully understand what has happened to them over the past 12 months -- and why their future taxes will be so much higher. I spend quite a lot of time talking to relatively well-informed people. After an hour or so of intense discussion and argument, I would say that most people see much more clearly just what the big banks got away with, although they do not necessarily agree with the idea of stricter regulatory controls on those banks. Left to their own devices, or just relying on the usual sources, I'm not sure how clear any of this is to most people.

And I worry that e-mailing friends doesn't necessarily engage people at the necessary level. You need repeated reinforcement of the key themes -- and a lot of back and forth with people you trust -- to really change minds on something this big. Or, as you say, you need to see it again and again, and perhaps you need to worry about the consequences for your own well-being.

If the big banks could just lie low for a while, I honestly think they would get away with everything -- the backlash would fade, and we'd be setting ourselves up for another massive crisis down the road.

Fortunately (in a sense), the banks cannot back off from their most egregious behavior. Perhaps this is in their DNA; definitely it is in their organizational culture and how they see the world -- the people who run the biggest financial institutions really think they are the masters of the universe and are proceeding on that basis.

Their profits, their wages, their bonuses, and their behavior have begun to antagonize people greatly. Already, some of my contacts who are close to the administration wince at the latest news from the financial sector, be it the bonuses that were paid last year to senior people who oversaw major mistakes (some of whom are now rewarded with senior policy roles!) or the blatant bragging about political influence that some CEOs are now making public.

And even if some sensible people at these banks would like to rein in employee compensation to more moderate and reasonable levels, they have a problem. If you lower the wages for your people, another bank -- perhaps one based in Europe -- will hire them away with a crazy package. The rat race, across companies and between people, means that this can only be curtailed through regulation. But the survivor banks are so strong politically that they will defeat all meaningful regulation for compensation.

This very success makes them more vulnerable to further criticism and backlash.

I'm not saying that the banks will simply commit political suicide. Nothing is ever so simple. But they will likely undermine themselves with Congress and eventually even with the administration. The midterm elections in 2010 and the presidential election in 2012 could well be very much about restricting the power of the big banks.

American democracy does not get on well with overweening unelected individuals who pretend to great power. Andrew Jackson saw off Nicolas Biddle in the 1830s. Teddy Roosevelt stood up to -- and eventually towered over -- even J.P. Morgan at the beginning of the 20th century. And FDR remade everything in the 1930s.

As I said before, I'm optimistic that President Obama can do the same. The challenge to democracy is palpable and growing. The fact that two -- and only two -- big banks came through the crisis unscathed is a perfect symbol of the problem. In the past, part of the myth of Wall Street was that it was competitive, that many could enter the industry, and that its political power was not too concentrated. This myth, among many, has now exploded.

We see the power for what it is. Mainstream media increasingly picks up the story line. And still the big banks cannot step back and curtail their most troubling activities.

Keep explaining and let the big banks provide the supportive evidence you need.

Best wishes,

Simon

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John Talbot and Simon Johnson Exchange Email

Two very important economists, John Talbot and Simon Johnson, today have the third and final segment about the status of the economy at Salon.com. Here is the e-mail that Talbot send to Simon Johnson. Reading this is a mixed bag; he highlights the flaws of our unjust and corrupted economy, but also his desire to organize ordinary Americans to fight back against the establishment.

From: John Talbott

To: Simon Johnson

Subject: Taking Back the Country

Simon,

I think you and I and most economists suffer from an antiquated belief that if we can just figure out exactly what went wrong, policymakers will beat a path to our door to ask our help in enacting necessary reforms. Unfortunately, the world no longer works that way. Our corrupted government, our criminal businesses and banking institutions, lobbyists, special interests, and the corporate controlled media are not interested in fixing this problem. They are making trillions of dollars through a vast scheme that transfers wealth from ordinary American taxpayers and consumers to their corrupt coffers. You are right that if big business thought about it, they should support efforts at restricting lobbying so that growth-oriented government policies could be implemented without the influence of corrupting special interests. But each lobbying corporation is also its own special interest, and so such internal reform is impossible.

The million-dollar question is: Why haven't ordinary Americans reacted more passionately and angrily in taking real action to end this systemic abuse? A decade ago, I wrote my first book on the corrupting influence of big business lobbying on our government and concluded at the time that average Americans would not focus on the issue until they had suffered real pain. I concluded that you can't defuse a bomb in America until after it has gone off.

But now the bomb has exploded. Forty million Americans are unemployed, millions have lost their homes, and most have taken a very substantial hit to their incomes, retirement savings and wealth. Why aren't Americans in the streets protesting this corrupt, enormously damaging criminal enterprise? I have traveled enough around America to realize that even though the current situation is enormously complex and not all Americans can describe exactly how the CDO market works, almost without exception every American can relate to you his frustration with how corrupt this government is and how unjust corporate lobbying and special influence in Washington has become. They get it. As a matter of fact, some of my high school-educated friends from my home state of Kentucky understand it a lot better than my Harvard-educated friends from Wall Street.

So I don't think the current challenge is figuring out exactly what caused the crisis. Focusing on what caused this episode will lead to narrow regulatory reform that reminds me that we all now take off our shoes at airports because one crazy fellow had the idea of putting a bomb in his heel. So while reform is needed in subprime mortgages, securitization, derivatives, and even in the magnitude of our financial institutions, none of these get at the fundamental problem: The people of this country are no longer making the rules by which they wish to live. If subprime mortgages hadn't blown up, some other area of highly leveraged bank lending would have eventually imploded. Even if the banking industry hadn't crashed, some other sector of the corrupt business/government criminal enterprise would have. Maybe the ice shelf of Greenland would have collapsed into the North Atlantic, maybe we would have run out of oil, maybe Microsoft's monopoly position in operating systems would have led to a worldwide computer virus shutdown, maybe poor consumer safety standards with China would have led to a global disease epidemic. The point is that when corporations make the rules, the results are not always good for the inhabitants of the planet.

So we don't have to decide today exactly what the reforms will be -- we just need to get corporate America out of our government so that the people can deliberate and make these reform decisions themselves without undue influence from bankers and corporations.

But there are two huge impediments to accomplishing this. This is not a traditional economics problem, it is an organizing problem or a collective action problem. People know the system is rigged and broken and unjust, but they feel as if there is very little that any one of them can do to effect much change. The organizing task is further complicated by the fact that our media, including television networks, cable TV, radio, newspapers, and magazine and book publishing, are almost all sponsored, owned and controlled by big corporations. The only hope is the Internet, over which big business has tried but to date failed to successfully exert its dominance. The Internet will prove to be both a source of unbiased news and information as well as the communication tool concerned citizens can utilize to fight back against big government, big business and big media.

What has to happen to get this movement started? First, I think people need to see that there is a channel being constructed that has the potential to be effective in directing their anger into real positive reform and change. I am in the process of beginning just such an organization and encourage people who are interested in fighting back against the system and against corporate lobbyists and special interests to contact me at my e-mail address, johntalbs (at) hotmail (dot) com.

Next, people have to believe that if they invest their time in such an effort they have the potential of winning. In this case, this is rather straightforward and easy to explain. If we are successful in organizing 5 million to 10 million Americans who want to see real change about how business is conducted in Washington, then by definition, we will have not only substantial political and voting power, but more important, the beginnings of a real consumer movement that could easily boycott the products and services of the worst corporate lobbyers in our government.

And this is where the magic of the Internet comes in. No one person could organize a 10 million person database in his lifetime. But Obama was able to accomplish it in less than two years. How? We don't have his money. Instead, we create our own Ponzi scheme. We create the ultimate chain letter. I e-mail 30 of my friends who each e-mail 30 of their friends and so on and so on. If only four cycles of people pass on the info we end up contacting 25 million Americans. We ask people to give us their e-mails and then contact them when we want to boycott a new offender.

It is time for Americans to realize that things are not going to improve until they get involved. It will take time. But the economy is not going to improve until we straighten out our corrupt system. Do you have anything more important that you are working on than this? The survival of liberal democratic society in the world.

Thanks for a great exchange of ideas. And best of luck in your future research and work.

John

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Organizing average citizens against powerful financial interests has always been the central challenge of any democratic society. The only way that is going to happen is if the citizenry is informed and empowered to take a stand against the corrupt state of affairs in this country. In my opinion, the two-party system that is dominated by corporate financial interests is one of the main problems in our political system. Both Democrats and Republicans are heavily influenced by a variety of corporate interests, and corporate interests do not discriminate against either party; they fund both parties, making any real reform incredibly difficult in the face of an unorganized, disenfranchised populace. This will be an ongoing struggle for those of us interested in social justice and an undoing of the corrupted capitalistic economy that has exploited average Americans for decades.

Letter to Dick Morrison

After viewing this segment on The O'Reilly Factor, I had to write Dick Morris a letter explaining why I objected to his distortions of the health care debate. It is because of people like him and O'Reilly that spout propaganda that health care remains such a distorted and misunderstood subject in American society. Here is Obama's former physician in Chicago, Dr. David Scheiner, and Amy Goodman speaking the truth about the state of health care in this county.

Here is the letter I wrote:

I would really appreciate it if you actually used some common sense and stop distorting the facts around the health care debate. Obama and the Dems bill is not perfect, far from it. The main factor hindering health care reform is the insurance industry that has a highly effective public relations campaign. I mean look at all the pharmaceutical drugs they put out each year, and most of the stuff is addicting and gets abused by the very people it is supposed to help. This is one aspect of this very complex issue. There are many problems with our health care system, and the biggest one of them all is the private health care industry that blocks reform by getting people like you to scare impressionable people into believing all the lies and distortions that come out of Fox News. We already have socialized medicine in this country. The VA system, all federal, state, and local employees, Medicare, and Medicaid are perfect examples. Why not universal Medicare, which practically every other country in the world has?

Our Policies Backfire, Once Again

Today, Glenn Greenwald interviewed Jonathan Horowitz of the Open Society Institute who is currently in Afghanistan researching the impact of American policy in the country. The transcript can be read here. Horowitz is primarily concerned with the draconian detention policy of the US, in which hundreds of prisoners are in US custody without legal rights, credible evidence of the crimes they supposedly committed, and humane living conditions. Horowitz's main conclusion, based on the interview, is that this policy specifically, and one could argue our militaristic, "bomb who we please" military strategy generally, has led to increased resistance against US forces and a loss of American credibility. This is just the latest example of "blowback", a term coined by the CIA in which the local population turns against American interests based on the policy implemented. Think about it: if France invaded the US to bring democracy and modernization to our country, for example, and started bombing targets that inevitably kill innocent civilians, indefinitely detained US citizens without any credible evidence or any legal rights, and tortured detainees, sometimes to death, wouldn't you think that would cause a major credibility problem for the French? The problem with the "War on Terror" is that we have abandoned our most basic values in the pursuit of al-Qaida and other terrorist cells. All of this is based on the idea that "we are bringing democracy to the Middle East." At least that is the justification now, especially in Iraq. We are trying to export democracy at the same time we are subverting it in very substantial ways at home.