The downside of political amnesia

By the time you read this, we'll all know the outcome from the Alabama Senate race. And either way, it is a cautionary tale about the perils of plunging into phase 8 of the American Civil War.

You’ve also heard about an effort by well-known political fraudster James O’Keefe and his organization Project Veritas to entrap the Washington Post newspaper into publishing a false story about Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, with the obvious intention of discrediting the well-documented allegations that Moore preyed on teenage girls when he was in his 30s. This Post writer - Paul Waldman - has a right to be angry… but also should take a stress pill.

“If you’re a Republican voter, I have some bad news for you. The people who lead the movement that supposedly represents your views — the politicians, the media figures, the activists — think you’re an idiot. In fact, they count on it…. This is much larger than O’Keefe or this one Senate race. It’s about a poison of exploitation and deceit that courses through the conservative movement. Some conservatives have tried to expunge this poison, without success. If anything, the scam has gotten even more pervasive and influential.”

Okay, take a breath, big fellah.  Pace yourself. In fact, I have nothing against baited tests of integrity being applied to all sorts of professions.  But they should be evenhanded and citizens should note when it snares members of their own party.  Not much chance of that, alas.

Anyway, you didn't expect the goal posts to shift, yet again?  Used to be that divorce was a sure killer for any Republican candidate. Then came Reagan and suddenly third or even fourth marriages are dismissed with a shrug. Vices like gambling become normalized, when casino lords make up a large part of your party's donor base. 

The goal post shifts regarding Climate Change have been epic! (First: "Glaciers are spreading!" Then: "There's been no warming for 20 years!" Then: "Okay it's getting plenty hotter but... but it's the sun! Yeah, that's the ticket!" Then: "Who cares about doomed Florida, if I can buy melting tundra in the Yukon!")

So calm down. Normalizing pedophiles and sexual predators is only part of the "normal" pattern.

== Don't be distracted from the core matter -- war ==

Everything I predicted about the looming Iran-U.S. “Potemkin war” is coming true, as anti-democratic forces converge on the same scenario. See: Iran’s hard-liners use Trump’s rhetoric to target rivals at home. "Escalating tensions with the United States have stirred nationalist sentiment in Iran, giving its hard-liners an opportunity to more fiercely target critics and settle old scores, rights advocates and analysts say."

Exactly as predicted. This run-up to war is a choreographed dance..

== The Soros Amnesia Effect ==

Google partnered with an organization largely funded by billionaire George Soros to “fact-check” news stories, a move that could affect search results for certain news agencies. The new group’s code of principles requires news agencies to obey five commitments to ensure news agencies remain honest, transparent and nonpartisan. 

And yes, there are denunciations that Soros - called by some “the Great Meddler - is using this excuse to gain propaganda advantage, as slyly implied in this article. (Only, note the source! RT, the official Kremlin mouthpiece.)

“Soros was recently criticised for transferring nearly $18 billion to his Open Society Foundations, making it the second largest charity in the US after the Bill and Melinda Gates’ Foundation. The charity has been accused of inciting so-called “color revolutions” to install governments friendly to the US.”

Ah Soros.  All across the right-o-sphere, from Glen Beck and Fox to Alex Jones and Breitbart, George Soros is declaimed, often as Enemy #1. In their ravings about him, they illustrate the “true lie” technique. When a fellow is rich and strong enough to sue, you attack with half-truths. 

Glen Beck led the way, shouting "George Soros is so powerful he toppled EIGHT FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS!!!!"

Now, I’ll surprise you by agreeing with Beck. This lie is based on a true statement. George Soros did in fact help to topple eight foreign governments! But does it occur to any of the Beck-Breitbart-Fox watchers to ask their hypnotizers to name those foreign regimes that George Soros helped to topple? 

Is it a sign of the quality of this audience that no one asked or considered it pertinent? None of the alt-right blogs, not Fox, no one at all… and sadly, no one on the left or in mainstream media bothered, either. No one asked for the list of foreign governments that George Soros “toppled.” Why? Was it simple, dullard incuriosity? 

Can you name them? It seems a simple enough question. I ask it in perfect friendliness. There’s a hint, even in the recent RT article. And it shows that - yes - George Soros has been a master meddler!  But he has always been on our side. 

And those denouncing him are not. 

== Oh the “Uranium” thing… subsidized by guess who? ==

One outcome of the Paradise Papers imbroglio: Offshore cash helped fund Steve Bannon's attacks on Hillary Clinton, especially channeled in secret from Robert Mercer.

Oh, when your crazy Uncle screeches about “selling all our Uranium to Russia," ask him to state clearly what supposedly happened? And then put money on it in a wager! Over whether: 

(1) whether Hillary Clinton had anything to do with the decision (she didn’t),

(2) whether the Russians got any Uranium (they didn’t; a Russian company bought a Canadian mining company that owns land where maybe 20% of U.S. reserves might (estimates) lie deeply buried),

(3) whether she was bribed (show one scrap of evidence. Nine U.S. agencies and half a dozen Canadian ones signed off on the purchase; were all of them bribed?)

(4) This 'uranium sale' (that actually sold no uranium) helps to “arm” Russia? Hmm…. Maybe over a decade or more. But when the Soviet Union collapsed, Yeltsin sold us almost all of their loose Plutonium…. hundreds of bombs’ worth, and already refined. So I guess the screams were louder, over there.

In a more general sense, you folks have been denouncing the Clintons for 25 years. In just taxpayer funded investigations (not counting right wing private eyes) the cost has neared half a billion dollars of our money. For much of that time, the GOP owned every single branch of government , ordering vast resources to seek even a single Clintonian "smoking gun." And to date, what's proved, or even indictable?

Nada, zip. This doesn't utterly prove the Clintons totally innocent!  (Though let's see you survive that kind of 25 year dissection, hm?) 

What it does prove is that the entire GOP political caste is so incompetent they shouldn't be trusted with a burnt match. Seriously. You can't nail the "worst humans alive" after 25 years spent prying into every single file or pimple or pore? A cynic might suggest you guys are siding with Idiocracy. 

== Bait n' switch ==

Paul Ryan announces a 4th tax bracket for "the rich," and thus hopes to distract from the core goals of theTax Bill. 

- to end the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) that assures the uber-wealthy pay at least something into the civilization that defends them.

- to end the Inheritance Tax. While you pay state and federal on the income you sweated for, some brat scion-heir will get billions tax free, because you weren't paying attention. The Inheritance Tax is by-far the fairest tax, helping to prevent a return to 6000 years of feudalism. And it need never be paid! Just leave your kids the exempt $10 million and assign the rest to a charitable foundation of your own choosing, to sing your generous name down the ages!

- the slashed corporate tax rate won't be spent much on productive capacity or jobs or R&D. These weren't incentivized and profitable companies were already spending their cash on stock buy-backs. (Which the Greatest Generation wisely made illegal.) This will let the 5000 member of the CEO caste fulfill their golden option plans while buying oligarch-owned stock at top prices, just before a recession. It is the part of the bill that has the aristocracy drooling.

This is the attempted oligarchic coup in its rawest form. Note that it is not the self-made, genius inventor tech-billionaires or makers or producers who are fighting for this. Most of them are democrats! (Or libertarians: another story.) 

No, it's the stupid ones - resource extractors who buy sweetheart deals through political influence, K Street "swamp" lobbyists, Wall Street parasite cheaters, lordly heirs, foreign sheiks and Cayman moguls - who actually manage to convince themselves that something like this will stand for long, before Americans eventually turn to one kind of revolution -- the moderate, rooseveltean variety preferred by the Greatest Generation -- or else another, less-moderate kind. 

Look up the word "tumbrels." See my earlier posting: Class War and the Lessons of History.

== Some conservatives can see what's in front of their faces ==

On his newsletter - Thoughts from the Frontine - John Mauldin struggles to maintain a nearly extinct species – the sane American conservative. And that means accepting facts, now and then, as illustrated by the following chart from John’s friend, billionaire Ray Dalio, one of the smart moguls who recognize that revolution is coming, and wants it to be one of those mild ones.

The red line is the share of US wealth owned by the bottom 90% of the population, and the green line is the share held by the top 0.1%. Right now they are about the same – the top 0.1% owns as much as the bottom 90% -- but notice the trend. The wealthiest 0.1% has been increasing its share of wealth since the 1980s, or the dawn of Supply Side “economics” -- while the bottom 90% has been losing ground. 

Says Mauldin: “Looking back, we see a similar pattern in the 1920s – which dramatically reversed in the following decade. Then there was an almost 50-year period during which the masses gained wealth and the wealthy lost ground. This doesn’t mean the 0.1% ceased being wealthy. It just means they owned a smaller portion of the total wealth. An economy in which 0.1% of the people own 10% of the wealth is still skewed, just less so.”

Yes, and I hope we can do as well as the Greatest Generation -- when America proved its 'greatness' -- and when the most adored American was the fellow who saved the republic from a communist revolution and put us on the road to prosperity, might and success. You know who.

== The real war, made utterly explicit! ==

Never has the war on all fact-users been more explicit than conveyed by the Core Loon himself, Rush Limbaugh. 

On Fox, they’ll whinge: “

we aren’t anti-science! We’re just urging you to assume scientists (and all other fact-professions) are all mealy-mouth, conformist-corrupt liars. We know and love science better than scientists!” 

Hypocrites. 

But Rush is blatant and in the open, See the image he originated, that’s circulating the web like mad. Hatred of all fact-using professions is now the main Confederate article of faith.

From Thomas Paine "To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture."

Rising wages and politics outside of Cleveland!

Amid the Cleveland Carnival -- with six (count-em) speakers named Trump, and Duck Dynasty stars replacing AWOL former presidents and statesmen, onstage -- I think it best to take some steps back from Ohio and give this week's political posting a wider perspective. I'll offer a final riff on Donald Trump at the end of this essay. But first --

Wages are rising... almost the last piece in the longest economic recovery since the 1950s.  The U.S. economy gets a bad rap these days, despite the fact that it’s doing better than almost every other economy that went through a financial crisis in 2007-2008. With very low unemployment and historically low inflation.

Also  the pace of health-care cost growth has also slowed. For years skyrocketing health-care costs gobbled up a larger share of workers’ total compensation, crowding out wage growth. This is exactly what the ACA promised and its detractors declared to be impossible. Do factual outcomes and predictions matter?

Add to this the fact that entrepreneurial startups, small businesses and innovation, all economic drivers, always-always-always do much better across democratic administrations.

So what is toking so much anger, down below, that even the Fox-Beck-watching confeds know something is deeply wrong? Both Sanders and Trump channel rage over rapaciously greedy insider-manipulators.  Sanders points to facts, like skyrocketing wealth inequality, propelled by Supply Side gushers fed into oligarchic maws, approaching levels not seen since 1789 France. 

On the right? Gifted svengalis know they have to point fingers at somebody rich and powerful. And so they choose...

== Blame it all on George Soros! ==

Purportedly “libertarian” newsletterist David Galland has been posting jeremiads putting the entire blame for the world’s refugee crisis - as well as the 2008 bank collapse and every other 21st Century calamity - on George Soros. 

Well, why not? The party of oligarchy can sense a rising revulsion toward aristocratic rule embedded in American DNA. So pick a symbolic scapegoat oligarch. A democrat! Soros.

Fine, but there must be a core rationalization. Something to make Soros seem equal to Roger Ailes, Rupert Murdoch, Sheldon Adelson, the Kochs, The Waltons, Wall Street and the Saudi Royal House, combined! How do you pump one man to loom as the archetype rich (and Jewish) manipulator?  Beck, Fox, Limbaugh and Hannity all parroted the same line:

"Here's a man who single-handedly toppled EIGHT FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS!" 

In fact, Soros had help topping those governments. But yes! Let there's truth to this assertion. Soros was largely involved in sending those governments that he despised crashing down.  Only... do nodding dittoheads ever... even once... lift their heads to ask Beck or Limbaugh or Hannity: "Say, Sean... WHICH foreign governments did that vile manipulator-commie George Soros topple? (Actually, the number isn't eight. It is ten.)

The human quality of curiosity is suppressed by the insane War on Science. Still... repeat after me: "Which foreign governments do almost all the right wing shouters credit George Soros with toppling?"

Now you see the Lobotomization Explanation for Donald Trump, since the long vanished days of minds like Goldwater and Buckley. Not one member of the Fox-Beck-Breitbart-Drudge Nuremberg rally lifts his head to ask inconvenient questions.

Are you ready for the list?  Let’s have a drum roll… or scroll spaces to make you work for it.

.

.

 "Which foreign governments do the entire right wing establishment credit George Soros with toppling?"

The communist dictatorship of Hungary.
The communist dictatorship of Poland
The communist dictatorship of Czechoslovakia
The communist dictatorship of Romania
The communist dictatorship of Bulgaria
The communist dictatorship of Estonia
The communist dictatorship of Latvia
The communist dictatorship of Lithuania

Add in Ukraine, whose loss from the Russian sphere of influence drove Vladimir Putin to a frenzy. Sure, the Russian press credits a diabolically clever and Machiavellian-aggressive Barack Obama for that immense, strategic loss, which vastly overshadows the later, minor-and-expected claw-back of Russian-speaking Crimea and Donbass. But I am willing to toss some credit back in time, to Soros.

Make it explicit. Glen Beck and all those other right wing mavens officially credit terrifying leftist George Soros with the toppling of the Iron Curtain, liberating hundreds of millions and the victorious end of the Cold War. That is explicitly and exactly what they have been saying for more than twenty years, absolutely relying on their followers never to ask any details.

Huh.  I thought it was that other liberal (compared to today’s GOP) Ronald Reagan! In fact, they both share equal credit with Michail Gorbachev and with architect of the West’s overall plan of calm containment - George Marshall.  (With Jimmy Carter deserving more of an assist cred than you’d believe!)

  

Look, the crux here is not who actually tore down the wall. 

No, ask why do Fox/Beck/Limbaugh followers never poke at a tsunami of ironies, contradictions and outright lies? The answer is “cultural”… the same reason a million confederates marched to fight and die for their slaveholding plantation lords. It's the recurring American tragedy and it has no solution except for the Blue Union to just keep on winning and moving us into the future.

As you watch the farce in Cleveland, oh, pity Barry Goldwater. spinning 6000 RPM in his grave.

           

== A final look at DT ==

Among the more interesting attempts to decrypt the Donald Trump phenomenon is this well-written, informative and amusing piece contending that it’s all a way to reinvigorate the money-making Trump brand.  

Do I agree we are witnessing a scam campaign or ‘scampaign’? Naw.  Still the author does connect some dots, like the way radio svanarolas have milked elderly white audiences ever since John Bircher paranoia jockeys in the 1950s. In The New Republic, Jeet Heer writes:

“The anti-intellectualism that has been a mainstay of the conservative movement for decades also makes its members easy marks. After all, if you are taught to believe that the reigning scientific consensuses on evolution and climate change are lies, then you will lack the elementary logical skills that will set your alarm bells ringing when you hear a flim-flam artist like Trump. The Republican “war on science” is also a war on the intellectual habits needed to detect lies….” and “an entire class of Republican politicians, including Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, used mailing lists built up in their presidential campaigns to sell dubious products afterward.”  

Including a “breakthrough” remedy for erectile dysfunction. Yipe. At least Bush and Cheney robbed us the old-fashioned way.

How Far Conservatism Has Changed

All right, it is an important U.S. political season.  As a registered Republican and a frequent speaker at libertarian gatherings, I remain hopeful that this will be the year that several million temperamentally conservative-but-calmly-rational Americans will wake up to the way their movement and the GOP have been hijacked. And that only a shattering drubbing at the polls will send the American right back to the drawing boards -- learning to do politics again. Including negotiation about real problems. 

Oh, but it will be so hard! 

The oligarchs who have done the hijacking have ordered up so many narratives, from "birther" paranoia to climate denialism, from preaching "oligarchy is gooood for you" to utter lies about U.S. history. I will explicate the best and most hilariously most damning example below -- the George Soros Effect.  

But first -- In That's Not What They Meant!: Reclaiming the Founding Fathers from America's Right Wing, Professor Michael Austin examines dozens of books, articles, speeches, and radio broadcasts by such figures as Glenn Beck, Mark Levin, Sean Hannity, Larry Schweikart, and David Barton to expose the deep historical flaws in their use of America's founding history. In contrast to their misleading method of citing proof texts to serve a narrow agenda, Austin allows the Founding Fathers to speak for themselves, situating all quotations in the proper historical context. 

What emerges is a true historical picture of men who often disagreed with one another on such crucial issues as federal power, judicial review, and the separation of church and state. 

As Austin -- whom I met last week, at Newman University, in Kansas -- shows, the real legacy of the Founding Fathers to us is a political process: a system of disagreement, debate, and compromise that has kept democracy vibrant in America for more than two hundred years, but that regularly comes under attack. How extreme has been the veer off any path of sane conservatism?  

== A Look Back to 1956 ==

A commenter on the New York Magazine site said: Nothing underscores the change in the Republican Party more than to read Dwight Eisenhower's 1956 Republican Platform:

PHILOSOPHY: "Our great President Eisenhower has counseled us further: "In all those things which deal with people, be liberal, be human. Government must have a heart as well as a head. "

LABOR: "Workers have benefited by the progress which has been made in carrying out the programs and principles set forth in the 1952 Republican platform. All workers have gained and unions have grown in strength and responsibility, and have increased their membership by 2 millions. "

EDUCATION: "Republican action created the Department of Health, Education and Welfare as the first new Federal department in 40 years, to raise the continuing consideration of these problems for the first time to the highest council of Government, the President's Cabinet."

FOREIGN POLICY: "We shall continue vigorously to support the United Nations."

SAFETY NET: The Federal minimum wage has been raised for more than 2 million workers. Social Security has been extended to an additional 10 million workers and the benefits raised for 6 1/2 million. The protection of unemployment insurance has been brought to 4 million additional workers.

ENVIRONMENT: "We recognize the need for maintaining isolated wilderness areas to provide opportunity for future generations to experience some of the wilderness living through which the traditional American spirit of hardihood was developed. Added more than 400,000 acres to our National Park system, and 90,000 acres to wildlife refuges."  

How did that Republican Party mutate into today's openly treasonous and insane New Confederacy? Openly and repeatedly declaring -- under the "Hastert Rule" -- that negotiating with their opponents, in any way and over anything, is absolutely forbidden?

Propaganda. Aimed at destroying politics as an American problem solving tool. And here's an example to show just how blatant it has become.

== On George Soros == 

All right. let's illustrate the mad-right's narrative machine, and how sadly incurious millions of our neighbors have become, nodding and swallowing anything that gets fed to them on Fox. 

Use this!  Ask your crazy uncle what he thinks of a man named... George Soros. 

Oh, any Fox-watcher will tell you about Soros! How he is a criminal mastermind with a huge media empire that has suckered millions of Blue Americans into raving socialist-communist frenzy. 

Never mind that Soros's wealth and media "empire" are minuscule compared to the triumvirate of Rupert Mudoch, the Koch boys and the Saudi royal family, all co-owners of Fox. Folks following the narrative call George Soros a "super-leftist" master-demon.

A special moment: they nod in terror when Glen Beck howls "Soros toppled EIGHT foreign governments!" 

In fact, that's true! For once, Beck ain't lying at all. George Soros did help to topple eight foreign governments! He is, indeed, a formidable fellow. Alas, in a sign of how far GOP intellect has plummeted since days of Goldwater and Buckley, not one audience member of the Beck or Limbaugh or Fox riefenstahl-rallies ever lifts his head to ask ... 

"Um... Glen? Rush? Sean? WHICH eight foreign governments do you credit Soros - the super leftist with toppling?"

 In ten years of daring these guys, none of the Fox-ites I've  confronted has ever been able to name even one of those toppled foreign governments. It just never occurred to them, to ask.

Are you ready to ask? Ready for the list? Here are those eight foreign governments Beck/Limbaugh/Fox credit George Soros with toppling.

The communist dictatorship of Hungary.

The communist dictatorship of Poland

The communist dictatorship of Czechoslovakia

The communist dictatorship of Romania

The communist dictatorship of Bulgaria

The communist dictatorship of Estonia

The communist dictatorship of Latvia

The communist dictatorship of Lithuania

And mind you it isn't just uber-conservatives Beck and Limbaugh who credit Soros with this terrifying feat! The Heritage Foundation and AEI and most rightist pundit-castes have repeated it! Along with many GOP candidates. (Though sometimes the figure is nine since it rightfully should include East Germany.) Indeed, Soros's relentless efforts to undermine the USSR and communism made up his core life's work and even many sane political observers credit him substantially.

Let’s make this explicit. Glen Beck and all those other right wing mavens officially credit terrifying leftist George Soros with the toppling of the Iron Curtain and the end of the Warsaw Pact, the liberation of hundreds of millions and the victorious end of the Cold War. 

Huh. I thought it was that other liberal (compared to today’s GOP) Ronald Reagan. In fact, they both share equal credit with Michail Gorbachev and with the architect of our grand 1945-2000 plan -- George Marshall. (With Jimmy Carter deserving more of an assist cred than you’d believe.)

Look, the crux here is not who actually tore down the wall. Hey, let's credit the people of those nations, above all. 

No, the core point is this: why are the viewers of Fox and Beck/Limbaugh so cosmically stupid that they never — any of them — ask enough questions to notice the tsunami of ironies and contradictions and outright lies at their Nuremberg Rally? 

So... um... where does this ghastly example of looniness, incuriosity and knee jerk obedience to declared dogma leave the credibility of today's monster that has hijacked the once intellectually solid American conservative movement?

Oh, pity Barry Goldwater. spinning 6000 RPM in his grave.

== Make that 10,000 RPM... ==

I have long believed we should be dealing with crises with a multi-pronged approach. The far-left, in opposing even experiments in (say) ocean fertilization, is almost 10% as crazy as today’s entire US right. (Yes, that crazy!) 

Both sides poison pragmatism, which is portrayed on this page about ways to ameliorate the incredible harm that carbonate-driven acidification is doing to our oceans. But yes, there’s no doubt it is the Denialist Cult doing the worst harm.

Ocean acidification is the silver bullet, boys and girls. It is undeniable. It cannot be armwaved away with Fox-nuremberg-style sieg-incantations. It is pure fact, and caused by human generated CO2. And it threatens our children. 

Furthermore, those who would sneer us into doing nothing - refusing even to negotiate moderate improvements in energy efficiency that would save consumers billions - are complicit with murdering the future.

Do not let them get away with the tactic of yelling “Squirrel!” and pointing elsewhere to change the subject. Repeat it. “The oceans are going acid. The oceans are going acid. The oceans are going acid. The oceans are going acid. The oceans are going acid. The oceans are going acid. The oceans are going acid. The oceans are going acid…. ".

..And if YOU guys keep this up, and the seas die, we will remember you. Yes you. Personally. By name.”

Soros Examines the Causes of the World Financial Meltdown

In the latest issue of the New York Review of Books, philanthropist, currency trader and international financial expert George Soros offers his own view of the world financial meltdown.

The salient feature of the current financial crisis is that it was not caused by some external shock like OPEC raising the price of oil or a particular country or financial institution defaulting. The crisis was generated by the financial system itself. This fact—that the defect was inherent in the system —contradicts the prevailing theory, which holds that financial markets tend toward equilibrium and that deviations from the equilibrium either occur in a random manner or are caused by some sudden external event to which markets have difficulty adjusting. The severity and amplitude of the crisis provides convincing evidence that there is something fundamentally wrong with this prevailing theory and with the approach to market regulation that has gone with it.

Later in his rumination, Mr. Soros gets to an important point that is routinely, even fetishistically, ignored by those who recite incantations of Faith In Blind Markets.

This remarkable sequence of events can be understood only if we abandon the prevailing theory of market behavior. As a way of explaining financial markets, I propose an alternative paradigm that differs from the current one in two respects. First, financial markets do not reflect prevailing conditions accurately; they provide a picture that is always biased or distorted in one way or another. Second, the distorted views held by market participants and expressed in market prices can, under certain circumstances, affect the so-called fundamentals that market prices are supposed to reflect. This two-way circular connection between market prices and the underlying reality I call reflexivity.


Soros is quite right to focus on human nature -- and our propensity for delusion, in particular -- as a root of the problem. In fact, while markets are wonderful wealth generating machines, that harness competition between individuals and groups in positive-sum ways that benefit us all, they are not mystically simple or perfect. Nor do they arise (as the sun does) out of immutable physical law.

Indeed, if you scan human history, you will find very few examples of market-based systems that escaped meddling and ruination at the hands of the very same elites who stood at the top of the social order -- the owners of nearly all capital, who insisted that they knew what's best, and nearly always squelched competition, rather than let it flow and thrive. In the vast majority of cultures, it was top owners who shut down what we would call open market behavior. A threat far more prevalent than peasant revolts or socialism.

Market Fundamentalists tell themselves a dogma that Adam Smith himself never believed, that markets are rooted in - and organically emerge from - human nature. This is fundamentally wrong. Our natures developed in a Darwinian-tribal context that predated civilization and markets. In order to understand this, simply study the power and economic arrangements in most tribal or pastoral societies. And even later. Try calculating what fraction of the population in most ancient nations must have been descended from the harems of kings. (Recent data show that 8% of the Chinese population, today, is directly descended from Ghengis Khan.)

While it is true that some deeply human imperatives do work well with markets - e.g. our ability to both cooperate and compete, our embedded notion of fairness and quid-pro-quo. other human drives do not. For example, the propensity to cheat and deceive. And our remarkable tendency to tell ourselves satisfyingly delusional stories that aren't well-based in fact. This latter trait makes us wonderful artists, but also great believers in simplistic dogmas.

Like the simplistic dogma of perfect, equilibrium-seeking markets.

What Mr. Soros appears to see clearly, and describes well, is the role of delusion in our both our recent "credit bubble" and a much longer, post-Reagan "super-bubble" that was based upon the assumption that markets automatically correct for all distortions, even though traders can be like any other tribe, influenced by group-think, by shared myths and by zealous optimism. Even by their own standards. hedge-betters did not include enough wagers that pondered the possibility of a serious downturn to what was obviously a bubble,

What Mr. Soros appears to leave out is another aspect of the present crisis, how it was driven not only be delusion, but also by cheating, predation and parasitism. These are three different - if related - things. Cheating is where players seek to limit Hayekian knowledge flows by limiting the transparency that markets require to function.

Predation is outright lawbreaking -- or else stealing by using some loophole, the way that a crony network of golf buddies took over the boards of scores of US corporations, appointing each other to CEO slots and voting each other huge bonuses -- in effect creating a cartel of top managers -- all somehow without triggering the rules against interlocking directorates and restraint of trade. Above all, their belief in market forces was proved hypocritical, since such pay raises for CEOs should (under capitalism) draw in talent from other fields until managerial talent supply pushed prices down again. (See: The Syndrome of the Essential Man.)

Parasitism is the least examined of these forces, in part because it is almost perfectly legal. It happens when an entire species of creature arrives on the scene, that contributes little to economic activity, but draws sustenance from healthy companies, just like a vampire bat siphoning blood from cattle. In my last economics related posting, I suggested that this has happened to our civilization with the arrival, in layer after layer of management, of swarms of "business school graduates."

For all his faults, when Walter Wriston ran Citi Bank, the institution was all about... banking. Because Wriston and his colleagues were, above all, bankers. Likewise, companies led by widget-makers tended to remember that their core business is widget-making. Even if some of the engineers went on to get MBAs and law degrees, at least they would remember the product. The service that customers paid for.

But as corporations were taken over by a caste who never made a product or provided a service, it is only natural that goods and services dropped in priority, while parasitical aspects of business gained importance, like developing innovative ways to hedge and leverage instruments to squeeze a little more profit out of transactions in commoditized debt.

Think of it this way. When vampires are in charge, they will emphasize blood. Even if they are smart vampires who claim to have the health of the cows at heart (so to speak), their goal will be to maximize the flow of blood. Now, blood is important. Like money, it enables the body to live and take nourishment to all its cells. Money and blood matter... but their purpose, in the long run, is to help the body stay alive -- or to help the company to make competitive goods and services. When the vampire tunes the cow's body to deliver JUST the right amount of blood to keep it alive, under ideal circumstance, and no more, guess what happens when the slightest thing goes wrong?

Above all, both vampires and business majors like to live on the edge. They assume the body that they are tapping will remain in equilibrium forever. Reserves? Those are for wusses. Hence, another "management" psychosis that will hit us hard, very soon... our industrial over-reliance on just-in-time production practices -- abetted by tax laws that punish warehousing and robust practices -- will surely be the second shoe to drop.

The drastic step of closing undergraduate business schools and only allowing MBA candidates who heve spent some time in goods and services, may be drastic. But it could be effective.

These warnings are not new. Last time, I urged that folks try watching “Executive Suite,” a 1954 Robert Wise film starring William Holden and Barbara Stanwyck. Though a bit silly, it really does address some of these issues, at a level that movies seldom aspire-to.

The essay by Mr. Soros should be read. We all need to ponder new ways of looking at old problems.

The Past Shines Light on the Future

Here are perspectives I've stored up for weeks... some of them pretty important! (And the political lamp is lit.)

An absolute must-read, in the October 15 New York Times Sunday Book Review, “Cold Warrior,’ in which Henry Kissinger praises Robert Beisner’s tome, “Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War,” agreeing that President Truman’s Secretary of State was probably the best Secretary in U.S. history.

“In this maelstrom, Acheson dealt with the five principal tasks of any secretary of state: the identification of the challenge; the development of a strategy to deal with it; organizing and motivating the bureaucracy in the State Department and in other agencies; persuading the American public; and conducting American diplomacy toward other countries. These tasks require the closest collaboration between the president and the secretary of state; secretaries of state who seek to base their influence on the prerogatives of the office invariably become marginalized. Presidents cannot be constrained by administrative flowcharts; for a secretary of state to be effective, he or she has to get into the president’s head, so to speak. This is why Acheson made it a point to see Truman almost every day they were in town together and why their friendship was so crucial to the achievements of the Truman years.”

Mind you, I happen to believe that Acheson’s predecessor, George Marshall, might have been named Man of the Century with tremendous justice. But Acheson - more specialized - was even better at that specific job. I am glad Kissinger has the guts and high standards to know it.

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See Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Google, interview George Soros in a very interesting podcast, discussing his book The Age of Fallibility: Consequences of the War on Terror. A controversial figure but one who believes passionately in open societies, who played a huge role in ensuring that the nations of the former Warsaw Pact would transform into democratic Western members of NATO and the EU, rather than slipping into retro-czarist personality cults.

Especially telling. Like me, he believes that there IS a legitimate role for assertive democracy-spreading and intervention to idealistically eliminate tyrants like Saddam. But doing it STUPIDLY - in ways that undermine your own strengths and freedom and economy and leadership role in the world? He is also (like me) deeply critical of calling this current crisis a “war”... a metaphor that deeply cripples our agility and flexibility and credibility in the world.

Above all, he speaks for the advantages of an open society, in which we (enlightenment civilization) hold all the advantages. As the author of The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom? I can be expected to agree.


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Another must -read. The 'war on terror' that ruined Rome. Excerpt: In the autumn of 68 B.C. the world's only military superpower was dealt a profound psychological blow by a daring terrorist attack on its very heart. Rome's port at Ostia was set on fire, the consular war fleet destroyed, and two prominent senators, together with their bodyguards and staff, kidnapped.

The incident, dramatic though it was, has not attracted much attention from modern historians. But an event that was merely a footnote five years ago has now, in our post-9/11 world, assumed a fresh and ominous significance. For in the panicky aftermath of the attack, the Roman people made decisions that set them on the path to the destruction of their Constitution, their democracy and their liberty. One cannot help wondering if history is repeating itself.

Consider the parallels. The perpetrators of this spectacular assault were not in the pay of any foreign power: No nation would have dared to attack Rome so provocatively. Like Al Qaeda, these pirates were loosely organized, but able to spread a disproportionate amount of fear among citizens who had believed themselves immune from attack. Over the preceding centuries, the Constitution of ancient Rome had developed an intricate series of checks and balances intended to prevent the concentration of power in the hands of a single individual. Ordinary citizens were accustomed to a remarkable degree of liberty: the cry of "Civis Romanus sum" - "I am a Roman citizen" - was a guarantee of safety throughout the world.

But such was the panic that ensued after Ostia that the people were willing to compromise these rights. The greatest soldier in Rome, the 38-year- old Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (better known to posterity as Pompey the Great) arranged for a lieutenant of his, the tribune Aulus Gabinius, to rise in the Roman Forum and propose an astonishing new law, the Lex Gabinia. "Pompey was to be given not only the supreme naval command but what amounted in fact to an absolute authority and uncontrolled power over everyone," the Greek historian Plutarch wrote. Pompey eventually received almost the entire contents of the Roman Treasury to pay for his "war on terror," which included building a fleet of 500 ships and raising an army of 120,000 infantry and 5,000 cavalry. Such an accumulation of power was unprecedented.

Once Pompey put to sea, it took less than three months to sweep the pirates from the entire Mediterranean. Even allowing for Pompey's genius as a military strategist, the suspicion arises that if the pirates could be defeated so swiftly, they could hardly have been such a grievous threat in the first place. But it was too late to raise such questions. By the oldest trick in the political book - the whipping up of a panic, in which any dissenting voice could be dismissed as "soft" or even "traitorous" - powers had been ceded by the people that would never be returned. Pompey stayed in the Middle East for six years, establishing puppet regimes throughout the region, and turning himself into the richest man in the empire.

Wow... I did not know of this.

My own bit of obscure historical erudition is to compare the mad neocons like Nitze and Wolfowitz and Perle to Alcibiades, the reckless Athenian polemic who, taking advantage of the death of Pericles, persuaded Athens to squander its prestige and power and wealth on a ridiculous, utopian attempt at so-called “nation building” in far off Sicily. But this lesson of Ostia is even more relevant.

Especially now that the mad Straussians are no longer heeded or needed by the ones truly in charge. Poor fellows. Starting to wake up to how you’ve been used? Like Alcibiades, you have used democracy to pave the way for tyrants.

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Have you a little more patience? Here’s another gem from Russ Daggatt:

“It really takes amazing focus and systematic determination for a president to be wrong about everything. I mean, what are the odds of pulling it off, even if you tried? This is how you might go about it: Start with an incurious, arrogant ideologue. Centralize all policy making with the smallest possible group of people, selected entirely on the basis of loyalty, and then shield them behind the greatest possible degree of secrecy. Limit your sources of information to those who strongly agree with you and tolerate no dissent whatsoever. Interject as much fear as possible to give the more primitive regions of the brain an advantage over the higher regions. Make every decision a Manichean choice between us and them, right and wrong, good and evil, black and white with no shades of grey. Admit no mistakes ever. And believe that a Divine Being has chosen you to execute His will.”

Well, well. Russ states the dilemma well. Alas, he still refuses to take this chain of reasoning to its logical conclusion. But some of you know the scenario (worthy of a thriller novel!) that I can only halfway make myself disbelieve. Because he is right. It is simply impossible to do this much harm to a mighty nation, and have that effect be inadvertent. Purely a result of ideology, and indignant/secretive stupidity.

1) The list of harms is devastating. for example:

* utter demolition of US reputation (for reliability, sense and judgement) among our allies.

* utter demolition of US reputation (respect for our effectiveness and competence) among our potential foes.

* utter demolition of the reputation of the US Congress.

* utter demolition of American popularity and world Acquiescence to US leadership.

* utter demolition of US military readiness, down to levels not seen since Pearl Harbor. In a post-9/11 world, we are not even prepared with enough rested and equipped active duty personnel to deal with ONE medium scale “surprise contingency.” (These people criticized Clinton because we were “only” ready to deal with one and a half MAJOR contingencies at that time. A comparison raised by absolutely no one at any level.)

* utter demolition of our fiscal condition, turning vast surpluses into generation-breaking debt.

* utter demolition of our social cohesion as a united nation (via relentless culture war.)

The list goes on and on, but...

2) This simply could not have taken place simply as a matter of incompetence. Not even if you throw in ruthless, kleptocratic venality (through crony contracts, for example). That explanation fails because, three layers down from the political appointees, there exists a vast sea of civilian and military civil servants. The most amazing collection of human competence that has ever been assembled!

I never cease to be amazed by how little attention is paid to this level, the vastly knowledgeable and professional US Officer Corps and the collected experts and diplomats and scientists and other skilled workers who fill the vast federal pyramid. For they are key! Under normal circumstances, they would be able to keep things going, at least at a competent-simmering level, even in the face of dingbat idiocy from above!

That is, if it were merely dingbat idiocy!

Oh, but is ANYBODY looking into the possibility that it isn't? We have paid professional paranoids whose JOB it is to look into such possibilities.

I wonder if they are.