Afghanistan

Today's Visionary: An Illustrated Guide to Dr. King's 21st Century Insights

Richard Eskow — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 11:37:33 -0500

Here it comes again. This holiday weekend we'll see a lot of media coverage of Martin Luther King, Jr. But we'll hear very little about what he really was - a brave and visionary leader whose vision is as relevant today as ever.

One year ago I listed ten quotes by Dr. King, and mourned the lack of a movement that would advance his kind of vision. Then came the uprising in Madison and the Occupy movement, which began a long-overdue national debate about economic, as well as racial inequality.

Once again, Dr. King's insights provide offer insight and vision for today's movement activists - and tomorrow's.

1. "True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring." Where Do We Go From Here? August 1967 speech.

"Bain Capitalism" - aka "vulture capitalism" - didn't happen out of nowhere. It was made by politicians. It should be un-made by politicians. The system is the problem and it needs to change.

A long list of corporations and banks enriched itself by triggering the events that led to the Great Recession, and many of them took Federal bailout money when it happened. Each of them has a Corporate Social Responsibility policy, designed to show they're good citizens who give back to the community. And each of them has a fleet of lobbyists working to protect their privileged status and tax benefits.

Meanwhile the poverty rate, which had been declining, started to rise again in 2000. That year it stood at 11.3%, but by 2009 the Census Bureau reported that it had climbed back to 14.3%. At last count, 46 million Americans lived in poverty, more than 15 percent of the population. More than 16 million of them are children, which means that nearly one in four American kids (22 percent) is living in poverty.

Is that okay with you?

The situation has become so grave that The Nation responded by allocating an entire page to poverty, which is managed by Greg Kaufman. Sadly, it is now essential reading if we're to understand the real state of our union. As Kaufman points out, one study suggests that 340,000 children joined the ranks of the impoverished last year.

As the New York Times reported last September, another 2.6 million people slipped below the official poverty line in 2010. The official total of impoverished Americans was the highest it's been in the 52 years that it has been reported. For white Americans, the figure was 9.9 percent. The poverty rate for African Americans surged to 27.4 percent. For Hispanics the figure was 26.6 percent. For African American children the figure was 39 percent.

Is that okay with you?

(photo by Jeff Schrier, Saginaw News)

2. "We must develop a federal program of public works, retraining, and jobs for all - so that none, white or black, will have cause to feel threatened ... There is nothing except shortsightedness to prevent us from guaranteeing an annual minimum and livable income for every American family." Where Do We Go From Here?

Many economists agree that the unemployment rate will remain tragically high unless there is a concentrated program of government-funded, short-term job creation. Instead, budget cutbacks are forcing layoffs of government employees, especially at the state level. Republicans are refusing to back any extension of unemployment benefits. Among their Presidential candidates, only Mitt Romney appears to support increasing the minimum wage.

President Obama's pre-compromised and therefore overly mild jobs proposal was weakened with ineffective tax breaks for businesses, but it would have provided some jobs. Yet even that proposal was rejected by the Republicans. Of the political groups in Washington, only the House Progressive Caucus is willing to propose an effective ob creation bill - one that would also reduce the nation's deficit. But mainstream media have stigmatized it as "extreme" and no major politician is willing to back it.

What did Dr. King say about jobs?

"The unemployed, poverty-stricken white man must be made to realize that he is in the very same boat with the Negro. Together, they could exert massive pressure on the government to get jobs for all. Together they could form a grand alliance. Together, they could merge all people for the good of all."

Today it seems that the only bills that even get proposed are those that disguise tax breaks for corporations as "stimulus" spending, even though there is widespread agreement they're an ineffective way of creating jobs when there's not enough consumer demand.

With 24 million people out of work or under-employed, demand is hard to come by. ALong-term unemployment is a portrait of human loss, of human beings cast out of productive, wage-earning lives and into an existence of hopelessness and deprivation.

How bad is unemployment today? There are a number of ways to illustrate it. Here's one:

Pundits and politicians get excited about short-term blips in unemployment figures. But nobody's addressing this long-term catastrophe..

3. "A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth." Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence, April 1967 speech.

(Daimler Maybach sedan, manufacturer's suggested retail price $366,000 - plus delivery and other charges)

Hello, Occupy!

The gap between the wealthy and the rest of society is greater now than it was when Dr. King spoke those words in April, 1967. The progress we made toward reducing poverty is being eroded as the result of increasingly maldistributed wealth, Wall Street's reckless gambling, and the cost of the Great Recession that followed. Wall Street's doing fine, now that it has been rescued by the American public. But the American public isn't doing so well. We threw a life preserver to the drowning bankers, and now they're sitting on the shore as millions of their rescuers go down for the third time.

Income inequality in this country is worse than it is in Egypt. As economist Edward Wolff explains, wealth inequality has more than doubled in this country since the mid 1970s. The GINI coefficient, which measures economic inequality, has risen nearly 20% since it was first measured in this country (coincidentally, the same year Dr. King's speech was given.)

Where are the trends headed?

The increasing disparity in wealth has been greatest for the top 0.5% of earners - the wealthiest of the wealthy - yet their tax burden has dropped from 70% in 1967 to 35% today (it was scheduled to "soar" to 39.6% until the Obama/McConnell tax deal of December 2010). And hedge fund managers - including the billionaires - continue to pay 15% instead of the 28% commonly paid by teachers, nurses, and police officers. (One hedge fund manager likened the possibility of a change to Hitler's invasion of Poland.)

The Federal minimum wage, however, has dropped from $6.58 in fixed-dollar terms (1996 equivalent) to $5.29 since this speech was given. When Dr. King gave his speech, it was possible to support a family of three on this wage and stay out of poverty, but that's no longer possible.

4. "The profit motive, when it is the sole basis of an economic system, encourages a cutthroat competition and selfish ambition that encourages men to be I-centered rather than thou-centered." Where do we go from here?

The I-centeredness of American business leaders has reached a level Dr. King could not have dreamed of. Two short years after Wall Street ruined the economy and was rescued by the American people, the depth of its self-absorption and self-pity was a miracle of human indulgence. It reflects a self-centeredness so profound that its leaders are in danger of morally imploding, spiritual black holes in an amoral universe.

Case in point: Steven Schwartzman, the hedge fund manager we mentioned earlier, who felt that paying taxes on his billions' at a laborers' rate was the moral equivalent of the invasion of Poland.

Or Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, who said "We're very important ... we do God's work." (Reverend King might beg to differ.)

Or erstwhile Democrat Daniel S. Loeb comparing himself and his fellow investors to an oppressed minority, victims of tyranny (a "tyranny" that rescued them and asked nothing in return), and even underpaid workers.

Or John Coulson, head of the Mortgage Bankers Association, lecturing underwater homeowners not to walk out on their mortgages - even as his organization was walking away from a headquarters building they lost nearly forty million dollars on in two short years.

Or the King of the Emo Executives, Jamie Dimon, pouring out his hurt feelings to the New York Times - "My Achilles heel?" Jay-Z rapped, "Love! I don't get enough of it!" - even as his bank was on its way to earning record profits in a time of record unemployment (and as it continued to engage in unscrupulous business practices).

Dimon, who has also contributed to the Democratic Party, is stridently resisting regulations that would remove the existential threat his bank (and others like it) pose to the economy. And he won't stop whining.

I'm tired of going after the guy, so this time we'll let Josh Brown tell him what time it is. All these greedy, rapacious, whiny CEOs help to remind us that shame performs a useful social function.

We need better laws and regulations - and they should be ashamed of themselves.

5. "Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals." Letter From a Birmingham Jail, April 1963 open letter.

Tea Party supporters may have populist impulses. But the movement itself was created with an outburst by an investor-turned-television commentator who was cheered on in his rantings by traders on the Chicago Board of Mercantile Exchange. And the movement's been funded by wealthy interests ever since.

After it was bailed out, Wall Street immediately redoubled its lobbying efforts. Banks were able to blunt the most effective and urgently needed financial reforms, like breaking up banks that are "too big to fail." Now they're hard at work eliminating the reforms that were passed, with the help of the Republican Congress they helped get elected. Big-bank CEOs have spent more than $170 million to influence politicians in the last ten years.

The situation has gotten so bad that the International Monetary Fund - hardly a leftist organization - issued a report showing a strong correlation between bank lobbying and risky bank behavior in the United States.

That's why the Occupy movement is so important, and why it must grow and evolve in 2012.

6. "An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal." Letter From a Birmingham Jail

Recent court cases have revealed widespread lawbreaking on the part of United States banks - a "power majority group" - as they foreclosed on homes that in some cases they don't even own.

Members of both parties have indicated an eagerness to rescue banks from the consequences of their own disregard for state and local laws, which has led to numerous and egregious violations (like foreclosing on a home that is fully paid for). But the criminality goes further: In many cases, mortgages changed ownership without proper notification to the borrower. The new holder of the note often changed the rules - about due dates for payment, late penalties, and other contractually agreed-upon terms - without informing the homeowner, then began imposing steep fees and penalties retroactively. (The banks own servicing companies that benefit from these fees.)

Many homeowners are now delinquent because of these wrongfully-imposed fees. Many of the solutions now being proposed would allow them to seize the homes anyway. The Administration's HAMP program, ostensibly designed to help homeowners, has too often become an "extend and pretend" program that allows banks to take another year or two's worth of mortgage payments before seizing the home anyway.

That's why the Obama Administration's cushy settlement deal - which would immunize bankers from criminal prosecution, or even investigation - must be stopped. (You can help by making your voice heard here.)

7. "When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered." A Testament of Hope (posthumously published essay).

Banking has become divorced from reality. When the financial sector can enrich itself with speculation alone, it no longer needs to fund concrete business activities. That's why statements like "Main Street and Wall Street rise and fall together" are 100% incorrect: Those two geographies have never been more distant from one another.

Robo-trading. Flash crashes. Databases where mortgages are traded like gambling chips. Incentives to lie, and to hide the truth. Banks are "automated greed factories." The most human thing about banking in the 21st Century is its greed.

Is racism conquered? When infant mortality for African Americans in 2.5 times that of whites? With these disparities in poverty and employment?

Militarism? The Cold War is over and the Defense budget continues to expand. We didn't shift military spending when the world changed—we added to it. The Homeland Security Complex is enormous, growing—and looking for targets of surveillance.

And as Tom Engelhardt points out, President Obama's much-touted "defense cuts" are really just a slight reduction in the rate of spending increase. That's like an alcoholic boasting that he's solved his drinking problem by only having three more drinks a day next month, instead of his original plan to have four more.

As for conquering materialism, how many people even want to anymore? Dr. King's "three triplets" still walk the earth.

8. "There is also the violence of (African Americans) having to live in a community and pay higher consumer prices for goods or higher rents for equivalent housing than are charged in white parts of the city." A Testament of Hope

Payday lenders disproportionately exploit minorities and lower-income communities. Big banks (like Jamie Dimon's) make it harder for working minorities to get credit through normal channels. Then they help finance usurious payday lenders who step in and offer credit at outrageous rates designed to trap the borrower in a cycle of debt, so that a "one-time" fee for borrowing against next week's paycheck turns into a revolving loan that costs the borrower 300-400% in interest per year.

As a theologian and scholar, Dr. King would recognize a practice that was condemned as sinful in both the Old and New Testaments.

Big banks also back auto loans, which have been shown to charge more to African Americans than whites. HSBC Bank settled when it was found to have been charging minority customers more than others.

When it comes to banks, Dr. King would recognize the United States of the 21st Century. And he wouldn't be surprised to learn that the government is still more inclined to rescue banks than force them to change. He would probably be encouraging citizens to take action - action that would change things. The CFPB is now up and running with a full-time Director. We wish Richard Cordray and his staff the best.

9. "Congress appropriates military funds with alacrity and generosity. It appropriates poverty funds with miserliness and grudging reluctance. The government is emotionally committed to the war. It is emotionally hostile to the needs of the poor." Domestic impact of the war in America, November 1967 speech..

Today's politics would look all too familiar to Dr. King. In the matter of poverty, as in so many things, the Washington consensus of "centrist" Democrats and Republicans fails to reflect the opinions of the American people.

He would be pleased to learn that the American people are dedicated to eliminating poverty - and to protecting Social Security, defending Medicare, and asking the wealthy to pay their fair share.

He would be disappointed, however, to find that there aren't more national leaders speaking up for the public's values in Washington.

10. "Ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus." Domestic impact of the war.

Dr. King was discussing a critic who told him that taking a controversial position on Vietnam might diminish his authority as a civil rights leader and weaken his political influence in Washington. Here's the full quote:

And I had to answer by looking that person into the eye, and say 'I'm sorry sir but you don't know me. I'm not a consensus leader.' I do not determine what is right and wrong by looking at the budget of my organization or by taking a Gallup poll of the majority opinion. Ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.

We're speculating now, but we can't help imagining that Dr. King might have challenged today's leaders to try harder at molding consensus before seeking to achieve it. That was his idea of genuine leadership.

Lately the President of the United States has been taking a tougher rhetorical stance on behalf of the American majority. We hope that his words will be followed by a year of aggressive action. But we won't be waiting to find out. We'll be acting for ourselves and encouraging others to do the same.

See you at the demonstrations.

Today's Visionary: 10 Things Martin Luther King, Jr. Taught Us About Today's Struggles

Richard Eskow — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 14:17:18 -0400

A lot of people in the media are so afraid of offending anyone that they can't even tell the truth about the man whose memorial is being unveiled this weekend in Washington. Their coverage could give you the impression that the purpose of Martin Luther King, Jr's life was simply to make everybody in this country feel good about themselves. So once again we're presenting ten quotes that represent Dr. King as he truly was -- the kind of brave and visionary leader we so badly need today.

You might be forgiven for thinking that everybody liked and admired Dr. King while he was alive except maybe for a few angry old white people down South (who later realized the errors of their ways and were very sorry.) The media have been so reluctant to convey Dr. King's true message that Glenn Beck can claim to have inherited his mantle and millions of people believe him. They're so afraid of telling his truth that a Pentagon official can claim that the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, the spiritual heir to Gandhi's mantle of nonviolence, would have supported the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In this fame-addicted age, this activist and challenger of comfortable ideals has been presented as just another celebrity. And these days "celebrity" is another word for "commodity." Dr. King: Didn't they use his picture for one of those Apple ads (or was it Nike?) Didn't he have his picture taken with movie stars and singers? Future generations may come to believe he was famous just for being famous - like a Kardashian.

This weekend Dr. King's name will be spoken by politicians and business leaders who would probably despise what he would have had to say about 21st Century America. They'll try to appropriate his name and memory to ensure their own well-being. They hope to domesticate his moral challenge in order to protect their own ambition.

Fortunately, Martin Luther King left his words behind. In his honor, here are ten quotes from Dr. King, illustrated with images from today's events to show their continued meaning. If they don't manage to comfort the afflicted on this national holiday—and at least unsettle the comfortable—they're followed by a slide show with even more quotes.

A long chain of corporations and banks enriched itself by triggering the events that led to the Great Recession, and many of them took Federal bailout money when it happened. Each of them has a Corporate Social Responsibility policy, designed to show they're good citizens who give back to the community. And each of them has a fleet of lobbyists working to protect their privileged status and tax benefits.

The poverty rate, which had been declining, started to rise again in 2000. That year it stood at 11.3%, but by 2009 the Census Bureau reported that it had climbed back to 14.3%. At last count, 43.6 million Americans lived in poverty. In raw numbers, that's the highest number since these statistics were first collected more than fifty years ago (although it's been higher as a percentage of the population).

We're moving in the wrong direction. Children are being hit the hardest, and their rate of poverty is growing the fastest. More than 20% of children in the United States - one child in five - lived in poverty in 2009. The poverty rate for African Americans was 25.8%, a considerably higher percentage than possess a college degree. A college education is still the best ticket out of poverty - but there's considerable pressure to cut funding for education, too.

Poverty rates would have been even higher if not for unemployment insurance, which was not extended for the long-term unemployed. That means they're likely to jump again. The "99ers" have exhausted their ninety-nine weeks of special unemployment, and the agreement that extended tax cuts for the wealthy and the middle class included nothing for them.

(photo by Jeff Schrier, Saginaw News)

Had Dr. King's vision become reality, it wouldn't have been necessary to extend unemployment for the 99ers. As he said:

"The unemployed, poverty-stricken white man must be made to realize that he is in the very same boat with the Negro. Together, they could exert massive pressure on the government to get jobs for all. Together they could form a grand alliance. Together, they could merge all people for the good of all."

Today the idea of Federal support for jobs is considered so politically unfeasible that President Obama didn't even bother asking Congress for the full stimulus package economists felt was needed - and that was in a national emergency. The only bills that can passed are those that disguise tax breaks for corporations as "stimulus" spending, even though there is widespread agreement they're an ineffective way of creating jobs when there's not enough consumer demand.

With 25 million people out of work or under-employed, demand is harder to come by. And the rapid rise in long-term unemployment is a portrait of human loss, the outline of human beings cast out of productive, wage-earning lives into an existence of hopelessness and deprivation:

In the mid-sixties there was vigorous protest at the idea that 5% might be an acceptable unemployment level. The racial disparities of Dr. King's day haven't changed much, at least as far as employment is concerned: The African American rate that month was 15.8%, as opposed to 8.5% for Caucasians. Official figures reflect the fact that unemployment in the black community is twice that of whites - and the true difference is probably even greater, once figures are adjusted for those who have given up seeking employment. Underemployment is also considerably higher among African Americans.

But Caucasians aren't winning this game, either. 8.5% is a devastating figure. Increased employment for some people means more jobs for all, as newly-employed workers spend their earnings and stimulate economic growth. Dr. King's words are as true today as they were when he spoke them: A unified movement to demand more jobs would benefit all races and communities in the United States.

Income support for lower-income Americans was cut during the Clinton years, in the name of welfare reform. Dr. King's dream of an annual minimum income for all Americans, working or unemployed, may sound hopelessly radical today. But Richard Nixon proposed a guaranteed national income (he called it a "negative income tax") and it almost made it through Congress while he was President.

Could a President as economically progressive as Richard Nixon get elected today? It's hard to tell, because nobody's tried lately.

3. "A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth." Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence, April 1967 speech.

(Daimler Maybach sedan, manufacturer's suggested retail price $366,000 - plus delivery and other charges)

As economist Edward Wolff explains, wealth inequality has more than doubled in this country since the mid 1970s. The GINI coefficient, which measures economic inequality, has risen nearly 20% since it was first measured in this country (coincidentally, the same year Dr. King's speech was given.)

This increasing disparity in wealth has been greatest for the top 0.5% of earners - the wealthiest of the wealthy - yet their tax burden has dropped from 70% in 1967 to 35% today (it was scheduled to "soar" to 39.6% until the Obama/McConnell tax deal of December 2010). And hedge fund managers - including the billionaires - continue to pay 15% instead of the 28% commonly paid by teachers, nurses, and police officers. (One hedge fund manager likened the possibility of a change to Hitler's invasion of Poland.)

Case in point: Steven Schwartzman, the hedge fund manager we mentioned earlier, who felt that paying taxes on his billions' at a laborers' rate was the moral equivalent of the invasion of Poland.

Or Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, who said "We're very important ... we do God's work." (Reverend King might beg to differ.)

Or the King of the Emo Executives, Jamie Dimon, pouring out his hurt feelings to the New York Times - "My Achilles heel?" Jay-Z rapped this year, "Love! I don't get enough of it!" - even as his bank was on its way to earning record profits in a time of record unemployment (and as it continued to engage in unscrupulous business practices).

Poverty's up. Unemployment's essentially unchanged. The American family is struggling. American businesses just had their best quarter ever. Yet its leaders are whining. They're using the rhetoric of freedom in defense of greed.

Dr. King trained his followers in the path of nonviolent resistance to endure jail, starvation, beatings, and even death without complaint or retaliation. He would not be impressed with America's CEOs.

After it was bailed out, Wall Street immediately redoubled its lobbying efforts. Banks were able to blunt the most effective and urgently needed financial reforms, like breaking up banks that are "too big to fail." Now they're hard at work eliminating the reforms that were passed last year, with the help of the Republican Congress they helped get elected. Big-bank CEOs have spent more than $170 million to influence politicians in the last ten years.

And that report was issued before the lobbying frenzy of the last twelve months - before the White House hired more bank executives to placate Wall Street, and before leading Republicans paraded themselves before bank lobbyists like le Pigalle hookers on a Parisian summer's night.

Guess who wasn't represented? The American public, 72% of whom want Washington to do more to rein in Wall Street misbehavior. Washington still lives by its version of the Golden Rule: Whoever has the gold, sets the rules.

Recent court cases have revealed widespread lawbreaking on the part of United States banks - a "power majority group" - as they foreclosed on homes that in some cases they don't even own.

The incestuous relationship between big banks and government threatens to undermine fundamental principles of law and justice, some of which were established in the Magna Carta. A recent proposal from "centrist" group Third Way is typical ("centrist" is a term Dr. King wouldn't recognize in its present use, where it denotes a right-wing ideology masquerading as middle-of-the-road "common sense'). It would override centuries of legal tradition and the legal responsibilities of the states to protect the nation's banks at the expense of their clients.

There are rumors that the Administration is sympathetic to solutions of this kind. It seems safe to say that Dr. King would not have felt the same way.

Is racism conquered? When infant mortality for African Americans in 2.5 times that of whites? With these disparities in poverty and employment?

As for conquering materialism, how many people even want to anymore? Dr. King's "three triplets" still walk the earth. And three years into what has become a permanent depression for millions of Americans, reality shows about rich people are still popular.

As a theologian and scholar, Dr. King would recognize a practice that was condemned as sinful in both the Old and New Testaments.

Big banks also back auto loans, which have been shown to charge more to African Americans than whites. HSBC Bank settled when it was found to have been charging minority customers more than others.

He would be pleased to learn that the American people are dedicated to eliminating poverty - and to protecting Social Security, defending Medicare, and asking the wealthy to pay their fair share. He might be disappointed, however, to find that there aren't more national leaders speaking up for the public's values in Washington.

10. "Ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus." Domestic impact of the war.

And I had to answer by looking that person into the eye, and say 'I'm sorry sir but you don't know me. I'm not a consensus leader.' I do not determine what is right and wrong by looking at the budget of my organization or by taking a Gallup poll of the majority opinion. Ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.

This post was produced as part of the Curbing Wall Street project.

War Economy: The Selling of Afghanistan, 2011

Richard Eskow — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 19:45:55 -0400

Pop quiz: Can you list some specific, concrete military objectives we're trying to accomplish in Afghanistan? If so, please write them in the space provided below:

If you felt you could fill out this form, here's part two of the quiz: Now write a speech uniting the nation around your objectives. Explain that they've been achieved successfully enough to begin bringing troops home, but not successfully enough to bring them home very quickly.

Finally, convince your fellow citizens that spending billions each month to meet these objectives is more important than investing in jobs, growth, education, or a crumbling national infrastructure.

A Tough Assignment

If you thought this quiz was hard, you have a pretty good idea why the President gave himself a tough assignment for last night's speech. A nation in the midst of a prolonged recession is increasingly impatient with a war that's approaching its ten year anniversary. A poll conducted over the last week showed that nearly one-third of all Americans want an immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan, and a majority want to see us out in the next couple of years.

The President withdrew approximately 100,000 troops from Iraq, to widespread public approval and with no apparent political blowback. That was the right move. But troop levels in Afghanistan have risen dramatically under his command. With Al Qaeda on the move, Bin Laden dead, and no clear goals on the ground, he set out an impossible task for himself in this speech: He needed to explain why it's a good idea to withdraw some troops, while also trying to prop up support for not withdrawing most of the others for the foreseeable future.

We were told that 10,000 troops will be out of Afghanistan by the end of the year, with the rest of President Obama's troop "surge" (another 23,000) to be withdrawn by September of 2012. But that still leaves 68,000 troops in place. There were less that number in Afghanistan at the beginning of 2008.

Some people will agree with Tom Hayden that the President's withdrawal announcement is a victory for the peace movement. Others will see it as a manipulative attempt to prolong an unpopular war. Either belief calls for the same response: continued political pressure for a prompt withdrawal.

Guns and Butter

The human price of our Afghan venture in military and civilian deaths and injuries has been sadly invisible to the American people, at least most of the time. But they're acutely aware of their own financial situation with every passing day, and that's fueling a growing sense of unease about this long and costly war.

The country's in a state of economic gloom. Almost everyone's close to a household touched by unemployment or foreclosure. Those fortunate enough to have jobs are fearful, too. Nine out of ten expect their income to fall behind inflation next year, according to a recent poll, and 70% expect to cut back their purchases to cover only necessities.

Pessimism's bad for the economy. It also creates a hostile political climate for a combined war effort that costs more than ten billion dollars every month. "Why spend the money over there," goes the refrain, "when we need it over here?" While that question may ignore the political reality of a Republican Congress ready to veto any and all common-sense domestic spending measures, it helps to illustrate the political hypocrisy behind Washington's new "austerity economics" craze.

It also explains why the National Conference of US Mayors, which includes mayors from across the political spectrum, just adopted a resolution asking the President and Congress "to end the wars as soon as strategically possible and bring these war dollars home to meet vital human needs, promote job creation, rebuild our infrastructure, aid municipal and state governments, and develop a new economy based upon renewable,sustainable energy and reduce the federal debt."

These mayors deal with brutal economic realities every day. As their report says, "75 (metropolitan areas) will have double-digit unemployment rates, and 193 (53%) will have rates higher than 8%. At the end of 2012, 311 (metropolitan areas) will have unemployment rates above 6%; 173 will have rates above 8%; and 69 above 10%."

"Mission Creep"? We should be so lucky.

Anybody who believes in Clemenceau's maxim that war is too important to be left to the generals has never tried telling it to a general. They disagree, and pretty vehemently. So do cable TV newspeople, one of whom asked me last night: "Why shouldn't the generals have the final say about the timetable for withdrawal?"

The first answer to that question is, because they chose to practice their profession in a nation where civilians supposedly control the military. But the second, more specific answer is this: Without a well-defined mission, the generals don't have the benchmarks to set a reasonable schedule for withdrawal.

In World War II and other "normal" wars, it was easy to know when victory had been achieved: when Rome or Berlin fell, when Hirohito surrendered, when the walls of Jericho crumbled. Afghanistan isn't like that. Al Qaeda's on the move, tribal loyalties keep shifting, and corruption touches everything. Nothing is as it seems.

Even "mission creep," that curse of wars, seems like a well-structure agenda compared to Afghanistan. And if there's no clear mission, why are we there at all?

A Constituency of Generals

Even those of us who stand by Clemenceau's words know that generals are a powerful constituency for any President. Obama seems to be meeting with firm resistance from the Joint Chiefs (if recent reports are to be believed).

Military leaders have the power to cause considerable political damage to any President, especially a Democrat. Admiral Mike Mullen, head of the Joint Chiefs, said today expressed tepid support for the President's withdrawal plans while saying they"more aggressive and incur more risk" than he advised. (It's ironic when a military leader describes a troop reduction as "more aggressive," isn't it?) Mullen added: "More force for more time is, without doubt, the safer course."

Admiral Mullen's statement isn't very clear or coherent. Safety for whom - our troops? They'd be safest at home. For the Afghans? How are we protecting them, exactly? But although it was unclear in many ways, his warning to the President seemed clear enought: Don't push this withdrawal business too far.

Ambiguities and Endgames

But whatever the risk of incurring the military's wrath, the President may be running an even greater risk by trying to ride a wave of ambiguity. The Democrats' vague statements about the value of government in general, and entitlements in particular, allowed hard-right Republicans to run to the President's left in 2010 on Medicare. Presidential ambivalence about Afghanistan could let them do the same on the war in 2012. Jon Huntsman tried it this week when he called for "an aggressive drawdown" and said "it's an issue of priorities."

The President's observation that by "the Afghan people will be responsible for their own security" raises more questions than answers. If they're responsible for their own security in 2014, why aren't all our troops coming home then? And Americans won't take orders from Afghan commanders, so what does this statement mean?

Mr. Obama gave some red-meat language for liberals, as he often does. "America," he said, "it is time to focus on nation building here at home." But his list of Afghan successes works better as an argument for a quick withdrawal than it does for a slow one. And his statement that "the light of a secure peace can be seen in the distance" may remind older Americans of the often repeated Vietnam-era reassurance that there's "light at the end of the tunnel."

An economically struggling United States is running out of patience with a venture that's costly in both blood and treasure. There have been more than 2,400 coalition deaths and an unknown number of Afghan losses, and the financial cost is approaching half a trillion dollars. Meanwhile the public is being sold on the need to continue this war, while simultaneously being sold on the idea that we can end it. No wonder people are confused, especially since this war's stated purpose was to "get" the people who attacked us on 9/11.

Okay, people seem to be saying. They've been "got." Shouldn't we be going?

The last President declared "Mission Accomplished" too soon. It would be tragic if this one declared it too late.

______________________________

(There's a petition you can sign: "Draw Down Afghanistan. Build Up America.")

Campaign for America’s Future Urges: “Draw Down Afghanistan. Build Up America.”

Liz Rose — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 17:02:08 -0400

Washington, DC – Robert Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future issued the following statement in anticipation of President Obama’s speech tonight announcing the troop withdrawal levels for the conflict in Afghanistan.

Borosage said, “We went into Afghanistan to track down those who launched the 9/11 attacks on America. With Osama bin Laden dead, and Al Qaeda smashed, that mission has been accomplished. Meanwhile, we face a fundamental security challenge here at home in rebuilding America.

“We have spent $450 billion on the war in Afghanistan since 2001. What was initially a hunt for the perpetrators of 9/11 has turned into the nation’s longest war, with the thankless task of nation-building in Afghanistan, while bolstering a regime too corrupt to stand on its own.

“We need to remain vigilant against terrorists who still seek to do us harm. Aggressive global international intelligence, police, and Special Forces activity are still required.

“But it is time to end the effort to prop up the corrupt and incompetent Karzai regime in Afghanistan, led by someone who continually threatens to join the other side.

“We should not continue spending over $10 billion a month and sacrificing lives in what has become a quagmire with no remaining clear objective. Instead, we bring the troops home with dispatch, and invest the money here at home, revitalizing our infrastructure, generating clean energy and educating our kids. Also, it’s important that the troops that do come home have the opportunity to find meaningful work here at home. They will need the support of the American people to re-integrate to our economy and to life back home.

“It is time to declare mission accomplished in Afghanistan and bring our soldiers, our resources and our attention home.

“Please join us in sending the message to the White House and to the leaders in Congress. It is time to declare victory and come home.

“Click here to sign the petition: "Draw Down Afghanistan. Build Up America."

On Redistribution, Or, “Afghanistan Peace Dividend Stimulus Lotto? OK!”

fake consultant — Thu, 12 May 2011 06:46:32 -0400

They tell us we’re dropping about $10 billion a month in Afghanistan so we can catch that Bin Laden guy...but eventually, we’re gonna catch him, and as soon as we do you can imagine that folks will be wondering why we’re still over there – and I gotta tell ya, I’m one of those people.

I mean, we’re over here talking about how we're so broke that we have no choice but to cut a couple of billion from heat assistance for the poor, and a billion-and-a-half from the Social Security operations budget, and money from food stamps and childcare assistance and tornado forecasting in Alabama…but every single month, just as regular as clockwork, we seem to be able to find another $10 billion to spend in Afghanistan, even as we have an economy that could badly use another round of truly productive stimulus.

And I don’t think y’all even realize just how much money $10 billion really is – but today we’re gonna see if we can’t fix that with a bit of a thought exercise.

Imagine if we set up a program that took that Afghanistan money and spent it right here at home for a year or two – and it was spent in the form of a lottery, where we stimulate the larger economy, help fix the mortgage crisis, and create a more energy-independent nation, all at the same time.

I got all we need except a catchy name; with that in mind let’s move on to the description of how the Happy Super Fun Day Peace Lotto Stimulus Thingy works.

...In this world, the two cities – the earthly and the heavenly – are commingled; but hereafter the predestinate and the reprobate will be separated. In this life we cannot know who, even among our seeming enemies, are to be found ultimately among the elect...

--Bertrand Russell, explaining St. Augustine, in the book “A History of Western Philosophy”

So it couldn’t be any simpler: what I have in mind, to illustrate our point, is a giant national lottery, and it wouldn’t cost a dime to enter.

First prize would be directed toward cleaning up the mortgage crisis by either getting folks out from “under water”, lowering their current monthly payments, or converting them from renters into homeowners: if you’re one of the 10,000 first place winners, you get $250,000 to spend on either paying down your mortgage or to buy a house of your choice if you don’t have one now.

Second prize involves “greening” America’s homes; the idea being that if we cut America’s heating, air conditioning, and hot water bills, we free up billions of newly productive dollars to create long-term self-sustaining consumer demand – and that means you can take some of that power bill money and go out and have a nice dinner with the kids again.

10,000 winners would each get $50,000, and with that you could easily replace a whole lot of windows with better-insulated ones…or you could get some solar panels, or put up that rooftop wind generator you’ve been thinking about, and you could pay for the electrical connections to get you in the business of selling power back to your utility. Don’t own your house? That’s OK, we’ll “green” it up anyway, with the owner’s permission – and if that can’t be arranged, then maybe we’ll have to just award you third prize instead.

The idea behind our third prize is to lower the amount of money we spend every year on imported oil; to that end we would give 50,000 third place winners $40,000 to spend on a vehicle that gets 40 MPG or better – and because we don’t want to “disincentive” inexpensive green cars, if you can arrange to buy two cars for $40,000, we’ll do that, too. (And hey, just to be fair: if you were “bumped down” from second place, let’s make your “car credit” $50,000.)

That’s 70,000 winners, folks, who could end up with a new house, or a new car, or a newly energy-efficient home – and that doesn’t give a complete picture of just how much we’re really spending right now blowing up Afghanistan.

You see, we’re spending so much right now that we could give away all this stuff every single month of the year with all the money we’re dumping “Over There” instead – and even that doesn’t tell the whole story, because all that stuff...all the houses and all the cars and all the energy improvements...represents only 50% of what we’re spending every month Over There.

And all that money doesn’t even include what we’re spending on our other wars, overt and covert, in Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, the Philippines, Yemen, Iran, Mexico, Columbia, Venezuela, and, of course, the one we fight right here in the good ol’ USA: The War On Drugs.

So whaddaya think, America?

Should we continue the endless war and keep on looking for those last 100 or so Al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan, to the tune of $100 million a month for each guy, for the next decade or so…or would you rather do a giant lottery for a couple of years, for half the cost of what we’re spending every month over there now, that creates lots and lots of jobs and permanently lowers our national energy bill?

I think I know which one you want – and that’s just too bad, because we aren’t gonna get it anytime soon, now are we?

Afghanistan's "Too Big to Fail" Bank Is Failing. Guess Our System Doesn't Work There, Either.

Richard Eskow — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 05:15:49 -0500

The collapse of Afghanistan's largest bank will seem familiar to Americans, and so will the upcoming reports of its bailout. We've heard the story before: Unheeded warnings. Lax (or nonexistent) law enforcement. An American auditor who said nothing as the books imploded. Sloppy, reckless, and greedy lending. Politicians in bed with banks. And a corporate crime wave led by bankers who can break the law with impunity, knowing they won't be punished even if they're caught.

The Kabul Bank story is a sad inversion of nation-building. It might have provided some moments of black humor for the recession-ravaged middle class, if only Americans and Afghans weren't paying for it with their lives. We promised to teach the Afghans everything we know about running a modern economy.

Apparently we did.

Exporting hypocrisy

The financial collapse of 2008 discredited an economic philosophy which had dominated both political parties for decades. That philosophy created a toxic cocktail of deregulation, ineffective oversight, concentrated wealth, and incentives to cheat. The end result cost the economy trillions in lost wealth, ongoing hardship for tens of millions of people, and a bailout whose true cost is still being hidden from the public. And what did we learn from all of that?

Not too much, judging by the evidence. The list of institutions advising the Afghans includes the US Treasury Department and the Department of Justice - both of whom have, shall we say, underperformed when it comes to regulating banks and prosecuting financial crimes. And the consulting group that was awarded nearly $100 million to help the Afghans develop sound financial practices went bankrupt in the middle of its assignment. That's right -- bankrupt.

But the source of our failure in Afghanistan isn't in the government's choice of advisors or its failure to manage its developmental efforts properly, as harmful as those things have been. The real problems in Afghanistan are philosophical, not managerial, and they're the same ones that have plagued us at home: a continued belief in failed economic theories; indifference or hostility toward regulation and regulatory agencies; a too-cozy relationship between banks and politicians; and, worst of all, the willingness to tolerate (and therefore condone) a list of bank crimes that includes fraud, forgery, and laundering drug money.

"Thin Tightrope"

Cables released by Wikileaks reveal that U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry considered it necessary to walk a "thin tightrope" when working with corrupt officials. The cable indicated that Eikenberry collaborated with an "allegedly corrupt official because he could serve as a "stabilizing ... force" (militarily, in this case.) This official's "illicit (drug) trafficking" was not to be tolerated in the interests of security.

That philosophy extended to banking, where the now-failing Kabul Bank and other banks were widely understood to be helping Afghans get illicit drug money out of the country. Kabul Bank's no different from Wells Fargo, either in its willingness to handle drug money or its apparent impunity from the law. Wells Fargo As Bloomberg News originally reported, Wells Fargo's internal screening unit repatedly turned a blind eye to money laundering on behalf of mass-murdering Mexican drug cartels.

Regarding these drug laundering charges,Bloomberg reported that "no big U.S. bank -- Wells Fargo included -- has ever been indicted Instead, the Justice Department settles criminal charges by using deferred-prosecution agreements, in which a bank pays a fine and promises not to break the law again." As Bloomberg explains, "Large banks are protected from indictments by a variant of the too-big-to-fail theory."

In other words, once a bank is big enough to pose a threat to the economy it receives effective immunity for past and future criminal behavior - a license to commit crime. Yet "too big to fail" provisions were removed from last year's US financial reform law by lawmakers on Capitol Hill whose own favorite investments included Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan Chase. And Afghanistan's largest bank, a corrupt collaboration between its President and the bank's principal owners, grew large enough to become a "systemic risk" to the nation's economy ... as our own government stood and watched.

Meanwhile, here at home, corporate lawbreakers like Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan Chase are apparently still considered a "stabilizing force."

Too big to fail

As the New York Times

reported this week, " Fraud and mismanagement at Afghanistan's largest bank have resulted in potential losses of as much as $900 million -- three times previous estimates -- heightening concerns that the bank could collapse and trigger a broad financial panic in Afghanistan, according to American, European and Afghan officials.

"The extent of these losses make it clear that keeping the bank afloat -- something the government has said it is determined to do -- would require large infusions of cash from an already strained budget."

The crisis was a long time coming. As the Times reported last September, Afghan President Hamid Kharzai has family ties and a personal financial interest in the bank, and agreed to bring the brother of one of the bank's principals into the government as his Vice Presidential running mate. (But then, American Administrations from both parties (including the current one) have hired a string of senior bank officials and watched others leave government to join big banks - not as egregious, perhaps, but a clear conflict of interest.)

If an institution is allowed to become "too big to fail," it's rarely an accident. The corruption has already taken place somewhere along the line.

Austerity and Deregulation

We're told that Deloitte, the auditor in place at Kabul Bank, was not specifically tasked with reviewing its accounts. Deloitte apparently acquired the contract when it purchased BearingPoint, the consulting firm that went bankrupt. But unless there are more contracts being awarded than have been widely reported, the original BearingPoint contract (worth a reported $98 million) was designed to help banks "improve economic governance." There were reports as far back as 2005 that some of the consultants on the project were "subpar" and that US contractors were receiving widespread criticism locally.

BearingPoint has promoted a privatization-oriented approach during its richly (and, let's not forget, publicly) funded tenure in Afghanistan, as it has in other countries. The firm and its successor unit within Deloitte have done some good work, but remain part of a well-paid consultant nexus that emphasizes the same set of shared values that undermined the US economy. In other words, BearingPoint and like-minded vendors have been faithful in the execution of an austerity-minded philosophy - a philosophy that can sometimes become anti-government in many ways, and whose philosophy of "austerity" rarely extends to its own practitioners.

The Afghan Research and Evaluation unit, a group set up by the international aid community in Afghanistan, assessed Afghan aid as follows:

"Consistent with the current consensus on development held by the donor community and international financial institutions (IFIs), the privatisation process has gained increased momentum in Afghanistan ... Fifty four fully state-owned enterprises (SOEs) have been slated for privatisation as going concerns or through liquidation by the end of 2009."

In BearingPoint's case, their sympathy for this downsizing-government approach isn't surprising. Alice Rivlin, the economist best-known for relentlessly advocated Social Security cuts, was a member of the Board and the company's leading economic figure - before it went bankrupt.

They say they weren't doing the bank's books. But If they were there "improve the economic governance" of Kabul Bank, an institution whose misdeeds were well-known and whose implosion could topple the economy, then it's certainly fair to say that their work has been "subpar."

Toxic Assets

A report commissioned by the International Monetary Fund got the problems right. "As of March 2008," the report noted, "the two largest domestic private banks accounted for almost 50 percent of total banking system assets. The combined loans of these two banks were 70 percent of total commercial bank lending."

The mayor of Kabul was indicted by the Afghan government on corruption charges, but US officials wound his explanation credible: He was arrested by corrupt officials after he exposed their own misdeeds. Specifically, he told officials that he found files for more than 30,000 applicants who paid for "nonexistent plots of land in Kabul." These toxic assets were part of a larger get-rich-quick schemes for officials who apparently found his investigations inconvenient.

The IMF report also included this observation: "Most banks did not attach particular importance to analysis of borrowers' balance sheets, cash flow, or business plans." That kind of lax underwriting will be familiar to observers of American lending practices. The report also noted, somewhat laconically, that "banks that lend extensively domestically engage in extra-judicial, non-traditional contract enforcement."

Extra-judicial? As in illegal? It sounds like we've exported foreclosure fraud, too.

Do as we say, not as we do

The procurement process for USAID projects in Afghanistan seems to be a mess. Sen. McCaskill was surprised to learn that major contractors there were not being asked to file the usual tracking reports. The Obama Administration was criticized for awarding a major contract to a Democratic party donor, and for using the "no-bid" process it has criticized in the election campaign to do it.

After Kabul Bank's impending failure was reported, the US government insisted that the Times update its story to include a quote from a Treasury Department spokesperson saying that "no American taxpayer funds will be used to prop up Kabul Bank." But that doesn't have any more credibility than Treasury Department claims that bank bailouts in this country have been fully repaid - a claims that don't count aid funneled through the Federal Reserve, the cash value of low- and zero-interest bank loans, and other taxpayer-funded measures.

Ninety percent of Afghanistan's national budget was financed by foreign countries last year, with the US assuming a significant chunk of the cost. When the Afghans conduct their first bank bailout, under United States supervision, the funds will undoubtedly come from the Afghan treasury. And then funds from ours will help make up the shortfall elsewhere.

Yes, corruption among politicians and other officials is a much greater problem there. They're a drug-based economy whose principal export is poppies. Their country is divided, impoverished, and largely illiterate. But economic behavior is universal. Ttheir bankers are subject to the same "moral hazard" as bankers everywhere: When "too big to fail" banks can gamble with absolute certainty that they'll be rescued, that's exactly what they'll do. When bankers know they can commit crimes go unpunished, they'll commit crimes. And they won't stop until people start going to jail - in both countries.

"You complete me ..."

A jargon-laden report from the Congressional Research Service addressed what it called "ROL," an acronym that stands for the "rule of law," and concluded:

"Helping Afghanistan build its justice sector ... suffers from the same difficulties that have complicated all efforts to expand and reform governance in that country: lack of trained human capital; traditional affiliation patterns that undermine the professionalism, neutrality, and impartiality of official institutions; and complications from the broader lack of security and stability in Afghanistan."

In other words, they're saying that Afghans are too tribal and primitive to do things the American way. But that's not true. Yes, education and training is needed. But their lack of law enforcement, especially in the financial sector, directly reflects the level of emphasis we've placed on it ourselves - in their country and here at home. We've lavishly funded privatization efforts and the unrestrained growth of private and morally corrupt banks, while at the same time devaluing the role of regulation and law enforcement.

The problem with the Afghans isn't that they're not like us. The problem is that we're too much alike. People everywhere are, pretty much, especially where money's concerned. So until we change the way we govern, the results are likely to be the same wherever we go. Crimes will still be committed, banks will still fail, and we'll all keep paying the price for a moral, legal, and economic blindness that keeps leading us off the same cliff over and over again.

____________________________________

This post was produced as part of the Curbing Wall Street project.

Today's Visionary: 10 Things Martin Luther King, Jr. Taught Us About Today's Struggles

Richard Eskow — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 04:04:59 -0500

A lot of people in the media are so afraid of offending anyone with controversial truths that they can't even tell the truth about the man whose holiday we're celebrating this weekend. Their coverage could give you the impression that the purpose of Martin Luther King, Jr's life was simply to make everybody in this country feel good about themselves—so good, in fact, that we deserve a day off just for having the wisdom to be born American.

You might be forgiven for thinking that everybody liked and admired Dr. King while he was alive - except maybe for a few angry old white people down South, who later realized the errors of their ways and were very sorry. The media have been so reluctant to convey Dr. King's true message that Glenn Beck can claim to have inherited his mantle and millions of people believe him. They're so afraid of telling his truth that a Pentagon official can claim that the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, the spiritual heir to Gandhi's mantle of nonviolence, would have supported the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In this fame-addicted age, this activist and challenger of comfortable ideals has been presented as just another celebrity. And these days "celebrity" is another word for "commodity." Dr. King: Didn't they use his picture for one of those Apple ads? Or was it Nike? Didn't he have his picture taken with movie stars and singers? Future generations may come to believe he was famous just for being famous - you know, like Heidi Montag.

(photo by Jeff Schrier, Saginaw News)

Had Dr. King's vision become reality, it wouldn't have been necessary to extend unemployment for the 99ers. As he said:

"The unemployed, poverty-stricken white man must be made to realize that he is in the very same boat with the Negro. Together, they could exert massive pressure on the government to get jobs for all. Together they could form a grand alliance. Together, they could merge all people for the good of all."

With 15 million people out of work, demand is harder to come by. And the rapid rise in long-term unemployment is a portrait of human loss, the outline of human beings cast out of productive, wage-earning lives into an existence of hopelessness and deprivation:

Some people "celebrated" last month when the official unemployment rate dropped from 9.8% to 9.4%. (In the mid-sixties there was vigorous protest at the idea that 5% might be an acceptable unemployment level.) The racial disparities of Dr. King's day haven't changed much, at least as far as employment is concerned: The African American rate that month was 15.8%, as opposed to 8.5% for Caucasians. Official figures reflect the fact that unemployment in the black community is twice that of whites - and the true difference is probably even greater, once figures are adjusted for those who have given up seeking employment. Underemployment is also considerably higher among African Americans.

Could a President as economically progressive as Richard Nixon get elected today? It's hard to tell, because nobody's tried lately.

3. "A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth." Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence, April 1967 speech.

(Daimler Maybach sedan, manufacturer's suggested retail price $366,000 - plus delivery and other charges)

Case in point: Steven Schwartzman, the hedge fund manager we mentioned earlier, who felt that paying taxes on his billions' at a laborers' rate was the moral equivalent of the invasion of Poland.

Or Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, who said "We're very important ... we do God's work." (Reverend King might beg to differ.)

Poverty's up. Unemployment's up. The American family is struggling. American businesses just had their best quarter ever. Yet its leaders are whining. They're using the rhetoric of freedom in defense of greed.

After it was bailed out, Wall Street immediately redoubled its lobbying efforts. Banks were able to blunt the most effective and urgently needed financial reforms, like breaking up banks that are "too big to fail." Now they're hard at work eliminating the reforms that were passed last year, with the help of the Republican Congress they helped get elected. Big-bank CEOs have spent more than $170 million to influence politicians in the last ten years.

Recent court cases have revealed widespread lawbreaking on the part of United States banks - a "power majority group" - as they foreclosed on homes that in some cases they don't even own.

There are rumors that the Administration is sympathetic to solutions of this kind. It seems safe to say that Dr. King would not have felt the same way.

Is racism conquered? When infant mortality for African Americans in 2.5 times that of whites? With these disparities in poverty and employment?

As a theologian and scholar, Dr. King would recognize a practice that was condemned as sinful in both the Old and New Testaments.

Big banks also back auto loans, which have been shown to charge more to African Americans than whites. HSBC Bank settled when it was found to have been charging minority customers more than others.

10. "Ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus." Domestic impact of the war.

And I had to answer by looking that person into the eye, and say 'I'm sorry sir but you don't know me. I'm not a consensus leader.' I do not determine what is right and wrong by looking at the budget of my organization or by taking a Gallup poll of the majority opinion. Ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.

This post was produced as part of the Curbing Wall Street project.

Contractors in Afghanistan, A Recipe for Failure

Armand Biroonak — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 07:19:54 -0500

Similar to Iraq, the use of contractors by the U.S. government in Afghanistan stands at unprecedented levels. In fact, contractors in Afghanistan outnumber American troops –and will continue to do so despite Obama’s troop increase in 2010. This heavy reliance on contractors is not only a cause for alarm, but also cause for failure.

Already over 100,000 contractors are in Afghanistan, largely local hires, with contracts valued at near $8.5 billion the past year. These numbers will rise too, it is predicted that by next year total contractors in Afghanistan will grow, totaling 130,000 to 160,000.

Contractors Harm the U.S. Mission

Contrary to popular belief, outsourcing military and reconstruction operations in many cases costs much more and can be harmful to the overall mission. This was the case for contractors in Iraq, where private security firms such as Blackwater, committed numerous atrocities against civilians and helped fuel the insurgency, while pocketing billions.

For Afghanistan, the use of contractors is not much better. Stunningly, according to a recent article in the Nation, American military contractors are paying suspected insurgents and the Taliban, yes the TALIBAN! to protect military supply routes from harm. As Aram Roston reports,

“In this grotesque carnival...It is an accepted fact of the military logistics operation in Afghanistan that the US government funds the very forces American troops are fighting. And it is a deadly irony, because these funds add up to a huge amount of money for the Taliban. In fact, US military officials in Kabul estimate that a minimum of 10 percent of the Pentagon's logistics contracts--hundreds of millions of dollars--consists of payments to insurgents.”

Meanwhile, American efforts to build an Afghan army are muddled. A Congressional hearing Thursday lead by Senator Claire McCaskill, (D-MO) spotlighted that contractors pay Afghans more to cook for the troops, than the U.S. military pays for Afghans to serve in their national army or local police force. This stands as a big problem since wisely; Afghans choose the former means of employment, rather than the latter. This also poses a huge setback for Obama, as he stated his goal for the U.S. to help build up an Afghan army, to then allow for U.S. withdrawal by 2011.

It is not only security that is harmed by contractors’ work, but also reconstruction efforts. The international aid agency Oxfam found that USAID awards more than half of its Afghan aid to just five U.S. private contractors. While for every $100 of aid dispensed for the region, a mere $10 reaches Afghanistan.

And oversight for contractors is abysmal. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), is responsible for the oversight of some $50 billion (FY 2010) for Afghan development, but the office has done little auditing and oversight to ensure that contractors are completing the job to build the country’s infrastructure. To date, the office has received only $23 million for its work.

With little seen improvements to their country, coupled with American support for a very corrupt government, and ongoing violence, it is hard to believe that Afghans will treat the American presence very kindly. In all, Obama’s strategy for Afghanistan is quite dubious, but the presence of contractors challenges what little chance for success we had to begin with. And considering the failures and billions lost in Iraq on the issue –I have a feeling this will not be my last post.

America's King George III may get a challenge from the left on Afghanistan.

Michael Kwiatkowski — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 23:22:38 -0500

Leave it to Ohio's Dennis Kucinich to do what no one else in Congress has the courage to do. The Representative from the Buckeye State's tenth Congressional District is looking to force a vote on withdrawal from Afghanistan, according to a report by RAW Story.

For congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), Afghan President Hamid Karzai's announcement Tuesday that his country would need the US's military support for another 10 or 15 years seems to have been the last straw.

The outspoken House representative says it was Karzai's statement that prompted him to draft a resolution calling for a House vote on the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan and Pakistan.

"We shouldn't be there another 15 to 20 months, let alone 15 to 20 years," Kucinich told the Cleveland Plain Dealer. "When I'm in my district talking to people, nobody has come up to me and said we need to be in Afghanistan for the next 15 to 20 years. They do say we need jobs, we need to protect our basic industry, we need education, we need to protect retirement security. I'd like to see us start taking care of things here at home."

Kucinich tried to initiate impeachment proceedings against Dick Cheney using this same method. Unfortunately, he'll get absolutely no support from his own political party. We can't pay for basic services here in the United States, such as medical care and infrastructure including bridges, highways, and electrical grids, but oh how we have money for genocidal killing and for Wall Street criminals. And the political party that is supposed to be against all this is instead enabling it. It's madness.

Small wonder that rumblings of a repeat of 1994 abound. With Democrats like the bunch we elected to power, who needs Republicans? I don't know about you, but it's time we on the left finally get Dennis Kucinich's back and help him end these wars. Click the link to the House Telephone Directory and use it to get in touch with your representatives. Tell them that if they want your money and votes next year, they'd damn well better do as they're told and end this occupation.

Imperial Blues

Robert Borosage — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 09:34:17 -0500

..."[O]ur troop commitment in Afghanistan cannot be open-ended -- because the nation that I am most interested in building is our own."

—President Obama

But Afghanistan comes first?

President Obama made the best possible case for dispatching more troops to Afghanistan last night. But his speech left me with a haunting foreboding. Surely this is the way that great imperial powers decline. Their soldiers police the ends of the earth. There is always another enemy, always a threat—sometimes imagined, often real—that must be faced. And meanwhile, the productive economy declines, the rich live increasingly off investments abroad, the poor depend on public sustenance, the middle declines. No battle is so costly that it cannot be afforded; no battle so unimportant that the nation must not be mobilized. The soldiers become professionals, "volunteers" in our terms. The institutions of the Republic—the Congress, the Senate—are scorned, often deservedly so. The executive decides the questions of war and peace. The secret state expands. The country finds itself constantly at war. New presidents inherit the wars of their predecessors. They are faced not with deciding to go to war, but whether to accept defeat in one already in progress.

And slowly, the great power declines from the inside out. The wars are costly, running up national debts. Vital investments are put off. Schools decline. Sewers leak. For a long time, circuses distract from the spreading ruin. Other societies become productive centers, capturing the new industries. Some begin providing better education and support for their citizens. Their taxes, not drained by the cost of wars past and present, can be devoted to what we used to call "domestic improvements."

The escalation in Afghanistan, so inevitable, so logical, so thoughtfully considered, surely is but a chapter in this saga. The president committed the country to spend about $250 billion in Afghanistan over the next 18 months. For a wealthy country, this isn't a lot. We can afford it. We will chase the devil in South Waziristan. Our soldiers will repel the Taliban, providing a "breathing space" for a corrupt government whose writ barely reaches the outskirts of the capital city.

On Thursday, the President will convene a jobs summit. Already, his aides have sent out the word that deficits will limit what can be done. Or as the head of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, Christine Roemer writes in The Wall Street Journal today, "Given the budget deficits this administration inherited, it is critical to leverage scarce public funds."

The collapse of revenues at the state and local level will force states to make cuts and layoffs that are projected to cost another 900,000 jobs over the next year. But more aid to the states and localities, unpopular in the polls, is apparently not on the president's agenda. Anyone traveling in America runs into the growing costs of our aging and outmoded infrastructure, from collapsing bridges to exploding sewer pipes, to slow trains on bad tracks, to schools in such disrepair that they pose dangers to the students. But a bold program of investment in our infrastructure is considered a bridge too far.

Far worse in many ways than the money squandered on wars abroad is the attention consumed, the values distorted. This president understands that Americans are focused on the economic troubles here at home. In his speech last night, he argued "as we end the war in Iraq and transition to Afghan responsibility, we must rebuild our strength here at home. Our prosperity provides a foundation for our power. It pays for our military. It underwrites our diplomacy. It taps the potential of our people and allows investment in new industry. And it will allow us to compete in this century as successfully as we did in the last."

Note the order of priority. Our "strength here at home" is needed because it (1) is the foundation of our power; (2) pays for our military; (3) underwrites our diplomacy. It also taps the potential of our people and allows us to compete globally. Stunningly absent in that martial list is any sense of creating a society that has eradicated hunger and poverty, that has secured the American dream for its citizens.

This attention disorder undermines our security as well. Next week the president will travel to Copenhagen, where he will boldly call for setting standards on carbon emissions, in essence promising to deliver a Congress that is not nearly ready to make that commitment. This president, more than any other, has the vision and the capacity to rally this country to meet the real security challenge posed by catastrophic climate change and to grasp the vital economic opportunity of leading the impending green industrial revolution. The speech to the cadets of West Point might have dramatically made that national security case, begun a campaign to run up to the Copenhagen global summit and culminated in a Nobel Peace Prize address that framed the new challenge. Instead, the president had little choice but to focus his attention and his speech on Afghanistan, with critics already accusing him of dithering, daring to question the generals' "requirements."

This is a very rich country, despite the years of conservative misrule. But even wealthy countries must choose. We can afford to police the word—to sustain 800 bases across the globe, to station troops in Korea, in Japan, in Bosnia, in Europe, fight wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, sustain fleets to police the seas.

In his speech, the president called us to that mission:

"The struggle against violent extremism will not be finished quickly, and it extends well beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan... unlike the great power conflicts and clear lines of division that defined the 20th century, our effort will involve disorderly regions and diffuse enemies.... We will have to be nimble and precise in our use of military power. Where al-Qaida and its allies attempt to establish a foothold—whether in Somalia or Yemen or elsewhere they must be confronted by growing pressure and strong partnerships."

South Waziristan, Yemen, Somalia, Kosovo, the Taiwan straits, the North Korean border, the seven seas—we can do this. But the result is that we are continually at war. And the wars cost—in money, in lives, in attention. Inevitably, domestic priorities, as well as emerging security threats that have no military answers, get ignored. A rich country, Adam Smith wrote, has a lot of ruin in it. We seem intent on testing the limits of that proposition.