Turning Back the Tax Revolt

The end of the tax revolt means an opportunity to fund progressive priorities,

End of the revolt? Hardly. Any “funding” will be done at the expense of the middle class. Picking the pockets of hard working Americans to fund ill conceived progressive agendas that only serve the bottom 10 percent of citizens will only exacerbate the pain felt by all. The revolt has not begun.  Wait until the average middle class tax bill doubles . If progressives want to help the working man stay the hell out of his wallet.

Posted by texasindependent on Nov 30, 2006 at 2:25 PM

The end of the tax revolt means more progressive reform?
If that wasn’t so foolish, I’d be marginally amused.
If I knew with certainty that my taxes were going to be used for my benefit and the benefit of The People (remember them?—-the ones who put Democrats back on the political map?), I’d gladly pay my taxes. I would be assured that my money would be put to work for the benefit of The People and not the political elite. No, I agree with the previous posting; the Tax Revolt has not even begun.
Do something worthy with the billions we all pay each day in taxes (especially on April 15th) and you might convince me and many others that our revolt should be discontinued.

Until then, prepare for battle.

Posted by awrifford on Nov 30, 2006 at 7:49 PM

Texas Independant, you are far more Texas than Independant!!

It is all to easy to forget that the bottom 10% has never much benefited from US progressive federal programs and never were able to do so. AFDC is gone. Social Security should be saved as people worked hard for years for low wages and also put into the system. A far greater amount of federal subsidies go to the working and middle classes. These programs entail, but are not limited to, educational loans, small business loans, farm subsidies, subsidized mortgages, the GI bill, and tax deferred retirement accounts.  These are all middle class subsidies and they far outnumber anything given to the hard core poor in dollar terms or number of programs. They also keep the economy going. But they cost money in taxes. This is not a reason to shun these programs. The money spent repays the middle class many times over so long as the economy continues to grow.

Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Nov 30, 2006 at 11:50 PM

First let me make it quite clear I have compassion and give both of my time and money to various charitable causes. I understand poverty and hunger and have suffered both. However our welfare system as it exists is an enormous waste of money. It would be cheaper to simply hire the 4 million recipients as federal employees.

Loaning our money back to us hardly qualifies as a benefit. Subsidized mortgages are “free” unless a default occurs. The GI bill is EARNED not given. Tax deferred accounts are not federal money and provide the only salvation from the horrors of SSI . The entire agriculture budget is less than 1 percent of the federal budget. Education is less than three percent.  The totals for Medicaid, Unemployment, and Welfare is only 643.4 billion dollars. Social Security and Medicare are a paltry 980 billion dollars.

It doesn’t matter what liberal spin you guys put on these numbers 58 percent of our federal tax dollars are spent on social programs that benefit the elderly and poor and have no real benefit to the working middle class except to ease white liberal guilt. And you need more? I realize progressives have good intentions but a harsh dose of reality would help us all out.

Sweden touted as a model to admire and emulate has a tax rate from 30 to 55 percent on individual income with 25 percent to local government.. Thats direct from the Swedish government. Is that the progressive goal? To tax us into submission?

The highest federal tax bracket in the US is 35 percent. Most working families pay state tax ( except Texas and eight other states)  the highest is Vermont at 9.5 percent ( what a surprise).  The vast majority of that money is coming direct from middle class paychecks. Even if you taxed the “rich” at a ridiculous rate as progressives love to yammer about, the middle class would still carry the largest burden. I propose a simple solution. That silly tenth amendment. Crush the Federal monster down to a small managable size and direct it onto providing a common defense and ensuring justice and let the powers not specified in the Constitution ( almost every government department) revert to the people or the states as the founders intended. I can provide for my own welfare once I get your hands out of my wallet. 

I am tired of taxation without representation. Let the revolt begin!

Posted by texasindependent on Dec 1, 2006 at 11:51 PM

Texas,

  In the first place you claim that the US federal budget is 58% committed to programs for the poor and elderly. That would mean nearly 1.5 trillion are committed to these programs which is not true. Social Security payouts are about half a trillion annually and don’t come out of the federal budget but from a separate fund.  TANF blockgrants have averaged around $16 to $17 billion annually since the law was passed in 1996. In the years since the law was passed the TANF participation rate nation wide has slid from 67% in 1996 to 48% in 2001 and 2002. Still fewer that half the eligible population collect benefits under the terms of TANF. Most states use less than $400 million in TANF disbursements and many states disburse even less that $100 million. Most TANF recipients get less than they would have received under the old AFDC program. Programs for the poor don’t amount to anything any longer. They’re all but gone. The middle class once received a lot more for their tax contributions.

As far as Social Security is concerned, tax deferments cost the federal government nearly $115 billion in taxes or about a fourth of the annual payout in transfer payments of the entire program. Despite this fact fewer and fewer people have retirement savings and the income recovery rate, or rate of monthly retirement income received as a percentage of monthly income in the final year of employment, is declining for both Social Security recipients and defined contribution recipients. These folks get between 30% and 67% of their working income well below the recommended 70%. As income becomes more skewed and the equities market less stable retirement income will become lower and lower for most retirees.  Wall Street may be getting rich off private retirement accounts but they’re not taking care of the retirees who save. Most people with such accounts receive less than $100,000 at retirement in a lump sum and less than that after taxes to live out the remaining 20 or so average years of retirement. It’s not much today. The median retirement account pays very small annuities. And despite so much savings committed to retirement accounts less than 60% of Americans will receive anything other than SS for retirement.

The idea that the poor and elderly and even the middle and working classes are getting the benefit of the federal budget is nonsense. The American people are the lowest taxed people in the industrialized world. Top bracket for the very rich is now 35%. Local and state taxes are increasing as are property taxes and sales taxes. The working and middle classes are paying these on behalf of the richest 1% of the country who got much of their tax payments rebated by our fearless leader. Inequality is growing and it is not because of taxes. Wages and income are down and the benefits the middle and working class received as part of the social safty net are gone. Most people can’t get decent housing, health care, or education for their families the cost of which is going up at a rate faster that the median national income. There is no more talk or white liberal guilt tex but we as a working society are burdened with the stupid consequences of your displaced white male rage.  Taxes aren’t what’s harming the lower 80% of society, it’s social inequality. Even if most people below the median paid no taxes at all, they’ld still be up shits creek. Think about it Tex.

Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Dec 3, 2006 at 2:07 AM

Taxation is theft, no matter how you rationalize it; no matter how noble the intent.  That’s why people are so in love with government - it allows them to do things that would be considered a crime if done in the private sector.  For example, if I stole money from my next door neighbor and gave it to charity, I would be arrested and taken to jail.  Yet, when government agencies do the same exact thing (ex. taxation to fund social programs), they are lauded as ‘compassionate’ and “caring”. 

This is why progressive and conservative ideologies are fundamentally immoral and corrupt - and why there is truly little difference between them.  Both rely upon the coercive use of force by the State to achieve their goals, and neither respects the individual’s right to live as he chooses, peacefully and in voluntary cooperation with others in society. 

The average American family pays about 40% of their TOTAL annual income in taxes (direct and hidden) - more than they pay for food, clothing AND shelter COMBINED.  Additionally, many of the ‘crises’ that exist today - high health care costs, high housing costs - were created by the very policies of the governments who claimed that their actions would ‘solve’ these problems. 

As government imposes ever more rules, regulations, taxes, subsidies, tariffs, and restrictions on businesses, employees, and consumers, it reduces the incentive to provide goods and services that are needed for a ‘free’ society to prosper. 

Government control of the monetary system allows the politicians to inflate the money supply (by printing dollars at will) to pay for needless overseas wars, never-ending military spending, and the inefficient welfare state, thus creating inflation and making every hard-earned dollar worth less. 

This is another great example of the State performing an act that is considered a crime in the private sector.  If a private individual prints dollars on a printing press in his home, he is jailed as a counterfeiter.  Yet, when the government prints money at will (backed by nothing of intrinsic value), it is called “adding liquidity”.

Those who advocate government intervention, whether economic or social, rarely consider the harmful, unintended consequences their actions may cause.  This is just as true with conservatives as it is with progressives.  The reality is that the more that government intervenes in the economic and personal lives of the citizenry, the poorer and less safe they will be.

Posted by JT_Lancer on Dec 3, 2006 at 9:48 AM

Lancer -

You were doing very well down until your fifth paragraph:

Government control of the monetary system allows the politicians to inflate the money supply (by printing dollars at will) to pay for needless overseas wars, never-ending military spending, and the inefficient welfare state, thus creating inflation and making every hard-earned dollar worth less.

In practice, President Reagan passed tax cuts and tax reform and eliminated the hyperinflation he inherited from LBJ’s mismanagement of the Vietnam War and the Great Society, and Carter’s disastrous policies.  The seventeen years between LBJ and Jimmi Carter were marked by low growth and no growth, much like what Europe and Japan are experiencing for the last twenty years. 

With inflation and interest rates in double digits, and unemployment stuck at 7.5%, Carter actually claimed, in his “malaise” speech, that the American system had reached an end point and things would not get better.  Carter advocated reaching an accommodation with the Soviet Union, which he viewed as an acceptable alternative to Western democracy and freedom, in spite of the horrific Soviet human rights (mass murder) record.  But, of course, the economic problems and the Communist problems went away rapidly when intelligent solutions were applied.

The Reagan tax cuts and tax reforms have resulted in steady growth and minimal inflation and interest rates from that day to this, interrupted only by the near disaster of the Clinton dot.com Bubba Bubble.  Bush 43 eliminated the Clinton tax increases and the Bubba Bubble eliminated itself, as bubbles always do, but only after the Bubba Recession.

So, your worry about inflation has not been valid for twenty-five years, and will not be valid unless the Democrats succeed in screwing up the economy again.

Mahmoud Ahmedinejad recently wrote an eighteen-page letter to President Bush inviting Bush to embrace justice, Muslim style, and to declare allegiance and belief in Allah.  That had no effect, so now Ahmedinejad has written a five-page letter to the American people reiterating the same points.  There are long and well-founded historical precedents for these letters; typically, Muslims send these letters to enemies they are going to declare war upon, in accordance with Mohammed’s interpretation of the will of Allah, as contained in the Koran.  This would be a cosmic joke if Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan were not actively engaged in building and trafficking in nuclear weapons. 

So you may believe that there are “needless overseas wars, never-ending military spending”, but I do not.  We deliberately deceived ourselves in 1938 that there could be “Peace in our time”, but that peace lasted only until 1939, while Hitler continued his military build up and aggression, and twenty million people died in WWII. 

We again deliberately deceived ourselves in 1972 that there could be “Peace with honor” in SE Asia, and two million died in Vietnam and two million died in Cambodia (one-third of the Cambodian population), after the new Democrats in Congress sold out the South Vietnamese.

The Democrats whine interminably about the cost of the Afghanistan and Iraqi wars, and I appreciate the cost in American lives and American dollars.  But the cost of the effort in the Middle East is miniscule compared to, say, Vietnam, which cost an order of magnitude more.  And of course, Vietnam had extremely bad results, and the current dust up has every promise of achieving lasting, positive results if the Democrats are not allowed to sell us out again. 

The terrorists are going to try to kill us until we surrender, or until they become dead or disabused of their weird religious ideas.  There is no alternative.  Live with it.  If you want to become Muslim, or if you want to die at terrorist hands, you are on you own, boy.  I am not with you.

Posted by scorp on Dec 3, 2006 at 12:44 PM

Cabdriver
            I am not white sorry. And the budget for social programs including buildings, staff salaries, costs, ect eats up 58 percent of the Federal budget. Check the figures for yourself. Its printed on the back of your 1040 booklet, avaliable on the web, printed with tax dollars and distributed en masse. If you add the programs together( SSI, Medicaid, Medicare, Welfare,  and Unemployment yes about 1.5 trillion dollars. Ridiculous isn’t it!  How much of that actually makes it into a check to the recipient? My problem with “progressives” is not political it’s financial. If you want to improve the social system we have to fix the programs we have now not come up with new ones requiring more government employees and buildings and billions of dollars.

  Even if most people below the median paid no taxes at all, they’ld still be up shits creek. Think about it Tex.

Most people don’t pay taxes in on April 15th but the money is drawn out of everyones paycheck and kept interest free. People cannot thrive in our economy because they make poor financial and personal descisions Cabdriver not due to not paying enough taxes. I realize that the terms hard work, self sacrifice, and self discipline are curse words to progressives but its the only way. If a poor Mexican kid from the Valley can succeed anyone can.

Posted by texasindependent on Dec 3, 2006 at 4:19 PM

First of all SS and unemployment are insurence programs that involve payment to the federal government but are not purely out of federal taxes but specially earmarked contributions. Secondly, it is a fact that Americans pay less taxes for what they get than anyone else in the industrial world. It has been shown time and again that the post and pre tax income distribution structures in the US are about the same. Taxation in the US hasn’t been redistributive since the top bracket went from 91% during FDR to 70% in the 1950s. The stratication patterns remain the same. Taxes are not theft. They stabilize the society and provide needed infrastructure of all kinds so people can do business and society can function. I am one progressive that personally hates the idea of welfare. But I don’t falsely attribute to it a drain on society. The wars and the military budget are doing more to drain society of needed revenue. Half the money spent on the wars which accomplished nothing could have been spent on a national health insurence plan, expanded health care AND the job market at home, and stimulated much more economic growth and local tax base from the money being spent here than abroad on war and corrupt contractors that don’t funnel their earning back through the US economy the way a National Health Plan would. Who’s the real patriot?

People do make poor financial and personal decisions. I confess to being one of them!!  But the real problem is the system and the inequality it generates. This is not a society that prioritizes most of its citizens. We need change and it’s got to involve more than promoting GDP growth through tax cuts for the rich. This has failed as the post recession rate of job growth has been the lowest in post-WWII history. We also have to understand that GDP growth no longer creates jobs in the way it used to because the employment threshold of the US economy is higher due to globalization and technological streamlining of production. Redistribution is necessary. So is a policy to insure fair trade. Labor productivity is high and wages low. Profits are at an all time high. And unemployment has not gone down enough.  We are still at an over 4.5% unemployment rate which is higher than the 3.9% during the Clinton years. Everyone knows that the official statistics are not the real ones anyhow. The real problem is that we can no longer afford the ultra rich in this society.

Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Dec 3, 2006 at 7:30 PM

scorp -

Reagan preached the limited government line, but he didn’t practice it.  In eight years as pres, the US went from the greatest creditor nation to the greatest debtor nation.  Reagan never vetoed a single federal budget presented by the Democratic Congress.  Annual fed spending when Reagan took office: $600 Billion.  Annual fed spending when he left office: over $1 trillion. 

Yes, he cut taxes in a big way (hooray!).  But federal govt did not slow down spending; in fact, it increased spending dramatically.  Tax cuts are virtually irrelevant if they are not accomodated by an equivalent reduction in spending. 

More government debt is simply an additional tax passed on to future generations.  Conservatives are hardly champions of limited government.  In fact, Clinton makes Bush II look like a freaking conservative.

The fact is that Democrats and Republicans are both to blame for the dire financial straits that the country is in.  They both deserve the blame for the warfare/welfare state that exists today.  Federal debt, when considering future debt obligations to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid as well as the “official debt” - is estimated at between $50 and $75 TRILLION!  Your kids and grandkids are on the hook for the sins of todays and yesterdays politicians.  And they will reap what their forebearers sowed in the form of runaway inflation and a lower standard of living. 

Politicians are the problem, not the solution.

Posted by JT_Lancer on Dec 3, 2006 at 9:27 PM

I meant to say Bush II makes Clinton look like a freaking conservative. Sorry.

Posted by JT_Lancer on Dec 3, 2006 at 9:28 PM

CDC –

You seem fairly well read for a cab driver.  Let me guess.  You went to college, studied all that liberal nonsense, and THEN discovered that there was no market for little dumb shits that can only think in terms of socialism.  Am I close?

We are still at an over 4.5% unemployment rate which is higher than the 3.9% during the Clinton years.

Well, no.  Did they teach you to lie with statistics in college?  There was a mild recession at the end of Bush 41’s term, caused by the Fed raising interest rates.  The Fed was fearful of reviving the Carter Catastrophe, when interest rates and inflation went into double digits, and when, during Carter’s entire term, unemployment never went below 5.6%, and sometimes was above 8%.

Consequent to the rise in interest rates, the unemployment rate was 7.3% in the month President Clinton took office, and rose to 7.8% five months later, in June 1992.  The unemployment rate then gradually fell and stabilized in 1995-1996 in a narrow band between 5.4% and 5.8%.

In 1996, Chairman Greenspan expressed alarm at the “irrational exuberance” of the markets (the Dow was at 6000), but neither Greenspan nor Clinton did anything to alleviate this irrational behavior of the markets.  At that point the unemployment rate began to fall to an historically low level, the lowest level since the Kennedy tax cuts in the mid-1960s. 

But the low Clinton unemployment rates were not due to tax cuts; Clinton had raised taxes.  Fortunately, the defense dividend from when President Reagan promoted the collapse of the Soviet Union kicked in, and unfortunately the Dow irrationally doubled in four years, to 12,000; this was the dot.com Bubba Bubble.  All this money created incomes, jobs, tax receipts, and false growth.  The false growth became evident in Clinton’s last year, when the NASDAQ plunged over 50%, from over 5000 to about 2300, and hundreds of new internet companies went out of business.

The last four complete months of the Clinton Administration saw your 3.9% unemployment, but the month Clinton left office, the downward trend was abruptly broken, and unemployment jumped 0.3%; this was the start of the Clinton Recession, a direct result of the collapse of the Bubba Bubble.

Unemployment under the Bush Administration is again approaching historically low levels, without the false impetus from an economic bubble. 

The real problem is that we can no longer afford the ultra rich in this society.

Speak for yourself, boy.  I once calculated that my contribution to Bill Gates personal fortune was about $100 per year.  In the years that I have been using Microsoft products, my income has increased by about $60,000 annually, and much of the increase is directly traceable to computers.  Computers have made us faster and more efficient, and have greatly reduced costs of manufacturing, logistics, and information processing.  Of course, you are not engaged in any of this, you drive a cab.  No wonder you don’t understand how the real world works.  Why don’t you go back to school and qualify for a real job?

Of course there were the ultra rich that were the subjects of the scandals a few years back: Enron, Tyco, WorldCom.  You are right, we can’t afford them.  But these crimes were committed during the Clinton-Reno years, and Clinton and Reno did absolutely nothing about detecting or prosecuting the biggest criminal scandals in the world before the UN’s Oil-for-Food program.  Not to worry; George Bush and AGAG are putting Clinton’s and Reno’s criminals in jail.  I hope they nail that fucking Kofi Annan, but I doubt if they will.

Posted by scorp on Dec 3, 2006 at 11:07 PM

Consequent to the rise in interest rates, the unemployment rate was 7.3% in the month President Clinton took office, and rose to 7.8% five months later, in June 1992.  The unemployment rate then gradually fell and stabilized in 1995-1996 in a narrow band between 5.4% and 5.8%.

In 1996, Chairman Greenspan expressed alarm at the

Posted by scorp on Dec 3, 2006 at 11:09 PM

Scorp, George Bush 1 was President in June 1992, NOT Clinton. You
can’t even get the most elementary facts correct.
We don’t need to listen to fake figures on what your income is, we all
have our own lives. Bill Gates took a much better, more user friendly
Apple system and ruined it. I’ve heard nothing but complaints about
his products. That they sell shakes my faith in the market, much of it must be composed of idiots as you suggest.
Your figures on Clinton are a lie. The unemployment rate went steadily
up for the first three years of Bush 2’ s Administration. When he ran for
reelection in 2004 he was the first President since Herbert Hoover to have no net gain in job creation.
That “mild recession’” in THE LAST TWO YEARS OF BUSH 1’S TENURE
WAS THE WORST SINCE THE GREAT DEPRESSION. OFFICIAL UNEMPLOYMENT REACHED DOUBLE FIGURES IN ALL THE INDUSTRIAL STATES, 12% HERE IN CALIFORNIA, 15% IN MICHIGAN,
13% IN ALABAMA AND THE SAME IN PENNSYLVANIA. ONE OF THE FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO HIS LOSS IN FALL 1992.
If you call the official rate of just under 5% low, you are crazy but everyone knows that rate is wrong because it doesn’t count people
who have given up looking for work or whose unemployment has run out and only one third of those eligible for unemployment are on it
here in California and that’s probably true elsewhere. And the millions
in the military ARE counted !
Enron was even more of a Bush crime and Bush was his personal pet,
he referred to Lay as “Kenny Boy.” And that’s just one of the many major GOP big biz scandals since 9-11.
Who are you trying to fool with this GOP shit smells like perfume nonsense ?  Did Clinton cut off your welfare check to your trailer ?
Get a life, sad little guy. Even much of the GOP is giving up these
talking points lies.

Posted by blondemike on Dec 4, 2006 at 11:36 AM

Koffi Annan is great!! He didn’t steal nearly as much as US contractors. Over 9 billion unaccounted for at the end of the War!! Also Scorp, I meant the Walmarts of the world who pay nothing and import everything taking down our whole economy and the whole middle class with it!!

Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Dec 4, 2006 at 11:38 AM

Chicago, the trouble with debating an idiot ideologue like Scorp is that
after a while people might not be to tell the difference.
Thanks for making your usual good points but this guy is hopeless.

Posted by blondemike on Dec 4, 2006 at 2:57 PM

Mike -

Of course, 1992 was the election year and Clinton took office in January 1993.  Apologize for that one.  While we are in correction mode, you have not yet acknowledged or apologized for your gross misstatement of President Reagan’s educational qualifications.  Or are you left-wind moonbats too good or too important to bother with correcting yourselves when you make a mistake?

And speaking of mistakes, or lies, or whatever you are calling it these days, where did you come up with this crap:

That “mild recession” in THE LAST TWO YEARS OF BUSH 1’S TENURE WAS THE WORST SINCE THE GREAT DEPRESSION. OFFICIAL UNEMPLOYMENT REACHED DOUBLE FIGURES IN ALL THE INDUSTRIAL STATES, 12% HERE IN CALIFORNIA, 15% IN MICHIGAN, 13% IN ALABAMA AND THE SAME IN PENNSYLVANIA. ONE OF THE FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO HIS LOSS IN FALL 1992.

At no time did the unemployment rates approach your figures during “THE LAST TWO YEARS OF BUSH 1’S TENURE”.  And if you disagree that “the official (unemployment) rate of just under 5% (is) low”, you must be terribly disappointed with Jimmi Carter, during whose Administration the unemployment rate never got below 5.6%.  You may have confused “THE LAST TWO YEARS OF BUSH 1’S TENURE” with the data from the Carter years and the first years of the Reagan Administration.  That is an easy mistake to make, I suppose.

Now, this is what happens in real life.  Economic phenomena are caused.  Bad policies make the economy worse.  Good policies lead to stability and growth.  Socialism is a bad policy, and is too dumb to comment on if we are discussing the real world.

At the time of the Roaring Twenties, no one understood that we were in a bubble, and that bubbles always burst.  Serious people thought that we were into permanent good times in the 1920s, just as serious people thought that the computer revolution (dot.com) had created permanent good times in the 1990s.  When things went bad in 1929, we found out just how bad the collapse of a bubble could be.  Actions taken to improve the economy served to make the economy worse, particularly raising taxes and restricting international trade.  Eight years of FDR, whom I admire greatly for leadership and perseverance, still left the economy in dire straits.  We simply did not understand the economy then as well as we do now.

When there is a car wreck, the damage must be repaired and and repairs are expensive. 

The Democrats have wrecked the economy twice in your lifetime.  LBJ started it by trying to have guns and butter in the Vietnam War and the Great Society, with no plans on how to pay for them.  This led to seventeen years of stagnation, capped off when Carter made it worse with high unemployment, high interest rates, and high inflation: the worst of all worlds.  Reagan recognized the problem, squeezed the inflation and interest rates, restored employment and growth, and the economy went on a substantial upswing.  It was expensive, but it worked.  So, whom do the Democrats blame?  Reagan, of course, for repairing the Democratic wreck. 

Then Clinton raised taxes and allowed the dot.com Bubba Bubble to develop, wasting billions of dollars on unsustainable internet projects that had no payoff.  It was fun while it lasted, but in Clinton"s last year the NASDAQ crashed, the Dow started down, and unemployment jumped 0.3% the month Clinton left office.  This was a potential disaster on the scale of the Great Depression, but President Bush took corrective actions.  The unemployment rate went up to 6.3% in June 2003 and has since fallen to 4.4%.  So what could have been a terrible outcome became a fairly minor recession.  It was expensive, but it worked.  So, whom do the Democrats blame?  Bush, of course, for repairing the Democratic wreck.

The Republican repairs to the economy are not nearly as expensive as the Democratic wrecks.  You are incapable of understanding this, I’m sure.  The Democrats just took Congress, and are already talking about raising taxes again.

Posted by scorp on Dec 4, 2006 at 6:51 PM

Reagan had no educational qualifications, he went to some cow college in the sticks.
The GOP has wrecked the economy under Ike 1958-60 recession,
Nixon 1972-74 recession, Ford 1975-76 recession, Reagan 1981-83
recession, Bush 1990-92 depression and Bush 2 2001-2004 major
recession. That’s FIVE times in my lifetime.
Clinton only slightly raised taxes on the very richest back to Reagan Era
levels in 1993 and the economy boomed as never before. For the first time since 1973 some of the middle class actually gained ground. Part of it was the internet which is still thriving, Goggle’s a 185 BILLION dollar
company.
The Repubs were in power THROUGHOUT THE 20s,  A MAJOR REPUB DEPRESSION.  They understood bubbles in the 19th century, see Murray Rothbard’s The Panic of 1819.
I got the figues from the US Dept of Labor for Bush 1. And all the states
EDD’s verified them.
Take your Holocaust didn’t happen BS and stick it up your ass.
Tired of rebutting the same lying crap from you.
Bush 1 depression greatly exceeded in intensity and duration the
Carter recession. Carter never approached the double digit unemployment figures of Bush 1. Nowhere close. Carter DID have
doubledigit inflation which Reagan cured by an old fashioned depression. Again, see “Reagan:An Autopsy” by Murray N. Rothbard
on the RIGHTWING Lew Rockwell website.
Under FDR the economy did pick up greatly in the mid-30s, went down
again in 37 and then started booming bigtime in 1939 as he schemed
us into WW2. Your statement that it remained static for 8 straight years
is an out and out lie.
Capitalism is a disaster unless regulated by the state, which it always has been, pro-business under the Repugs and somewhat more pro-labor under the Dems though Clinton was a rightwinger economically.
Bush’s corrective actions left Clinton’s strong economy in tatters for
his WHOLE FIRST TERM AND HE WAS THE FIRST PRESIDENT SINCE HOOVER TO HAVE NO NET EMPLOYMENT GAIN.
END OF DEBATE.

Posted by blondemike on Dec 4, 2006 at 7:08 PM

CDC -

<blockquote>Koffi Annan is great!! He didn

Posted by scorp on Dec 4, 2006 at 8:29 PM

There was $8.9 billion in the escrow account for the oil for food program that was immediately transfered illegally to the federal reserve and was never accounted for to congress or any oversite body.  And it was illegal because according to the UNSC resolutions that established the program and all resolutions pursuant to the goals and administration of the program the money was supposed to be in a special UN escrow account not at the FED.

The real scandle was that the war was a showcase for neo-liberal capitalist development by US corporations which took over the Iraqi economy. The $50 billion is close to 60% of the Iraqi GDP. Aside from the Petrolium sector more than half the Iraqi economy was in private hands under Saddam. The state helped encourage Iraqi business. Iraq’s economy was quite modern with locally owned steel industries that were newer and more efficient than the US steel facilities. The Iraqi middle class and upper middle class was wiped out by US imperialism. Even the farmers were threatened by US encroachment. Beginning in the 1980s subsidized US grain was dumped on the Iraqi market in order to run small and medium sized Iraqi farmers out of business.  By the late 1980s, over 80% of the diverse Iraqi grain market was dominated by US exports.

Later, Bremer Order 81 prevented Iraqi farmers from saving seeds for the next sowing and harvest in order to allow US corporations to patent them and claim the seed varieties as US corporate intellectual property. This required Iraqi farmers to pay royalties to the US firms or purchase their seeds from the patent holding US firms. 

The Bremer Orders eased the foreign takeover of the Iraqi economy by disallowing tariffs and capital controls, allowing 100% profit repatriation, and allowing 100% foreign ownership of local banks. Iraqi law may not discriminate (as does US law) against foreign capital and must enforce equal conditions for both foreign and domestic capital.  This hardly exists anywhere.

The new federal income tax structure with a top bracket of 35% makes the effective rate of taxation (the actual proportion of gross income paid in federal income by most people) very near the ten percent flat tax touted by the far right.  Anyone at or below the $61,000 gross income bracket will, if filing a joint return with a spouse, enjoy a new 12% effective rate of taxation especially when deductions are factored in. This bracket used to be between 15 and 25%. Most of those in the top bracket will probably not pay much over 15% of their income in federal taxes after deductions and filing a joint return. These calculations are based on the figures provided by the Congressional Budget Office. Steve Forbes has essentially accomplished his goal without passing the flat tax.

I agree that those families below $75,000 annual income, about 80% of all US households, need a tax break but the super rich pay far to little. The 35% top bracket for those making over a quarter million annually is absurd. It means the effective rate of taxation on millionaires is less than one third and less than a fourth or even a fifth of total income once deductions and joint filings are accounted for at tax time. The country can ill afford this. We have a huge deficit, a war,  a costly military machine, and vast unmet social needs of the WORKING POOR because the rich get away with paying very little wages, illegally making many employees “independant contractors” to evade paying unemployment compensation and social security, and paying no benefits. Often the US federal government takes up the slack with a highly regressive taxation system increasingly comprised of local taxes and users fees. This is what I meant by not being able to afford the very rich.

Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Dec 4, 2006 at 9:28 PM

Mike -

I got the figues from the US Dept of Labor for Bush 1. And all the states EDD’s verified them.

Can you be a little more specific, with a verifiable reference?  BLS has nothing close to the numbers you have provided for Alabama, California, Michigan, or Pennsylvania, either SA or NSA, during Bush 1’s term.

And you are contradicting yourself again.  First you said:

Ronald Reagan WAS NOT A COLLEGE GRADUATE, HE WAS NOT AN ECONOMIST OF ANY SORT AND HE PRODUCED THE MOST MASSIVE DEFICITS IN US HISTORY PRIOR TO THE CURRENT IMBECILE.

Then you said:

Reagan had no educational qualifications, he went to some cow college in the sticks.

No educational qualifications?  A degree in economics from a distinguished small college is no educational qualifications to you?  Eureka does not mint many dumb-ass socialists, but why are you so contemptuous of your betters?  A little jealousy, perhaps.

You are conflicted by facts and sources that do not fit your ideology, people who are smarter than you, people who make more money than you, and people who accomplish more than you.  What is your problem?

And the biggest deficits in our history were during WWII, when the national debt hit 120% of GDP.  Try to keep your facts straight.

Posted by scorp on Dec 4, 2006 at 10:18 PM

The debt as a proportion of GDP game is misleading. Sure current account deficits under FDR were large but the depression made the US GDP quite small. We were still an industrializing nation at that point. FDR’s deficits to run the New Deal and the War were also the reason we came out of the depression. So it is misleading to talk about deficits as a proportion of the economy without mentioning the incredible spurt in economic growth. Average growth rates under FDR exceeded 5.6% while those under Reagan’s “Seven Fat Years” were only 3.7%. A middle class grew under FDR and Truman afterward while it shrank under Reagan. The United States became a great power because of FDR’s leadership while we became an net debtor and importer of capital under Reagan’s leadership.

It is worsening now under Bush. Many of my friends back at the UW-Madison would say this reflected less the nature of the US political leadership than the specific stage of late capitalism in which each of these leaders controlled the state. Certainly the age of national Keynesean Welfare State capitalism is more egalitarian by nature than that of the globalization phase which breaks down national barriers in order to concentrate wealth on a global scale.  Even the IMF, no bastion of socialism in their effort to “force open” third world economies to US trade and investment, reported that in 1989, over 82% of the worlds wealth was controlled by the top 20% of the world’s people!! This seems like heavy concentration to me and we are then only beginning to recast the global division of labor by concentrating global investment and productive assets. Even before the 1929 depression, the top 200 US corporations controlled over half of US industry. Today the concentration is much greater after several waves of mergers that have occured in the wake of the dozen recessions following the end of WWII. Today the top 1% of households control about half the nation’s wealth and close to a fifth of the national income. Reagan was voted into power by an American middle class fed rage producing images of Welfare queens and free spending democrats while the welfare rolls were rapidly declining and the rate of federal spending as a proportion of the GNP was slowing. What the middle class got was a huge national debt, cuts in the very programs and labor legislation that created them, high paying jobs shipped overseas, and an overall threat to their very existance.  And many of them still haven’t learned. They keep voting for Republicans!! Go figure. I guess that’s why they invented nationalism.

Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Dec 5, 2006 at 12:09 AM

BLS does issue the monthly unemployment stats, they gather them from the EDD’s around the country. I got the figures from BLS and they were widely reported at the time, it was the highest double digit official figures since the GOP Great Depression.
Eureka College is nothing. If Reagan didn’t have a cue card, he had nothing to say, he couldn’t tell you the difference between the Austrian
and Chicago Schools to save his life or the Keynesian School or the
Institutionalists or the Marxists. He said he was a free trader and imposed the highest tariffs since the 30s. Read “Reagan: An Autopsy”
by Murray N. Rothbard, you can download all 12 pages legally from the lew rockwell.com website.
The biggest ABSOLUTE deficits were under Reagan and now Bush 2,
proportionately it’s less but then under FDR we were in WW2. No such
excuses for the GOP bums.

Posted by blondemike on Dec 5, 2006 at 1:48 PM

Scorp, when it comes to people who confuse their ideology with facts,
you are the Champ !

Posted by blondemike on Dec 5, 2006 at 1:50 PM

CDC -

I’ll bet you made really good grades in college.  You could really soak up whatever the left-wind professors were pouring into your cranium, and regurgitate on demand.  Unfortunately, socialist theory has nothing to do with the way the real world operates (witness the universal failures of socialism, wherever applied).  And the object of an education is to learn to think, NOT to spout socialist propaganda.

Your last two posts are literate, well constructed, understandable, and silly, to the point of being absurd.  All these “facts” you have assembled: did you stop and read any of the source material?  Do you actually understand the issues you have addressed?  Do you understand the implications of the actions you advocate?  Hell, no, you do not have a clue.  Some left-wind idiot (not you) came up with this stuff, and you repeat as if it were holy writ, because this was the way you were taught.

Take Bremer Order 81:

Bremer Order 81 prevented Iraqi farmers from saving seeds for the next sowing and harvest in order to allow US corporations to patent them and claim the seed varieties as US corporate intellectual property.

Why, sure.  We had 150,000 Coalition troops and 300,000 agricultural inspectors going around making sure that farmers did not plant their own seeds.  Sounds about right. 

Your statement of Bremer Order 81 is utterly incomprehensible in terms of what 81 actually says.  Do you know what the source document for Order 81 was?  No, you do not, so I will tell you.  The source document was the Iraqi patent law, The Patent and Industrial Designs Laws and Regulations Number 65, dated 1970. 

So, why did Bremer, working with the Iraqi Council, put out Order 81, based on Laws and Regulations Number 65?  Order 81, which you did not read, states clearly that 81 was written to protect intellectual property, and that changes to the old Iraqi law were made to assure that Iraqi law in future would be consonant with internationally accepted trade standards.  There is nothing in Order 81 that is not in all international trade rules. 

And there is nothing in Order 81 that prevents an Iraqi farmer for keeping and planting his own seeds.  It is only patented varieties that are are protected, in accordance with well-established international law.  And Order 81 does not address patenting Iraqi seeds at all, but if there is anything of value among the Iraqi seed varieties, someone sure as hell ought to identify it and patent it and put it to good use.  If they do so, they are protected by the new Iraqi law. 

If you would read Norman Borlaug instead of Karl Marx, you would find that the Green Revolution, invented in the United States, has fed more people and saved more lives than were killed by Stalin and Mao and Kim pere and Kim fils and Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara and Pol Pot and Saddam and Idi Amin and the Hutus and Infidel Castro put together.  So, what is it about this murderous socialist ideology that you personally find so attractive?

And why are you so intellectually uncurious and sloppy that you can’t think things through for yourself?

Posted by scorp on Dec 5, 2006 at 2:19 PM

The Green Revolution has been a disaster throughout the third world
and along with the IMF-World Bank-WTO policies killed more people
than the dictators listed above. Go to the Fifty (50) Years Is Enough website or Alexander Cockburn’s Counterpunch.org.
The whole fascist Bremer “constitution” was an attempt to loot Iraq
for the benefit of Halliburton and other US-UK multinationals.
And those farmers for the first time are being charged for their own seeds, this is happening all over the developing world and causing
great misery, poverty, serfdom and starvation. Noam Chomsky has
exposed this at great length.
Scorp, you are the most completely stupid liar I’ve ever come across.
You spread the same lies that you heard earlier in the day from Rush,
who is an impotent, lying dope addict.
The US public repudiated your GOP talking points big time. They
will turn you goofballs out of the White House in 08.
Another big Bush bomb to the economy coming down the road is the
incredible shrinking US dollar related to Bush’s astronomical trade
deficits. This moron has not only cost us ONE THIRD OF OUR INDUSTRIAL PLANT but is now wreaking havoc on the US dollar with his goofy free (for whom ?) trade policies. Go to The American Prospect website and see the December 4, 2006 piece by the editor, Robert Kuttner, titled “Another Quagmire.” This Bush clown is doing an Iraq number on the US dollar which will adversely affect the US economy.
Poo Poo Pants Scorp likes to throw around “socialism” but no one
here has advocated the nationalization of the means of production
in either major party at any times in the last 150 years. By socialism
this trailer park hound means welfare, job safety, civil rights laws
guaranteeing access to public accomodations, jobs and housing,
minimum wage, child labor, zoning, conservation, social security
and everything else that cuts into the rapacious, unearned profits
of the richest 1%. All of Europe has this kind of “socialism” and all
have a higher living standard with safer streets than we do.
We have a mixed economy and at this point we might require diversion
of taxes from Pentagon Corporate wasted welfare to our infrastructure.
The many good things owned by us for WE are the government, roads,
streets, highways, freeways, TVA, public schools, public airwaves,
lighthouses, libraries and parks just to name some.
The Conservaturd Tide has now ebbed and we can finish off the pathetic apologists like Scorp if that is the best that they now have.

Posted by blondemike on Dec 5, 2006 at 5:29 PM

I’m hearing that several of the rightwing talk show hatemeisters are now
running out of steam, Fox News’ viewers are down 40%. The National
Review and other rightist sites are running out of anything to spout.
No one cares about the fetus or prayer in schools or even gay marriage.
No one except Bush thinks we can “win” in Iraq or even knows what that MEANS. With the dismal GOP economic record under both Bushes
and the first half of Reagan, conservatives can’t talk about that.
When a “Scorp” pops up the progressives are all over him like a dog on
doo doo. Which analogy is appropriate to “Scorp.”
Fascist Bolton retired ! HOORAY !
Someone ought to yank that tobacco and whisky flavored mustache
off his face.
Offhand “scorp” says he’s doing great….........................Sorry Billy Balls
cut off his welfare check and screwed his wife.
He’s just a better man than you, “scorp.”

Posted by blondemike on Dec 5, 2006 at 5:39 PM

Why do I bother with this minutia?
How did it ever get thsi bad?This boring?
Can someone point me the way out of here..

Posted by awrifford on Dec 5, 2006 at 6:34 PM

Cabdriver
            Your post on redistribution of wealth left me with a comment and a question. In Daniel Pipes Property and Freedom Pipes makes the argument that starting with the Magna Carta as property rights increased the idea of liberty grew stronger. In contrast the Russian peasant suffered the absence of property in land this deprived Russians of all those levers by means of which the English succeeded in limiting the power of their kings. The only two rights that check government power are the right to bear arms and the legal precedent regarding property rights. The idea of wealth redistribution is a violation not only of the Constution but also 791 years of English Common Law. I have always believed that progressives are the single greatest threat to Civil Liberties. I hate to say it but Joe McCarthy was right.

My question would be:....Who would decide what constituted “ultra rich”

Posted by texasindependent on Dec 5, 2006 at 9:47 PM

Scorp,

In fact #81 prohibits Iraqi farmers from saving and reusing seeds of “new” plant varieties registered under the law. The law is an amendment of an old Iraqi patent law from 1970 except that it expands on it so much as to make it an entirely new law. Never in Iraqi history was it legal to patent life forms. For over 10,000 years in Mesopotamia, long a breadbasket of the region until US dumping and now, Order 81, farmers saved and bred seeds and developed a rich biodiversity in edible grains. Now all this is threatened with the Bremer Orders After years of famine, drought, war, a new and biologically narrow seed market controlled by transnational agribusiness firms is emerging. Soon traditional farmers will have to purchase new seed varieties every season from the big TNCs who will dominate the market. The farmers will NOT be able to patent their traditional seed varieties as they do not meet the four requirements of the Swiss UPOV convention on Plant Variety Protection requiring protected varieties to be New, Stable, Uniform, and distinct. Traditional seeds are genetically diverse and do not meet the requirements for patenting. Hence only the TNC controlled varieties will be protected locking tens of thousands of Iraqi farmers into their seed market.  The patent protection of new plant varieties is a novelty in Iraqi law which previously banned the monopolization of organic material.

Now plant breeders have exclusive rights over the breeding, production, reproduction, sale, import and export, and storing of new patented varieties of field crop seeds.  Monopoly rights for the patent is 20 years for field crop varieties and 25 years for viniculture and trees. This is longer than many patent life spans for US organic products before they must become public domain. Any private use of the product is banned without agreement and compensation to the patent holder. This deprives farmers of the right to replant protected seed varieties.

This opens the door to corporate domination of the Iraqi seed market and the abuse of power to make Iraq dependant on foreign produced seeds while attempting to obliterate from the market the genetically diverse traditional variety of seeds. The New seeds are being promoted toward larger farmers with deep corporate connections who will produce mostly for export and making Iraq dependant on imports of cheap US grains whose price will increase once poorer local farmers are put out of business.  Iraq will become a base for growing genetically modified food for lucreative export markets to enrich large corporations while the local population remains food insecure and dependant on foreign imports. Millions are being spent in USAID reconstruction contracts to promote export oriented cash cropping of GM foods promoting linkages of local farmers to TNCs with agreements to purchase seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides for years. The bulk of the earnings will go to the TNCs while Iraqi farmers will deplete their soils requiring the further purchase of highly expensive inputs from the TNCs.

Scorp, I would like you to know that what I write is from my own research. No one writes anything for me and I don’t steal material. I have an MA in Political Science from the UW-Madison and I don’t need others to write for me. I quote sources more than you ever do. The above critique of Order 81 is based on the research and a press release from Focus on the Global South, an organization concerned with the impact of economic globalization on the third world.

Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Dec 5, 2006 at 10:22 PM

Mike -

BLS does issue the monthly unemployment stats, they gather them from the EDD’s around the country. I got the figures from BLS and they were widely reported at the time, it was the highest double digit official figures since the GOP Great Depression.

Well, that’s nice.  I guess.  But why are your BLS unemployment rates so much greater than my BLS unemployment rates for Bush 1’s term?

Maximum Alabama unemployment rate, 1989 - 1992 -  7.1%

Maximum California unemployment rate, 1989 - 1992 -  9.9%

Maximum Michigan unemployment rate, 1989 - 1992 -  9.7%

Maximum Pennsylvania unemployment rate, 1989 - 1992 -  7.8%

Data is from BLS Alabama site listed below, search for other states from this page:

http://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.al.htm

So, who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?

You really think Reagan was stupid?  So, how is it that Reagan was able to win an election over brilliant Jimmi Carter?  The two biggest problems in the USA in 1981 were the economy domestically and the threat from the Soviet Union internationally.  During Reagan’s Administration, both problems had been of long duration and both went away.  To what do you attribute these magnificent results?  Luck?  Accident?  And don’t give me any crap about the deficit.  Increasing the deficit was the cost of correcting the Democratic mistakes, and it was the only thing that could have restored the economy.  The important thing was to restore economic activity and eliminate the murdering Soviets.  Reagan understood this.  To this day you do not understand this, making you pretty damn dumb.  End of discussion. 

The biggest ABSOLUTE deficits were under Reagan and now Bush 2,

Duh?  Duh!

Posted by scorp on Dec 5, 2006 at 10:49 PM

Your BLS figures are wrong because you are dishonestly averaging them over a four year period. At the depths of the GOP Depression
under Bush 1 there was double digit unemployment here in Calfornia,
Alabama, Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Oregon, Hawaii and several other
states in 1991-1992. In an earlier posting you even claimed that the BLS
didn’t keep statistics on unemployment ? Now you change your line
or is it lies ? Your a rushlimbaughgoppartylinegoonshittohead, you
make it up as it goes along.
The Soviets were NOT a threat in 1980, their whole society & economy
were collapsing as a result of too much central planning, which nobody
here advocates by the way contrary to your juvenile redbaiting.
A dog could have beaten Carter in 1980 because of inflation, record
interest rates and Iran. BUT Carter did get all the hostages back home
safe & alive UNLIKE Reagan in Lebanon who retreated tail in legs after
243 Marines were killed.  The deficit didn’t correct any mistakes, it
compounded the big spending habits of both parties.
Scorp, I’m getting tired of having to change your excrement filled diapers
every morning. You need to get your lazy behind out of that trash trailer
and seek gainful employment. Recycling Rush’s lies every day is not
going to put food on the table. Please let us know if you require any
gift packages. We progressives are a charitable lot.
By the way, Gorbachev wrote that Reagan’s insane arms race PROLONGED the cold war and the Soviet collapse.
Ronald McDonald Dummy does not get ANY credit for the Soviet
collapse.

Posted by blondemike on Dec 6, 2006 at 9:32 AM

CDC -

<blockquote>Scorp, I would like you to know that what I write is from my own research. No one writes anything for me and I don

Posted by scorp on Dec 6, 2006 at 1:02 PM

Goddam, Mike, you are as dumb as a turnip.

Now tell me which word or words that you do not understand.

Maximum?

Alabama?

unemployment?

rate?

1989 - 1992?

California?

Michigan?

Pennsylvania ?

And where did I say “average”?

Did you read the site I gave you?

http://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.al.htm

You claim some data from the BLS exists, but it does not show up on the BLS website; entirely different data shows up on the BLS website.  And Greenspan’s interest rate recession in 1991 and 1992 barely showed up as a blip on the GDP graphs, unlike the Bubba Bubble and the Bubba Recession in 1997-2003.  What is your problem?

Posted by scorp on Dec 6, 2006 at 1:24 PM

Scorp,

You have no right to make ad hominem attacks on people you don’t know anything about only because you don’t approve of their politics. This is typical right-wing bullying and intolerance. It is also ignorant beyond belief!! I think a lot deeper than you have by the look of things. I really don’t know who you think you are!!

Global South corrected their mistake about Bremer Order 81 in a recent press release to mean that the Order prohibited Iraqi farmers from saving only patented seeds not traditional ones. The real problem is that given US subsidized grain dumping for the last 20 years, famine, war, and the depletion of the Iraqi naional seed bank only the largest farmers will be in business using corporate patented seeds and the GM seeds will dominate the Iraqi market mostly for planting cash crops for export. The export oriented nature of Iraqi agriculture will spell doom for the majority of urban poor and displaced traditional farmers who once fed the nation with affordable food.  Eventually, increasing food imports will become expensive and the external food dependency will seriously compromise Iraqi sovereignty.

By the Way, Global South never claimed that TNCs could patent the traditional seeds as their own because they don’t meet the UPOV criteria for PVP patenting. They do however raid various seed banks for germplasm in order to breed, patent, store, and market new seeds

Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Dec 6, 2006 at 1:34 PM

You have already been rebutted on the BLS stats. In the years 1991
and 1992 unemployment reached serious double digit proportions
in many states particularly in the industrial north & west but also
states with a mixed ag-industrial base like Alabama.
There was no recession from 1997-2000. They were years of the
greatest US economic growth since WW2, actually in most of our
history. The internet bubble didn’t turn into a general depression until
Bush and AGAIN BUSH WAS THE FIRST PRESIDENT SINCE HERBERT HOOVER TO SHOW NO INCREASE IN NET JOB GROWTH.
Now if something goes wrong under the GOP it’s Greenspan’s fault,
well he’s a die hard ayn rand Republican. If Greenspan hurts the Dens,
it’s Clinton’s fault ! You are the last person to talk about other peoples’
brains, you have not demonstrated any intelligence whatsoever and
any honesty, a more serious failing. I’m in management, not labor
and I can tell you Reagan’s depression of 1981-83 was the worst
since The Great GOP Depression of the 20s & 30s AND WAS ONLY
EXCEEDED BY BUSH 1’S MAJOR DEPRESSION OF 1990-1992.
It started in late 90 and was THE factor which finished him in the
election in 92, despite his 91% approval rating after the Gulf 1 Massacre ! It was the economy, STUPID ! as Carville used to say.
If Bush 2’s DOL is now rigging the stats, why would that surprise
anyone after his lying on Iraq alone ?
Chicago Cab Driver, “Scorp” has posted here and on other boards
as a troll. He’s a lowlife piece of crap and is INTENTIONALLY A LIAR.
We need to get his diseased ass out of here.

Posted by blondemike on Dec 6, 2006 at 5:48 PM

CDC - 

<blockquote>You have no right to make ad hominem attacks on people you don

Posted by scorp on Dec 6, 2006 at 7:35 PM

Mike -

The American Prospect???  Counterpunch???????

Well, that explains a lot. 

If you look to Counterpunch and American Prospect for information, you undoubtedly call telephone numbers you find on the men’s room wall at the Oakland Bus Terminal in order to find a date. Or do you go to the San Francisco Bus Terminal?  Your social life is as empty as your so-called intellectual life.

You, Sir, are a nekulturny nut case.

Posted by scorp on Dec 6, 2006 at 8:01 PM

“Scorp” coming from a Party Line LimbaughLite Shittohead like you I take that as a compliment.
Again, you have failed totally to deal with ANY of my rebuttals to your
many nonarguments. None of my posts were obscene.
I used “excrement” to describe you, that’s proper english and proper
characterization.
Take your sad little behind out of here, no one is buying your rightwing
poison.
I feel very sorry for you, little man.

Posted by blondemike on Dec 7, 2006 at 9:48 AM

Scorp, it may interest you to know that Reagan didn’t bring down the Soviet Empire. It was a drastic drop in world oil prices after 1986 and hence a foreign exchange bottleneck which made debt repayment and needed technology imports difficult. Also, Soviet oil production had been seriously declining along with domestic economic growth because oil prices didn’t reflect actual domestic oil scarcity meaning that the Soviet Union was depleting its oil resources to fast and needed to free up the economy in order to adjust. It also needed to maintain energy production and supply levels to continue economic growth. It was the capacity to increase oil production/import levels to maintain economic growth in the late 1980s not the massive Reagan military buildup which actually hurt the US more than the Russians who were actually poised for dramatic economic and political reform.

Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Dec 7, 2006 at 5:54 PM

chicago cab driver, thanks again for your intelligent effort to set the record straight.  “Scorp” is immune to reason but it’s always good
to nail a myth peddler.

Posted by blondemike on Dec 8, 2006 at 9:43 AM

What’s the difference between a Republican and a Democrat?  BOTH will spend every dime in the Treasury, but the Republican will feel bad about it the next day!

Ain’t a dime’s worth of difference between them.  They are like the legal mafia.  Most things that the policticians do under the guise of government force would be considered crimes in the private sector.

Posted by JT_Lancer on Dec 8, 2006 at 9:56 AM

CDC -

Scorp, it may interest you to know that Reagan didn’t bring down the Soviet Empire.

Oh, I assure you that I am very interested in what you have to say about President Reagan and the Soviet economy.  It is always fascinating the spin you left-wind types put on subjects of which you know nothing. 

I am sure that President Reagan had lots of help in bringing down the Soviet Union.  The Soviets, following good socialist principles, had created a gigantic house of cards masquerading as a superpower state.  Reagan just recognized that it was a flimsy structure, and blew on it, bringing it down.  Reagan said, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” and down it came. 

Now, notice that President Carter, just a few years before, had declared that the USA economy and state were in a hopeless fix, and that our best course of action was to cut the best deal we could with the Soviets because things were not going to get any better.  A few more years of Carter, and it would have been the USA collapsing, for sure. 

There was a famous quote from that era, I can’t lay my hands on it just now, but the comment was from a Westerner who wondered out loud why a superpower like the Soviet Union could not build a workable flush toilet.  The joke was that the Soviets could not build any workable system, but they could massively, and inefficiently, apply resources to specific projects, such as their space program..  OK, the space projects were visible, but the toilets did not work, and the time spent waiting in the line to get bread was not available to spend waiting in the other line to get toilet paper. 

Reagan was virtually alone in recognizing the true state of affairs within the Soviet Union.  Neither the CIA nor the State Department nor the European intel groups nor the European states saw the collapse coming.  When President Reagan called for the Berlin Wall to come down, his own speechwriters tried to delete the line, and he got a very negative reaction from the Europes, because nobody had the vision and foresight that President Reagan had. 

The only other person of note who shared President Reagan’s vision was Winston Churchill, who in the 1950s stated that the Eastern European states would someday be free of communist domination. 

So, why did you focus on the Soviet oil industry as a cause of the Soviet collapse?  What was your point?  Lots of oil producing countries, some of them poorly managed, went through the 1980s energy crunch without collapsing, and all parts of the Soviet economy were in trouble.  And why was Soviet oil production “seriously declining”, do you suppose?  Before the collapse, the Soviet oil facilities were poorly maintained and quite decrepit.  After the collapse, there was a lot of capital invested, and oil production increased.  Then Putin started taking over the oil companies, and 2005 saw the first production declines since the collapse.  Makes you wonder about the virtues of socialism, doesn"t it?  No?

It was the capacity to increase oil production/import levels to maintain economic growth in the late 1980s not the massive Reagan military buildup which actually hurt the US more than the Russians who were actually poised for dramatic economic and political reform.

You have just stated that the Russians, “were actually poised for dramatic economic and political reform”.  But the Soviet Union collapsed.

And you said, “the massive Reagan military buildup ... actually hurt the US more than the Russians”.  But the US was entering the strongest growth period of any nation in history.

Can you justify either of the above statements?  Or are they as insane as they sound?  Learn how to think.

Posted by scorp on Dec 9, 2006 at 1:00 AM

CDC -

Have you been following the debate in our colleges and universities on academic freedom?  There is quite a history, and some of it is pretty ugly.

A key step was taken in Pennsylvania, when the legislature held hearings on academic freedom for students.  The leftist professors reacted furiouly, but the hearings revealed that existing rules on academic freedom allowed the professors to say anything, including bald indotrination in areas outside their competence and the class subject.  Meanwhile, students’ academic freedom was limited to things like being in a smoke-free classroom.

The hearings led to new academic freedom standards in the several Pennsylvania institutions of higher learning.  A new Penn State Polict HR 64, Academic Freedom, now states:

The faculty member is entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing his/her subject.  The faculty member is, however, responsible for the maintenance of appropriate standards of scholarship and teaching ability. It is not the function of a faculty member in a democracy to indoctrinate his/her students with ready-made conclusions on controversial subjects. The faculty member is expected to train students to think for themselves, and to provide them access to those materials which they need if they are to think intelligently. Hence, in giving instruction upon controversial matters the faculty member is expected to be of a fair and judicial mind, and to set forth justly, without supersession or innuendo, the divergent opinions of other investigators.

No faculty member may claim as a right the privilege of discussing in the classroom controversial topics outside his/her own field of study. The faculty member is normally bound not to take advantage of his/her position by introducing into the classroom provocative discussions of irrelevant subjects not within the field of his/her study.

Imagine that.  “The faculty member is expected to train students to think for themselves, and to provide them access to those materials which they need if they are to think intelligently.”

I have an MA in Political Science from the UW-Madison ...

I can well believe that, but what you do not have is an education.  No educated person would entertain the ideas contained in Global South for more than a few minutes; such ideas are patently absurd for a person with the capacity for critical thought.  Your indoctrination at the University of Wisconsin has done you a great disservice, and that is why you are a cab driver in Chicago. 

You could go back to UW and demand a real education, in light of UW’s incompetent and fraudulent treatment of you and your classmates.

You probably do not have to do anything about academic freedom standards, because the idea is catching on everywhere, notably in California.  Poor Mike is in the same dilemma as you are, but I am a firm believer that our world continues to improve, despite how the left-wind professors indoctrinate their students, and themselves.  Academic standards are a trailing indicator, and all the old radicals from 1960 are retiring and dying off.  Good riddance.

Whatever you do, learn to think for yourself.

Posted by scorp on Dec 9, 2006 at 11:27 AM

Scorp,

How the hell can an uneducated right-wing moron such as yourself tell others whether or not they’re educated just because you disapprove of their views. The so called movement for academic freedom is nothing more than a rightist ploy to infest the last bastions of free thought in the US, American Universities, with rightist morons who want to spread culture war BS and degrade the level of academic discourse down to that of an unschooled cracker. In my entire 6 years as a student at the UW I never saw any student attacked, demeaned, prejudicially graded or treated, or excluded from academic awards, positions, or funding because of their political views!! If it happened at all it was to individuals on the left and then only because of merit. There were plenty of right-wingers at the UW and they were treated with respect and engaged in discourse like all the others.

Scorp, the American Cracker cannot understand what goes on in the University because whether left or right, students are told the world is a complex place. This is something the American cracker can’t abide.  Don’t EVER expect the American University to be like FOX News. It’s a University and it is a place people come to seek enlightenment. We aren’t going to be seen speaking in tongues or screaming for the apocalypse. Universities are to bring enlightenment and that is important in these dark days of the medieval revival. I am proud to have been part of such an endeavor.

Your take on Reagan it is absurd. Most experts across the political spectrum disagree with you. The claim about him bringing down the Soviet empire is non-sense,  mere right wing sound bites with no other value. It was clear that the Soviet economy was in trouble due to energy and foreign exchange bottlenecks as per much CIA analysis. How could Reagan know things that the CIA, DIA, Mi6, and other Intel groups didn’t pass along. Maybe its that direct line to Jesus!!

FYI, the anti-Soviet policy started with Carter and Brezhinski, in the summer of 1979 six months prior to the Soviet invasion.  The CIA began arming and training Mujihadeen in northeastern Afghanistan at the time as per the open claims of Zbigniev Brezhinski in the European Press. Reagan and Co. picked up on the policy of “bleeding the Soviets through the Afghan wound” despite repeated Soviet attempts to extricate themselves from a situation they went into with grave hesitation, proof, by the way, that the Soviets had limited objectives to stabilize the regime in Afghanistan and not a grand design to overrun southasia or alter the balance of power in the region.  Today we have the Al Qaeda legacy of this misguided policy. And the Russian economy is a worse mess now than in the 1980s when according to the CIA it experienced higher annual average economic growth rates than many western powers. Most eastern European migration today is economic. Only the rich few can afford to live in Eastern Europe and Russia!!

As far as Order 81 is concerned I attempted to explain that in light ot the massive destruction of natural Iraqi seed stocks the US was trying to replace those stocks with patented GM seeds controlled by large TNCs. Millions of dollars of USAID money is spent to subsidize the promotion of six major GM grain varieties half of which are for export. This will entirely restructure the agricultural profile of the country. It will reduce the number of local farmers who produce for the domestic market, while creating a nexus between the export oriented part of the farming sector and US TNCs who will extract most of the profit from the agricultural sector in royalties, and from revenue from the sale of seed, fertilizers, pesticides, and other inputs. The local market which had a great deal biodiversity in its natural food supply, will become even more dependant on imports than they already are after 10,000 of being the breadbasket of all Mesopotamia!!  This is undoubtedly another reason behind the insurgency.

Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Dec 9, 2006 at 12:55 PM

CDC -

Now, come on, boy.  On the one hand you are complaining that I treat you too roughly, by questioning the quality of the left-wind education you received at UW-Madison.  Now you are complaining that even though your MA in PolySci only qualifies you for a cab driver’s job, you are “educated”.  Which is it?  The two positions you have taken are incompatible. 

<blockquote>How could Reagan know things that the CIA, DIA, Mi6, and other Intel groups didn

Posted by scorp on Dec 9, 2006 at 6:33 PM

CDC -

The so called movement for academic freedom is nothing more than a rightist ploy to infest the last bastions of free thought in the US, American Universities, with rightist morons who want to spread culture war BS and degrade the level of academic discourse down to that of an unschooled cracker.

Well, I have been trying to convince you that you can and you should learn to think for yourself.  It is a much bigger job than I expected.

Quite apart from your left-wind, knee-jerk reaction as expressed above, take a moment to consider what Penn State Policy HR 64, Academic Freedom, actually calls for.  The requirements may be summarized as:

* Instructors stay on topic.

* Instructors present balanced views in an academic manner.

* Insructors encourage students to learn to think, and avoid indoctrinating students. 

And you think this is bad, and motivated by rightists with negative intent for negative purposes?

Well, let

Posted by scorp on Dec 9, 2006 at 8:35 PM

Scorp,

You exhibit all the qualities of a right-wing neanderthal. First you put words in my mouth. I never “complained” that my degree wasn’t useful except for unskilled labor. In fact, if you would have read what I actually stated you would have discovered that I stated the opposite. I said I was very proud of my degree and time spent at the UW-Madison (with a politically diverse group no less!!) I’m sorry you don’t know the joy of a higher education. As they say it’s never to late!!

Reagan didn’t use common sense. It is well known that the “Cold War II” was initiated by liars like the recently dismissed Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld who began circulating deliberate misinformation about a “strategic bomber gap” and other such nonsense that everyone now knows is false in order to justify large defense budgets. This caused huge deficits in the US and needless financial dependance on foreign capital. It began our long decent as a nation as much as the Russians. BTW, I actually know far more Russians than you do here in Chicago and I can tell you the myths about long lines and a disfunctional economy before 1989 are false. There wasn’t the choice of consumer goods but people had everything they needed. Today there is a real economic problem. Most people can’t earn a living as their economies are overtaken by Western capital and domestic oligarchs pushing prices up above wages to the point there is massive outmigration. The social gap is growing over there like never before in their history. They often tell me they pine for the good old days in some ways!!

As far as Global South’s mistake perhaps they were taking a page from the right’s playbook. At least they came out and thoroughly corrected their error instead of continuing to lie like our nation’s fearless leader.

As far as the Universities go you obviously have never been to one so it is YOU that go by biased hearsay not me. I’ve only known professional and dedicated instructors with integrity and knowledge that don’t lie or deliberately distort the truth. There are many different ways to look at a political question. I’ve seen many of them at the UW-Madison. The people there study hard and are not guilty of the wrongs you have accused them of out of sheer bias and prejudice. Like I said however, a University is not a Pentacostal Church!! Don’t go there expecting to see people speaking in tongues…or davening for that matter!!

As far as Order 81 goes, it is official US government admission that between 1983 and 1990, the US Commodity Credit Corporation disbursed some $5 billion in agricultural credits to Iraq which not only enabled Saddam’s War Machine but caused the bankruptcy of thousands of local Iraqi farmers, ruined the national seed bank supply, and created a more than 80% import dependancy on US grains. It also created unnecessary balance of payments deficits and massive foreign debt while ultimately making food more expensive to the Iraqi consumer.  Order 81 is an attempt to displace the natural seed varieties that Iraqi farmers have been breeding for centuries with a limited number of GMO seeds controlled by US TNCs like Monsanto and Conagra. Your typical racist arrogance ASSUMES the Iraqi varieties to be “inferior” when in fact they possess far greater nutrients and are cheaper in the long run. Iraqis have been feeding themselves for millenia. Why now do they need GMO seeds? It is the TNCs who want to streamline Iraqi agriculture in order to create (a) import dependance for surplus US grains and, (b) to create a vertically integrated global production structure with Iraqi farmers functioning essentially as low wage producers in a profit driven export system mostly favoring large TNCs.

Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Dec 10, 2006 at 1:14 PM

CDC -

It is well known that the “Cold War II” was initiated by liars like the recently dismissed Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld who began circulating deliberate misinformation about a “strategic bomber gap” and other such nonsense that everyone now knows is false in order to justify large defense budgets.

Whoa, CDC.  Learn to think.  Try to use a little common sense. 

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first ever reference to a “missile gap” was by Senator John F. Kennedy on 14 August 1958.  This “missle gap” became a major theme in Kennedy’s presidential campaign in 1960, even though President Eisenhower declared that no such missile gap existed.  Eisenhower knew this because of the U-2 intelligence flights.  But Kennedy kept lying until he won the election, but then a funny thing happened.  In October 1961, just months after Kennedy was safely elected, his Administration revealed that there was no missile gap and that the United States had overwhelming military superiority.  Read all about it at answers.com, “missile gap”. 

So, first you say:

The claim about (Reagan) bringing down the Soviet empire is non-sense …

And now you say:

Reagan didn’t use common sense. It is well known that the “Cold War II” was initiated by liars like the recently dismissed Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld who began circulating deliberate misinformation about a “strategic bomber gap” and other such nonsense that everyone now knows is false in order to justify large defense budgets. This caused huge deficits in the US and needless financial dependance on foreign capital. It began our long decent (sic) as a nation as much as the Russians.

“It began our long decent (sic) as a nation as much as the Russians.” 

So, you are saying that the Russian (Soviet, actually) empire declined as a result of the American military build-up?  Why, yes, that is exactly what happened.  Reagan knew that the Soviets were too corrupt and inefficient to compete with us, and he planned this carefully.  Read a good account of the Reykjavik Summit with Gorbachev for the details, when Gorbachev realized that he did not have the horsepower to compete with the USA. 

And if you knew that Reagan brought down the Soviet Empire, why did you pretend that he did not?

But part of your statement is nonsensical.  Our long descent?  Umm, what would that be?  There was a relatively brief period of financial and immoral excess during the Clinton years (the Bubba Bubble), followed by the inevitable reaction decline (the Clintn Recession).  But fortunately, President Bush took the proper corrective actions by lowering and reforming taxes.  Voi-LA!  The economy is booming and markets are higher than during the Bubba Bubble, without benefit of a distorting, destructive bubble. 

“ … needless financial dependance on foreign capital … “ 

Whatever are you talking about?  Don’t start this argument.  I don’t have time for it , and you will lose, anyway.  Go read The Skeptical Optimist if you are confused.

BTW, I actually know far more Russians than you do here in Chicago and I can tell you the myths about long lines and a disfunctional economy before 1989 are false.

Whoa, CDC.  Learn to think before saying perfectly idiotic things.  Try to use a little common sense.  Quit being so fucking stupid. 

The only time I was actually behind the iron curtain was in East Germany, and they definitely had long bread lines.  Not in the big showcase cities, of course, but in the towns and villages.  But there is this marvelous thing called Google, and you can use it to call up all sorts of interesting information.  Like articles on the Soviet Union and their long bread lines and rationing and empty shops.  The Soviets were not big on showing how bad off their people were, but there are even a few photos of Soviet breadlines that have sneaked into the system.  Enjoy.

And learn to think.  Aspire to common sense, that most uncommon virtue.

Posted by scorp on Dec 10, 2006 at 11:30 PM

Seeing your opponent as corrupt and inefficient is no reason to knowingly engage in actions that could take the world to the brink of nuclear war when your opponent isn’t threatening your security. It is you, Scorp, who is admitting to contradicting your past claims. You have always seen the world in a myopic “good and evil” scenario dogma. Now you are admitting to US aggression. Instigating an arms race in order to bring down your opponent is an unprovoked act of aggression. The Soviet Union only wanted to stabilize the Kabul Regime and by Brezhinski’s own admission we drew them into a full scale war. Now we have the ongoing consequences in the form of Islamic extremism cultivated by US military assistance and, at the time, moral approval.

Scorp, the Soviets were a tired, status quo power at the time on the brink of reform mostly because their economy was over centralized and failed to use prices to reflect the true value of basic commodities like oil and other extractive industrial inputs.  After 1992, the entire economy was privatized except for a few core state enterprises. Most prices were allowed to seek market level except for oil and food which were allowed to rise with a regulatory cap. The rapid change which would have occured more gradually and smoothly anyhow came suddenly and the dislocation was costly in terms of money and lives when one considers the wars that were born of the rash of breakups all over eastern europe. Many lives were needlessly lost and it looks as if this was all a plan of US capitalism to break open the east to expand product, financial, and labor markets for a stagnating global capitalism mired down in overproduction and overconcentration of wealth. Recent polls have shown that more than half of Russians pine for the good old days because though there was less freedom and consumer goods the necessities were provided for and reforms were slow but making their way forward. I’ve spoken to hundreds of people from Russia and eastern europe and I was shocked myself to hear the opinions. Many people think life was in many ways better before. I guess not everyone thinks that working sixty hours a week to blow your check on cheap crap from Walmart is the ultimate Nirvana.

Scorp there are many problems with both systems. The Soviets were at least reforming. Here the far right seems more stubborn than the old Soviet politburo. I still don’t understand your irrational hatred of Clinton. He was probably our best post-War president after Kennedy.  He managed the economy like a fiscal conservative while being compassionate to the poor with things like the earned income tax credit. There were proposed tax cuts under Clinton. His were much fairer. Bush just opened the public till and turned it over to the upper 1% who according to some estimates will eventually glean over 40% of the tax cuts. This is alarming since they only pay about a third of the federal taxes and hold a fifth of the national income (but close to half the nation’s marketable wealth). I know about taxes because I looked at the new tax structure. I even see the new 10% bracket created for those making less that $8,000 annually (these people should be exempt altogether!) Basically, the 80% of the households below $75,000 save a few thousand to a few hundred bucks a year while thousands are saved by the very richest. And the economy has barely been stimulated as per our long standing jobless recovery. More and more people are getting poorer and incomes are becoming more skewed. Bush has not benefitted most Americans.  This is a regime of the rich and the warmongering US military.

Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Dec 11, 2006 at 12:35 AM

If all correct answers consist of a single word then why do YOU use so many words to say so little ???????????????
Scorp, you have never made one reasonable argument, your responses
consists of unfactual assertions, profanity and ad hominem attacks on
your political opponents. Gorbachev himself wrote that Reagan’s insane
arms race unnecessarily prolonged the cold war by breathing new life
into the Soviet military establishment and the Communist Party. The
system had been going downhill since the 60s because of the crisis
in the command economy. The more complex a society the less possible it becomes to have a central authority plan every thing. Reagan did help bankrupt the Soviets but then as Republican Congressman Sonny Bono noted,we went bankrupt five minutes later.
Reagan never “planned” anything, he was a C class actor who read his
lines, mostly he slept including at Cabinent meetings and he had very
short workdays. If you are an example of “common sense,” that is untutored wisdom, then maybe it’s not such a great thing.  After all
“common sense” tells us the earth is both flat and stationary, which
science disproves. Scorp, you are a personal physical coward. I know
you would never use insults and profanity to Chicago’s face or mine.
You’d be brushing your teeth via your anal canal if you did.
Churchill was a total fraud too, see David Irving’s massive two volume
set, Churchill’s War, see John Charmley’s Churchill:The End of Glory
and Francis Neilson’ s The Churchill Legend, all are British rightwingers.
As far as universities go, if you have really spent that much time in them
as you claim and we do know that your word is not reliable, then maybe
you need to get out. They have obviously not helped you.
As far as the 60s graduates retiring and being replaced by rightists, dream on ! The faculties are solidly left liberal. Not roaring radicals
but definitely liberal or progressive.
Chicago does not know that Reagan brought down the Soviet empire
because Reagan didn’t. Gorbachev who DOES know is the better
authority here.
Again, thanks Chicago for making cogent intelligent arguments.
It’s a bit like casting pearls before swine in the case of the party you’re
debating with but it’s always good to set the record straight.
The only question is whether “scorp” is the biggest liar on the planet
or as utterly stupid as his heroes, Ronald McDonald Reagan and
George Alfred E. Newman Bush.

Posted by blondemike on Dec 11, 2006 at 10:24 AM

Mike,

We seemed to have instituted in effect the 10% flat tax of steve forbes without a vote for it in congress. The effective rate of taxation across the nation accounting for joint returns and deductions puts the US taxpaying public at an average effective tax rate of 15% or so. Not much more. And the economy is still sluggish and not producing much in the way of good jobs. All we have are deficits and a skewed national distribution of income with slow economic growth.

Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Dec 11, 2006 at 11:13 AM

Your right but you do need to factor in the social security/medicare tax
which is the biggest on some workers’ paychecks and of course is regressive. I won’t even get into local govt financing, we pay 3K taxes
a year on our small home and recently found out that the Oakland Police
don’t even take fingerprints anymore ! My wife was a recent crime victim.

Posted by blondemike on Dec 11, 2006 at 1:46 PM

I’m very sorry to hear that Mike.

Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Dec 11, 2006 at 2:21 PM

Thanks, my wife Nina has the San Francisco Chronicle’s main columnists interested and they ran one column this morning
and she’s going to at be a press conference with them this afternoon.
So activism works !

Posted by blondemike on Dec 11, 2006 at 3:39 PM

CDC -

Seeing your opponent as corrupt and inefficient is no reason to knowingly engage in actions that could take the world to the brink of nuclear war when your opponent isn’t threatening your security.

Oh, I did not see our opponent as corrupt and inefficient.  Our opponent was corrupt, inefficient, and in possession of nuclear weapons with 10,000 kajillion tons of destructive power, the knowledge for which he did not develop himself, but which he had to steal.  Sort of like NorK and Iran now.  And why did the Soviets gear their entire economy to heavy industry and weapons systems, while their people stood in bread lines, and toilet paper lines, and vodka lines? 

During WWII the USA sent millions of tons of Lend-Lease assistance to Russia in the form of trucks, aircraft, machine tools, and hundreds of thousands of pairs of boots.  After WWII, we offered to extend Marshall Plan aid to the Soviets, who refused to accept it.  They used our machine tools, aircraft designs, and nuclear designs to build their military capability.  “We will bury you”, and all that crap.  This was not done to threaten our security?  Are you fucking crazy? 

Now you are admitting to US aggression. Instigating an arms race in order to bring down your opponent is an unprovoked act of aggression.

Aggression was what the Soviets did to the Hungarians, and Poles, and Afghanis.  Only a socialist is dumb enough to call a defensive weapons system “an unprovoked act of aggression”.  Fortunately, the ABM system and its successors have already proved a degree of capability against Saddam in 1991, and offer some assurance against Kim Jong-Il and the Council of Guardians now.  Good thing Reagan insisted on it, huh?

The Soviet Union only wanted to stabilize the Kabul Regime and by Brezhinski’s own admission we drew them into a full scale war. Now we have the ongoing consequences in the form of Islamic extremism cultivated by US military assistance and, at the time, moral approval.

That’s cute, CDC.  “The Soviet Union only wanted to stabilize the Kabul Regime and by Brezhinski’s own admission we drew them into a full scale war.”  So, the Soviets suffered 15,000 fatalities, 500,000 wounded and sick, bankrupted themselves, killed some two million Afghanis in the process, and its all our fault?  Nah, cute is not the word.  Try fucking insane.

We allied with the Soviets in WWII, not because Stalin was a fine fellow (he was not), but because Hitler was worse.  After WWII, the Soviets chose to continue the worst of all political systems, socialism, with it’s inherent corruption, inefficiency, and aggressiveness.  We allied with the Afghanis against the Soviets for the same reason we allied with Stalin in WWII.  All you have done is to provide a powerful argument for American unilateralism.  This allied crap has a very poor track record.  Look at France and Mad Jack Chirac.

… the Soviets were a tired, status quo power at the time on the brink of reform mostly because their economy was over centralized and failed to use prices to reflect the true value of basic commodities like oil and other extractive industrial inputs.

If what you say is true, why did Jimmi Carter (I notice he is not on your list of best presidents of the late Twentieth Century) declare that the USA was at a terminal stage and we should cut the best deal we could with the domineering Soviets?  And do you have any actual evidence the Soviets were on the “brink of reform” before Gorbachev realized at Reykjavik that the Soviets could not keep up?  Reykjavik was a tipping point, after which the Soviets knew they were floundering.  There was no movement to reform before or after Reykjavik, until the Soviet crash.  And, as a good socialist, why are you complaining that the Soviet “economy was over centralized and failed to use prices to reflect the true value of basic commodities”.  That is what socialists do.  Either follow the party line or find a new party. 

Many lives were needlessly lost and it looks as if this was all a plan of US capitalism to break open the east to expand product, financial, and labor markets for a stagnating global capitalism mired down in overproduction and overconcentration of wealth.

So, now you are concerned about lives?  How many lives?  And how do the lives lost in the transition compare to the 100,000,000 innocent lives killed by you fucking socialists in Russia, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Afghanistan?

Think, CDC, think.  Use your head.  Don’t just use socialist spin for all circumstances.  The USA economy was a near disaster under Carter, with Fed Fund interest rates over 19% the month Carter left office, monthly consumer price inflation hitting over 18% during Carter’s last year, and unemployment stuck at over 7% in Carter’s last months.  The economy was extremely sick, and Carter was saying, in the “malaise” speech, that it would not get better.  Extreme illness requires strong medicine, and Reagan supplied it.  Squeezing the excesses out of the Carter economy resulted in temporary increases in unemployment, but interest rates and inflation went steadily downward under Reagan, and unemployment spiked in late 1983 before it also started steadily downward.  At this time the economy was becoming very healthy indeed, and the markets took off like a rocket in their historic run which continues to this day, interrupted only by the Bubba tax increase and Bubba Bubble fiascos.

Reagan’s economic recovery was well under way before Reagan addressed the ongoing problem of the Soviet Union; it had to be, you could not take on the Evil Empire with a Carter economy, for gosh sakes.  So your fatuous spin statement about a “plan of US capitalism to break open the east to expand product, financial, and labor markets for a stagnating global capitalism mired down in overproduction and overconcentration of wealth” yadda, yadda, yadda was inaccurate, the product of a left-wind spinmeister (not you).  The USA economy stagnated for seventeen years from LBJ to Carter but was no longer stagnant early in Reagan’ first term.  And neutralizing a corrupt, inefficient, aggressive, murderous Empire is its own justification without your silly socialist spin.

... there are many problems with both systems.

There are many problems with all systems.  So, what is this fascination you have with the worst, most murderous, most inefficient, most destructive system ever devised?

(Clinton) was probably our best post-War president after Kennedy.  He managed the economy like a fiscal conservative while being compassionate to the poor with things like the earned income tax credit.

Think, think, think, CDC.  If Kennedy was so great, tell me all the wonderful things he accomplished.  Bay of Pigs?  Umm, no.  Soviet nukes in Cuba?  No, that was the result of his demonstrated weakness at the Bay of Pigs.  Vietnam?  Not just no, but hell, no!  The only demonstrated good effect Kennedy had on the USA was his tax cuts, which had an extremely beneficial effect on the economy for a couple of years before LBJ negated them.  Now it requires a major effort to get a leftist to acknowledge that Kennedy advocated tax cuts, much less that they worked.  The Kennedy Administration was the triumph of style over substance, with style permanently diminished as a consequence. 

Clinton did certain good things, with good results; ending welfare and promoting free trade (both were Republican programs) had positive, measurable effects on the American economy.  But Clinton was morally deficient and corrupt, not good traits in the person occupying the most powerful position in the world.  And Clinton was a strange mixture of perceptiveness and stupidity.  His political talents are universally remarked on, if not universally appreciated. 

But Clinton’s blindness to the foreign terrorist efforts and the domestic economic processes the nation was experiencing during his Administration was extremely disruptive and had an extreme potential to do serious damage to the nation.  I do not know if you read any of my cites (I don’t know if you read anything besides left-wind propaganda), but you really, REALLY, REALLY ought to Google up “Dutch Tulip Bubble” and read several different takes on the subject. 

The Dutch Tulip Bubble was the most improbable catastrophe ever to befall a bunch of hard-headed Dutchmen up until the current Muslim invasion.  People went nuts speculating on the ever-increasing prices in the tulip market, until the whole thing went smash and lives and fortunes were lost.  Genuine economic bubbles are rare, but when they occur thay are, historically, devastating.  The Great Depression in 1929, the Japanese Bubble in 1991, and the Bubba Bubble starting in 1997 fall in thie category. 

Economic bubbles always follow a set pattern: wild speculation followed by an economic crash, sort of a social manic-depressive episode on a grand scale.  People are euphoric during the manic phase. In the Roaring Twenties and in the Bubba Bubble there were serious arguments that all economc problems had been solved and we were in a period of eternal growth.  But the depressive phase that always follows is a bitch. 

Early in Clinton’s second term it was obvious that the economy was getting out of whack: Chairman Greenspan was warning of irrational exuberance in the markets.  Clinton and Greenspan were the only two people on earth that absolutely could have taken corrective steps, and Clinton was foolishly celebrating the “good” economic numbers.  Just as you were.

But by Clinton’s last year, the numbers were no longer good.  The surplus was declining rapidly, GDP growth wavered into negative territory, the NASDAQ collapsed by over half its value, and the Dow had started south.  As night follows day, the down phase of the Clinton Bubble was following the up phase.  It is to the eternal credit of the American people that they recognized that things were not going well, and they elected George Bush as President. 

If Gore had been elected in year 2000, you would not be a cab driver in Chicago; the most you could aspire to would be an apple salesman on a street corner.  Gore would have cut free trade and raised taxes, the standard Democratic Party solution to all problems, and things would have gotten much worse, exactly like the Great Depression when taxes were raised, and trade was limited, and things got worse. 

So, you owe a debt of gratitude to President Bush, who assured that the Clinton Bubble was the least destructive major economic hazard in history.

Learn to think, CDC.  Strive for common sense.

Posted by scorp on Dec 11, 2006 at 5:40 PM

scorp, you take up a lot of space to peddle your rightwing falsehoods.
Between 1930 and 1945 Soviet military spending was over a trillion dollars, see The Myths of The New History by David L. Hoggan.
Our lendlease aid was a pitiful 11 billion dollars which Nixon realistically forgave at 800 million. Considering how long we delayed
the Second Front and the fact that the Soviets lost 27 million in the
European theatre versus a few hundred thousand for the US, the
Soviets contributed 90% to the victory over Germany. Our main battle
and enemy was Japan in the Pacific Theatre which had a Non-Aggression Pact with the USSR until after Truman’s militarily unnecessary and genocidal atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. See “Assault On A Beaten Foe” by Harry Elmer Barnes
in the May 10, 1958 National Review (yes, THAT National Review).
And see the book “Atomic Diplomacy” by Gar Alperowitz for a thorough
debunking on all the lying rationales Truman & his neocon apologists
still use to justify that WAR CRIME.
NAFTA was a total disaster and the worst thing Clinton ever did prior to
welfare deform, which is a disaster too. The costs are down but child
and adult malnutrition are way up and most of the people have either
not been able to maintain longrange employment or they are stuck in deadend jobs that do not lift them out of poverty. I have no doubt that
the explosive reemergence of high crime rates in major US cities over
the last three years after a decade long decline is due to this disastous
GOP program which Clinton in his usual bumbling, appeasing way stupidly adopted. And there was no need to in either case. Just check
the rightwing media like The American Conservative and The New American for the disastrous results of free trade. Clinton made a demagougic campaign promise to end welfare in 1992 and the
result is a real crime. Contrary to Limbaugh and the usual rightist
liars there has been nothing successful about it. Corporate welfare
is thriving more than ever and that was always 90% of all Federal
welfare.
Bush 2 took a very mild Clinton recession mainly limited to the overly
dotcom fantasies and made into a general Depression. Bush 2 WAS THE FIRST US PRESIDENT SINCE REPUBLICAN HERBERT HOOVER
TO HAVE NO NEW NET GAIN IN JOBS. SOME RECORD !
Do you mind if we all skip the gratitude, scorp ?
Bush totally downplayed Clinton’s efforts against Al Queda, ignored
several FBI and CIA warnings right up to the attack and should have
been impeached & incarcerated for criminal negligence.
The ABM Star Wars fantasy was opposed by the US when the Soviets
wanted to do it in 1967 because the scheme is inherently aggressive.
It is meant as a first strike because it precludes the other side from responding to a first strike which is why McNamara talked Kosygin
out of installing it around Moscow. All the tests under Reagan showed
it to be totally unworkable, the failure rate was astronomical which is
why the Amercican Academy of Science opposed it. See the Report
of the Union Of Concerned Scientists totally Reagan’s Star Wars fantasy. The USA invasion of Iraq is inherently aggressive, the US
invasions of Haiti, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Mexico
and many other countries were inherently aggressive. Compared to US
regimes in Latin America the Soviets in eastern Europe were libertarians. The US stole over 1/3rd of Mexico and murdered tens
of millions of African slaves & Native Americans, far exceeding Hitler’s
toll in WW2.

Posted by blondemike on Dec 11, 2006 at 7:12 PM

The worst recessions/depressions have been under the GOP,
Hoover in the Great Depression, Ike in 1958-60,  Nixon in 1973-74,
Ford in 1975-76, Reagan in 1981-83, Bush 1 in 1990-1992 and
Bush 2 in 2001-2005. The Dems are not either progressive or great
bargains but they easily beat the GOP.
US invasion of Cuba, Hawaii, the Philippines where we slaughtered hundreds of thousands in 1898-1901, Puerto Rico, our imperialist
military base at GITMO which Bush’s torture tactics have made into a
symbol of infamy, US support of dictatorships from Zaire to Cuba
to China (under both Chiang & Mao), Reagan’s support for Khmer Rouge at the UN after the humanitarian Vietnamese invasion deposed Pol Pot, US support for Indonesian Army mass murder in 1965-68
of a million people, US support for Indonesian genocide against East
Timor, which resulted in the murder of a third of the population, highest
of genocide proportionately in history, equivalent to 100 Americans
being murdered, US support for Pinochet’s murderous regime in Chile,
US support for the Guatemalan regimes from 1954-1992 which murdered over 250,000 people and the list goes on. William Blum
in his 1982 book on the CIA estimated over six million victims of US
foreign policy since WW 2 and that was 24 years ago ! JFK’s invasion of South Vietnam and the setting up of concentration camps known as strategic hamlets. The US invasion of Afghanistan was which more people than died in 9-11 and the US training of the Afghan fundamentalists under Carter & Reagan, which came back home on 9-11. Nixon and Kissinger killed the same number of Cambodians as
Pol Pot, half a million and they killed them first, 1971-75.
Since no democratic socialist either supported the Communist bloc nor considered them socialist you know what you can do with that
contrived “100 million” figure. Some historians are planning a Black Book of Capitalism which estimates several hunderd million victims of
capitalism over the past four centuries. Chiang Kai Chek killed 10 million people in China in 1927, mostly leftists and Hussein killed many
more leftists than rightists in Iraq.
Kennedy’s programs never got pass the GOP-Dixiecrat stranglehold in
Congress but LBJ passed Medicare, Medicaid, federal aid to education,
three major Civil Rights Act, atuto safety and much more, and they were
much more important than JFK’s tax cuts, which were nowhere as extreme or budget busting as Reagans. Of couse Reagan’s one major
tax cut was followed by three major increases in 1982, 1983 and 1986.
See the Rothbard essay I referred you to earlier.

Posted by blondemike on Dec 11, 2006 at 7:32 PM

Reagan’s “economic recovery” didn’t begin until 1984, he was peddling
hysterical lies about a Soviet plot to take over the world in 1981.
See James Carroll’s new massive book rebutting Reagan’s lies here.
Of course, the Russkies could never develop nukes themselves, they had to steal them ! You believe this childish nonsense ?  Maybe our
many Nazi scientists were better than theirs. The USA was born in aggression as Robert Kagan recently noted in the conservative
New Republic, his essay can be downloaded on the web.
Chicago has FORGOTTEN more about thinking than you ever knew
nor does he rely on primitive the earth is flat commonsense which can
mislead untutored fellows like you. You need to know history, economics, philosophy and politics, all of which you know NOTHING.
One final note for now, Carter’s projected defense spending for his second term EXCEEDED Reagan’s. So much for “appeasement.”

Posted by blondemike on Dec 11, 2006 at 7:40 PM

Mike,

You’ve done about as good a job as anyone could do. This Scorp is a warmonger. All he knows is violence and rigid thinking. Too bad.

Scorp,

Most socialists don’t subscribe to the Soviet model of authoritarian central planning. Most socialists don’t regard the market as either strictly a capitalist creation or a natural, transcendental institution that has always existed by virtue of human nature but rather a quintessentially historic and modern innovation which uses price to reflect the true scarcity of resources and to create certain efficiencies in production and distribution. Prices can also be used to clear markets to some extent or to bring them nearer to equalibrium. Oskar Lange a Polish Socialist theorist believed in market socialism using some aspects of classical price theory and planning to create a mixed economy encompassing cooperative forms of ownership, petty capitalism in small scale farming and urban retail, and state control of certain heavy industry and infrastructure. It could possibly work. Yugoslavia did well with it until the late 1970s when energy prices caused growth problems. The economies of eastern europe were highly productive as well. Our capitalist economy isn’t really free. The problem is concentrated ownership and the skewed distribution of wealth. This routes investment away from affordable services, affordable housing,. consumer durables, and light industrial goods toward niche markets, luxury markets, and high priced durables.  Most working and middle class people are priced out of the market and can’t afford new cars, health insurence, or a whole range of durables that were within reach when the middle and working classes were the core of the economy. I have had many people in the healthcare and pharmacutical industries tell me that greed for profits is pushing up fees and prices at a much faster rate than costs and the people with incomes at or below the median aren’t relevant to profit making which can be done without their purchasing power though not without their labor!! 

This is the story behind Walmart. A few people get rich by shipping the manufacturing sector of the economy to low wage countries while the impoverished lower classes consume the cheap goods that put still further independant producers and retailers, unionized food retailers that pay benefits, and small manufacturing suppliers out of business thus further concentrating the world economy and skewing the US distribution of income even more. Thus, Walmart becomes self-justifying. We are no longer a middle class consumer society. We are now a consumers of cheap foreign goods and dependant on foreign capital to hold up the dollar and bloat the financial markets for the decreasing number of rich who rely on the financialization of the economy for a living.

Financial markets are now mostly speculative. Financial flows far exceed the value of productive activity to absorb and utilize it. Finance is involved in merger and aquisition activity, leveraged buyouts, and speculation. This is due to a drastic drop in effective demand due to the impoverishment of more and more people. The economy is now run on debt and the average annual rate of per capital job creation is decreasing. The Bush economy has failed most people.

Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Dec 11, 2006 at 10:39 PM

Scorp,

I believe that historians will see Leninist centralized state planning and ownership as a development and modernization strategy for poor backward countries whose brief experience with industrial capitalism was highly destabilizing.  These countries, China, Russia, Vietnam, Korea, and some others all experienced deep political and social trauma.  They either experienced rapid integration into the global economy at the hands of foreign colonizers which developed a foreign dominated capitalist system that was highly exploititive using hated domestic collaberators as partners often in the context of war and occupation or, as in the case of Russian, industrialized quickly and thoroughly causing deep social dislocation and ultimately trauma due to a catastrophic war. Russia also experienced a long Civil War and Occupation by 14 invading powers which took a brutal toll on the people and ultimately lead to the rise of Stalin. In most of these cases, Communism was built upon countries which had long experienced dictatorship, corruption, and brutality. War and Occupation deepened the trauma and the popularity of the communist forces as liberators. This is especially true since the development of capitalism in these countries wasn’t based on a broad based indigenous middle class and independant small farming class but on foreign tied oligarchs and urban rich who consumed most of their fortunes instead of investing them productively to develop a balanced economy capable of absorbing peasants leaving the rural areas for the cities. The failed to create high wage manufacturing and other work that would serve as the basis of an economy which systematically raise incomes and productivity. These economies remained stagnant and the corrupt preserve of the rich few at low levels of development.

Massive poverty and exploitation often against the backdrop of war and colonization served as the context for Leninist communism. One country served as an exception, Cuba. However, despite a growing middle class in the post WWII era and impressive average annual GNP growth rates the Cuban economy’s income profile remained highly skewed. Cuba’s economy also lacked a diverse base.  Cuba relied on tourism and sugar exports which created a very narrow externally oriented economy, largely delinked from the increasingly impoverished rural majority. In addition, a brutal dictatorship under Fulgencio Batista repressed the political aspirations of the poor and working classes as he catered to the rich and foreign economic interests. Castro’s revolution succeeded in ending poverty and boosted Cuba’s external trade and improved its terms of trade but ultimately became bogged down in bureaucracy and inefficiency. Castro was also dictatorial and repressive. Much of this was due to US imperialist hostility. Nonetheless, Cuba made great revolutionary gains such as the spread of literacy and health care to the rural areas, the diversification of the economy with manufacturing accounting for well over a third of the GDP by the mid-1970s, and dramatic improvements in Sugar production. 

Scorp, you are doubtless impervious to the faults of your country. Its imperialist aggression and exploititive economic impact on the third world has left a legacy of death, poverty, ecological damage, instability,  social chaos, and war. Mike, myself, and others have tried to get you to see a different side to US history and politics but you stubbornly refuse. This is too bad!

Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Dec 11, 2006 at 11:45 PM

CDC -

I must say that your last two posts (except when you called me a warmonger) have been characterized by more rational discourse and less polemical rants.  Let me illustrate what I find objectionable in your rants.  This is from your learned discussion on Order 81:

This opens the door to corporate domination of the Iraqi seed market and the abuse of power to make Iraq dependant (sic) on foreign produced seeds while attempting to obliterate from the market the genetically diverse traditional variety of seeds. The New seeds are being promoted toward larger farmers with deep corporate connections who will produce mostly for export and making Iraq dependant on imports of cheap US grains whose price will increase once poorer local farmers are put out of business.  Iraq will become a base for growing genetically modified food for lucreative (sic) export markets to enrich large corporations while the local population remains food insecure and dependant on foreign imports. Millions are being spent in USAID reconstruction contracts to promote export oriented cash cropping of GM foods promoting linkages of local farmers to TNCs with agreements to purchase seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides for years. The bulk of the earnings will go to the TNCs while Iraqi farmers will deplete their soils requiring the further purchase of highly expensive inputs from the TNCs.

Quite apart from Global South’s gross misrepresentation of the nature and purpose of Order 81 (GS was lying), you have written, as above, knowledgeably about Iraq, Iraq farmers, historical farming methods and practices in the Middle East, and corporate agribusiness marketing, while emphasizing that the corporations are rapacious and domineering.  Are you qualified to write these things?  Have you ever been to the Middle East?  Have you ever farmed?  Have you ever shoveled manure fertilizer?  Do you know what a moldboard is, or a whiffletree?  Have you any experience with agribusiness?  No x 6. 

So, what is your basis for saying, “This opens the door to corporate domination of the Iraqi seed market and the abuse of power to make Iraq dependent on foreign produced seeds while attempting to obliterate from the market the genetically diverse traditional variety of seeds.”  Duh.  From your personal knowledge of the subject, maybe it closes the door, opens the window, and cleans last years bird nest out of the flue; you just don’t know.  This is insane, CDC.  This is an artificial construct by people, not in pursuit of knowledge or accuracy, but of ideological advantage.  For example, how many corporations do you know that waste money “attempting to obliterate from the market the genetically diverse traditional variety of seeds”.  Any attempt of this nature in a country the size of Iraq would cost many billions of dollars, with no conceivable payoff.  And if such an effort was completely successful in Iraq, similar seeds are available in Syria, Turkey, and Iran. 

And this: “Iraq will become a base for growing genetically modified food for lucrative export markets to enrich large corporations while the local population remains food insecure and dependent on foreign imports.”  Name the “lucrative export markets” to which you refer.  Europe (and Russia since 1991) are exporting grain, not importing grain.  Do you know how much it costs to ship grain?  And you think that Iraq will simultaneously import and export grain?  You may know how to read and regurgitate silly propaganda, but you don’t know dip about business practices. 

And especially this: ” ... making Iraq dependent on imports of cheap US grains whose price will increase once poorer local farmers are put out of business.”  CDC, how in the hell can anyone force an increase in the price of grain?  Do you understand how the international grain markets work?  Obviously not.  All grain markets are international.  Since Russia and Ukrania have started exporting grain again, after a 73 year hiatus corresponding exactly with the rise and fall of communism, the world supply of grain has increased, since the countries that made up the old Soviet Union are no longer importing grain and have begun exporting grain again, as they did before 1918.  All things being equal, Ukrania is much closer to Iraq than Houston is, and grain will come through the Black Sea from Odessa (Odessa, Ukrania, not Odessa, Texas), not from Houston.  If grain is shipped from Houston to Iraq, it is because it is cheaper than any alternative.  It is not because the price is forced higher, which is both impossible and ridiculous.  I used to make a good living as a professional engineer, and now I make a much better living as a commodities trader, mostly grains.  I know exactly what I am talking about, and you, Sir, have a profound ignorance of the subject. 

What is the point of all this nonsense, other than to criticize?  And if leftists want to criticize, say, agribusiness, shouldn’t such criticism at least be rational?  There is no doubt that criticism, preferably in the form of competition, is benefical, but lying about facts or speculating about motives is counterproductive in the long term, and works only on the ignorant.

Do you understand why I consider your rants, such as the above, absurd?  Do you understand that as long as you talk this way you have no credibility with me.  Maybe with your professors who taught you these foul habits, but not with me. 

Let me get off my high horse, and I will try to engage in rational discourse if you will.

Posted by scorp on Dec 12, 2006 at 9:17 AM

Scorp, Chicago very correctly labelled Brenner’s fascist grab for what it is. An attempt to turn over the resources of a sovereign state to multinational thieves of the kind you have been working for in Occupied
Iraq. Your intensity on Order 81 was a bit too transparent. I’m very happy
when the insurgents capture ilk like you and behead them, that will be
your market disincentive not to muck around in other peoples’ lands.
You are a rightwing troll whose sole purpose is to disrupt these boards
with your moronic rants, a combination of the Readers’s Digest circa
1954, the John Birch Society, Limbaugh, the Weekly Nonstandard
and trash much lower down the line. Even the Birchers long ago caught
on to Nixon, Reagan, both Bushes and the free trade NAFTA hoax.
Your an exceptionally dense moronic true believer of the type that Eric
Hoffer described in his book of the same title.
One arbitrary, unproven assertion after another like Reagan’s welfare
cadillac queen anecdote and claiming he was at Buchenwald when he
never left California ! Five minutes of research disproves all ASSertions
made by your lying butt.
As regards the former USSR they ARE MUCH WORSE OFF SINCE THE FALL OF COMMUNISM. The life expectancy has gone from 71 to 55 years under capitalism in the former Soviet Union. 50% of the population is living in serious poverty, not the case under communism,
infant mortality and AIDS have skyrocketed under capitalism, crime
which was repressed by the Communists has soared out of control
in Moscow and other major Russian cities, education has greatly deteriorated, medical care which was once adequate, not great, is
now not even adequate. The civil society has collapsed and there
are a great many MORE people imprisoned today in the former USSR
than were under the Reds. So much for capitalist success.
You never saw massive begging on Moscow streets under the Reds,
you do now.
Read Arundahti Roy and Noam Chomsky on the multinational plans
to start charging farmers for THEIR OWN SEEDS. If you think that that
is not causing great starvation & discontent you are even denser than
we all thought. In fact, several thieving attempts by multinationals to
privatize water are being reversed after communites from the UK to
the Third World have had disastrous experiences with water privatization. You may be a low level businessman of some sort or
an employee of same but you know zip about economics or history.
Chicago, I think you should close down the debate with this goon, he
never answers our rebuttals, he keeps repeating the same old recycled
rightist lies, what’s the point ?
By the way, the USSR was exporting grain to China, India and the Arab world long before the fall of the USSR. They had shortages but not over
a 73 year period.
Commodities trading is a good way to lose your shirt. 90% of all the
people in the field eventually fail. It’s a total crap shoot because the market itself is based on irrational whims much of the time. You keep
changing your occupations too, on another thread I recall you were a
home builder in Ohio raving about the economy there which has lost 40% of all industrial jobs since Bush 2. Then your an engineer, that
one I might believe because that’s what you did in Occupied Iraq for
the dictator Fascist Brenner, et al.
NAFTA has impoverished Mexican agriculture contrary to the Clinton-GOP lies when they promoted it. You seriously expect us to believe that similar “free trade” policies won’t decimate Iraq ???? Contrary to all
recent historical evidence ? I’m sorry that you flunked out of Junior College but please take your anti-Professorial tirades elsewhere.
And who would even WANT your “respect” ?????

Posted by blondemike on Dec 12, 2006 at 10:20 AM

Scorp, you couldn’t engage in “rational discourse” if your life depended on it. You are a typical conservative fascist, emphatic assertions in lieu
of argument, ad hominem attacks & condesecending namecalling when your opponent rebuts you. Chicago has been very polite with you,
I haven’t because I grew in a conservative environment and I can recognize your fallacies a mile down the road. No one would take you
seriously because of your very tone. I give it right back to you because
I don’t play pattycakes with shitbirds. There’s an old saying that a little
knowledge is a dangerous thing, a very little bit of knowledge in your case. In science they critically examine their own assumptions, their
own premises, people like you never do. It’s not a monopoly of the
Right but it’s almost totally widespread on the Right. I subscribe to
many pubs ranging from The Nation to The New American and I
usually find the more nuanced argumentson the left. Occasionally
I’ll disagree with left on gun control or affirmative action just like I
totally disagree with the Right on “the drug war” and abortion.
But as bad as many of the libs are, 99% of the real simpletons
are the so-called “conservatives” like you, radical reactionary
fascists posing as conservatives.
Your not going to convince or successfully intimidate or browbeat
anyone here. Get a life and be gone.

Posted by blondemike on Dec 12, 2006 at 10:31 AM

In fact, I did farm in the Middle East. I picked vegetables on a Moshav in Israel. Importing and Exporting similar commodities at the same time is called redundant trade in the ag biz and is quite common. We do it with beef all the time!! In Iraq the idea is to import surplus US basic grains while cultivating and exporting specialty grains for exotic pastas via TNC marketing networks. A handful of large domestic farmers will participate in this operation. It won’t balance the trade if there are greater grain imports or if most of the earnings accrue to the TNCs.

Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Dec 12, 2006 at 10:40 AM

Chicago, this is exactly what “free trade” policies have wrought in Latin
America.  People are starving while their main food commodities are
being bought by multinationals for export to the US.

Posted by blondemike on Dec 12, 2006 at 11:38 AM

The market for GM seeds are amoung the most concentrated markets in the entire world. Just six TNCs control 98% of the global market in GM seeds. About 80% of all patents on genetically modified foods are held by 13 TNCs. The roughly one and a half billion farmers in the world who rely on traditional farming methods are now threatened. Their livings and national markets are are threatened. So is global food security. Poor farmers ability to continue to farm and save seeds for traditional farming is threatened by the move to GM food cultivation . It will cause more, not less, starvation. Profits of TNCs will go up, however, as rural to urban migration dramatically increases in response to agricultural concentration in third world countries causing destabilizing social pressures in many poor societies.

Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Dec 12, 2006 at 4:09 PM

Thanks, again, Chicago, it is a pleasure to read you because you actually know what your talking about and impart valid information
instead of easily refutable Repug talking points.
I think worldwide necktie parties are in order for the corporate hogs
who are condemning billions to world poverty and if a few of the hired
hand engineers (Scorp) get scooped up as has happened in insurgent
Iraq, too bad. It’s not like Hitler drove all the trains himself….........
Some of these “little guys” are bad news too.
In people of Scorp’s mindset I don’t think the absence of a head makes
much difference.

Posted by blondemike on Dec 12, 2006 at 4:35 PM

CDC -

I am impressed that you actually have experience with agriculture.

But I am not impressed with you changing the subject.  You spelled out in some detail how the Iraqi native grains were to be “obliterated” and commercial grain seeds would be forced on the poor Iraqi farmers, to nobody’s benefit but the commercial grain companies.  None of that is true, of course.

Now you are talking about meat and vegetables and specialty grains for exotic pastas and redundant trade.  All of which is true and interesting, but totally unrelated to our discussion.

In 2003, Iraq produced 900,000 metric tons of wheat and 800,000 metric tons of barley.  With USAID assistance, pilot projects are doubling the amount of grain being produced per hectare. Man, that is a lot of exotic pasta.  In fact, specialty grains, for pasta or beer or whatever, are sold by the pound and usually containerized in 15,000-pound packages for shipment.  Bulk wheat goes by the shipload, and a 600

Posted by scorp on Dec 13, 2006 at 8:51 AM

Mike -

Just out of curiosity, how tall are you?

Posted by scorp on Dec 13, 2006 at 9:04 AM

There are many more than five million people starved to death every year in the Third World by US-WTO-IMF-World Bank food export policies.
If you want to compare death tolls Stalin’s is very bad but dwarfed by the
death toll in the third world every year due to capitalistic agri-business
policies.
Letting farmers keep THEIR OWN SEEDS is not restricting them to subsistence, forcing them to buy them is. Iraq’s economy is a total mess thanks to the US invasion so don’t waste our time playing another one of your dubious stats games here, brings to mind the old saw about lies and statistics.
And yes many of the displaced in the third world are starving to death in
either rural areas or urban ghettoes, your complacent assumption that
starvation takes place only in “enemy” countries is another Big Lie promulgated by you.
Chicago, don’t waste time on this agent provocateur.
There are no crops that are drought or disease resistant,  that genetically modified foods are more nutritious is arguable to put it mildly.  More productive yes but that’s been going on for hundreds of
years.
Eight feet.

Posted by blondemike on Dec 13, 2006 at 9:27 AM

CDC

Posted by scorp on Dec 13, 2006 at 9:33 AM

If GM seeds were the choice of farmers in the third world or even in the first (which they’re not) the WTO would not have needed to push through the TRIPS agreement in 1994 which guarantees the TNCs 20 year patent protections for their seeds. The seeds often contaminate the soil and germinate all over cropping up in other fields or in the same field in places where it has not been planted for several seasons. Monsanto el al. take farmers to court for royalty payments in response to these situations and often win. There companies are a menace and are trying to control the food supply all over the world. It is a dangerous situation. They threaten the world’s biodiversity. According to the FAO, about 75% of the world’s biodiversity has been lost over the past century. The proportion is actually much higher for certain third world countries! Concentrated patent control of seeds will only worsen the situation over time! There are NO free markets. All economies are administered by governments or corporations or both. The losers are working people of all types. BTW, stop bringing up Stalin. No one is responsible for him nor does anyone advocate his system. It is obnoxious to keep harping on his miserable legacy.

Also, the 1.7 million tonnes of grain you cited with US help is not impressive since pre-1991 average annual grain yields in Iraq were over 1.4 million metric tonnes. In any case, F. William Engdahl, a German Journalist, cites 2003 Iraqi grain production figures at only half the pre-1990 levels. A USDA report confirmed this fact at the time. One and a quarter decades of war, drought,  and sanctions took the rural economy down so far it could only go up. Grain production levels are still low. Only about a quarter of the land is arable. The Iraqis will now lack their former biodiversity and will be export dependent on western markets. Domestic food shortages will result when balance of payments bottlenecks occur or the Iraqi currency devalues on the world exchange market. The farming community will shrink without compensating elsewhere in the economy. The Iraqi situation is not economically comparable to the US one. We developed independantly over time. The Iraqis were colonized and consequently don’t have sovereign control over their fate. There is also an unnecessary war.

Large seed companies see Iraq as a great to start GM pasta grain seed cultivation. It will serve export markets all over the world. Half the new seeds sold to Iraqi farmers are for export field crops of this type according to USAID. There is experimentation with some large farms north of Baghdad through US based University research. Texas A&M is one such institution. My guess is that it is easier to get Iraqis to participate in the pilot program and because they will sell the harvest to the TNC marketers for less than a US farmers would. The profit margin for the TNC is probably enormous. This will add little to Iraq’s foreign exchange earnings which will continue to come from oil exports. Iraq is already 85% import dependent for domestically consumed grains. This is less about efficiency and trade than global control of world agriculture by large TNCs. Already the farm sector has shrunk over the last 20 years with traditional farming playing very little role in domestic consumption. Mostly it is served by costlier subsidized imports

Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Dec 13, 2006 at 10:36 AM

All change is “dynamic” according to “Scorp” and must be accepted like a law of nature. Not true as Pat Buchanan has noted many times about
“free trade” and outsourcing, they are human decisions that can be reversed by humans. Capitalism is a man-created system, it is not a
law of nature.
One of the things that was done on November 7 was to vote 30 of the “free trade” clones out and now changes have to be made. Clinton
and Gore and the GOP lied big time about NAFTA, it does not have
the labor & environmental protections they claimed. That can be changed or NAFTA repealed. National governments CAN regulate
international corporations. For decades South Korea had a law that
forbade disinvestment under penalty of death. Guess what ? There
was no disinvestment. Surprise, surprise.
Scorp, we don’t expect you to do anything about it. But the rest of us
can.
Thanks, Chicago, for setting the record straight in the face of this endless blowhard’s monomania.

Posted by blondemike on Dec 13, 2006 at 12:02 PM

CDC -

The market for GM seeds are amoung (sic) the most concentrated markets in the entire world.

If GM seeds were the choice of farmers in the third world or even in the first (which they’re not) the WTO would not have needed to push through the TRIPS agreement in 1994 which guarantees the TNCs 20 year patent protections for their seeds.

Duh!  Well, which is it?  Concentration in a market in which there is no demand is meaningless.  Who would go to the trouble of patenting something useless?  Intellectual property laws are well defined: patents, copyrights, trademarks.  Why are you hung up on this one? 

Since USAID has already demonstrated that grain production can be doubled in Iraqi fields, why do you think that the Iraqi farmers will refuse to participate?  Why are you attempting to refuse to participate in behalf of the Iraqi farmers?  If Iraq doubles its grain production, who gets stuck with having to eat all that bread?

The battle to feed all of humanity is over.  In the 1970s the world will undergo famines—hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death.

The Population Bomb, Paul Ehrlich, 1968

Ehrlich was wrong in 1968, and you are wrong now.  You are blindly pushing an agenda, and you are quite incapable of rational consideration of all the facts and variables.

The Green Revolution, invented in America, is working.  Has anything ever been created in a socialist society besides stagnation, destruction, and death?

Posted by scorp on Dec 13, 2006 at 5:45 PM

Mike -

Five feet, six inches, max.  I bet you are pretty tough, though, right?

Posted by scorp on Dec 13, 2006 at 5:49 PM

scorp, just reiterating your unproved assertions does not make them right. The Green Revolution in the third world is not working whatever may be happening here with corporate agriculture.
I notice that like all unintelligent people you frequently use “duh.”
Is that because you are unable to think up a real word ?
USAID’s charts or projections for Iraq bear no relation to the real world.
Did Brenner let you ride in his limousine ?
That Ehrlich overstated his case in 1968 bears no relation on the disastrous food export policies the US is promoting in the Third World.
Parenti sourced a study which showed that the Indians in the Guatemalan Highlands ate better 500 years ago before the Spanairds
came than they do today. Oh, what “revolution” were you blabbering
about ?
In socialist societies from England to Cuba to China to South Korea
to Sweden to Germany to Belgium to Norway, great medical care
has been created, great education & literacy has been created, great
infrastructure has been created, great old age pensions and retirement
communities have been created, great elimination of all forms of discrimination has been created, great SAFE cities has been created,
and so on for every socio-economic indicator.
Oh I’ m sorry, that wasn’t what you read in your Far Right readings ?

Posted by blondemike on Dec 13, 2006 at 5:58 PM

Scorp,

Patented high yield seeds are not, as you suggest in your criticism of Paul Ehrlich’s assertions in the late 1960s, a response to the problem of low agricultural productivity, population explosions, or other Malthusian falsehoods. It is based on a desire of a few large agribusiness firms to monopolize and control the source of the world’s food supply in order to profit enormously. When six large companies control almost all the patented seed varieties for field crops there is a danger that is greater than simple restraint of trade. They have control of the world food supply and can turn over a billion and a half farmers into their personal vassels for inputs and markets while siphoning off the bulk of the food business profits. They can further do this at the expense of the world’s treasured biodiversity, ecological soundness, nutritional value of the crop yield, and the economic health of many local rural economies. I have searched the web all over and 90% of the features oppose GM seed patenting. Farmers all over the world, including in the US and Canada, are organizing against the WTO’s TRIPS agreement for patenting seeds. Farmers want the right to continue to save, breed, and exchange seeds as they have done for over 10,000 years.  Farmers are often pressured into buying high yield patented seeds in order to qualify for subsidies, loans, or to be able to market their harvests through big networks rather than local farmers markets. This allows the big Six to take over the world’s seed market and lowers biodiversity promoted by traditional methods for thousands of years. Most farmers oppose the big seed companies just as most ranchers oppose the big meatpackers who suppress the price of cattle and sides of beef. What Monsanto and others are trying to do even violates US law.

Some farmers have been successfully sued for royalties from seeds cross pollinating from adjacent fields into their fields in cases where they were of a GM patent protected variety of field crop seed. This is quite overboard. It is only a sample of the kind of threat to farming engendered by seed patents. Much of what seed companies do is patent varieties based on traditional strains anyhow!! This doesn’t credit the farmer. This is where the real “theft” lies.

Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Dec 13, 2006 at 9:37 PM

CDC -

<blockquote> Patented high yield seeds are not, as you suggest in your criticism of Paul Ehrlich

Posted by scorp on Dec 14, 2006 at 7:59 AM

Chicago, I’m getting tired of repeating myself over and over again.
No criticism of you at all but have you noticed the way this rightist
clown has hijacked a thread on the tax revolt ? I think we need to
stop playing into his agenda. Just was dealing with some of the
black “left” extremists on some other threads and I realized that
I’m as big a fool for playing into their endless game. It’s one thing
to make your points, it’s quite another to make the same variant
thirty times to the same dimbulb.
Take care. Sure I’ll see you on another thread.

Posted by blondemike on Dec 14, 2006 at 9:36 AM

You said he was wrong in 1968 and he is still wrong today. YOU need to learn to think you unschooled asshole and stop criticizing others. I also think that six seed companies controlling the world food supply is wrong, dangerous, and unwise. It is not comparable to other examples of monopolies. For about 50 years farmers have become increasingly productive with less and less of the food dollar accruing to them. They are only making big suppliers and TNCs rich.

Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Dec 14, 2006 at 11:14 AM

Chicago, I was just doing a final walk through here. Your points
are good as always but it’s like trying to pour water down a very small
receptacle.  Scorp is committed to nonperception of any thoughts
that are not congenial to his Panglossian world view.

Posted by blondemike on Dec 14, 2006 at 3:32 PM

CDC -

You said (Ehrlich) was wrong in 1968 and he is still wrong today.

Well, no.  What I actually said was:

Ehrlich was wrong in 1968, and you (CDC) are wrong now.

Ummm, CDC, criticism involves a value judgement.  Stating a fact (Ehrlich’s prophecy did not come to pass), a fact with which you have already agreed, is not criticism.  When you call me an “asshole”, that contains a value judgement, and it is criticism.  Now I reply that you are as nekulturny as Mike, and I have made a value judgement and criticized you.

What in the fuck are they teaching in school these days?  You can’t read, you can’t think, and you have adopted a strange religion, socialism, that glorifies ignorance and irrationality.  Socialism created a disaster in the Soviet Union, it is creating a disaster in Europe now, and Putin and Chavez and the Mullahs are in hot pursuit of similar totalitarian goals, whether they are called socialist or not.

Not to worry.  President Bush was ill advised, and chose to fight a politically correct war against the terrorists; it is not been as successful as he hoped.  Now he will fight to win, and it will be over as fast as the first three weeks of Afghanistan and the first three weeks of Iraq.  Enjoy.

Posted by scorp on Dec 14, 2006 at 3:51 PM

Scorp (Ann Coulter?),

Anyone who has watched what is going on in Iraq or Afghanistan has to conclude they are the biggest failures ever in US presidential history. We are shamed before the world.

Further, Farmers have been complaining a long time about their simultanious rising productivity and declining income. This is the fault of TNCs who sell ever greater expensive inputs that create self justifying needs for use. More and more money is going to TNCs at the expense of farmers and consumers. Ecological farming is organic, rising in popularity, taking a larger share of the market, and better all around. Farmers are a very conservative lot. Ask them why they have a problem with big agribusiness.

Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Dec 14, 2006 at 4:25 PM

Three weeks ???????????????
Scorp, you must be on straight smack. Killing 700,000 Iraqis and 20,000
Afghanis is “politically correct” restraint ??????????????
Is it hard writing with that large white jacket fastened on ?

Posted by blondemike on Dec 14, 2006 at 5:21 PM

Mike,

In all our wars, despite official policy distinguishing between friend and foe in any particular place we’re fighting, we always end up conflating the entire population in propaganda and deed.  This was true in Vietnam and it is true in Iraq. Racism, thus, drives much of the enthusiasm for conflict. People never make a distinction between the people and the leadership over whom they have no control.  This kind of racism is useful in encouraging soldiers to fight and so it goes on in war after war.  This leads to war crimes like My Lai and Haditha, America IS quintessentially a violent place with violent people. 

When Scorp (I think he might be Ann Coulter) calls the deaths of 700,000 Iraqis and over 20,000 Afghans the result of restraint imposed by political correctness he is expressing the racist belief that all those who had the misfortune of being in the way of a raging US imperial onslaught born of greed and arrogance deserve death. This is a common belief of all such people. It was believed by the Japanese warlords, the Nazis, and British Imperialists.  Scorp’s ideas share muxch in common with theirs. Imperialism is utterly racist. .

Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Dec 14, 2006 at 8:16 PM

CDC, Mike -

The 700,000 figure came from Lancet, and has been utterly refuted.  Don’t be so gullible/stupid.  Iraqbodycount give a maximum and minimum range for civilian fatalities, and is widely accepted as the best available data.  Iraqbodycount gives a cause/circumstance of death, and most of the bodies are the result of terrorist activity and internecine warfare.  About 10,000 fatalities are attributable to Coalition activity, most of them in the first three weeks, and these include civilians used for shields by terrorists.

You are incapable of cogent, persuasive arguments, so now you employ dishonesty.  Neat trick if you can convince anybody.

Mike you keep promising to leave and then you always come back.  I really enjoy your nonsense, it provides an pleasant interlude to my busy day.  Please stick around.

Posted by scorp on Dec 14, 2006 at 10:46 PM

The Lancet figures are actually the only scientifically established ones according to most reasonable sources.  The Lancet study is globally the most respected source on the subject of Iraqi civilian casualties caused in the conflict with coalition forces and the insurgency since May 2003.

Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Dec 15, 2006 at 9:14 AM

That figure has NOT been refuted and Lancet is a highly respected UK
medical journal which has much more credibility than the Bush Administration. When Bush lyingly denies something that’s “refutation”
according to Scorp !
The rest of your statements, Scorp, are what psychiatrists call projection. Look it up in the DSM.
Prior to the 700,000 deaths, more properly called murders, were two
million civilian deaths caused by the genocidal embargo under both
Bushes and Clinton. Next you’ll be telling us 200 people died at Auschwitz, Scorp. You are one uneducated dumbass. I can see why
your Profs flunked you out of college…...............

Posted by blondemike on Dec 15, 2006 at 10:14 AM

CDC -

If the Lancet figures are correct, about 770 people have died each day since March 2003.  But the MSM is joyful when they can report one-tenth that number.  I realize that members of the leftist media and socialists (same thing) are incompetent to count beyond twenty-one, but surely there would be wild celebrations at the NYT if they could report numbers anywhere close to the Lancet figures.

The Lancet figures exceed the combined numbers of fatalities from the fire bomb raids on Japan, plus Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with Dresden thrown in for good measure. 

Learn to think, CDC.  Don’t be a little dumbshit all your life, like Mike.

Posted by scorp on Dec 15, 2006 at 10:26 AM

Mike -

I have never been to Auschwitz.  But I have been to Dachau, Verdun, Tuol Sleng, the Killing Fields, and WTC. 

The lesson any sane person would learn from these experiences is that terrorism, whether it is described as communist, socialist, fascist, or Islamist, needs to be stomped out of existence with the least possible delay, at whatever necessary cost.  President Bush has been remiss in pussyfooting around in Iraq, while Iran is building nukes.

I do not credit you with sanity, much less understanding, but things are coming to a head, as in Europe 1938.  Are we going to squash the terrorists now at relatively low cost, or will things have to spin out of control, with millions dead, as in WWII? 

There is no question the USA will prevail, but will it be at low cost (in lives and treasure), or at high cost?  You fucking socialists, like the fucking Islamists (Ahmadinejad and al-Qa’eda in particular) seek chaos, out of which each of you (socialists and Islamists, with your conflicting views of the future) expect to create your own new world.  Neither the Islamist nor the socialist world views will ever come to pass. 

Merry Christmas.

Posted by scorp on Dec 15, 2006 at 11:34 AM

The Lancet study implies about 500 deaths daily. They claim 601,000 deaths from gunfire with another 54,000 deaths due to the health effects of the war related to dirty drinking water due to lack of electricity to run water purification plants, disease epidemics, and lack of medical care.  About 31% of the gunfire deaths are said to be from coalition forces with the remainder from terrorism and insurgent attacks. These figures are as of October 2006. Most mortality experts claim that the Lancet’s research methods were sound.

Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Dec 15, 2006 at 11:45 AM

Scorp, if you went to Indochina you would see the results of four million
murders caused by the US policy from 1961-75.
It’s cheap and very easy to only list official enemy death tolls but the
death toll from world capitalism over four centuries could be as high
as several hundred million or even half a billion deaths.
The US is the leading terroist state on the planet closely followed by
Israel, see William Blum’s Rogue States and Noam Chomsky’s Rogue
State. The USA has supported terror from Cuba to Chile to Zaire to Guatemala to Indonesia to East Timor to the Philippines to Vietnam
& Cambodia-Laos to the Israeli Occupied Territories to Haiti to you
name it.
We internally are bringing down the US Empire as the Europeans brought down the Soviet one. We have lost in Iraq, we are going to
lose in Afghanistan, we are losing every place in the Middle East
and if Bush starts a war in Iran he will lose there too and get impeached in the bargain. You will be held accountable for your
participation in war crimes under Brenner and Rummy. Following
orders will not be a legal defense.
If the UK hadn’t given that stupid guarantee to Poland on the German
city of Danzig there would have been no WW2. That war led to the Communist takeover of one third of the world including all the places we were ostensibly fighting to “free.” WW1 led to Bolshevik Revolution,
Versailles Treaty, Hitler and WW2. Every one of our crusades was
unjustified and lead to a far worse state of affairs including the Korean
& Vietnam disasters where we backed one side of a civil war.
The socialist worldview has come to pass in Europe, Japan, Taiwan,
Singapore, South Korea and most of the Third World. The Islamic
worldview now has over one billion adherents in many countries.
The Scorp rightwing worldview was repudiated by the US voters on
November 7 and the GOP is a dying party. They can only rally behind a dimwit like McCain, who GOT EXACTLY WHAT HE DESERVED FOR
TRYING TO MASS MURDER IN VIETNAM.

Posted by blondemike on Dec 15, 2006 at 1:06 PM

Chicago, thanks for the detailed breakdown of Bush’s Mass Murder in
Iraq.
Scorp will get back to you after Rush sends him the latest talking points
for pinheads sheet for today. Be patient with Scorp, he has to constantly
rotate his thumb from his facial to his anal orifice and back every 15 minutes. And then he ran out of tin foil this morning. To top it off the pipes in his trailer froze last night. He also to get to the creek to do his
undies, they are rather shitstained after seven straight weeks.
He’s been stuck on page 5 of The Idiot’s Guide To Economics for
five months now….....we better cut him some slack.

Posted by blondemike on Dec 15, 2006 at 2:06 PM

Mike -

<blockquote>

Posted by scorp on Dec 15, 2006 at 10:14 PM

Scorp,

You throw around political labels in a meaningless manner. Imperialism was more the creature of 19th century capitalism than merchantilism. In the period of merchantilism settler colonialism and conquest, especially in the New World, was prevalent but imperialism picked up steam in the mid to late nineteenth centuries when the UK and US industrial revolutions got into gear. Western European overseas imperialism was also a response to monopoly capitalism’s need for cheap raw material inputs, food to feed growing urban working class populations, and overseas markets for surplus production. It also served the UK as a place of settlement to send politically destabilizing surplus urban population.  The more modern form of imperialism was more integrative and intense. It was more production and less market related than earlier types. A good source is Harry Magdoff’s book “Imperialism”. 

You mention slavery. US slavery was not anathema to US or world capitalism but rather a handmaiden to it.  It is said that the accumulation produced by slavery funded the UK’s early industrial revolution. It also developed foreign markets for US cotton and tobacco and thus integrated the US into the world economy for the first time in history.  By the time Southern Cannons opened fire on Fort Sumner over two-thirds of world cotton consumption came from the US. Slavery had existed centuries before capitalism but it was only with the dawn of capitalism that it became so unprecedentedly intense, systematic, and permanent with no hope of manumission as with its earlier forms. Far from mitigating or eliminating slavery, capitalism intensified it as a form of labor domination creating super profits for a few big landholders. Slaves still exist in places even today.

Scorp, your comments on European demographics is way off base.  People will always struggle against inequality. This is why the future of capitalism is in doubt. It produces the contradictory forces of exteme wealth and poverty. It concentrates capital as it dispossess increased numbers of formerly independent producers.

People will always seek ways to mitigate the ill social effects of late capitalism. Capitalism is highly productive yet it increasingly skews the benefits of that productivity toward the rich even as the working class becomes more productive and efficient. This is unjust. It is also a source of capitalism’s weakness. The system cannot sustain itself due to lack of effective demand for its productivity. The key is to find profitable outlets for investment capital in the face of late capitalism’s tendency to accumulate more and more surplus. The system often turns to financialization in order to concentrate the economy at a profit. This is risky but preferable to the necessary Keynesian social change. Failing some catastrophic exogenous force on the system causing it to entirely restructure capital on a global basis the system will remain sluggish and stagnant limping from recession to recession unable to restart growth on its own.  WWII was one example of an exogenous trauma to the system that allowed retrenchment and renewed takeoff allowing yet a fourth long wave of capitalist expansion to follow in its wake. It is highly doubful as to whether this can happen again without a real disaster which would mitigate any positive effects. The real choice is clear. It is socialism or barbarism.

Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Dec 15, 2006 at 10:51 PM

CDC

Posted by scorp on Dec 16, 2006 at 12:47 PM

Where’s your argument, where’s your proof, Scorp ? i’ve already proved the death toll from US Imperialism is in the many of tens of millions
and have sourced it. You have no comeback but your arbitrary assertions. I have already proved and given UN & other sources for
the greater socialist general prosperity and lower mortality rate in
Cuba, west & north Europe and East Asia than what exists in the semi-capitalist US. Again, you have NO arguments, just the same tired old
rightwing bullshit as if your repetition of same is going to magically make it true ! You have nothing CONCRETE to rebut ANY argument
of myself or Chicago and then YOU tell us learn to think !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Pot, scrub thyself !  You have never demonstrated ANY thought, just
screaming, nonsensical, easily refutable assertions of the same moronic type uttered by Moron Reagan and Moron Bush Two.
Slavery is what exists under wage slave capitalism all over the third
world and in the US now. What Nike runs in Indonesia and Guatemala
is slavery pure and simple, people are locked in the concentration camp factories 20 hours a day and require permission to go to the bathroom.
The LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY WAS THE GREATEST PERIOD OF
IMPERIALIST EXPANSION IN HISTORY DWARFING THE PERSIAN, GREEK AND ROMAN EMPIRES AND YET A FUCKING IMBECILE LIKE
YOU WRITES THAT IT WENT INTO DECLINE WELL BEFORE THE 19TH
CENTURY !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
Actually capitalism did NOT start with the Industrial Revolution and goes
back at least 500 years. See World Politics in Modern Civilization by Dr.
Harry Elmer Barnes.
Scorp, you need to remove the butt plug from your stinky rear end because you totally full of shit. The only question is whether you are
the biggest liar or the dumbest bastard on planet earth.

Posted by blondemike on Dec 16, 2006 at 2:47 PM

On the body count alone, capitalism exceeds the Soviet Bloc and even the capitalist Hitler regime. What existed in the USSR, China and East
Europe was STATE CAPITALISM, not socialism.
Socialist Europe has more jobs of a better class than the 90% low wage jobs being created here and people can live well who are not
employed, unlike here. Your comments are laughable garbage and
your whole Greedy Old Pedophiles party was repudiated en masse on
Election Day. Get a life, you sick, smelly asshole, “scorp.”

Posted by blondemike on Dec 16, 2006 at 2:54 PM

I see you haven’t yet learned about civilized discourse. Scorp what I’ve forgotten years ago about thinking you’ll never learn if you live several more lifetimes. You seem to be an arrogant cracker. Am I being unfair? Did you actually attend school? Good thing for the information superhwy or lots of folks wouldn’t know their ass from a hole in the ground. That could even include me.

I found your frenetic rant laughable. Obviously I meant capitalist imperialism. US capitalism has always been inherently expansionist while Soviet Communism “consolidated Socialism in one country.” Anti-Slavery and Anti-Imperialist movements ended neither. Tenant farming in the US was slavery through debt peonage. Slavery exists all over the third world today. What makes you think the Spanish American War was “anti-imperialist?” Even mainstream historians know it was an inter-imperialist war to replace Spanish Imperialism with US imperialism. We invaded, occupied, and controlled the governments of Cuba (the Platt amendment) and the Phillipines and even debated annexing the Phillipines during the McKinley period.  By the first intervention in 1898 the US held $200 million in direct investments in Cuba.  The US held the lion’s share of direct foreigjn investments in Cuba when they forced them to sign a permanent treaty abrogating the Platt amendment in 1933 but also forcing Cuba to relinquish Guantanamo to the US Navy. The US military bases at Clark and Subic Bay afforded the US more influence in the Phillipines than the Spanish ever had. The US has 110 military bases all over the world and has intervened over 6 dozen times in the internal affairs of other countries since the end of WWII. The US is even being called Imperialist by conservative historians like Max Boot and Robert Kaplan as well as many others.

Socialist societies have depleted their capital but the Soviets had over 7% average annual growth rates althroughout the 1970s and 1980s until 1986 when global oil prices collapsed.  These societies are even more capital poor at this point since they’ve privatized so much of their economy and its been broken up and parcelled out. The economic growth rate is now quite low in the east bloc and the rate of real job creation low as well. I also know many people from socialist countries. They say they work harder here than there although the one think they like about the west is free consumer choice. I’ve often asked about persecution or slave like conditions for workers and they laugh. They work more like slaves in the US than anywhere else. Only in China do people work harder. Most people work 55 to 60 hours a week to survive, usually between two jobs. I know eastern european ex-pats who bartend, waitress, drive cab and limo and do other such jobs and very few work fewer than 60 hours a week here in Chicago. Their standard of living has gone way up in terms of all the shit they can buy at Walmart, Target, and Best Buy and other such places. If they get sick they’re screwed cuz they’re gonna end up in Cook County Hospital since they have no health insurence. I asked about health care “over there” and they said it was ok. Better than nothing. 

Both capitalism and socialism have their achievements and their problmes. I suspect that eventually most people want a mixed system. Today in the US the top 300,000 households, or 0.1% of the population has as much income as the poorest 20% of the population whose median annual income is under $11,500. About 34 million of the poorest 60 million Americans net less than $6,000/year or about $17.00/day.  Most of these folks are well under the conservatively estimated poverty line for either an individual or family. There is to much poverty here and abroad. Eventually a major crisis in the US will lead to a progressive movement that will correct this problem. I believe that at some point we will have a social democratic mixed economy that WILL work for the benefit of more than just the upper layer of society. Justice demands it.

Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Dec 16, 2006 at 4:14 PM

CDC -

I believe that historians will see Leninist centralized state planning and ownership as a development and modernization strategy for poor backward countries whose brief experience with industrial capitalism was highly destabilizing.

And you will be wrong, as always.  Lenin came to power as the head of a criminal enterprise, not unlike the Mafia.  Stalin was top gun for Lenin, and that was how Stalin came to power under Lenin.  Some of Stalin

Posted by scorp on Dec 16, 2006 at 9:06 PM

Mike

Posted by scorp on Dec 16, 2006 at 9:10 PM

Thanks, Chicago. Every country on earth has a mixed economy of public
and private including the USA. “Scorp” just uses “socialism” as an all purpose swear word, he’s not a bright guy, you notice how often he uses
interjections like “duh” because he can’t think of a real word.
For him to tell you “learn to think” is like a retarded first grader lecturing
Einstein on physics !
Kaplan’s defense of two century plus US imperialism in TNR was quite a piece ! Even Chomsky was blown away by it when I emailed it to him.
Cheers.

Posted by blondemike on Dec 17, 2006 at 2:52 PM

Scorp,

Your version of Russian history is utterly warped. No one accepts it, even conservative historians. Drop the shit if you want to debate history and politics seriously. You’re not amusing. And you tell others to “learn to think.” Shameful!!

Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Dec 17, 2006 at 10:29 PM

CDC -

Your last post was quite remarkable, even for you.  Moynihan said:

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts.

You seem to object to what I wrote about the criminal nature of the Soviet founding, though you do not spell out your objections.  Koba was one of the aliases used by Stalin:

The expropriation on Erivan Square in Tiflis on June 13, 1907, was by far the greatest success. Lenin took part in a meeting in Berlin in May to work out the details of the raid. Backed by a band of about 50 bomb-throwing thugs, Koba and Kamo attacked a bank wagon on the crowded square and carried off a fantastic sum between 250,000 and 340,000 rubles, by various accounts. Three Cossacks of the escort were killed and more than 50 bystanders were wounded. The liberal New Times burst out, “The devil alone knows how a robbery of such unheard-of audacity could be pulled off.” Lenin was overjoyed, but was soon in for a deep disappointment. Nikolai Semashko was arrested by the Swiss police when he tried to launder the “expropriated” notes there. Other money changers failed as well. The central committee was forced to burn the useless notes. Equally unsuccessful was Krasin’s plan to start printing counterfeit Russian money. On the plus side, the “marvelous Georgian Koba” was duly appreciated by Lenin for his criminal bent and started climbing up the Bolshevist ladder fast, until he was co-opted to the central committee in winter 1912, in absentia.

http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:9EfXs6ZxfO4J:www.newtimes.ru/eng/detail.asp?art_id=1648+Lenin+Koba+bank+robber&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=6

There are thousands of other references to the criminal nature of the founders of the Soviet Union in the historical record.  The criminal nature of the founding segued seamlessly into the criminal expropriations and murders of the Soviet state. 

http://www.pwhce.org/rus/stalin.html

http://www.arlindo-correia.com/stalin.html

You have this romantic view of socialism that is quite contrary to the facts.  All your thought processes are confined to your limited world view, encompassed by socialist writings, Chomsky rants, and such. 

Avoid thinking, CDC.  Your flabby brain cells probably are not up to the strain.

Posted by scorp on Dec 18, 2006 at 6:46 AM

Scorp, you have nothing new to add, in fact you have never ADDED anything to the debate here. Your reasoning consists of ad hominem
attacks, semi-literate interjections like “duh” and whatever BS you just
heard from Rush. Nice to give your far right sources but since you will
not look up and read the refs we give, why should you expect any courtesy here ?
Time to close down the debate because you have nothing to add,
you are mentally handicapped and you are always off subject.
Scorp, you have my deepest pity.

Posted by blondemike on Dec 18, 2006 at 9:55 AM

Scorp,

All revolutions start with a violent illegal act. That is what makes them revolutions. Ours was no different. Boston Tea Party, anyone?

Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Dec 18, 2006 at 10:50 AM

CDC -

Your version of Russian history is utterly warped. No one accepts it, even conservative historians. Drop the shit if you want to debate history and politics seriously.

All revolutions start with a violent illegal act. That is what makes them revolutions. Ours was no different. Boston Tea Party, anyone?

What, you mean my “version of Russian history” was right after all?  Well, fancy that!  Now you are not going to even apologize for getting it so wrong? 

The American Revolution was not a criminal enterprise, unlike the Soviet Revolution.  The American Revolution did not immediately set out to starve and murder great chunks of the populace and steal their crops and livestock, unlike the Soviet Revolution.  The American Revolution keeps getting bigger and stronger, unlike the Soviet Revolution, which disintegrated in corruption and inefficiency, and death and decay. 

Now would you like to debate these propositions?

Avoid thinking, CDC.  You are no good at it, anyway.

Posted by scorp on Dec 18, 2006 at 5:53 PM

The Russian Revolution was not a criminal enterprise, it was a legitimate overthrowing of a thousand year tyranny.
YOUR version is exactly right , Scorp. Your “facts” never check out and your interpretation is even more suspect.
The US Revolution has long since ENDED, there is NOTHING to debate, it was a violent affair which CAUSED ONE THIRD OF THE
US POPULATION TO FLEE TO CANADA AND THE VICTORS PROMPTLY COMMITTED GENOCIDE AGAINST THE NATIVE AMERICANS. YES, THAT IS WHAT IS CALLED A CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE.
We have not been a revolutionary country since the early 19th century
and the Russian Revolution ended after their great victory in WW2,
where they lost 27 MILLION fighting Hitler and we lost a few hundred
thousands, PEANUTS COMPARED TO THE SOVIETS. THE SOVIETS
WON THE EUROPEAN WAR IN WW2.
We won in Asia till Mao & Stalin took it away from us because as usual
we backed a vicious fascist, Chiang Kai-Chek.
Scorp, you don’t have to avoid thinking because you CAN’T THINK.
Always a pleasure to wipe your dirty little ass in public again.

Posted by blondemike on Dec 18, 2006 at 7:00 PM

Scorp, you need to apologize for getting everything wrong and being a
belligerent ass in doing so.

Posted by blondemike on Dec 18, 2006 at 7:02 PM

Scorp,

No revolution’s leadership deliberately intends to harm most of the people in the society in trys to transform. This makes no sense. The US revolution consolidated state power and decisively unified the country with the end of the US Civil War in 1865. The US never faced a counter revolution. It faced modest UK attempts at subversion which ended in 1812. After that the US was free to expand unhindered by foreign attacks.

By contrast, the Soviet Union was invaded, occupied, blockaded, and sealed off between 1917 and 1923 by fourteen separate invading Armies and expeditionary forces. The “attempt to strange Bolshevism in its cradel” had a traumatic effect on the nascent revolutionary society. This is especially because a Civil War was raging at the same time between the Red and White armies.The White armies were not just nationalists who wanted to continue an absurd war with the Germans and Austrians but murderous racists who killed over 200,000 innocent Jews in pogroms in order to further the goals of independance from Moscow. This was one of the first massive attempts at the types of racist ethnic cleansing that ultimately charactorized the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

The Bolsheviks before Stalin opposed forced collectivization. Scorp, you have obsessively harped on this moot point constantly whether in discussions on the Iraq War or tax cuts. It is not appropriate or helpful. In any case the early Bolsheviks before 1928 favored a policy described in Lenin’s NEP. This modest plan for the modernization of Soviet society encompassed a moderate landreform which would redistribute some land from the richest peasants to the landless and land poor peasants, use market prices to insure grain production goals, shift some resources into heavy industry for the development of the railroads and infrastructure of the country, and build large scale factories for the production of light consumer goods whose scale economies allowed greater productivity and higher wages to sustain the urban economy. This was reasonable given the constraints on Soviet development at the times. It was only Stalin who wanted forced collectivization and heavy industrialization only at the expense of most of society.

Scorp, the US began expansionist tendencies with the 1898 invasion and occupation of the Phillippines, Cuba, and a number of Latin American countries. We blew up the Maine and killed 260 crewman all of them Black while the white officiers were safely ashore in order to have an excuse to go to war with Spain. This started a pattern such as the Gulf of Tonkin fraud and the lies about WMDs in Iraq. The imperative in 1898 was the 1893 recession which was the first deep recession we experienced as a nation. Many railroads went bankrupt, and hundreds of small banks and businesses collapsed. Many farmers were ruined as well with the collapse of export prices for such cash crops as wheat and cotton. The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) became one of the first modern lobbies in DC. They argued that the recession could have been avoided and further ones headed off if the US had vast overseas markets for its surplus production and sources of cheap raw materials to contain cost structures in producer durables manufacturing in order to remain competitive. NAM argued their case successfully and thus we became an expansionist power mostly in response to our chronic tendency toward overproduction and the eventual need to seek profitable outlets for surplus accumulated goods and investment capital. Hence US capitalism has always driven an outwardly aggressive US foreign policy. We will always face an endless array of enemies. There will always be war. This is the basis of my argument that US capitalism is historically expansionist and imperialist.

Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Dec 19, 2006 at 1:19 PM

Thanks, Chicago, for your welcome history lesson. My great maternal
uncle was in on Wilson’s invasion of the USSR in Siberia.
I think in Scorp’s case I’m running out of patience and he’s running
out of lies. Time for a new thread.
Actually our expansionist tendencies began with the seizure of 1/3rd of
Mexico before the Civil War, Jackson’s extermination of the Cherokees
and the Monroe Doctrine. Chomsky thinks it began in 1492. Lincoln
himself was a brutal bastard and Sherman’s scorched earth policy was a prelude to 20th century unlimited war on civilians.
Scorp’s DAR-Birch Society history is a whitewashed farce.
He probably believes that George Washington Cherry Tree fable.
As Dan Quayle once said, a mind is a terrible thing to lose….....

Posted by blondemike on Dec 19, 2006 at 4:36 PM

Mike, that is a touching tribute you offered to CDC for his fictional alternate history.  Unfortunately, you are both as dumb as dog shit.

No revolution’s leadership deliberately intends to harm most of the people in the society in (sic) trys to transform. This makes no sense.

It made perfect sense to Stalin during the period of Collectivization, when Ukrainian peasants were assaulted by military formations and their food was stolen, so that millions of them starved and died.  You might argue that Lenin’s War Communism and Mao’s Great Cultural Revolution might not have “deliberately” deprived and starved people (I have heard it so argued, by socialists, natch), but that would make them, Lenin and Mao, the dumbest, most incompetent fuckers that ever walked. 

The history of the Western World has been characterized by ameliorating circumstances.  Slavery was eliminated, overt racism and discrimination have been reduced, health and longevity have been improved, laws of war have alleviated civilian and military suffering, technology and material goods are greater, etc.  Virtually all such improvements are the result of Western scientific and moral efforts.  Has any non-Western or totalitarian state ever improved the lot of anyone?

But there is a class of behavior that has not been improved.  Totalitarian ideologies, some of them formally documented and some of them not, idealize the state and its strong leader, rules developed over centuries are ignored and laughed at, and savagery reigns.  Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Ho Chi Minh, and Saddam Hussein fall in this category. 

Insofar as these ideologues had a coherent program at all, some group was upheld as perfect and deserving, and everyone else was vilified, cursed, assaulted, and murdered.  For Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Ho, the favored group included workers and peasants, as more-or-less defined in the writings of Marx.  For Hitler, it was ethnic Germans.  For Pol Pot and Idi Amin, who had less well-defined ideologies, it was a close circle of friends or fellow ideologues.  For Saddam, it was his ethnic Sunni tribesmen.

In every case, the strong leader succeeded in destroying his ideological base, and doing severe damage to his favored constituency, not to mention everyone else in the neighborhood.  Why contemporary ideologues, such as your gruesome selves, prefer their favored dead or dying ideology, as opposed to a different ideology, much less Western civilization, is a question for students of abnormal psychology.  Why socialists prefer, say, Stalin to Hitler is one of the unresolved mysteries of the ages.  They were both destructive, murderous tyrants with nothing to choose between, except that Stalin was worse by virtue (?) of his greater body count.  The mind boggles at trying to identify a single material or moral good brought to us by Lenin, Hitler, Mao, or Idi Amin.

Karl Marx developed socialism, a perverse ideology of limited utility and lousy results, and Lenin perverted even that into something much worse.  In Marx’s scheme (that is the proper word), the industrialized workers were going to take charge of the world and their own affairs. 

In his wildest nightmares, Marx would never have supposed that socialism would come to Russia within the foreseeable future.  Russia was not industrialized and had no significant number of working class industrial laborers, hence was not a candidate for socialism.  The Russian Social-Democratic Workers Party, to which Lenin belonged, fractured in 1903, when Lenin advocated that the Party be ruled by a small group of professional agitators, rather than Marx’s vision of workers doing their own thing.  The Party membership voted with Martov against Lenin’s proposal, but the Party Central Committee, packed by Lenin’s appointees, voted for Lenin’s position.  In one of life’s little jokes, Lenin’s minority became known as Bolsheviks (from the Russian word for majority), while Martov’s majority were yclept Mensheviks (from the Russian word for minority).

Both before and after the split, the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks agreed that Russia was not ready for Marxist socialism, and that they were working for a bourgeois democratic revolution as a step toward eventual socialism.  Lenin advocated introducing the peasants into the equation, even though feudal peasants were never anticipated as a component of a socialist development.  But then when Lenin returned from exile in 1917 and the Bolsheviks came to power, Lenin declared that socialist industrialization had actually taken place in an eighteen-month period, rather than the decades or centuries that were normally required, and Russia was ready for socialism!  Duh!

CDC, I realize that you did not have a clue that the Bolsheviks were a criminal enterprise until I pointed it out to you, but the nations of the world were well aware of the dangers of Bolshevism at the time of the Russian revolution.  This is why the Reds were attacked; who would want a bunch of criminals running the prison they were building?

The Bolsheviks before Stalin opposed forced collectivization.

You, Sir, are out of you cotton picking, tater digging, duck fucking mind.  Collectivization or not, everything belonged to the state, including farmland.  War Communism, 1918-1921, was what they called the original effort to communize the country, and it was a royal, supercolossal, unmitigated disaster. 

War Communism had included forced requisition of grain, nationalization of all trade and industry, strict control of labor, payment in kind, and confiscation of financial capital. As a result of this program and of the ravages of the war, industrial and agricultural production declined sharply, and the population suffered severe deprivation.

Columbia University Encyclopedia

War Communism was a disaster. In all areas, the economic strength of Russia fell below the 1914 level. Peasant farmers only grew for themselves, as they knew that any extra would be taken by the state. Therefore, the industrial cities were starved of food despite the introduction of the 4:3:2:1 ratio. A bad harvest could be disastrous for the countryside, and even worse for cities. Malnutrition was common, as was disease. Those in the cities believed that their only hope was to move out to the countryside and grow food for themselves. Between 1916 and 1920, the cities of northern and central Russia lost 33% of their population to the countryside. Under War Communism, the number of those working in the factories and mines dropped by 50%.

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/war_communism.htm

Your understanding of the early days of the Russian Revolution are non-existent, and your understanding of the NEP is worse.

In any case the early Bolsheviks before 1928 favored a policy described in Lenin’s NEP.

Well, no.  After the War Communism disaster, Lenin introduced the New Economic Policy.  I do not know why he called it “new”; for farmers and workers it was the same old capitalism that prevailed before the communists came to power.  Whatever, it worked and things got better.  Agricultural output improved and the farmers were free to farm, even though they no longer owned the land. 

So, from their own experience, the communists in Russia knew that socialism was a disaster and capitalism worked much better.  So, what do you suppose the communists did with this hard earned knowledge?  As you point out, Stalin reasserted socialism and collectivized in 1928. An estimated seven million died in the Ukraine from starvation.  You don’t believe it?  Here are the pictures, since you have so little ability to understand the abundant, available literature:

http://209.82.14.226/history/famine/gregorovich/

Chomsky is in La-La Land, and you follow him there joyfully. 

Merry Christmas.

Posted by scorp on Dec 19, 2006 at 10:51 PM

Scorp method of argument: “Your dumb as shit. DUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.”
Spare us your selected quotes that you use solely because they agree
with your prejudices. If the same sources have contrary quotes you will
ignore them. Who are you trying to kid ?
Your history boils down to: “USA all good and pure. Socialism,
which solely means the late Soviet Bloc, all bad.”
Talking about limited utility and lousy results, ever hear of capitalism ?
Wars, starvations, depressions, mass layoffs, corporate homogenization of whole society,  outsourcing of all kinds of jobs, growing child poverty and infant mortality, greatest inequality in wealth since the 1890s, economy dependent on war and war preparations since 1940, trade deficit at alltime high, national debt at alltime high, crime which was WAY down under Clinton now increasing for the past four years under Bush.
It’s easy to attack Stalin, he was invaded by US & UK, under constant
attack and he had to feed a huge population while greedy Ukraine
kulaks wanted to get the highest price regardless of how many starved.
You think in a similar situation over here there wouldn’t be some radical
actions taken ?
Pictures ARE NOT AN ARGUMENT AND DO NOT PROVE A THING.
You have to use your intelligence to EVALUATE pictures.
It doesn’t matter if the picture is of an aborted fetus because that in
itself doesn’t prove murder or that the woman was obligated to take
it to term. Same with WW2 camp pictures, people died of typhus and
all sorts of diseases, pictures in themselves again do not prove murder.
You have to know the history and evaluate them in that CONTEXT.
We know all about the NEP. Nixon had one in 1971 that was rather
more pro-socialist than Lenin’s.
No, not everything belonged to the state. People had personal property throughout the entire USSR era. You were forbidden to employ others
and to own land but you could rent or lease land. Gorbachev changed
that too.
Hitler got Germany out of the Great Depression, FIRST western country
to do so, enacted public health campaigns against smoking and cancer, enacted anti-pollution laws, social welfare legislation,
gun control so psychos like Scorp were disarmed, public works,
created autobahns and the socialist Volkswagen works, etc.
That’s a LOT of good along with the bad anti-Jewish laws.
Mao brought China out of feudalism and made into a respected
world power, ended disease & illiteracy, enacted public health, etc.
Ergo for Lenin and Stalin in bringing Russia out of feudalism into
another world power status. That’s a whole lot of good, Scoop.
What have you done by contrast ?
Idi Amin laid your mama and she was an UGGGILLLLLLLLLY Dog,
so let’s give credit where credit is due.
Your ONLY true statement is that, yes, Marx never thought it would come to Russia instead of an advanced Germany.
Have a horrible, rotten Christmas and please drop dead by the New Year.

Posted by blondemike on Dec 20, 2006 at 10:49 AM

Try refuting Chomsky instead of namecalling, he’s not perfect but I doubt
you could refute him in any case.

Posted by blondemike on Dec 20, 2006 at 10:51 AM

What about Popper? Schmookler? What about Taliaferro’s “capitalism with a conscience” (see raytal.com)?

Posted by barkless1 on Dec 20, 2006 at 3:49 PM

Popper’s a fraud, never heard of Schmookler but Ray Taliaferro is from
here in SF, liberal Democrat radio talk show host. Good man.

Posted by blondemike on Dec 20, 2006 at 4:16 PM

You continually harp on war communism and Lenin and Stalin and Mao. It is because it is easier to criticize their failures and insanely associate them with anyone who doesn’t accept your ultra-rightist republican bullshit than to look at the obvious failures of neo-conservative warmongering and neo-liberal corporate globalization.

The first 35 years of US post-WWII society saw unprecedented GNP growth rates, income growth rates, profit rates and productivity growth. It was also a time which coincided with a high rate of Union density (one third of the US work force) high real incomes, relative income equality, and high progressive tax rates with top bracket on federal income taxes at 70% and higher capital gains taxes.  In the era of the “Reagan Revolution” we have seen deregulation, privatization, deunionization, outsourcing, and drastic tax cuts to where the effective rate of taxation for federal income tax on the upper 1% of the taxpayers is easily under 25% after deductions and joint filings (despite a top bracket of 35%). We have very low GDP growth rates and very high levels of inequality.

Reagan and the entire conservative movement promised higher income and GDP growth but we’ve seen these decline. More than half the real income growth went to the richest 10% of Americans.  All the right did was skew the distribution of wealth by sending high paying jobs over seas. Manufacturing is disappearing all the time. Paper mills are closing all over Wisconsin. Auto manufacturing and Auto parts manufacturing is moving to Mexico and elsewhere. Even such things as healthcare, America’s number one growing industry which accounts for nearly 20 % of the GDP is outsourcing many expensive medical procedures such as sending cardiac patients abroad to Singapore and elsewhere it’s cheaper.

Neo-liberal theory says this saves resources and wealth which ultimately are used to create greater efficiency and growth in the economy. Yet this has not occurred. The distribution of wealth only gets worse as well as the savings rate as more and more imports fill the gap left by the collapse of US domestic industry. Foreign bond purchases take up the slack. Low effective demand means low domestic US direct investment.

Even corporate capital, swimming in profits, has suffered a reversal of its world position. In 1965 two/thirds of all Multinational Corporations were domiciled in the US. Today it is 24% at most. India is the world’s leading Steel producer with the leading Indian firm purchasing a number of European and North American steel firms. The firm doesn’t even manufacture in India shipping most of its product to China and other places where durable goods manufacturing has been permanently outsourced. Mega-retailers like Walmart import the consumer products made in these global production and supply chains and sell domestically to an increasingly impoverished population where the middle class disappears more and more quickly. The standard of living is going down all the time and there is less and less hope.  The economic miracle we were promised is turning into ever slower growth rates and worse poverty and income maldistribution. More than 20% of the population earns a poverty wage while over 15% have no access to health care. If you take away medicaid and medicare nearly one third of the people would be without medical insurence. Poverty rates are higher than they were 30 years ago.

Obviously, there is no peace dividend and only more contrived enemies since 1991. The US doubled the number of military bases it once had around the world two decades ago and the military budget in real terms has gone up enormously. The US military budget equals the total of the rest of the world’s combined. In an age of deficits and poverty this is shameful.

Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Dec 20, 2006 at 5:14 PM

Also Scorp,

Your Soviet history is warped as usual. In March 1921, the NEP replaced war communism which was explicitly a temporary policy to deal with the foreign invasion of the country and the Civil War with Denikin and the White Armies. 

The New Economic Policy (NEP) was an effort to privatize the entire Soviet economy except for national finance, railroads and some heavy industry. Under this policy market forces were allowed to determine agricultural prices after a modest 10% tax on the market value of the grain. Some modest redistribution of land to the land poor and landless peasants increased production and income for smaller farmers. Urban consumer goods production increased and along with it prices. This forced the agricultural sector to increase production in order to offset urban price increases with greater volumes of grain sales. As agricultural production increased unit prices dropped creating a scissors crisis or a squeeze between rising prices on finished consumer goods and declining grain prices. The Soviet state intervened and set price limits on all production until equilibrium was reached. The collection of grain was privatized at this point and carried out by private NEP collectors and resold to the state grainaries. Petty retail, small scale manufacturing, and local finance was privatized as well. The policy was enormously successful and by 1928, Russia had exceeded it 1913 levels of agricultural and light industrial output. Per capita income also increased. Living standards were set to go up.

This policy was quite contraversial within the Communist Party. Lenin, Trotsky (who first suggested it in 1920) and many of the old guard like Mikhail Bukharin favored the new mixed economy as an alternative to central planning and as a way to pursue a path of socialism and fight “bureaucratism.” 

Stalin was intent on centralizing political power through his economic policies as well as squeezing the entire economy to accumulate resources for a massive heavy industrial buildup. This involved increasing steel production, the building of infrastructure for electrical power generation such as hydro-electric dams, and more and more railways deeper into the interior in order to move people and resources. He also intended to increase overall efficiency in agriculture through a shift from small scale independant production to large scale collectivized production that would free up large numbers of peasants to move to the cities for heavy industrial work. It is true that many people died in the process. Stalin didn’t have the support of the masses and ruled through terror. He also didn’t represent the original goals of the revolution.  These were actually more nearly represented by Lenin’s NEP than the five years plans of Stalin.

Nevertheless, heavy industrial output increased by over 400% from 1931 until the start of WWII. This enabled the Soviets to withstand the Nazi onslaught and emerge victorious. In a sense, many Russians died in order to help the US and UK win the war and the post War peace for a new US corporate capitalist world order.  The US invested heavily in the Nazi war machine during the 1930s which had a greatrer impact on Hitlers war making abilities than the time bought by the Molotov/Ribbentrop Non-Aggression Pact.  The post war position of the Soviets was quite weak while that of the US was more powerful. The Russians had far less ability to assert their will outside their “sphere of influence” than did the US.

Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Dec 20, 2006 at 6:46 PM

CDC -

You continually harp on war communism and Lenin and Stalin and Mao.

I have mentioned War Communism exactly one time, and that was in response to your characterization of the early Soviet years as an idyllic period, when it was in fact a disaster, a time of death, destruction, massive dislocations, waste, inefficiency, and lost productivity.  Lenin and Stalin, more-or-less following socialist theory, were the two main principals that presided over that mess. 

Something similar happened in Mao’s China when he imposed similar socialist theories, and millions died. 

Old Europe is now non-totalitarian socialist, and it is experiencing a stagnant economy, high unemployment, and growth near zero.  This has been going on for over fifteen years. 

Look hard.  Do you see a pattern here?  You read socialist theory, and think that the world is rosy.  If you would read history, you would not be so ill-informed.  Class-based social models idealize equality.  Then they build a bureaucracy to enforce that equality, and the bureaucrats become the new elite.  How many times have we seen this happen?  What the hell is elite about a goddam bureaucrat?  Why can’t socialists ever deliver superior economic system performance?  And while the deaths in the Soviet Union and China are well documented, why are Eurorpeans not reproducing themselves now? 

In merit-based economic systems, the bureaucracy is minimized, and people who build and create are rewarded.  You use a computer, do you ever stop to think how much it has improved your life?  Your hardware and software probably costs no more than a few hundred dollars a year, a cost you are willing to pay.  Wal-Mart invented innovative computerized inventory control systems that signnificantly keeps the cost of goods down.  If you use a computer and shop at Wal-Mart, you are taking advantage of Bill Gates and Sam Walton’s hard work and sharp intelligence, so what are you grousing about?  If Gates and Walton had never lived, your life would be worse than it is now.  And you think that is bad, compared to corrupt and inefficient socialism?

Even corporate capital, swimming in profits, has suffered a reversal of its world position. In 1965 two/thirds of all Multinational Corporations were domiciled in the US. Today it is 24% at most.

Now, come on, CDC.  You and Mike have been complaining steadily about American imperialism, hegemony, and globalization.  The figures you just quoted prove that your complaints are invalid.  The world economy is not a zero-growth game.  Does the falling percentage of Multinational Corporations in the US mean that the total number has fallen?  Of course not, don’t be silly.  The USA has grown, and other nations have grown as well.  Some of them have grown quite spectacularly, particularly to the extent they have abandoned socialism: Estonia, Chile, Ireland, China, India.  It is absolutely essential that other counries grow and continue to grow, to relieve world poverty.  I should hope the number of multinational corporations contiues to increase, because the world is in desperate need of the goods and services they provide. 

Learn to think.

Posted by scorp on Dec 20, 2006 at 9:48 PM

Scorp, you have never responded to the many specifics that Chicago
and myself have brought up, you keep rehashing recyled versions of the same old shit with patronizing “learn to think” slogans.
Europe has a better economy than US, much more equality and a
much better safety net. All of the Asian countries that you list HAVE MUCH MORE GOVERNMENTAL INTERVENTION INTO THEIR ECONOMIES THAN THE US HAS AND WE HAVE A CONSIDERABLE AMOUNT.
SPARE US THIS MERIT BASED BULLSHIT BECAUSE THERE ARE
MANY CEO’S WHO HAVE MADE A TOTAL MESS OF THEIR COMPANIES
AND WIND UP WITH GOLDEN MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR PARACHUTES. ENRON IS JUST THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG OF THE
WIDESPREAD CORPORATE WHICH CHEATS US WORKERS, US STOCKHOLDERS AND THE PATHETIC FOREIGN WHOM THEY PAY
A PITTANCE TO. NOBODY “EARNS” A BILLION OR HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS, THAT IS SIMPLY THEFT FROM THE WORKERS, THE
STOCKHOLDERS AND THE CONSUMERS.
WALTON HAS BROUGHT ZERO TO MY LIFE, I NEVER HAVE ONCE
PATRONIZED A WALMART. HE HAS MADE BILLIONS BY UNDERPAYING WORKERS AND AS A RESULT MANY STATES HAVE HAD TO PAY FOR WALMART WORKERS HEALTH CARE IN ADDITION TO ALL THE TRAFFIC, POLICE AND POLLUTION COSTS ASSOCIATED
WITH THEIR OUTLETS. AT LEAST COSTCO PAYS DECENTLY AND
DONATES TO DEMOCRATS NOT TO THE FASCIST-NAZI GOP.
GATES STOLE A MUCH BETTER CONCEPT FROM MAC AND MADE
IT INTO A MUCH LESS USER FRIENDLY SYSTEM. I DO NOT OWE
HIM SQUAT. HE HAS MADE OUR COMPUTER LIVES MORE COMPLICATED, NOT NECESSARILY BETTER.
LEARN SOMETHING IN THAT WHISKEY SOAKED SKULL, SCORP.
THE FIGURES ON MULTINATIONALS HEADQUARTED ABROAD PROVE OUR POINT, THEY ONLY GO ABROAD TO ESCAPE US
AND LABOR REGULATIONS TO MAKE MORE PROFIT THROUGH GREATER EXPLOITATION OF THE WORKERS ABROAD. THERE
IS NO FREE ENTERPRISE HERE, THE HOST GOVTS SAVAGELY
REPRESS UNION ORGANIZING. THIS IS A NAZI TYPE OF PREDATORY
CAPITALISM AND THESE PEOPLE SHOULD BE BROUGHT TO A
NUREMBERG STYLE TRIBUNAL. YOU AS AN ENGINEER ARE OF
THE HIRED HAND GOONS SO NATURALLY YOU RATIONALIZE
EVERYTHING THESE PIGS DO.
YOU NEVER MENTION THE GREAT SUCCESS OF WESTERN AND NORTHERN EUROPE OR THE EAST ASIAN TIGERS WHO ARE SOCIALIST, SINGAPORE AND SOUTH KOREA HAVE A COORDINATED
CORPORATE STATE ECONOMY THAT RESEMBLES CENTRAL PLANNING MORE THAN LAISSEZ-FAIRE.
GROW UP AND LEARN TO THINK.

Posted by blondemike on Dec 21, 2006 at 9:53 AM

CDC

Posted by scorp on Dec 21, 2006 at 10:44 AM

MIKE!

DON’T PANIC, MIKE!  HYSTERIA DOESN’T ACCOMPLISH ANYTHING AND IT MAKES YOU LOOK STUPID!

Posted by scorp on Dec 21, 2006 at 10:53 AM

Scorp, spare us the “history” lesson, mostly what you write is false, to
the extent it is true, we already knew it and thus learned nothing from you.
Crystal Night was not the beginning of any “holocaust.”  The term itself
is wrong, it means death by fire and the only deaths by fire in the Nazi
concentration camps occurred from Allied bombing. And that only in
Germany, not at the larger camps in Poland. The conventional story
of the “holocaust’ dates from Summer 1942 to Summer 1944, the
reason being that fullscale war in Europe made it much more difficult
for Jews to escape as so many did before 1941.
The Versailles Treaty itself was an illegal farce and Germany had every right to get military aid from the Soviets.
Your figures for Moscow and Petrograd ARE TOTAL BULLSHIT.
You think you can wow us with your discredited Far Right sources ?
And Scorp no one has to make you look stupid because you naturally
are. I put caps on the last message because you appear to have trouble
in reading comprehension so I wanted to make it easier for you to read.
CAN you read ?
The Kronstadt rebellion was very brief and put down very quickly by Trotsky. I disagreed with Trotsky here but that revolt was not emblematic of a widespread feeling, the Bolshies had the allegiance
of the great bulk of the Soviet population until the end in Dec 1991.
Now Scorpie, go back to playing handball with your shit.

Posted by blondemike on Dec 21, 2006 at 1:17 PM

War Communism did end in 1920. By March 1921 the NEP began with a 10% in kind tax on the peasants and a majority privatized economy including grain collection. Most of the people that died before 1924 in Russia died because of blockades, war, invasion, military siege, disease, and starvation. All this was war related and not due to economic policy per se. The NEP relieved much suffering, especially after the political and military situation was stabilized. The Stalinists took power and shifted toward forced collectivization at the expense of most of the society in order to pursue heavy industrialization. This was a mistake!!

I dont read Pipes. I read Stephen Cohen, EH Carr, Alec Nove, and Isaac Deutscher. They seem more realistic. They are also less biased and are closer to the real facts.

Low road US corporate capitalism is a failure. The Western European economies (old europe? no such thing!!) now top out at a 45% tax rate and have cut the social safety net. No real “socialism” anywhere. In the US most of the income growth has gone to the upper 20% of the society. This correlates with slow annual per capita GDP growth rates, low levels of social mobility, and low levels of social well being and living standards. Our friends who are more equal can out compete us. Too bad you don’t get it. Globalization has failed much of the globe.

Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Dec 21, 2006 at 4:20 PM

Chicago, did Scorpio schmuck actually reference Richard Pipes ?
Unbelievable, he’s a stone cold reactionary and his son Daniel is
the biggest anti-Arab racist in academe.
Thanks for your corrections as usual.

Posted by blondemike on Dec 21, 2006 at 4:51 PM

MIKE -

DON’T PANIC, MIKE!  AND DON’T PRACTICE WILLFUL IGNORANCE.  VOLUNTARY STUPIDITY DOESN’T ACCOMPLISH ANYTHING AND IT MAKES YOU LOOK LIKE A TOTAL IDIOT!  HOW DO YOU EXPECT TO LEAD THE REVOLUTION IF EVERYONE THINKS YOU ARE A TOTAL IDIOT?  HMMMM???

Crystal Night was not the beginning of any “holocaust.” The term itself is wrong, it means death by fire and the only deaths by fire in the Nazi concentration camps occurred from Allied bombing.

What a pair of fucking idiots.  CDC can’t think, and Mike does not know how to read.  I said absolutely nothing about the “holocaust”.  What I said was that there was little opposition to Hitler before Kristallnacht, and some people admired him greatly.  And Crystal Night refers to the broken glass when the Jewish shops were broken into, the windows were broken, and the Jews were arrested.  Kristallnacht makes no reference whatsoever to death or fire, either by etymology, or by association, or by symbolism.

Talking about the depopulation of the cities during War Communism, you say:

Your figures for Moscow and Petrograd ARE TOTAL BULLSHIT.

But that is not what the historical record says:

“War Communism was a disaster. In all areas, the economic strength of Russia fell below the 1914 level. Peasant farmers only grew for themselves, as they knew that any extra would be taken by the state. Therefore, the industrial cities were starved of food despite the introduction of the 4:3:2:1 ratio. A bad harvest could be disastrous for the countryside and even worse for cities. Malnutrition was common, as was disease. Those in the cities believed that their only hope was to move out to the countryside and grow food for themselves. Between 1916 and 1920, the cities of northern and central Russia lost 33% of their population to the countryside. Under War Communism, the number of those working in the factories and mines dropped by 50%.

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/war_communism.htm

—————————-

The decline of industry was to have serious social consequences. Already by September 1918 the industrial workforce of Petrograd was a mere 30 per cent of its size in January 1917, and its metalworking sector, amongst whom the Bolsheviks enjoyed their strongest base of support, had dropped in the same period from 250,000 to under 46,000, a decline of over 80 per cent.27 Even prior to War Communism many workers were becoming disillusioned with the Bolsheviks, either showing less interest in politics, or supporting non-Bolshevik parties. The sheer struggle for survival led many workers to dabble in petty trading, often using the factory’s scarce resources to make household items and farm tools to exchange for agricultural produce. Many others left for the countryside, and unemployment was replaced by a labour shortage.

.....

In some respects, society had gone backwards. In the autumn of 1920, the population of 40 provincial capitals had dropped by 33 per cent since 1917. Moscow had lost 44.5 per cent of its population, Petrograd had lost 57.5 per cent.57 Moshe Lewin considers that in the countryside, the old ruling class may have been destroyed and the land redistributed on an egalitarian basis, but the effects of the differentiation started by the Stolypin reforms, “the bigger and better producers and forms of farming”, had also been eradicated. The peasants “moved back into a more “natural” economy than in Tsarist Russia”, and the declining peasant commune was given a new lease of life.58

http://www.whatnextjournal.co.uk/Pages/Back/Wnext5/Warcomm.html

—————————

Almost immediately after they seized power, Lenin’s Bolsheviks inaugurated an endless stream of economic decrees and policies. These proved to be disastrous, resulting in a horrific famine, depopulation of the cities, and an enormous decline in living standards. So unpopular were these policies that after they were finally altered in mid 1921, Lenin tried to re-write their history. It was at this point that the Bolsheviks economic policies from 1918-1921 were dubbed “War Communism,” and declared to have been a temporary expedient forced upon Lenin’s government by wartime conditions. In fact, so-called “War Communism” began before serious fighting erupted, and continued after the Whites had been decisively defeated. It was not a wartime expedient; it was the policy that Lenin wanted to pursue in war or peace. As Pipes explains, “War Communism as a whole was not a ‘temporary measure’ but an ambitious and as it turned out premature attempt to introduce full-blown communism.” (The Russian Revolution) As noted earlier, Lenin’s ideas on desirable economic policy were vague at best. So upon taking power, he looked around the world for inspiration; what caught his eye was the “War Socialism” of the German Kaiser.

http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/bcaplan/museum/his1g.htm

—————————————-

Peasants refused to co-operate in producing food, as the government took away far too much of it. Workers began migrating from the cities to the countryside, where the chances to feed oneself were higher, thus further decreasing the possibility of the fair trade of industrial goods for food and worsening the plight of the remaining urban population. Between 1918 and 1920, Petrograd lost 75% of its population, whilst Moscow lost 50%.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_communism

Posted by scorp on Dec 21, 2006 at 7:24 PM

Soviet Russian history from the revolution to the death of Stalin is really quite irrelevant. The American Left does not seek to follow the old Soviet model. Their critique of US corporate capitalism is based simply on the inequality generated by globalization, deunionization, no minimum wage hike in ten years and no social legislation passed at the federal level since Reagan came into office in 1980, and corporate takeover of the US economy at the expense of the environment, workers, local communities, and the shrinking middle class. What the new, new left is all about is finding a way to fuse the democratic socialist ideal with environmentalism, a kind of DSA/Greens alliance to either eclipse the Democratic Party or infiltrate it and push it much further left than it currently is now. There seems to be a fanatastic wellspring of populist spirit after six long years of the most reactionary unelected reign of repression, warmongering, and inequality in US history.

According to a recent US Census Department survey only the top 20% of US taxpayers saw real income growth between 1999 and 2001. All other quintiles saw a real decline. Only the 95th fractile saw an increase of over 5% and the upper 1% saw real growth in inflation adjusted terms of about 9.5%. Even a recent edition of the official CIA fact book stated that “almost all the real income growth since 1975 went to the top five of the income ladder”.There is a strong co-relation of this kind of inequality with slow GDP growth and low levels of social mobility. One source makes one of the most disturbing claims I’ve encountered, the only 42% of all those born into the top 20% remain there. This means there is more social movement down than up. I’ll bet the higher up one goes toward the upper fractiles like upper 5% to Upper 0.01% sees very little movement in or out of this range of fractiles. What we now have is an elite, hardened class boundaries and an entrenched ruling class that gets the lion’s share of the benefits of the society that we all work to create. Even the much vaunted upper middles, those who earn between $75,000 and $500,000, stand to lose up to 70% of their tax cuts (which average about 12,000 annually) to the alternative minimum tax which millionaires are safe from by dint of their investments and loopholes. Many millionaires have an effective rate of taxation that takes a proportion of their income which is exactly the same as the proportion paid by the $50,000 to $75,000 annual income groups. By 2010, close to half of the tax cuts will go to the upper 1% of US taxpayers.

BY the looks of the recent developments in US society there is the basis for a new populist political coalition of working poor and lower middle class against the extreme rich. There must be an agenda of redistribution of wealth, income support, increased wages and salaries for workers from low wage to profession/technical groupings, taxing the rich and reinvestment in job creation, technological and medical research, healthcare and public hospital construction, education, and a stronger single payer pension and healthcare program. Economic growth could restart based on this massive redistribution as in the new deal era. Keynes believed that government intervention was needed in times of stagnation to restart the economy and eliminate high unemployment and underemployment. Low interest rates were not sufficient to rekindle borrowing and direct investment. The demand profile matters.

I believe we need a government that cares about all the people and the natural environment in which the live. I also think that we need a renewed respect for science and a renewed separation of church and state. We also need renewed respect for the US constitution and due process. Most of all we need the long awaited peace dividend so we can stop this obnoxous military spending and unnecessary war making which even most experts have opposed from the start. If this sounds like Stalinism to you Scorp I feel very sorry for you. It is thus you that has not learned to think!!

Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Dec 21, 2006 at 8:43 PM

Scorp, give me your location and I’ll make good on my promises to kick your shitstained butt. You have no idea where I’m at when I post.
You did write that crystal night was the beginning of Hitler’s alleged
plans so any sane person would take it to mean the holocaust.
It doesn’t matter if Russia was in a terrible condition after BEING INVADED BY THE US-UK TO PROP UP THE LOSING WHITES IN THEIR CIVIL WAR.  It’s like saying that Vietnam proved socialism
doesn’t work after the US invaded “South” Vietnam and killed four million people over 14 years. If you look at the industrial stats in 1930
you will see the USSR well ahead of the long Czarist period and the
fastest, most impressive case of industrialization in world history.
In fact up until the 70s communism or state capitalism worked
reasonably well in the USSR.  It did breakdown afterwards because
of the contradictions in central planning, which by the way nobody on
this board has advocated, you fucking whitetrash illegitimate pinhead.
All of your one sided ultra right postings prove nothing and are going nowhere. Those figures from Wikipedia ARE PURE BULLSHIT.
ANY CRACKPOT CAN POST ON WIKIPEDIA AND DOES.
EVER READ A REAL BOOK ?

Posted by blondemike on Dec 22, 2006 at 9:43 AM

MIKE -

DON

Posted by scorp on Dec 22, 2006 at 11:09 AM

CDC -

Soviet Russian history from the revolution to the death of Stalin is really quite irrelevant. The American Left does not seek to follow the old Soviet model.

“The American Left does not seek to follow the old Soviet model.”  The hell you don’t.  Mike has threatened me with decapitation for my political beliefs.  If it were left up to Mike, my life expectancy would be less than that of a Kulak, who had the dubious benefit of starving to death over a period of time. 

The purpose of raisng taxes, which has the effect of lowering tax receipts, is political and social control - by the leftist bureaucrats, of course.  Marx and Lenin both preached the wonderful benefits of socialism, but the major benefits all accrue to the elite party bureaucrats.  Such benefits as are delivered to the surviving peasants are rationed, because socialism is a faulty system of production and distribution. 

First you falsely whitewashed War Communism and the NEP, and now this period is “irrelevant”?  It is abundantly obvious that millions of dead bodies in socialist countries are irrelevant to socialists.  It is equally obvious that 3000 dead Americans in our own country are irrelevant to socialists.  Since the Jihadists want to establish their world-wide Caliphate, and everyone will then be dead or be Muslim, what is the advantage of being a socialist under those conditions?  All of Old Media and great chunks of Academia are opposed to resisting the Jihadists, and so are you. 

You are mistaken or lying about the GDP.  You have no understanding of why the GDP or any other economic data goes up, or down, or sideways.  You are confident that Marx and Chomsky have all the answers, and you have a child-like religious faith in these gurus, in spite of the repeated disasters socialism has inflicted on the world.  I take it that everyone who is a rigid follower of any religious or political leader does so out of a sense of personal inadequacy.  That is why I am amused and bemused by Mike’s ranting about Limbaugh; I have never in my life listened to Limbaugh. 

You socialists have a strange relationship with objective facts and subjective authorities.  You accept without question everything your masters say, and reject without question everything your masters reject.  Perfectly good facts from the wrong sources are rejected, leaving you grossly ignorant concerning great chunks of real world conditions.

Did you really say this:

There is a strong co-relation of this kind of inequality with slow GDP growth and low levels of social mobility.  One source makes one of the most disturbing claims I’ve encountered, the (sic) only 42% of all those born into the top 20% remain there. This means there is more social movement down than up.

CDC, if you find this claim disturbing, relax.  You sound just like a backward Lake Woebegone, where “all of the children are above average”.  If “only 42% of all those born into the top 20% remain there”, I guarantee you that people from a lower level have to move up to take their places.  This is the result of economic mobility, if not “social movement”, as you term it.  How in the hell did you get an MA when you are not able to understand simple Middle School math concepts?  Can you make correct change for your cab customers?

This entire conversation has swung on you and Mike and your inability to apply basic logic.  You have a cult-like faith that socialism will deliver, when the entire history of socialism is a record of inefficiency, corruption, death, and destruction.

Not only was Bill Clinton corrupt, his economic house of cards was tumbling by the last year of his administration.  The GDP went up like a skyrocket during the dot.com bubble, but it was flat during Clinton’s last year, and was negative for part of that year.  George Bush restored the integrity of the economic system and, since the first quarter of 2002, GDP has risen at a higher rate than the average of the Clinton years.  But not as fast as the bubble years, because the bubble was a catatrophe in the making.  GDP is now higher than it has ever been, over one and one-half trillion dollars higher than when Clinton left office.  And the economy is on a very firm footing compared to the bubble of the last years of the Clinton Administration. 

Relax.  And learn to think.

Posted by scorp on Dec 22, 2006 at 11:27 AM

Again, Scorp, give me yo’ address, punk. Threats are illegal, I’m making
a promise. Who would “panic” over an insignificant piece of shit like
you ?
Both Bushes and Reagan and Nixon were far more corrupt than Clinton.
Nor did the economy collapse in Clinton’s last year. It was far better than all of Bush’s subsequent years. BUSH WAS THE FIRST PRESIDENT SINCE HOOVER TO HAVE NO NET JOB GAINS IN HIS
FIRST TERM. 
AND BUSH TOOK CLINTON’S PROJECTED 5-6 TRILLION DOLLAR SURPLUS AND CONVERTED IT INTO A 5-6 TRILLION DOLLAR DEFICIT. THE RECOVERY SO-CALLED IS THE WEAKEST EVER, THE TAX CUTS WILL HAVE TO BE REPEALED TO AVERT TOTAL ECONOMIC COLLAPSE AND THEY ONLY BENEFITTED 1% OF THE
POPULATION. THE AVERAGE PERSON GOT BACK A WHOPPING 300 BUCKS !
WHOOPEE ! THE TRADE DEFICIT IS THE LARGEST IN US HISTORY
AND 1/3RD OF THE US INDUSTRIAL BASE HAS BEEN DEMOLISHED
UNDER BUSH, THE BIGGEST GROWTH IN EMPLOYMENT IS IN THE
LOW PAID SERVICE INDUSTRY.
NINA THINKS EVEN LESS OF YOU THAN I DO. YOUR A LOWLIFE COWARD HIDING UNDER A TRANSPARENT PSEUDONYM.
There is no plan to establish a worldwide Muslim rule, if we stopped
supporting Israel and the rightwing Arab tyrannies that would be the
end of our troubles in the Near East.
Thanks for acknowledging that CAPITALISM has killed half a BILLION
people over five centuries and has caused a worldwide trail of death,
poverty, disease and destruction. Democratic socialism has been
successful all over Europe and Asia and since Bush 2 Left of Center
governments have to power in every Latin American country but Colombia and they will be next. Bush and the GOP lost both houses
of Congress and were repudiated big time in 2006. Hillary will be our
next President and you can’t do a damn thing about it, Scoop.
The Kulaks were only killed because they tried to starve the rest of
the country through price gouging and withholding food but even that
Stalinist horror pales besides the hundreds of millions killed by IMF-
US-WTO-World Bank policies in the third world just since WW2.
Scoop, you are in no position to “assure” anyone as to who will rise
out of what class. Except for Clinton, Americans have been sinking
relatively speaking since 1973.
You have yet to present one fact, “objective” or otherwise. No one
ever said that Chomsky and Marx have all the answers. Another
strawman nonargument of yours.
And Scoop your lying about Limbaugh. You listen every day and your
arguments come straight from him either the same or next day.
I have verified this several times.
You haven’t had an original or profound thought in your life.
In all of your postings your only accurate historical was that Marx never
envisioned socialism in backward Russia. True but that is a pathetic
record considering your volume of postings.
“Learn to think” coming from you is like “Be sober” coming from the
town drunk.

Posted by blondemike on Dec 22, 2006 at 11:55 AM

BTW, no here ever advocated the Soviet model, every one on this board
advocated democratic socialism. You are so intellectually bankrupt, Scoop, that you have to resort to nonscholarly sources like the “wikipedia” to invent “facts” about what STALIN did 70 years ago !
You can’t deal with democratic socialist arguments, you have to resort
to the crudest ad hominem redbaiting and your invention of nonfacts
about Bush v. Clinton comes straight from Limbaugh, you don’t even have the wit to change one of HIS words.
Are you unemployed after the Iraqi sojourn ? I worked engineers in
Nam and found out most aren’t too bright once they get their beaks
out of the blueprints.

Posted by blondemike on Dec 22, 2006 at 12:03 PM

Mike,

It seems to me that you are a HOLOCAUST DENIER. You have claimed that the only people that died in Nazi death camps between 1942 and 1945 were bombed by the allies. This is the neo-Nazi line. Also there were very few who escaped. Of the 12 million Jews in Europe in 1939, six million were shot or gassed and another 5 million made it to saftey behind Soviet lines. Another million or so survived, escaped, and later resettled. Today there are very few Jews in Europe except for Russia. Ironically a large number of European Jews are Sephardic Jews from Morrocco or Israel. These are mostly in France or the Netherlands.

Mike, the Holocaust began in earnest with the einsetzgruppen on the eastern front. About one and a half million Jews were killed this way in the fall and winter of 1941. The einsetzgruppen of the SS forced Jews rounded up to dig long trenches that would serve as mass graves for those shot by the einsetzgruppen. The SS decided this was inefficient, wasteful of ammunition, and psychologically difficult on the firesquads. In October 1941, the Nazi SS experimented with gassing vans in Chelmno Poland. This was more successful than the firing squads and in a short time several thousand prisoners were gassed. After the Jan. 1942 Wannsee Conference it was decided to ship the victims in by rail to stationary camps in Poland. There were six of them including Chelmno. The others were Sobibor, Auschwitz, Belzek, Majdenek, and Treblinka. Close to four million people were gassed in these facilities. In Auschwitz, the largest and most efficient,. about one and a half million people were gassed and cremated in less than two years over 90% of them Jews. All these camps had fixed gas chambers using Zyclon B or Carbon Monoxide and crematoria to dispose of the toxified corpses.

You mentioned that many Jews escaped. This is not true. Fewer than 5% actually escaped Europe. Of the 12 million Jews in Europe when Hitler took power, six million died, another 5 million escaped or survived behind Russian lines and the rest escaped or survived. Close to half the number who survived and escaped went to Palestine. About a quarter of a million made it to Palestine between 1933 and 1945. Another 100,000 or so were allowed in after the war by Britain after much armtwisting by the US. Neither the US the UK or any other western power was very generous to the Jewish refugees of Europe. Even after the war the 80th US congress voted to cut off Jewish immigration from the US/UK run DP camps in Allied occupied Germany. There were originally over 450,000 Jewish DPs at the height of the crisis in 1946. Truman allowed in 160,000 by executive order. The remainder either wound up in Palestine or elsewhere. Many Jews remained in transit camps or temporary places for over ten years after the end of the war before finding permanent settlement despite Israeli independance. One thing for sure is that the resettlement of Jewish refugees was the toughest post WWII refugee problem of all to solve. As we all know the effects of this genocide, of unprecedented magnitude, are still with all of us.

Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Dec 22, 2006 at 12:10 PM

Scoop, you don’t have to “look” like a retarded moron, you ARE one.
People like you are the reason the GOP lost six weeks ago and why
the conservative movement is collapsing. Loudmouth wannabe Joe
McCarthys reiterating unproven and unprovable ASSertions do not
an ideology make. Even the fat, dumb US public is waking up to what
a fascist fraud conservatism is. The sole significant accomplishment
since Reagan in reducing Big Gov was the repeal of the 55 MPH
speed limit, see Reagan:An Autopsy by Murray N. Rothbard on the
lew rockwell.com website. Even The American Conservative acknowledges that Bush has been a total failure as a leader and
as a conservative. Bush is the biggest Big Gov President in US history, dwarfing even FDR and LBJ. Bush’s medicare drug “benefit” program
is the largest, most expensive socialist program in US history.
Bush’s greatest “accomplishment” is that his latest huge deficit will
be “only” 254 billion, about the size of Clinton’s smallest surplus.
What a record ! Greedy Old Pedophiles (GOP.)

Posted by blondemike on Dec 22, 2006 at 12:14 PM

Chicago, your figures are bullshit, there were never anywhere near 12 million Jews in Europe on the eve of WW2. 80% of the Jews in the
USSR were evacuated behind the Urals before the Germans got
far into Russia. I acknowledged that anywhere from 1-2 million Jews
died of all causes in Europe during WW2, many from gunfire execution
by the Einsatzgruppen in the Ukraine and western Russia.
The very term “holocaust” is a misnomer because it means death by
fire. The idiotic term “holocaust denier” was invented by Debra Lipstadt
in her easily debunked 1993 book, see the ihr.org website.
I am in agreement with much of holocaust revisionism having read
Rassinier, Butz, Rudolph, Faurisson, Harwood, Hoggan, Sanning,
Mattogno (might be off on spelling here) and many others.
You can look up these authors and their very extensive technical
& demographic analyses. BTW, I never claimed the Allied bombing
was the SOLE cause of the concentration camps deaths due to overcrowding, disease, poor sanitation, overwork but a major factor.
I can give you specific refs here but why don’t you look them up.
They don’t put people in jail for being flat earthers but do under
Soviet style laws like the ones they introduced when they were
occupying Austria in 1945. I didn’t mention Irving because by his
own admission he’s not an authority on the holocaust so-called.
That “four million” gassed figure in Poland is a big lie that was repudiated after the Soviets left, now it is claimed 900,000 Jews
died at Auschwitz and co. If you punch in holocaust revisionism
and go to Germar Rudolph’s Castle Hill publishers website you can literally download thousands of pages of books on Auschwitz, Treblinka,
Belzec, etc. I’m not wasting further time debating you here because
it would take up way too much time. Scoop has already led us way off
the purported topic of this thread. Many more Jews than the very low figure you gave came to the US after WW2.
Tragedy enough that 1-2 million Jews along with 55 million others
died in WW2, don’t push this holocaust industry shoah business
crap on me, see Finkelstein’s The Holocaust Industry.

Posted by blondemike on Dec 22, 2006 at 12:35 PM

One final note: Walter Sanning has the best demographic analysis of
eastern European Jewry and Mattogno & Rudolph have the best technical analyses debunking the “gas chamber” claims as well
as the whole idea of a centrally planned conspiracy to exterminate
European Jewry. Butz’s revised The Hoax of The 20th Century is
excellent as well as Rudolph’s edited Dissecting The Holocaust.
I can see why the Establishment has had to resort to imprisoning
many of these historians. No one gets jailed for denying American
or Communist atrocities.
The idiotic idea that you have to be either anti-Jewish (Arabs are
99.99% of Semites so that term is in error) or pro-Nazi to question
the fantastic, utter bullshit lies of the “holocaust hysterians” is crazy.
So if you want to challenge your own deeply ingrained assumptions,
Chicago, you have been referred to sources.
So far Lipstadt and others have utterly failed to rebut the revisionists,
she is reduced to referring to “Nazi rats” in her shabby book.
The burden of proof is always on those who make a positive assertion
and not on those who find the positive assertion wanting.
This is my final word here.

Posted by blondemike on Dec 22, 2006 at 12:46 PM

You’re really fucked up, Mike. Lipstadt won her case in a UK court against David Irving and bankrupted his sorry ass in the process of doing so!! The Holocaust revisionists and IHR have NO credibility with anyone except neo-Nazis, uneducated thugs, and, unfortunately, a growing number of Muslims who think there is a lot of political capital to be made from this shit. They never did any independant scholarly research and mostly cite one another as evidence. No one would accept the claims made by legitimate Holocaust scholars if they weren’t true. The Nazis themselves confessed to the truth of the claims of these scholars. Eichmann in Jerusalem gave the six million figure. The 12 million figure was also established by census data taken by the Nazis during and before the war. Holocaust revisionists are motivated by their fear and hatred of Jews. They feel that the historic fact of the holocaust gives the Jews to much power. Idiots like Finkelstein feel like they have to dance on the six million graves in order to make a point about the illegal occupation of Palestine.  Holocaust denial is a front for fascism. It is racist and pathetic. It is a sick endeavor to extricate the world’s bullies from criticism of their behaviour. They also don’t like criticism of genocide in general because they’re guilty of so much of it. Legitimate holocaust scholars have proven their case many times as well as their credentials. Trials like that of Eichmann in Jerusalem and Demjaniuk in Jerusalem (despite his aquital) establishe the truth of the Holocaust as a recognized legal fact. The fact that Arabs are semites doesn’t alter the original meaning of anti-semitism as established the 1880s by the German anti-semite and Journalist Wilhelm Marr in his attempt to officially racialize anti-Jewish prejudice with this obviously racial term.

The Iranian regimes is trying to ralley not only the Islamic world but “respectable European Opinion” in denying the Holocaust in order to legitimate and spread hatred of Jews and rally anti-Israeli sentiment. They also are trying to blame a genocide committed by Muslims in Darfur on the Jews. This is interesting because here the Muslims are blaming Jews for perpetrating a genocide they didn’t committ while simultaniously claiming that they never suffered a genocide which they did suffer. The hatred of Israel is strong now because they continue an illegal occupation of over 3 million people and tore up Lebanon killing over 1,000 people and expelling over a quarter of the population.  I have always warned my people that Zionism isn’t worth the price of the moral high ground given us by history before the occupation of Palestine. Neither has Zionism made us safe, respected, or prosperous. Holocaust denial is cowardly, ignorant, and pathetic. It is also wrong. No one will get anywhere with this shit and willl only delegitimate themselves. I’m disappointed with your position.

Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Dec 22, 2006 at 1:06 PM

That case proved nothing. In fact you can download the whole case on Irving’s site which should be operational again soon. He was stupid
to sue because some asshole called him a denier.
As an atheist am I a “Christ Denier” ?
The Nazis never confessed to that figure, the Hoess “confession”
was extracted under torture and includes the now discredited “four
million” figure as well as other fantastic tales. Nor did Eichmann
“confess” during his farce of a trial.
See The Real Eichmann Trial: The Incorrigible Victors” by Paul
Rassinier and you can download it for free at the Rudolph site.
That 12 million figure was NEVER established by the Nazis or anyone
else, see The Drama of The European Jews by Rassinier and
Walter Sanning’s The Dissolution of East European Jewry for a
detailed statistical analysis. Rassinier’s Drama is also reprinted
in a larger volume Debunking The Genocide Myth.
Finkelstein is NOT a holocaust revisionist but he debunks the
holocaust industry. Your the idiot for attacking him when you never
read him.
Your ad hominem attacks on holocaust revisionists and revisionism prove NOTHING. You sound like Scorp here, an ignorant buffoon.
Iran was right to hold that conference because of if this big myth is discredited it will help the Palestinians more than anything the worthless fucking Chomskys & other leftists ever have.
Iran has NEVER blamed the Jews for Darfur and neither has
any Arab writer or government.
Your logic is: if you disbelieve the standard version of the holocaust
that means that you are in favor of a holocaust.
Right, sure.
Oh by the way, lots of claims are accepted by lots of people from
“legitimate scholars” before they are proven to be frauds. Ever
hear of Piltdown Man ? Even Wiesenthal Center doesn’t accept
the lampshades and bars of soap bullshit stories anymore though
at one time every one “knew” they were true.
Chicago, I’m very disappointed in you.

Posted by blondemike on Dec 22, 2006 at 1:27 PM

Every one of the people you cite have no scholarly credentials. The lampshades/soapbars story was never fully considered historic fact although many non-Jewish European historians have documented in the German Archives SS laboratories experimenting with the remains of deceased camp inmates to see what Practicle value their skin, teeth, fatty tissue, and organs could have for industry (see Carl Tighe’s GDANSK: National Identity in the Polish-German Borderlands, Pluto Press. 1990). This book was nominated for a silver PEN award. The research into the parts on Nazi attrocities and outrages is impeccable though this is not the prime focus of the work. It should dispell any doubts about what the Nazis did in terms of experimentation with human being both pre-and post-mortem.  There are many other scholarly volumes as well.

Most holocaust deniers have had their works critiqued by competant scholars. Amoung the academic dishonesty found in their work are, deliberate misquotes, quotes from people who don’t exist, twisting of evidence, false statements, and fudging of data. Real believable folks, huh? They’re sick. And politically motivated due to their agenda.

Mike I don’t know what your problem is. Are you a rightwing populist? An anti-semite? A neo-Nazi (some of them are quite anti-Bush and pro-Worker)? A muslim? A slavic “captive-nations” nationalist? A CATO-Libertarian who sees the Jewish State as more State than Jewish and is thus lashing out? Mike, all of these people are illigitimate.  They all put as thier main goal these days as harm to Jews. Why would anyone deny the Holocaust unless they wanted to harm the Jews. By saying that It will help the Palestinian cause is ludicrous. With or without the Holocaust Israel isn’t going anywhere.  This kind of shit will only make muslims’ cause more difficult.  The leader of the Sudan a week ago blamed Israel for intervening in the Sudanese crisis in Darfur. Check it out on the web. Sudan’s President Field Marshall Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir claimed on Tuesday Nov. 28 that western journalists’ reports of a genocide in Darfur was part of a global Israeli conspiricy to discredit the Islamic regime. He claimed that claims of 400,000 dead were slanderous and that realistic figures were “less than 9,000.” Al Bashir further claimed that “accusations that his government trained, armed, and supported the brutal Janjeweed militia, which has displaced, raped and robbed an estimated 2.5 million people in Darfur, were a western conspiricy led by Israel to divert attention from the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Palestinian Territories.” He went on to praise Saddam as a great leader of who the Arab World could be proud.

It surely seems that nutcase genocide deniers of a feather flock together!!

Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Dec 22, 2006 at 2:22 PM

CDC -

I am on your side on this one, but you are inconsistent (hypocritcal?) by valuing a dead Jew in Dachau more than a dead Kulak in Ukrania. 

There is no possible justification for either, and Mike’s pretense of millions of dead victims of capitalism with no evidence of capitalist death camps, no capitalist Killing Fields, no capitalist Siberian Golgotha, is as deluded as his holocaust denial.

Posted by scorp on Dec 22, 2006 at 3:54 PM

Every source I cited not only has scholarly credentials, most are Ph.D’s.
Now you have a choice, you can either open that bigoted little mind or yours and dare to challenge your ingrained stupidity in this area or
not. I’ve referred you to good sources, the rest is up to you.
Any critique of holocaust revisionists has been refuted as soon as it
has been written even though it is illegal to do so in much of Europe
and elsewhere. If I didn’t know anything else about this issue except
that people who doubt it publicly can go to jail in many places that’s
all I’d need to know that the holohoax is a fraud. Go to ihr.org and you
can download issues of the Journal of Historical Review and see the
rebuttals in detail of Lipstadt.
As far as the rest of your ad hominem, psychobabble have you stopped
beating your wife type of questions, please go fuck yourself.
I have no intention of reinventing the wheel 300 times with you as I have
with Scorp.
It’s safe and easy to criticize the Sudan but we totally subsidize Israel
and AIPAC can get 400 Reps and 95 Senators any day of the week so
don’t give me a load of bullshit from your stinky little behind that those who criticize excessive Jewish power are paranoid. Even my wife agrees here.
99% of the stuff on Mengele is pure fantasy.
Pluto Press is a pro-Communist outfit of the type of mentality that invented the holohoax legend to begin with. That work you cited is
as worthless as the rest of the shoah “documentation.”
Now read my lips, asshole. I’m done here on this topic, I’ve referred
to reliable sources that are no more politicized than the assholes you
give and it’s up to you. I don’t know if the Sudanese President made the
quote that you claim, probably not, but who cares ?
Saddam Hussein was not accused of gassing the Kurds when it
happened, Reagan Admin blamed Iran as did the Army War College
study.
No business like shoah business. Get a life, cabbie.

Posted by blondemike on Dec 22, 2006 at 3:57 PM

Scorp, you don’t kill 500 million people as happened under capitalism
over a 500 year period in death camps. I never claimed that’s how they
died, asshole, I am in fact refuting the standard holocaust bullshit.
The camps were bad but no different at all in principle from the concentration camps we set up for all 120,000 Japanese Americans.
And with far less excuse. Hitler was at least fighting a three front
war, we had been attacked on a military target only (PH) 3,000 miles from US soil.
I’ll refer you to the same sources I did Chicago.
If you want to check into them fine, or just go fuck yourself.
Makes no personal difference to me.
When it comes to “denial” of US and capitalist atrocities, your
the champ, Scorp. Getting lectured here by you is like a lecture
on sobriety from the town drunk.
See A People’s History Of The US by Howard Zinn. US klled
anywhere from 10 to 35 million “Indians” north of the Rio Grande
and anywhere from 10 to 100 million African slaves during the
three century capitalist trade. We have NOTHING to lecture either
the Nazis or the Soviets about. Only Mao is comparable as a mass
murderer to the USA. Even Stalin is behind and Hitler’s not even on
the radar here.
Merry Christmas and Happy Kwanza boys.
Time to move on.

Posted by blondemike on Dec 22, 2006 at 4:08 PM

What’s Iraq got to do with the Shoah? And what kind of authority on the Holocaust is your wife Nina? Does she speak the necessary languages as do the real holocaust scholars to do the research? From what I see you are an intolerant moron with no education and you like to slam Jews who never harmed you just to get your jollies. Holocaust revisionists have been shown time and again to be frauds. They have an agenda which is to harm Jews as such.

Scorp, I agree that Stalin is one of the worst people in history. No one makes apologia for the deaths of the Kulaks or other Russian peasantry. Stalin was extremely sick!! He even persecuted the Jews during his reign. But the US opposed the Soviets all during the Cold War and today all the former Soviet Republics are independant and recieving aid from the US and other places as well. In my historic studies, though I am no expert, I differentiate between the Trotskyites and some other reformist Bolsheviks like Kamenev, Zinoviev, Kirov, Bukharin, and Swerdlow on the one hand and Stalinism on the other. The reformers championed the NEP which adopted a mixed economy and didn’t prioritized heavy industry but light consumer goods industry to relieve the suffering of the people and absorb the food produced by small peasants while selling them back manufactured consumer goods. It was Stalin with his meglomaniacal cruelty that pushed forced collectivization and heavy industrialization. This is the opinion of many reliable scholars. Mike has turned out to be a real prejudiced nutcase. I feel sorry for him. Posing as a leftist he suddenly denounces Pluto Publishers as a communist front despite their excellent work and diverse views on the left. What’s up with this crap? You guys aren’t incahoots are ya? That would certainly be a pity. Politically it would be most disasterous.

BTW, what do you think Chomsky and Zinn (both Jews) would think of your Holocaust Denial BM? I don’t think they’d approve of that or your absurd red baiting.

Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Dec 22, 2006 at 4:24 PM

My wife of 18 years is Jewish, we don’t agree here but we can have
a civil discussion. Apparently something you are incapable of.
I only became an “illiterate moron” when you disagreed with me
on this one matter and you were unable to add anything to the debate
except the same discredited. If I don’t think six million Jews but at most
1-2 million and not by “gas chambers” that makes me a Jew hater ????????????????????????????????????
I brought up Iraq as a possible example of a widely believed atrocity
story that might be bogus.
I’ve known Chomsky for 22 years and he’s not upset at my holocaust
revisionism in the least. Zinn doesn’t think WW2 was a good war so
maybe he’s open too. It’s not redbaiting to mention the Soviet origin
of this hoax.
No one has either shown that holocaust revisionists are frauds or
that they have a political anti-Jewish agenda. That claim is made
by stupid people like yourself but never proven. I didn’t pose as a
left libertarian, I am one. In France most of the holocaust revisionism
comes from leftists.
Chicago, thanks for proving what an unreasonable, off the wall,
emotionalistic asshole you are when someone presents a contrary
view.

Posted by blondemike on Dec 22, 2006 at 4:50 PM

Every single work of the Holocaust Revisionists has been shown to be academically fraudulent. Chomsky and Zinn think Holocaust revisionism is a fraud and fascistic in every way imaginable. You and your wife need serious counciling. You seem to have real issues. My life is a bit of a mess so I’m no one to talk but you guys need real professional help.

Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Dec 22, 2006 at 5:11 PM

The fairer the shares, the more delicious the pie.

Posted by barkless1 on Dec 23, 2006 at 1:00 AM

...And this has what to do with the price of tea in China?

Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Dec 23, 2006 at 10:16 AM

Is bigger better, or fairer finer? seems to be the argument.

Posted by barkless1 on Dec 23, 2006 at 9:44 PM

Name whom has shown HR to be fraudelent, Lipstadt and Wiesenthal Center are scared to debate holocaust revisionists. Your assertion here
proves nothing, it’s as vacuous as the rest of your nonarguments.
Who cares what Chomsky and Zinn think of HR ? I’ve never heard either
discuss it except to deplore laws criminalizing HR.
Psychiatry is a bigger farce than the standard holocaust version.
See all works by Thomas S. Szasz, MD starting with The Myth of Mental
Illness and about 30 books after that.
Don’t confuse your refusal to think here with anything deeper, you need
to read firsthand the various refs I’ve referred you to, “professionals”
can’t help you here.

Posted by blondemike on Dec 24, 2006 at 2:16 PM