Electronic Pen

PAUL BUCHHEIT FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Go Berserk, Young Man

And young woman, of course. You're being cheated by a free-market system that is out of control.

Consider that a single individual (John Paulson) made enough money last year to pay the salaries of 100,000 teachers.

100,000 jobs. All those potential salaries ($50,000 each) diverted to a man who started making his billions by betting against the U.S. mortgage market.

And he's not alone. In 2009 25 hedge fund managers averaged a billion dollars in earnings. Hedge fund manager James Dinan, who made 'only' $350 million in 2009, advised other hedgers to "stay in the middle of the field" to avoid angering the public.

The hedge fund managers are not alone, either. Based on Tax Foundation figures, the richest 1% has TRIPLED its share of America's income over the past 30 years. Much of the gain came from tax cuts and minimally taxed financial instruments. If their income had increased only at the pace of American productivity (80%), they would be taking about a TRILLION DOLLARS A YEAR LESS out of our economy.

If middle-class incomes had increased at the pace of American productivity, the median household income would now be nearly $92,000, not $50,000.

So if you hear the 'redistribution' argument, keep in mind that the redistribution has already taken place, from the middle and lower classes to the rich.

Meanwhile, profits for the 500 largest corporations rose 81% last year, prompting Fortune Magazine to say "we've rarely seen such a stark gulf between the fortunes of the 500 and those of ordinary Americans."

There used to be a safeguard against these extremes, in the form of progressive taxes. But a 30-year assault on the alleged evils of government has largely taken this away. Many of the billion-dollar paychecks are overloaded with capital gains earnings, taxed at a minimal 15% rate.

Young men and women, you should be very angry. Millions of you have college degrees and/or marketable skills, but you're either unemployed or underemployed because profit-rich corporations have stopped investing in America. They're still investing, but not in America. Pharmaceutical companies move production to China and India because of less stringent inspection standards. Energy companies use subsidies for solar energy research and development to move production facilities to Asia. Everyday products are no longer made in the United States. The examples go on and on.

But these increasingly profitable companies are paying less taxes. According to Citizens for Tax Justice, 12 of our largest corporations actually received tax refunds! The drop in tax revenue is forcing cuts in education, social programs, and national infrastructure. Think of the implications. Do we want programs for music and the arts eliminated from schools, so that only children of the wealthy can participate in them? Do we want our national parks sold to billionaires?

It has been argued that corporations are just following the rules of capitalism, that their only obligation is making profits for their stockholders. But corporations and very rich individuals benefit most from national security, government-funded research, infrastructure, and property laws. Defending the country benefits the rich more, because they have more to defend. Taxpayer-funded research at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (the Internet), the National Institute of Health (pharmaceuticals), and the National Science Foundation (the Digital Library Initiative) has laid a half-century foundation for their idea-building. The interstates and airports and FAA and TSA benefit people who have the money to travel.

In his book "Outliers," Malcolm Gladwell says this about the richest and most successful Americans: "Their success was not just of their own making. It was a product of the world in which they grew up."

The wealthiest individuals and corporations depended on all of America to make their fortunes. Now they're saying they did it on their own, and they don't need government or the American public any more.

That is why the rest of us, especially young people bearing the brunt of the snub, should be mad.

In 1865 newspaper editor Horace Greeley said to those struggling to find success in life: "The rents are high, the food is bad, the dust is disgusting and the morals are deplorable. Go West, young man, go West and grow up with the country." It's no longer that simple for our young people. The country's all grown up, and it's mostly owned by corporations.

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MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Why is our energy policy fossilized with policies that are bankrupting us, polluting toxins into the air and water and serving as the catalyst to launch wars to control oil reserves?

That is because there is no separation between our government's federal energy policy and the "industry's" energy policy. They are virtually one and the same. That means that the profits of the oil companies, the coal barons and other fossil fuel businesses are basically in charge of driving a strategic policy that is economically ruining us and preventing the development of alternative energy sources.

China, on the other hand, has little distinction between primarily state-owned energy companies and the government's policies on the matter (although there is an expansion of "private" energy companies). Therefore, it is driven by a mandate to develop the most effective, most modern sources of fuel. In fact, it created the China Energy Conservation Investment Corporation, which is devoted to funding more efficient energy.

That is the major reason it is light years ahead of the US in nurturing the solar, hydropower and wind power industries, among others. Yes, China heavily subsidizes its alternative fuel initiatives, but shouldn't the US government be doing the same? Why isn't the entire south of the United States powered in large part by solar and wind energy? Why isn't geothermal technology at an advance development state in the US?

This is the crux of the matter: the more the US develops alternative energy sources, the more the oil companies and their fossil fuel cohorts are likely to decrease profits. The less the US plays a role in developing alternative energy and keeping the US hooked on fossil fuel, the greater the bloated profits of the current antiquated providers rise as scarcity increases.

That is literally the bottom line.

In China, since the government heavily dominates the energy industry - for all practical purposes - decreasing the cost of fuel and creating new sources that, in the long term, will be more durable and less expensive is good strategic policy. Relying on fossil fuel will hamper China's economic growth, as is currently happening in the US. For China, long-term dependence on fossil fuels will result in a strain on economic growth, not a profit.

So, the people who killed the electric car several times (now having its tenth or 11th "rebirth"), who have impeded solar energy, who scrapped mass transportation in Los Angeles, who are supporting a toxic Keystone XL pipeline through the US to export oil overseas and who have done everything possible to keep us junkies hooked on fossil fuels, these people continue to prevent the US government from advancing nontoxic and less expensive (in the long term, sun and wind power will never be exhausted) energy.

China is proof that alternative fuel development is best for a nation looking to the future, not looking to pad the multibillion-dollar profits of a fossil fuel industry.

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BILL BERKOWITZ FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

An otherwise extraordinary art exhibit at San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art, is marred by leaving out some salient, but disquieting historical facts, namely: Prior to World War II, Gertrude Stein allegedly advocated for Adolf Hitler to receive the Nobel Peace Prize; and, she survived the Nazi occupation of France and the Vichy puppet government thanks to at least one well-known French anti-Semite with close ties to the Vichy and Nazi regimes. Some details are still not clear, but the evidence of de facto tacit "collaboration" is.

For days now, I've been haunted by Gertrude Stein. Except for an occasional glance at her book The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, I confess to never fully reading her work. I did see Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris and enjoyed (as always) Kathy Bates' portrayal of her. And, I have known - as does most any Oakland resident -- that Stein is famously quoted as having remarked, "The trouble with Oakland is that when you get there, there isn't any there there"; a comment that for years has been open to various interpretations.

My Stein saga started innocently enough: My wife and I met up with two friends on Saturday afternoon outside the San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA), and headed in to see The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso and the Parisian Avant-Garde. This was the last weekend the exhibit would be up, and the place was packed. It was so crowded that I blithely remarked that it seemed like we were at The Louvre during tourist season. (In an early August Press Release, SFMoMA indicated that it expected as many as 350,000 visitors by the end of the run.)

The exhibit was fascinating. I'll let Stephen West of Bloomberg.com who described it as, "The curatorial triumph of the summer," handle the details:

"Writer and Bay Area native Gertrude Stein and her brothers, Leo and Michael, had remarkable taste and timing. They moved to Paris in the early 1900s and soon began collecting the newest wave of modern art, Matisse and Picasso, as well as the more established Cezanne, Renoir, Bonnard and others.

"Their apartments became de facto museums of modernism and salons for the artistic elite of Paris. Gertrude was Picasso's champion. Leo, Michael and his wife, Sarah, favored Matisse. (And others: Michael and Sarah later commissioned Le Corbusier to design a modernist house for them.)

"The sprawling show brings together much of the now scattered Stein collection. It features iconic works like Picasso's monumental 1905-06 portrait of Gertrude, now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and Matisse's 1905 'Woman With a Hat,' now part of the San Francisco museum's collection.

"Along with about 40 Picassos, 60 Matisses and works by more than a dozen other artists, the exhibition offers scores of photographs of the Steins, Gertrude's partner Alice B. Toklas, their apartments and their arty circle, encapsulating a remarkable period."

In each room, accompanying the paintings were drawings, film clips, correspondence, and photos (some from floor-to-ceiling) from the Stein family.  There was an informative introductory description of the period, the changes that were taking place in the art world during that time, and the family's connection and influence on it all.

One of the first rooms at the SFMoMA exhibit featured photographs of the then Bay Area-based Stein family from the turn of the twentieth century, before Gertrude and her brother Leo took off for Paris. The Stein family was part of a thriving Jewish community in Northern California, and clearly proud of their Jewish identity.

The exhibit, according to an SFMoMA press release posted toward the end, was structured "roughly chronologically by when they were originally acquired by the family, highlighting major themes and benchmarks of both art history and the Steins' parallel journey." There was a discussion of the years leading up to and including World War II. Buried in that particular narrative was a statement that Stein had spent the war years in Southern France.

As I left the museum, I turned toward my friend and asked him if he had noticed that sentence. He had. It was, after all quite remarkable.

It was an unexceptional detail that told us nothing, yet ironically, told us a great deal, because Jews in Vichy "controlled" southern France were rounded up for concentration camps at the direction of the Nazis.

We both wondered how Stein and her lover/longtime companion, Alice Toklas -- lesbians and Jews -- had managed to survive during the German occupation (puppet Vichy government), which saw the deportation and murder of thousands of French Jews in concentration camps.

Later that evening I began looking into that question. Googling "Gertrude Stein" "Nazis" I found thousands of hits. The first site I went to was called "Adolph The Great. Com," which claims that it "is not an anti-Semitic [sic] site but a collection of facts intended to bring about understanding and tolerance," which is code for an anti-Semitic site. The site's content includes those titled "Adolf the Humanitarian," "Adolf the Artist," "Adolf fights cancer," "Adolf's Jewish Support," and "Adolf and the Nobel Peace Prize." That was the one that caught me off guard as it featured a picture of Gertrude Stein.

According to adolfthegreat.com, "The renowned Jewish author, Gertrude Stein, led the campaign to get Adolf Hitler nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1938: 'I say that Hitler ought to have the peace prize, because he is removing all the elements of contest and of struggle from Germany. By driving out the Jews and the democratic and Left element, he is driving out everything that conduces to activity. That means peace...'"

I couldn't believe what I had just read. It must be the product of a fevered mind distorting some off-hand comment that Stein might or might not have made. In any case, why trust a Nazi-revisionist website? (In fact, the quotation is from a New York Times interview with Stein in 1934, but there is no credible evidence that she actually lobbied the Nobel Peace Prize Committee. Advocates of Stein also contend that she was being "sarcastic," but her statement fits with her political viewpoints of the time: that Hitler was an authoritarian leader who could keep the Bolsheviks at bay and that many communists in Germany were Jews -- and Stein was no friend of communists.

I continued my search.

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NIKOLAS KOZLOFF FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

For the past year or so, I've been writing steadily about WikiLeaks and U.S. diplomatic correspondence between various American embassies in Latin America and the State Department in Washington, D.C.  For a full inventory of these pieces, you may head to my web site, which complements and further contextualizes my two books, Revolution: South America and the Rise of the New Left, and Hugo Chávez: Oil, Politics and the Challenge to the U.S.

It's a bit difficult for one person to stay on top of all the communication back and forth, and WikiLeaks' recent decision to place all of the remaining cables online has made the researchers' work even more of an uphill climb.  In an effort to stay afloat, I decided to sift through many of these cables, taking note of intriguing, incendiary or just plain odd documents which may be worthy of further investigation.  In coming weeks, I'll be publishing my own guide to the "Caracas cables" which may aid journalists, researchers or activists.  In the interest of saving time, I've opted not to insert too much of my own commentary or analysis but have added in links to the original documents where useful.

Chávez's Former Wife Herma Marksman

At the U.S. Embassy in Caracas, diplomatic staff routinely spoke to the rightist Chávez opposition during the Bush years.  But in 2004, an odd encounter occurred between the Americans and Chávez's former wife, Herma Marksman, who held a rather disparaging view of the Venezuelan president.  Marksman, a history professor who was married to Chávez between 1984 and 1993, told U.S. diplomats that the firebrand populist was ambitious from an early age and "even thought of running the country as a 20 year-old."

Later, as a junior officer, Chávez fell under the influence of Douglas Bravo, a former Communist and guerrilla leader from the 1960s.  According to Marksman it was Bravo, and not Chávez, who developed the political philosophy of the Bolivarian Revolution.  Though Marksman cast Chávez as an intellectual lightweight, she added that he "should not be underestimated."  The Venezuelan was "an excellent storyteller, who often characterizes his opponents as devils, which is a powerful religious symbol to the poor."

According to Marksman, Chávez was unscrupulous, "trusted few people" and "does not have true friends."  If he had a problem, Marksman added, Chávez would only confide in his brother Adan or Cuban leader Fidel Castro.  Marksman remarked cryptically that several individuals within the Chávez government were "dangerous," including some figures in the inner circle such as Diosdado Cabello (for more on him, stay tuned for future posts).

Could the disgruntled Marksman have had some kind of personal or political axe to grind, and why did she agree to speak to the U.S. Embassy in the first place?  It's unclear why the couple split in the 1990s, but diplomats wrote that Marksman may have been unhappy with Chávez's failed coup in 1992 against then president Carlos Andrés Pérez.  "While Marksman's statements may be biased," the Americans wrote, "she does offer a unique perspective into the current president."

Chávez's "Half Brother"?

Another intriguing cable relates to Jesus Arnaldo Pérez, who was promoted to head the Ministry of Foreign Relations in 2004.  According to U.S. diplomats, Pérez was Hugo's childhood friend, and "rumors abound that he is in fact the President's illegitimate half brother" and had the same father [I can't comment on the veracity of such claims, but for a photo of Pérez, who like Chávez has a wide face, click here].  The Americans wrote that Pérez was born in the town of Veguita in the provincial state of Barinas, close to Hugo's birthplace, and during Pérez's swearing in ceremony the president mentioned that the two had attended school together in Barinas.

Typically, U.S. diplomats refer to figures in the Chávez government in a rather smug and condescending fashion, and their report on Pérez was no exception.  Commenting on Pérez, they remarked that the new Foreign Minister "is neither a convincing orator nor seems to possess a great intellect."  "We see the appointment of Perez as Chávez's desire to surround himself with people who are loyal above all," the embassy concluded.

Perhaps, diplomats such as U.S. ambassador Charles Shapiro simply did not care for officials who would talk back to them.  In March, 2004 Shapiro met with Pérez, who said the U.S.-Venezuelan relationship "could not get worse."  Shapiro tried to reassure Pérez that there was no Bush plan to overthrow the Chávez regime, but "relations could indeed get much worse unless Chávez tempers his anti-U.S. remarks, personal insults and invective."  Predictably, the meeting did not progress much from there amidst recrimination and a cloud of mutual suspicion.

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STEVE JONAS FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

From the Huffington Post, August 26, 2011: "Televangelist Pat Robertson suggested Wednesday that cracks in the Washington Monument caused by the August 23 (Virginia) earthquake could be a sign from God, and the natural disaster 'means that we're closer to the coming of the Lord.' To explain the rare east coast quake, Robertson pointed to the Biblical prophecy of the end of the world, which claims there could be potential devastation from natural disasters leading up to Jesus' return to Earth. On his television show, 'The 700 Club,' Robertson said: 'I don't want to get weird on this, so please take it for what it's worth, but it seems to me the Washington Monument is a symbol of America's power. It has been the symbol of our great nation, we look at that monument and we say this is one nation under God. Now there's a crack in it. Is that a sign from the Lord? Is that something that has significance, or is it just the result of an earthquake?' " Robertson asked his viewers.

This was rather less definitive than his statement on the Haitian earthquake (and much less definitive than his "it's the fault of the gays" declaration made with the late Jerry Falwell following 9/11).  Maybe he is getting a bit sensitized.  At any rate, consider this one:

"NEW YORK (CBS, 1/12/10) Pat Robertson, the American Christian televangelist and host of 'The 700 Club,' said that Haitians need to have a 'great turning to god' while he was reporting on the devastating 7.0 earthquake that shook the island nation . . .'Something happened a long time ago in Haiti and people might not want to talk about. . . They were under the heel of the French, you know Napoleon the third and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said 'We will serve you if you will get us free from the prince.'  True story. And so the devil said, 'OK it's a deal.' And they kicked the French out. The Haitians revolted and got something themselves free.  But ever since they have been cursed by one thing after another.' "

Well, Pat, actually it was not (Louis) Napoleon III (1852-1870) against whom the Haitian slave revolt took place but the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte (1798-1815).  But when you are making up stuff like you do, what difference do the facts make?  There was a huge amount of controversy, not about him getting his facts wrong, but about the content of what he said.  While many including myself regard what he said as an outrageous slander against the Haitian people, another question occurred to me: how does he know?  How does he know that in fact the Haitian people made a pact with the devil, whenever they did it, and that because of that pact, made however may years ago, they suffered this horrible earthquake now.

And then Michelle Bachmann tells us that Hurricane Irene was the result of God's wrath for too much Federal spending (that is on items that Michelle doesn't like spending on, like repairing bridges like the one that collapsed in her home state a couple of years ago).  She later claimed she was joking, but from I have heard from the likes of her and the Rev. Perry, God is not someone one should joke around with.  We will not here get into the seeming illogic of God punishing the US for Federal overspending by committing an act that requires more spending, actually on matters she really doesn't like money to spent on.  For I assume that as a "Tea Partier," as she likes to tell us even when not looking into the camera --- see, I do pay attention to details even if I don't deign to interfere with them --- she is following the lead of her Tea Party House Majority Leader (and luster after the Speaker's job, but that is another matter).  That is unless you are Rep. Cantor and want to find every possible excuse, including natural disasters, to rip out of the Federal budget spending you happen not to like too.

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MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

We've wallowed too long in our victimhood

9-11 was indeed a devastating loss of personal life.  Those who died were mostly US citizens, but included people of all nations, such as the wait staff and bus boys at the sky high restaurant in the Twin Towers.  It was a "shared" loss, indicative of the international inclusiveness of America.

But having never experienced a significant mainland attack since the War of 1812 -- as Noam Chomsky points out in his remarkable book, "9-11: Was There an Alternative?" -- we feel ourselves invulnerable as a country. I recall reading an observation of Kurt Vonnegut many years ago -- who survived the allied fire bombing of Dresden in WW II in an underground slaughterhouse for prisoners of war -- commenting that America was distinct among Western allies in never knowing the devastation of cities under siege by bombers, rockets, tanks and mortar attack.

Then there is our national hubris, that American Exceptionalism itself was under attack on September 11, 2001.  Like all powerful empires, we feel invulnerable and crush anyone perceived to have pierced through our bubble of "invincibility."

Chomsky and others call 9-11 a crime, which our government treated as a justification for wars that are still continuing ten years later, draining us of military lives in excess of those lost on 9-11, causing civilian deaths in the hundreds of thousands, and being a central contributing factor to the rise in the American deficit.

Europe, which endured WW II -- in which some 30 million people were killed -- stopped letting the nightmarish loss of life and destruction hamper its reconstruction more quickly than America has let go of 9-11, which it still clings to and wallows in.

BuzzFlash at Truthout, publishing since May of 2000, reported and broke stories on the attack on the Twin Towers (and the Pentagon) and the Bush/Cheney administration use of the tragedy to launch military conflicts of empire.  At the time of 9-11, the Bush administration's poll numbers were low and dropping.  All that changed on 9-11, after which the full propaganda strength of the White House and corporate mass media focused on putting US citizens in a state of fear to accomplish strategic military goals to enhance America's superpower status and extend our military footprint.

Yes, BuzzFlash at Truthout focused on verifiable fact that Bush and Rice were warned of likely Al-Qaeda hijackings and how the stenographic DC press let them off the hook on their egregious unintentional or intentional lapse in heightening airport security that might indeed have prevented 9-11.

Rice eventually defended her failed responsibility to protect us by saying something like "but we didn't receive warnings that they would fly them into buildings," which was specious because US intelligence knew for some time of just such a possibility as part of an overall Al-Qaeda strategy.  Bush finally admitted, during his presidency, that they were warned of hijackings, but not of a specific target so his administration didn't take action to protect the World Trade Center.  The corporate press thought those excuses made sense, except for the simple logical fact that if Bush and Rice, among others, had taken increased steps to prevent hijackings, they might have prevented the hijackings that brought down the Twin Towers and blew up part of the Pentagon.

Furthermore, in exclusive reporting by Jason Leopold and Jeff Kaye on Truthout, it is revealed that US intelligence services did indeed know of Al-Qaeda interest in targeting the Twin Towers and the Pentagon: "high-level DoD officials held discussions about DO5's intelligence activities between the summer of 2000 and June 2001 revolving around al-Qaeda's interest in striking the Pentagon, the World Trade Center (WTC), and other targets."

In other words, at least some individuals in the Bush administration were aware that the terrorist organization had set its sights on those structures prior to 9/11 and, apparently, government officials failed to act on those warnings.

And then there are all the lingering threads, still unconnected, of how the CIA and FBI were on to some of the hijackers, not to mention the quickly erased connections of the hijackers to Saudi Arabian backers.  There are so many unanswered questions, even more after a 9-11 commission whitewashed the dirty laundry surrounding the attack.

But this much we know.  The narrative of our government switched on a dime after 9-11, and we were cast into a state of what Chomsky calls "manufactured consent," whipped up by a bombardment of jingoistic rhetoric coming from the federal government and the airwaves.  We were kept in a constant state of fear with crayon-colored alerts.  We were pawns in the great game of empire.

As a result, our nation is on the verge of a double-dip recession.  While nations like Germany forge ahead economically, Osama bin-Laden achieved one of his major goals: crippling America economically.

We are still wallowing in our victimhood.  We had our time to grieve, but we haven't moved on.

After World War II, the US helped rebuild Europe -- with the visionary Marshall Plan that even turned Germany (our former Nazi adversary) -- into thriving democracies and economic engines.

Since Barack Obama was elected, the Republican Party shifted the national narrative from 9-11 to the deficit, which -- as noted earlier -- has been a substantial contributor to our financial shortfall.  But 9-11 has continued to be an albatross around the neck of national progress and the closure of grief and grievance.

That will continue to weigh upon us unnecessarily until we get on with a new narrative of innovation, a belief in the strength of democracy, and an understanding that overextended empire cannot endure indefinitely while undertaking squandered and prolonged military expeditions.

We have appropriately mourned those who died in the attack of 9-11.  It is time that we honor them by advancing as a nation to write the next chapter of the great experiment in democracy known as America.

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DEE EVANS FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

With the 10-year anniversary of September 11 approaching, I have been listening to the increased discussions about how the people of America came together and were so unified in the aftermath of this horrific tragedy and how so many people now wish that our country could get back to how we were back then...when political party didn't matter.  But I can't help but ask myself...didn't political party matter?

Did which party was in control of the White House actually play a part in how 'unified' we were back then?  I have to wonder how things might have played differently if 9/11 had happened on a Democratic president's watch.

Whether our 'fair and balanced' mainstream media wants to admit it publicly or not, the Republicans have taken the Nobel "Putz" Prize quite a bit in recent years when it comes to political divisiveness and obstruction in this country.

Think back to the weeks immediately following 9/11.  Couldn't you just hear the likes of Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter had this happened on Bill Clinton's or Barack Obama's watch?  In the midst of the grieving, wouldn't you just have loved to listen to all the public threats of Congressional hearings about "what did the White House know" that would have been demanded by the Jim DeMint's and Michele Bachmann's of the world? 

And I can just see the Muslim witch hunt that would have ensued under Congressman Peter King's direction (much like the one he's involved in now).  Can't you just imagine the Fox News and talk radio roundtable discussions about how the President "failed to keep us safe" and how he was "weak on terror!"

Back then, however, Bush was not a Republican President; he was an American President and most Americans supported his "anti-terrorism" campaign.  If you need any more proof of this, just look at Bush's approval ratings following 9/11.  His approval was around 90% and it stayed in the 60's and 70's through 2004.  I again ask, do you think this would have been the case had it been a Democratic President? 

The Republicans and the right-wing media would have so demagogued the president (and as usual, the sheep of the mainstream media would have followed suit) that the narrative would have developed into more one of blame than of unity.  With this negativity clogging the airwaves, the president would have been more questioned and criticized than supported and praised and his approval ratings would have almost surely plummeted.

After 9/11, many Democrats were very eager to work with President Bush.  Many of them voted for much of what he asked for and threw no extra special roadblocks in his path on the road to two wars.  Can you imagine if the shoe was on the other foot?  Would Clinton or Obama have received the same Congressional unity that Bush received?  My mind tells me Heck No!  Remember, Republicans live and breathe on their so-called national security credentials.  They would never have taken this attack as selflessly as the Democrats, did and the right-wing media would have had a field day assigning blame and labeling the President as a failure.

I too would love for our country to get back to the sense of pride and unity that we felt back then but I am in no way naïve enough to think that it was all on the up and up.  I just do not believe that Republicans and the right-wing media would have allowed a Democratic President to be looked upon so favorably as a warrior following a terrorist attack that killed 3,000 Americans on U.S. soil.

Just ponder the question: How "unified" would our country have been if 9/11 had happened under a Democratic President?

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SHAMUS COOKE FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

When there are zero jobs available, any job will do. This fact has been exploited by corporations now re-labeling themselves "job creators," since being a job creator in a time of depression brings a religious status similar to a rain god during a drought. Democrats and Republicans have lavished eternal praise on the "job creators" and in consequence have created a political atmosphere that is rabidly pro-corporate "job creators" and anti-everything else.    

In practice this means that any new law or regulation that hinders the power or profits of "job creating" corporations is instantly attacked as a "job killer." This type of logic is good for bumper stickers and Tea Parties but bad for those who suffer under the giant power of corporations, including working people, the unemployed, the self-employed, and the environment.

For example, in Oregon a statewide measure was passed to increase taxes on corporations and the wealthy to deal with the state's budget deficit. The tax money was to be used to save social services and prevent layoffs. Before it became law the measure was attacked viciously by a newborn, well-funded group calling itself "Oregonians Against Job-Killing Taxes." The message was simple: if you tax the wealthy and corporations, they will punish you by leaving the state and taking their jobs with them; better to simply accept their absolute power and sing their praises while reducing their taxes and destroying environmental regulations that impede their profits.  

Obama recently surrendered to this philosophy when he reneged on a promise to adopt stricter air quality standards around ozone pollution (against the recommendations of scientists from his own Environmental Protection Agency).  Less ground-level smog would prevent thousands of deaths while reducing lung and health issues in general, cutting health care costs by billions. But the interests of the corporate "job creators" won out in the end. The Huffington Post reports:  

"The White House has been under heavy pressure from GOP lawmakers and major industries, which have slammed the stricter standard as an unnecessary jobs killer...Obama said his decision was made in part to reduce regulatory burdens [on corporations] and uncertainty [for corporations] at a time of rampant questions about the strength of the U.S. economy." 

How did corporate America react? 

Thomas Donohue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce [a giant corporate lobby group] said the move was "an enormous victory for America's job creators, the right decision by the president and one that will help reduce the uncertainty facing businesses." (September 2nd, 2011).   

This dynamic is now the new normal. The same logic was used after the Gulf Coast BP disaster, when Obama temporarily banned offshore drilling in response. But this practical and necessary measure was instantly attacked as a "job killer" and Obama quickly changed his tune and ended the ban.  Dangerous deep-sea drilling continues and politicians and the media alike have hushed-over the issues until the next disaster occurs. The incredible shock and outrage that working people voiced over the BP oil spill has been ignored in favor of the interests of the "Job Creators."  

Not only was the BP disaster ignored, but some corporations used it to their benefit. Since deep sea drilling was dangerous, some corporations admitted, better to focus on the ever-expanding realm of land drilling for natural gas.  As the excellent documentary Gasland shows, drilling for natural gas (also called Liquefied natural gas, or LNG) is causing catastrophic environmental damage while the Obama administration has repeatedly encouraged its expansion as an alternative to "foreign oil." The Environmental Protection Agency has virtually ignored this now-gigantic industry as corporations like Halliburton pump hundreds of poisonous chemicals into the ground and air for their personal profit.  

Corporations also won out when it came to environmentally-sane logging strategies in the Pacific Northwest and the horrifically-destructive act of mountain removal for the mining industries. Yet another recent victim was the Canadian Tar Sands pipeline that Obama agreed to, which will run from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, carrying oil that was especially destructive to mine. In all these cases the corporate "Job Creators" attacked the so-called "Job Killers" for wanting to impose regulations that would help prevent environmental disasters.   

In addition, corporations quietly sidelined Obama's campaign promise to set the first-ever limits on the specific pollution blamed for global warming. At a time when most working people are educated and deathly afraid of the near-term effects of global warming, the President has simply stopped talking about the issue. Any respectable climate scientist will tell you that unless massive environmental changes are made very soon there will be unstoppable climate change that will have dire consequences for all humans, not just the ones most immediately effected in areas devastated by droughts, flooding, and other extreme weather patterns.  

All working people have an interest in ensuring that their children and grandchildren can live a life without such carnage. Some, however, are tricked into thinking that the immediate need for jobs overrules any consideration for the environment, since not eating today is more important than a global environmental crisis that will strike tomorrow. In reality there is no such contradiction. Now is actually the perfect time to brush this corporate-created myth aside and demand what is sorely over-due for both working people and the environment.  

It should be painfully clear to even the most reality-blind politicians that the private sector has no interest in creating jobs; they are quite content sitting on their mountains of cash until wages fall low enough -- due to massive unemployment -- for them to hire more labor. Working people cannot afford the patience or the low wages. The jobs' crisis demands that governments on the city, state, and federal level create jobs' programs similar to the programs enacted during the last great depression. But not just any jobs will do.  

Given that our society is facing an energy crisis and a related environmental crisis, only a green jobs program will do. This means not only fixing dilapidated bridges and roads, but investing massive amounts of money in alternative energy -- solar, wind, hydro, etc. -- while improving and expanding alternative forms of transportation -- high speed trains, buses, electric cars, etc. It also means massive investments in home and building weatherization, recycling infrastructure, public education campaigns, research and development for alternative energy, and a variety of other measures that will help fundamentally change our culture's relation to the environment, all of which will create massive amounts of jobs.  

Obama's stubborn refusal to do anything of substance for labor, the unemployed, and environmentalists creates an opportunity for these groups to work closely together for a better world. Because politicians are refusing to respond to society's most pressing needs, new tactics need to be employed. Lobbying politicians and organizing small rallies cannot have the same effects they once did.    

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MARK KARLIN, EDITOR FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

The GOP position on health care is killing us.

That's a narrative that President Obama should have used when battling for health care reform. His absence of doing so is indicative of his inability - even while giving stirring speeches, as he did on jobs - to instill a larger vision and narrative into his presidency.

The reality is that the current health care system for those with insurance - many of whom opposed the White House's health care reform package - increasingly means that they are paying more and getting less in coverage. This is resulting from escalating deductibles, co-payments, out-of-pocket limits and higher premium co-pays. Ask any American, except for the wealthiest, and this is most likely a growing financial challenge that they are experiencing.

Ezra Klein of The Washington Post wrote a column entitled, "How Health Costs Wiped Out a Full Decade of Income Increases."

Klein notes:

All evidence points to American voters not really caring about rising health care costs. But here's one pretty compelling reason they should: The escalating cost of health care has wiped out nearly all income gains made by the average American family in the past decade....

[Rising health care costs, in the form of increased insurance premiums and co-pays, ate up nearly all of that [increase in wages].

So, instead of emphasizing the larger narrative of rising personal medical insurance costs that threatens most Americans, Obama emphasized the uninsured. The Republicans turned this to their advantage through code words and fear - but mostly through the usual wink and nod that this was some scheme to benefit minorities and dead beats.

Obama lost the battle over this narrative, even though it was his to win, because he all too often is afraid of speaking in terms that reflect the contextual reality of public policy options in plain, homespun terms. Instead, he accepts the debate "frame" of the likes of right-wing think tanks funded by the heavy-hitting Koch brothers' crowd.

The choice was never between "Obamacare" and a system that works. It was between a health care delivery system that is eating away at the wages of all but the wealthiest Americans and a paradigm shift in providing medical care in the US.

Obama avoided the paradigm shift and created a system that will enrich insurance companies that are themselves a key cause of rising health care costs, while managing to provide the Republicans a cudgel with which to hit him over the head.

Without a vision, without resetting the terms of the debate, without bringing the truth to bear down upon the important public policy issues of the day, Obama is a trapped man trying to punch his way out of an alternative universe narrative created by three decades of right-wing propaganda and bullying.

What about that average $1,500 in payroll tax deduction that the president proposed in his new jobs bill? Most of us will be spending it on increased health insurance premiums, deductibles and paying for non-covered services.

President Obama needs to spell out the real narrative of America, not to de facto accept the one forced down our gullets by Fox News.

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LARRY BEINHART FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

It's time to end this silly farce of Labor Day.

No one celebrates labor.

I mean no one. A few months back I suggested to Arianna Huffington that Huffington Post have a Labor section. They have business - as do all major publications - style, black, latino, green, religion, good news, travel, weird news, comedy, celebrity, parents - but not labor. They have recipes, home, do it yourself, body, spirit, and mind, they have tech, engadget, techcrunch, joystiq, and an apple blog - but not labor. They have New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Denver - but not labor.

Let's give the day to the people we actually admire, look up to, and support. We could have a Broker and Bankers Day, Hedge Fund Day, Big Banks Day, Billionaires Day, Multinationals Day.

The best replacement would be Corporation Day.

We need to celebrate corporations because we love and admire them so very much. We feel beholding to them for giving us 'jobs' and gadgets and stuff.

Plus they need a special day, like Martin Luther King Day, to celebrate their admission to full personhood after hundreds of years of not being persons, being just, well, corporations.

The amazing, and wonderful, thing is that they have already become not just our equals, but our superiors in every way.

First off, they are immortal, which is always an advantage.

As noted, at last they have all the rights of people. They have achieved that status without our human limitations or our social and legal liabilities. They have no sentimental attachments to human values. They need not care for family, relatives, friends, or neighbors. No obligation is so important that if it's to their financial advantage they won't seek to get out of it.

Their sole goal is to make money, at any cost to others, and they need not apologize for that.

They cannot go to prison for their crimes. They can kill, rob, steal, chisel, cheat, defraud, poison, pollute, wreck, and ruin. But they cannot be contained, even for that most valid of reasons for imprisoning people - to stop them from doing it again.

Corporate commercial interests have more status in our courts than human interests.

A human falsely imprisoned and tortured in the name of national security can't sue because the suit might expose government secrets. But a private airline that flew such people to secret prisons and to countries where they would be tortured can expose the entire operation in court in a lawsuit over getting paid.

A high school student has no right to make jokes - like holding up a sign 'Bong Hits for Jesus' - but corporations have a right to spend unlimited money on political campaigns.

The results of political campaigns are largely determined by how much money is spent. That makes corporations into super-voters. The more money they have, the more super they are.

When it comes time to pass legislation a normal person can't tell their congress person how to write the bill. They can't get anywhere near their senator (try it sometime if you doubt me.). But corporations hire lobbyists to write the bills for congress and the senate and guide them on how to vote yes for their bills and then give them the sound bites to explain to us why they were good bills.

Let's get real, folks. We hate and despise regular working people, they're not rich!

Let's have a day for the übermenchen we truly love and adore, Corporation Day!

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MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

On the same day that a ghoulish "gladiator" forum crowd at the Reagan Library cheered the announcement that Texas Gov. Rick Perry had executed 234 people, a man appointed by Perry to chair the Texas Forensic Science Commission, Sam Bassett, accused the governor of covering up the state killing of a likely innocent man.

The executed prisoner, Cameron Todd Willingham was convicted and sentenced on what was likely faulty forensic evidence. Bassett was fired as chairman of the commission, as previously reported in BuzzFlash at Truthout, just before the Forensic Science Commission was about to formally issue a scathing report about the highly flawed "arson" investigation that led to Willingham's conviction.

Will Bunch of The Philadelphia Daily News commented about the rousing approval of putting people to death - innocent or not - at the GOP debate: "What you heard echoing in the Reagan Library last night was not reason. It was bloodlust, pure and simple, and it was repulsive."

"It was utterly sickening to watch," Bunch reflects. "When Perry - who recently vetoed a bill that would halt the execution of the mentally ill - told the audience that anyone convicted of murder in the Lone Star State faces 'the ultimate justice,' the applause grew even louder."

As for Perry, he was asked by Brian Williams, the moderator of the NBC/Politico sponsored September 7 debate, "Have you struggled to sleep at night with the idea that any one of those might have been innocent?"

Perry adamantly responded, "no, sir. I've never struggled with that at all."

Basset calls the Willingham execution and cover-up of the botched evidence indicative of Perry's character and decision making.

But as BuzzFlash at Truthout pointed out in its previous commentary on the Willingham execution, Perry and his advisers may know exactly what they were doing. In a focus group run by a 2010 Republican primary opponent of Perry, a Texan voter spoke admiringly of Perry going ahead and executing Willingham, saying: "It takes balls to execute an innocent man."

Given the response of the GOP faithful at the Reagan Library to Perry having surpassed George W. Bush's record-setting rate of executions when he was Texas governor, it's clear that Perry is going to get the cojones vote, because no "liberal wimp" is going to murder someone who is probably not guilty.

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Quick Take On The GOP Debate

Things for Bachmann and Perry

Didn't go according to plan.

Romney did better than expected;

The Mitt didn't hit the fan.

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MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

If you want to make crime a growth industry to create more jobs, just privatize prisons.

It's happening across the nation. Heck, crime has been an institutional engine for a huge work force even in the public sector. Think of the hundreds of thousands of lawyers, judges, clerks, prison guards, police, parole officers, social workers etc. depending upon keeping people incarcerated.

And then there's the construction industry that is hot footin' it to build new maximum security facilities. And the small towns now depleted of jobs that compete to "host" prisons to bring jobs to the community.

But the real institutionalization of crime as a job creator is emerging full force with the privatization of jails. A corporation can't make a profit - let alone the issue of their accountability for how they treat prisoners - unless they have sufficient volume.

In short, a privatized criminal incarceration system de facto creates the need for an ongoing source of criminals to meet the need for generating a profit based on economies of scale.

It's no surprise that Rick Perry, then, has jumped on the prison privatization bandwagon, as detailed in a Mother Jones article, "Flush With Prison Industry Dollars, Rick Perry Pushed Privatized Prisoner Care."

Of course, a lot of crime is based on multi-generational poverty, a condition which is exacerbated by our current severe economic downturn. That is why the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world.

It would be interesting to see what would result if we offered more jobs in the highest crime rate areas. But that's not bound to happen now or anytime soon.

There's a lot of money to be made in crime by the many professions that depend upon the revolving door of "offenders" continuing at a nice pace, and much of that profit is increasingly being made by the growing for-profit prison industry.

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A BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT NEWS ALERT

The following is a September 7 statement by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont):

As President Barack Obama prepares for a Thursday address on jobs to a joint session of Congress, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) called today for putting Americans back to work through a series of bold measures that include rebuilding the country's crumbling infrastructure.

As part of a four-point plan to jumpstart the economy, Sanders also said the federal government should do more to help cash-strapped states and local governments that have been forced to furlough teachers, firefighters, police officers and other workers. He advocated transforming our energy system with job-creating investments in renewable and sustainable energy sources. And he called on Congress to reconsider so-called free-trade policies that have decimated manufacturing in the United States.

"While everyone understands that we have got to reduce the deficit, the number one challenge America faces right now is a jobs crisis," Sanders said, noting that 25 million Americans, 16 percent of the workforce, are today either unemployed or underemployed.

"Creating the millions of new jobs that we desperately need is not only vitally important to our economy but will be the means by which we reduce the deficit over the long term."

The centerpiece of Sanders' plan for putting millions of Americans back to work is his call for infrastructure investment.  "Everyone in Vermont and across the country understands that we can put millions of Americans back to work rebuilding the nation's bridges, roads, schools, dams, culverts, rail systems and public transportation, among other vital needs," Sanders said.  "We also need to build new infrastructure: every community in the nation needs high speed Internet access, most need new water or sewage plants, and our antiquated electric grid needs to be redesigned and rebuilt."

Other critical elements of a successful jobs plan would transform energy systems, reform trade policies and help states and local governments.

"We must transform our energy system away from fossil fuel and into energy efficiency and sustainable energy. A significant number of jobs can be created through weatherization, and the manufacturing of American-made wind turbines, solar panels, and heat pumps," Sanders said.

"We must also make fundamental changes in our trade policy so that we rebuild our manufacturing sector. Corporate America must invest in the United States and stop the outsourcing of jobs to China, Vietnam, and other low-wage countries."

Under current tax laws, the United States rewards companies that move manufacturing jobs overseas. "If we ended the absurdity of providing tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas, the Joint Tax Committee has estimated that we could raise more than $582 billion in revenue over the next 10 years."

As the president and Congress refocus on jobs, Sanders said it also is critically important that a new congressional super committee assigned to cut the deficit by $1.5 trillion eliminate those tax breaks and other tax loopholes for the wealthy and large corporations.

He also stressed that he would oppose any efforts by the super committee to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

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MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH FOR TRUTHOUT 

Tony Blair didn't just play godfather to one of Rupert Murdoch's daughters by his third wife. Blair is the godfather.

People generally pick close friends to honor by being a godparent, so Murdoch didn't choose Blair by accident. According to The Guardian UK, "Murdoch's third wife, Wendi Deng, who let slip the information in an interview with Vogue, described Blair as one of Rupert's closest friends."

Meanwhile, the British Parliament has once again begun hearings on the Murdoch News Corp. hacking and bribery scandal. The incestuous relationships of Murdoch with UK governments of both the Labour and Conservative Parties flow seamlessly from one parliamentary majority to another. The current UK Prime Minister, Conservative David Cameron, has been so tight with Murdoch that Cameron's former press secretary was one of Murdoch's infamous tabloid editors.

As Henry Porter scathingly observes in The Guardian UK: "Real political power always works unseen, and that is how Murdoch has pulled the levers in British society. Prime ministers who accept Murdoch's support end up doing his bidding."

Add British Petroleum to the mix, as it is the first- or second-largest company in the UK, depending upon the criteria used - and you have a triumvirate of government/media propaganda and corruption/big oil corporate rule. There is little doubt that BP, for instance, played an enormous role in influencing Blair to back the invasion of Iraq - and it has always figured prominently in relations with Libya.

The result of this chronic triumvirate rule (and add a host of other corporations to join BP in the winner's circle) is that the UK has the semblance of democracy, but the structure of the elite status quo remains basically unchanged under governments of any political party.

If that sounds a lot like how things are in the United States, that's because it is.

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TONY PEYSER FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Instead of responding to every Republican
Bit of lunacy --- a mistake I made
More than once --- maybe it's smarter to
Ignore every typical GOP tirade.

Don't take the bait, stuck to your guns and
Avoid becoming an accidental inflator
Of the vile views of Bachmann, Palin, Perry
And some new loon to be named later.

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WALTER BRASCH FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

For most Americans, the only significance of Labor Day is that it concludes a three day weekend.

For Kirk Artley, it means he has about six weeks left of employment.

On Aug. 24, RR Donnelley, a Chicago-based megacorporation that claims to be "the world's premier full-service provider of print and related services," told Artley and the other 283 workers at the Bloomsburg, Pa., plant that "economic conditions" forced the closing of the book printing facility. The workers said they would take significant pay cuts if that would save the plant. RR Donnelley rejected the offer.

Most of the workers live in Columbia County, a small rural county of about 65,000, with unemployment about 8 percent, slightly less than the national rate. Adding 284 persons would significantly increase that rate.

Under the termination agreement, the workers, both management and labor, wouldn't have priority rights to bid for jobs at any other plant. "We were told we could apply for open jobs just like anyone else," says Artley, a bindery technician and president of Local 732C of the Graphic Communications Conference, a Teamsters division. Apparently, there was no way to integrate a couple of hundred workers into a corporation that employs about 58,000. What the corporation that had about $10 billion income last year did agree to do, after negotiations with the union, was award severance of one week pay for every year of service, and to pay for half the health insurance for up to nine months, depending upon length of service.

The corporation told the workers the Bloomsburg plant was no longer profitable. They claimed there was no way the Bloomsburg plant, with its eight rotary offset web presses and five bindery lines, could be competitive in an industry that was moving to digital books. They said other plants would absorb the work. If the company had even contemplated changing the nature of production at Bloomsburg to deal with a changing industry, and re-training the workers, that was never made known to those still employed. Every day, the workers did their jobs, put up with Management, and then went home.

By federal law, there has to be a 60-day notice to the workers. But there is no law to require corporations to tell them the truth.

Contrary to corporate statements and a popular belief that print books are doomed by the emergence and significant increase in publication and sales of digital books, there is still a consumer interest in print. Overall, about 2.57 billion books were sold in 2010, a 4.1 percent increase since 2008, according to data compiled by the Association of American Publishers (AAP). Net sales revenue last year was $27.94 billion, a 5.6 percent increase from two years earlier. The AAP reports there were 603 million copies of trade hardcover books published last year, a 5.8 percent increase from two years earlier, with net sales revenue up about 0.9 percent. For trade softcover books, sales were about one billion copies, up 2.0 percent from 2008, with net sales revenue of about $5.27 billion, according to the AAP. The only significant decrease was mass market paperbacks (sometimes known as the supermarket or rack paperbacks). In 2010, net unit sales were 319 million, a decrease of 16.8 percent from 2008; net revenue was $1.28 billion in 2010, down 13.8 percent from two years earlier, according to the AAP. The Bloomsburg plant printed Harlequin romances and some other mass market paperbacks, but they were a small part of the overall production.

RR Donnelley itself, with assets of about $9 billion, is profitable, although its stock has had wide fluctuations in 2011. Its net sales for 2010 were $10.02 billion, up from $9.86 billion the year before. For the first half of 2011, Donnelley had net sales of $3.86 billion, up about 5.7 percent from $3.65 billion a year earlier. Its second quarter net sales were $2.62 billion, an 8.6 percent increase from a year earlier. The company CEO, Thomas J. Quinlan III, earns about $2.6 million in total compensation, with a five-year combined compensation of about $13.6 million, according to Forbes. In contrast, hourly workers in the Bloomsburg plant received an average of 2 percent pay raises each year.

"Just last month, the company told us we were profitable, that it had no plans to close us down," says Artley, "and now they say we aren't profitable?"

No well-run corporation makes a decision in less than a month to close a 370,000 square foot plant, with an estimated market value of about $8.4 million. But, that is what the corporation wants the workers to believe. The union did get Donnelley to agree it would not shut down the plant and then re-open it and resume printing books. There was no corporate agreement that it wouldn't "re-tool," and establish other printing or digital services. And there was definitely no agreement to retrain or rehire any worker. Based upon past practices, RRD Donnelley is more likely to try to sell the empty building and land.

A clue to what the corporation was going to do may have been disclosed in October 2010 when it trumpeted that it had developed the ProteusJet, high-speed ink jet printers, and was shipping one a month to various plants. The printers were designed to handle short run and one copy at a time print-on-demand publishing. None of those printers were scheduled to be delivered to Bloomsburg.

Bloomsburg still produced several long-run publications for major publishers, including the Idiot's Guide and Twilight series, as well as several fiction best-sellers. But, it was developing a specialty as a short-run printer (generally 1,000-3,000 copies of a title), with a three-day turn-around. In the current book industry, shorter runs with faster turn-around times are becoming more of an industry standard, especially with the rise of more small independent regional publishers. Yet, Donnelley was closing a plant that could have been part of a major expansion to meet the new publishing platforms. "That's one of the things that baffled us," says Artley.

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BILL BERKOWITZ FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

While they are not spitting images of each other, there's an eerie similarity in how the press is covering Rick Perry's first weeks on the campaign trail. In addition, Perry is counting on tapping into the same funding sources that paved the way for George W. Bush, especially the 'Swift Boat' donors that helped put the kybosh on John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign.

Stop me if you've heard this story before.

A well-heeled and politically well-connected Texas Governor becomes president of the United States. During the run-up to his campaign, he receives significant advice and support from some of the most conservative evangelical Christians in his state and across the nation. At the same time his campaign team rounds up some of the state's wealthiest funders and then branches out to include rich conservatives from around the country. The media begins investigating his business deals and his record as governor. The "liberal elite" and late-night talk show hosts routinely ridicule him for getting average grades in college and for being generally "not so smart."

That was then (George W. Bush), this is now (Rick Perry).

With 14-+ months left before the presidential election and some five months before the first GOP primaries, it's, as Yogi Berra said, "déjà vu all over again?"

There is an eerily similar dynamic developing.  Since Perry announced his candidacy, one of the areas that the mainstream press has examined - as it should - is Perry's business dealings; documenting how the son of a poor cotton farmer has become a millionaire several times over.

Back in 1999-2000, there were oodles of stories documenting George W. Bush's abject failure in several business ventures, and how his father's fabulously wealthy friends bailed him out. There was the Texas Rangers deal replete with allegations of insider trading, extraordinary bank loans, and a huge investment of public tax money to build The Ballpark at Arlington.  Eventually Bush sold his share in the team and made out like a bandit (http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/05/13/president.2000/jackson.bush/).

However, the more the press probed, the more labyrinthine some of those deals became until the general public largely ignored and tuned out those stories.

This time around, you can bet that Perry's committed base could care less about any stories from the mainstream press about backroom deals, cronyism or how he accumulated his wealth (see "Rick Perry's Heavenly Host" (http://info.tpj.org/reports/pdf/PerryLeiningerHeavenlyHost.pdf).

This is not to say that the cowboy boots wearing Bush and the cowboy boots wearing Perry are cut from the same cloth. For one thing, Bush, a recovering alcoholic, was putting forth the mantra of "compassionate conservatism," which while conservative, was deeply lacking in compassion. Perry's refrain - including comments that Social Security is a Penza scheme -- smacks of "cutthroat conservatism." Bush was born of privilege and Perry wasn't. And there are all sorts of stories floating about detailing major rifts between Team Perry and Team Bush.

They both are, however, plain-speaking men who have (or least appear to have) inviolable core beliefs, or at least the same inviolable set of talking points. When it comes down to some base issues - abortion, school vouchers, tort reform, same-sex marriage -- Bush and Perry are on the same page.

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STEPHEN PIZZO FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Remember learning in school about how American revolutionaries changed ground warfare? For centuries soldiers from opposing armies marched in straight lines towards each other engaging in face to face battle. America's out-manned and out-armed  citizen soldiers introduced the British Red Coats to what we now call "asymmetric warfare,"-- and much to the disgust of the British. They considered hiding in the bushes and shooting down the neatly lined up Red Coats something considerately less than cricket.

I only mention this because I've been watching the fresh pissing match that has broken out over Wikileaks. This time it's not just embarrassed governments and public officials condemning Wikileaks, but the media as well.

Because, you see, in the minds of those who have, for the past century or so, acted as unchallenged gatekeepers of information, suddenly they seem to have lost control. Stuff gets out before they get to see it, filter it, change it or decide for us we don't need to know it.

I can fully understand why governments and government officials, past and present, hate Wikileaks. But the press? What's that all about?

Well, it's about that whole "emperor's clothes" business. Wikileaks has left the world's media standing stark naked for all to see.

How mortifying to have everyone learn - thanks to Wikileaks - that the W. Bush administration was sending suspected terrorist suspects to Libya so Gaddafi's forces could work them over for us. Yeah, THAT Gaddafi, the guy who killed a hundred Americans when he bombed that Pan Am flight over Scotland. We didn't learn that bit of news from the New York Times or Washington Post, now did we.

No. We learned that little gem when Wikileaks dumped all it's secret US cables at once a week ago --  without first letting favored media outlets see them first.

"Many media outlets, including The Associated Press, previously had access to all or part of the uncensored tome. But Wikileaks' decision to post the 251,287 cables on its website makes potentially sensitive diplomatic sources available to anyone, anywhere at the stroke of a key. American officials have warned that the disclosures could jeopardize vulnerable people such as opposition figures or human rights campaigner" Full Story

As long as they got to see these things first and remove stuff from them, these mainstream media outlets, while hardly delighted that Wikileaks was revealing stuff they'd missed -or ignored - at least Wikileaks was still showing the mainstream media "respect" - as the term is used by crime bosses and cartel operators.

But last week that all ended when Wikileaks cut the mainstream media entirely out of the loop and just, well, leaked - like a fire hose.

And there they were, one super-hot scoop after another that none of us ever saw in print or heard about on CNN. Nope. It was all, apparently, news to them when Wikileaks leaked;

• That American troops executed an entire Iraqi family, kids and all, then higher ups ordered airstrikes on the house to cover up the crime.

• That Microsoft aided the recently deposed Tunisian dictator

• That Indian Gov. Mayawati sent an empty jet to Mumbai to purchase a pair of shoes

• That, during the early days of the US banking crisis in 2008, China offered to invest in US Banks

• A cable that reveals how the Israeli Army planned to abuse peaceful civilian protesters.

And more, lots more. For the most part we hadn't read a word of it in the press, until last week. And then only because the cats had been let out of the bag by Wikileaks forcing, not only embarrassed governments and officials to sputter and spit, but the mainstream media as well.

The conservative American Standard headline read: "Wikileaks Now Foe of Free Speech"

A joint statement published on the Guardian's website said that the British publication and its international counterparts - The New York Times, France's Le Monde, Spanish daily El Pais and German newspaper Der Spiegel - "deplore the decision of WikiLeaks to publish the unredacted State Department cables, which may put sources at risk."

In their statement, the Guardian's international partners lined up to slam the 40-year-old former computer hacker.

"We cannot defend the needless publication of the complete data - indeed, we are united in condemning it," the statement read, before adding: "The decision to publish by Julian Assange was his, and his alone."

Ah yes, and isn't that so NOT cricket... failing to run it all by the masters of media first, the very same folks who either failed to uncover these stories themselves or, for whatever reasons, ignored them.

Isn't this a rare convergence of outrage; governments,public officials and the press, all on the same side. Not that it hasn't happened before:

Former UK PM,Tony Blair, Godfather To Rupert Murdoch's Daughter

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not being mindlessly cavalier about the potential dangers of leaking some secrets. But it's got to be balance and right now we're terribly out of balance. Governments and those who control them use secrecy to hide genuinely important national security information.

That's true. But they have abused the practice. Much as pot farmers in the midwest plant corn just to hide the pot growing between the rows. Governments and government officials and corporations in cahoots with both, use national security to hide the very kind of core information needed for a democracy to run as a democracy.

Maybe the guy who runs Wikileaks, Julian Assange - a flawed figure himself - put it best last week. In responding to the hailstorm of attacks from around the world over the recent data dump Assange bluntly replied;

"If governments don't like people knowing this kind of stuff, they should stop acting like pigs in the first place."

Amen to that. And to the press I add, - I think the lady protesteth too much. Tell your new corporate paymasters you're in the news business, not the public relations business or a protection service for public officials. Start funding I-teams again and relearn the art of what the CIA calls "HUMIT" or "human intelligence." You remember human intelligence, don't you? Back in the day we used to call them "sources," and we tended them like a gardener tends their garden. And, they bore fruit, more often than not.

But, until then, we will have to rely on the Wikileaks and hackers of our time to tell us what we need to know, even when others think we shouldn't know.

So, Wikileakers and hackers like Anonymous might be thought of as the revolutionaries of our age - refusing to play by the rules of the rulers. Breaking the rules of engagement for a higher good.

And the Red Coats hate it.

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MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

As President Obama puts the finishing touches on his much anticipated "jobs speech," The Washington Post is featuring a story, "A Decade After the 9/11 Attacks, Americans Live in an Era of Endless War."

More than 65 years ago, the US celebrated a post-World War II victory Labor Day that marked the rise of the great era of the American middle class, and the hope of an end to armed conflict. But that was not to be, as the Post notes: in World War II, "the players are unquestionably good and the war's ends are noble.... In the modern warfare battles, the conflicts are unending."

This Labor Day, in 2011, the middle class is incrementally disappearing and we are fighting wars that we no longer have a coherent rationale for fighting. But these unending Pentagon battles are a growth industry in a declining job market. They are one of our few "successful" jobs programs, employing everyone from GIs to weapons assemblers to "security" contracting firms to our extensive intelligence network.

No politician, including President Obama, will seriously challenge the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us to be wary of. It - through the lobbying influence of weapons makers and the mythic power of the Pentagon - continues to wage war because it needs "enemies" to justify its existence, profit and expansion.

This is where we have ended up: a broken American dream of a ghoulish growth industry, according to the Post:

This is the American era of endless war.

To grasp its sweep, it helps to visit Fort Campbell, Ky., where the Army will soon open a $31 million complex for wounded troops and those whose bodies are breaking down after a decade of deployments.

The Warrior Transition Battalion complex boasts the only four-story structure on the base, which at 105,000 acres is more than twice the size of Washington, D.C. The imposing brick-and-glass building towers over architecture from earlier wars.

"This unit will be around as long as the Army is around," said Lt. Col. Bill Howard, the battalion commander.

As the new complex rises, bulldozers are taking down the last of Fort Campbell's World War II-era buildings. The white clapboard structures were hastily thrown up in the early 1940s as the country girded to battle Nazi Germany and imperial Japan. Each was labeled with a large letter "T." The buildings, like the war the country was entering, were supposed to be temporary.

The two sets of buildings tell the story of America's embrace of endless war in the 10 years since Sept. 11, 2001. In previous decades, the military and the American public viewed war as an aberration and peace as the norm.

But in place of the dream is a nightmare, wars that are almost forgotten but drain our economy and kill and maim young Americans who could be helping our nation grow into a brighter future.

These wars without end last so long that most Americans have basically forgotten that they are still being waged.

Tell that to the wounded GIs who will be filling up the "Warrior Transition Battalion." The elitists in DC have given up on offering them dignified work at home and a nation at peace. That is something to deplore, not celebrate, this Labor Day.

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