Bernie Sanders: Progressive, Socialist, or just Liberal?

Is Bernie Sanders a really a Socialist or just another Liberal?

I cannot point out too many times that people tend to see specific a word as representing a specific, real object. But we all have had the experience that one word can mean many things, and that specific things may have more than one name. Words of the day: socialist and progressive.

The Democratic Party Presidential debate in New Hampshire on February 4, 2016 provided lessons in both semantics and real politics. It was a long debate. Anyone who listened to it, or who reads the transcript, might reasonably select different points to emphasizing in reporting on it. Not surprisingly, Bernie advocates believe he won the debate, while Hillary advocates believe she won the debate.

I am not concerned with who "won" the debate. I am not registered in any political party, but I certainly have a political agenda. And I have priorities. I put the environment first, international peace and justice second, and American economic & legal justice third. But I have an opinion about just about every detail of politics, society and culture.

To me the debate was an important read on Bernie Sanders' foreign policy. Hillary Clinton is too hawkish for my taste, but of course she is much closer to mainstream sentiments than I am.

Bernie harps on Clinton's vote to attack Iraq (which was a war crime, if you use the Nuremberg criteria for war crimes). But Bernie's rabble rousing speeches always fail to mention his vote to attack Afghanistan (which was a war crime, if you use the Nuremberg criteria for war crimes). When pointed out, he changes the subject, as he did in the debate. When it is pointed out to his supporters, they usually go back to the Clinton Iraq vote.

In the debate there was a second part to the question. Both Hillary and Bernie were asked, by the moderators: what would you do about the U.S. troops currently in Iraq. Hillary gave a clear answer without hesitation: she would leave the troops there, subject to the situation changing. Bernie tried to evade answering, but when pinned down said, or I should say mumbled, that he would leave the troops there.

Bernie is also for fighting ISIS, preferably with other nation's armies. It is a hypocritical position for someone who claims he has been screaming for 50 years about American job losses. Isn't killing ISIS soldiers a paid job? Why should that skilled labor go to foreigners?

Forgive me if I wax sarcastic. It's the "I'm perfect," from Bernie, "He's perfect" from his chorus of followers chanting that has become irritating. But then I'm from California, in fact northern California, where a Bernie Bot seems to be lurking in every smoke-filled room. No, not tobacco.

In short, when pushed to comment, Bernie was just as hawkish as Hillary. Too hawkish for me.

I was surprised and pleased that Hillary finally started poking at Bernie's allegedly perfect Progressive credentials. I think earlier in the campaign she and her advisors assumed she would beat Bernie easily. She did not want to alienate his followers, as she will need their support in November. But his follows drank his kool-aid, not knowing, as he himself remembers, what a bad little boy he has been these past thirty years.

Hillary pointed out that he voted to deregulate derivatives. Bernie did not deny it, he just went on to change the subject. Bernie Bots would be all over Hillary if she did something like that. They would claim it is proof that she is just a pawn for Goldman Sachs. But in all the commentary I've read today (admittedly just a fraction of what there is), I have seen no Bernie Bot criticizing Bernie for that vote. Maybe Bernie Bots don't know what a financial derivative is.

The Democratic Party is no home for Socialists. I would say the Democratic Party is socialist-influenced. Sanders bought the socialist line in college (so did I). Now, in his dotage, apparently doing something about it is on his bucket list. Great. Do something about it, if you can. I personally favor mixed systems, though I would probably argue about what specifically should be socialized and what should be left to free markets. Also I favor worker ownership of business, not the centralized government bureaucratic ownership of business that Sanders favors. Though I might make an exception in some cases, like localities owning their own utility companies.

So hurray for Bernie, but I've had enough of old white socialist male domination in my lifetime (most of my friends were fellow leftist activists). I'd like to try old white female liberal domination for 4 years, especially since the alternative is Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio.

I have watched a lot of bullying done by Bernie supporters both on the Internet and in my local area. At the comments section of the New York Times, for instance, you would think 98% of the Democratic Party voters favor Bernie. I've found that if I even hint to many voters around here that Hillary might be the better candidate, suddenly they want to talk. The rabidness of the Bernie Bullies is not something they can turn off. Most people need that personality defect to maintain a leftist stance in America. But bullying does not a Democracy make.

Harry Truman's Hell

"According to the pleasant mythology Truman later created about those years, he was the solitary rose in the manure pile, an honest public servant unaware of the crimes around him."

Thomas Joseph Pendergast was the political boss of the Democratic Party of Kansas City and effectively controlled the city from 1925 until about 1936.

Harry Truman served in the U.S. Army in World War I, and one of his associates then was a nephew of Pendergast. Truman was elected county judge in 1922 with the backing of the Pendergast machine (which had been started by Tom's older brother). Like many city machines of that era, corruption was rampant. With Prohibition in full swing, vast bootlegging profits slushed around Kansas City; plenty to buy any votes needed to control the political offices.

Harry was a funny guy, according to his own notes. He followed orders from Pendergast, helping the machine to rob the city, but (he claimed) doing his best to minimize that, and refusing to take any graft for his own use. "I could have had $1,500,000.00. I haven't $150.00. Am I a fool or an ethical giant?"

Pendergast liked Harry because he was a competent administrator, kept his own hand out of the till, and yet followed orders. When a U.S. Senate seat became available, it was Pendergast's machine that sent Harry Truman to Washington in 1934, in the depths of the Great Depression. Truman then and later claimed there were no strings attached. Biographer Richard L. Miller observed: "Clearly he protested too much, perhaps to ease his own guilty conscience about his role as an honest front protecting the power of thieves and murderers."

During the Pendergast era Kansas City was the nation's Las Vegas. Nothing illegal was not available and easy to find: alcohol, prostitutes, casinos and other forms of gambling. The city actually prospered, as organized criminals led by Johnny Lazia made sure visitors and citizens were safe from petty crime, and the take from the criminal enterprises was generally divvied up in a civil manner. They even used a lot of it to build up infrastructure. Even after Lazia was gunned down in July of 1934.

Senator Truman, of course, was an ardent supporter of the New Deal. Pendergast eventually fell victim to his own gambling addiction. He was indicted for tax evasion by the IRS and went to jail in 1939. In 1940 a reform slate came to power in Kansas City, just in time to the boom years of World War II.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, in 1940, found he needed the corrupt urban political machines (he had not needed them, at least not much, in 1932 or 1936). American tradition, starting with George Washington, was that no President would serve more than 2 terms. Roosevelt imagined himself indispensable, but he did not openly run for the Democratic nomination. When the convention assembled in Chicago (where the Capone machine still ran things) the delegates thought they were nominating John Nance Garner, then FDR's Vice President. Ed Kelly, Chicago's Mayor and a Capone man, packed the convention hall with thugs who "spontaneously" staged an hour-long demonstration demanding that Roosevelt accept the nomination. Roosevelt did. Mussolini's March on Rome was not more perfectly staged.

By 1944 the bosses were back in charge of the Democratic Party. "The 1944 convention — dominated by Hannegan, Hillman, and the city bosses — added Truman to the ticket. Roosevelt died three months after his fourth inauguration, and Tom Pendergast's boy became President."

President Truman continued the New Deal and tried to extend it to creating a national health insurance program. He also committed heinous war crimes, continuing Roosevelt's policies of purposefully targeting civilians in German and Japanese cities with conventional weapons, then becoming the only human in history to actually use nuclear weapons, and against mainly civilian targets at that.

Go to hell, Harry.

[All quotes were found in Stephen R. Fox's Blood and Power, Organized Crime in Twentieth Century America, William Morrow & Company, 1989.]

Joseph Biden Primary Talk and Rotten Boroughs

This weekend the major media revived the idea that Vice President Joseph (Joe) Biden could enter the Democratic Presidential primaries. That isn't as exciting as watching Donald Trump beating up on his Republican rivals, but it reveals much about Democratic Party and American politics.

The basic idea is that while the nation might be ready for a female President, that female might not be Hillary Clinton. She is taking a bit of a bruising from the "progressive" wing of the Democratic Party, now led by Bernie Sanders, who until recently was an independent socialist, not a Democrat at all. And of course the the conservative media, which is most of the media, treat Hillary like she is some combination of Bloody Mary and Joe Stalin's wife.

Joe Biden would be promoted as a fresh face that can unite the Party. Once its bureaucracy, donors, and likely even voters, reject the Bernie Sanders bid.

People forget what Joe Biden stands for and where he comes from. A narrative a personal grief and service as Vice President under Barack Obama is supposed to make us forget his deeper, darker, shadier past.

Joe Biden come from a pocket borough, and not just any pocket borough.

The term pocket borough came from Britain to indicate an election district where a very few people chose someone for Parliament. It did not so much result from corruption as from the migration from rural areas to cities, combined by leaving the districts drawn in ancient past in place. But once the pocket burroughs existed, it was easy for rich people to control them, and thus control Parliament.

A similar, if not quite as dramatic, situation exists in the United States, set in cement when the Constitution was drawn up. Each state gets two Senators, no matter how small its population.

Bernie Sanders is from the state of Vermont. It has a population of about 627,000. In other words, its entire population is equivalent to a mid-size city in one of the more populous states. Yet it gets two U.S. Senators. In this state we had liberal capture, or socialist capture if you will, or at least capture by Bernie Sanders. He has never accomplished much in the U.S. Congress, but he has somehow kept the voters in Vermont happy.

Before the Vice Presidency Joe Biden was Senator from Delaware. That state has a population of about 936,000, but is much more urban/suburban than Vermont. Most importantly Delaware is the most corrupt state in the nation, if by corrupt you mean rich people and their banks and corporations getting their way. Delaware is so corrupt that corruption (of the corporate type) is legal.

Most notably, Delaware has the loosest laws to control corporations in the nation. It is so lawless that most corporations of any size in the U.S. incorporate themselves in Delaware, even though their corporate headquarters are in other states.

So as Senator, Joe Biden was essential representing corporate America. The last time he tried to run for President I called him the Senator from Visa Card.

On the plus side Biden seems to have been less interested in pushing foreign wars than Hillary Clinton. When it comes to the Presidency, you have to pick your poison, if you want to have some chance of backing a winning candidate. If you want to vote your progressive conscience there is always the Green Party candidate. Though I think Hillary is actually reasonably environmentally friendly and progressive, when compared to the other choices.

Perhaps the bigger question is not who should be President, but why the Senate should be institutionally riddled with corruption. The Constitution should be amended to apportion the Senate to make each Senator represent roughly the same number of people, like other offices in the U.S.

Barack Obama's War on Venezuela

President Barack Obama announced that U.S. Imperialism is still alive and swaggering in the Americas yesterday.

Let's look at the Venezuela Executive Order Fact Sheet issued yesterday by the White House.

We are declaring economic war on Venezuela, and are presumably ready to foment a civil war or coup there, because: they are not democratic enough. They do not respect civil rights enough for Obama and crew.

Of course, we'll do business with Saudi Arabia, and U.S. puppet regimes and even Texas, but we can't be having politicians who were not pre-selected by the U.S. being voted into power, and actually exercising power, in Venezuela.

What are these evil Venezuelans accused of? Why corruption. None of that in Washington, D.C. or any of our client states around the world.

Undermining the democratic process. Barack does not like that ... in Venezuela. Which does not include actions like when the young Obama kept Republicans off the ballot by legal challenges. Or Hillary Clinton's back-door fundraising.

"Actions that prohibit, limit, or penalize the exercise of freedom of expression," which I suppose they don't have a Citizen's United ruling that rich people can spend unlimited money to influence elections.

What happened to the old international model of intervention? Did John Kerry count heads at the U.N. and decide we just didn't have the votes to impose our (the U.S. elite's) will that way?

This is yet another reminder of why I am not a member of the Democratic Party. The party of slavery and the Vietnam War. A party of putrid pig parts.

Isn't targeting particular politicians and officials of a sovereign country exactly a policy that undermines democratic processes or institutions?

Here's an idea: let's all the people of the world who are peaceful stop doing business with Barack Obama and his corrupt pals like Hillary "I am not my husband" Clinton and John "I forgot what I learned in Vietnam" Kerry. War criminals all.

I can hear the democratic donkeys braying: but the Republicans!

Sure, the Republicans are soul sucking zombies who would crash the American economy again while demanding we worship Christ the Vampire.

I don't care any more. I'd like to destroy both parties, but if the Democrats have to go first, that is fine with me.

I don't want a just a decent independent or third-party candidate for President to vote for in 2016. I want every election for every office to give voters a real choice. And I want the Democrats and Republicans to lose, and then to be prosecuted for their past crimes.

U.S. hands off Venezuela! Let's use our hands to clean up the United States of America.

Gone Girl Politics and Politicians

Last night I did my usual volunteer stint at the community-operated Arena Theater and then watched Gone Girl, starring Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike. Because my wife Jan had read the novel by Gillian Flynn, I knew the gist, which only detracted a little from empathizing alternately with the main characters, Nick Dunne and Amazing Amy.

Naturally it reminded me of the current state of political affairs in the United States. Nick Dunne could represent the Democratic Party, and Amazing Amy could represent the Republican Party. Or maybe a better fit is Nick Dunne represents the Republican Party, and Amy represents the Democratic Party.

The citizens and voters of the United States are represented by the people of the smallish town in Missouri where the happy married couple has moved after losing their respective high-powered writing jobs in New York City. At times they sympathize with Nick, when they think his wife Amy was kidnapped. At times they hate Nick, when they think he killed Amy.

This is a story of multiple levels of deception. That is pretty much politics in a nutshell. Many Democrats believe their party has been hijacked. They voted for Nick (not Hillary), peace and prosperity in 2006, got a Democratic Party controlled Congress starting in 2007 and had full control of Congress and the Executive Branch after Barack Obama won the election of 2008. But instead of peace and prosperity, by then the nation was in the Great Recession, and Obama kept finding reasons to keep killing people in the Middle East and even extended the war to much of Africa.

Obama and Democratic politicians may have made a vow of marriage to Democratic voters, but marriage is not so easy. With the Pentagon waving its tits about, no wonder the boys (and the girls too, Pelosi and Feinstein et al) got distracted. No money! Just run up the credit cards and hope that sooner or later something will come up to keep the nation's head above water. And if a few million, well tens of millions, of Americans lose their jobs and life savings before things get straightened out, that is not because Nick was not trying to be a good husband.

Amy could also represent the Democrats, waving her Ivy League degrees around and refusing to get pregnant, but she is from a rich, cunning family that reminds me of the Bush clan. She was all sex and laughter and wit when her money was mostly inherited, but she turns vicious when she has little to do but play MacHousewife in a MacMansion in the kind of boring small city that breeds your typical Republican voter.

Amy and the Republican leaders, are all about deception. Many Republicans believe their party has been hijacked. The Tea Party types feel the Grand Old Party was hijacked by crony capitalists (it was formed in the late 1850s by a coalition that included crony capitalists). The mainstream Republicans feel the wackos in the Tea Party cause them to lose elections. Worse, if elected, Tea Party Republicans won't vote to spend the money so important to a wide variety of business men who have learned that the government market is much more profitable than the ruinous competition one sometimes encounters in the free market. In American politics everyone liked building roads until the Tea Party came along.

And who needs Al-Qaeda to cripple the economy by blowing up a bridge (in America) or two when Amazing Amy will just deny funds for its repair, until it eventually collapses?

You can't trust any politician. Or the media, or the police. Yet you have to some trust people. That is called society. Choosing who to trust, or how much to trust, is the most important skill you can develop.

"Therefore since the world has still,
Much good, but much less good than ill ...
I'd face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good"
— A. E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad

House of Cards, 2014 Deal

Deadlock has characterized the Government of the United States since the midterm elections of 2010. Not much got done during 2009 and 2010, either, despite Democratic Party control of the Presidency and both houses of Congress. In 2009 the Great Recession was in full swing. The national deficit was unprecedented: tax receipts were low and payments for social services hit record levels.

Now the economy is back to something approaching normal, and so is politics. Armies of people who thought they were getting rich in the real estate market, and then lost their life savings, are no longer marching around with pitchforks threatening to tar and feather, or at least un-elect, incumbent politicians.

No one noticed the resilience of the system that was set up as the result of the compromise between free-market capitalism and socialism that is still known as the New Deal. The Federal Reserve probably should have done more to prevent the crisis, but in the end muddled through. Congress should have done more, but in the end muddled through. Businesses mostly muddled through. Workers got the shaft as usual, but are a tough lot and mostly muddled through.

Deadlock does not mean there is no policy. It means federal policy will remain the same as it has been since the Democratic Party, led by Bill Clinton, tried to destroy the welfare state, figuring it was no longer needed to elect Democrats to office. What choice did the welfare bums and working poor have, voting Republican?

For 2015 and 2016 we can expect business as usual. Obscene amounts of money will be spent on the War on Terror. A new federal Highway/Transportation deal will be made, because both parties get paid off by the contracting companies. Food stamps won't go away, but as employment rises less people will get them. The Affordable Care Act won't go away, because the Insurance Companies are making more money than ever, as are the doctors and hospital administrators.

The only real difference is Fracking. Complain about water pollution if you will, but Fracking has given the U.S. post-imperialist economy a second wind. The first effect of fracking was a big increase in incomes in the gas and oil states. That helped local economies and even the federal deficit. Now, after a few years of ramping production, everyone is benefiting from lower gasoline and natural gas prices.

Meanwhile, Chinese workers got big raises every year between 2008 and 2104, so now the cost of labor is not that big of an advantage for China any more. Their advantage is that almost all of the factories were moved to China in the meantime. We are not going to see many factories move back to the U.S., although new ones are already opening here to take advantage of the proximity to oil production and a huge consumer base.

After the election the Keystone Pipeline will be approved. Environmentalists will be mad, but soon they won't have Barack Obama to kick around any more. And why, really, was the Keystone different than any other pipelines? Why not demand existing pipelines be torn up, or people just move so they can huddle around North Dakota for warmth?

Immigration policy won't change much either. People will continue to come here illegally. No matter how much overpopulation hurts the environment, the Democrats will turn a blind eye to illegal immigration because they need the votes. No matter how much illegal immigration helps the rich (by creating cheap labor and increasing overall demand) the Republicans will remain anti-immigration because that is one way they keep American workers' anger focused on ethnic issues, rather than on the exploitive economic system.

And war will go on. For the time being Ultraconservative Islam seems to be willing to play the enemy, despite the consequences. But if necessary new enemies can always be found. Turning taxes into the satisfying feeling of being the biggest bully in the world is just too satisfying to too many people for us to ever Hope that situation will Change.

People talk about the Internet of Things. They should talk about the Internet of Lies. All lying, all th time, the art of politics in America.

Hitler and the problems of National Self-determination

"The most believing Protestant could stand in the ranks of our movement next to the most believing Catholic, without ever having to come into the slightest conflict of conscience to his religious obligations." - Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

The idea of national self-determination is closely linked to American President Woodrow Wilson and the post-World War I peace settlements. Nations are conceived of along ethnic, linguistic, racial and cultural lines. National self-determination provides that each group of people who constitute a definable nation has the right to their own national government.

The Democratic Party lauds Woodrow Wilson as a great President, a man of progressive (liberal) ideals who was also a man of peace and yet led the U.S. to its first great international war victory. A closer examination reveals a more complex picture, in which Wilson, a college professor turned politician, was a conservative racist who turned against his own idea of national self-determination as soon as he saw its global consequences, which did not sit well with his Aryan, racist agenda.

[Who's lying to you Litmus Test: if Woodrow Wilson was not a racist, why did racism remain legal in the U.S. after he had two terms as President?]

As I write this, ethnic and religious conflicts continue to escalate. Israel is bombing parts of Palestine it made into reservations for the natives when it got tired of its ethnic cleansing chore. Kurds are asserting their rights to recognition as a nation. The lines drawn by Wilson's colonial-era pals of the British, French, Dutch, and Belgian empires are still not working, largely due to their failure to correspond to natural national boundaries.

But there is another important consideration: the negative consequences of stressing ethnic cultures, religion, and nationalism.

After World War I Poland was created from former parts of Germany (and a bit of Russia). There was a substantial German-speaking population within the new Poland. The new Austria was German speaking, Roman Catholic, and highly anti-semitic.

Meanwhile, a lot of other cultural nations thought they should have the same rights as the Poles. Famously, Ho Chi Minh demanded independence for Vietnam, but he represented just one of hundreds of nations seeking self-determination. The Brits and French gave the right to self-determination to exactly one nation within their empires between World War I and World War II (the Republic of Ireland, but Britain kept Northern Ireland). The lesson was clear: only losers in wars might get dismembered into smaller nations with borders drawn on ethnic lines.

It should not be surprising that Hitler's Germany had strange allies in World War II (some in hostile neutrality, like Ireland). In almost every colony of the British, French, Belgian, and Dutch empires there were groups hoping Hitler would win, and in many cases fighting against the British or French.

While Britain won the war (and the French empire was re-instated), the cost was so high it was unable to maintain much of its empire afterwards. National revolutions, often led by Communists, lined up much more of the world along lines of national self-determination.

Many of the new nations had sub-nations within them. Vietnam had Roman Catholics and Buddhists who did not like communism or each other. India had many sub-nations that had be be invaded by Mahatma Gandhi's tanks to persuade them that they were not to be allowed to exercise their own rights to self-determination. Most African nations had multiple rival tribal or clan groups arbitrarily thrown together.

And a whole bunch of European Jews who survived the Holocaust decided they needed a land of their own, the land their ancestors had abandoned almost two thousand years earlier. They invaded Palestine, kicked out most other Palestinians, and set up a racist state they call Israel.

The United States of America, for all of its legendary past faults (genocide, racism, etc.), meanwhile has developed a new model. I just call it the Modern state. It is not based on race or religion, though there is nationalism. It is based on ideals tempered with pragmatism: liberty of conscience, a semblance of equality under the law, and pragmatic good government: good roads, fair schools, and not too much air pollution, even a bit of a social safety net, as long as taxes are not too high.

But this modern America had advantages in developing. Not just a lot of resources that were easily stolen from the natives, but a population (excepting black slaves) who came here more or less voluntarily at an exceptional time in history. At a time when people were questioning revealed religions like Christianity and Islam. At a time when Republics were a reality and were moving in the direction of becoming Democracies. And when agricultural and industrial revolutions were getting underway that would raise the standards of living for almost everyone.

I believe people have a right to self-determination, but I believe they should be cautious with that right. The Nazis determined that no Jews, atheists, or communists would be allowed to live in Germany. Then they decided to greatly enlarge Germany. That is not the example I am hoping other nations will follow.

When a people has been deprived of their own nation for a long time, and has been treated poorly by the nation(s) they inhabit, I think they might benefit from setting up as a nation-state. Thus I favor Kurdish and Palestinian states, among others. But ... I hope they are modern states, or turn into modern states. I hope the people choose to join the modern world, with modern values: equality and justice for all. Not states based on religious or ethnic tests.

When there is equality and justice for all, it does not matter which government rules us, nor which ethnic group we descend from or identify with.

It is sad that America's leaders after World War II (mirroring the equally culpable leaders of the U.S.S.R.) sought to create a new commercial-imperial global system run from Washington D.C. America's making enemies so readily, and imposing our will when possible with bombs, assassinations, rigged elections and embargoes, marred our international image and robbed our modern system of moral authority (as did discrimination in the U.S. against non-whites, until around 1970).

Adolf Hitler was not a self-made man. Germany, Austria and Turkey surrendered at the end of World War I, after Woodrow Wilson and his allies had promised a just peace. Instead the defeated Central Powers  were treated to dismemberment and economic pillage. Hitler blamed this "stab in the back" on Jews and communists, and an angry nation elevated him to power. Nor were the Zionists who fought to create Israel in Palestine self-made: they were Hitler's creation. Hamas, in turn, was created by the Israeli Zionists.

We need the opposite chain-reaction. Self-determination based on nationalism or religion is not necessarily bad, but it is just as dangerous as imperialism. I hope when people assert their right to self-determination, they determine that they want equality and justice for all humans, not a new round of sectarian conflict.

The Double Coup of 1952

Coup. 2 a sudden, successful move or action 3 coup d'etat
— Webster's New World Dictionary, Third College Edition

1952 was a relatively calm year in the USA. The postwar prosperity was just 7 years old, as most other nations had not yet been able to rebuild their bombed-out factories enough to make a dent in U.S. global economic dominance. The Korean War had settled down, for the most part, even if an armistice had not been signed. China's communist party was well-entrenched, so that only right-wing crazies any longer believed Chiang Kai-shek could ever return to the mainland. Jazz was still hot, and so was Frank Sinatra; rock and roll had not quite been born yet.

It was an election year, and as usual a number of men (it was before women aspired to be nominees of the two main political parties) wanted to be President.

There were primaries held in many states in 1952, but many state parties still chose the party delegations to the national conventions by other methods. These typically amounted to appointments by party bosses.

The two main contenders in the Republican Party were Senator Robert Taft and General Dwight David Eisenhower, most recently the Commander of NATO. Eisenhower, at least at first, did not so much run for the office as allow others to create a campaign using his name. Outgoing President Truman had once asked him to run as a Democrat. But "Not only had Eisenhower no politics; he had no religion, no conspicuous guiding principles, and few known views on most of the great issues of his time." But, it turned out, he was a Republican. [Manchester, The Glory and the Dream, p. 745]

Senator Estes Kefauver

President Truman was eligible for another term (his first term as President came from the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt), and he was on the primary ballots, but he was low in the polls. Estes Kefauver, Senator from Tennessee, was the front runner. He had led an investigation into organized crime and its control of political machines, which turned out to be mostly Democratic Party political machines. He vowed to clean up America.

Truman could not let that happen. While most historians have been unable to prove that Truman was personally corrupt, it is hard to argue with his lifetime tendency to run with corrupt men, starting with the Pendergast Machine in his native Missouri, and ending with men he appointed to high office when the President's appointed cronies, among them Donald Dawson, Merle Young, and William Boyle Jr., were caught demanding bribes to facilitate government grants to businesses. Truman did not think Kefauver was cleaning up the Democratic Party, he thought Kefauver was destroying it.

Truman needed a white knight, someone with a good reputation, but who would let the Democrats continue corruption as usual. After considerable effort he convinced the Governor of Illinois, Adlai E. Stevenson, to run against Kefauver.

Stevenson's run may have been the model for Barack Obama's primary run in 2008. Adlai was articulate, a great speaker who could galvanize the Democrats' liberals and intellectuals. Meanwhile the party bosses, hand in hand with organized crime, were happy to get behind Stevenson, who was a true son of the Chicago political machine, no matter his surface gloss.

In the first primary, New Hampshire, Kefauver crushed Truman; Stevenson was not on the ballot. Eisenhower beat Taft 44,497 to 35,820, which is also a large margin of victory.

But Taft was not so easily put off. His father, William Howard Taft, had served both as President and as Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Robert had first been elected to office in 1920 and had served in the U.S. Senate since 1939. He had led the conservative opposition to Roosevelt and Truman for almost two decades. He had a strong campaign organization left over from two prior runs for the nomination.

Robert Taft beat Eisenhower in the next Republican primary, Nebraska; then in Wisconsin. In Illinois Eisenhower came in third. But "Ike" won the New Jersey and Pennsylvania primaries. Earl Warren won California and Taft won South Dakota, the last 2 primaries. With delegates from states not holding primaries Taft was way ahead. He had 588 committed delegates, with only 604 needed to get the nomination. He just needed 16 more uncommitted delegates to win.

Meanwhile Kefauver won every state Democratic primary except Minnesota (won by Hubert Humphrey), Florida (Richard Russell) and West Virginia (which elected an unpledged delegation).

So who was elected President in 1952? Did the people elect Estes Kefauver or Robert Taft?

Trick question. Don't feel bad, few Americans can name all the Presidents. There were a lot of them, and many are now quite obscure.

There were two political coups in 1952, one in the Democratic Party and one in the Republican Party.

Back in 1952 African-Americans could not vote in the former Confederate states, the South (and were discouraged from voting in many other states as well). The Democratic Party, in the South, was the party of segregation, a white-people's party. There were few Republicans in the southern states, but they sent delegates to the Republican National Convention, convened on July 7 in Chicago, anyway. Keynotes were given by Joe McCarthy and General Douglas MacArthur. Then business was conducted.

Taft appeared to be able to win the nomination on the first ballot. He now had 607 committed delegates. But Thomas Dewey and other supporters of Eisenhower had other ideas. They challenged the credentials of the southern state delegates, most of whom supported Taft. Meanwhile polls showed Eisenhower would do better with the general public than Taft, the darling of conservatives. Back room deals were made in secret. Individual delegates began to desert Taft.

On the first ballot Eisenhower got 595 votes, Taft 500, Warren 81, Harold Stassen 20, and MacArthur 10. Before a second ballot could be held, the Minnesota delegation changed over to Ike, giving him the nomination. Taft, ever the team player, allowed a motion to make the nomination unanimous.

The Democrats also met in Chicago, about a week after the Republicans left. Adlai Stevenson had taken himself out of the race on April 16. Kefauver had the popularly elected delegates, but crooks ran the party in that era. The anybody-but-a-reformer crowd considered Vice President Alben Barkley, but labor union leaders refused to back him. Stevenson made a speech welcoming the convention, and by all accounts, it was a great speech, recapitulating the achievements of the New Deal. Soon after Stevenson allowed he would accept the nomination, if offered.

It took three ballots for organized crime to prevent Estes Kefauver from becoming President. Kefauver led Stevenson in the first ballot with 340 votes to Stevenson's 273, Richard Russell's 268, Averall Harriman's 123 and 1/2, and a scattering for others. In the second ballot Kefauver again led with 362.5 votes, Stevenson had 324.5, Russell 294, and Harriman 121. But on the third ballot some delegates (probably bribed) defected from Kefauver, and Harriman's switched to Stevenson in a block. So Stevenson was nominated on the third ballot with 617.5 votes, or 50.2% of the delegates.

The party bosses did let the American people (excepting southrern non-whites) vote in November of 1952. The American people went with the General, who was pretty close to the center of the political spectrum. To appease the right wing of the Republican Party, Richard Nixon was Ike's running mate and became the Vice President of the United States. Dwight David Eisenhower became the first Republican Party President of the United States since Herbert Hoover.

Feinstein and Brown Fuel Drug Corruption

There are many forms of political corruption, and some are worse than others. Ordinary corruption might be when an office holder, in return for some consideration, awards a government contract to a specific contractor. Or when a legislator includes a line or two of text in a bill that creates a tax break or regulatory loophole for a supporter's business.

Then there is systemic corruption, where the law itself is corrupted by a corrupt society, as in the racist laws the Democratic Party wrote and upheld from the time of its founding by Andrew Jackson until the laws were finally changed in the late 1960s.

Money from black market profiteering has an ancient role in corrupting governments. In the last century the key black market has been in illegal drugs. A vast framework of corrupt police and politicians have been fueled by drug money, including here in California.

You can tell which politicians are corrupt by their stands on efforts to legalize these drugs. We supposedly live in a democracy. People want drugs for fun, for energy, for relief from pain. Sure people injure themselves with meth and heroin and other drugs, but it is highly obvious that the bans on these drugs just make them highly profitable.

Most drug-associated crime is because the drugs are artificially expensive because of the costs of running a black market, evading law enforcement and fighting other groups for business. So besides the criminal enterprises that manufacturer and distribute the drugs, the main beneficiaries are political machines like the Democratic Party and Republican Party.

When a politician is against legalizing marijuana, he or she is just protecting the black market rackets of their racketeer friends, and their own "juice."

Lately the top two political figures in the State of California, Governor Jerry Brown and U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, have spoken against legalizing marijuana (beyond the current legal status of "medical" marijuana.) Governor Brown asked "How many people can get stoned and still have a great state or a great nation?" The kind of nation that can topple 3rd world governments at will, keep the wages for most workers artificially low, and make sure that every poor boy and girl can look forward to a life of selling illegal narcotics.

Diane Feinstein has been politically bullet-proof since most women in California decided to vote for Democratic Party female candidates without looking beyond the issue of reproductive rights. She recently came to Brown's rescue, saying "I saw a lot of where people began with marijuana and went on to hard drugs." Some people start as relatively harmless city council members and go on to become Senators, but does that mean we should abolish city councils?

The depths of Feinstein's corruption and misgovernance are difficult for the average Californian voter to fathom. Unfortunately, the corrupt two-party system in California means her only serious electoral opposition has been from Republican Senatorial candidates who are also anti-drug.

What distinguishes Feinstein is she has a voting record in Congress. She apparently hates animals. She was the co-sponsor in the Senate of the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, which makes anyone protesting cruelty to animals a terrorist.

She hates Palestinians, as shown by her constant, vocal support for U.S. taxpayer subsidies for Israeli ethnic cleansing in Palestine. Many California Democrats who think the U.S. wastes a lot of money on war would be surprised at how Feinstein has consistently supported inflating the homeland security and "defense" budgets.

Senator Feinstein's husband is Richard C. Blum, a capitalist, investment banker, and real-estate tycoon (he owns much of San Francisco). There we have at least the appearance of ordinary corruption. One of Blum's many holdings EG&G won a $600 million contract from the U.S. military. Because he is so wealthy he also controls or helps control a number of prestigious non-for-profit (but run by profiteers) groups, notably The Wilderness Society.

There is probably nothing to be done about Senator Feinstein except to wait for her to die from old age. However, California voters will likely have a chance to legalize marijuana in a future referendum.

Illegal drugs generate vast sums of money that corrupt society and our political structure. Because of black-market drugs sales in the U.S., Mexico has become a drug lord's playground. Did no one learn any lessons from the U.S. experiment with alcohol Prohibition?

When you hear a politician tell you marijuana should be illegal, remember they are on the take. When they ask to be re-elected, just say no.

Disclosure: I don't smoke marijuana (but I did when I was younger).

Defund Republicare

Republicans in the United States House of Representatives are using the federal deficit and national debt, and coming need to authorize a higher ceiling for the debt, as an excuse to try to defund Obamacare (Affordable Care Act).

How about a little fight from the Democratic Party side? How about a little offense, instead of the usual half-hearted defense?

How about defunding Republicare, the vast system of federal spending and tax breaks that is the millionaires' equivalent of the Food Stamp program?

How about refusing to fund the debt ceiling unless the military budget and homeland security budgets are cut by, say, 75%? How about a mean, lean, U.S. force that just defends U.S. territory and leaves the rest of the world to mind its own business?

How about defunding the capital gains tax break. Rich people, truly rich people, get almost all of their money through inheritances and capital gains. When they can't evade capital gains taxes altogether, they only pay 15%. Is that fair? Is that right, when working people making $50,000 per year pay 30%, and families making between $50,000 and $100,000 per year pay a much higher tax rate?

Why do the Democrats always fail to stand up to the rich bully boys who fund the Tea Party and even the mainstream Republican politicians? You know why. Democratic Party politicians use rhetoric to get working class and middle class votes, but they are almost all on the business lobby payroll.

How about defunding the agriculture programs that were set up to help Depression Era small farmers and now funnel hundreds of billions of dollars to corporate farmers, many of whom actually just sit in urban penthouses, collecting government welfare checks?

How about defunding DEA anti-marijuana operations? They just drive up the price of marijuana, creating black market profits, a sliver of which are sufficient to bribe Republicans and Democrats alike to keep Marijuana Prohibition on the law books.

How about defunding Israel? Why are American taxpayers sending vast sums of money to a weathy nation that abuses women, subsidizes a vast welfare scheme for ultraconservative cults, takes the private property of Palestinians without due process of law, and generally causes about a billion people in the world to hate the U.S. government?

There are a lot of other smaller programs that waste money subsidizing America's richest citizens, and even foreigners. Each program should be looked at. And no matter how loud the campaign donors scream, the subsidies should be eliminated. In many cases, like the federal transportation program, the same dollars could alternatively go much further if the profits of contractors were limited to a fair rate.

But Democratic Party politicians are as bad as Republicans when it comes to protecting their own rivers of corruption. Democrats like to call something a program to help the poor, then use it to subsidize giant construction and real estate companies that kick back to urban Democratic Party machines. So while we're in liposuction mode, let's eliminate all but the regulatory functions of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Unlike most Democrats, I believe the nearly 17 trillion dollar federal debt is a serious problem, and is going to be more of a problem going forward. History shows that nations that overburden themselves with debt eventually fail. [See Bankruptcy and Beyond]

But don't expect Democrats to show any backbone. The Democrats have used their backbone to help ordinary citizens for only 8 years of the 200 year history: 1932 to 1936 and 1964 to 1968. Barack Obama and most of his faithful are politically to the right of Richard Nixon and Dwight Eisenhower. The main use of Democratic Party backbone between 1824 and 1964 was to protect slavery and then segregation.

But the real problem, perhaps, is not the politicians. Like thieves, they mostly just get away with whatever the citizens leave laying around loose and unguarded. The American working class is lame. The high hopes of the Marxists for the class came to naught. A surprising number of working class people spout Tea Party nonsense, often because their minds are rotted out by Christian doctrines. But even those who see the problems won't fight for their rights, and are mostly afraid to speak out. They are afraid to unionize, they are afraid to vote for better democrats in primaries or leftist parties when the Democratic candidate is useless.

And what of the middle class? Normally a reservoir of energy and intelligence, the American middle class was corrupted by easy living during the golden age of American imperialism. People expect to inherit a middle class lifestyle. That isn't going to happen much anymore. You are going to have to fight for your living, and not just in the economic arena, or by getting a college education. And if the middle class does not learn to fight in the political arena, and fight the right people (the robber barons, not the working folk) this nation's historical descent will be even more rapid than its rise.

Defund Republicare!

Estes Kefauver, Organized Crime, and Politics

There's a dirty little secret of the 1950's that neither the Democratic Party propagandists nor the Republican Party propagandists want you to remember. For both parties the 1950s were a shining era. A Republican, Dwight D. Eisenhower, was President for most of the decade, but the New Deal was still largely intact and the Democrats often controlled Congress. Both parties consider the 1950's a time of greatness, when the economy prospered, America ruled most of the world, and people were modest and hard-working.

Estes Kefauver was a Senator from Tennessee and he wanted to be President. He knew a little bit about vice, particularly the games of poker and flirting. Within the Democratic Party he was seen as too conservative by northern liberals and too liberal by southern conservatives.

In 1950 Senator Kevauver decided to have a committee investigate organized crime on a national scale. As far as the mainstream media was concerned, organized crime had been busted up after Prohibition. Sure, illegal gambling and prostitution still existed, and there were some junkies in most major cities who had to get their junk from somewhere, but crime just was not on the agenda.

Despite having a committee loaded with at least two Senators with mob connections and a marginally competent staff, Estes not only found organized criminal organizations in each of 14 cities he looked at, but in each city the political machine, and the police, were closely tied in with the mob.

Television was still fairly new in 1950s, but millions of sets existed and the Senate hearings were televised. It is estimated that 30 million Americans watched New York City crime boss Frank Costello testify, or rather dodge questions. Willie Moretti of New Jersey answered too many questions, and was gunned down in October 1951.

Kefauver exposed but he also protected. He was surprised at the wrath of top elected Democrats from Harry Truman on down. He carefully underplayed the political corruption angle. During the hearings he inexplicably deposited $25,000 in his bank (about $250,000 in today's money) and found another $10,500 to pay off a mortgage. One of his own chief campaign contributors was exponsed as a numbers boss in Knoxville. When hearings in Chicago ignored Democratic Party leaders having become millionaires in public offices having only small salaries, it was rumorred that they had a picture of him doing a Chicago prostitute.

All lines of inquiry seemed to lead in one direction: Las Vegas. In November 1950 the Kefauver Committee arrived in Los Vegas. The nation was newly at war in Korea and the Repubicans had just picked up five seats in the U.S. Senate (one was Richard Nixon) and twenty-eight in the House of Representatives. Kefauver was blamed by Democratic Party leaders for the defeat. Then the hand-selected mob frontmen, casino owners and public officials alike, denied knowing anything about organized crime or even the amount of money skimmed out of the casinos' takes before accounting was done and taxes paid.

Kefauver drew no conclusions from the testimony in Las Vegas. He had been defeated.

Today only students of organized crime read the old Kefauver report. That generation of top mobsters is dead. The political machines are less corrupt in some places, more corrupt in others, and the widespread legalization of gambling has. It is no accident that Barack Obama has happily focused on radical Islam rather than on organized crime, since he is the packaged product of the Chicago political machine. He has continued to support the anti-marijuana laws despite overwhelming grassroots support for legalization because he is protecting the black market profits of his allies.

You can read the Committe report at: American MAFIA, Kefauver Committee Final Report.

While unpopular with elected Democrats, Estes Kefauver was popular with voters. In the 1952 New Hamphire Primary he defeated President Truman, who then dropped out of the race. Kefauver won 12 of 15 primaries, but back then delegates to national conventions were mainly chosen by party machines. The same mob-ridden machines that Kefauver exposed. Adlai Stevenson, another mob-friendly but liberal Illinois politician, got the nomination. In the end the Republican Dwight ("Ike") Eisenhower won the Presidency. In 1956 Kefauver stomped Stevenson in the primaries at first, but later Stevenson, awash in campaign donations, won Oregon, Florida and California. Stevenson was nominated, and Ike was re-elected.

Kefauver died in 1963. No major, nationwide, public investigation into the links between organized criminal activity and politics has taken place since 1950.

This essay is largely based on Chapters 6 and 7 of The Money and the Power by Sally Denton and Roger Morris. Also David Halberstam's The Fifties.

Late Stage Imperialism, Class, and America's Future

"Like a poor beggar, raileth on the rich.
Well, whiles I am a beggar, I will rail
And there is no sin but to be rich;"
—William Shakespeare, King John, Act II

I was an infant in the late 1950's, and in the early 60's I was sure the world was about to end. I lived in Florida during the Cuban Missile Crisis. If that were not bad enough, I was still a pre-teen when I heard predictions that even if there were no nuclear war, there would be an ecological crisis that would surely destroy civilization.

Half a century later the nuclear weapons are still at the ready. The world's population has climbed, species have disappeared, and global warming has been added to the potential ingredients for catastrophe.

In the seventies I hoped for a political revolution in the U.S. with the working class coming out on top, but not led by a dictator. When I graduated from college the world was deep in recession. Jobs were hard to come by, so I took ones that no one else in their right mind wanted. I sure as hell would rather have starved as a bum than move back in with my parents. But even at minimum wage, even at part time, I could get by on my own, often living in a group house with a bunch of roommates.

For a few years it has been obvious that the U.S. economy is in trouble, and with a kind of trouble that no political party wants to admit to. The trouble is in history itself, and history cannot be changed, nor can politicians or most citizens face it honestly. The trouble is complex, but not so complex that it cannot be outlined in this essay. The solutions offered by the main political parties (and the wings within these parties) are not going to work, because they refuse to admit to the essential features of the problems facing us. I include here the Democratic Party, Republican Party, Green Party, and Libertarian Party.

Let's just suppose you want to know what is going on, even though you won't be able to do anything about it, because 300 million of your fellow American citizens are wandering around a circus of mirrors, wondering why good times are getting scarcer no matter how hard they pray to Jesus, Keynes, Ayn Rand or Rachel Carson.

Most Americans today think Brits are a cutely accented people with a very sweet Queen leading them in High Tea. But from roughly 1500 until shortly after World War II the Brits ran the largest, most brutal, most barbaric empire in global history. Which brings us to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, or FDR.

Imbued with schooling in the Latin classics, even before the American Revolution some members of our ruling class longed to be the center of a new, global empire. FDR today is beloved by Democrats and hated by Republicans for New Deal economic policies and bureaucracies that never die, but that was and is a side show. FDR's true importance was that he fulfilled the imperialist dreams of the founding fathers.

FDR was quite clever. He had learned much from his uncle, former President Teddy Roosevelt, and from the architect of modern American and global racism, President Woodrow Wilson. FDR served as Wilson's Assistant Secretary of the Navy (1913 to 1920), which traditionally was the front-line post for U.S. imperialist plotting. From uncle Teddy he learned how to prepare to take advantage of a situation, and from uncle Woodrow he learned how to wait until other imperialist powers were exhausted fighting each other before committing American troops.

Hence, Britain, Germany, and Russia bombed each other's factories pretty well before Japan finally recognized a war that already existed (American soldiers were fighting Japanese soldiers in China before Pearl Harbor) and forced FDR's hand. FDR had already been building a vast armada to invade China and Japan, but much of it was sunk at the Battle of Pearl Harbor. With ten times the industrial capacity of Japan and with Communist Russia having already stopped the German advance, it was mainly a matter of time and willingness to spill blood to capture Germany, China and Japan before the Red Army could.

Russia did pretty well during World War II, but the British Empire collapsed. So did the Dutch Empire (did you even know the Netherlands had a empire, also know for its cruelty to natives?) and the French Empire. But in all the world only one nation had not lost a single factory to bombs. It was the United States of America. Thank you FDR.

In 1946 everyone wanted American food and other aid, and so no one could afford to set protective tariff barriers against U.S. goods. U.S. factories and corporations went wild. We took over French and British colonial puppet governments by offering them higher bribes than their old oppressors could. We lost China and Eastern Europe to communism, but by 1950 the effective American Empire was larger than the British Empire had ever been.

Working class Americans benefited. Corporations could be generous to newly-recognized unions because profits were flooding in from all over the world. Still remembering the Depression, workers and business people alike worked hard to push Prosperity to greater heights. Almost everyone (except for some oppressed minority groups) could own a suburban home, a car or two, a television, telephone, stereo, lawnmower, and the usual furnishings. College education became the rule, not the exception.

The Unions attributed prosperity to their forcing the Bosses to pay higher wages; they did not want to look at imperialism. The Business guys (this was pre-feminism) attributed prosperity to the Free Markets and their own cleverness. They did not want to look at imperialism. The Democratic Party and Republican Parties did not want to look at imperialism's effects on the American economy, they just wanted credit for prosperity. Within the U.S. everyone could agree that U.S. global dominance was a kind, protective sort of dominance. Our dictators were good men who were protecting their people from the horrors of Communism. We sent aid packages to show our benevolence. Anything said to the contrary was Communist propaganda.

The only people who talked about imperialism were the American Communists. Until around 1960 they were almost all in the Communist Party U.S.A., a pro-Stalin organization, and few people listened to them. In the 1960's a bunch of smaller communist, anarchist, and socialist groups thrived for a while, but they mostly collapsed after the end of the Vietnam War, and with them any analysis of imperialism.

Meanwhile, due to improvements in medicine and agricultural science, the human population of the world mounted rapidly. It was great for business. Each newly added human was a consumer and potential worker.

New trends emerged between 1970 and 2010 that gradually changed the global balance of power. The U.S., although defeated in Vietnam, maintained much of its economic empire and military clout, but was unable and uninterested in overtly conquering the entire world even after the collapse of the U.S.S.R. and its allied regimes. But the most important trend was re-industrialization both inside and outside the Empire, and a coincidental relative de-industrialization of the U.S. It was simple: producing profits became easier outside the U.S. than within as each decade passed.

Global industrialism, including mechanization of agriculture, has led to the degradation of the environment almost everywhere, but most notably in China. With China now trying hard to clean up its own environment, and labor costs rising, the rapid expansion of the Chinese economy is already slowing down. Other nations will absorb most new factories that are built to serve the global economy.

Neither the Democratic Party nor the Republican Party is willing to tax our non-American subjects to pay for the costs of imperialism. The U.S. federal budget is now in perpetual deficit, yet domestic government services are rapidly disintegrating. Almost all union workers now are government employees. Even the agricultural sector is under constant attack by drought, roundup-ready weeds, global warming, and symptoms like honeybee colony collapse.

The problem is not just that the Democrats and Republicans are deadlocked in Congress, resulting in a do-nothing government. The problem is that even if one party had its way, its solutions would not work. None of the solutions on the table are designed to work to revive a late-stage imperialist economy. Just like nothing the British did could revive their economy as their empire collapsed between 1945 and 1960. The world went on, and eventually the British adjusted, but they were no longer the world's richest rich people with the world's best paid workers.

The first real decision to be made is whether to maintain the empire, downsize it, or abandon it. From a purely economic viewpoint, each option has its merits. Maintaining the empire would work if we admitted we run an empire and imposed substantial taxes on our foreign subjects. Downsizing would work if we could shuck the most expensive and indefensible subjects, but even with a smaller military we would still need impose taxes. If nations rebelled against the taxes, we would probably have to abandon them.

Abandoning the entire empire would likely work out best in the long run, but it also abandons the easy fix of taxing our subjects. Today we still have very significant industrial, agricultural, and educational capacity in the 50 states (I am assuming Puerto Rican independence is an economic no-brainer). As bad as our natural environment is, it is in better shape than that of many other nations. Yet in international competition we have few advantages because of the stupidity of our business class and legacy costs of imperialism (the national debt).

We would still need to either decide on a national course. How can every person capable of work be given a productive role in a post-imperialist scenario? I don't think the welfare-state model, in which more of the pie is doled out to the indolent, can lead to anything but further decline. The goal of full and productive (as opposed to make-work) employment could be achieved within a democratic and largely free-market framework if the government would show a bit of backbone when necessary. Local, State, and federal government should be free to set up businesses as needed to address needs underserved by existing businesses. After an incubation period the ownership of such businesses should be transferred to the employees of the businesses.

It is absolutely essential, however, that the U.S. reduce its population. There cannot be prosperity for all on a limited supply of natural resources when the population keeps climbing, or even at the current level. This policy would doubtless include economic guidance. I would advocate free public education only for 2 children per family, and no tax deductions beyond the 2nd child either. If only a few people have more than 2 children, enough women will have no or only one children, and the population should trend to long-term sustainable levels.

Of course, I know this won't happen. The working class of the U.S. is as infected with fantasies as the capitalist class and the middle class. The leaders of the working class, middle class, and capitalist class are clueless. They were deceived by the easy fruits of imperialism. Those fruits are disappearing. Instead of waking up and learning how to plant an orchard, Americans demand that the fruit just keep appearing on the table. And politicians give them what they demand: pipe dreams.

American War Crimes Organizations and Nuremberg Article 9

Are you a member of the Democratic Party or the Republican Party? Then you had better hope that the military of the United State of America keeps the world at bay. Which is not likely to last forever, given that the U.S. government will become bankrupt if interest rates on its debts ever rise above an average of about 5%.

There is a precedent from the Nuremberg trials that allows Democrats and Republicans to be tried simply for being in those parties. Article 9 clearly states that for Crimes Against Peace, War Crimes, and Crimes Against Humanity:

Article 9.
At the trial of any individual member of any group or organization the Tribunal may declare (in connection with any act of which the individual may be convicted) that the group or organization of which the individual was a member was a criminal organization.

Thus it would only take one conviction of a Democratic Party or Republican Party official, living or dead, to turn all party members into criminals. As criminals they would lose their right to vote, which would allow non-war crimes political parties to gain the ascendancy, much as the Republican Party gained dominance after the Civil War by preventing Democratic Party leaders (who mostly had also been Confederate State leaders) from voting and running for office.

The Crimes Against Peace, War Crimes, and Crimes Against Humanity of the United States Government, and hence of her leaders and citizens, loom large in history, and not just in the distant past. It is too big of a topic to begin to compass in a short essay. But to illustrate, we need look no further than the events that provided the context for the Nuremberg trials of German political leaders, the losers of World War II.

Defendants at Nuremberg Trial, Franz von Papen standing

First, let's touch on the arguments against the legality of the Nuremberg trials, their sentencing and convictions. The U.S. Constitution (in article 1, section 9) prohibits ex post facto laws, but the entirety of the Nuremberg apparatus was created without the traditional legislation involving statutes with clear punishments for clear crimes. The trial was conducted without a jury and with no appeals apparatus, and the trial judges belonged to the injured parties. Despite war crimes being widespread during the period concerned, the charter of the tribunal specifically limits itself to prosecuting members of the Axis Powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan). Because the very legal propriety of the Tribunal should have been the main question, Article 3 states: Neither the Tribunal, its members nor their alternates can be challenged by the prosecution, or by the Defendants or their Counsel.

Nevertheless, the way of the Law, and particularly Common Law, is that Nuremberg established a precedent. If other nations can hold a kangaroo court and prosecute (and execute) people for war crimes, then the United States of America can legally be subjected to such a court, should our defensive arsenal ever allow it. Or should we have the wisdom to constitute one ourselves.

After the first round of leading Nazi (National Socialist German Workers' Party) officials and government leaders were convicted and hung until dead, the Nazi Party was declared a criminal organization by the tribunal. 8.5 million German citizens had been members, and many were soon tried in the Denazification Campaign, which was also ex post facto in nature.

The Nuremberg Trials were careful to not look too closely at how World War II actually started, repeating the lack of care of Allied historians for the timeline of events leading up to World War I. The judges refused to allow the defense to bring up that it was France that first declared war on Germany or that the German invasion of Norway at the beginning of of the war only managed to get there ahead of a British invasion by a few days. There was some small success, however, in the defense pointing to certain British and American war tactics, notably unrestricted submarine warfare, to push back against certain of the charges.

But, as is so often the case in the law, some mighty big fish got away because they were doing the prosecuting. The level of German bombing of British Empire targets in England was doubtless criminal, but nothing new, and nothing the British themselves had not done in 400 years of empire building. The unprecedented war crimes of World War II were Allied affairs: the complete destruction of cities by bombing, in particular firebombing, and eventually the atomic war waged against Japan.

Americans are so used to excusing their attacks on Japanese cities that they seldom can think clearly about war crimes. They excuse these attacks as military necessities. "Millions of U.S. soldiers would have died if we had been forced to invade Japan." But the U.S. was not being forced to invade Japan. The diplomatic history of the war is one of nearly continuous peace initiatives by the Japanese before, during, and right up to the end of the war, all spurned by President Franklin Roosevelt and his Secretary of State Cordell Hull. [Before the U.S. officially entered the war Roosevelt frequently decried bombing cities as a crime.]

If killing civilians is excused as a war crime because it saves lives of combatants, then the entire Nuremberg prosecution was flawed. The defense lawyers could have argued that Jews, foreign civilians and and German political prisoners who died in or were murdered in the concentration camps were impediments to military success, and that would have been true. The blitz against London could be interpreted as legally justified because it would have saved German lives in the invasion of England, had it taken place.

The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were war crimes plain and simple. President Roosevelt had died, so President Harry Truman made the ultimate decision. His advisors were all members of the Democratic Party. Only General Douglas MacArthur, who was a Republican and no bleeding heart, argued against the use of the atomic bomb on cities filled with civilians. He believed, correctly, that it stained the honor of American soldiers.

I see no reason for there to be a statute of limitations on war crimes organizations. The Democratic Party and Republican Party should be declared criminal organizations based on their past actions. Living leaders, mostly Presidents, who have committed war crimes, crimes of peace, or crimes against humanity should be prosecuted and punished appropriately.

The only real question is: what constitutes membership in these parties? Many more Germans voted for the Nazi Party in elections than actually belonged to the party. Party membership was clear: one paid one's dues and received a membership card. In the U.S. the parties don't keep membership rolls. It is hard to say if registering to vote in the primary of a political party actually constitutes becoming a member of a party. Certainly donating money to a party should be held as the rough equivalent of paying membership dues to the Nazi Party.

I guess we'll have to sort that out when be set up our Peace and Justice Tribunal. I'd like to hold it in Philadelphia, to remind us that crimes against humanity are in the U.S. DNA, and that restitution has never been made for the wars against native American tribes or for slavery, indentured servitude, or the more subtle crimes of the ruling class of this nation.

Corporate Security State Declares Victory in 2012 Elections

After an extensive analysis of the situation, the United States corporate security state declared a victory in the November 2012 Presidential election, in an internal March 31st memorandum circulated by analysts to key figures.

"We are now that certain that, barring extreme circumstances, either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney will be the next President of the United States," a source who saw the memo told me.

But which of the two men did they favor? "We almost always prefer Democrats, as long as they are firm supporters of our security agenda, as Obama is. Democrats are good at heading off troubles among poorer Americans. Throw people a few food stamps and you don't have to worry about them getting very out of line."

Wouldn't any of the Republican candidates have been acceptable? "Mitt Romney was the best of the lot. He really wants to be President, just like Obama, so he'll be easy to control. Santorum gets people too whipped up over religion and morality, which is a security concern. Newt is, well, a time bomb waiting to go off. Ron Paul was a real danger because he would have tried to close down our global empire."

Aren't Democrats cutting the military budget? "Our own analysis showed the economy would crumble under current spending projections. We are reining things in to assure our long term prosperity."

What about withdrawing from Afghanistan? "We decide how to prioritize our missions. The President can help with that, but it is not his final decision. Not if he doesn't want to be Kennedied."

How about Congress? "During an election year in certain districts they have to moo about being concerned about Afghanistan or military spending. We want them to be re-elected. Let them moo."

Not even Norman Solomon, running for Congress in northern California? "Having a couple of people in token opposition in Congress keeps our control system credible. We don't think Solomon can win, and if he does we don't think he'll be a problem. He spent his younger years using nonviolence as a bludgeon against Marxists and Anarchists. These last few years he's been a big help in destroying the Green Party in California. We can work with him. We can show him off as proof that we are a democracy."

So no problems at all? "We are keeping an eye on Derrick Jensen and his attempts to inspire a new generation of eco-terrorists. We keep an eye on Occupy. We keep an eye on a lot of people. But we are not going to overreact to a bunch of amateurs. Frankly, the greatest danger to the corporate security state is that our own people will get too greedy and cause our temple to collapse under its own weight."

I am not venturing an opinion. They have an eye on me. I am just reporting what my source said.

Defend Democracy from Republic Advocates

Most Americans assume that Democracy is still a central American ideal. It may not work as well as we might like, but one of our jobs as citizens and as a nation is to perfect Democracy.

A dangerous movement exists in our nation to take away voting rights from most citizens so as to turn back the clock and return America to being a Republic run by a limited set of people having full citizenship. They are able to confuse many honest citizens because the terms Democracy and Republic are not necessarily opposites. A Republic in which every adult person has recognized rights, including the right to equal treatment and the right to vote for elected officials, is called a Representative Democracy. The history of the United States of America, under the U.S. Constitution, is largely a history of moving from a corrupt Republic to a shining Democracy. [See America: Republic or Democracy?]

This anti-democracy movement started on the fringes of the far right, but in the last few years has gained traction among the Tea Party and even among some mainstream conservative Republican Party members. To make headway it lies about the differences between Democracies and Republics. It purposefully conflates the Democratic Party with democracy and the Republican Party with republicanism (of the type it espouses). It revises American history to deceive the American people about the genesis of our nation, our liberties, and the creation of our Constitution.

The Republican Party was not named for the idea that only rich white men should vote, as was the case when our Constitution was written. It was called the Republican Party because the best name, Democratic Party, was already taken. There is nothing wrong, or inherently bad, in the concept of a Republic. If anything, a key concept of the Republican Party when it formed in the 1850's was that the Democratic Party was not democratic enough. The Democratic Party was the party of slavery.

The Democratic Party arose when property requirements to qualify for the franchise were being reduced and eliminated in the early 18th century, allowing all white male citizens to vote for elected officials. This was a critical turn in U.S. history, and within the racialist and sexist thinking of that era meant that our republic was becoming more democratic. Andrew Jackson and his cronies saw the potential in becoming leaders of these newly enfranchised voters [See Internet Biography of Andrew Jackson] and so created the Democratic Party.

The Republicans did not advocate taking away rights from poor white males. They advocated eliminating slavery and extending the right to vote (and other rights) to non-white ethnic groups, notably African-Americans. Thus, in their early history, Republicans also helped to forge our democracy out of the entirety of our citizenry.

Both Republicans and Democrats later supported the right of women to vote, extending our democracy further with the 19th Amendment. In the 20th century the Republican Party championed the right of African-Americans living in the old south to vote. In the 1960's the Democratic Party finally overruled its segregationist wing and joined in making our nation one where every adult could vote and was equal in the eyes of the law.

Two Big Lies are being told right now by the anti-democracy demagogues. One is that only Republics protect human rights. They claim democracies mean majority rule and the ability of majority to take away rights (and private property) from individuals. Yet we have a democracy that protects individual rights better than most real Republics ever have. Republics typically are run by minorities that trample on the rights of majorities. Communist Party leadership of Soviet Republics is one recent historic example. More commonly in Republics voters and rulers have been limited to a small class of rich people. In American history our early republic was run by slave masters who refused to treat slaves (and American Indians, and even middle class white men) as having the rights listed in our Bill of Rights.

The other big lie is that God, through our Founding Fathers, embodied in our Constitution, mandated that the United States would be a republic with a limited franchise. They point to where the Constitution ensures that state governments are to have "a republican form of government." They conveniently forget that a Republic can be democratic or undemocratic, and still have a Republican form (elected officials instead of a monarch). They failed to note that the most powerful branch of government in the new Federal constitution was the House of Representatives, which was constituted according to democratic, not merely republican, ideals. The House may exhibit all the imperfections of humans and politics, but it successfully accomodated the extension of voting rights to all adults.

Don't think this issue will go away. There is money behind it and forceful evil intent. Advocating disenfranchising American citizens may be protected speech, but it verges on treason.

These people need to be stopped. Their ideas must be soundly refuted. Help create a body of public opinion that will reject their poisoned mind set. Forward this essay, speak out, or write your own commentary on this critical issue.

Pius XII and the Cordell Hull Lacuna

It is a mystery, and a lot of secret history may hinge on it.

I came across it last night while reading The Memoirs of Cordell Hull. Or rather, I did not come across it, because it is a lacuna, or gap in the record.

Cordell Hull was one of the most important figures in American history, though he is now largely forgotten. The highest office he obtained was Secretary of State, under Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR). But why was he appointed to that high office? He is the man who brought us the income tax, back when he was a Democratic representative from Tennessee. You would think at least the Tea Party would want to know about the guy. He also brought us Free Trade, or at least a major step in that direction. As Secretary of State he was largely responsible for an unnecessary war with Japan, while evading as long as possible doing anything about Adolf Hitler.
I am reading his Memoirs as my last major research task before drafting my U.S. War Against Asia. His Memoirs are vast: two volumes, 1800 pages of fine print. Only one printing was made [MacMillan, New York, 1948], with most copies doubtless bought by libraries. So far I am only to page 718, in the opening days of what later would be called World War II.

I mention the size of the book because it emphasizes the gap. Hull loved to document and explain his actions in glorious detail.

On page 713 Hull begins recounts his initiative to get Pope Pius XII involved in a peace process, starting in July 1939, well before Germany invaded Poland (regaining the territory lost in the peace settlement after World War I). This account goes on to page 716, corresponding to March 1941. While interesting of itself for the light it throws on U.S. and Vatican war aims, it flashed in my mind that I thought Vatican Secretary of State Eugene Pacelli, before he became Pope Pius XII, had relations with the FDR regime .

I pulled out my copy of Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII by John Cornwell, and sure enough, Cardinal Pacelli had visited the United States from October 1936 until November [see pages 176-178]. He met with FDR on November 6, just after FDR had won a second term. They had made a deal, possibly set up and executed by Francis Spellman, then a bishop but later known as Cardinal Spellman. The Roman Catholic Church silenced Father Charles Coughlin, an influential radio-based critic of FDR. Pacelli, in return, received a promise that FDR would work to restore direct relations between the U.S. Government and the Vatican, which had made a treaty with Mussolini in 1929 (see Lateran Treaty) to become a sovereign state as well as the center of a global religion business.

The context for this is important and mostly forgotten. There were two core constituencies of the Democratic Party. There was the southern, racist, white, mostly conservative and Protestant southern wing. In the northern and western states, normally majoirty Republican, the Democratic Party was mainly urban, working class, and Roman Catholic. Holding that coalition together from the Civil War until the 1970s was a great political feat. FDR needed the Roman Catholic Church to stay in power. But the southern democrats did not like that very Church. At the same time, the Depression and popularity of the New Deal (or at least the blaming of Herbert Hoover) brought many former Republicans into the Democratic Party.

So why the lacuna? The Vatican Secretary of State visits America, makes some deals, even has a documented meeting with President Roosevelt. Cordell Hull, Secretary of State, who in his own words ran most American foreign policy with only moderate direction from the President, has nothing to say about it?

You can call it speculation, but I call it analysis. Pacelli had been working on a long-term plan for Roman Catholic domination of the globe, starting with Europe. Mussolini was cooperating in Italy, but Adolf Hitler, a Catholic, had been chosen by Pacelli to lead God's work, which included converting or exterminating atheists, socialists, communists, and even democrats, republicans, protestants, and of course Muslims, Jews, and other religious sects. Roosevelt had a different agenda: American imperialism, on the model of the British Empire, with democracy in the home company serving as a cover for a global dictatorship. Both Roosevelt and the Pope (as well as Hitler and Stalin) knew the biggest global prize was the British Empire. The Popes wanted it brought back under their religious sovereignty, but that would be second step, after Hitler defeated Russia. FDR wanted it to collapse just enough to allow the U.S. to take it over.

The Popes hoped important men in the U.S., even if not religious themselves, would eventually make the U.S. a Catholics-only nation. In the meantime, they did not want the U.S. economy used to build up the armies of anti-fascist governments and groups in Europe. In 1936 the issue was Spain, where the Pope's pet General (Francisco) Franco had launched a civil war, murdering everyone who disagreed with him, including Roman Catholics who supported the democratically elected government. Probably Pacelli and FDR agreed the U.S. would not arm the elected Republican government of Spain, thus ensuring Franco's eventual victory.

What Pacelli wanted long term was for Hitler, when his armies were ready, to have the freedom to attack Russia (aka the USSR) and destroy Communism and Atheism with one blow. But it's a complex world. While Hitler did eventually attack Russia, and engulfed that region in an Atheist Holocaust, the Pope and Cardinal Spellman were not able to convert Roosevelt to Catholicism. With the defeat of the fascists Catholicism suffered a major setback. The Popes had to spend 30 years trying to convince people that they had never even liked Hitler, Petain, Mussolini and Franco. America did inherit the British empire, got the French empire thrown in as well, occupied Japan, and would have gotten China for good measure if it had not been for the Chinese Communist Party.

The negotiations with Pacelli in 1936 probably continued after he became Pope Pius XII; certainly Spellman retained the ear of both FDR and the pope. The peace negotiations of 1940 went nowhere because there were several very different versions of peace involved. Hitler wanted peace if he could keep Poland and prepare for further advances to the east, in line with the papal plan. Britain and France wanted peace if they got to keep their empires and Germany had to give Poland back. America wanted peace because it was good politics, but we know FDR was hoping the European powers would do a World War I repeat: draining each other so that the United States of America would become the new global imperialist power.

Barack Obama Responds on Nuclear Dangers

President Barack Obama's nuclear nightmare is not that there will be a Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, or Fukushima in the United States during his presidency. He certainly is not worried that his encouraging the building of more nuclear plants will bring disaster in the future. I know, because the President sent me a letter.

This is the letter I sent to President Barack Obama, handwritten, by snail mail:

Dear President Obama,

Please don't wait for an earthquake.

Please order all U.S. nuclear reactors to be shut down as soon as is safely possible.

Sincerely,

William P. Meyers

This is the reply I received:

Dear William:

Thank you for writing. I have heard from many Americans who have been affected by natural disasters, and I appreciate hearing from you.

My administration is working every day to ensure our country stands ready to respond to any disaster or emergency. Our goal is a more resilient Nation, one in which individuals, communities, and our economy can adapt to changing conditions, as well as withstand and rapidly recover from a disruption of any kind. I encourage Americans who are directly impacted by natural disasters to visit www.fema.gov for up-to-date information and to access current response and recovery information.
Thank you again for writing.

Sincerely,

Barack Obama

Link to image of Barack Obama letter to William P. Meyers

In other words, he instructed his staff to duck the issue. The Obama administration is not just one in a long line of administrations that is desecrating American soil with nuclear power plants. By aligning the Democratic Party with the nuclear power industry, he has restarted the building of nuclear plants. What Obama fears is not a lack of support from people like me, but a lack of support from the corporate security state.

Failing to protect workers, extending a counterproductive foreign war, and rolling up his sleeves to help oil and nuclear power corporations destroy the environment, these are the legacies of the Obama administration.

The only real hope within the electoral system is the Green Party. The Green Party of California is launching a registration drive and fundraising drive right now. I'll admit we are weak, but that is because you have wasted your time and donations on the Democratic Party. If those of you who see the solutions to our problems join us, we will be strong. Together we will stop and reverse the damage to the environment. We will create a strong and just economy. We will withdraw from the imperialist system and enjoy the benefits of a peacetime economy.

And we will definately close down all nuclear plants and store all nuclear material in the safest manner scientists can devise.

Note: Nuclear mishaps occur more frequently than most people realize. See List of Civilian Nuclear Accidents