Eric Levinson's Blog

modern slavery in america

levinson.eric — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 01:17:10 EDT

CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. - A millionaire convicted of helping his wife keep two Indonesian housekeepers as virtual slaves was sentenced Friday to more than three years in prison, ending a trial that shed light on the often little-seen exploitation and abuse of domestic workers.

FRANK ELTMAN, Associated Press Writer

once again, people with millions of dollars convicted of sadistic crimes committed in the name of money.

corporations and even small businesses also take advantage of "illegal immigrants" for cheap slavery in the name of money.

"illegal immigrant" is a euphemism for "potential slave."

every restaurant in nyc takes advantage of someone without a social security number to do dishes or cleaning or some other shit job for far less than minimum wage.

it's time to acknowledge that "illegal immigrants" are human beings, not "aliens."

how have we come to accept a self-regulating market economy run by felons?

levinson.eric — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 16:31:23 EDT

so, why is it the "self-regulating" economy is full of felons?

with the most recent scandal at bear-sterns, and need i remind you about enron (worldcom... etc etc), is it any wonder that people are waking up to the fact that our generation is rejecting corporate slavery?

every time i meet someone that works for a large, faceless, sociopathic corporation, they admit it with some element of shame. subconscious or not, it is manifest in the rolling of the eyes and sigh.

so, what keeps them doing it? financial obligations, both real and imaginary!

most of my hours working are to pay rent.

food used to be a big part of my budget. it's expensive to eat healthy. not only here in in nyc, however, as it was just as expensive in buffalo (though rent was a lot cheaper). now i eat better than ever by getting a part time job at a vegan organic (local in season) restaurant and salvaging the organic foods wasted by retailers. i also support my local co-ops, farmers' markets, and CSAs when i do need to make a food purchase, cutting out the corporate middle-man as much as possible and putting the money directly into the producers' hands. i also believe it is important to support the use of hemp for energy, clothing, milk and other products).

what other forces were used to keep me enslaved?

loans for school and cars.
shitty new clothing and furniture laced with chemicals.
mind-numbing cable tv, movies, and video games.
some sick compulsion to prove how well i could damage myself with drugs and alcohol.
...?

i realized these things were killing me.
i realized these financial obligations make people sick (spiritually, mentally, and physically).
i realized i was sick.

forget about i.
the i was created by corporations, using freudian psychology to manipulate the soul into a materialistic machine. shaped and squeezed into a mindless mass programmed by the media.

completely self-involved, overly anxious manic depressives.

how many people can you name that take a pharmaceutical that fucks with their brain chemistry? family, friends, lovers?

how many people do you know that love getting "fucked up" every time they drink (or brag about how many cigs they smoked, or how much blow they did, or...)?

how many people do you know that suffer from an eating disorder, are workaholics, or are addicted to television?

typically, the explanation is some inescapable sense of helplessness. like there is no choice but to continue damaging ourselves despite knowing that we are doing so.

we want to damage ourselves.

we are all working class, whether you live below the "poverty line" or earn several mil every year. you most likely work for a living earning dollars to buy the necessities of life and that means you are a commodity. that means you will buy the same shit, eat the same shit, and watch the same shit as everyone else.

some members of the working class don't actually work for a living, because society has provided them with the wealth necessary to fulfil their every whim and desire. they are still a cog in the system, filling a niche of completely self-indulgent consumers that help guide and direct the consumption of those "less fortunate." they, too, are still mostly miserable and chasing some impossible dream that is most likely littered with debt.

financial obligations.

they're addictive and masochistic. even the multimillionaires that make the big decisions in sociopathic corporations and take home millions and live off expense accounts are so addicted they feel compelled to steal even more millions from their employees and investors (and they especially enjoy stealing from the public) to afford even bigger financial obligations.

in a world where economics and politics are driven by corporate profitability, it is essential that we all share a consumerist mindset. even politicians are sold by the media using polarizing issues. psychological manipulation used to convince the voting public that two major party candidates are the only two choices. consumer narcissism allows us to devalue opposing political opinions without any real discussion, the same way purchase decisions are presented as infallible. our candidates are bought and resold to us by corporations and the global elite.

just like the global economy of cookie-cutter homes, cars, clothes, entertainment, and lifestyle, we really don't have a choice, just the illusion of it.

isn't it troubling to any of you obama supporters that he's felt compelled to refuse the 85 million in public financing to use his own insane amount of money given to him by supporters buying his "change?"

where will obama's nearly 300 million go?

will it go to:
the media giants that manipulate his campaign (knowing their campaign ads are only as effective as the media lets them be)?
the oil company that gets his campaign convoy to all 50 states?
extravagant and wasteful publicity events for wealthy campaign "investors?"

but do you really think a guy running on cash and a message of hope is really going to deliver any real change? didn't we put him and the rest of the dems in charge of congress for believing those same delusions? isn't he a product of the same broken system we are demanding someone fix?

he is not offering a message of real change. he is promising small improvements and band-aids to cover up just a few symptoms of a broken system. a diversion to appease the masses long enough for the system to continue unaffected.

he is a consumer being sold as a leader to the rest of the consumers. he is a product of political psychological and sociological manipulators. he will not change anything. he is just as dependent on the comforts of empty corporate pampering as most everyone else.

in order for their to be real change, americans have to change.

everyone is just standing around waiting for some one magical person to come around and fix everything for them.

"please, don't make me leave my comfort zone full of prime time television, comforting junk food, masochistic obsessions, and mindless self-indulgence!"

capitalism is a system where actors make the best decision for the sake of their immediate pleasure and are not required to consider the negative consequences that result as long is it is productive and profitable.

anarchy is not simply a political ideology. it is a way of life that is healthy for people and the planet. it is a calling towards freedom from wage slavery and poisonous consumption. it means taking responsibility for our own survival and well-being, and those of the planet. it means a return to community to provide for our needs. it means creating sustainable communities from the ground up, instead of the top down.

capitalism enslaves the mind, body, and soul for profit.

corporate media controls what you think.
corporate agriculture controls what you eat.
corporate religions control what you believe (or, more importantly, don't believe).

corporate government protects profitability.

corporate culture is evolving. it is making a move away from individualism to collectivism.

as capitalism erodes, are you going to wait for it to collapse on top of you, or start running now, when i yell, "run!"

The flood felt round the world

levinson.eric — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 03:00:22 EDT

For as long as I can remember, food was typically acquired from boxes and cans or drive-through windows. Once in a while, there was a home-cooked meal.

Meals were somewhat spontaneous reactions to haphazard hunger, raiding the fridge or late night fast food.

Nutrition was something dieters thought about.

The environment was something hippies thought about.

Back then, I didn’t think about what was really in my food and obviously didn’t give a damn about where it came from.

This was the conditioning of a culture built on mindless consumption. I was taught to think worrying about the health of myself or the planet was somehow “un-American” and abnormal. Wholistic medicine and environmentalism was for people “going through a phase.” This was the type of stuff you are supposed to quickly become disillusioned about and return to the mainstream culture.

I was led to believe I could ignore my own nutritional needs and modern medicine would always have a cure. The doctor would sell me the quick fix for my symptoms, ignoring the years of nutritional and spiritual neglect that causes them.

Now I realize that the doctors are an extension of corporate culture. I can finally see that doctors are used to manipulate and violate my trust for corporate profit and the re-concentration of wealth.

The doctors are trained to earn my trust while they sell me poison and ignore Wholistic nutritional science. They told me I would stay healthy consuming mostly grains, meat and dairy: the chemical-fed and nutritionally-void foods that concentrate incredible amounts of toxins in the human population.

The doctors push drugs for corporations. They are not successful unless they are treating patients. They are trained to earn your trust and sell you chemical cures. They are trained to prove dangerous chemicals are actually safe. Doctors spend nearly a decade learning about curing acute symptoms with drugs and surgery; they spend less than a week studying nutritional science. They are not trained in the science of prevention because there is no profit there. They are even trained not to really care about or become personally involved with their patients beyond simply earning an authoritative trust. Hospitals and large medical practices are the "big-box stores" of medicine.

Wholesale healthcare is a soulless extension of the corporate consumption-driven culture.

Our culture depends on illness and ignorance and wastefulness. These have been cultivated with cheap fossil fuels and an obsession with material wealth by decades of corporate culture. It is the same corporate culture that manipulates and exploits war and disaster victims.

All of these elements are contributing to the current food crisis that most Americans are seeing as only a small increase in the price of food from the global marketplace. As natural disasters destroy this year's harvest, the world's food reserves are dwindling to historical lows. Even the Red Cross is taking out loans to fund its rescue operations.

It is always incredible for me to see people that can afford to eat well buying cheap processed crap. Food is completely taken for granted. Americans can eat anything from anywhere at anytime.

Now, there may not be much choice once local, seasonal foods are gone this year. Our food supply is shipped by boat from around the globe and trucked all over the country before we have to drive to the store or restaurant to buy it. Fossil fuels are no longer cheap enough to sustain this insanity we affectionately call the global food system.

Have you started noticing the rising costs of processed foods?

Are you starting to realize the direct correlation between food prices and prices at the pump?

What are you going to do if the cost of living continues to rise?

Our culture has become completely dependent on soulless global corporate entities, and this dependency may be about to leave us all as helpless and vulnerable as the victims of the current flooding are now and the people of New Orleans were in 2005.

what food crisis?

levinson.eric — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 15:40:00 EDT

i saw the Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping on Sunday. he asked, "where are the Coltranes and Ginsbergs?"

i wonder that myself. today's celebrities are hand-picked based on image and marketability; celebrity creativity is all but extinct as the science of entertainment has replaced the natural creative process. no wonder our britney spearses and michael jacksons crack up under the pressure of being a brand name commodity.

even our food is no longer the center of community as it was throughout human history. our harvest festivals have been hijacked by corporate sponsors pressuring us to go shopping (black friday, christmas, easter, etc) and most americans have no idea what seasonal produce is. everyday, millions of americans eat meal after meal alone and perhaps even in shame of the unhealthy foods they chose to consume. we have been robbed of our connection to the earth and to each other.

in terms of resistance, the Reverend spends his time opposing Wal-Marts and the privatization of public spaces like Union Square and Coney Island (which i wholeheartedly support). i just wish his "gospel" included some mention of the importance of weighing the consequences of what foods we choose to buy. when we buy anything at Wal-Mart (including their "organic" foods, the standards of which they spend millions to undermine), we are supporting the exploitation of labor, the homogenization of our culture, and the system that says it's better to ship things all over the globe to reduce retail prices without accountability rather than produce locally. it is the same idea when we reach for that genetically modified empire red that can be grown all over the world and spend a week on a cargo ship and another 2 on a display without a bruise or a blemish (and without much flavor nor nutrition, but with deforestation among the hidden costs the producers of such garbage externalize on us).

in an age where everything is produced in unfathomable quantities, what little artisan crafts remain are still highly commodified in the fashion and art industries. they are playthings of the global elite, and typically worthless towards survival. so few of us have retained the basic skills of "homemaking," that when the global food crisis does start to really hit us here, we will certainly have an even harder time recovering than "third world" nations that may still have retained some of these skills. only in the past 2 decades has financial pressure from the WTO and IMF coerced many of these "less fortunate" peoples to accept cheap exported foods from the US. by dumping cheap foods on these localized economies, the local producers were run out of town and reliance on the global food system filled the gap. to me, "third world" has become a euphemism for localized independence of the global system. generations of farmers and artisans with skills and heirloom crops developed specifically for life in the places they call home. community cannot be built on homogenized, pasteurized, genetically manipulated hegemonic global economics.

as they talked about the global food crisis this morning on the BBC World News, i kept thinking to myself that a food crisis should never be global. in the past 1/2 century, we have moved from producing and consuming almost all of our food locally to the "global food system" that enables the convenience of fruits and vegetables out of season all year long. it enables new york, a historical apple empire, to import genetically modified, tasteless apples from south america, and dozens of other such ridiculous examples of apple frivolity. it is important to note that i said dozens, when there are hundreds of delicious apple varieties unique to every part of the world (many may already be lost forever). this reduction in genetic variety is another result of the globalization of food, as species have been selected for their resilience during global shipping and shelf life rather than their relevance to the local environment and culture.

are we doomed to suffer the bland uniformity of "empire reds" forever? will you reach for the local, season produce and pay a little extra next time you get groceries, or even better, join a local CSA? or, as the Reverend put it so well, will you succumb to "that damned convenience?"

--
According to the latest data from the U.S. Department of Energy, the United States is importing 12-14 million barrels of oil per day. At a current price of about $115 per barrel, that's $1.5 billion per day, or $548 billion per year.

Ann Coulter held accountable?

levinson.eric — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 14:01:12 EST

Editorial cartoonist Ted Rall is currently soliciting support for a lawsuit against the until now, unaccountable Ann Coulter. As we have seen from the remarkable coverage of the CPAC, her hateful rhetoric is becoming widely accepted by the Right. Although she has a right to make such hateful comments, when she flat-out lies we do have legal recourse.

From Ted Rall's website:

Republican columnist Ann Coulter spoke earlier today to the Conservative Political Action Committee, where the audience included 1000 right-wingers including Vice President Dick Cheney. There, among other things, she is reported to have said the following:

"Iran is soliciting cartoons on the Holocaust. So far, only Ted Rall, Garry Trudeau, and the NY Times have made submissions."

She lied. I have not submitted anything to any Iranian publication. I have no intention of doing so. And I have said that in public, repeatedly.

. . .

To vote YES, please email chet@rall.com along with a solemn pledge stating the amount of financial support you are willing to contribute to support my legal challenge to Coulter's libelous statement.

If enough YES votes come in with enough serious pledges, I'll see Ann in court. If not, well, chalk up another victory for the Right.

I think you all know what to do! Pledge your support and a modest donation to help the effort at confronting Ann Coulter's unchecked aggression!

My defense budget

levinson.eric — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 11:38:47 EST

"In 1998, the United Nations Development Program estimated that it would cost an additional $9 billion (above current expenditures) to provide clean water and sanitation for everyone on earth. It would cost an additional $12 billion, they said, to cover reproductive health services for all women worldwode. Another $13 billion would be enough not only to give every person on earth enough foot to eat but also basic health care. An additional $6 billion could provide basic education for all . . . Combined they add up to $40 billion."
John Robbins The Food Revolution

Instead of loading up our big guns and literally beating our agenda into the rest of the world, what if we took our defense budget and used it for actually promoting well-being around the globe?

Would anti-Americans have so much to complain about if we were spending our own money to build clean water systems, develop infrastructure for feeding starving populations and providing basic healthcare?

It's not even a question of "where does the money come from?" since we have more than enough of it for jet fighters and nuclear bombs; the question is will you stand up and tell our government "enough is enough!" It is time to stand up and SHOW the world our wealth CAN be used for good!

Call your Senators TODAY and demand that they deny Rumsfeld his half-trillion dollar death and destruction war-chest; demand that we spend just $100 billion fighting poverty and despair without "Economic Hitmen."

GW's PR campaign eats into education funding

levinson.eric — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 10:17:19 EST

According to the Washington Post:

The administration is requesting $56 billion for the Department of Education, a reduction of a half billion dollars, or 0.9 percent, from the current spending plan -- which would be the first cut in overall federal education spending in a decade.

Where could that money for education have disappeared to?

Washington, DC - [Yesterday] Rep. Henry A. Waxman, Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, Rep. George Miller, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, and other senior Democrats released a new Government Accountability Office report finding that the Bush Administration spent more than $1.6 billion in public relations and media contracts in a two and a half year span.

I guess you just need a really expensive PR campaign when you are selling snake-oil and poison to the world; GW must get his cues from Big Tobacco:

A look at the top tobacco-money recipients for this election cycle shows a bit of what's on the industry's federal policy wish list. On top is President Bush, who, as of mid-year, had disclosed nearly $155,000 in tobacco donations. That places him just a hair under the $156,000 taken in by his father during the entire 1992 campaign, and it's the largest pot of tobacco cash taken by anyone since.

Trail of Destruction

levinson.eric — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 01:01:24 EST

As focus turns from war-torn Iraq to "energy-independence-seeking" Iran, Americans will once again be asked to foot the bill (but not if you are wealthy - you need a tax cut!).

When Israeli/U.S. warplanes begin dropping bombs on Iran, will Iraq fade to the back pages of the news as has Afghanistan? With the corporate media coverage of Iraq at this sorry state already, it's difficult to imagine that not occurring.

A trail of devastation to make sure no one can stop American imperialism. But what happens when OPEC and Chavez are sick of selling us oil and decide to sell it all to the much friendlier China or India? What happens when the oil stops flowing and America is just another "third world" country? Does our military have what it takes to take on the world to protect our future? What happens when China modernizes their military and ours is busy setting up puppet democracies in the Middle East? Why does the media play the role of Goebbels and only tell Americans what the President wants them to hear?

The new face of fascism: GW

levinson.eric — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 12:54:02 EST

GW is the poster child for the PNAC. He is a fumbling, bumbling facade that hides the true intentions of the global elite. They talk about supporting our troops and fighting for freedom while they slash military benefits, erode our Constitutional liberties and gag government whistle-blowers. They've attempted to trap us in an unwinnable war in the efforts of pushing us into a future of high-publicity perpetual warfare that is sucking the American treasury dry.

This week, Rumsfeld will try to sell Bush's military blueprint -- some $500 billion, including about $82 billion for a new supplemental for Iraq and Afghanistan -- to lawmakers at back-to-back hearings. It will mark his first public testimony before Congress since September.

It's all in line with bilking the American public out of more and more money to concentrate wealth and build a private-interest war machine. They even overinflated the deficit so there was more money to steal.

Now watch this video and see how well we are using all of this money to "support our troops," and not just those sent off to die for a private war in Iraq - this is slashing benefits for all veterans.

That's right, I said private war; the Project for a New American Century is devoted to using the American armed forces to protect private interests and promote American imperialism and dominance worldwide.

Republicans aren't our enemies, they are just pawns in a global game of chess; Congress is essentially powerless now, and the Judiciary is stacked against us in favor of a more powerful Executive. We couldn't get Rumsfeld to resign, Cheney may have no problem fending off the leak problem, and who the heck is actually going to impeach dictator-in-chief Bush?

What we have to worry about is the rise of fascism that is engulfing America: blind patriotism where speaking out against our unprovoked war is next to treasonous. This is all part of a project set in motion a long time ago, with a highly visible facade known as the PNAC. They were the driving force behind the invasion of Iraq and continue to drive the American thirst for blood.

Now, supposedly we cannott leave Iraq and end the perpetual war because of the chaos that would ensue: I propose there is no stopping the chaos because we have already provoked all three major Muslim sects into thinking it's "every man for himself." They are constantly under threat of random explosions and violence with a rogue army patrolling the streets and harassing anyone it sees fit. Even the Christian minority has been drawn into the violence. No matter how long we are there, the violence will continue because all sides believe they have a right to more power. There can be no winner unless all the losers are wiped out.

We either stop the war machine now or we face the rise of the new military fascism already in production.

According to Newsweek:

In the latest twist in the debate over presidential powers, a Justice Department official suggested that in certain circumstances, the president might have the power to order the killing of terrorist suspects inside the United States.

Did you actually read that? Yes, GW may now think he can order SUSPECTS killed! No trial, no conviction - straight to the executioner.

Are you going to let some assholes in Washington continue stealing your money and using your army to protect their personal economic interests? Are you going to stand up against the rise of a fascist dictatorship or just watch it happen like so many obedient Germans with our blind-faith nationalist pride?

The dangers of our mob mentality

levinson.eric — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 13:50:37 EST

This message from the UNC Progressive Student and Faculty listserv explains how mob mentality has clouded our understanding of 9/11, no matter what you choose to believe:

William:

Let me qualify my remarks by saying that I am sincerely not out to attack you personally. However, I do feel like I am "investigating" a certain kind of mentality, an approach to understanding things, a way of thinking, that you do seem from time to time to personify and display, and I believe, as a philosopher, that we all (humanity) need to take a good look at this kind of approach to the world -- which can be said to be prominent throughout Western philosophy over the centuries--so we can understand it, critique it, and then temper it with other ways of thinking.

Your terse responses are excellent in exhibiting this kind of thinking.
For example, your last statement, below, shows classical binary, either/or dualism:

On Mon, 30 Jan 2006, WILLIAM MARTIN wrote:

"The study by the MIT sponsored structural engineers must be taken seriously. You cannot ignore it. Either you must say that they, MIT and Scientific American were in on the conspiracy or they are all incompetent.

These people have nothing to do with either Bush or the government."

We MUST say EITHER a certain group of people were "in the conspiracy" OR "they were all incompetent"?

Well, not necessarily. As I watch with interest the emerging epistemic gap that has sprung up between what I happen to know about particular issues and what the official SPIN is, I am also noticing how many people, even among my friends and colleagues, are struggling within themselves to deal with the cognitive dissonance. As a teacher of Existentialism, I would say this kind of psychological struggle can lead to what Jean-Paul Sartre calls "bad faith," often defined as self-deception, though I think this definition misses some subtleties. At least for a certain period of time, the individual cannot handle the conflicting beliefs, cannot process them into an integrated understanding of "reality," and so they are blocked from full conscious attention.

The picture is further complicated when we add in social psychology (which Sartre also addressed in his later writings). There are many examples, both real-world and experimental, that demonstrate how strongly individual humans are influenced by the beliefs and emotional biases of others in their own "group," however that may be defined. The Solomon Asch experiments show that many people will go against the testimony of their own eyes to say that the shorter line is the longest line on a diagram, in order to conform to the stated beliefs of others in a group of strangers, just so they will "fit in" and be accepted by the group. The "bystander and victim" experiments by Latane and Darley demonstrate that the willingness of an experimental subject to help in response to cries of pain from another person drops from 70% to 7% when an unresponsive "stooge" is present (the real-world Kitty Genovese tragedy set the stage for these experiments). The Obedience experiments of Stanley Milgram and the Stanford Prison Experiment of Philip Zimbardo are well known and were in the news again when the Abu Ghraib story first broke. The social psychology of Hitler's rise to power and the abuses that occurred under the Nazi regime are also well known and well studied -- I include a section examining the deeds of the Nazi doctors in my bioethics classes. The conclusion? Even very "moral" people will do shocking things that violate their own ethical values when subject to social pressures -- even fairly mild pressures, it seems.

Putting these things together, it should not be surprising that questions about what happened on 9/11, or questions about lots of other shameful situations, from the persistent denial of global climate change to the "let's look the other way" attitude many share with respect to "mad cow disease" in the United States, are being actively suppressed, held just below the level of conscious thought, by the vast majority of people in this country. These are ideas that "must not be thought"--because to entertain even for a few moments the notion that perhaps our own government may have callously allowed, or even set up, thousands of Americans to die in order to facilitate its own agenda is simply too horrible to bear right now.

So, no, I don't think it's correct to say that the scientists and engineers at MIT or associated with Scientific American or Popular Mechanics are either in on the conspiracry or incompetent. They are subject to the same sorts of internal and external psychological tensions that we all are, plus they may have additional, more specific pressures regarding federal funding, academic politics, the goals of those who control the publishing industry, etc to contend with. The questions are still simmering in "the backs of the minds" of many knowledgable people. And the wheels of academia move slowly: there was some kind of hearing about 9/11 before an NSF panel this past weekend, in fact. And, as with the German physicians who came to believe they were all caught up in the "blood cement," inhibiting them from speaking out even if they were not facing the barrel of a gun, you don't have to be either "in on the conspiracy" or "incompetent" to be a bit slow to reach unhappy conclusions and even slower to speak out. (Just look at how faculty at UCF are responsing to what's happening to our "faculty governance.")

I don't know what happened on September 11, 2001. For some reason, however, I have always been relatively tough-minded and have always looked at people who turn their heads away from uncomfortable truths as, in the final analysis, coiwards, so I try not to let myself get away with such self-deception masquerading as self-protection. I do believe that the American people have not been given a truthful account of what went on in the "official story," and I find some of the alternative accounts to be quite reasonable. I look forward to watching as more and more people who are structural engineers and the like begin to overcome their internal censoring and their fears of external sanctions to discuss what, in their best judgment, they think was most probable. I even know a few people who have the sort of background in the physical sciences to come to well-reasoned judgments about what went on, and I know some of them are in fact quite dubious about the official account.

The typical approach of the Western/male mindset, however, which you illustrate so well, is to set up a dualism that seems to make one "side" of the controversy look absurd so that the whole issue can be summarily dismissed from further thought.

This is what you see with, for example, ethical issues raised about how humans treat other forms of life -- the dualism would be posed as, for example, either you privilege human life as being much, much more valuable than any other life or you decide that every bacterial cell must be treated as on a par with a human being. Since this latter pole of the dualism seems patently absurd, you can throw away the entire discussion and go on with the human takeover of the biosphere (which is giving us global climate change among other things) and with supporting the factory farming industry (which is bringing us the transmissible spongiform encephalopathies), et cetera et cetera.

In addition to this handy mechanism of dualistic thinking, which enables such thought throw-aways, the Western/male mindset also seems to be rather right-hemisphere impaired: the approach is quite good at linear thought and manipulation of digital information -- classic example being "money," little digits in computer banks that are often wildly disconnected from what our adherence to the money-is-power fascination leads us to do in the real world of biological organisms and systems. Learning to use BOTH sides of our cerebral cortex, like learning to transcend false dichotomies and grapple with the actual, if complex, situations we confront, is essential at this time in our human history -- we need to see our situation, grasp the gestalt. It is the intransigent refusal to SEE the gestalt when it's right in front of us -- the proverbial "elephant in the living room" -- that I am finding more and more tiresome these days, on the part of many in our male primate hierarchy, and that's why I am also intrigued by your apparent dismissal of "wholistic >>> practitioners of whatever" in your earlier post. There IS a place for (w)holism in the life of a rational animal -- in fact, I believe our hemispheric specialization -- along with interhemispheric communication by means of the corpus callosum -- is an adaptation for survival that we fail to make use of at our own peril. (There are interesting differences between malew and female brains being discovered "as we speak," by the way--that may possibly be a source of hope.)

So, William, please understand that I am not personally attacking you, but that I feel it is my ethical duty to challenge a certain type of thinking that you sometimes exhibit. We all need to direct our attention to alternative possible patterns of human thought if we are ever to overcome our "let's US make war on THEM" mentality, and analyzing the aspects I am considering here is just the first step.

Have we really "liberated" Iraq?

levinson.eric — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 16:06:48 EST

I guess that depends on your definition of the vague euphemism "liberated."

Yes, we did remove a secular tyrant from power, but did we just replace it with our armed forces and constant violence? Did we "free" the Iraqi people, or subject them to a violent invasion and even more violent occupation?

No matter what you believe is going on in Iraq right now, "liberation" has one true meaning that is hidden by the GW administration's talk of spreading freedom and democracy.

From A Dictionary of Euphemisms & Other Doubletalk by Hugh Rawson, 1981 edition:

liberate/liberation. To take what isn't yours, and the act thereof; ironically, to destroy something, usually a town.

The euphemistic noun seems to have come first, during World War II, when a patriotic editor of the Richmond News-Leader suggested that the Allies substitute "liberation" for "invasion." The idea was picked up by FDR. "At a press conference in May 1944, a month before D-day, President Roosevelet said that when our expected invasion of Europe began we would be using the word 'liberation - not invasion'" (Stuart Berg Flexner, I Hear America Talking, 1976). Thus, with the best of intentions, the word was liberated from its traditional moorings. Soon, soldiers in the armies of liberation began to speak of liberating chickens, bottles of wine, watches, and parctically everything else that wasn't nailed permanently in place. In this way, "liberate" became World War II's counterpart of World War I's SALVAGE and the Civil War's APPROPRIATE. In the ironic sense, cities sometimes were liberated so thoroughly as to be hardly recognizable, e.g., "'This place sure has been liberated,' said an American M.P. . . . when eventually they reached the waste of brick and stone which had been Vire" (A. McKee, Caen, 1964).

The euphemism has withstood the test of time. Thus, in Israel, the territories that were taken from the Arabs during the Six-Day War of 1967 are never described by expansionists as "annexed," "occupied," or "administered," but as liberated, while in Cambodia, amid the confusion that attended the fall of Phnom Penh to Communist forces, Sydney H. Schanberg noted that "I even had time to 'liberate' a typewriter someone had abandoned, since the troops had 'liberated' mine earlier" (New York Times, 5/9/75). Mr. Schanberg also noted that the Communist troops called their mlitary units "rumdos," which translates as "liberation forces." (When the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia in 1979, they also styled themselves as liberation forces.) In the United States, meanwhile, the crazies who murdered a black school superntendent and kidnapped Patty Hearst saw themsleves as the Symbionese Liberation Army. And so it goes.

(all emphasis, etc., from original)

In case you were wondering, I 100% agree we have "liberated" Iraq according to the above definition, and I bet they feel "liberated" as well. We took what did not belong to us, and destroyed several towns (i.e. Fallujah) in the process. Fits the definition to a 'T.'

Constitution just gets in the way during war

levinson.eric — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 15:41:03 EST

I've talked to three people present for the meeting that day and they all confirm that the President of the United States called the Constitution "a goddamned piece of paper.

I got that quote from Capital Hill Blue, but I'm sure you all recall the incident.

Now, GW and his team of misinformants are trying to claim that their spy program was respectful of the Constitution and FISA Act and completely within the scope of the Executive branch's power.

But at the same time, they claim the President has the authority to overstep his limitations in the name of "national security" during wartime.

So which one is it?

Has our nation's ADD gotten so bad that we forget the past (using blasphemy to describe the Constitution) every time some new GW administration scandal arises?

In today's speech, GW avoided questions concerning this latest scandal, claiming "that's what the investigators are for." He also claimed that he has turned over hundreds of thousands of documents, but I am interested to see what was "censored" in the name of national security.

We must have a legitimate investigation, and I personally will not stand for censored evidence. I do not recall any American, including the president (see: Watergate scandal) having the right to peruse the evidence against them and censor to their own pleasure before being investigated. I want full disclosure.

Call your Senators, write your papers, email your friends, and sign the ACLU petition (among others).

May I also urge you all to join the ACLU: become a card-carrying member that will not willingly sacrifice American civil liberties because of some percieved threat.

If GW acted legitimately, then he'd be all for a thorough investigation

levinson.eric — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 22:44:18 EST

He may say it's legal, but we have the right to know
exactly who he spied on, what was gathered and why.
If he broke federal statutes specifically prohibiting this
abuse of power, he better be able to prove it was
perfectly legitimate. This is exactly the type of abuse
that Congress meant to prevent.

They could easily use this guise of anti-terrorism to
spy on journalists, politicians and activists with
contacts worldwide.

They could easily spy on their business contacts,
friends and family; GW's "probable cause" is
guilt by association, and a lot more people than you
might suspect are potentially "associated."

Do you know, with absolute certainty, that your
phone has not been tapped since 9/11?

Since GW by-passed the FICA court, there was
absolutely NO oversight on who was tapped or
whether or not they had good reason, known in
America as "probable cause." The FICA court
demands evidence of a "probable cause" to
justify spying on an American citizen. Only
about 4 of the 10,000 legitimate wiretap
requests have ever been rejected by the FICA
court. The FICA court was designed to respond
quickly, and even up to three days retro-actively
when the court is not available. If these wiretaps
were legitimate, or based on evidence of
"probable cause," then there is no reason GW
should have avoided going through FICA.

So then the question is: why would GW avoid
FICA oversight of his wiretap program?

The administration has something to hide; they
were doing something that they knew the FISA
court would not approve, so they avoided FISA
altogether.

It is our right to ask the President to prove that
what he did was nothing to be ashamed of. As
long as he remains secretive, don't we have to
assume - as potential victims - that there was
severe "collateral damage" in this war on our
privacy?

Sign the petition to investigate the past five
years of illegal wire-tapping:
Petition

and join Congressman John Conyers, Jr. in the battle
to put the brakes on an out-of-control Presidential administration.

Love those phony patriotic chainmails

levinson.eric — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 01:00:52 EST

I got this chainmail from a relative today. Here is a little nugget of joy from it:

"Threatened? By whom?" the senator questioned.

"By a terrorist, sir" Ollie answered

"Terrorist? What terrorist could possibly scare you that much?"

"His name is Osama bin Laden, sir" Ollie replied.

So, do you think most of the people that got this email had the idea of checking it at snopes? Probably very few.

Mis-information is a very dangerous thing.

Hi, Condi? Yea, it's Iran.

levinson.eric — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 00:43:00 EST

I just had to share this from www.whatreallyhappened.com :

Rice: Iran must stop making nuclear bombs!

Iran: We're not making nuclear bombs. We're building a power station.

Rice: Iran's denial of nuclear weapons manufacture is proof of their uncooperative attitude!

Iran: We're not being uncooperative. Come in, look around all you want. It's a power station. Look here, see this switch? Switch goes up, light goes on. Switch goes down, light goes off!

Rice: Don't patronize me! We know you are building nuclear bombs with reactor fuel.

Iran: Look, I don't know who taught you nuclear physics but in fact the step from fuel-grade to weapons-grade is not as simple as you seem to think. It's not like you push a button on a microwave for an extra minute and instead of tuna noodle casserole you get a neutron bomb.

Rice: We are done talking!

Iran: Then shut the fuck up, already. Nobody believes you anyway. You were screaming that Iraq had nuclear weapons. You invaded, murdered thousands of innocent people, made a total mess of the country, and didn't find a single WMD. Now you are saying the same things about Iran, and without a single shred of proof, I might add!

Rice: Your refusal to be honest and open is proof enough!

Iran: Look, Ms. Rice, thank you for coming, but I think we are done for the day. You want to buy electricity or oil, you are welcome back. You want nuclear bombs, better you should go see the Israelis; they have lots of them!

Seriously, Condi, who are you trying to fool?

GW by-passes FICA, citizens forced to by-pass ineffectual House?

levinson.eric — Mon, 16 Jan 2006 19:16:14 EST

GW has shown his contempt for US and international law in the name of protecting America, and because of this GW is a threat to America. If the Congress continues to neglect its obligation to investigate and eventually prosecute the current administration for wrongdoing, Americans will have another chance this fall to by-pass the current leadership and replace it with representatives that will uphold their oath to protect and operate under the Constitution.

American freedoms are being systematically eroded on the basis that some invisible enemy has created a sense of panic in this nation. This panic has lead to a passive-aggressive response in Americans that seems to completely overshadow logic and reason. Americans are convinced that it is their freedoms that leave them vulnerable to terrorists, and those who would resist giving up those freedoms are being demonized. As support for public advocacy groups dwindles, even the ACLU is no longer safe from this demonization.

This invisible enemy has been used to justify legislation and aggressive behavior similar to that passed during the early stages of the Third Reich and Hitler's consolidation of power. Going back to Clinton and the Oklahoma bombing, with its resulting "anti-terror" legislation that laid the foundation, the past decade or so has seriously compromised the concept of American freedom. It is being eroded slowly in conjunction with desensitization; this is so methodical that Americans are literally throwing away civil liberties in order that the government can better protect their country. We are living in a police state, where everyone is assumed guilty before having committed any crime.

Countless great thinkers have condemned this process of trading freedom for safety. There is no point being safe if you are not free. There is a body of thought in the world today that believes world government is inevitable, and they are tricking Americans into submitting voluntarily to their terms of oppression as opposed to something they'd really hate: a world government that promoted equality and prosperity while decentralizing wealth.

Before GW, there was Nixon to disgrace our nation and the office of the President. It is incredible how nobody sees history repeating itself. Nixon used illegal phone taps to spy on political dissidents, leading to the creation of FISA. Now, remember that only about 4 of the nearly 10,000 warrant requests have ever been denied, and they can be applied for up to three days after surveillance begins. This begs the question: why would GW need to circumvent this highly accessible and highly cooperative control body?

Former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman has a pretty good answer to that question. During the impeachment proceedings against President Nixon, Holtzman sat on the House Judiciary Committee, and she writes in an article for The Nation:

FISA was enacted in 1978, against the backdrop of Watergate, to prevent the widespread abuses in domestic surveillance that were disclosed in Congressional hearings. Among his other abuses of power, President Nixon ordered the FBI to conduct warrantless wiretaps of seventeen journalists and White House staffers. Although Nixon claimed the wiretaps were done for national security purposes, they were undertaken for political purposes and were illegal. Just as Bush's warrantless wiretaps grew out of the 9/11 attacks, Nixon's illegal wiretaps grew out of the Vietnam War and the opposition to it. In fact, the first illegal Nixon wiretap was of a reporter who, in 1969, revealed the secret bombing of Cambodia, a program that President Nixon wanted to hide from the American people and Congress. Nixon's illegal wiretaps formed one of the many grounds for the articles of impeachment voted against him by a bipartisan majority of the House Judiciary Committee.

The GW administration has not released many details about the surveillance, and it is a pretty safe bet there is something worth all this effort to hide. However, it is incredibly troubling to note that this is all being downplayed and excused in the media.

With respect to President Bush and the Iraq War, there is not likely to be any such confusion. Most Americans know that his rationale for the war turned out to be untrue; for them the question is whether the President lied, and if so, what the remedies are for his misconduct.

The fact that we are already at war does not negate the fact that we have a negligent president occupying our White House. Have we forgotten that he works for us? How can we not hold him accountable for manipulating "intelligence" to support his own inclination towards deposing Saddam? The PNAC has a blatant agenda for world domination by a select few that already control the world's wealth and resources, How can a President claim to be working for America while operating under a haze of deception?

We cannot impeach GW for negligence, "[b]ut President Bush has been guilty of such gross incompetence or reckless indifference to his obligation to execute the laws faithfully as to call into question whether he takes his oath seriously or is capable of doing so." For GW, the ends justify the means; from where I'm sitting, the chaos we have unleashed in Iraq is not justified by three questionable elections.

The progress we are seeing in Iraq is a tribute to the fine men and women of the armed services, and not a reflection of the dictator-in-chief that chose to sacrifice them to the desert. They were literally sent off to die, considering that "[u]nconscionably and unaccountably, the Administration failed to provide US soldiers with bulletproof vests or appropriately armored vehicles. A recent Pentagon study disclosed that proper bulletproof vests would have saved hundreds of lives." By the administration's own admission, we will need to maintain a presence in Iraq for much of the next decade, but that's ok because Saddam was a bad guy? It's ok because we were able to stage free elections that are fueling a civil war?

And there was no serious plan for the aftermath of the war, a fact also noted in the Downing Street memo. The President's failure as Commander in Chief to protect the troops by arming them properly, and his failure to plan for the occupation, cost dearly in lives and taxpayer dollars. This was not mere negligence or oversight--in other words, maladministration--but reflected a reckless and grotesque disregard for the welfare of the troops and an utter indifference to the need for proper governance of a country after occupation. As such, these failures violated the requirements of the President's oath of office. If they are proven to be the product of political objectives, they could constitute impeachable offenses on those grounds alone.

This war was political. How many times did you hear that GW is a "war president" leading up to the 2004 elections? His primary campaign attack on Kerry was that Kerry was a sissy Democrat that could not protect America. The war was a weapon against Americans, not terrorism. It was used to fight a battle for control of voters' fears and trick them into voluntarily shedding rights in order to assist GW in protecting us.

A terrorist is now a special brand of criminal, which once accused of being a terrorist, means that criminal magically loses all protections normally enjoyed as an American citizen. For example, since anyone accused of terrorism or conspiracy to commit a terrorist act is automatically an enemy combatant, they are denied rights to habeas corpus, an expedient public trial, or even protection from torture (according to GW).

(5) the term "domestic terrorism" means activities that--
(A) involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State;
(B) appear to be intended--
(i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
(ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or
(iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and
(C) occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States.

By this definition, almost any political activist group could be considered a domestic terrorist organization without posing any actual threat. We are selling ourselves out to a handful of globalist elitists that are bent on ending the freedoms we take for granted. Wise up Progressives and realize that "anti-terrorism" is really just "anti-freedomism."

At the same time GW is sucking up our rights, he is in fact making the world a more dangerous place. According to Noam Chomsky:

The fact of the matter is that there is no War on Terror. It's a minor consideration. So invading Iraq and taking control of the world's energy resources was way more important than the threat of terror. And the same with other things. Take, say, nuclear terror. The American intelligence systems estimate that the likelihood of a "dirty bomb," a dirty nuclear bomb attack in the United States in the next ten years, is about 50 percent. Well, that's pretty high. Are they doing anything about it? Yeah. They're increasing the threat, by increasing nuclear proliferation, by compelling potential adversaries to take very dangerous measures to try to counter rising American threats.

Mother Jones covered the threat of nuclear proliferation this fall:

[Nuclear and bioweapons scientists] were Iraq's only real WMDs. The U.S. refused to secure them. Now Saddam's nuclear and bioweapons scientists are dispersed and more dangerous than ever.

If Iran now has the capabilities to develop nuclear weapons, I am willing to infer that the human and informational resources may have come from Iraq. These scientists were fearful for their safety following Saddam's removal after realizing the US was not actually interested in Iraq's WMDs; they were left to fend for themselves and were likely to have accepted any offers for employment that guaranteed their safety (i.e. removal from Iraq's chaos). Now, many of the scientists that operated Saddam's WMD programs that ended over a decade ago may have found new employment elsewhere.

Holtzmen leaves us with this plan for immediate results:

Mobilizing the nation and Congress in support of investigations and the impeachment of President Bush is a critical task that has already begun, but it must intensify and grow. The American people stopped the Vietnam
War--against the wishes of the President--and forced a reluctant Congress to act on the impeachment of President Nixon. And they can do the same with President Bush. The task has three elements: building public and Congressional support, getting Congress to undertake investigations into various aspects of presidential misconduct and changing the party makeup of Congress in the 2006 elections.

It is time to take America back from the elitists that believe it is ok to exploit impoverished populations and show the world that Americans are not extravagantly wasteful bullies obsessed with global domination. Progressives need to stop playing the field between Republicans and Democrats and realize that our nation's current leadership is destroying America's future. Our focus must turn to repairing America's domestic failings and addressing our failed diplomacy; it may be too soon for a complete withdrawal from Iraq, but it is not too early to hold GW and his cronies accountable for the crimes that sent us to war.

As awful as Watergate was, after the vote on impeachment and the resignation of President Nixon, the nation felt a huge sense of relief. Impeachment is a tortuous process, but now that President Bush has
thrown down the gauntlet and virtually dared Congress to stop him from violating the law, nothing less is necessary to protect our constitutional system and preserve our democracy.

Investigations into 9/11 and Iraq intelligence must start now; we need a complete Congressional-overhaul this November; and impeachment proceedings must begin first thing next year.

(all uncited quotes from Holtzman article)

What does being a Progressive mean to you?

levinson.eric — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 12:48:30 EST

I would like to know what people that contribute or merely peruse this website think being a Progressive really means.

According to Wikipedia:

Progressivism is a political philosophy whose adherents promote public policies that they believe would lead to positive social change. As a broad characterization of political leanings, political progressivism mostly refers to social democracy or democratic socialism. Progressivism may also mean prefering moderate change, as opposed to minimal or maximum change. In this sense, it is contrasted with reactionary, conservative, as well as radical ideology. Progressive logic is the value logic that gives an underlying unity to this diversity of views.

For me, being a Progressive means always fighting for Progress:
-towards peace.
-towards equality.
-towards a human community.
-towards true democracy.
-towards responsible commerce.
-towards true freedom.
-towards environmental sustainability.
-towards a guaranteed minimum quality of life for all humans, promoted through social spending.

This is just a quick list of what I believe to be Progressive ideals.

What do you all think?

You already write and breathe Progressivism, make this year's resolution to eat and drink Progressive!

levinson.eric — Fri, 30 Dec 2005 00:17:21 EST

"I do see a money potential in this," said Wolff, a 48-year-old vegan chef and UCLA-trained food scientist. "But this isn't about money. It's about converting as many people as I can to vegetarianism and veganism."

article

Pushing the Vegan agenda can no longer be considered extreme: the Vegan market is now recognized as a stable, predictable demographic. Our buying power can no longer be ignored. Considering the recent energy crisis and growing concern about greenhouse gas emissions, Veganism must be promoted tirelessly!

Fewer than 6 million American adults identify themselves as vegetarian - including 2 million to 3 million vegans - so veggie restaurants hoping to franchise must rely heavily on crossover patrons.

I estimate there are many more than that (this article was written over a year and a half ago). Everyone is a Vegan, some of us just add animal products to our diet. Also, with each passing day, consumers are gaining a greater awareness of the meat, egg and dairy industries' harsh realities. More and more Americans are shrugging dairy as they learn of the disgusting FDA standards for virus and bacteria content, as well as nearly double the tolerable amount of blood and pus as Europe. Children and college students are being exposed to PETA and other Vegan and animal rights advocate groups through the internet at never before seen rates. Fur was the first victory, and we are now beginning to see the mainstreaming of Veganism as well.

Veganism is Progressive: it conserves grain, water, oil and the environment by eliminating the need for millions of gallons of liquid manure produced every day. It is up to us to lead by example and show the rest of the world that consuming animal products is an unnecessary evil. We already devote some 70% of all grains produced in the US to feeding livestock, so imagine what will happen when the emerging middle-class in India and China develop a taste for flesh and dairy? Cows already produce over 100 times the amount of waste that humans produce.

At this point in human development, we have more obese Americans than ever before. The American diet is comprised primarily of dairy products: high protein, high calorie dairy displaces up to 40% of the average American's diet, replacing nutrient-dense, high fiber plant matter. The American healthcare system is burdened with treating Americans for diet-related chronic disease like diabetes, heart disease, impotence, and certain cancers. You may like to believe that this is not proven, but it certainly is, and there is absolutely no evidence that consuming animal products is in any way healthy for humans.

http://notmilk.com
http://goveg.com
Link
http://www.pcrm.org/

By moving towards a vegan society, we will gain immense benefits in reduced energy consumption and environmental degradation, as well as a vast improvement in the general health of the populace.

30,000 GM jobs disappear - economy and Bush approval still on the rise!

levinson.eric — Wed, 21 Dec 2005 18:28:37 EST

There's a reason 80% of Fox News viewers still believe there was a link between al Qaeda and Saddam. There is a reason Saudi royalty own 5.5% of Fox News:

To keep uninformed Americans exactly that - uninformed.

Cable news paints pretty pictures but never shows us the photo these pictures are meant to resemble. We get half-truths and distortions, not only from the right, but from the left as well.

With the news of 30,000 GM jobs about to vanish into thin air, and the rest of the working-class slowly slipping away with them, how is it that Republicans have been able to disguise themselves as working for the best interests of these same working-class Americans?

It's sad to say, but they dominate the airwaves with Right-loving, Left-hating headlines and of course, their love of god, hatred of gays, and ignorance of the social causes of poverty, crime, abortion, and religious fundamentalism.

Our country is being pulled out from underneath us, and there aren't any safety nets left. There was a time when Americans believed that we all proved our patriotism by paying taxes and supporting our government and its social programs that keep the bottom from falling out. It was once a matter of honor to be able to support our elderly, our sick, and our neighbors when they were down on their luck.

Now, we only offer loans to victims of hurricanes and confuse our elderly with extremely complicated medical insurance programs.

Now, all you need to be a patriot is a hatred of terrorists (but I venture it is damn near impossible to actually point one out).

That's right, we are un-American if we don't believe there are people out there that hate us so much they want to blow us up everywhere we go. Well, I for one am sick and tired of this crazy cat-and-mouse game, where a terrorist attack is justification for devastating entire countries, regardless of whether we set up a Democracy afterwards.

We are at war with ideology: both the "desperate" Islam that breeds terrorists, and the PNAC.

The only way to fight these dangerous ideologies is to fight the ignorance and desperation that spawn them. We need to refocus on education, here and abroad. Investing in our education system is an investment in our future: students are our most vital asset. Without an educated workforce, we have no chance of competing in the 21st century as Israel, China, India, and others lead the way in providing a strong recruitment base for tech jobs.

The GW America is not my America. I do not condone torture; I do not condone pre-emptive war; I do not condone economic embargoes that do more harm to the innocent citizens than to their despotic leaders; I do not condone unilateral initiatives that fail to gain international support; I do not condone detaining humans without trial. I especially do not condone slashing social programs that millions depend on in order to maintain bare-bones tax rates for the wealthy.

I do not want the world to see GW and think that he represents me, an American.

He has admitted to an impeachable offense: spying on US citizens. His administration approved torture, holds detainees without trial and without international oversight, manipulates media, and ignores the fact that their justification for invading Iraq has been proven false, manipulated, and ripe with omissions and even the outing of a CIA agent.

This is a blatant campaign to smear America's image, and we have to stand up and tell the world, once and for all, that this is NOT our President. He has betrayed our trust to uphold the Constition, or "just a goddamn piece of paper."

It's not impeachment, but a censure is a good start:
Link

"I'm stupid enough to think that I should pay my fair share of taxes." -Former President Bill Clinton

levinson.eric — Wed, 14 Dec 2005 19:34:00 EST

"America is yearning for a sense of purpose and unity."

William Jefferson Clinton spoke here in Buffalo today to a couple of hundred members of the local Democratic community. He continues to be a powerful leader for the Progressive community, and today's speech epitomizes that leadership.

Why was Clinton a great president and why does he continue to be a great leader?

Because he speaks from the heart, with conviction and honesty, and has a true vision for America's future.

He advocated a return to "performance-based politics," where elected officials are expected to fight for the best interests of all Americans and can be held accountable for failure. His speech centered around how badly Republicans have messed everything up in the past five years, favoring "ideology over evidence." Specifically, he was dumbfounded at how the Republican party, which historically epitomized conservation, could be so wasteful, pointing to the demonization of Nixon after signing the EPA's creation.

Specifically, Clinton called for a "reassessment in America," citing his belief that "no one puts the future ahead of the present" anymore. He fell just short of calling the GW administration liars, pointing to manipulated EPA reports, misrepresenting Medicare projections (leaving out the subsidies for drug companies), and the DOJ's prohibiting attorneys from publishing opinions on the Texas redistricting and the Georgia voter ID. He also declared that "Afghanistan is the most important military front."

He pointed out how, incredibly, Congressional Republicans just recently "discovered the pink elephant" of the budget deficit that has been looming since the invasion of Iraq. Now they are focusing on deficit reduction, but "in the wrong place." For example, federal disaster relief for Louisiana and Mississippi is being offered in the form of loans instead of grants, and many leaders are refusing them.

The result: no reconstruction and non-functional government.

The explanation: this disaster was "predictable, they knew the levees were flawed."

So now, Republicans want to pay for reconstruction HERE IN THE USA by slashing "food stamps, child support enforcement (that will reduce payments by $24 BILLION), raise the price of college loans and child care, and failing to fund New Orlean's public utilities."

In reference to his astronomical war-time tax-cuts, Clinton said:
"I'm stupid enough to think that I should pay my fair share of taxes. . . I resent the fact that I was robbed of the chance to support [our troops]."

We are talking about five years in a row of tax cuts, four years during war. There have never been repeated war-time tax cuts in American history, when the focus should be on "reducing debt and increasing social spending." He pointed to the fact that 9/11 has been "strung out" to excuse dangerous policies to which "wealthy Americans do no contribute." Instead of allowing wealthy Americans the priviledge to support their nation patriotically, they have been sidelined to borrow money from China and the Saudis. Under the Clinton administration, we saw "five times more trade law enforcement than under Bush. . . it is hard to enforce trade laws against our bankers."

This was an uplifting and hopeful speech that urged us all to capitalize on the horrible conservative policies that are weakening America. They are weakening our economy, our environment, and especially our prestige in the world.

He talked about actual conservation, specifically mentioning that if we completely switched to fluorescent lighting in this country, we could reduce energy spending by half and greenhouse emmissions by 1/3. As we begin to focus on more efficient sources and uses of energy, prices will drop since "the more you do it the cheaper it gets." He referred to the current energy policy as "more of the same. . . we use more oil and pay more for it" than ever before. This is good for the few that will get rich from such destructive policy, but it is not good for America's future. He talked about investing in solar and wind energy, and how far behind other industrialized nations we already are. We need to step up the call for responsible, renewable energy. I personally am a strong advocate for hemp, which has the potential to replace petroleum, coal, cotton and lumber.

Throwing subsidies at dying industries is not in America's best interests, and those industries know who they are. It creates artificial economic forces designed to keep strong industries like the automobile, petroleum, logging, and dairy industries competitive. These industries do more harm than good when they cannot support themselves naturally, since they survive by draining millions from the tax pool to pay over-priced CEOs.

Clinton urged us to "insist, of yourselves and your candidates, that we go back to reclaiming the future, unity politics, performancy politics, and put people to work!" The positive results of his administration were "not just because of [him], but because we worked together. . . to reach accross lines to get things done."

He talked about how, until recently, foreign students came to America for the best education in the world, but not anymore. There is more growth elsewhere in the world! We need to focus on improving the breadth and accessibility of education in our country to fill the gaps in science and technology that the industry now imports workers to fill or simply outsources to India.

We have a lot of problems to clean up once the Republicans leave office, but we can do it by promoting Progressive values:

Responsibility; strength; honesty; protection of the environment, consumers, workers, elderly, sick, and impoverished; democratic ideals and equality.

It's time to stop focusing on how badly Republicans have messed things up and unite behind a clear, honest Progressive plan for rebuilding America.