Structured Politics

The rich have a simple agenda. Reduce taxes, ensure handing down wealth to their descendents, and keep wages low.

Keeping wages low is the subject of this Op-Ed in the New York Times, Break the Immigration Impasse, by the three richest people in the country but they can't come right out and tell you this so they cloak it in humanitarian terms:

"Most Americans believe that our country has a clear and present interest in enacting immigration legislation that is both humane to immigrants living here and a contribution to the well-being of our citizens."

"Americans are a forgiving and generous people, and who among us is not happy that their forebears — whatever their motivation or means of entry — made it to our soil?"

A bone is thrown to conservatives:

"For the future, the United States should take all steps to ensure that every prospective immigrant follows all rules and that people breaking these rules, including any facilitators, are severely punished."

From Pleading Guilty, by Scott Turow, published in 1993, a commentary on Neoliberals and free market capitalism:

"You're turning out to be a much more complicated fellow than I imagined," said Pagnucci. I tipped my head slightly. I thought it might be a compliment. Before he opened my door, Carl said, "Keep me in the loop," then drifted off, smug and unruffled, leaving behind his usual aura: every soul for itself.

Amanda Knox has again been found guilty of murder by an Italian appeals court. The case against her apparently now rests on her confession that she murdered Meridith Kercher, her room mate.  This confession has all of the hallmarks of a false confession. It was obtained after 72 hours of nonstop interrogation during which time Knox suffered sleep deprivation, the humiliation of body cavity searches performed in front of male police officers, and, she claims, physical abuse in the form of being slapped around.   The fact that she made up false details in her confession, again characteristic of false confessions, has ironically been used against her and apparently contributed to the court's decision that she was guilty.

For those who have difficulty believing that a person would falsely incriminate themselves, a simple test:

In Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692, 130 people confessed to being witches. You can either believe that these were false confessions or you can believe in witches. There are no other options!

In the United States, you have the option of remaining silent and obtaining the services of a lawyer when police interrogate you.  In many police districts, videotaping of interrogation and the confession is routine because of the well known fact that the rate of false confessions here is about 10% after 10 to 12 hours of interrogation. Under Italian law, Knox was denied access to a lawyer during her interrogation and did not have the right to remain silent.

I mentioned the biography, Machiavelli, by Miles Unger previously on this blog. There is a review in Barnes and Noble Review by Brooke Allen which gives an insightful analysis of the book's message.

A couple of quotes from the book:

"The moralist gives way to the political scientist, whose job it is not to condemn human nature but to describe it in order to [counter]* its most pernicious effects. Instead of the morally freighted concept of original sin, Niccolo Machiavelli offers up the morally neutral concept of human nature, something that must be managed rather than atoned for."

"If men were good, there would be no need for government."

When the NSA revelations came out this summer, most people I spoke to took it rather casually. "If you have nothing to hide, why be concerned?" and "Giving up privacy for the sake of security is a good bargain." were two common responses. Now the runaway spy agency is being taken seriously by "serious" people. One of these is Jim Sensenbrenner, a very conservative Republican congressman from Wisconsin. The gist of his article in the Guardian, The NSA overreach poses a serious threat to our economy, is that US telecommunication and internet companies trying to do business overseas are getting the cold shoulder from potential customers.

Machiavelli, in The Discourses, points out that in a republic a determined minority can cripple the government so there must be  ways built into the system to circumvent the problem. Recess appointments have been a time honored way to get around minority roadblocks since the early days of the American Republic but recent minority parliamentary tactics may have made them illegal. The Supreme Court will decide the issue during the current 2013-2014 term.

My son sent me a link to Amendment To Farm Bill Could Be End To Humane Farming Standards. The amendment, Protect Interstate Commerce Act, would force farmers nationwide to lower their standards for humane farming practices to that of the state with the lowest standards.

As discussed previously, the Trans-Pacific Partnership Treaty, if passed by Congress would force Congress to pass laws that would take it a step further.  Farmers would be required by law to lower their heath and safety standards to that of the lowest member nation of the pact. I know this sounds paranoid, but it's not.

If the Obama administration has its way, health inspection standards for foreign food products such as catfish raised in Vietnam would be so loosened as to be meaningless.  Since imported food raised under loose standards would be so much cheaper, it would inevitably lead to lower safety standards for American raised food.

Two seemingly unrelated issues are quite intertwined.

The first is an ongoing appeal of Carol Anne Bond to the Supreme Court of the United States to reverse a conviction that she is a terrorist because she used toxic chemicals to injure her husband's mistress. The Federal Government claims that because it is a signatory to a treaty banning chemical weapons, it must prosecute Mrs. Bond. If the prosecution is permitted by the Court, it would be considered by many people, myself included as an extreme overreach into a domestic dispute that should be handed on a local level.

The second is the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), a treaty being negotiated under conditions of extreme secrecy that would, if passed by the Senate, make trade, manufacturing, or mining laws enacted in small foreign countries controlled by foreign corporations or dictatorships applicable to United States citizens. For example, the laws governing fracking in Brunei, one of the signers of the TPP would apply to citizens of the United States.  The lowest common denominator of health and safety regulations would apply to all.

The Obama administration has announced plans to present the treaty to the Senate for an up or down vote that would limit discovery or debate. Fortunately, about half of the members of Congress are protesting the secrecy of the treaty and the Obama administration's plan to railroad the treaty through Congress for approval.

Machiavelli noted that rulers and their supporting elites tend to become obsolete and corrupt. The survival of a representative democracy is therefore dependent on the ease with which it can change rulers.

The United States is going through a stage where gerrymandering, essentially unlimited funding of candidates, militarization of the police, and apparent unlimited surveillance of American citizens, will make a significant change in leadership difficult and disruptive. Increasingly sophisticated manipulation of public opinion will also play an important part.

Joe Nocera has written a review of Dave Eggers new novel, The Circle, which updates Orwell's 1984:

"Eggers’s subject is what the loss of privacy would look like if taken to its logical extreme. His focus is not on government but on the technology companies who invade our privacy on a daily basis. The Circle, you see, is a Silicon Valley company, an evil hybrid of Google, Facebook and Twitter, whose cultures — the freebies, the workaholism, the faux friendliness — Eggers captures with only slight exaggeration."

Cognitive dissonance is the pain felt when two conflicting ideas occupy the mind. The liberal part of the political spectrum may experience it in the near future if President Obama tries again to make a Grand Bargain with Speaker of the House Boehner to avert a debt default.

The extreme conservative bloc in the Congress has brought about this crisis in order to extract concessions that would start a roll back in New Deal social welfare legislation. They probably would be as delighted to take an offer from Obama of major Social Security reform, i.e. major cutbacks,  as they would a rollback in the Affordable Care Act. Obama could play it as a victory since he didn't have to give up the Affordable Care Act (Obama Care).

Cognitive dissonance would come into play as Democrats try to justify in their own minds how a liberal* president could offer cuts in Social Security. We escape the pain of cognitive dissonance by rationalizing. If Obama surrenders an increased age limit or decreased benefits for Social Security in the future, watch how you or your liberal friends rationalize the need for him to give up what he did.

Congress has been called dysfunctional* but it is doing exactly what a democratic (the definition - not the party) congress should do, which is to prevent the majority from pushing through its agenda without the minority having some recourse. It's a contest and you may not like the result but the Republican Party is playing the game very well.

I came across an article by Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University, which discusses the dysfunction issue much better  than I could:

Don't say 'dysfunctional Congress'

Yesterday's article, A Division Within the Oligarchy, discussed a split in the oligarchy that runs this country.  A network representing mostly wealthy and socially conservative Southerners  is staging a fight against the far more wealthy but socially liberal Republicans and Democrats of the Northeast and West Coast .  Main Street versus Wall Street and Silicon Valley.

In response to this congressional rebellion, the NY Times reported on  October 9th that Business Groups See Loss of Sway over House G.O.P.:

As the government shutdown grinds toward a potential debt default, some of the country’s most influential business executives have come to a conclusion .  .  . Their voices are carrying little weight with the House majority that their millions of dollars in campaign contributions helped build and sustain.

Their frustration has grown so intense in recent days that several trade association officials warned in interviews on Wednesday that they were considering helping wage primary campaigns against Republican lawmakers who had worked to engineer the political standoff in Washington.

“We are looking at ways to counter the rise of an ideological brand of conservatism that, for lack of a better word, is more anti-establishment than it has been in the past,” said David French, the top lobbyist at the National Retail Federation.

I emphasized the anti-establishment in the preceding paragraph. They really let the cat out of the oligarchical bag with that statement. 

I doubt that any resolution of the debt crisis will be more than a temporary delay in this increasingly bitter contest to roll back the Affordable Care Act and, eventually, New Deal social welfare programs.

For an interesting historical parallel, see The Nullification Crisis of 1832, when South Carolina refused to pay Federal Tariffs and talked about secession  from the Union. But they were dealing with President Andrew Jackson, "old Hickory".

By way of the Fabius Maximus blog, I came across an interesting article in Salon, Tea Party radicalism is misunderstood: Meet the "Newest Right"  by Michael Lind.

Lind posits that the congressional coalition that has shut down the government is not a populist uprising but a subset of our country's oligarchy. It's centered in the South and represents the interests of white well to do locals, millionaire auto dealers, real estate moguls, and contractors, not billionaire Wall Streeters. They feel threatened by the possibility of a minority takeover of the Federal government that would favor social welfare programs and higher taxes.

Lind points out that: ( Emphasis added)

The first misconception that is widespread in the commentariat is that the Newest Right can be thought of as being simply a group of “extremists” who happen to be further [right] on the same political spectrum on which leftists, liberals, centrists and moderate conservatives find their places. But reducing politics to points on a single line is more confusing than enlightening. Most political movements result from the intersection of several axes—ideology, class, occupation, religion, ethnicity and region—of which abstract ideology is seldom the most important.

.  .  . The third misconception is that the Newest Right is irrational.  .  .  .  Progressive snobs to the contrary, the leaders of the Newest Right, including Harvard-educated Ted Cruz, like the leaders of any successful political movement, tend to be highly educated and well-off. The self-described members of the Tea Party tend to be more affluent and educated than the general public.

The New York Times, in response to reprehensible reporting leading up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003(1), has had a Public Editor who:

"investigates matters of journalistic integrity. The public editor works independently, outside of the reporting and editing structure of the newspaper; her opinions are her own."

The Times regularly prints unsubstantiated claims from anonymous sources and the public editor catches many of them.  Her current article is about a claim from September 30th that a Qaeda Plot leak Has Undermined U.S. Intelligence and "caused more damage to counterintelligence efforts" than the NSA leaks earlier this year.

The most important lesson to be drawn from this is that most of what you read in the paper or see on television and the internet is propaganda, meant to emotionally sway your opinion. You must reserve judgement  and ask yourself, "Why is this being reported and who wanted it reported?"

Propaganda Techniques is a useful primer and worth a look.

Machiavelli pointed out that a major disadvantage of a representative democracy is its inability to adequately reward those people who are most vital for its survival, the reformers. Just as importantly, when the leadership of a republic is  complicit in corruption, reformers will either be forced out or they will become disenchanted and leave governmental service. A couple of examples recently reported in the New York Times:

Arnold I. Burns, a top Justice Department official under President Ronald Reagan who resigned in protest of what he and others viewed as improper acts by Attorney General Edwin Meese III, died on Tuesday in Manhattan. He was 83.

.  .  .  as Mr. Burns rose, Mr. Meese, .  .  ., was coming under scrutiny over his handling of the Iran-contra arms-for-hostages scandal, a proposal for a $1 billion Iraqi oil pipeline supported by a friend, and benefits that he and his family received from people seeking government contracts.

When Burns personally reported his concerns to President Regan and Vice President Bush in 1987 and they did nothing, he resigned.

Financial Watchdog With Bite to Depart His Agency

David Meister is waging legal battles against some of the biggest names in finance.

There’s JPMorgan Chase, the nation’s largest bank. The CME Group, one of the world’s largest futures exchanges. And Jon S. Corzine, the former governor of New Jersey.

But now, Mr. Meister is poised to step down from his role as head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s enforcement unit, a move that may put the future of those cases in question.

There has been an increasing disparity of wealth in the United States over the past thirty years. This will be addressed at some point by either rebellion or reform. 

Rebellion brings anarchy, hunger, and eventually the establishment of a new oligarchy, what has been called "the Iron Rule of Oligarchy".  This is not a rewarding path to take. (1)

Reform occurs when a faction of the existing oligarchy organizes and promotes a peaceful way to redistribute the wealth. This happened in the United States a hundred years ago with the Progressive movement; this morphed into the liberal wing of the Democratic party in the 1920s. With the onset of the Great Depression, Progressives gained power in the elections of 1930 and 1932.

At the present time there is no mainstream progressive party.  Both the Democratic and the Republican parties are controlled by an oligarchy intent on maximizing wealth extraction. It quite literally took decades of organization to achieve the liberal victories of the 1930s and we can expect the same time frame again. 

With the above in mind, it's interesting to review Chris Hedges'. The Sparks of Rebellion.

Hedges points out that rebellions are usually started by members of the middle class who are impoverished or unable to maintain acceptable lives because of corruption of the system. He mentions:

"Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan [who] examined 100 years of violent and nonviolent resistance movements in their book “Why Civil Resistance Works.” They concluded that nonviolent movements succeed twice as often as violent uprisings. Violent movements work primarily in civil wars or in ending foreign occupations, they found. Nonviolent movements that succeed appeal to those within the power structure, especially the police and civil servants, who are cognizant of the corruption and decadence of the power elite and are willing to abandon them."

Hedges goes on to say:

"The most important dilemma facing us is not ideological. It is logistical. The security and surveillance state has made its highest priority the breaking of any infrastructure that might spark widespread revolt."

As mentioned here previously, power comes from structured networks (Hedges's "infrastructure")  and structured networks are built on trust. Every Power Elite works to infiltrate and discredit networks and individuals plotting to displace them. (2)

The audience for peaceful civil demonstrations is those of the oligarchy who are thoughtful enough to take the demonstration as a warning of what could come if nothing is done, open rebellion.

Machiavelli discussed all of this 500 years ago.

(1) Re-read Animal Farm by Orwell