Dumb analogy by mean spirited Trump spokesperson

Watch this starting at 1:17 into the video. Then, see below.

Sorry Ms. Trump Spokesperson.

America is not a bar. American public policy programs are not beer. And she never once tells us how much each reporter makes each year. The first misdirection in the allegory starts at the beginning with the assumption....Ten reporters...as if they are all making roughly the same money. This is even more important than we may initially think because...

Another misdirection is what taxes she is talking about. It is not like there are no other taxes out there besides the tax on the drink of beer. How much of the income of each reporter in her allegory goes to other taxes besides income taxes? The reporters each pay, for example, the same exact sales tax on every item they buy besides beer in the allegory, and there are state and local taxes to consider. And the richest reporter may be paying a higher income tax rate on the beer in the allegory, but what about the other income received from passive and active investments, which are subject to a much lower capital gains tax, so that more money remains in the richest reporter's pocket. And why should the richest reporters children get the benefit of no tax whatsoever when the richest reporter dies, which is not mentioned in the allegory.

The sense of unfairness about our tax system is rarely explained to the American people in corporate media to begin with. We are never told that when we add up all the different taxes, we find a relatively flat tax already exists for about 80% of income makers (look at far right column chart in link to show percentage of income paid in all taxes, which is around 30%) since the dawn of Mr. 666's reign (Ronald Wilson Reagan, count the letters in each of his names). And rich people are making a killing these past nearly 40 years and have much less tax to pay overall than they did in the previous nearly 40 years. And the income growth for the middle and lower sectors has been abysmal. So no trickle down, even as automation from computers and other technologies have made each worker's productivity go up rather dramatically--and most of those workers do not share in that productivity the way they did in the days of unions.

This allegory is pernicious and is designed to appeal to those most ignorant of how the overall tax system functions, and belittles the foundation of governance and policy. Again, what the government largely spends money on is based upon public policy, not beer. It may be dumb spending in some areas, but the biggest dumb area we should look at is the cost of the Empire, which does not buy much for regular Americans at this point at least.

For fun, here is a more enlightening allegory about three people and twenty cookies. It is enlightening because it is very clear about the level of wealth or income owned by each of the three people. It is also subject to similar criticism as I did above, but at least it has the salutary effect of talking about unequal wealth that is at an outrageous level compared to where we were when supposedly America was "great."

Varoufakis trusted the Eurogroup's good faith when they were in bad faith. But he understood the need to default when recognizing that bad faith.

In this review of the new Yanis Varoufakis memoir, Doug Henwood confirms Varoufakis was against Grexit, but explains why Varoufakis was against Grexit, and why he then became an advocate of defaulting. Henwood also shows that the Eurogroup had people who wanted the Greeks to exit as way to punish the entire European social welfare state, starting with the French welfare state. If anything, Henwood's reading of the memoir shows why Jeremy Corbyn and others are spot on about the bankers and banker-acolytes who control the European monetary system are enemies to economic decency.  I have long believed Varoufakis' one and true mistake of judgment was to trust in the good faith of the Eurogroup.  I felt it in the early months of 2015, too, which is why I still think Eric Toussaint's much more critical and longer essay-review of Varoufakis' memoir is correct that the Greek government in which Varoufakis was a leader should have forced an early confrontation to leverage the negotiations--and that the Greek government should have been taking active steps to re-create a currency to show the Eurogroup that the then-new left government meant...shall we say, business.  The missing element in Toussaint's article is what Henwood highlights, which is that Varoufakis wanted to have Greece default on the loans by June 2015 in order to increase leverage--and the left leadership for whom Varoufakis worked for blinked.  

For those of us who wonder, here is a snapshot from May 2017 as to how the Greek economy is doing these days post-austerity measures the nominally leftist government accepted over Varoufakis' objections, which had led Varoufakis to resign in mid-2015.   Funny how Greece was in the corporate media orbit here in the USA in those first six months of 2015, and then, when the Greek government capitulated to the banker interests, the corporate media glare was removed from our gaze.  One struggles to find information in corporate media in the US about the Greek people's suffering post-June 2015.

Overall, I remain a major fan of Yanis Varoufakis. I believe him one of the most important and insightful minds in international politics today.  Here is Varoufakis from April 2016.  Worth watching and hearing.  Also, here is Varoufakis on negotiating Brexit.

So what's a little Roundup in our bodies?

The people who blindly support the introduction of GMOs into our agricultural system may one day have to explain themselves. I have never hid from the reality of the many studies that show no adverse effects of GMOs led by people such as Professor Pamela Ronald at UC Davis. What I have consistently said, however, is that I have yet to see a competent, long term epidemiological study that explains why people have developed far more gluten and peanut allergies in our nation, for example.

This article about a recent UC San Diego study raises a concern but admits there is still no known consequence to the weed killer remnants found in people. But it should raise some alarm bells.

Due to corporate Democratic Party and Republican Party officials in general, our nation have been guinea pigs in this GMO experiment. It is the Bi-partisanship of Evil.

On the continuing effect of Ralph Vaughan Williams on his 145th Birthday

Today is in fact the 145th birthday of Ralph (pronounced "Rafe") Vaughan Williams, my favorite classical composer.  This is the first piece I heard from him, hearing it on an FM classical station in the late 1990s, and instantly falling in love with his work.  This is "The Lark Ascending," composed largely before World War I, put away at a time of war, and completed after the war.  It is based upon a George Meredith poem of the same name and captures the feel of that then still famous poem.

A somewhat cute and recent story about The Son and this master work.  He too has always loved this work, of course.  Recently, he joined several friends from his Galapagos trip who agreed to meet up in Oregon back in August to watch the big eclipse.  They met and went across to I believe the point in Oregon that had the best viewing of the eclipse.  While on the trip, one morning, The Son looked out and saw a scene that brought this work to mind.  He stopped his buddies and said, "Guys, you gotta listen to this.  This piece of music goes perfectly with what we are seeing all around us."  They looked at him, nodded, and decided to hear out what he was about to play.  

The Son's Samsung phone rang out with this work and the guys just sat down, listened in almost total silence and enjoyment.  When it ended, all wanted to know what this piece was and who wrote it, and when.  I believe The Son told me he sent them all a link, hopefully to this marvelous version with the legendary Hugh Bean on violin.  And I have little doubt he added at some point, "There's more where that came from," or words to that effect.

For, indeed, there is more where this came from.

Oh, and for us King Crimson fans, Wiki says, in the"The Lark Ascending" entry, that "Larks Tongue in Aspic" (1973) pays some homage to "The Lark Ascending."  There is no citation, however, and I cannot find where Fripp acknowledges that or even violinist David Cross.  But perhaps....it seems a bit too coincidental in not only name but in some of the violin work Cross performs.  

Celebrities and Politics

Hmmm....I like this article quoting from an interview with George Clooney where he talks about his own less wealthy upbringing than Trump's and how Trump has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and he does not, yet Clooney is seen as the celebrity living in a "bubble" who should not be taken as seriously as, well, Trump who literally lives in a gold-plated house.

I could say, in response, that George's family was already in Hollywood or show biz when he was born (Aunt Rosemary Clooney was in Hollywood as a singer and actress and Dad Nick was a regional television show star in the Kentucky-Cincinnati area).  But his point is validly made when comparing himself to economic royalty such as Trump.

The argument that has also found resonance with me is from DC insider/political consultant/corpoate media commentator Paul Begala, who said, when he was in the Clinton administration, business people lobbied on behalf of themselves and nobody bats an eye at the selfishness of that. When Hollywood actors and actresses came to the White House, it was to lobby on behalf of causes and people who were not themselves at all.  It was Jessica Lange for farmers.  It was another actor or actresses about land mines or welfare mothers.  Yet, the hostility from more often right wing media pundits and sources has been relentless over the decades, all while right wingers promote and elect celebrities in and out of Hollywood, but still celebrities.  Let's name some shall we?

George Murphy, tap dancer and vaudeville type actor of mid Century Hollywood who served (ingloriously and embarrassingly) as US Senator from California from 1964-1970.

Ronald Wilson Reagan (Mr. 666, count the letters evangelical fans...)

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Jim Bunning, baseball pitcher who served as US Senator in Kentucky for two decades or so

Clint Eastwood, who served a couple of terms as mayor of Carmel

Fred Grandy, Gopher from "Love Boat," served several terms as a Congressman from Iowa

Sonny Bono, served as Mayor of Palm Springs and Congressman until a tragic skiing accident, and then his post-Cher wife, Mary, served as Congresswoman in the same district for a few terms

Fred Thompson, US Senator from Tennessee

...and lesser lights like Kevin Johnson, former basketball player who ran first as a Republican for Mayor of Sacramento, Stephen Peace, a CA Congressman most famous at the time he ran as the mind behind the film, "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes," and a few others.

Yes, Jerry Springer was Mayor of Cincinnati, but he was a political figure first, unlike Trump who was a business guy who became a television star and then ran for political office.  And there are two fairly prominent Dems in Congress:  Al Franken, US Senator from Minnesota and Ben Jones, US Congressman from Georgia.

But when we think about it, I would have rather had President Paul Newman than Ronald Reagan any day of the week.  But the one way demonization that continues with the whole "Shut Up and Sing" style of argument from the right wing is pretty amazing considering how the same right wingers who say that at the end of the bar on a barstool rush to embrace a right winger when he or she is a celebrity.

Presentism in the history of American women's civil rights in the pages of the NYRB

This review of a recent book on the longstanding battle for women's rights under law in the US from NY Times Supreme Court beat reporter Linda Greenhouse is a wonderful review of the rise and fall of feminism as a bipartisan issue within the duopoly we call the Democratic and Republican Parties.  The opening about George Wallace's turnabout on the Equal Rights Amendment was deeply fascinating.

However, one early phrasing in the review struck a discordant note with me (and I must add here I am a proud owner and reader of the Mansbridge book prominently and favorably discussed within the review of the recent book).  Greenhouse writes:

In fact, the Republican platform had supported the Equal Rights Amendment as far back as 1940; opposition had come mainly from pro-labor Democrats, who feared that equal treatment for men and women would mean an end to legislation that protected women from dangerous jobs. Labor opposition waned as the increasingly active feminist movement—frustrated that the Supreme Court had never interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection guarantee to apply to discrimination on the basis of sex—made passing the Equal Rights Amendment a top priority.

With that phrasing, Greenhouse leaves her early 21st Century readers, who are without an understanding of American labor history, thinking labor leaders opposed women's legal rights overall based upon a mere concern for women in "dangerous jobs."  Worse, the use of the phrase, "pro-labor Democrats," is an anachronism because on labor issues, the Republican Party had, at the time, as many if not more stalwarts for labor--owing to the founders of the party including Abraham Lincoln being much more pro-labor in the first place.  And yes, there were "conservatives," in both the Democratic and Republican Parties, who sometimes supported voting rights for women.  However, too many were taking seriously the sarcasm of their French contemporary Anatole France, who  was fond of, again, sarcastically saying: "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."  

I get libertarian law professor David Bernstein's point that Justice George Sutherland at the time was an ardent supporter of the 19th Amendment that finally enshrined the right of women to vote.  However, Sutherland was a more complicated person overall, having originally endorsed the Food & Drug Administration Act while in Congress before becoming a Justice of the Supreme Court, and only later falling into a right-wing conservative fetish for "the freedom of contract" that so often undermined progressive legislation in State legislatures and Congress for decades between 1870 and 1935.  The coalition on the Supreme Court which supposedly endorsed "women's equal rights under the law" included the odious Justice James McReynolds, who joined Sutherland in the infamous Adkins decision in the early 1920s that overturned a law protecting women and children with respect to a minimum wage law.  As the Wiki entry on McReynolds quotes an able biographer of Oliver Wendell Holmes,  Liva Baker, McReynolds was such a dis-respecter of women in the workplace that when a woman lawyer appeared in the room, he either said something disdainful or sometimes left the room when she rose to speak.  

The fight for progressive legislation during the time of the tyranny of "freedom of contract," where Gilded Age Supreme Court Justices grafted corporate capitalist principles into the Constitution, was to seek compromises whereby rights in the workplace were extended to women and children.  Feminists of the time, including Florence Kelley, pushed for these laws as part of a larger agenda to extend workplace rights for all.  It is not as if pro-labor leaders in either major party at the time opposed women's rights in the workplace or at the ballot box.  They were fighting a larger battle and some initially believed the ERA may be a step backwards in that battle. However, once the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 was passed, one saw labor leaders, already moving away from the Republican Party to join the FDR Democrats, much more consistently and broadly support women's rights including the Equal Rights Amendment.  

In this context, it is important to recall that Mother Jones, the famous (and often infamous) woman labor agitator and leader, was neutral at best and often against what became the 19th Amendment because she saw the issue of women having the right to vote as a diversion from the larger battles affecting women in the labor market.  It is a view I hope I would not have shared as it represents a refusal to chew gum and walk down the street.  It is why I generally support the "Black Lives Matter" movement, for example, and have long opposed the draconian so-called war on drugs and the punitive nature of our penal laws over the past forty years especially.  But Greenhouse's presentist, historically ahistorical phrasing, if applied to Mother Jones, would turn her into an antifeminist.  We need to ensure, when reviewing history, to see things how people then saw them, and to look at their historical perspectives in guiding us toward that understanding.  

And, again, for Greenhouse to write about "pro-labor Democrats" also mistakenly reenforces a presentist view of the past as many labor leaders of the time were steadfast Republicans and Republican Party membership in the House and Senate, including stalwarts such as the LaFollettes, father and son, were Republicans as much as Democrats.  The Democrats had made important inroads into labor support with the Bryan candidacies starting in 1896 and with Wilson's attempts to effectuate pro-labor legislation in the 1913-1916 period (and admirably Wilson was an ardent supporter of the right of women to vote).  But the floodgates of labor support in the Democratic Party did not occur until the FDR era,* and even Republican labor leader John L. Lewis of the nascent Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) had to recognize that by the late 1940s.   

In short, now armed with this context, Greenhouse could merely have written, "Some pro-labor leaders and pro-labor government officials, in both the Democratic and Republican Parties, feared enshrining equal rights for women without exception into the Constitution would have hurt the cause of protecting women and men in securing rights in the workplace, due to the strong anti-labor sentiment at the Supreme Court and other institutions existing at the time in the nation."  

In saying all this, I wish to add one final personal note:  Linda Greenhouse remains perhaps my favorite New York Times reporter over the past 20 years.  Unlike so many of her colleagues (cough, cough, Bruni, Friedman, Haberman, Seeyle, Dowd, cough, cough), she has a much more wide perspective beyond the cocktail circuit, which is surprising considering the elite nature of her "beat."  She also is interested in historical perspectives befitting a legal scholar.  It is why I was so surprised at that, again, discordant note in her otherwise excellent review.  I remain vigilant against efforts, starting with the otherwise scholarly legal professor, David Bernstein, to unduly highlight labor officials and labor-supporting labor union supporters as too often inherently racist and sexist with a goal of dismissing labor unions in general--because what we rightly recognize now as sexist and racist was unfortunately broadly prevalent and crossed almost all political lines.  Greenhouse's phrasing played into that often libertarian philosophy agenda, and therefore it required this exegesis. 

* The Democratic Party finally endorsed the Equal Rights Amendment in its party platform in 1944, which is fairly consistent with this point of  how and why the Democratic Party became more pro-labor overall and then open to supporting a broad endorsement of women's equality with men under the law.