Friday, September 21, 2012

Lies from the Right, in Your Email Inbox

I have an acquaintance—actually a high-school classmate with whom I re-established contact a few years ago—who likes to forward to me (and others) emails which I have to characterize as right-wing propaganda. And I use the word propaganda advisedly, with its suggestion of exaggeration and lies.

One such email contained a chart that purported to show what Medicare premiums are going to be under the Affordable Care Act (which the Right likes to call "Obamacare"). The chart showed that, four or five years out, Medicare premiums would reach a truly astounding, astronomical figure.

I did a little investigation and found out that the chart was simply and completely a lie. The fact is that Medicare premiums are not planned or announced four or five years in advance, as the chart purported, but are announced for the coming year only a few months before the start of a year. Thus no one—not the makers of the chart nor anyone in Washington—knows anything like that far in advance what Medicare premiums are going to be. (By the way, this example should remind all of us to look for some credit, some source or attribution for any "data" like that.)

The latest forward I received from my acquaintance was captioned something like "What the media won't show you." And what the media have, supposedly, been refusing to show us is a photograph. The photograph shows a man's body—living or dead, I don't think one could tell—being carried on the shoulder of another man.

The supposed story behind this photo: Supposedly the body is that of US Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens. The copy or text of the email claims that the ambassador was "dragged through the streets, sodomized, and murdered," and that this all was somehow Obama's fault. Admittedly I did not carefully read all of it; but it kept speaking of "Hussein Obama," who allegedly is too sympathetic to Islam to—what? avenge? prevent?--outrages to the US that are being committed in Muslim countries.

According to CBS television news, the Libyan government sent troops in, after the US Embassy compound in Benghazi was attacked. These troops found the ambassador, dead or dying, in the US Consulate, where he had gone to help evacuate consulate staff. If he was in fact dead or dying, then it has to be untrue that he was dragged through the streets and then murdered (let alone sodomized).

Some quotes from a September 21, 2012 Huffington Post article, quoting AP:

A Libyan doctor who treated Stevens said he died of severe asphyxiation, apparently from smoke.
. . .
Stevens was practically dead when he arrived close to 1 a.m. on Wednesday, but "we tried to revive him for an hour and a half but with no success," Abu Zeid [the doctor at the hospital] said. The ambassador had bleeding in his stomach because of the asphyxiation but no other injuries, he said.

But the brazen assaults - the first on U.S. diplomatic facilities in either country - underscored the lawlessness that has taken hold in Libya and Egypt after revolutions ousted their autocratic secular regimes and upended the tightly controlled police state in both countries.
. . . .
Moreover, security in both countries has broken down.
. . .
In Libya, central government control is weak, arms are ubiquitous and militias are pervasive.

So this, I would accept, is the true story. I am sure I don't have to emphasize how different this story is from that in the email I received.

And, note the name. Barack Obama's middle name is Hussein. During the 2008 election campaign, Obama's opponents on the Right liked to stress his middle name. It is, to be sure, an Islamic-sounding name. But what do they wish us to infer from that? There is a calumny that Obama is a Muslim that just won't go away.

To take these two emails together—plus many of the untrue things that some organizations have tried to say about gay people—upsets, enrages, and outrages me. The sheer immorality of these lies, of manufacturing tables of phony Medicare premiums; or taking a photo and claiming it shows Ambassador Stevens and then making up a backstory to that photo.

Update, May 27, 2013.
The television news reporting of the recent action by the Boy Scouts of America to allow gay boys and men to be Boy Scouts members and staffers included an inteview with a heavy man--presumably the father of a Boy Scout--who said on camera, "We're going to be required to teach homosexuality to boys as young as 6, up to 17."
I have to wonder who the "we" is supposed to be, and what he feels "teaching homosexuality" means. Maybe it means "tolerance," but he clearly meant something he viewed as pretty dire. The TV news article added that the Boy Scouts of America has denied this assertion; so my next thought is, Where did this man get that idea? I have to think this is yet one more example of  Right and homophobic organizations and individuals spreading misinformation and dysinformation.
Update, June 4, 2013
People who receive emails that contain "information" that seems dubious should be aware of a website called factcheck.org.
Here is their summary, for the end of 2012, of emails which have been circulating on the Internet and that include false "information": factcheck.org 2012 "viral spiral"

Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Sins and Crimes of Political and Religious Leaders

Tim Pawlenty, known to many as the former governor of Minnesota, has recently resigned as campaign manager for Mitt Romney, to join a financial-industry lobbying and advisory group.

So we see that he is allied with the people who gave us subprime mortgages, robo-signing of foreclosure orders, and the causes of the financial crisis and near-meltdown of 2007- 2008.

People don't usually enter that kind of an organization if they have not already had some ties to them. Thus, it's likely that Pawlenty has been allied with this group. Given how prone people are, these days, to besmirch any political candidate, it would be in this prevalent spirit if I said that Romney perhaps is guilty by association, even if perhaps somewhat remotely.

And, also in today's top news, at least in this region: The pastor of a Northwest Indiana mega-church was indicted for a sex crime, namely transporting a 17-year-old woman (and thus a minor) across state lines for sexual purposes. I think that violates both the so-called Mann Act, which covers transporting across state lines, and statutes involving minors.

And, to anyone who can remember even a short while back, he is not the first religious leader to be involved in a scandal. With just the sex scandals alone, I certainly have not been trying to keep count but if I had been I'm sure I would have lost count long ago.

I wish to imply that it is typical for our politicians to be tied to groups and organizations whose aims are counter to the public good; and that religious leaders are liars, shams, and hypocrites.

Well, all right, not all, of either group. I certainly must admit "not all." But too many. Way too many.

Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

The Great Economics Debate-- and Am I Converting?

There are (to put things in polarized terms) two schools of thought on some economic issues that have more or less been continuously battling for many years; the argument seem to have come to the foreground recently. One is the advocacy of complete laissez-faire—that is, the government should totally keep hands off business and then the economy will flourish, and all will be prosperous and otherwise rosy. This approach is exemplified by the late Milton Friedman, who for many years was one of the lights of the University of Chicago economics department, and who won a Nobel Prize in economics.

The other school maintains that government needs to have some controls on the commercial and financial sectors.

For me to say this is giving the devil his due; but there seems to be some evidence that Friedman's ideas work. For example, Friedman and some colleagues went into Chile and applied their ideas there to a badly faltering economy, and turned it around.

But what about the fact that businesses, left to their own, might sell us food and drugs with harmful or even poisonous adulterants, contaminants, and so forth (as happened with dog food and, I believe, baby formula from China)? What about what happened just a few years ago when greed, folly, and mistakes on the part of Wall Street investment bankers plunged the US and even world economies into crisis?

I think the answer is a middle course on the part of government. To have some regulations in place, on manufacturers of food and drugs; on the financial sector; and some other business areas does not necessarily mean stifling, hamstringing, or even seriously hampering business as those on the Right—corporations and their lobbyists—have been trying to tell the American people.

Update, September 19, 2012
A commentor (see comment below) says that it's Libertarians who feel there should be no regulations. I'll accept that. But, be they libertarians or Republicans, the people who feel that we don't need any oversight at all--that people will do right if you just leave them alone, and we don't need government interference--have a very rosy view of human nature. I can't understand why they haven't woken up, in the light of all the recent scandals that have shown human greed and the ability to cheat and lie. Liberals like me feel that the government should protect the weak from the strong, and that that idea is embodied in the Bill of Rights.

Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein

Sunday, September 16, 2012

Ronald Reagan: More on His Legacy

Maybe one of the biggest and most lasting parts of Reagan's legacy is that he made many Americans believe that government is evil—though this idea may in fact be deeply rooted in the American consciousness; one only has to look at the Declaration of Independence.

He persuaded us to make him head of that which he despised, namely the government. Evidently it didn't occur to anyone—least of all Reagan himself—that there was an irony there.

He tried to gut, undermine, and render powerless regulatory agencies such as the EPA and the FDA by cutting funding and causing staff cuts. Some of these agencies are still not restored to the funding or staffing that they need: thus Reagan's legacy lives on.

(These regulatory agencies protect consumers. Republicans--Reagan and more recent ones--argue that anything that impedes business is bad for all of us. So the argument comes down to this: Who do you trust to be on your side--"you" meaning the average Joe--corporations or the government? People mistrust the government but, to my mind, we've had plenty of cases of greedy, even evil and corrupt corporations. And, think of this: We don't elect corporations, so how do you expect them to be accountable, if they are free of all restrictions?)

It may well be due to Reagan that many people today feel that the government takes away their money—which they have earned and are thus entitled to keep—to give to people who don't want to work. (There is more than a hint of racism in this idea; I remember well Reagan's campaign speeches, which to me at least clearly included an appeal to racism. But you only have to look at photos or video clips--such as have appeared over and over—of job fairs that have been accessible to minorities, to see that there have been enormous, incredible, numbers of people willing to expend great amounts of time standing in long lines in hopes of getting a job.)

Further, to this type of thinking, this "redistribution of wealth"—that is, taxing their incomes--is outright socialism. Never mind that we have had an income tax for 150 years now, and the government's power to levy such a tax was confirmed by the Sixteenth Amendment 100 years ago.

Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

James Hormel, Philanthropist and Gay Ambassador

I have been reading a book by James C. Hormel entitled Fit to Serve.

Hormel is the scion of the Hormel meatpacking family, which got Americans—and much of the Western world—to eat meat that comes in rectangular blue cans—"Spam" in its original sense. Converting pigs to canned meat, particularly during World War II, was hugely profitable for Hormel's father, then the president of the company.

Hormel went on to lead a model life—married, with five children, a position as Dean of Students at the University of Chicago Law School, and a home (at one point, at least) in Chicago's tony North Shore suburbs. He was later to became US Ambassador to Luxembourg.

Before then, Hormel came out as gay and divorced his wife.

Hormel had numerous relationships with men, and, with his means, was able to live where he wanted, so at various periods he had homes in New York, Hawaii, and San Francisco.

While living in San Francisco, he became involved in many charitable and philanthropic organizations, mainly ones which formed in response to the AIDS epidemic, which at that time was decimating the gay male community in San Francisco.

Hormel was asked to serve on the boards of many of the organizations he'd become involved with.

I tend to feel that it is undemocratic that it's always the people with money who get to be on these boards. On the other hand, it's easy to understand why. Boards are as much about fundraising as anything else. And people who have money usually not only will contribute themselves, but they know other people who have money—so, they are well positioned to tap others like themselves for money.

Hormel does not say, in the book, how much money he personally has, but he does mention figures for how much he contributed. And it is a lot.

So--not to minimize the man's abilities or his generosity--he's been a force for good. Still, to get back to the point I wanted to make, he himself says he didn't do anything to earn that money. Purely by accident of birth, he has had a life of wealth and privilege. Which in turn made his philanthropy possible. And that in turn got him a degree of renown and a position as ambassador (even if to a very small country!).

So I guess what I am saying is what nearly everyone comes to realize at some point: that Nature does not deal everyone an equally good hand. But we need more people like Hormel who try to use their assets (in all senses) to do some good in the world they see around them.

Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein

Sunday, September 2, 2012

The Party's Over

I heard a man named Mike Lofgren being interviewed on Bill Moyers' PBS TV program, Moyers & Company.

Lofgren held a position in government. He had been a Republican but has switched parties to become a Democrat.

He has recently published a book entitled The Party Is Over: How the Republicans Went Crazy, The Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted. As you might guess from the book's title, both the Republican and the Democratic parties come in for criticism from him.

He talks about how very wealthy individuals (as well as corporations) have been contributing very heavily to the Republican party. I have written about this. Both individuals and corporations are currently able to contribute unlimited amounts and remain anonymous at the same time. When PACs and foundations and other groups have complex and interlocking structures, it is frequently difficult to trace the ultimate source of much of this money.

I can add—this is not a number from Mr. Lofgren—that 89% of corporate contributions go to the Republican Party and only 11% to the Democratic Party.

Wealthy individuals hope to "buy" lower taxes on themselves. Corporations and Wall Street hope to influence government regulations such that regulations will fail to be enacted, or will be weak or otherwise favorable to these business entities.

As I have theorized in previous blog postings, Republicans and other right-wing interests have managed to gain support from many people who are not among the "one percent" by taking conservative stances on social issues; for example, they know they can win the support of the Religious Right, evangelicals, and other social conservatives by having right (in both senses) stances on issues such as same-sex marriage. Lofgren called these issues or the appeal to these voters "rube bait." But this is how a definite non-majority—the very wealthy--has been gaining wider support.

Lofgren explains how people, when they define issues as being a matter of good or evil (for example, according to or against their religious notions), will see any compromise as giving in to evil. This is why our government has been deadlocked on many of the vital issues before Congress. This can have effects such as when, in the stalemate over debt-limit-extension legislation a year ago, the delay necessitated a lot of shuffling of the books which in turn cost our country $1.3 billion.

Lofgren says that much of what has been going on on our political scene has been the result of one over-riding goal on the part of Mitch McConnell (the Senate Minority Leader): to make Obama a one-term president; but that most likely has been apparent to many people.

Mr. Lofgren also blames Democrats who, he says, have also become "corporatized." Bill Clinton greatly contributed to the economic crisis of 2008 by repealing the Glass-Steagall Act, which had been enacted during the Depression to separate investment banking from consumer banking; and deregulating derivatives. Obama, by giving in to the interests of the pharmaceutical industry, has made the Health Care Reform Act ("Obamacare") considerably more expensive than it needed to be.

Copyright © 2012