22 November 2015. Why is Wall Street Bankrolling Chilly Hilly?

Bernie’s campaign is starting to punch back at Chilly Hilly. Good on them! You tried being polite and decent… you got the Italian Stallion up the ass without Vaseline in response. Now, it’s time to take off the gloves and give Hilly a taste of her own medicine!

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Chilly Hilly is raking in the contributions from Wall Street, corporations, and fatcat individuals. Bernie isn’t only not accepting their money… he’s only looking for modest contributions from rank n’ filers. Therefore, they’re doing their best to put the Whore of Wall Street… Chilly Hilly… into the White House. Remember, the Clintons gave us NAFTA and “welfare reform” the last time around. They’re phony-baloney semi-Repugs. The Clintons also destabilised Federal Yugoslavia and backed the drunkard Yeltsin. Hilly would gut Social Security, go on a warmongering toot that’d outdo GWB, and embrace trade agreements that’d send most of the rest of the remaining American industrial jobs to low-wage sweatshop countries.

Hilly is the candidate of the Big Money oligarchs. Bernie is the candidate of the workaday people. You CAN make YOUR voice heard. GET OFF YOUR DUPA AND VOTE. VOTE. We must keep Hilly out of the White House. It’s that simple…

BMD

This IS a “Read n’ Heed”… Crony Capitalism: Stockman is Disgusted with Own Party

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David Stockman, a former congressman and director of the OMB under President Reagan, is disgusted with his party. He’s a participant in what I refer to as the current civil war among Republicans… the fight on the part of traditional conservatives to get their party back from extremists. Stockman understands just how far it’s ventured from its conservative moorings. He obviously finds much to condemn in liberal approaches to the economy (he eschews Keynesian economics altogether and champions his own form of extremism in a return to the gold standard). What’s interesting, however, is his ire for today’s so-called “conservatives”, who created a monster… crony capitalism… the condemnation of which sounds more like Senator Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren.

Crony capitalism is the use of government power to achieve business success. It isn’t the reward and punishment of actors’ performance in a free market, but rather a corruption that depends on sweetheart deals in the corridors of Washington. Of course, those kinds of deals aren’t open to everyone, but only those with sufficient resources to fund campaigns, pay lobbyists, and take part in the revolving door through which various actors move in and out of government and the industry they represent (which is why Stockman also argues for campaign finance reform). The small business man is still left to his own devices. Crony capitalism means that profits are garnered through the manipulation of power and influence and not through ingenuity and contributions to the real economy. On the first page of his tome, The Great Deformation, Stockman calls it a “mutant régime”, where the economy has become a “speculative casino” that “swindles the masses and enriches the few”. It isn’t a fair capitalism, that lifts all boats, but rather it depends on handouts to the rich and powerful at the expense of the rest of us.

In what Stockman calls “socialism for the rich”, government is used for private purposes, profits are privatised and losses are socialised (paid for by taxpayers). This became possible due to the elimination of the Glass-Steagall Act, the onset of easy money, and guarantees of a bailout should things turn sour. Thus, actors stood to gain huge rewards while simultaneously being shielded from the consequences of failure. What Stockman refers to as “Main Street” loses either way. Whilst the financial sector grew to outrageous proportions, so has economic inequality. “The real net worth of the ‘bottom’ 90 percent dropped by one-fourth” and the growth of economic output is at its slowest since the Civil War. Real median family income declined along with the creation of full-time middle-class jobs.

There are distant culprits in Stockman’s tale, such as FDR, but given the economic golden era under his hero, President Eisenhower, the real problem lies closer to our day. Despite Republicans’ idealisation of President Reagan, for example, Stockman reminds us that, under the wrong influence of Milton Friedman and, later, Alan Greenspan, he was one of the first to argue that deficits didn’t matter. Much like his more profligate heir, President George W Bush, he engaged in unnecessary defence spending as he cut taxes. Republicans no longer saw tax cuts as dependent on a balanced budget, but they became an end in their own right (a “stunning denial of reality” that stood Republican fiscal orthodoxy “on its head”). Both contrast with President Eisenhower’s preference for balancing the budget over tax cuts, disdain of adventures abroad, and slashing defence budgets, warning us of a rising “military-industrial complex.”

Stockman further clarified, “Rather than a permanent era of robust free market growth, the Reagan Revolution ushered in two spells of massive statist policy stimulation before it finally ran out of steam”. Both “fiscal profligacy” and “Wall Street-coddling” created a “temporary spree of phony prosperity”. Stockman is thus disgusted by his party’s rhetoric of the free market (it’s not free); individual responsibility (there’s no longer a cord connecting actions to consequences for the rich and powerful); as well as its rants about the entitlement society versus the job creators. Thus, he turns the rhetoric around. The “entitlement expectation” is on the part of financiers and corporate leaders who expect the government to support them. As he told Bill Moyers, “There have been so many bailouts, there has been so much abuse and misuse of government power for private ends … that now we have an entitled class in this country that is far worse than … the welfare queens that Ronald Reagan used to talk about”. he argued that they own Congress “lock, stock and barrel”.

7 August 2014

Mary Barker

Deseret News

http://www.deseretnews.com/user/comments/865608270/Crony-capitalism-Stockman-is-disgusted-with-own-party.html#cId_28682456

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Editor:

“Conservatism” in the USA is now overrun with those who’d make Bismarck, Diefenbaker, Ike, Stolypin, and Franco do a double “face-palm”. They’d all toss down a good stiff double and they’d do another “face-palm”… people like Limbaugh, Norquist, Boehner, Cruz, Rubio, Coulter, and Dreher are all classic Neoliberals… there’s not a single Conservative amongst them. For instance, let’s take Dreher. He’s typical of the non-conservative “New Conservatives”. The first given about a True Conservative is LOCAL PATRIOTISM. You saw that in the authors of I’ll Take My Stand (the classic manifesto of Southern Nationalism)… you saw that in George Wallace (as a Dixiecrat, he was more Conservative than the righties I named)… you saw that in William F Buckley with his ties to Connecticut. For that matter, Bernie Sanders is more Conservative than Dreher is, he’s been in Vermont for the last 50 years, and you couldn’t blow him out with an A-bomb! Dreher, on the other hand is a typical peripatetic rootless Neoliberal… Brooklyn to Texas to the District to Greater Baton Rouge… all within five years! Yowza… I pity his wife and kids being subjected to that. NOT CONSERVATIVE, chum (I’m more “conservative” than that… you couldn’t get me out of the Northeast unless you set off the Tsar Bomba underneath me).

Dreher TALKS small government… but he was a stink-tanker in the District… the quintessential insider job. In other words, he talks the talk, but he refuses to walk the walk when it benefits him. He was with the Rutherford Institute… the founder, one John Whitehead, is a nutter who believes that the government is going to use a giant computer to oversee all the details of people’s lives (stop cars via remote control and control our thoughts, that sort of unbalanced rot). Anyone with good sense knows that such a project would require oodles of cash… cash that it wouldn’t get as it’d cut into the lifestyles of corrupt pols. It’d get just enough funding to put it seemingly in place (so the pols could all grab bragging rights), with 99.9 percent of its findings going straight into the shitter… like in the late USSR, where KGB officers wrote reports that no one read, no one acted upon, and no one cared about.

Dreher’s a sham religious “conservative”… he sure didn’t look deeply into the past of Dmitri Royster to check who ordained him! To think that Dreher slammed the RCs for being soft on paedophiles (Rod, there’s a good deal of that amongst us, too… if you had half a brain, you’d see it)… I wonder what he thinks of JP sheltering Brittain the Kiddie Porn King and of Mr Justice Mainella’s scathing opinion of Seraphim Storheim. Of course, there was Yustinian’s sudden fall from grace (a combination of sticky fingers in the cookie jar and guys coming forward that he propositioned them) and the saga of the dippy nuns in Maryland. Being linked with the New Right doesn’t make one a “religious conservative”… indeed, I’m LEFT, but I’m a “religious conservative”, as are others I know… as is His Holiness! That’s the most delicious irony… Dreher, as a member of a ROCOR parish, has to smile at HH slamming the American embargo on Cuba, American adventuring throughout the world, and the crook capitalist system.

Dreher isn’t alone… he ISN’T the worst of the lot… but he IS typical. Let him stay in Louisiana for the next twenty years, then, he could (perhaps) call himself a Conservative. Until then, he, like all of his New Right pals, is a poseur, and I’m going to say so. There isn’t a shred of truth in their pretence… they have money, I don’t, so, I know that some will “follow the money”… so be it. Conservatism is dead… the “conservatives” killed it… Slobberin’ Ronnie did… Bubba did (he was a Dixiecrat and Sam Walton pal, so, he was no “liberal”)… GWB did… and Norquist did. The corpse is beginning to stink… who’ll give it decent burial? It’s rather too much, isn’t it?

Conservatism… it doesn’t go bump in the night… the GOP made it so! Think on that…

BMD

A View from Moscow by Valentin Zorin: American Hysteria on Crimea’s Reunification Proves Washington’s Dangerous Political Games

This illustrates the paranoia now regnant in Washington… the inmates run the asylum and Zbig cries, “Off with their heads”

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The news of Crimea’s reunification with Russia put Barack Obama out of sorts. He abandoned all that he learned at Harvard, namely history, geography, international law, as well as the rules of politeness, convenience, and goodwill; he rejected the decorum required of him as head of state and started listing by name all the Moscow officials who displeased him, threatening Russia with punitive measures. The hysterics in Washington on Crimea’s reunification is evidence of the dangerous political games hatched in Washington offices. By receiving the Ukraine’s so-called Prime Minister recently, Washington showed the stakes that it places on the contemporary Ukraine.

Speaking in terms of what politicians refer to as a “tall order”, the Ukraine is no more than a pawn in Washington’s extensive and dangerous political game. The stakes are really much higher. In fact, on the banks of the Potomac, one sees markedly poor leadership, with a related drop in prestige of the USA in today’s world. The leadership in question… the US strategic goals… suffered and continues to suffer substantial setbacks in the half a century since the end of the Second World War. Military and political defeats from Vietnam to Iraq to Afghanistan, the loss in Latin America of what Washington for 200 years saw as its backyard, the economic crisis that erupted on Wall Street in 2008, and the astronomical 17 trillion USD (600 trillion Roubles. 18.7 trillion CAD. 18.3 trillion AUD. 12.4 trillion Euros. 10.3 trillion UK Pounds) US federal debt seriously damaged the much-desired American leadership of the world.

The most important thing was that Washington hoped that once they won the Cold War that they’d deal with a weak Russia, which would no longer bar their way to world domination, but these hopes are finally dashed. They clearly didn’t expect Russia to bounce back to the forefront of world politics under a President recognised as one of the most authoritative world leaders. As for Barack Obama, the 44th occupant of the White House, who sought to improve things for the USA, he runs the risk of joining the list of failed presidents. Last autumn, the USA witnessed a government shutdown. The country lived in conditions of dual power, in a Congressional/Presidential standoff. In autumn this year, the USA is due to hold midterm elections, with Obama suffering his worst approval rating thus far.

Eager to lay their hands on the Ukraine, the USA paid a lot of money and made Herculean efforts to assert its position, dig in its heels, and display its strength, so that they could deploy military bases next to Russia’s border in future. By giving a resounding rebuff to such plans, Moscow not only took care of Russia’s national security, which is important in itself, but it also cut the Washington hawks down to size. These stakes define much not only in today’s world, but also in tomorrow’s.

20 March 2014

Valentin Zorin

Voice of Russia World Service

http://voiceofrussia.com/2014_03_22/US-hysteria-on-Crimeas-reunification-proves-Washingtons-dangerous-political-games-3580/

http://rus.ruvr.ru/2014_03_20/Opasnie-igri-Vashingtona-3574/

3 March 2014. Are the Posturing Neocon Pigs Going to Try to Fuck Up the Paralympics in Sochi?

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It’s amazing how Washington is standing behind the criminal junta in Kiev. The Rump Rada keeps people out using Svoboda toughs, yet the USA slobbers all over them. Today, the USA refused visas to an agricultural mission. Yeah, to a bunch of farmers, agronomists, and scientists… good going, Obama! You’re really showing resolve… by banning people who have nothing to do with fucking up your attempt to stab the Ukraine in the back!

Amerikantsy are self-righteous smarmy bastards who think that the entire world has to kiss their ass or they get their nose out of joint. Who kills civilians in the Hindu Kush using drones? It’s NOT Russia! Who destroyed the Christian community of Iraq through a war of aggression? It’s NOT Russia! Who keeps the most political prisoners in the world (in the Gitmo Gulag) and has the larger per cap imprisonment rate in the world? It’s NOT Russia! Who kidnaps people throughout the world and brings them to its country for kangaroo court show trials? It’s NOT Russia!  Who’s put a vindictive trade embargo on Cuba since 1961? It’s NOT Russia! Who ran “black sites” in compliant foreign countries (including the Ukraine!) where they tortured people that they didn’t like? It’s NOT Russia!

NO SIR, IT WASN’T RUSSIA!

IT WAS THE USA…

Which has become the “Prison House of all the Nations”…

Why does Obama have his knicks in a knot? Oddly enough, this is uniting people of all spectrums, both in the USA and Russia. Everyone’s seeing how the Wall Street-controlled cabal in Washington is a bunch of terrorists in suits. Don’t get me wrong… they’re polite… they’re well-dressed… they’re not loud… they don’t cuss in public, smoke, or take a drink. Yet, they’re evil to the bone, they make Osama bin Laden look like a Boy Scout. I’ll betcha that the next stunt that the neocons are going to pull is to try to fuck up the Paralympics. They’ll make a big fuss and won’t allow American athletes to take part. That’s what they’ll do, the heartless bastards, I’ll betcha. They don’t give a busted rat’s ass that these folks have worked their hearts out for years… that doesn’t matter to greedster perverts who want to make the world safe for Wall Street. That sickens me most of all. The USA is acting like a spoilt child… and we get tarred with the blame for being its citizens. Note well the deafening silence from “progressives” (such as  the sleazy crowd at The Nation)… that’s why I generally don’t like “liberals” (in the Anglosphere sense). They’re just Lite Neoliberals who have no intention of giving up their ill-gotten gains and perks as upper-income upper-middles (“conservatives” are at least honest… they don’t coat their greed and grasping with a treacly and offensive exterior).

We hung people after World War II for running concentration camps, torturing people, and waging aggressive war. Methinks that it’s time to get out the noose again (and have a bipartisan gallows on K Street… let’s get ’em ALL whilst we’re at it).

Don’t be silent!

BMD