#418 – Dick Bernard: Watching President Obama

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Related posts here and here.
Monday I hoped to see Air Force One approach and land at Twin Cities International Airport. I got a late start, and missed any opportunity I may have had.
About 11:30 I went by the airport enroute to visit a friend of mine in a Twin Cities Nursing Home. When I got to Greg’s room, he was watching the President in Cannon Falls MN, and he and I watched the hour together. It was a special time.

President Obama at Cannon Falls MN August 15, 2011, thanks to Nancy Adams


Greg and I watched as the President talked about “Obamacare” (a term the President said he’s proud to own), and dealt effectively with the recent news that an Appeals Court had ruled that a federal requirement for people to pay for insurance they don’t want violates individual constitutional rights.
Greg may have had something to say about that topic, though we didn’t talk about it.
Greg and I volunteer together, so I don’t see him that often. I knew he’d been ill, but I thought he was getting better. He’s five years younger than I.
At church on Sunday I asked Greg’s son how his Dad was doing, and it was then I learned he was in the Nursing Home. It was a shock.
It turned out that Greg had been hospitalized with a treatable illness in May, and one thing led to another, and another, and another. Three months he’d been out of commission, and when I was visiting with him, he was again beginning to feel better, though he’d been bedridden so long that walking was a problem. He’d probably not return to be an usher captain – the position in which I knew him.
He and I didn’t need to talk about ‘opt out’ of mandatory medical insurance. We didn’t have to. He was living the reality that escapes others who think they can plan their illnesses.
As it happened, the last few days I’ve been surrounded by other random acts of disaster: Two days before the President arrived, my sister, properly crossing a street in New York City, was hit by a car which backed into her (it is an odd story). As I write, she’s awaiting surgery in a New York City hospital and in the long run should be okay.
Monday, a friend wrote about his wife, not yet 50, who ended up in emergency intensive care in a Rochester MN hospital due to kidney failure. She didn’t plan that.
And last night came a call from my Uncle that his 91 year old sister, my Aunt, had fallen in their apartment and had an emergency trip by ambulance to a rural North Dakota hospital. Luckily, she only cracked her collar bone. It could have been much worse.
So it goes when you’re in a position like the President of the United States (who I feel is doing an outstanding job under incredible obstacles).
Whether left or right, every opinion seems to be non-negotiable, and often completely opposite.
The House of Representatives (more on them in tomorrows post) is the only government entity that can provide funding to help increase employment, but will do nothing that can be perceived as a victory for the President.
People, including those who voted for him, seem to think their vote gave them the ability to order him around to their point of view.
It is “we, the people” who will make or break this country of ours.
I am not very optimistic that we have the vision and the ability to work together for positive change.
UPDATE August 21: A good friend commented on this yesterday. Comments and response included with his permission.
David Harris: Thanks for your continuing contributions, I enjoyed the recent blogs, even though I disagree that Obama is doing an outstanding job. I think it’s past time that he stopped compromising. I’m hoping he will have something of an epiphany on the fundamental nature of jobs and housing rather than attempting to boost the economy indirectly via programs that support banks and large corporations. I hope his actions are not based on concerns about being reelected. A lot of people pinned their hopes on him, and he is letting them down. In no way am I attempting to blame him for the incredibly obstructionist and short sighted actions of the Republicans, but I think he has been too focused on “top down” changes. Also, I’m very disappointed in his continued support of war as an instrument of policy.
Dick, in response: I doubt you and I will ever reach consensus on this, but here’s my position.
I think Obama has faced huge obstacles that few of us really appreciate. He needs to govern from the center, all the while beating off, in some fashion or other, the jackals that pass for the Republicans in Congress and Senate and State Houses. The politics is worse than I have ever experienced in my life, and I think he needs to be given a great deal of credit for accomplishing the great amount that he has.

#416 – Dick Bernard: The Downside of Belief.

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The Minneapolis Star Tribune accompanied us enroute to our vacation on July 23. The front page headline said it all, “TERROR IN NORWAY“, recounting the heinous attack by a lone Norwegian which included over 90 deaths, mostly young people at a youth camp and in Oslo itself. I had read the entire article early that morning, and on page A4, in a sidebar, was a note that “A Twitter account for [the killer] also surfaced, with just one post from July 17, which was a quote from philosopher John Stuart Mill: “One person with a belief is equal to the force of 100,000 who have only interests.”
The gunman survived, and seemed rather proud of his accomplishment – often that is how an eruption of anger feels: “they got what they deserved”. He now has a lifetime, short or long, to consider the wisdom of his actions. Thankfully, most likely his role modelling will not encourage others.
Thankfully, the Norwegian responses, officially, and through the public, seems not to be to exact revenge and thus compound the problem.
I bring this incident up as we are a society that has become more and more prone to substitute a dangerous combination of belief and supposedly righteous anger for reason.
“I don’t believe that human behavior has anything to do with climate change”; “I don’t believe that our country is collapsing due to our own actions, personal and collective”….
“I just believe [whatever it is]. I don’t want to hear any other view.”
Of course, there are pesky things called “facts” which sooner or later come calling, interfering with those beliefs of ours:
The credit card gets maxed out and the clerk says “sorry”; after a lifetime of smoking, that pesky cough turns into something far worse; the job we thought we’d have as long as we wanted it disappears….
That law we didn’t think we’d need, and got rid of, becomes personally very important…after its been repealed.
The government itself, which represents stability, is cast as the enemy of the people, because government is bad, or so we’re convinced to believe.
We forget that that awful U.S. Congress that we all hate, or our State Legislature, is really a creature of our own making. We forget to consider that not one single one of those Congressmen or women would be in office were it not for our vote, whether informed, uninformed or not voting at all….
They are, in fact, representatives of us, individually and collectively.
We are, it seems, a bunch of people who have trouble thinking beyond the immediate; and we are notoriously unwilling to be accountable for our cause in the matter of the huge problems we have brought upon ourselves over the past years. We’d like to have the fantasy that what is bad will be fixed, and we don’t need to exert any effort or make any sacrifices to do the fixing.
The guy in Norway bought the argument that the enemy was “them” – people who weren’t Norwegian – and went on a killing spree where all of the victims, to the best of my knowledge, were his fellow countrymen. Rather than solving his fantasy problem, he simply damaged his own people.
Like our ‘armed and dangerous’ society, he felt he was a law unto himself.
The Norwegian (who purposely remains nameless in this post) may well be one of those isolated nut-cases that do these heinous things, but he and others like him are just visible indicators of our lack of a greater and longer term vision, and our own inhumanity towards each other.
Just a thought.

#415 – Dick Bernard: The danger of an eccentric society.

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This morning two friends of mine were talking about why present day automobiles last so much longer and run so much better than those in earlier days.
There are many reasons, of course, but a primary one these two engineer-type folks identified was the present day near-perfect engineering of bearings used to keep automobile moving parts from wearing out. Older bearings might have appeared perfect to the untrained eye, but they had imperfections of various kinds that caused them to wear, and thus cause problems more quickly. A bearing even a tiny bit out of perfect balance or dimension is more likely to have problems. Most of the imperfections have been engineered out of today’s bearings.
During the day I kept thinking of that conversation about bearings, and how it applied to this eccentric (out of centric, unbalanced) nation of ours.
We have lost our bearings, to borrow the word for another purpose.
When one faction of a diverse society deems its philosophy to be the only acceptable philosophy, and tries in various ways to dominate and control the actions of all, the society goes out of balance, much like an unbalanced tub of a washing machine. The system begins to wear. The more unbalanced it becomes, the more likely it will be to crash and become completely dysfunctional, damaging not only the losers, but the winners as well.
Systems of all kinds need balance to survive and to thrive. History is full of examples, especially in the natural world. These are apparently easy to ignore if one thinks that they have found the perfect formula for taking control.
Down in Ames, Iowa, today, a bunch of Republican candidates for the U.S. Presidential nomination are engaged in a beauty contest, hoping to stay in the running for their party’s nomination, later. There is no perceptible balance there, of any kind. Each is trying to outdo the other as the premier conservative, far to the right of center. There are no moderates in the running in Ames. And probably the most conservative of all is not even there, hoping to gain strategic advantage over the others in months to come.
In the recent debate in Ames, every one of the candidates came down against even a 10:1 balance in spending cuts versus revenue increases in balancing the federal budget. Of course, they may have raised their hands only to go along with the rest of the herd, But it is their view, apparently, that no compromise is acceptable to Republican supporters. That it is “my way or no way”. This seems a guiding party narrative.
Ideologically pure positions such as the one just described are wildly out of balance, wildly eccentric, whether or not one has the votes to temporarily prevail.
Eccentric bearings ultimately wear out with mild to severe consequences.
So do washing machines whose load is constantly out of balance.
So do unbalanced countries where one side says, because they have a governing majority, or possess more of a particular kind of power*, “we can tell the rest of you what to do”.
“Majority rules” has its place, but not as currently practiced in the reigning arch-conservative and very radical wing of the Republican party in the United States.
We are a dreadfully unbalanced country at this point in our history, and we have been unbalanced for too many years.
We are paying a heavy price, and we are careening towards breakdown.
Will we stop the train before a bearing breaks and causes a fatal accident?
It’s up to us.
* – see the end of this link for a definition of some different kinds of “power”

#413 – Dick Bernard: V-Day. The Wisconsin Recall Elections

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5:30 a.m. August 9, 2011: Shortly, the polls open in Wisconsin, 15 miles or so from where I sit in eastern Minnesota. One of the people up for recall is the incumbent Republican Senator from just across the border so we have seen, at least, the TV ads. There is huge amount of outside money in these races.
The issues are unique to Wisconsin, but impact on us all.
Recalls are very difficult to win, especially when there are a lot of them at the same time.
Whatever results are announced later today will have meaning, and the meaning will be attached to them and heavily publicized by this or that political interest.
It will be an interesting evening tonight.
8:15 p.m. CDT. Apparently a huge turnout, but no predictions as of this point in time. Huge turnout means a huge amount of concern and a huge amount of on-the-ground organizing.
Stay tuned.
More, later.
5:15 a.m. CDT August 10. I have yet to read anything about yesterday’s election, but it appears that only two Wisconsin Senate seats turned Democrat from Republican in yesterday’s Recall election. Three were needed to retake control of the Wisconsin State Senate. Two more Senate Recall elections are next week, both seats held by Democrats. The Wisconsin Senate will remain Republican.
Everyone with an interest in politics will have an opinion.
Here’s mine, as a retired union organizer.
The outcome in Wisconsin does not surprise me.
It is no cause for celebration by the Republicans (though that is how it probably will be ‘spun’ – and everything is ‘spun’ these days).
There may even be a bit of collective wisdom at work across the border: recalls are a very unusual and rarely used process, and here were nine of them taking place at once in a single state. People all have their own reasons for voting, or not voting at all, so I won’t try to divine those notions. But what happened could well reflect a certain amount of common sense, as in “we made a mistake in November, 2010, but we’re not ready to compound our mistake by making another impulsive decision.” On the other hand, there have been formidable organizing efforts, and those are very helpful for future change.
People in Wisconsin probably didn’t really know the issues and the implications of sloppy political participation in the Fall of 2010. They do, now.
It’s just a thought.
As a Minnesotan, I didn’t “invest” much in the Wisconsin race. I sent $50 to the teacher’s union back in March, and I recall giving $24 to the Wisconsin Democratic party about the same time. Both were simple expressions of support in recognition of difficult times.
I didn’t drive the half hour to Wisconsin to help in organizing. From the beginning I saw Wisconsin as a local (state) issue best resolved by the residents of that state. I still feel that way.
I didn’t predict the outcome. (I didn’t notice many reporters predicting the outcome, though the turnout was heavy.)
In my judgment, Gov. Scott Walker and the new Republican majority did a huge amount of damage to working people in their first six months in office, particularly to public unions. But they did all of their damage before the elections were held, and even if all of the six recalls had been successful, and the two next week had failed, only the control of the Wisconsin Senate would have been changed. There were no challenges in the Republican House, and, of course, Gov. Walker is not open to challenge until January, 2012.
So, the status quo remains…or does it?
If there is such a thing as a warning shot across the bow of a political party in control of everything, yesterday’s results in nearby Wisconsin were such a warning: a very near miss.
The Republicans will make ‘victory’ talk. But there was little to feel victorious about yesterday.
Their future, in particular those who embrace the Tea Party philosophy, is very much in doubt…and they have already done most of the damage that they can do.
4:10 p.m. CDT August 10, 2011: Random thoughts through today. The Democrats “loss” to the Republicans in Wisconsin yesterday create far greater problems for the Republicans, and many opportunities for Democrats. There are many ‘for instances’, most of which are missed by the major media and by those licking their wounds after having their heart set on a clean ‘win’.
In the first place, through the rest of the Wisconsin biennium, the Republicans can not blame the Democrats for obstruction in the Senate. The Republicans control both houses and the governorship. Whatever record they generate from here on will, along with what they accomplished in the first eight months, be the record that they have to run on, and they’ll have to run in front of a much more informed and engaged population than in 2010.
In addition, the spotlight has been turned on the wealthy interests who bank-rolled the Republican success, the true interests of those rich and powerful folks and big business, and on the assorted ways in which these interests manipulated and used the common folks in groups like the Tea Party. It is all a bit like the Wizard of Oz being exposed for the fraud that he was.
So, rather than bemoaning the outcome, the best advice is to use this as a learning opportunity, and use the coming year to rebuild a true democracy in our states and nation. It can be done.

#412 – Dick Bernard: Will this crisis finally wake us up? I doubt it….

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Earlier today I sent to my own e-list the link to the Sunday August 7 Face the Nation.
I added this note:
“One of the most stupid comments I have ever heard was Sen. Lindsey Graham’s on Face the Nation yesterday. You can see it ‘below the fold’…. It was cynical, arrogant, hypocritical and worse.
Of course, it played well in sound-bite land.
Of course, it plays well with a certain audience.
These are sad days for this country…and it’s not Obama’s fault.
WE are the ones who need to do the heavy lifting. No more whining.”
Reader Will Shapira commented back, almost immediately:
“I think this all is very confusing and an abstraction at best to most people who believe it cannot affect them because they don’t understand it. That would generally include me.
You or someone else needs to explain to your readers how it could affect the common folk.”
I said I’d try.
We are a society whose eyes glaze over at headlines, much less essays. If we don’t understand something we tune it out. If it’s too hard to deal with, we generally refuse to deal with it. “Let’s go out and have a big sundae. It’s a nice afternoon. Going bankrupt is a problem for another day.”
But I digress:
Among other statements, Sen. Lindsey Graham said that “in any other private sector enterprise, he [Obama] would be fired.” He added “coach” as another profession from which the President would be fired.
OK. I’m in with “coach”.
There is, indeed, a ‘trickle down’ aspect to the tragedy of years of reckless spending accompanied by tax cuts for everyone, including ourselves. (The rich weren’t the only ones who got a good deal in the George W. Bush years of a Republican majority in both House and Senate.) The national credit card was out and running up a huge balance. We are on a national drunken binge. The culprits: unfunded wars and Medicare improvements, and, primarily, big tax cuts for the already wealthy. That trifecta is basically what got us to 2011. Oh, and we got those tax cuts too….
Team America was losing the game big time. And it all happened long before Obama’s watch.
Then comes Sen. Graham on Sunday, speaking for his Republican colleagues in carefully calibrated sound bites.
Let’s take his coach analogy.
Say someone is hired as a coach of a team, and a significant part of the team decides that it’s main objective is to get the coach fired – to make him fail – even before his first day.
In the real athletic world, that mutinous part of the team would be history, suspended at minimum. But in the United States political version, the mutinous rabble would be cheered on by the fans in the stands, hoping that their own team, the home team, would be clobbered, so that their new coach would be fired, and they could go back to the good old days, whose players and coach not only cost them the championship, but virtually bankrupted the operation. Those were the days when they got free popcorn, and all sorts of other bennies.
That’s what we’re playing with here. Team members who don’t think they’re part of the team. A crowd in the stands who doesn’t think they have any responsibility other than to watch: it’s the coaches fault. Fire the coach.
As previously stated, the key part of Graham’s quote is this: “…in any other private sector enterprise, he [Obama] would be fired.” Yah, right. Watch the mutinous division head become history in any private sector corporation that has hired a new CEO.
Of course, the U.S. is not a corporation, or a football team. Rather, we show ourselves in times like this to be a disorganized rabble.
Those who think they aren’t big enough to be impacted by, or impact on, this crisis had best think again, and think very, very hard.
We citizens may be small fish, but if the small fish start to die, the bigger fish further up the food chain will die as well, and sooner or later we’ll be all dead.
Maybe that’s what we want. For our sake, I hope not.
Update Aug. 8: Janet makes a relevant point: “Yes, but. But, we have been divided into 2 teams. Only 2 teams. Winner takes all.” Yes, but…until the present toxic days, our system seems to have been able to negotiate and compromise as though we were all interested in building a stronger union. There was rancor and division, yes, but there was negotiation and mutual respect. Those have been diminished to the point they have been all but destroyed.
Janet’s counterpoint to mine: “Good point. I have been thinking about this for years. When I say teams, I mean like athletic teams. America is very “team” oriented, whether it be school, college or professional sports, we want our team to win. Some will want to win at all costs and that is represented in extremity by the Tea Party. Unfortunately, they don’t understand that they are representing Koch Industries and other mega-corporations interests above their own. Koch funds Americans for Prosperity, Freedom Works, ALEC and a host of other organizations that want to destroy all laws and regulations that might affect them. Instead, those laws could apply to the rest of us or we could live like it was the Wild Wild West in a free for all.”

#411 – Dick Bernard: Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama

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Yesterday President Obama turned 50. His counterpart, Abraham Lincoln, was 51 when first elected to the presidency in 1860.
The similarities do not end there.

Cast iron plaque of Abraham Lincoln


Last Sunday evening, July 24, I happened across PBS American Experience on Twin Cities Channel 17. This segment was about the life of the Lincoln’s in Civil War Washington D.C.
The segment ended with the narrator talking about Lincoln’s exceedingly dismal chances for reelection in the election of 1864. His first term, after all, had not been in the best of times. As he took office in 1861, seven states had seceded from the still fledgling Union that was the United States of America. His first cabinet – selected by him – was not exactly a ‘band of brothers’. His entire term had been dominated by the Civil War. “Anybody but Lincoln” might have been an informal street assessment of Abe Lincoln’s chances for reelection to a second term in 1864. He was severely criticized from all sides.
Ultimately in the 1864 election he polled 55% of the popular vote, overwhelmingly won the electoral vote, and was inaugurated to a second term. Three months later he was dead.
“Now he belongs to the ages.”
Today Abraham Lincoln easily ranks as one of the most-loved Presidents in our Nations history.
This is how the matter of history plays itself out. The short term assessment by vocal critics means nothing; it is the long term that matters.
One hundred fifty years after Lincoln’s first inauguration a man with similar background experience to Lincoln, Barack Obama, occupies the White House.
In Obama’s case, states didn’t secede from the union. The U.S. now holds ten times the population of Lincoln’s United States.
But from the moment President Obama took the oath of office in 2009, his Republican opposition has been very, very public in their efforts to make Obama a failure: a one-term President. Their weapons: words and media. They have gone to war against this president, using all of the weapons in their arsenal to hopefully destroy him.
Obama’s base of support has for the moment seemed to join the opposition. “He’s sold us out”; “he doesn’t stand for anything”…. I see the litany all day every day on my computer screen.
To those character assasinators and those dooms-dayers and nay-sayers I say, don’t count President Obama out.
He is surviving a Baptism by Fire.
He is a class act.
Abe Lincoln similarly strode a hugely difficult road. But in 1864 the ordinary voters of the day decided that they had been well served, and gave Lincoln his second term.
I believe that there are lots of ordinary voters – the silent majority – who are finally beginning to seriously think about the implications of what is happening in this country.
You won’t see their opinions in letters to the editor, or in opinion polls, or reflected through the lens of the punditocracy or the political establishment, left and right. But they are out there, thinking.
“Is this mess what we want for our future?” they are saying. Who should lead us in this time of desperate trial. They aren’t deserting President Obama.
Will I be right or wrong about 2012? No one knows.
As my friends know, in 2008 I supported Hillary Clinton for President until she conceded the nomination. I thought she had the greatest and best experience to succeed at the job.
This time around, assuming he stays true to his performance so far, my support for President Obama is assured.

#410 – Dick Bernard: 2 days to Default. A tentative agreement.

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As of Sunday evening, a tentative agreement has been reached to resolve the stalemate in Washington. Ordinarily, such announcements are not made without a high degree of certainty that all parties will agree to the terms agreed to. Soon we shall see. There are plenty of loose cannons who need to ratify the results, first.
There are two safe predictions, regardless of whether or not the compromise actually passes and averts a shutdown:
1. The Principals to the deal will all say they wanted more of whatever they wanted.
2. The Spectators who actually comment on the deal from the outside will say it’s a rotten deal for certain specific reasons, and that their particular target should have done more, or less, or nothing at all.
While difficult to imagine the rationale they’ll use, some will declare victory over the evil-other….
Included in one of the endless pieces of e-mail in my inbox when we returned from vacation on Saturday was this most interesting information link about “government spending”. This is a particularly relevant document for this time in our national and state history. (If you’re just skimming things, it’s simply a list of 102 common things on which government spends money.)
A week or so before I saw the preceding item, someone my age, who has thus been long enrolled on Medicare and most likely on Social Security as well, sent me one of those ubiquitous pieces of anti-Obama hate mail circulating on the internet. This particular one purportedly quoted that renowned expert on “Obamacare”, Donald Trump, and, whether true or not, related the litany of the anti-government anti-Obama crowd against universal health care for everyone.
I wrote the gentleman back, saying as follows: “Before I saw this one, I was thinking: why don’t all complainers about government make an estimate of how much government could be gotten rid of, say, 10%, 90%, all of it…. First you pick the number. Then, if you’re serious, make a list of EVERYTHING that comes to you as a government benefit – like a freeway – and decide which one of those benefits you’ll get rid of. Rather than taking away somebody elses benefit, take away your own, first.”
He hasn’t responded, unless a response is considered to be his forwards, without comment, of several more pieces of anti-Obama hate-mail churned out by the anti-Obama assembly line.
One of these forwards was a cartoon I’ve seen before, which has a bunch of sinister looking vulture-like birds sitting on a pyramid like perch, each level befouling the one below. It was labelled “The Political Flowchart”
At the top was the President of the United States (of course);
next rung down a few labelled “Democrats” and “Republicans”;
then a few more, still lower, labelled “State Politicians”;
then on the last and lowest and most befouled perch the “American People”, the purported victims of government.
The narration continued: “When top level guys look down, they see only shitheads. When bottom level guys look up they see only assholes.”
Crude, but cute.
I wrote back:
“Perhaps you might consider sending [my response] along to your entire list, as well as the person who sent it to you in the first place.
I would propose that the flow chart be upended, so that the American People are at the top of the chart, etc.
After all, it is the American People who are solely responsible for who they elect, either by voting, or not voting at all. We are not a dictatorship.
Congress, in my opinion, and state legislatures, best reflect either our wisdom or stupidity in voting. Deal with your state legislators and the Congressperson from your district. How wonderful are they?
President Obama is doing an outstanding job in an impossible environment, especially with ‘crap’ like this which flows incessantly, and speaks profoundly about the people who choose to pass it along and thus apparently believe it.”
“We the people” authored this disastrous mess in which we find ourselves. It has taken years to reach this point.
Regardless of point of view, it’s time to go to work and become leaders to built a society we can be proud of.
And read “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism” by Naomi Klein.

#409 – Dick Bernard: 4 days to Default of the U.S. A highly recommended book to read (or re-read): The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein.

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RELATED, the post for August 1, 2011, here.
For some years we’ve had week 30 at a time-share in the Breezy Point complex on Pelican Lake in north central Minnesota. It is ordinarily a quiet and relaxing week, away from computer and the normal hubbub of life. Excepting 2007, when the evening news on August 1 brought us news of the collapse of the I-35W Bridge into the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, one can escape.
Relaxation was not as much an option this year.
We left home with the stark newspaper headlines on July 23 (click on photo to enlarge).

July 23, 2011 Minneapolis Star Tribune


The entire week was dominated by the not-funny circus in Washington D.C. which is near impossible to miss. We read about it in the daily paper, and saw the play-by-play on TV news.
I made one excellent choice this vacation week:

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein


I had purchased Shock Doctrine a long while ago – it was published in 2007 long before the name “Barack Obama” was much known outside of Illinois. I thought I knew what it was about, and it languished among the many unread books I own…until this week when I read every one of its heavily foot-noted 587 pages “up at the lake”.
The book covers LOTS of ground – at least 24 countries* in all, including the U.S. (Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, 2005). Succinctly it is the life history of a particularly vicious brand of unfettered free market capitalism.
I read it with the background noise of the looming Default of the U.S. on our debts; the recently ended Shutdown of Minnesota due to a budget impasse; the pending recall elections in neighboring Wisconsin….
The more I read, the more I became convinced that what is happening right now in our own country is directly out of the Disaster Capitalism playbook. Given the experience in the other situations outlined, beginning with Chile (Allende/Pinochet) in 1973, there is no good end for the vast majority of Americans IF the current campaign in Disaster Capitalism succeeds here.
There are many reviews of this book, which was a New York Times bestseller, and it no doubt remains in print. I was particularly taken by this review by Paul B. Farrell, Dow Jones Business News, certainly not a left wing publication: “To more fully grasp this new economy, you must read what may be the most important book on economics in the twenty-first century…The Shock Doctrine is one of the best economic books of the twenty-first century because it reveals in one place the confluence of cultural forces, the restructuring of a world economy as growing populations fight over depleting natural resources, and the drifting away of America from representative democracy to a government controlled by multiple, competing, well-finances, and shadowy special interests.”
Make no mistake, the cabal described in this book is real and still very powerful and United States based. Disaster Capitalism’s fingerprints are all over the present day political shenanigans in the United States, though the original architect is dead (2006), its major proponents are no longer in office and exposed, and the long-term results of its efforts have been proven to be destructive to the societies it has successfully infected.
But Disaster Capitalism’s power can be blunted by persons of good will who use Shock Doctrine to shine a light on a campaign whose only beneficiaries are the already super wealthy.
Do purchase the book. And help spread the word.
* – Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Guatemala, Honduras, Indonesia, Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, Maldives, Nepal, Nicaragua, Poland, Salvador, South Africa, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Thailand, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Uruguay,

#408 – Dick Bernard: 11 days to default in Washington DC. Communicating, publicly.

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NOTE: I will be off-line until at least July 31: vacation and computer maintenance. This column is #20 in a series which began June 23. All previous posts are accessible here (all hi-lited dates have articles behind them).
“A peace is of the nature of a conquest:
For then both parties nobly are subdued,
And neither party loser.”
Henry VI Part Two Act IV Scene 2
Seen in the book “One Thousand White Women – The Journals of May Dodd by Jim Fergus.
Sincere thanks to Kathy Garvey.
Thursday I went over to the Minnesota State Capitol. It was good to see it open. Some photos at the end.
I have long been of the opinion that the representations of political reality that we see and read in the traditional media are essentially worthless. Anyone whose daily work is in the public eye is well instructed on message management and looking and sounding politically correct and convincing. That person looking us in the eye through the television screen WILL stay on message. Contemporary politics is, simply, a war with different kinds of weapons.
In our society, “fair and balanced news” no longer has much meaning, even for the well intentioned. We seek validation of our own point of view, and we can find it.
There is a downside to this: If one’s source of information tells only one side of the story, there is no possibility of understanding what is real: that humans are people of differing opinions. One philosophy attempting to dominate and overwhelm others is ultimately doomed to failure.
Returning from the Capitol, one of the e-mails awaiting me was this one which I found quite fascinating. (There is a second part to this DVD, and the two in total are about 15 minutes in length. The show host would be considered on the progressive side of the political ledger, and the broadcast entity is sometimes accused of being of a liberal bent.) His comments speaks for themselves.
The group I saw at the State Capitol was one which had gotten my e-mail address in some way – I didn’t know of them otherwise. I was glad to hear from them, and happy to participate. They were serious and respectful. It will be interesting to see if they get some press notice in today’s newspapers. (They don’t have a feedback system, at least none that I can see at their website. This is a problem they hopefully will remedy.)
I am of the belief that the only effective way for ordinary people – people like myself – to have an impact is one person, one contact at a time. We are so overwhelmed with “information” that there is little left to learn. If we’re going to survive as a society, we need to talk with, even debate, each other, and really listen to other points of view. It isn’t easy – those people standing in a circle yesterday, to have effect, need to turn around and act outwards towards people outside the Capitol rotunda. The only way to do this is to practice honing the skill, be it letters to the editor, standing up in a small or large meeting, giving a presentation, etc….
As we go on a vacation, and this country of ours lurches towards default on our debts, I’m somewhat hopeful that the U.S. will avert economic catastrophe, and that we’ll learn something as a result of the current mess we’re in.
The teaching has to be up to us, not “them”.
A FEW PHOTOS FROM THE CAPITOL, THURSDAY, JULY 21, 2011 (click to enlarge).

Demonstration in the MN Capitol Rotunda July 21, 2011


Empty MN Senate Chamber July 21, 2011


Empty MN House of Representatives Chamber July 21, 2011


MN Governors Reception Room July 21, 2011


Speaker at Demonstration in Capitol Rotunda July 21, 2011

#407 – Dick Bernard: 12 days till U.S. Default on our debt. How terminally stupid can we be?

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Please see NOTE at end of this post.

I have discovered as I trudge along this path of attempting political conversation that political conversation is virtually impossible, to be avoided like the plague.
People are stuck in believing what they want to believe, and nothing will shake them out of even looking at their individual notion of reality.
This tendency applies, unfortunately, to both left and right, though it is the far right that dominates the media.
Our collective attitude seems similar to what would happen if I ran into the middle of rush hour traffic this morning, steadfast in my reality that I am not going to be killed by some motorist who doesn’t notice that I’m there.
I can believe it is not going to happen, but the odds are overwhelmingly against me.
I will be as dead as the average roadkill.
Yesterday, the Minnesota legislature agreed to end the government shutdown. I thought the final compromise to be reasonable and necessary, and said so. Not settling would just continue the insanity on into the distant future. The composite bills were signed by the Governor. Here’s the newspaper report on the settlement.
The legislative leadership could have done the requisite bargaining back in May or even long before – the Governor signalled from the beginning of the session in January his willingness to compromise. He had numerous official compromise positions on the table, including an offer to mediation to help settle differences between the parties. To my knowledge the opposition stayed entrenched. They had some point to prove, which has now gone unproven (except protecting the wealthiest Minnesotans from a small amount more taxes.)
A key element of the Minnesota settlement is borrowing more money. A new crisis is guaranteed next legislative session.
(In the wings is an unsettled and very controversial proposal to get in the business of building a new professional football stadium. It is a demand of the Minnesota Vikings, backed by a threat that they’ll pack up and move away when their stadium lease expires in a year. That will not be a pleasant debate either. Prediction: the Vikings will get their stadium.)
Predictably, in the wake of the settlement both sides are righteously angry.
We have brought this on ourselves, of course. In our collective stupidity, we elected a Democratic Governor with lots of government experience and a clearly stated set of priorities, and a new Republican legislature dominated by people plenty of whom have never held state office before who had this or that score to settle and were diametrically opposed to the same Governor we had just elected on the same ballot.
It is as if the newbies could race into town, put their pet initiative on the floor, and get it passed in their first six months on the job.
They – We? – believed this nonsense.
So did the Republicans in Wisconsin, who believed that they could re-engineer government in the first few weeks they were in control of all branches of government.
We Minnesotans now have to watch the insane Wisconsin campaign ads on TV as the Recall election campaigns take place, including one a dozen miles from where I type this note. There is nothing smart about recall elections; there is also no particular option to recall other than to roll over and give up if a majority side believes it can steamroller the minority into permanent irrelevancy.
But the issue, now, is not what is happening in Wisconsin, or in Minnesota, but what is happening in Washington D.C.
There is a long but useful summary of what is happening in D.C. accessible here, and I hope you take the time to actually read it through.
The short summary as I see it:
1) the hated national debt is the difference between what the Congress chooses to spend, and what it chooses to pay (tax) for the debts it freely incurs. Only the House of Representatives can initiate spending bills. For almost all of the years since 1994, that House of Representatives has been Republican and it has run up huge debt, for which it now chooses to blame the Democrats, especially President Obama. An incredibly expensive (and stupid) war was “paid” off budget in the eight years post-9-11; Afghanistan is a tragic leftover of 9-11. For a while we lived in a time of false prosperity, on the national credit card. False prosperity is very satisfying, till the debt collector comes calling. Till now, the debt ceiling was simply and routinely raised.
2) A majority of the House of Representatives is unwilling to publicly acknowledge the reality in #1 above, and is holding everyone else hostage. And blaming an enemy – people like me – for the problems it freely created.
3) We Americans elected these people, who are ill-serving us. Polls routinely show that we despise Congress collectively. For some odd reason, we still elect the individuals who comprise Congress, and hold them in higher esteem. Our Congressperson is not like the others, apparently.
Maybe we’ll default on August 2, and the sun will rise, the birds sing, and the weather be pleasant on August 3 and on into the fall and winter.
Maybe not….
NOTE: July 22 there will be a post at this space; then ‘radio silence’ until at least July 31 due to vacation and computer repair. My personal ‘tradition’ is that the computer, e-mail and all, does not follow me away from home. All best wherever you are.