A first-class post in the Daily Kos by ordinary expat explains how neocons, Christian fundamentalists and proto-fascists have written our nation's current story to their advantage and to our extreme prejudice.

Our story tells us who we are as a people. It delineates our values. It assigns us a place among the nations of the earth.

It also designates and characterizes our enemies. Whom we call enemies and what we think about the people, groups and nations that we call enemies is part of our story and it defines us just as much as what we call ourselves. It may be even more accurate, since the enemy is as much projection of our own unacknowledged dark side as it is an objective description of the actual enemy.

It's always been the philosophy of the JP that when intelligent people seem to be doing everything wrong and failing egregiously in what they are supposed to be doing, you are probably judging their behavior by the wrong scoring system. Ordinary expat contends that Iraq (and now Iran) are just so much meat thrown to the ignorant masses to distract from their real objective.

We have made it clear that most of us can be entertained forever by a cartoon reality that reduces the real complexity of life to the level of the Simpsons, --or Rush Limbaugh. We’re the market, folks. BCR Inc. just supplies the product.

It worked for a long time- it kept us occupied, and, with well-chosen archetypes as key parts of the story, it provided apparent justification for a raft of moves that consolidated executive power to an unprecedented degree. Now it is failing as a story. Now resistance to further power accumulation is growing. They need a new story. That will be Iran.

The only remedy to this state of affairs is to stop allowing BCR, Inc. (Bush, Cheney and Rove — convenient symbols for the fascist kleptocracy that is in control of the executive branch) to write our story for us. We can do this only by writing our own story, a story based on reality. This is all the more important since members of the power elite (BCR, Inc.) eventually come to believe the story they originally foisted upon us, a story divorced from reality.

Isolated and unable to think out of the box- in a real systems fashion- the theocon and the cynical pol share the huge blind spot of coming to think their own fabricated stories ARE reality, instead of sucker bait. Fortunately for us, there is a wider world, a world where, after enough public catastrophe and elite contempt, Mussolini ends up strung up on a lamppost. A wider world view that makes a fair try at including the complexities of human society works better. It is still very flawed, but the secular, early systems thinking that brought us the US Constitution, quantum theory and the French health care system worked. We need to stop wasting time chewing on the bait BCR inc. throws us.

Read the article and ponder.

Sidney Blumenthal, writing in Open Democracy, presents a sad and sobering narrative of the events leading up to Bush's embracing of a "surge," rather than seeking a diplomatic and political solution to the Iraq quagmire. Three facts stand out: 1. Bush is incapable of admitting mistakes, either in strategy or policy, and he is incapable altering his course in response to evidence of failure; 2. Brent Scowcraft, a prominent member of the commission, had pinned his hopes on Condi Rice to talk the president into following the commission's recommendations; and, 3. Cheney and the neocons at the American Enterprise Institute still have the president's ear, along with the major share of influence over Bush's foreign policy.

Blumenthal's description of Rice as an enabler for Bush is an astute characterization of a relationship that is looking more and more like a destructive psychological codependency

Bush is not an unintelligent man, but the incontrovertible evidence before our very eye compels the conclusion that he is a fool at best and a dangerous psychopath at worst. The damage he has done to the nation and the world cannot begun to be repaired until he leaves office.

Sidney Blumenthal: Washington's Political Cleansing

According the today's New York Times, the 12th person has been recently exonerated by DNA evidence in Dallas County, Texas.

I wonder how many innocent persons were convicted and put to death in Texas with George W. Bush's approval and occasional mockery?

Considering the number of death sentences that have been overturned nationwide by DNA testing--even when the defendant actually confessed to the crime--I wonder how many innocent persons have been wrongly convicted for lesser crimes but whose conviction was reviewed with far less scrutiny than death-sentence cases? When I practiced criminal law, especially post-conviction litigation, I was astounded by convictions that seemed to rest on very flimsy evidence but which the appellate courts affirmed with no qualms. I estimate that at least 20% of the convicts I came in contact with were completely innocent. Many were convicted because their lawyers failed to perform even the most cursory investigation and allowed the prosecution to roll over their client with no resistance. False and tainted eyewitness identification accounted for many wrong convictions.

Besides invoking hyper-technicalities to avoid actually considering the issue of ineffective assistance of counsel, courts have defined ineffective assistance in such a way as to make it almost impossible for defendants to actually prove ineffective assistance, even when their counsel did practically nothing to defend them.

The explanation is not difficult. Having been whipped into a fearful frenzy over crime, mainly by political writers and commentators and by reactionary politicians, we as a society decided about twenty years ago to "get tough" on crime, by requiring extraordinarily harsh sentences and by removing more and more "liberal" constitutional protections for the accused. Consequently and predictably, more and more innocent persons have been convicted and sent to jail.

For those of us who believe that the whole idea of America is founded upon civil liberties and freedoms, it appears that we have collectively decided to trade some freedom for security, and we all know what Benjamin Franklin said about a people that trades freedom for security. It is a lesson that tragically has to be relearned over and over by human societies. We become afraid for our individual skins and ignore the dangers that threaten to engulf us all.

New York Times: A 12th Dallas Convict Is Exonerated by DNA

Once upon a time, some very visionary and clever people purchased a lot in a remote valley and built a house, intending to live there comfortably and cheaply forever. They cut down the trees on the lot, sawed them into boards and used them in the construction. They drilled a water well in order to have inexpensive water, since they were far from urban water systems. They forgot about sewage, however, until the house was nearly finished, when someone noticed a large pipe protruding from the foundation going nowhere.

That presented a serious problem. The sewage either had to be treated with a sewage disposal plant or underground septic tank, or it had to be channeled away from the house to a sufficiently distant place that it wouldn't cause problems for the inhabitants of the house. But treatment plants, septic tanks and long pipelines cost money, and they had spent almost all their money building the house and were unwilling to spend any more on sanitary system. Instead, they decided to dig a ditch leading to a small pit a short distance from the house where the sewage could accumulate and not cause them any problems. The pit was located behind a tall hedge, so they didn't have to see it when they looked out their windows or walked in the yard. Everyone agreed that it was the best and cheapest solution to the waste disposal problem.

Everything went fine until the weather warmed up and folks started becoming aware of a faint foul odor, the source of which they couldn't locate. It was easily taken care of with some chlorophyll air wicks and baskets of potpourri scattered around the house.

The smell continued to worsen. The residents closed all the windows of the house and turned on the air conditioning to keep the foul air out. A little quicklime in a bowl helped to control the smell inside. When the smell further worsened they completely sealed the house.

Keeping the house sealed worked for quite a while. The small seepage of air into the house was taken care of by the quicklime and the chlorophyll. Everyone said that it wasn't important to go outside, anyway, that they really wanted to stay inside. After a few weeks, they started getting sick and the doctor discovered that they were infected with e coli bacteria. The well from which they drew their drinking water had become contaminated by seepage from the sewage. They started boiling water.

This went on for a few weeks until someone looked out the back window and saw a lake of foul dark liquid filling up the backyard and pouring under the house. Gradually the smell of the sewage found its way into the house through the floor and it finally became obvious to everyone that they could not continue to live there. They had ignored the source of the problem while designing ingenious technologies to keep from being inconvenienced by the costs of fixing it properly.

This parable occurred to me as I was reading an article from the New York Times, Open-Source Spying by Clive Thompson, published on December 3, 2006 ($). The article relates the efforts of the intelligence agencies to share intelligence without betraying sources or leaking sensitive information. The U.S. spends untold billions (much of which is hidden in the classified intelligence budget) on its intelligence agencies but they failed to anticipate the WTC attack because they had no way of putting together the clues possessed by different agencies.

The intelligence community has reacted to that failure in a number of ways, one of which is to experiment with blogs and wikis where intelligence personnel can share related information on a real time basis, rather than sending reports through a bureaucratic thicket and hoping that they will survive the trip.

It was an interesting article. Many of us have a fascination for spy stuff and Thompson writes entertainingly about what is usually a grim business.

Another thought, however, came to mind after reading the article: It's easy to become wrapped up in the intelligence game, much like becoming wrapped up in chess, where the fascination of strategy and tactics is everything. The difference is that in chess, there is no reason to play the game other than for the pleasure of it, or in a few cases for the acclaim one can receive from one's peers. The game itself is morally neutral.

The intelligence game, on the other hand, is played in order to advance national interests as defined for better or worse by the political process. Politicians decide the direction and speed of the ship of state, and the spooks try to spot in advance the icebergs in its path along with other ships in the vicinity that might offer resistance. It's obvious that if the captain and crew sail the ship due north, it will soon encounter icebergs and the intelligence services will be very busy.

The point is that intelligence is a reactive profession, even when it is aggressively pursuing some strategic objective. By its nature, it seldom asks how the world got into the situation it is now in, only what is happening now or will happen in the future. Richard Clarke, advisor on terrorism to the president, wrote "Why do they hate us?" and the president asked that very question in his address to the nation after September 11. Clarke never answered it. The president stated that they hated us because of our freedoms and our open society. Clarke was the more honest man. Bush simply lied, because the truth contradicts our national story so completely that the American people would dismiss it without thinking. Many people in the middle east hate us because we treated them badly and stole their oil for nearly a hundred years, telling ourselves (and them) that we were bringing civilization to the middle east.

Like the householders in the parable above, we have created something dangerous that could be kept out of sight and mind for a long time. When bad things started happening, we created clever fixes in order not to face reality and to prolong the good times. Eventually, what we have created has found its way to our back yard and under our house. Then it is too late; all choices are bad.

There is simply no substitute for realism. Things have a way of coming around; deceiving ourselves as to the cause of our troubles guarantees that there will be further bad consequences. Exhausting our cleverness producing fixes without solving underlying problems guarantees disaster, including in this case more 9/11s.

If you are one of those unfortunate souls infected with hepatitis-C, there is a cure: a form of interferon produced by Hoffman-La Roche and Schering Plough the surface of whose molecule is covered with a polyethylene glycol (PEG) molecule that causes the drug to persist in the body. The only hitch is that, in the profit-maximizing spirit of capitalism, the manufacturers have set the price of the drug at approximately #13,500.00/year, more than $1,000 per month. Most of the victims of hepatitis-C live in the poorest nations of the world, and $1,000 amounts to more than their entire annual income. Since Hoffman-La Roche and Schering Plough hold patents on the medication, manufacturing it inexpensively is all but out of the question for the poorer countries, so the victims must simply do without treatment and die from the virus.

Charging what the traffic will bear is a long-honored principle of capitalism. There is no doubt that Hoffman-La Roche and Schering Plough have set their price and output at the point of maximum profit, balancing supply and demand by the monopoly power given to them by the intellectual property laws. That millions may suffer and die from being unable to afford the drug may be an unfortunate result of corporate profit decisions, but corporations owe no duty towards anyone but their stockholders and that duty is to maximize the value of their investment. The fact that people need the medicine is only important to the corporation when that need becomes demand, that is, the willingness to purchase the product coupled with the ability to pay for it. The market itself, as described by economists, is perfectly happy to let millions perish as long as it "clears," I.e., supply and demand are balanced by the free wheeling and dealing of buyers and sellers.

Clearly, this is an amoral, if not evil, system, even though the managers and executives (and even stockholders) of Hoffman-La Roche and Schering Plough may be persons of the highest integrity, generosity and compassion. They cannot escape the corporate imperative of profit-maximizing, whose outcome is both impeccably logical but at the same time insane. The health of millions is sacrificed so that the makers of health-giving medicines can make as much money as possible from their monopolies.

Occasionally there is good news. British researchers have discovered a PEG-interferon as effective as the current product but which does not infringe on Hoffman-La Roche and Schering Plough's patents and which will be made available to patients at very low cost. Instead of placing the PEG molecule on the outside of the interferon protein, the researches have discovered how to place it inside the molecule. The British publication New Scientist has the details.

So the good guys will probably win this round and millions will have access to treatment they would otherwise not be able to afford. But this single happy ending does not solve the ethical, moral and political problems presented by an industry that exists ostensibly to save lives and at the same time exists to maximize its profits, interests that are almost diametrically opposed. The fabulous profits the pharmaceutical corporations have raked in over the past twenty or thirty years have enabled them to purchase disproportionate influence over legislators and regulators to the detriment of the public. This is a problem that will have to be faced before long.

British biologist Richard Dawkins recently published The God Delusion, a scathing denunciation of religion in all its forms that attributes most of the evils of the world to religious belief. A number of rebuttals have been published in the mass media, but the Mahablog has one of the best:

I agree with Dawkins on many points. For example, I agree with him (and Sam Harris) that good socialization is a better prerequisite for moral and ethical behavior than religious belief. I agree that much religion is a stew of shams and inconsistencies and superstition that people use as an emotional crutch. What Dawkins writes about religion is, IMO, generally true of that part of religion he is writing about.

Unfortunately, like every other fundamentalist atheist I’ve ever encountered, he is profoundly ignorant about religion as a whole. The small part of religion he knows and writes about is not representative of the whole. He’s like a really backward space alien who lands on the North Pole and assumes the whole planet is covered by ice. And, because he doesn’t respect religion enough to study it, he remains willfully ignorant of it. This is, pure and simple, elective ignorance, which is the hallmark of a fanatic.

Mahablog: Richard Dawkins and Fundamentalist Atheism

Now that the Democrats have won the 110th Congress, a chorus of Washington wise men have suddenly decided that the new majority should embrace bipartisanship.

<snark>
How appropriate! After twelve years of demonstrating their commitment to collegiality and bipartisanship, the Republicans have much wisdom to impart to the incoming Democrats on how to go about being bipartisan:

Tom DeLay could instruct on mid-decade redistricting;

Newt Gingrich on impeaching presidents of the opposite party;

Dick Cheney on courtesy towards senators of the opposite party;

Mark Foley on youth outreach;

Dennis Hastert on transparency and openness in government;

Duke Cunningham on honesty and integrity in government;

Trent Lott on coiffure;

Chip Pickering on net neutrality;

Virgil Goode on religious tolerance;

John McCain on how to fool people into thinking you are moderate and bipartisan;

The Washington common wisdom is correct; the Democrats have much to learn from their Republican colleagues.
</snark>

Thomas Palley's weblog contains an interesting article on the worldwide phenomenon of asset inflation that has characterized the U.S. (and World) economy over the past thirty years and especially the last five years. Palley lists seven factors that explain the bubble: 1) Increased income inequality; 2) Increased profit shares; 3) Taxation policy (favoring the wealthy); 4) Export-led growth; 5) Lower central bank interest rates; 6) Credit market innovations; 7) Demographic trends (baby boomers investing for retirement).

Palley's analysis make sense. When you raise the average person's income, he will usually spend it to raise his standard of living. Not so in the case of the wealthy, who already have a high standard of living. The wealthy invest their additional income, principally in stock and hard assets that are likely to increase in value. They have little incentive to purchase bonds, since interest rates are so low. The predictable result is the bidding up of asset prices. Thus the recent massive tax cuts for the wealthy have had little positive effect on the lower 90% of the American people, while they have maintained high stock values in the face of an increasingly weak economy. The last time this happened was in the 1920s.

The “supply-side” collateral shortage hypothesis and asset “demand-side” hypothesis have radically different public policy implications. The former views asset price bubbles as largely benevolent, reflecting the market’s attempt to solve collateral shortages. Policy may even wish to encourage bubbles by further lowering interest rates, thereby increasing asset values and collateral.

The latter sees things very differently. The rise in asset prices reflects significant adverse trends regarding rising income inequality and shifts in income distribution to profits. It also reflects the distorting effect of excessive export-led growth and weak global demand that have driven low interest rates. Furthermore, asset price inflation aggravates income inequality since it is tantamount to a terms-of-trade improvement for the wealthy, whose assets are now worth more. Consequently, workers must give over more to acquire retirement assets, and they are also vulnerable to price declines. Lastly, asset price inflation creates a form of economic lock-in since attempts to alter income distribution or taxes can undermine asset prices, potentially causing financial crisis. This is particularly so if asset purchases have been credit financed.

Finally, the collateral shortage hypothesis camouflages a regressive political economy. Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz’s work on credit rationing shows how economies can be constrained by lack of collateral that limits access to credit. This is a real problem in developing countries where wealth inequality means that most have no collateral, inhibiting their entrepreneurial possibilities. The asset boom - collateral shortage hypothesis implicitly puts this insight in the service of developing country elites who own most of the wealth, encouraging policies that further raise the value of their assets. Look for this idea to soon show up at the IMF and World Bank.

To this amateur economist, Palley's analysis bodes ill for most of the world's peoples, with rising inequality leading to increased hopelessness among the overwhelming majority owning no substantial assets which can be collateralized and thus with no access to capital. The growing gulf between the fabulously wealthy 1% and the rest of us who are experiencing more and more economic stress (or worse), increases the likelihood of political and economic instability, with all the pain and suffering that invariably accompany them.

Not a pretty picture. Look around and see for yourself if Pally is on the wrong track.

World Asset Prices: What’s Really Going on?