Category Archives: Myths Exposed

A vote against Big Government is a vote for Big Business

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Rest assured that if you are angry and want to vote against the Democrats by voting for a Republican you will be voting for Big Business.  You will be voting for Wall Street, private contractor wars and world anger and hatred for the United States.  You will be voting for more of the Bush years.  Republicans will say and do anything to get elected but their actions speak louder than words.  They are all about back room deals with Big Business. 

Here is one proof:

In 8 years controlling the executive branch and 6 years of that controlling the legislative branch, the Republicans did the only major health care initiative that I know of – the Prescription Drug Benefit known as Medicare Part D.

Take a look at this article concerning Part D:

http://taxvox.taxpolicycenter.org/blog/_archives/2009/5/14/4186168.html

The initial 10 year cost of the program by the CBO in 2003 was $395 billion.   The current 10 year cost cited below totals out at $999.9 billion.  All costs cited above are intermediate estimates.

Table III.C19.—Operations of the Part D Account in the SMI Trust Fund (Cash Basis) during Calendar Years 2004-2018

[In billions]

Income Expenditures Account
Calendar year Premium income1 General revenue2 Transfers from States3 Interest and other Total Benefit payments4 Adminis-trative expense Total Net change Balance at end of year5
Historical data:
2004 — $0.4 — — $0.4 $0.4 — $0.4 — —
2005 — 1.1 — — 1.1 1.1 — 1.1 — —
2006 $3.5 39.2 $5.5 $0.0 48.2 47.1 $0.3 47.4 $0.8 $0.8
2007 4.0 38.8 6.9 0.0 49.7 48.8 0.9 49.7 0.0 0.8
2008 5.0 37.3 7.1 0.0 49.4 49.0 0.3 49.3 0.1 0.9
Intermediate estimates:
2009 6.3 6 48.5 7.9 0.0 62.7 62.6 0.4 63.0 −0.2 0.7
2010 7.2 6 50.7 8.3 0.0 66.2 65.8 0.4 66.2 0.0 0.7
2011 8.4 55.5 8.8 0.0 72.8 72.3 0.4 72.7 0.0 0.7
2012 9.6 60.8 9.4 0.0 79.9 79.4 0.5 79.8 0.1 0.8
2013 10.6 66.1 10.1 0.0 86.8 86.2 0.5 86.7 0.1 0.9
2014 11.6 72.4 10.8 0.0 94.9 94.3 0.5 94.8 0.1 0.9
2015 13.3 6 79.9 11.5 0.0 104.8 104.2 0.5 104.8 0.1 1.0
2016 13.8 6 88.2 12.6 0.0 114.7 114.0 0.5 114.6 0.1 1.1
2017 15.9 97.4 13.9 0.0 127.3 126.6 0.5 127.2 0.1 1.2
2018 17.7 107.8 15.4 0.0 140.9 140.2 0.6 140.8 0.1 1.3
                         

 

AND:

Table III.C23.—Unfunded Part D Obligations from Program Inception through the Infinite Horizon

[Present values as of January 1, 2009; dollar amounts in trillions]

Present value As a percentage of GDP
Unfunded obligations through the infinite horizon1 $0.0 0.0 %
Expenditures 20.3 1.5
Income 20.3 1.5
Beneficiary premiums 2.5 0.2
State transfers 2.2 0.2
General revenue contributions 15.5 1.2
Unfunded obligations from program inception through 20831 0.0 0.0
Expenditures 9.4 1.2
Income 9.4 1.2
Beneficiary premiums 1.2 0.1
State transfers 1.0 0.1
General revenue contributions 7.2 0.9
       

 

15.5 trillion projected out to infinity and 7.2 trillion to 2083.

http://www.cms.hhs.gov/ReportsTrustFunds/downloads/tr2009.pdf

Here are some other quotes from articles:

“Just to be clear, the Medicare drug benefit was a pure giveaway with a gross cost greater than either the House or Senate health reform bills how being considered. Together the new bills would cost roughly $900 billion over the next 10 years, while Medicare Part D will cost $1 trillion.”

 “when the legislation came up for its final vote on Nov. 22, 2003, it was failing by 216 to 218 when the standard 15-minute time allowed for voting came to an end.

What followed was one of the most extraordinary events in congressional history. The vote was kept open for almost three hours while the House Republican leadership brought massive pressure to bear on the handful of principled Republicans who had the nerve to put country ahead of party. The leadership even froze the C-SPAN cameras so that no one outside the House chamber could see what was going on.”

http://www.forbes.com/2009/11/19/republican-budget-hypocrisy-health-care-opinions-columnists-bruce-bartlett.html

“By the design of the program, the federal government is not permitted to negotiate prices of drugs with the drug companies, as federal agencies do in other programs. The Veterans Administration, which is allowed to negotiate drug prices and establish a formulary, pays 58% less for drugs, on average, than Medicare Part D.[32] For example, Medicare pays $785 for a year’s supply of Lipitor (atorvastatin), while the VA pays $520. Medicare pays $1,485 for Zocor, while the VA pays $127.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicare_Part_D [i]

One other thing, if you hear anyone tell you that they do not take any give outs from the government and they are on Part D – they are absolutely wrong.  We will not even have to discuss what they paid into Social Security and Medicare and how much more they are taking out because:

-they are living longer

-the increasing cost of health that was way off when it was calculated in their employment years   

They never paid anything into Part D and the money they pay for their drugs is very small compared to the cost of the drug.  The 1 trillion dollar deficit over 10 years includes what they pay.

So, here we have it – Republicans did this:

-Gave the drug companies and insurance companies a trillion dollar handout over the next 10 years

-Total Cost to the tax payer is 15.5 trillion projected out to infinity

-Made sure we could not negotiate these costs in bulk

1 trillion dollars over 10 years for Part D is 100 billion dollars a year for 10 years.  It is more than the current estimate for the Health Care Reform bill (currently priced at 900 billion for 10 years in the Senate bill)!

Hello – If you vote for a Republican you are voting for Wall Street to get away with more than they already did – do you think the United States can survive this???

Folks, we need to understand that a vote against Big Government is a vote for Big Business.

My background is in business.  I was an engineer, low and middle manager in small, intermediate and large businesses.  I know it from the inside.  My significant other retired from the GAO so I know this side as well.  Here are some observations:

Government calls it tax => Business calls it profit – it all boils down to more money you pay from your pocket!

Government has programs that are wasteful (but not nearly as many as you might think) => Big business gives huge bonuses and stock options

Government has its share of inefficient employees => Big business keeps hiring and promoting worthless people that suck up the bottom line and many stay on when the company is sold

Government is too big => Big business is too big to fail

If you think there is a “free market” that makes Big Business better than Big Government you have bought hook, line and sinker into Republican propaganda – Big Business is NO better by any of the standards you want to compare with Big Government.  The best thing we can do is keep Big Business and Big Government at each other (see http://mixermuse.com/blog/2010/01/04/free-market-eitheror-government/ ). 

You gave Bush 8 years to lavish riches on Big Business – please give the Democrats time to try to reverse and offset those years.  If you are unhappy in eight years vote them out!  If you vote them out now you may as well say goodbye to the USA because the collapse we had on Wall Street will pale in comparison to what you are going to get!

[i]   In researching this paper I found what I think are glaring mistakes for the Wikipedia Medicare Part D article cited here.  I have put these comments in the talk section for this article and plan to correct it if there are no objections.

“Current “Program costs” Section is:

As of January 2006, the expected per capita drug spending, reported by the Department of Health and Human services, was $2,250, making the total cost of the program $42.75 Billion.[6] This budget compares with revenues of $54 Billion for Pfizer and $48.6 Billion for Johnson & Johnson, the two largest pharmaceutical companies. Kaiser Family Foundation, estimates the 2006 costs at $37.4 billion.[2] Total costs through 2015 are estimated to be $724 billion. Some of these revenues will be provided by “clawback” of revenues currently provided to the states for Medicaid. The “clawback” is a mechanism by which federal expenditures that benefit states (specifically regarding dual eligibles) are reimbursed back to the federal government. This reimbursement starts at 90%, but then falls to 75% in 2015. Figures also depend on per capita estimates of dual eligible expenditures and the number of dual eligibles that receive benefits.

As of January 2008, total Medicare spending for prescription drug benefits was projected to drop from $40.5 billion in 2007 to $36 billion in 2008. One factor contributing to lower costs is the increased use of generic drugs.[4] Shortly after the release of the 2008 Medicare Trustees’ Report,[25] the Chief Actuary testified that the 10-year cost of Medicare drug benefit is 37% lower than originally projected in 2003, and 17% percent lower than last year’s projections.[26]

In August 2008, CMS estimated that the 10-year cost of the program would be $395 billion, down from the original estimate of $634 billion.[15] (note: This link is dead.) In late October 2008, USA Today reported that costs were down by $6 billion, or 12%, for the fiscal year ended September 30. Costs for the program were approximately one third less than originally predicted.[27]

Proposed New “Program costs” Section:

As of the end of year 2008, the average annual per beneficiary cost spending for Part D, reported by the Department of Health and Human Services, was $1,517 [44], making the total expenditures of the program for 2008 $49.3 (billions). Total intermediate, projected expenditures from 2009 through 2018 are estimated to be $999.9 (billions). [45]

New “Program costs” References:

44. ^ 2009 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE BOARDS OF TRUSTEES OF THE FEDERAL HOSPITAL INSURANCE AND FEDERAL SUPPLEMENTARY MEDICAL INSURANCE TRUST FUNDS, Table II.B1.—Medicare Data for Calendar Year 2008, Page 5 (Page 11 in pdf)

45. ^ 2009 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE BOARDS OF TRUSTEES OF THE FEDERAL HOSPITAL INSURANCE AND FEDERAL SUPPLEMENTARY MEDICAL INSURANCE TRUST FUNDS, Table III.C19.—Operations of the Part D Account in the SMI Trust Fund (Cash Basis) during Calendar Years 2004-2018, Page 120 (Page 126 in pdf)

Notes for Talk section viewers:

– There are many links that are dead in this article. The data is also very old.

– I will try to update the article one section at a time starting with the program cost section. If there are no objections or requested additions I will update the “Program costs” section on 2/1

– The hyperlink for reference 44 is http://www.cms.hhs.gov/ReportsTrustFunds/downloads/tr2009.pdf

– The hyperlink for refernce 45 is also http://www.cms.hhs.gov/ReportsTrustFunds/downloads/tr2009.pdf

– Any comments or feedback is highly welcome…”

The Criminal and The Human – A Rational Approach to Liberalism

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Desperation is pain expressed. Pain necessarily is totalitarian. It encompasses the whole of the person’s existence that experiences it. It demands the person’s full attention. It requires action. There is no free choice in the face of pain. There is only obedience. The person must find a way to stop the pain. Their continued existence depends on finding a way out. There is no `other’ in intense pain. There is no morality. There is no ideology. Rationality is meaningless. There is only the requirement to act immediately. The problem of pain may pose no solution. There may be no hope of surviving. The required action may have no goal other than a desire to stop the pain. The action may only find its termination in death. There may be no other way to return to the living, to the cessation of pain, to the place of rest and repose within existence – the place where the other can have significance.

When a person is in a fight for continued existence there is no `other’ that matters. There is only the imminence of pain. As pain increases the need to act increases. Conversely, the human capacity for the experience of the other decreases. The other as law, morality, concern, ideals, etc. loses its relevance to the person in pain. The self is necessarily projected to the absolute in intense, mortal pain until the self is extinguished in death and is no more. It is important to understand that there is a progression from extreme pain to repose in existence. In rest, the cessation of pain, we can be with others. We can attend to others. We can care. We can show concern. We can love. We can find meaning in being with others. We can sense the necessity of our collectivity, our shared identity, our debt to history via language.

These polarities, pain and repose in existence define our days as humans. There are perhaps those that for biological reasons we do not fully understand are not fully human. They have pathologies such as a serial killer that make them fundamentally different. They look human but they have no soul, no natural response to the other that most of us know and understand in our repose. Pathology, deviation from the norm is real but by definition it is not common. Therefore, it is not essentially human. It is more like a tornado or absolute non-recognition of human. It is totally oblivious to existence as human and owes no requirement for action to the human. It only follows its own necessity for action.

As human we exist in-between pain and repose. To the degree that we experience pain we resort to desperation. Thus, we become criminal. We become self-centered. We take advantage of others. We think more and more of ourselves. The other is sacrificed on the altar of me. The criminal by definition is totalitarian. The criminal is not obliged to act in any way other than its own desire. It has no ideology, no ideals, no concern for the other. It is us to the extent that we experience pain.

At this point, let me add that there is such a thing as phantom pain. There is the perception of threat that sets off all the alarms of pain, the adrenaline to fight or flee without any perceived pain by an outside observer. Anxiety may have no apparent reason to an outside observer. Phantom pain may have a biological component or imaginary. Biological pain that is not apparent to the outside observer can result from physical pathologies, deficiencies or deviation from norms that are purely cellular, hormonal, etc.. As human we have also have the capacity for imagination. Humans can project into the future. We can envision a future, an ideal and take actions to apprehend that future. This capacity also has the ability to deviate from a positive apprehension of the future to a negative apprehension of the future. We can dread the future. We can imagine that the future holds pain and despair. This may for example be at the psychological root of an addiction (not necessarily the physical, biological root of an addiction). We can project the future and apprehend it as negative, undesirable as pain. In this case, all the previously described dynamics of pain are present in the imminence of pain.

To the degree that we act, think, idealize from selfishness, from `me’ at the cost of the other, we express our capacity for suffering, for desperately attempting to alleviate pain. We are only concerned with our survival and not with anyone else’s survival. The driving instinct to self-survival blinds us to the plight of anyone else that may be suffering. For example, we may perceive that we are being taxed to death, threatening our ability to provide food and shelter to ourselves and our family. We may imagine that the future is bleak and we will be living on the street in freezing cold without food. We can do this all the while living in a comfortable 3000 square foot house with our family and a job that pays $75,000 a year. In the perception of this pain there is a need to act, to vote for politicians that we think will lower our taxes and thereby relieve our fears. However, the brute, realistic fact is that there are those that are living in freezing cold with no food. There are those dying in emergency rooms with no health care. There are those that are suffering in a real sense with real pain. The question becomes is my pain really more important than those that are much more apparently suffering?

The option to think this thought is not present for one that is in mortal pain but the possibility for suspension of one’s perceived pain is possible for less extreme situations. The possibility to suspend ones imagined fears for the sake of the other is part of human existence. This, for example, is envisioned in the act of Jesus dying for the sins of the world. We also have the capacity to “die for the sins of the world”. We can refuse to act automatically to our perceived pain and recognize the real pain of the other. We can judge our pain to be less important that the suffering, homeless child. This capacity is purely human.

We can do this because in our repose we can experience ourselves as community, as necessarily understanding ourselves with others. We certainly see proof of this necessity in language. Language fashions how we understand ourselves and the world. Language enables us project into the future, make sense of our past and even make sense of our present. Yet, we did not invent language. It was given as a gift. It already assumes a history, those that went before, those that forged words and thoughts that are essential tools we were freely given.

Aristotle said, “Of all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved.” The reason he said this was because as humans in repose, as essentially a “we” we have the ability to defer to the other. We can make judgments that suspend our desires, our pain and act to relieve worse suffering of the other. This does not mean we always choose this course of action. Pain whether real or perceived pulls us under at times and causes us to act selfishly. This is also purely human. Many philosophers have traditionally thought of our necessary capacity for repose in existence as our higher self. What they mean by this is that we have the innate capacity for acting to relieve the suffering of the other. We can project this capacity into a future and act accordingly. We can think, fashion ideologies that reinforce our higher self. Conversely, we can fashion ideologies that project into the future to reinforce our fears and the need to act selfishly from our pain. We are the ultimate arbiters of how we envision our future. We can indulge our fears or we can hear the cries of the other. We can vote for politicians that we think will appease our suffering or we can vote for politicians that will ask us to sacrifice for the sake of the other. What is required in how we make these judgments is wisdom.

Wisdom is true judgment. Wisdom weighs all the elements of decision correctly. Wisdom is very difficult. For example, we may think all politicians are only out to alleviate their suffering by using politics to enrich themselves and not alleviate the suffering of others. This is the wisdom that true conservatism would teach us. Genuine conservation has the goal of conserving precious resources not for selfishly, perceived goals but for the good of society; so that suffering is addressed efficiently and effectively. When conservatism beats its chest to the Darwinian drum of Ayne Rand1, the Machiavellian war of all against all in defense of an isolated self, a “me” that conquers all and merely takes absolute pride in the destruction of the other for my sake, it sanctifies pain. It does not merely react blindly to pain but it fashions an altar to my right to act only for me even in repose. The question that should be raised here is not moral, altruistic, based on shoulds and shouldn’ts but based on wisdom – how we find ourselves in existence pitched between pain and repose.

As necessarily human we live in the regions of language and desperation, concern for the other and the absolutism of immanent pain and suffering. We are not pure unattached egos, gods free of necessity. We certainly have the capacity for absolute and even necessary selfishness as evidenced in mortal pain but we also have the necessary capacity for collectivity, being with others, love, compassion, concern even at our personal expense. Weighing the outcome of our vote in line with the necessity of our repose, our collective obligation may at times concede that a particular politician is acting for their own pain based reasons but the result of their policies may have opposite consequences. They may be individually, morally reprehensible but they may put programs in place that effectively address real suffering. They may also be individually, morally admirable but put programs in place that only protect their constituents perceived pain (i.e. taxes) while turning a blind eye to millions suffering without health care or basic needs. There are many permutations here but the point is that wisdom requires one to weigh the nuances such that the true outcome is obtained, the goal to alleviate suffering in this case2. Let me also state that this is not a simple matter of Republican or Democrat, it is a matter of recognizing who we are necessarily as humans and requiring that our actions are in line with our projected goals. I have used politics as an example but this discussion has extensions and impacts in many areas not simply civic responsibilities.

We are all accountable to ourselves, our higher selves, our essential capacity to defer ourselves for the other. Again, not due to some perceived altruism, moral obligation, demand from a god or an ideology but because to deny the suffering of the other is to deny the repose of our existence. We need not make repose bourgeois. Neither do we need to make our pain absolute as egoism. A guilty conscious is not called for here at all, only the clarity of wisdom and the actions that necessarily follows.

 

_________________

1 While Ayne Rand stated “I am not primarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason” her “reason”s stopped at egoism and the economies of a pain based ideology and could never account for the an equally necessary “we” that is in every way just as much who we are as human as selfishness is in mortal pain. Reason without wisdom goes against who we are, how we find ourselves and fails to truly judge who we are, to see what is in front of us, to take into account the necessary ways we find ourselves in existence.

2 I have also made a similar case in another paper with regard to the free market war of all against all and multinational corporations versus the government. In this case, the interest of repose is best served by their mutual regulation and limitation (see http://mixermuse.com/blog/2010/01/04/free-market-eitheror-government/).

The Latest Republican Attempt to Kill Health Care Reform

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Personally, I would have liked to have seen Lott stay in his position.  It would have been great for the Democrats.  Sort of like the gift of Dick Cheney that keeps on giving…

The majority leader of the Senate is elected by the majority party in the Senate when the term begins.

http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/Majority_Minority_Leaders.htm

The Democrats could not forcibly remove Trent Lott.  Only the Republicans could remove Trent Lott from the majority leadership of the Senate. 

“Political controversy ensued following remarks Lott made on December 5, 2002 at the 100th birthday party of Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. Thurmond ran for President of the United States in 1948 on the Dixiecrat (or States’ Rights) ticket. Lott said: “When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over the years, either.”[3]

Thurmond had based his presidential campaign largely on an explicit racial segregation platform. Lott had attracted controversy before in issues relating to civil rights. As a Congressman, he voted against renewal of the Voting Rights Act, voted against the continuation of the Civil Rights Act and opposed making Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday a federal holiday.[4] The Washington Post reported that Lott had made similar comments about Thurmond’s candidacy in a 1980 rally.[5] Lott gave an interview with Black Entertainment Television explaining himself and repudiating Thurmond’s former views.[6]”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trent_Lott

Trent Lott did not just resign because of what he said during Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday party.  The Republicans did not support him after President Bush would not stand behind him.  Speculation about why President Bush did not stand behind him was because Trent Lott could not get his immigration reform through the Senate.

“President Bush distanced himself from Lott’s remarks, telling an audience the comments “do not reflect the spirit of our country.””

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21973397/

This is yet another ridiculous attempt by the Republicans to kill health care reform.

War on Terrorism

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The implied assumption of a “war on terrorism” is that the war will destroy and annihilate terrorists not create more terrorist.  This old school thought ignores the lesson of history.  A nation can be fought and defeated in war but not an ideology.  To the degree that terrorism incorporates an ideology that forces a conflict between a person’s higher ideals and their daily life it cannot be fought with conventional methods of war.  War in a conventional sense will only intensify and perpetuate the proliferation of the ideology as we have seen.  To the credit of the Bush administration, they did come to see the need for nation building after they blundered into Iraq and Afghanistan (even though they denounced nation building in their election rhetoric).  Moreover, the current military strategy in Afghanistan is control and winning the hearts and minds of the Afghans – nation building. The conventional war failed but now the `war’ has taken some unconventional turns.  Most of all, England should understand the dark side of nation building – colonialism.

Being from the Deep South I certainly saw those that wanted to fight a `war’ against civil rights but the ideology at work in inequality and “all men are created equal” was not a battle that could be fought in conventional terms.  The real source of the conflict was a contradiction in our higher ideals and our daily life traditions (slavery and inequality).  While one can continually insist that a “square is a circle” and go to war against anyone that would suggest different, the inevitable conclusion is that a square is not a circle and when a genuine conflict between our higher ideals and our habits or traditions arise we may fight wars to defeat the dilemma but after much destruction we will find that the dilemma is still there but only worse. 

While I certainly agree that terrorists are criminal thugs.  It would be a fatal mistake to think that they are simply an isolated bunch of criminal thugs.  Whether we like it or not, terrorism has become an ideology of the oppressed, the holy war against the Great Satin.  It highlights Western exploitation and even the perceived cultural invasion of infidel behaviors and ideals.  In our country some would call this evil that promotes sinful behavior and ideas.  If we fail to see how terrorism has morphed from criminal behavior to an ideology that pits higher ideals against a real and perceived evil, we will make the mistake that history has made many times (England comes to mind).  The mistake of the Bush administration was in failing to see how international criminal behavior should be dealt with in a nation where there was no native, functioning justice system.  They drained the swamp to kill the alligator.  

In a nation with a functioning justice system, thugs can be dealt with on a much smaller level than war with laws and justice.  Laws and justice appeal to our higher ideals while criminal narcissism is anarchistic and ultimately self-destructive.  The forces of entropy at work in criminal behavior preclude the behavior from ever posing a collective threat to our higher ideals.  Thus criminal ideals (if there is such a thing) can never attract the masses in any such way as for example, the civil rights struggle did.  Criminal behavior destroys civil society and since humans are as much (if not more) a `they’ (i.e., language which manifest our historical being) as a `me’, we would have to deny ourselves to become complete narcissists and insist on our desires over and above anyone else’s desires (i.e., robbery, murder, rape…criminal behavior).      

On the international scene, if a country does not have a functioning government that can effectively enforce the “rule of law” the international terrorist poses a real problem.  This is where the Bush administration failed.  I am a strong advocate of the foreign aid, education, the United Nations, the international court and to some extent the IMF (International Monetary Fund).  These organizations offer the only real hope I can see to effectively deal with anarchistic nations that harbor criminal thugs (terrorists).  Ideally, they could be a surrogate nation of sorts until the country could support its own justice system.  However, practically the groups have failed (and we fail with them).  We also went to war with them as Bush so clearly demonstrated instead of demanding and providing resources to make these groups better.  War is knee jerk but most of the time not very smart.  In any case for future reference, the interim solution for rouge nations with terrorists should have been the CIA and perhaps Special Forces – small strategic strikes that would not effectively fan the flames of social discontent. 

Whenever and to the extent that we deny our own nations grander and higher ideas for justice and equality we force the tension up and thereby the recruitment of anti-American ideologies in the rest of the world.  When Bush proclaimed that we were going to avenge 911 by going after, killing, lynching, crusading against the terrorists, he may have just as well told the Islamic world that the terrorist were right – we are the Great Satin and join Al Qaeda to become human bombs.  What he should have stated in his rhetoric was that we were going to bring the international criminals to justice.  If we really believe in our justice system and think that it is a model for the world then I think we should bring them here and show the world.  If this is not possible then, as much as I detest it, I would favor covert operations. Instead, we have Dick Cheney declaring torture, illegal imprisonment, and denial of justice (i.e., in a fair and impartial justice system) as a model for the world to emulate.  Is this the great United States of America or just the Great Satin?  If we want to create more human bombs Bush and Cheney are doing a great job.  We need to live up to our higher ideals, demand the rest of the world live up to theirs and listen when we find that our higher ideals may not be the highest ideals.  While being belligerent and “killing all the terrorists” may make some feel good it only makes the problem worse and it is sheer madness to think a good outcome is possible with this strategy.

Some may write this off as mere liberal ridiculousness but I contend that at the heart of liberalism is a well thought and reasoned higher ideology that really has nothing to do with feel good morality or altruism but is just as rational for human social behavior as Darwin was for the natural world.  See http://mixermuse.com/blog/2010/01/19/the-criminal-and-the-human-a-rational-approach-to-liberalism/

Fascism is Liberal and Squares are Circles

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George Santayana remarked that forgetting history was tantamount to repeating it.  I would add that re-writing history is also tantamount to repeating it.  How do you re-write history – simple, propaganda.  Propaganda is the art of equivocation.  If you have an ideology to promote and you minimize differences and maximizes similarities that reinforce your dogma then the only other thing you need to do is get people to believe it by repeating it enough.  If you can achieve this you can re-write history and start down the road of its horrific repetitions.  With regard to the assertion made in many posts I have read, the equivocation is this: Liberalism = Socialism = Totalitarianism = Evil.  The other unspoken equivocation is Conservatism = Capitalism = Nationalism = Good.  By “Nationalism” I mean, God/Good is on the side of the US (or more particularly – the Republican party since  liberals may or may not be Nationalistic as also Democrats can be liberal or conservative economically and/or socially – see how these equivocations break down when thought is applied).  I have no interest whatsoever in defending socialism only in preserving differences and preventing equivocation and dogmatic, homogenizing of history.  Additionally, I totally agree that this nonsense goes on from both sides!  I oppose it equally from the left too.

After doing some research I found a source of these equivocations to be a book by Jonah Goldberg called “Liberal Fascism”.  The Heritage Foundation and the National Review are promoting it.  Jonah Goldberg is a Fox news commentator and editor at the National Review.  He did go to college but I can’t find if he even got an undergraduate degree (??).  He is not a scholar and his work is at best considered right-wing propaganda by scholars (i.e., liberal, commie academics) oh, and also serious conservatives.  His book appeals to the same crowd as Ann [Reich] Coulter.  He also thinks the KKK came from liberalism.  Maybe we should round up these commie liberals and execute them or at least start a “black list” in the name of anti-fascism and love of God and country? – give me a f***ing break

 “Not without reason was Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism widely expected to be a bad book. As many predicted from the title, Goldberg does not content himself with rebuking those who call anyone who disagrees with them a fascist. Instead, he invents reasons of his own for calling anyone who disagrees with Jonah Goldberg a fascist.”

                                             January 28, 2008 Issue
                                             Copyright © 2007 The American Conservative

                                             Goldberg’s Trivial Pursuit

 http://amconmag.com/2008/2008_01_28/review.html

Myth: Hitler was a leftist.

Fact: Nearly all of Hitler’s beliefs placed him on the far right.

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-hitler.htm

“Fascism is definitely and absolutely opposed to the doctrines of liberalism, both in the political and economic sphere.” (p. 32)

                                                          Benito Mussolini, 1935, The Doctrine of Fascism, Firenze: Vallecchi Editore.

 Gosh, I guess that would explain why the first prisoners rounded up and sent to Dachau — the first Nazi death camp — were socialists and communists:

“Dachau is one of the first concentration camps the Nazis establish. The first prisoners arrive two days later. They are mainly Communists and Socialists and other political opponents of the Nazi party. Dachau is the only camp to remain in operation from 1933 until 1945.”

                                                   http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2007/12/liberal-fascism-preview.html

 For that matter, of course, there are still genuine fascists and proto-fascists with us today. They go by such names as the Aryan Nations, Christian Identity, or National Socialist Movement. And they’re all aligned, politically, to the far right.

http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2005/10/ultimate-newspeak.html

“National Socialism is what Marxism might have been if it could have broken its absurd and artificial ties with the democratic order.”

                                                                                                                          Hitler to Rauschning, The Voice of Destruction, pg. 186

“Fascism [is] the complete opposite of…Marxian Socialism, the materialist conception of history of human civilization can be explained simply through the conflict of interests among the various social groups and by the change and development in the means and instruments of production…. Fascism, now and always, believes in holiness and in heroism; that is to say, in actions influenced by no economic motive, direct or indirect. And if the economic conception of history be denied, according to which theory men are no more than puppets, carried to and fro by the waves of chance, while the real directing forces are quite out of their control, it follows that the existence of an unchangeable and unchanging class-war is also denied – the natural progeny of the economic conception of history. And above all Fascism denies that class-war can be the preponderant force in the transformation of society….”

“The conception of the Liberal State is not that of a directing force, guiding the play and development, both material and spiritual, of a collective body, but merely a force limited to the function of recording results: on the other hand, the Fascist State is itself conscious and has itself a will and a personality — thus it may be called the “ethic” State….”

                            In 1932 Mussolini wrote (with the help of Giovanni Gentile) and entry for the Italian Encyclopedia on the definition of fascism.

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/mussolini-fascism.html

“And thus the Left is forced more and more to turn to Bolshevism. “In Bolshevism they see today the sole, the last possibility of preserving the present state of affairs. They realize quite accurately that the people is beaten so long as Brain and Hand can be kept apart. For alone neither Brain nor Hand can really oppose them. So long therefore as the Socialist idea is coined only by men who see in it a means for disintegrating a nation, so long can they rest in peace.”

“But it will be a sorry day for them when this Socialist idea is grasped by a Movement which unites with it the highest Nationalist pride, with Nationalist defiance, and thus places the Nation’s Brain, its intellectual workers, on this ground. Then this system will break up, and there would remain only one single means of salvation for its supporters: vis. to bring the catastrophe upon us before their own ruin, to destroy the Nation’s Brain, to bring it to the scaffold – to introduce Bolshevism.”

“So the Left neither can nor will help. On the contrary, their first lie compels them constantly to resort to new lies. There remains then the Right. And this party of the Right meant well, but it cannot do what it would because up to the present time it has failed to recognize a whole series of elementary principles.

“In the first place the Right still fails to recognize the danger. These gentlemen still persist in believing that it is a question of being elected to a Landtag or of posts as minister or secretaries. They think that the decision of a people’s destiny would mean at worst nothing more than some damage to their so-called bourgeois-economic existence. They have never grasped the fact that this decision threatens their heads. They have never yet understood that it is not necessary to be an enemy of the Jew for him to drag you one day on the Russian model to the scaffold. They do not see that it is quite enough to have a head on your shoulders and not to be a Jew: that will secure the scaffold for you. “

“In consequence their whole action today is so petty, so limited, so hesitating and pusillanimous. They would like to – but they can never decide on any great deed, because they fail to realize the greatness of the whole period. “

“And then there is another fundamental error: they have never got it clear in their own minds that there is a difference or how great a difference there is between the conception ‘National’ and the word ‘dynastic’ or ‘monarchistic.’ They do not understand that today it is more than ever necessary in our thoughts as Nationalists to avoid anything which might perhaps cause the individual to think that the National Idea was identical with petty everyday political views. They ought day by day to din into the ears of the masses: ‘We want to bury all the petty differences and to bring out into the light the big things, the things we have in common which bind us to one another. That should weld and fuse together those who have still a German heart and a love for their people in the fight against the common hereditary foe of all Aryans. How afterward we divide up this State, friends – we have no wish to dispute over that! The form of a State results from the essential character of a people, results from necessities which are so elementary and powerful that in time every individual will realize them without any disputation when once all Germany is united and free.’

“And finally they all fail to understand that we must on principle free ourselves from any class standpoint. It is of course very easy to call out to those on the Left, ‘You must not be proletarians, leave your class-madness,’ while you yourselves continue to call yourself ‘bourgeois.’ They should learn that in a single State there is only one supreme citizen-right, one supreme citizen-honor, and that is the right and the honor of honest work. They should further learn that the social idea must be the essential foundation for any State, otherwise no State can permanently endure. “

“Certainly a government needs power, it needs strength. It must, I might almost say, with brutal ruthlessness press through the ideas which it has recognized to be right, trusting to the actual authority of its strength in the State. But even with the most ruthless brutality it can ultimately prevail only if what it seeks to restore does truly correspond to the welfare of a whole people. “

“That the so-called enlightened absolutism of a Frederick the Great was possible depended solely on the fact that, though this man could undoubtedly have decided ‘arbitrarily’ the destiny – for good or ill – of his so-called ‘subject,’ he did not do so, but made his decisions influenced and supported by one thought alone, the welfare of his Prussian people. it was this fact only that led the people to tolerate willingly, nay joyfully, the dictatorship of the great king. “

“And the Right has further completely forgotten that democracy is fundamentally no German: it is Jewish. It has completely forgotten that this Jewish democracy with its majority decisions has always been without exception only a means towards the destruction of any existing Aryan leadership. The Right does not understand that directly every small question of profit or loss is regularly put before so-called ‘public opinion,’ he who knows how most skillfully to make this ‘public opinion’ serve his own interests becomes forthwith master in the State. And that can be achieved by the man who can lie most artfully, most infamously; and in the last resort he is not the German, he is, in Schopenauer’s words, ‘the great master in the art of lying’ – the Jew. “

“And finally it has been forgotten that the condition which must precede every act is the will and the courage to speak the truth – and that we do not see today either in the Right or in the Left. “

“There are only two possibilities in Germany; do not imagine that the people will forever go with the middle party, the party of compromises; one day it will turn to those who have most consistently foretold the coming ruin and have sought to dissociate themselves from it. And that party is either the Left: and then God help us! for it will lead us to complete destruction – to Bolshevism, or else it is a party of the Right which at the last, when the people is in utter despair, when it has lost all its spirit and has no longer any faith in anything, is determined for its part ruthlessly to seize the reins of power – that is the beginning of resistance of which I spoke a few minutes ago. Here, too, there can be no compromise – there are only two possibilities: either victory of the Aryan or annihilation of the Aryan and the victory of the Jew. “

“It is from the recognition of this fact, from recognizing it, I would say, in utter, dead earnestness, that there resulted the formation of our Movement. There are two principles which, when we founded the Movement, we engraved upon our hearts: first, to base it on the most sober recognition of the facts and second, to proclaim these facts with the most ruthless sincerity. “

“And this recognition of the facts discloses at once a whole series of the most important fundamental principles which must guide this young Movement which, we hope, is destined one day for greatness:

1. ‘National’ and ‘social’ are two identical conceptions. It was only the Jew who succeeded, through falsifying the social idea and turning it into Marxism, not only in divorcing the social idea from the national, but in actually representing them as utterly contradictory. That aim he has in fact achieved. At the founding of this Movement we formed the decision that we would give expression to this idea of ours of the identity of the two conceptions: despite all warnings, on the basis of what we had come to believe, on the basis of the sincerity of our will, we christened it ‘National Socialist.’ We said to ourselves that to be ‘national’ means above everything to act with a boundless and all-embracing love for the people and, if necessary, eve to die for it. And similarly to be ‘social’ means so to build up the State and the community of the people that every individual acts in the interest of the community of the people and must be to such an extent convinced of the goodness, of the honorable straightforwardness of this community of the people as to be ready to die for it.

“2. And then we said to ourselves: there are no such things as classes: they cannot be. Class means caste and caste means race. If there are castes in India, well and good; there it is possible, for there were formerly Aryans and dark aborigines. So it was in Egypt and Rome. But with us in Germany where everyone who is a German at all has the same blood, has the same eyes, and speaks the same language, here there can be no class, here there can be only a single people and beyond that nothing else. Certainly, we recognize, just as anyone must recognize, that there are different ‘occupations’ and ‘professions’ [Stände] – there is the Stand of the watchmakers, the Stand of the common laborers, the Stand of the painters or technicians, the Stand of the engineers, officials, etc. Stände there can be. But in the struggles which these Stände have amongst themselves for the equalization of their economic conditions, the conflict and the division must never be so great as to sunder the ties of race. “

“And if you say ‘But there must after all be a difference between honest creators and those who do nothing at all’ – certainly there must! That is the difference which lies in the performance of the conscientious work of the individual. Work must be the great connecting link, but at the same time the great factor which separates one man from another. The drone is the foe of us all. But the creators – it matters not whether they are brain workers or workers with the hand – they are the nobility of our State, they are the German people! “

“We understand under the term ‘work’ exclusively that activity which not only profits the individual but in no way harms the community, nay rather which contributes to for the community. “

“3. And in the third place it was clear to us that this particular view is based on an impulse which springs from our race and from our blood. We said to ourselves that race differs from race and, further, that each race in accordance with its fundamental demands shows externally certain specific tendencies, and these tendencies can perhaps be most clearly traced in their relation to the conception of work. The Aryan regards work as the foundation for the maintenance of the community of the people amongst its members. The Jew regards work as the means to the exploitation of other peoples. The Jew never works as a productive creator without the great aim of becoming the master. He works unproductively, using and enjoying other people’s work. And thus we understand the iron sentence which Mommsen once uttered: ‘The Jews is the ferment of decomposition in peoples,’ that means that the Jew destroys and must destroy because he completely lacks the conception of an activity which builds up the life of the community. And therefore it is beside the point whether the individual Jew is ‘decent’ or not. In himself he carries those characteristics which Nature has given him, and he cannot ever rid himself of those characteristics. And to us he is harmful. Whether he harms us consciously or unconsciously, that is not our affair. We have consciously to concern ourselves for the welfare of our own people. “

“4. And fourthly we were further persuaded that economic prosperity is inseparable from political freedom and that therefore that house of lies, ‘Internationalism,’ must immediately collapse. We recognized that freedom can eternally be only a consequence of power and that the source of power is the will. Consequently the will to power must be strengthened in a people with passionate ardor. And thus we realized, fifthly that …”

“5. We as National Socialists and members of the German Workers’ Party – a Party pledge to work – must be on principle the most fanatical Nationalists. We realized that the State can be for our people a paradise only if the people can hold sway therein freely as in a paradise: we realized that a slave state still never be a paradise, but only – always and for all time – a hell or a colony. “

“6. And then sixthly we grasped the fact that power in the last resort is possible only where there is strength, and that strength lies not in the dead weight of numbers but solely in energy. Even the smallest minority can achieve a might result if it is inspired by the most fiery, the most passionate will to act. World history has always been made by minorities. And lastly… “

“7. If one has realized a truth, that truth is valueless so long as there is lacking the indomitable will to turn this realization into action! “

“These were the foundations of our Movement – the truths on which it was based and which demonstrated its necessity. “

“For three years we have sought to realize these fundamental ideas. And of course a fight is and remains a fight. Stroking in very truth will not carry one far. Today the German people has been beaten by a quite other world, while in its domestic life it has lost all spirit; no longer has it any faith. But how will you give this people once more firm ground beneath its feet save by the passionate insistence on one definite, great, clear goal? “

“…thus we were the first to declare that this peace treaty was a crime. Then folk abused us as ‘agitators.’ We were the first to protest against the failure to present this treaty to the people before it was signed. Again we were called on the masses of the people not to surrender their arms, for the surrender of one’s arms would be nothing less than the beginning of enslavement. We were called, no, we were cried down as, ‘agitators.’ We were the first to say that this meant the loss of Upper Silesia. So it was, and still they called us ‘agitators.’ We declared at that time that compliance in the question of Upper Silesia must have as its consequence the awakening of a passionate greed which would demand the occupation of the Ruhr. We were cried down ceaselessly, again and again. And because we opposed the mad financial policy which today will lead to our collapse, what was it that we were called repeatedly once more? ‘Agitators.’ And today? “

“And finally we were also the first to point the people on any large scale to a danger which insinuated itself into our midst – a danger which millions failed to realize and which will nonetheless lead us all into ruin – the Jewish danger. And today people are saying yet again that we were ‘agitators.’ “

“I would like here to appeal to a greater than I, Count Lerchenfeld. He said in the last session of the Landtag that his felling ‘as a man and a Christian; prevented him from being an anti-Semite. I say: my feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Saviour as a fighter. It points me to the Man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to the fight against them and who, God’s truth! was greatest not as sufferer but as fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through that passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and of adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have not duty to allow myself be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice. And as a man I have the duty to see to it that human society does not suffer the same catastrophic collapse as did the civilization of the ancient world some two thousand years ago – a civilization which was driven to its ruin through this same Jewish people. “

“Then indeed when Rome collapsed there were endless streams of new German bands flowing into the Empire from the North; but, if Germany collapses today, who is there to come after us? German blood upon this earth is on the way to gradual exhaustion unless we pull ourselves together and make ourselves free! “

“And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly, it is the distress which daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people. And when I look on my people I see it work and work and toil and labor, and at the end of the week it has only for its wage wretchedness and misery. When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil, if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom today this poor people is plundered and exploited. “

“And through the distress there is no doubt that the people has been aroused. Externally perhaps apathetic, but within there is ferment. And many may say, ‘It is an accursed crime to stir up passions in the people.’ And then I say to myself: Passion is already stirred through the rising tide of distress, and one day this passion will break out in one way or another: and now I would ask those who today call us ‘agitators’: ‘What then have you to give to the people as a faith to which it might cling?’

“Nothing at all, for you yourselves have no faith in your own prescriptions. “

“That is the mightiest thing which our Movement must create: for these widespread, seeking and straying masses a new Faith which will not fail them in this hour of confusion, to which they can pledge themselves, on which they can build so that they may at least find once again a place which may bring calm to their hearts.”

                                                        Adolf Hitler
                                                         Speech of April 12, 1921

http://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/111hit1.html

” 2. The danger to which Russia succumbed is always present for Germany. Only a bourgeois simpleton is capable of imagining that Bolshevism has been exorcised. With his superficial thinking he has no idea that this is an instinctive process; that is, the striving of the Jewish people for world domination, a process which is just as natural as the urge of the Anglo-Saxon to seize domination of the earth. And just as the Anglo-Saxon pursues this course in his own way and carries on the fight with his own weapons, likewise the Jew. He goes his way, the way of sneaking in among the nations and boring from within, and he fights with his weapons, with lies and slander, poison and corruption, intensifying the struggle to the point of bloodily exterminating his hated foes. In Russian Bolshevism we must see the attempt undertaken by the Jews in the twentieth century to achieve world domination. Just as in other epochs they strove to reach the same goal by other, though inwardly related processes. Their endeavor lies profoundly rooted in their essential nature. No more than another nation renounces of its own accord the pursuit of its impulse for the expansion of its power and way of life, but is compelled by outward circumstances or else succumbs to impotence due to the symptoms of old age, does the Jew break off his road to world dictatorship out of voluntary renunciation, or because he represses his eternal urge. He, too, will either be thrown back in his course by forces lying outside himself, or all his striving for world domination will be ended by his own dying out. But the impotence of nations, their own death from old age, arises from the abandonment of their blood purity. And this is a thing that the Jew preserves better than any other people on earth. And so he advances on his fatal road until another force comes forth to oppose him, and in a mighty struggle hurls the heaven-stormer back to Lucifer.

  Germany is today the next great war aim of Bolshevism. It requires all the force of a young missionary idea to raise our people up again, to free them from the snares of this international serpent, and to stop the inner contamination of our blood, in order that the forces of the nation thus set free can be thrown in to safeguard our nationality, and thus can prevent a repetition of the recent catastrophes down to the most distant future. If we pursue this aim, it is sheer lunacy to ally ourselves with a power whose master is the mortal enemy of our future. How can we expect to free our own people from the fetters of this poisonous embrace if we walk right into it? How shall we explain Bolshevism to the German worker as an accursed crime against humanity if we ally ourselves with the organizations of this spawn of hell, thus recognizing it in the larger sense? By what right shall we condemn a member of the broad masses for his sympathy with an outlook if the very leaders of the state choose the representatives of this outlook for allies?

  The fight against Jewish world Bolshevization requires a clear attitude toward Soviet Russia. thou cannot drive out the Devil with Beelsebub.
  If today even folkish circles rave about an alliance with Russia, they should just look around them in Germany and see whose support they find in their efforts. Or have folkish men lately begun to view an activity as beneficial to the German people which is recommended and promoted by the international Marxist press? Since when do folkish men fight with armor held out to them by a Jewish squire?

  There is one main charge that could be raised against the old German Reich with regard to its alliance policy: not, however, that it failed to maintain good relations with Russia, but only that it ruined its relations with everyone by continuous shilly-shallying, in the pathological weakness of trying to preserve world peace at any price.

I openly confess that even in the pre-War period I would have thought it sounder if Germany, renouncing her senseless colonial policy and renouncing her merchant marine and war fleet, had concluded an alliance with England against Russia, thus passing from a feeble global policy to a determined European policy of territorial acquisition on the continent.”

                                                    Mein Kampf
                                                    (1926)

http://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/111hit1.html

“What Hitler and Mussolini favored and promoted was a system where the State and private corporations served each other’s special interests, much like the situation in America today. They both stood for protecting private ownership from the social revolution, which sought to redistribute wealth and promote public ownership of the means of production.”

http://rationalrevolution.net/war/condition_of_modern_american_soc.htm

In 1932 Mussolini declared that the 20th century would be the “Fascist century” by stating:

“If it is admitted that the nineteenth century has been the century of Socialism, Liberalism and Democracy, it does not follow that the twentieth must also be the century of Liberalism, Socialism and Democracy. Political doctrines pass; peoples remain. It is to be expected that this century may be that of authority, a century of the “Right,” a Fascist century.”

“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of State and corporate power.”

— Benito Mussolini Fascist dictator of Italy

“We stand for the maintenance of private property… We shall protect free enterprise as the most expedient, or rather the sole possible economic order.”

— Adolf Hitler

The fascists hated the socialists. I have many, many quotes from Hitler and Mussolini detesting the Russian socialists and the French liberals. The current American Nazi groups also hate liberals and recruit their clowns from the far right.  Nowdays, the far right is fond of calling Democrats socialists and fascists. The two are mutually exclusive.  You can’t have it both ways unless you just insist on being historical revisionists which by the way the Nazis were really, really good at.  Hitler called it propoganda.

It is precisely that Hitler was nationalistic that he confiscated property from the Jews.  The Jews were not Aryan and not only did not deserve property, they did not deserve to live according to the Nazis.  The property was not confiscated because Hitler was against private property.  Ever heard of the Volkswagen (folks wagen). Hitler loved it…still around today as a private company. Communism (new word – not socialism) thought nationalism was the reason why wars were fought and class systems were founded.

Go ahead and call liberals fascists – just remember that if you participate in propaganda to further your cause you are part of the condemnation to come for forgetting history yet once again!

Nearly Every Member of Congress Voted for Intervention in Iraq?

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“I keep reading posts that say the war in Iraq was all the Republicans fault. My memory says that nearly every member in Congress (Democrats included) voted to declare war in Iraq.”

                                                                                                                                                   A Blogger

It was not “nearly every member of Congress” – Generally, Republicans favored it and Democrates did not but enough Democrates favored it to get it through.

United States House of Representatives

Party                                       Ayes                Nays

Republican                                215                    6

Democratic                                 82                 126

Independent                                  0                     1

TOTALS                                    297                 133
 

United States Senate

Party                                         Ayes                Nays

Republican                                    48                      1

Democratic                                   29                     21

Independent                                    0                       1

TOTALS                                       77                     23

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Resolution_to_Authorize_the_Use_of_United_States_Armed_Forces_Against_Iraq