Where Are We Going?

The Shirley Sherrod story started on Monday with the release of a heavily edited video about a life experience which occurred decades ago. This story was released by a right-wing authoritarian (RWA) web site known for its lies. By Wednesday morning the lies had gone viral, everyone was reporting on it, and Ms. Sherrod was fired. By Wednesday afternoon, the lies had been exposed. Now it’s Thursday and the media is still all over it and it will probably continue to dominate the news cycle into tomorrow as
Ms. Sherrod considers a new job offer from the Administration.

With all the RWA noise and lies occupying all sides of cable and network news, one has to wonder why all this fuss happened this week? The RWA blog that posted it had been holding onto the video for some time. They were waiting for just the right time to release it. But why now? Do you think the RWAs were responding to last weeks NAACP complaints about Tea Party bigotry, or were they trying to overshadow other big news?

Do you know what new legislation was signed into law this morning? Do you know whether this new law was about Wall Street or Main street reform? Do you know if this new law was about consumer protection or bank protection? Do you wonder why you may not have heard much about the Obama signing ceremony earlier today? (See the links at the end of this posting for details.)

If the RWAs are out to win the mid-term elections and win back The White House in 2012 by making sure the Obama administration fails, then it makes sense that any Obama successes must be obliterated from the public’s memory. That’s why all the fuss.

Months from now, what story will most of us remember? The one about the signing of the Todd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act or the one about Ms. Sherrod, an innocent victim of the RWA message machine?

It’s all about information control and the RWAs have been fine tuning their communication skills for decades while the Democrats and liberal news media are always there to help by repeating the RWA talking points.

Fearmongering and Noble Lies are primary tools for the right-wing authoritarians (RWA).

Just think back to last year and all the RWA fearmongering and lies about health care and how it barely became law. It wasn’t so much about the lies themselves, it was about getting a consensus that health care for all was a ‘bad thing.’

We also remember what happened after the attack on 9/11/2001. The RWAs made 935 documented false statements leading up to the Iraq invasion. They achieved a consensus based on these lies and, too easily, lead us into an unfunded war and a growing deficit. Their lies weren’t about WMDs, they were about getting a consensus to invade.

Now, how many fear mongering lies will we hear about the deficit, which the RWAs created, and to what purpose?

Christopher Hayes of The Nation has written an article and warns us that the RWAs are putting their favorite tools to work once again. According to Mr. Hayes, the RWA “hysteria” is about ‘the deficit,’ but the real goal is to kill needed stimulus and maintain the Nixon, Reagan and Bush tax breaks. Tax breaks which favored the wealthy by a 3 to 1 margin and added to the deficit.

And yet: the drumbeat of deficit hysterics thumping in self-righteous panic grows louder by the day. Judging by its schedule and online video, this year’s Aspen Ideas Festival was an open-air orgy of anti-deficit moaning. The festival is a good window into elite preoccupations, and that its opening forum featured ominous warnings of future bankruptcy from Niall Ferguson, Mort Zuckerman and David Gergen does not bode well. Nor does the fact that there was a panel called “America’s Looming Fiscal Emergency: How to Balance the Books.” This attitude isn’t confined to pundits. The heads of Obama’s fiscal commission have called projected deficits a “cancer.”

The hysteria has reached such a pitch that Republican senators (joined by Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson) have filibustered an extension of unemployment benefits because it was not offset by spending cuts. Keep in mind, the cost of the extension for people unlucky enough to be caught in the jaws of the worst recession in thirty years is $35 billion. The bill would increase the debt by less than 0.3 percent.

This all seems eerily familiar. The conversation—if it can be called that—about deficits recalls the national conversation about war in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. From one day to the next, what was once accepted by the establishment as tolerable—Saddam Hussein—became intolerable, a crisis of such pressing urgency that “serious people” were required to present their ideas about how to deal with it. Once the burden of proof shifted from those who favored war to those who opposed it, the argument was lost.

We are poised on the same tipping point with regard to the debt. Amid official unemployment of 9.5 percent and a global contraction, we shouldn’t even be talking about deficits in the short run. Yet these days, entrance into the club of the “serious” requires not a plan for reducing unemployment but a plan to do battle with the invisible and as yet unmaterialized international bond traders preparing an attack on the dollar.

Perhaps the most egregious aspect of the selling of the Iraq War was its false pretext. It never really was about weapons of mass destruction, as Paul Wolfowitz admitted. WMDs were just “what everyone could agree on.” So it is with deficits. Conservatives and their neoliberal allies don’t really care about deficits; they care about austerity—about gutting the welfare state and redistributing wealth upward. That’s the objective. Deficits are just what they can all agree on, the WMDs of this manufactured crisis. Senator John Kyl of Arizona, speaking on Fox, has come out and admitted as much. All new spending increases must be offset, he said, but “you should never have to offset the cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax rates on Americans.” So there you have it.

Here’s one more example of RWA lies that lead to a consensus and, unfortunately, completion of a major RWA goal:

So, all the deficit hysteria from the RWAs combined with the fearful shifting to the right by Democrats, a consensus, is aimed at further reductions in our social safety net and letting the mega rich keep their Republican tax breaks.

This hysteria has nothing to do with balancing the budget or protecting our grandchildren. For RWAs, deficits are for wars and making the mega rich richer and more powerful.

(Do you think the RWAs actually planned the deficits just to maintain the Republican tax breaks for the mega rich?)

In a recent conservative without conscience (CWC) email (You know one of those forwarded emails with mixed font and colors, false comparisons, and statements of problems that don’t exist.), there was a list of situations where one might be asked for an ID.

• Pulled over by the police.
• Making purchases on your department store credit card.
• When you show up for a doctor’s appointment.
• When filling out a credit card or loan application.
• When applying for or renewing a driver’s license or passport.
• When applying for any kind of insurance.
• When filling out college applications.
• When donating blood.
• When obtaining certain prescription drugs.
• When making some debit purchases, especially if you’re from out of state.
• When collecting a boarding pass for airline or train travel.

This list is then followed by a false comparison to the new Arizona law on immigration and implications that some group is exempt from showing an ID.

This is my response to that fear-mongering email.

What’s going on in Arizona is nothing like asking for an ID for the situations listed above. What Arizona is proposing amounts to asking for an ID just because someone doesn’t look like they belong – supposedly non-citizens. Just what does a non-citizen look like? Probably like a citizen.

Also, these non-citizens are not exempt from any of those checks above. If they were caught breaking the law or applying for a loan or donating blood, they too would be asked for an ID regardless of their immigration status. But, in reality these non-citizens can’t do anything in that list.

The more thought provoking question is, what would happen to this nation if it were to miraculously deport 12 million undocumented, low wage, but skilled, workers? (Remember, it took Nazi Germany several years to gather and ‘deal with’ only half as many of those ‘who didn’t belong.’) Food crops won’t get picked and will rot in the field. Work places won’t get cleaned at night. Fewer homes will be built and new roofs won’t get installed. In other words, small businesses will lose a source of cheap labor in a cash based economy and our cost of living will increase.

For those who are so eager to support the Arizona law, maybe they should check out the new Take Our Jobs internet site where they can volunteer to be a farm worker. So far, they have gotten only 4 volunteers including one late night celebrity. Here’s the job description:

“Job may include using hand tools such as knives, hoes, shovels, etc. Duties may include tilling the soil, transplanting, weeding, thinning, picking, cutting, sorting & packing of harvested produce. May set up & operate irrigation equip. Work is performed outside in all weather conditions (Summertime 90+ degree weather) & is physically demanding requiring workers to bend, stoop, lift & carry up to 50 lbs on a regular basis.”

Paranoid, fearful, extremely nationalistic citizens need to chill out. As they chill, the flow of fear driven adrenaline will slow and the cognitive function of their brains will return. Maybe then they can see the effect of their self-inflected feelings of terror – stupid laws, loss of needed workers, and a higher cost of living.

One of the categories for this blog is Powerful Nationalism.

In a recent Pew Research survey of 1,001 adults, some measures of this powerful nationalism were captured. These metrics confirm what has been posted previously in this blog and add to recognition of theRight-wing Authoritarian (RWA) among us.

Here is what the survey confirms about RWAs and their extreme nationalistic pride:

These older, white, Republican RWAs:

• Are more likely to fly the US flag
• Believe they are more patriotic than those not like them
• Are angry [driven by fear] with their federal government
• Agree with the Tea Party

Being powerfully nationalistic is one of Lawrence Britt’s fourteen common threads that link historical fascist or protofascist regimes “in recognizable patterns of national behavior and abuse of power.”

One of the tools used by the right-wing authoritarian (RWA) or “Conservatives Without Conscience” (CWC) leaders (Rep. Senators, Dick Arm…, Rush Lim…, Glenn Be.., Bill O’…, Newt Ging…, Michele Bach…, Sharron Ang…, Ann Coul…,) is the Noble Lie. These lies by the RWA leadership are used to manipulate the RWA followers, deny guilt, label their enemies, and create issues that don’t exist. But the point of this posting is to show how the nature of these lies has changed.

Over the last forty years, RWA lies have morphed and become more caustic to our political system. Decades ago, they were simple statements of denial when crimes were exposed. Now, many are accusatory in nature – even when crimes are exposed. They have gone from “I’m not a crook” to ‘You’re the crook’ (liberal, commie, socialist, racist, Nazi, etc.).

Here’s an example of how lying was done forty years ago:

Here’s an example of the false accusations of today as described by Lewis Black:

Regardless of their approach or how accusatory they become, RWAs and CWCs lie to hide the truth. The truth is, they are either what they deny being – “I’m not a crook.” – or they accuse others of being what they are – RWAs (Nazis).

This blog tracks where we are going by documenting the characteristic categories of the minority right-wing authoritarians (RWA) in the United States. The RWAs are part of our political system and are currently represented by the Tea Party, Sarah Palin, and the minority party in our Senate. They are also characterized as being born-again evangelicals and some of them have been referred to as the “extreme right of the extreme right.” The RWAs are also represented by a privateering group of civilian mercenaries hired by our government to replace our military and used both nationally and internationally to provide unaccountable, freelance “security.”

Now the presence of RWAs in our own military has to be added to that list. Their existence is exemplified by the words of General McChrystal as reported by Rolling Stone magazine. Frank Schaeffer detailed this growing characteristic of our military leaders in a recent Huffington Post article. Here are some related quotes from Schaeffer’s article:

The real reason that Rolling Stone was able to quote so many highly placed military people’s disdain for members of the Obama administration is because the military sees itself as more moral and better — and certainly more conservative — than the types who serve in civilian roles today, especially within a Democratic administration.

Perhaps more importantly, the evangelical Christians — now a force for reactionary Far Right politics — created an alliance between themselves, the Republican party, and the military beginning in the 1970s — something that’s been well documented by political scientist Andrew Bacevich — and this strategy has borne “fruit” in the current era, where the ties between the three groups — weak a generation ago — are now very strong.

America needs to understand that we have a professional military that increasingly looks on the culture it serves as morally inferior. And speaking as the father of a Marine who had plenty of neighbors who went shopping as my son went to war, I understand this feeling!

What you saw now between the White House and the general being fired is the tip of an iceberg.
New recruits are increasingly second generation military. This is especially so in the officer class, a nation within a nation. We now have a military “class.” And face it they [the military] don’t trust or like the people outside that class who tell them what to do but with no skin in the game.

Our system was set up to have a civilian led military of mostly civilian non-professionals serving for a time then returning to civilian life. We now have a civilian leadership with no military experience in charge of a mercenary professional force with few personal (let alone empathetic) ties to our leaders.

And that force is no longer protecting America only but rather projecting imperial overreach that will lead to more and more loss of American lives for no reason. Expect more trouble.

So, not only has our government contracted with freelance, unaccountable mercenaries like Blackwater (Xe), it has cultivated a “mercenary professional force” in our military which has little respect for those who prefer everything ‘me’ to serving others.

Combine the public and private RWA mercenaries with the RWAs of the Christian right and the RWAs of Tea party right, and you have a potent cocktail for wars against the many imagined internal and external enemies of the RWAs.

Have you forgotten about the gun and ammunition shortages around the country since the 2008 election?

Mr. Barton,

You’re ashamed of BP suffering through a meeting with the President and having to honor their promise to pay “all legitimate claims?”

As a homegrown Texan, I’m ashamed of your apology to BP. What could have made you do this? Are you running short of campaign funds? Did BP meet with you while they were in town to call in one of your IOUs?

Your late, forced apology was phony and pathetic.

Any politician who puts corporations before their constituency, deserves to be fired.

I’m not eligible to vote against you, but I will send money to your opponent.

The table below is mostly from an October 4, 2007 News Release from the conservative Tax Foundation. They point out that the richest 1% of the tax payers pay more in total taxes than the poorer 90 percent – those that make less than $103,912 a year. (These data are for tax year 2005.)

The last three rows of this table were extrapolated from the original table and added to show the bottom 90, 95 and 99 percentile groups. Adding these rows shows that the bottom 99 percent pay 54 percent more in taxes than the top 1 percent. I think the top 1 percent should pay as much in taxes as the bottom 99 percent – and it won’t cost them that much, see below.

What the Tax Foundation didn’t mention in the article, see new table below, is that the average income for the top 1% is $1,200,280 and the average income for everyone else is $45,064. No wonder the top 1% pay such a large portion of total taxes collected – they earn, on average, 27 times more than the bottom 99 percent and earn at least $364,657 a year. Factor in that their effective tax rate is only 2.4 times greater than the rest of us, and you can realize just how much empathy we should feel for them. (Data in this table were extrapolated from the one above.)

Making the richest 1 percent pay the same in total taxes as all the rest of us would raise their effective tax rate from 23.1 percent to 35.6 percent. At that rate, the average income for the mega rich, after paying taxes, would only be $773,039. The poorest among the top 1 percent would be left with just $237,077. How could they possibly survive? What real need would they have to give up?

As I wrote in a previous posting, “It’s time we all realize that … tax cuts favoring the very wealthy are not what America needs.”

The problem with illegal immigration is US consumers and employers. Consumers want cheap stuff and employers hire cheap labor to give consumers what they want. We get what we pay for, including trashy side effects in the deserts of Arizona.

WE GET WHAT WE PAY FOR.

Lois “Brooksie” Hailey

1/18/1915 to 4/24/2010

Lois Brooks Hailey, 95, passed away April 24, 2010 at her son’s home in Friendswood, Texas. She was born on January 18, 1915, in the house where she would grow up in Reno, Nevada, to Charles W. Brooks and Harriet Peckham Brooks. Lois was preceded in death by her brother Ernest Brooks and four sisters; Ethel Gadda, Myrtle Sanford, Carol Lyons, and Louise Marsh.

As a tomboy and free spirit Lois learned early in life that she could be whatever she wanted to be. Lois attended Reno High School and then the University of Nevada, Reno where she received a bachelor’s degree in Education with a minor in Spanish. During her senior year, she took care of her ailing mother, who was stricken with cancer. She did not know it at the time, but cancer would come into her life again and again.

After graduation in 1936 from U of N, Lois took a teaching job in Minden, NV, south of Reno. She organized and directed the school band and gave private music lessons to interested students. She was also taught photography. Her plan was to save enough money to fulfill her dream of attending Julliard’s School of Music.

All was going as planned until June 7, 1939, when Jim Peckham, a cousin, convinced her to join him and learn to fly. She immediately fell in love with flying. On December 3, 1939, Lois flew her first solo flight and by April 17, 1940, she had her private license.

On December 1, 1940, Lois, Jim and Vic Spezia pooled their funds and bought a single engine Taylorcraft airplane. Since they were sharing the plane they divided up the time so that Jim and Vic got the plane during the week and Lois got it on weekends. Lois loved soaring over the Sierra Nevada mountains and taking photos.

Just as WWII was starting Lois bought out her flying partners. While still fulfilling her teaching duties, she kept flying by doing spot landings, cross-country, chandelles, eights, spins, and stalls. Finally, on July 11, 1941, with over 300 hours, she passed her commercial license test and became the first female pilot in the state of Nevada to do so.

As the war progressed, flying became restricted and fuel was rationed. She was grounded and on August 29, 1942; with just over 500 hours of flying time, she sold her Taylorcraft to a training school so it could be put to better use.

That didn’t keep her from flying though. In September of that year, her brother Ernest had started an unsuccessful run for Congress and she borrowed a plane to fly him around northern Nevada to campaign.

Because Lois had over 500 flying hours, she received an invitation to join the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS). She declined but then received a telegram from Jacqueline Cochran to meet her for an interview in San Francisco to join the Women’s Ferrying Training Detachment (WFTD). Both groups were part of the Army at the time.

Lois was interested in meeting Jacqueline, but not in joining the Army. So, she and a friend; who also got an invitation to join the WFTD, went to see what it was all about. Lois told them she wasn’t interested in joining and asked about meeting Jacqueline. They told her that Jacqueline was not there but she should take the physical just to see if she could pass. Well she passed and ended up joining. She joined the third WFTD class and started training on January 15, 1943.

After training for twelve months, including 6 months for tow target, she took on her next teaching job. While in the Sixth Tow Target squadron at Biggs Army Air Field in El Paso, Texas, she assisted in the training of Army personnel by towing a target behind her plane so that the men could learn how to use machine guns and larger artillery to hit moving targets. She also flew at night so they could learn how to use search lights and strafed infantry with tear gas.

In December of 1944, the WASP (Women Airforce Service Pilots – a merging of the WAFS and WFTD) were disbanded and all records were classified. The jobs they were performing were now going back to the men who were returning home.

As the end of the WASP drew near, Lois and her best WASP friend Holly, started training to get their civilian instructor licenses in El Paso. When they left the WASP, they joined Border Flying Service and started teaching GIs how to fly civilian aircraft.

By this time, Lois had accumulated over 1,300 flying hours. For the next five years she and Holly supported themselves as flight instructors. They even pooled their earnings to buy a house.

In 1946, she also became the first chairperson of the El Paso Chapter of the 99s, the International Organization of Women Pilots. In March of 1947, she soloed Sam Hailey, her husband to be and in June of that same year, she soloed her father at age 65. At this point, Lois had over 3,000 hours flying. During this time, she also wrote a column, “El Paso Air Lanes” for the El Paso Times newspaper.

Lois married Sam Hailey in 1947. In April of 1948, they became the proud parents of Charles Andrew Hailey. Their marriage didn’t last and they divorced when Andrew was two. She never remarried and raised her son alone.

In the fall of 1949, she gave up teaching flying and went back to teaching band and orchestra with the El Paso Independent School District. Lois’ teaching career in El Paso spanned 31 years and during this time she earned a Masters degree in Education with a minor in Music from Texas Western College (which is now the University of Texas of El Paso) in 1953.

She typically taught at three different schools each day for a given school year and provided instruction at more than 10 different schools. At Austin High School, she taught a course in aeronautics, but most classes were band or orchestra. During that time she continued to fly, but by 1978, she had only added about 600 hours to her pilot log.

In 1980, three years after the WASP were finally recognized as veterans by an act passed by the Congress, she retired from teaching. During retirement, she continued to support flying through membership in the 99s and volunteering at the War Eagles Museum near El Paso. She also attended WASP reunions until they disbanded in 2008. She also traveled to other activities honoring the WASP.

Lois was inducted into the El Paso Aviation Hall of Fame in 1985 and the Texas Aviation Hall of Fame in 2004. On the May 23, 2005, Lois was honored by the El Paso County Commissioners Court for her WASP service, her services to El Paso ISD, and becoming the first chairperson of the El Paso chapter of the 99s. On March 10 of this year, she, and her fellow WASP were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in Washington, DC for their service to the country during WWII.

Lois is survived by her son, Charles “Andy” Hailey, his wife Mary and granddaughter Dawn of Friendswood, TX and her stepbrother George Peckham of Fort Myers, Florida.