At Truthdig, Chris Hedges notes that the modern version of politics refuses to publicly discuss specific problems and specific solutions. Instead, we chant words like “destiny,” “progress” and “change.” In the meantime, power continues to be wrested from the people and the politicians they think that they are empowering.
Every election cycle, our self-identified left dutifully lines up like sheep to vote for the corporate wolves who control the Democratic Party. It bleats the tired, false mantra about Ralph Nader being responsible for the 2000 election of George W. Bush and warns us that the corporate technocrat Mitt Romney is, in fact, an extremist.
The extremists, of course, are already in power. They have been in power for several years. They write our legislation. They pick the candidates and fund their campaigns. They dominate the courts. They effectively gut regulations and environmental controls. They suck down billions in government subsidies. They pay no taxes. They determine our energy policy. They loot the U.S. treasury. They rigidly control public debate and information. They wage useless and costly imperial wars for profit. They are behind the stripping away of our most cherished civil liberties. They are implementing government programs to gouge out any money left in the carcass of America. And they know that Romney or Barack Obama, along with the Democratic and the Republican parties, will not stop them.
With the financial crisis continuing the spread across America and Europe, the centers of wealth can be expected to further assert their craving for more wealth, and they will resort to anything. We've already seen their tactics:
The most retrograde forces within the corporate state, such as the Koch brothers, will lavish racists, homophobes, demagogues, birthers, creationists and gun-carrying, flag-waving idiots with money once the political center crumbles.
You need to read the NYT's hatchet piece regarding Julian Assange to believe it. The writer, Alessandra Stanley, apparently has no idea how utterly sick the mainstream media is, including her precious employer, the NYT, which is significantly responsible for plunging the United States into a needless war in Iraq.
Instead of showing some appreciation that Assange has used his new television show to provide meaningful dialogue with a significant world figure, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, she repeatedly tries to draw attention to her own sense of superiority, ignoring the horrifically unjust treatment Assange has received on many fronts, especially from the United States. She blithely writes, citing no sources, that nowadays Assange "is most often portrayed as a nut job." She has no idea, and offers no appreciation for the mission of Wikileaks or for the personal sacrifice experienced by Mr. Assange. She should start with this list of the many accomplishments of Wikileaks. Then she should consider this presentation at this year's National Conference for Media Reform and this.
Glenn Greenwald forcefully and precisely puts Stanley's piece in perspective:
Assange developed an alternative template to the corporate media — one that was far more independent of, and adversarial to, government power — and, in the process, produced more newsworthy scoops than all of them combined. As NYU Journalism Professor Jay Rosen once put it about WikiLeaks: “The Watchdog Press Died; We Have This Instead.” The mavens of that dead watchdog press then decided that they hated Assange and devoted themselves to demonizing and destroying him. That behavior makes someone a “nut job,” but it isn’t Assange.
More revealingly still: it is simply impossible to imagine The New York Times using the phrase “nut job” to describe how anyone who exercises actual power in Washington is “most often portrayed.” The same is true of the rank speculation Stanley invokes to imply — without having the slightest idea whether it’s true — that Assange “wore out his welcome” at his prior home: that sort of gossipy ignorance, designed to smear without any basis, would rarely make its way into an article about someone at the epicenter of America’s political class. That’s because American media outlets are eager to savage those who are outcasts in Washington, but unfailingly treat its most powerful figures with great reverence. Stanley may want to reflect on that the next time she seeks to portray some media outlet other than her own as a subservient tool of state propaganda.
We imagine the lobbyist stalking the halls of Congress trying to use cash to influence important people. But it doesn't always work that way. Often, the Congressman is stalking the lobbyist, asking for money.
Lawmakers of both parties need to raise millions of dollars per election cycle. So lobbyists get calls from lawmakers and their staffs all the time, inviting them to fundraisers, according to Jimmy Williams, a former lobbyist for the real estate industry.
Author Chris Hedges argues that the American Empire is following the trajectory of all empires; we are expanding beyond our capacity to sustain ourselves. We have run up deficits we have no way to repay. We are "hollowing the country out from the inside." Nearly one-third of Americans are living in poverty. We are destroying quality education. We are reaching a "terminal point." Unless we change our course, we will face collapse. The current electoral system is not a legitimate place for seeking meaningful reform, not given the state of money-dominated elections.
Those captive to images cast ballots based on how candidates make them fee. They vote for a slogan, a smile, perceived sincerity, and attractiveness, along with the carefully crafted personal narrative of the candidate. It is style and story, not content and fact, that inform mass politics.
Hedges points out that the structure of the corporate state is thoroughly immunized from meaningful change from a Democrat like Barack Obama, no different than a Republican like George W. Bush. We are facing a bi-partisan-approved looting of the U.S. Treasury by Wall Street and domestic spying. Obama's health care bill is no exception, having been written by corporate lobbyists (4 min) It is "essentially the equivalent of the bank bailout bill written for the insurance and pharmaceutical industry, with $400 million of subsidies." Under the new system, corporate insurers can hold sick children hostage while bankrupting their parents (5 min).
Hedges often criticizes liberals. He explains: The liberal class was never designed to function as the political left. (min 6). It was designed to function as the political center. In the early 1900s liberals were quite vocal and held significant political power. They produced publications with wide circulation. There were several dozen socialist mayors in America. He argues that America got involved in WWI, despite any serious public support, because American bankers had loaned substantial money to Great Britain and France, and they didn't want to lose their money. (min. 7).
As the century went on, politicians followed the 1922 advice of Walter Lipman to use propaganda "to manufacture consent." There's no need to throw many people in prison when you can "herd" them using war-related-emotion rather than facts or reason. (min. 9). A meaningful liberal class, provoked by radical and populist movements, would make piecemeal and incremental reform possible to benefit the needs of the working class. Such radical movements are rare these post-Red-Scare days, and there is thus no longer any bulwark to "protect us from the corporate state."
We have turned from an Empire of Production to an Empire of Over-Consumption. We non longer have true liberals. Instead, we have faux liberals, people who "speak the language of traditional liberalism like Bill Clinton, yet serve the interests of the corporate state." (Min 12). Hedges offers the following evidence of Clinton's assaults on the working class: NAFTA, destruction of welfare, deregulation of the FCC, destruction of the banking system (the US differs from Canada, which did not tear down the firewall of Glass-Steagall). The U.S. has allowed hedge funds to take over its banks). To top things off, Barack Obama "essentially codifies the destruction of both domestic and international law put in place by the Bush Administration," a severe assault on civil liberties, including the right of the Executive branch to carry out assassinations and the new military detention act, which allows Americans to be indefinitely detained if accused of being a "terrorist," an absurdly nebulous charge.
As a result, we now live under "inverted totalitarianism," which "does not find its expression through a demagogue or charismatic leader, but through the anonymity of the corporate state." In our inverted totalitarianism, corporate forces pretend to pay homage to the iconography and patriotism of America, but "have so corrupted the levers of power that as to render the citizenry powerless." (min 14).
Here is the creed of modern liberals:
The creed of impartiality and "objectivity" that has infected the liberal class teaches, ultimately, the importance of not offending the status quo. The "professionalism" demanded in the classroom, in newsprint, in the arts or in political discourse is code for moral disengagement.
What modern day liberals end up doing, according to Hedges is giving deference to institutions like Goldman Sachs ("a criminal enterprise") and other "power centers that long ago walked away from responsible citizenship." He includes the following industries: coal companies, chemical plants the pollute rivers or Wall Street. This allegiance has left the modern liberal class "not only useless, but despised by large segments of American society." Modern liberals (including traditional liberal institutions such as liberal churches, the press, labor unions, education and American culture generally) posit themselves as the "moral voice of the nation, but have failed miserably." (min 16). According to Hedges, modern liberals "want to empower people they've never met. They liked the poor, but they didn't like the smell of the poor." (min 20).
While evangelicals often champion a gospel of greed and personal empowerment . . . Liberals "often speak on behalf of oppressed groups they never meet, advocating utopian and unrealistic schemes to bring about peace and universal love. Neither group has much interest in testing their ideologies against reality.
What I have described above is from the first 25 minutes of the video discussion, which lasts almost three hours.
Dan Solin offers a disturbing inside view of FINRA arbitration. Given that it is binding, mandatory pre-dispute arbitration controlled by the industry being sued, it is not surprising that the table is tilted dramatically in favor of the financial industries and brokers. Here's an excerpt from Solin's article:
If you have an account with a retail broker, or are employed by one, you signed an agreement requiring you to submit all disputes to mandatory arbitration administered by FINRA. The idea of requiring investors and employees to arbitrate disputes before a tribunal appointed by the very industry being sued is deeply troubling. Because it deprives American citizens of their constitutional rights to access to the courtroom and trial by a jury of their peers, it has neither the appearance nor the reality of impartiality. Among others, Itestified before Congress and urged it to enact legislation prohibiting mandatory arbitration clauses as being fundamentally unfair.
A study I co-authored of more than 14,000 FINRA arbitration awards over a ten-year period found that investors with significant claims suing major brokerage firms could expect to recover only 12 percent of the amount claimed. It is not surprising that many investors required to submit to this process perceive it to be biased against them.
Note the $60,000 attorney fee award assessed against the man filing the arbitration claim described by Solin. Can you imagine many sane people exposing themselves to that sort of risk, especially when it is a rare court that would step in to reverse such an injustice? That's what happened in the case Solin describes, but you'll need to look long and hard to find other cases where a court disturbs a FINRA arbitrator's decision.
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