No Merit Badge for You!

Remember a few months ago when the Boy Scouts announced that No Gays Allowed was now their official policy.  No gay kids, no gay scout leaders or employees.  No gay need apply.  And they declared they were doing this to "protect the children."  So some fabulous young scouts were out on their keisters, along with some fabulous scouting leaders.

Then the L.A. Times comes out with an exhaustive report after "examining 1,600 confidential files dating from 1970 to 1991 [and] found that Scouting officials frequently urged admitted offenders to quietly resign -- and helped many cover their tracks."  [that] "Volunteers and employees suspected of abuse were allowed to leave citing bogus reasons such as business demands, 'chronic brain dysfunction' [???] and duties at a Shakespeare festival."  And that "The details are contained in the organization's confidential 'perversion files,' a blacklist of alleged molesters, that the Scouts have used internally since 1919.  Scouts' lawyers around the country have been fighting in court to keep the files from public view."  And, "In about 400 of [500] of those cases -- 80 percent -- there is no record of Scouting officials reporting the allegations to police.  In more than 100 of the cases, officials actively sought to conceal the alleged abuse or allowed the suspects to hide it, The Times found."

Well, sure.  I can see the problem.  When you're getting a merit badge in wilderness tracking, for example, the first thing you learn is you must correctly identify the right footprint.  No good rushing off on a deer track if you're hunting a panther.  So, listen carefully, Scout leaders:

1.  There's gay people.  2.  There's straight people.  3.  There's pedophiles.
You can be a gay pedophile.  You can be a straight pedophile.  But the key word there is:  pedophile.  That's who you're supposed to be looking for, not gay people. HUGE difference.. 

So, no merit badges for you.  You've been tracking the wrong people. 

Oh, America, Get Over Yourself!

Thanks to the media and America's generalized narcissism, a whole lot of us are getting all riled up over those crazy Muslims, wringing our hands and saying, O, O, why do they hate us?

Well, first of all, many of them actually have a long, long list of perfectly valid reasons and if Americans bothered to read much history, they'd understand the list very well.  But, secondly, a whole lot of the DeathToAmerica! foofarrah in the streets, the "Arab Street," isn't about America at all; it's about local politics -- who's going to prevail in a newly liberated country.  Will it be the conservative Salafists?  A more moderate group? Secularists?  Another dictator?

And, as any political organizer knows, having a great hot-button trigger that's easily understood is a great way to get a good turnout. Remember in New York when a group of Muslims wanted to build a mosque near Ground Zero?  That was a perfectly legal, proper thing to do in the Land of  Freedom of Religion, right?  Remember how perfectly decent people suddenly lost their marbles and turned into raging, ugly, racist bigots, snarling and hissing about "muslim murderers", and etc.  Shameful.  Disgraceful.  But there it was: Americans coming unglued, having an irrational, emotional, ugly, bigoted flare up over . . . what?  Another group of Americans who just wanted to build a house of worship.

And Americans are now having a fit over another group of people having an irrational, emotional, ugly flare up over . . . what?  A crappy, ridiculous film.

This is what a certain percentage of people always do. Including Americans. So, get over yourself.  You're also no better than you ought to be either.

Awwww, Mitt.  You don't love us freeloading bums anymore, do you? 

So Mitt finally spilled the beans of his heart:  He thinks 47% of us lazy, good for nothing citizens, are a bunch of tax-shirking freeloaders who want to loaf around all day eating bon-bons and waiting for our government checks.  That we "pay no income taxes," are "dependent upon government." and we're all food-stamp black welfare queens who are going to vote for Barack Obama no matter what Romney has to say.

Well, first of all, Mitt clearly didn't see last week's Time Magazine's cover story on "Subsidy Nation," a brilliant exploration of how everyone in the country is on the mooch -- farm subsidies, energy subsidies, infrastructure subsidies, tax breaks -- subsidized everything that touches our lives. (That electric bill you just paid doesn't begin to cover the real cost of getting that power to you.  Ditto your water bill. Fill your gas tank?  Take off the gas/oil subsidies/tax-breaks and you'd have heart seizure watching the pump ratchet up the real (unsubsidized) price per gallon. Hospitals, public health, streets, airline safety, schools, public safety, you name it, every bit of it is communally subsidized by all of us.  Which will come as a shock, no doubt, to privitizing Ayn Randers of all stripes, including Paul Ryan, bless his heart.)

True, Mitt forgot to note that all us 47% moochers were paying payroll and sales tax, something The Mitt might have overlooked since he may not be familiar with getting an actual "payroll check" as opposed to a "dividend check."  And I'm sure he forgot the fact that those moochers who did pay income tax were taxed at a higher rate for their income than he was.  And, yes, he likely overlooked that, according to the Tax Policy Center, over half of those moochers who paid no taxes, "more than half were elderly and more than a third were not elderly but had income under $20,000.  Which means that "about half of those were off the rolls because they had low incomes."

So, in MittWorld, people who are so poor they don't hit the income tax threshold are moochers.  Noted one wag on the New York Times comment page, "He's talking about the 47% who clean his toilets, do his laundry, drive him around, clean the hotels, pick the fruit and vegetables.  Maybe if Mitt and his snobby pals paid a living wage, the working poor wouldn't need food stamps.  He really does look down his nose at the rest of us."

Ya think?      

Alice in Demo Land

Calhoun’s Cannons for Sept 7, 2012

            Three days of the Republican convention.  Three days of the Democratic convention.  And I have just one question:  What the hell happened to this country?

            Really.  How did the ethos of work hard, help your neighbor raise his barn and he’ll help with yours, build for the future so your kids will have it better than you,  get transmuted into the ethos of Ayn Rand:  Money equals success, taxes are theft, go raise your own damned barn, and the next generation can look out for themselves?

            When did we stop being a nation of hard-headed pragmatists – pay your bills, grow your business, invest in the future – and turn into air-heads willing to believe voodoo economics, the “trickle-down” fake theories of David Stockman who later admitted that he made it all up?  In a consumer/capitalist society, trickles go upward, not down.  Henry Ford figured that out years ago.  He paid an unheard-of living wage so his workers had enough money to buy his product.  No salaries, no buyers; no buyers, no factory; no factory, no Henry Ford.

            When did companies move out of what economists call “the virtuous circle of growth?”  Back in the day, Frank W. Abrams, chairman of Standard Oil of New Jersey, wrote, “The job of management is to maintain an equitable and working balance among the claims of the various directly affected interests groups . . .”  i.e. stockholders, employees, the community, the public, the nation as a whole.

            The Virtuous Circle resulted in and sustained the middle class, encouraged ongoing prosperity for the maximum number of people, ensured stability, kept Ayn Randian greed in check.  How quaint it seems now.  In its stead, we have Gordon Gekko, the rapacious Bainer whose overriding goal is to maximize profits for a small number of stakeholders, push all value to the first-quarter bottom line, loot the company and scamper for the Cayman Islands, with all that rapacious, short-sighted behavior rewarded by hefty bonuses and favorable back-room-written tax laws.

            How could anyone think that such behavior wouldn’t lead to bubbles and theft and corruption and crash?  Did the average American somehow think that he would be exempt from the destruction that was heading his way?  Is that why he kept voting into office wholly-owned Corporate Pols who would promise him pie then vote into law policies that would actually deliver dead flies to the working and middle class? 

            Was it because the Kool Aide the Ayn Randers were delivering was a slow acting poison?  A drug that dulled the mind so nobody noticed until it was too late? Or was it because The Big Lie always works? 

            And when did we become a country that decided Big Lies were acceptable? Lie about war, lie about Wall Street, lie about anything, since winning and holding power at any cost was the only thing that counted.  And if you were rich,  famous and brazen enough, you could get away with anything.  Who would stop you? After all, as a Republican operative once famously said, “We create our own reality.”  Is that what turned the old Republican party of fiscal responsibility and prudent conservatism into math-challenged Neo Know-Nothings waving vaginal probes? 

            So here we are, Battered Wife Nation, a country poisoned by fake reality – trickle-down “job creators,” my ass -- hammered into believing that the majority of us don’t deserve anything – no decent health care, no decent wages, no decent schools, or roads or bridges.  We were told that all that mattered were the stock market numbers and we believed that lie.  We were told that unions were to blame for our jobs being shipped overseas, so we hated unions.  We were told that teachers and firemen and government workers were blood-sucking leeches, so we kicked them into the street.  We were told that black people and brown people were either the enemy who would steal our outsourced, non-existent jobs or were “welfare queens” stealing our taxes, and we believed that.  We were told that more tax breaks for the wealthy took priority over helping our unemployed neighbor, helping the poor and the old and the sick, and we believed that, too.

            We forgot our civics lessons; if you want a better congress you have to vote in better congressmen.  Instead, we elected clueless monkey-wrenchers, ideological hacks and wing nuts, then wondered why nothing reasonable got done.  And when outrage and blunt honesty was the only sane response to the disaster our apathy and inattention had called down on upon our heads, we were told we should shut up and accept our downsized serfdom with a smiley face and grab our own bootstraps.  Pluckiness was demanded, not fierce, righteous anger.  It was Mr. Mcawber over Madame Defarge.

            So, here we sit, sick, hurting, and befuddled at the corner of Battered Wife Nation and Enough Already! with the hour late, real economics (arithmetic, not theory) and real Mother Nature (hot enough for you?) bearing down on us – two actual real realities that do not deal in lies, care nothing about ideology and take no prisoners.

            Happily, one antidote arrived at the convention.  Former President Clinton, the Big Dawg himself, got down off the porch to call out and fact- check the Republican’s false narratives with the cheerful exactitude of a finger-waving schoolmarm. So now we’ll see how many people were tuned in and paying attention and how many were watching football on another channel.

            Which, come to think of it, is pretty much how and why we got into this mess in the first place.      

                 

Holy Ryan!

Calhoun’s Cannons for August 13, 12

            Did a Mormon just throw a Hail Mary pass?  Right there in front of the retired battleship Wisconsin in historical naval Norfolk?  (I looked, but I didn’t see any banners announcing, “Mission Accomplished,” and neither Romney nor Ryan were wearing jump suits, (neither men served in the military, but that critical military subtext was still on delicious display.) Well, Quel astonishments!

            Unless that Hail Mary Pass turns into another McCain-Palin moment and the Ryan tail starts wagging the dog.  After all, truth has its own creepy way of oozing past smiling teeth, no matter how tightly clenched, and Romney’s teeth were on display when he introduced Ryan as, “the next president of the United States.”  A gaff, yes, but a prescient one, I suspect.

            After all, we’ve been down this road before; floundering campaign, candidate can’t seem to get traction, back-room Pols decide the candidate needs a Veep pick with some energy and excitement and behold! Sarah.  And the rest is history, which didn’t go well. 

            In Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney will get energy, all right. But he’ll also get Ryan, the Ayn Rand fanboy, Tea Party darling, leader of the No-Compromise Radical Republican Young Guns that repeatedly hijacked Obama’s agenda and did everything they could to stonewall, stall, filibuster and stymie their Democratic foes while the country’s needs went begging.  (Among the grim consequences were the U.S. bond ratings downgraded, the recovery stalled, desperately needed legislation sidetracked or killed).  But that didn’t stop Ryan from forcefully and gleefully dumping those consequences on the President’s head during his rousing introductory speech.  J’ accuse! thundered Ryan, with a straight face and nary a mention of his role in the obstruction, like the man who burns the house down then blames the match.  It’s become a typical Republican hypocrisy that constantly makes one’s head explode. And should put us all on notice: With Ryan, as with Sarah Palin, facts need not be in evidence.

            Which the voter really, really needs to remember because with Ryan comes Ryan’s infamous budget plan, which aims at downsizing government by privitizing Social Security and Medicare and making deep, punishing cuts to the social safety net. It’s a budget that various experts, who do like to deal with facts in evidence, have decreed to be a deficit- exploder that would throw the poor under the bus while increasing tax breaks for the rich – which, of course, is the Ayn Randian wet dream. (As Randian fanboys know, “the poor” are “parasites” and the sooner they’re done away with the better.  John Galt and his ilk don’t do “moochers.”)

            But there it is nonetheless, that budget, the 800 pound spike that Romney drove through his own foot in order to stop his teeter-tottering cold.  Bam! Nailed himself and his gossamer thin, smoke and mirrors, now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t campaign firmly to the radical right-wing Republican base -- Romney’s breathtaking go for broke auto-de-fe to the Tea Party.

            But an unexpected consequence of that choice appeared in the first few days of the duo’s introductory tour. There he was, bubbling with life, tossing off  sound-bites like confetti, young Ryan, vigorous, active, charged up and stemwinding the crowd with skilful, stirring rhetoric that outlines his vision for America while Romney stands awkwardly nearby looking like a tired out-of-place roadie waiting to adjust Ryan’s microphone.

            It was pure TV messaging:  With his veep pick, Romney had outsourced himself.  He became Ryan’s me-too wingman, Ryan’s beard, Ryan’s stalking horse.  Why go to Romney, when Ryan’s the Idea Guy, The Guy With The Plan, the forceful,  articulate, exciting Stemwinder On The Stump, the guy the camera loves, the ratings-getter media darling, the Pit Bull without the lipstick.  

            Déjà vu?  You betcha! 

            Well, if the public can get past the false narratives that are now rolling out from both parties, and can get access to some real facts as opposed to faux facts from people who view “facts” as opinions from an alternative universe, this election, despite its PAC-guaranteed Mad Hatterish hideousness, will be critical for setting the country’s direction for the foreseeable future. 

            The can has been kicked down the road about as far as it can go and just how we chose to deal with that can will have real-world impacts on all of us.  We can go back to trickle-down economics and try another version in hopes it will work this time.  Or we can rethink and recalibrate what we want to be as a country and who we want to be as a people. We’ve dithered enough and our string is running out. And I doubt the choices will ever be clearer

            And in a game with stakes this high, I don’t think a Hail Mary Pass is going to cut it. Time to get serious.  No more lipstick on pigs or pit bulls. Please.    

It Wuz Ayn

Calhoun’s Can(n)ons for May 3, 2012

            It could only have been her. Who else in the world could have talked a whole country into collectively committing suicide?  Turn it into a heedless fiddle-playing grasshopper who had no responsibility for its future because winter would never come?  Who could make a whole nation believe that it was so exceptional, so special, so wonderful, so King-of-the-Worldish that it didn’t need to undertake those annoying chores like taking out the garbage, washing the windows, mowing the lawn and paying the mortgage, all of which are part of the adult responsibility required to maintain a civil society?  Who could feed the adolescent ego to such a degree that a whole generation of boomers would grow up to become right-wing Randian Republicans, all convinced that they were John Galt and it was time to shrug?          

            Ayn Rand, that’s who. And why not?  Hers was the irresistible siren song for every 18 year-old brooding in his room in the basement, picking at pimples and daydreaming about the cool, blond Dagny Taggart, while Mom keeps hollering down the stairs that he needs to do his homework, clean up his room, take a shower and come take the garbage out. Terrible. Take the garbage out. That’s for mooks, for losers, for leeches and takers, not for job-creating Masters of the Universe!

            And so John Galt was secretly born in the hearts of millions of average Americans – the belief that the benefits they received by living in a civil society, the schools they attended, the roads they drove on, the public health measures that helped keep them healthy, the regulations and subsidies that kept their food safe and affordable, everything in the social compact that surrounded them, all paid for by taxes by their hard-working fellow citizens  – all of that should be eliminated, de-regulated, privatized, profitized and paid for by The Other Guy, while they alone would be exempt, would be the special ones, answerable only to themselves.  Not for them the taking out of garbage.  Or paying the taxes that kept the schools and roads open so others could also benefit.  No.  Once he’s gotten his, John Galt doesn’t do The Commons for anybody else. That is for the moochers, the leeches.

            Did I say “siren song?”  Crack cocaine is more like it.  It was irresistible to the self-centered sociopathic 18-year old mind.  Fortunately, most people were able to outgrow Randian sociopathy when they grew up, got a job, had a family.  That’s when a world-wiser adult realizes that paying for a civil society actually brings benefits, secures a better future for their kids, and offers vital protections against the brutal way capitalism often operates in the real world.

            But a few people never grew out of that mind set. Alan Greenspan, the former Chairman of the Fed, was one of those life-long fanboys of Ayn.  He was also one of the most powerful financial advisers to all the Masters of the Universe for years, which gave his Randian world view extraordinary legitimacy. The Koch  Brothers are fanboy beneficiaries extraordinare, as is Congressman Paul Ryan.  He’s a Super Fanboy who requires that his staffers read her interminable Atlas Shrugged.  His proposed federal budget is Ayn at her chilling best.

            Which is all well and good.  In a capitalist, consumer society, sociopathy has its special charms and pay-offs for a certain few.  But here was the most amazing part of  Ayn’s mind-trick:  Her few fanboys managed to convince a huge majority of normal adults --who knew better-- that they should repeatedly vote for Master of the Universe policies that would benefit a handful of real John Galts, while hurting all those useless, contemptible moochers and leeches  -- themselves. 

             It was a brilliant piece of political ju-jitsu, all blind self-destructive noses, scissors, and fearful, misdirected spite on the part of the voters.  While the manipulative, sociopathic Randers smiled. Ayn would have been so proud.   

            So, how did it all work out?  Look around you at what happens when Atlas shrugs: For the moochers, an underwater mortgage, a looted national treasury, record unemployment, outsourced jobs, busted unions, voter suppression, a crumbling, bankrupt Commons, a failing health system, a failing school system.  In short, a system in collapse, a country without a future.

            And for the Masters of the Universe? The happy continued massive transfer of the nation’s wealth upline, with the booming Wall Street casino once again open for business-as-usual.   

            And why not?  Johnny Galt needs a new pair of shoes.

Ayn's Fanboys Rule!

Calhoun's Can(n)ons for April 29, 2001


True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.  Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt had no idea. The Cult of Ayn Rand is now in full flower in Washington in a gaggle of powerful players. And they’re writing and trying to pass laws that don’t just affect your Senior Prom, they’re now writing laws that will affect your life.

A wag once noted, “There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: “The Lord of the Rings” and “Atlas Shrugged.” One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.”

Alas, Representative Paul Ryan, Chairman of the House Budget Committee, was one of those 14-year olds, but he didn’t get the joke. Instead, he’s an Ayn Rand Fanboy who requires his staffers to read her massive screed, “Atlas Shrugged,” which is a risky thing to do since it will plunk him into the Bin of the Shameless Hypocrites when they learn that Ryan’s father died when Ryan was 16 and thereafter Ryan received Survivor’s Benefits from that anathema to all Randians: Social Security. Which, ironically, puts Ryan in the class of people Ayn Rand most despised: parasites and moochers. (“Bootstraps, young Ryan. That’s all you need: Bootstraps!”) And may explain why Ryan now wants to “transform” and “privatize” Social Security as we know it right out of existence. (“A bootstrapped safety net for me, zip for you. Ayn wouldn’t approve, you know.”)

Ryan is being touted as the courageous savior du jour with his budget proposal that basically gives more tax cuts for the rich and the shaft to everybody else. Which is quintessential Rand. Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of the Fed was also a Fanboy of Rand, even wrote her a fan letter, although he couldn’t have read her novels very carefully. On his watch, after the Randian Masters of the Universe on Wall Street blew up the financial world and nearly brought this country down, he expressed surprise and confessed that it never occurred to him that any Master of the Universe would be so irresponsible and reckless as to destroy his own company.

Obviously, Greenspan never bothered to read the ending of “The Fountainhead.” Some fan.

And now the Cult of Rand has churned out Part I of “Atlas Shrugged,” a loving-hands-at-home movie filled with earnest reverence and bad writing, while offering full employment for second-string character actors. It’s now playing at your local Cineplex, though if you want to see it, I’d recommend you hurry since Part II has been canceled and Part I won’t be there long.

A Romantic Rand Renaissance in the era of Facebook (We’re all one big interconnected Tahrir Square, now.) seems strangely anachronistic, like watching Republican Congressmen suddenly morphing into Civil War reenactors on the floor of Congress and yelling about the South Rising Again! But I suppose it’s to be expected.

In hard times, when the world has suddenly turns upside down and flies totally out of control, a good number of people apparently find comfort in turning back into teenagers. And there is nothing more powerfully attractive than RandWorld’s ego-stroking, romantic world view, which is basically the normal 14 year-old’s sociopathically delusional belief that his individual needs alone stand athwart the world -- “ I AM JOHN GALT!”-- while Mom is hollering down the basement stairs that he needs to stop picking at his pimples and get his homework done.

Most of us grow out of that phase. But a few don’t. Safely wrapped up in RandWorld, the Paul Ryans of this world grow up believing that society is made up of Prime Movers (them) and everybody else (moochers). They forget that Dagney Taggart didn’t build her railroad with those soft white manicured hands: Moochers did, one spike at a time; Commie Bums and Socialist Moochers and Union Parasites who knew what the real world is like and demanded whiney Dagney pay a living wage and pony up her fair share of taxes to help build and pay for a safety net because building railroads is hard, dangerous work and those builders needed a safety net for when times got tough.

That’s who built Dagney’s railroad. Without them and their steel-bending hands, Dagney Taggart would just be another rich second-rate dreamer sitting in a bar buying drinks for anybody who would listen to her while she drew her useless plans to build a railroad and make it run, all scribbled out on the back of damp cocktail napkins.

Buddy, can you spare a dime?