Bulletin N° 759
Subject : FINANCE AND THE POLITICAL ECONOMY
OF COGNITIVE DISSONANCE: SADISTS CREATING A POPULATION OF MASOCHISTS.
According to cognitive dissonance theory,
there is a tendency for individuals to seek consistency among their cognitions
(i.e., beliefs, opinions).
When there is an
inconsistency between attitudes or behaviors (dissonance), something must change to eliminate the dissonance and often this change is the birth of a new illusion.
US Independence Day 2017
Grenoble, France
Dear
Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
The Central Bank of the United States, the so-called Federal Reserve,
is a privately owned, for-profit institution which prints money and controls
its flow by raising and lowering interest rates on bank loans and, also, by
increasing and decreasing the quantity of money in circulation at any time. The
history of this powerful institution, operating in secrecy, is essential for
any understanding of the financial manipulations which affect the lives
of virtually every person on the planet. William Greider’s
book, Secrets of the Temple: How The Federal Reserve
Runs The Country, was first published by
Simon & Schuster Press in 1987. [See CEIMSA Bulletin N°757
for a presentation of the first part of Greider’s
important book, with contemporary illustrations from current events.] This
well-written history takes us deep into the metabolism of contemporary
capitalism, providing a detailed look at how society has been, and continues to
be, dominated by the private profit motive, to the detriment of us all, some of
us more than others.
The fundamental incompatibility of capitalism (the accumulation
of private wealth) and democracy (the political responsibility of all citizens)
is a theme that runs through this entire 700-page book. Its eighteen chapters include
titles such as “In the Temple,” “Behavior Modification,” “The God Almighty
Dollar,” “Democratic Money,” “That Old-Time Religion,” “Slaughter of the
Innocents,” “Winners and Losers,” and “The Triumph of Money”; and each chapter
offers a new revelation for understanding the political power of banks and “the
revolution from the top down,” which is hidden behind the façade of
representative democracy.
The authoritarian belief system that governs the logical
practice of liberal capitalism is
also in crisis, and both the ideological and
material threats presented by fascist
capitalism appear as real dangers today in the daily lives of most people.
Behind this menace are irrational beliefs and behaviors, some of which have
emerged before in the history of capitalist crises. Greider
analyzes the metaphysics behind the structure of capitalist accumulation, in
Chapter 12, “That Old-Time Religion,” with a quote by the Austrian-born
American economist, Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950): “Capitalist rationality does
not do away with sub- or superrational impulses. It
merely makes them get out of hand by removing the restraint of sacred or
semi-sacred tradition.” Greider then goes on to point
out the grim influence that the Judeo-Christian-Muslim tradition has had on capitalist
society.
Capitalism also adapted sacred tradition to its own uses,
inventing a rationalistic logic that corresponded with the oldest rituals of
worship and cloaked the non-rationalistic logic in scientific garb.
Every important
economic theory, one could say, relied upon an unstated subtext drawn from
religious convictions. To declare correct principles for the functioning of the
economy, one would first have to make certain assumptions about the larger
nature of life itself – about God’s purpose and humanity’s obligations and the
moral law that derived from the relationship of deity and mortals. Monetarists,
for instance, assumed an immutable natural order, knowable limits that worldly
existence imposed on human behavior and predictable penalties for folly and
error. The money rule was described as a golden mean: a society that faithfully
adhered to it would enjoy the maximum of what was possible in life. If society
strayed too far from its path, like Icarus daring to
fly too close to the sun, disorder and retribution would result. The advocates
of gold relied upon divine authority to enforce this natural order. If
humankind pledged obedience to God’s indestructible metal, it would be rewarded
with an eternal assurance of stability. Both doctrines, gold and monetarism,
were expressions of pre-modernist fundamentalism, simple and certain moral
formulas for life, their certitudes had deep appeal, especially in anxious
times.
In this context, [John
Maynard] Keynes[1883 – 1946] and his followers were the
heretics. They were secular humanists who claimed that men and women could
responsibly manage human affairs for themselves. They were rationalists who
dismissed the ‘old-time religion’ and its false moral commandments. Universal
human pleasure, Keynes announced, did not require a requisite measure of
Calvinist pain. It required the application of human intelligence.
When Americans judged economic events or political agendas, they worked
off the same subtext, the same set of religious assumptions. Like the President
himself, citizens were capable of simultaneously embracing conflicting
sensibilities, both the old-fashioned Protestant ethic and the humanist faith
of abundance. They believed in the here and now – easy credit, full employment and
economic guarantees of the welfare state. But they also still believed, down
deep, that sinful excess must be punished, that suffering was necessary for
redemption. The recession fulfilled their expectations.
The ‘old-time religion’ was unacceptable as an explicit theme in the
political campaign, but it connected with deeply held beliefs – and a large
reservoir of collective guilt. The disorders of inflation produced complicated
anxieties that included a sense that, as [President Ronald] Reagan [1911 –
2004] put it, everyone must pay for the ‘binge.’
These underlying attitudes were suggested, at least obliquely, in the
public-opinion polls on inflation. During the 1980 presidential election, when
political candidates were accentuating the positive, the public expressed an
overwhelming pessimism: the country would have to undergo a recession in order
to slow down inflation. By a 2-to-1 majority, people agreed with Ronald
Reagan’s unexpressed conviction that the nation must endure a ‘bellyache’ in order
to cure itself. According to a Harris poll, 55 percent even said that they
would favor measures to bring on a recession if that would stop inflation.
With a politician’s intuition, Ronald Reagan perhaps grasped that his
Calvinist dogma was not altogether out of step with what the electorate really
believed. A prudent candidate would not speak of these things directly, but
people understood the moral commandment better than they acknowledged. In the
spring of 1981, public opinion swung to a much more optimistic frame of mind,
as the President campaigned for his economic agenda. The majority appeared to
believe his promises for economic recovery. By the fall, however, most had
returned to their original pessimism. They could see for themselves that the
society was beginning to pay for its collective guilt. The suffering was what
they had expected all along.
In the political economy, as in the church, ritual atonement required
the elements of convincing theater. For the vast audience of faithful, an
ancient religious drama was performed by two figures of mythic authority, the
President and the Federal Reserve chairman, who presided like priest and prince
on a stage of darkness and light. One was shadowy and remote, an ominous
figure: the other, bright and cheerful. Paul Volcker [b.1927] was the stern
father who admonished and prophesied, uttering mysterious incantations of
numbers. Ronald Reagan was the generous king who inspired hope, whose rhetoric
evoked streaks of sunshine across the darkened sky.
Together, they promised redemption – if only the faithful flock would accept
the penitential sacrifice.
The ritual of atonement could even be satisfying. Most Americans, after
all, would not suffer grievously from the economic contradiction. They would
witness the dislocations and failure around them, but they would not themselves
have to endure the worst of it. Millions of wage earners would lose their
livelihoods, but the majority would not. Tens of thousands of businesses would
be driven to bankruptcy, but most would survive. For most Americans, the
recession meant at most a postponement of their economic ambitions, a time to
pull back and wait until the ‘bad times’ passed. In exchange, they received an
expunging of guilt.
The real burden of cleansing pain was borne disproportionately by a
defenseless minority of Americans. The rest accepted this as morally wholesome
or else pretended not to know. The political rhetoric of the leaders emphasized
shared sacrifice, a period of national penance in which all participated, and
this pretense enabled citizens to ignore the true moral content of the
exercise. There was something bracing, spiritually invigoration, in the
knowledge of ‘hard times,’ especially if one averted one’s eyes and pretended
that all were sharing in the sacrifice together. The social deception required
a complicity of ignorance between citizens and leaders.
The economic liquidation, in fact, resembled the form, though not the
content, of a primitive religious practice – the pagan ritual of human
sacrifice. Some individuals were chosen to serve as victims for the good of the
entire society, sacrificed in order that the tribe would be restored to harmony
with its gods. In moral terms, the process was sadistic, an example of what Thorstein Veblen [1857-1929] called the enduring barbarism
of modern society.
The economic victims were chosen at random, but mostly from among the
weaker groups in the society. The mythology employed by the Federal Reserve to induce
contraction – rationing credit by raising its price – insured that the
strongest individuals and enterprises would be able to evade selection. There
was this hierarchy within democracy – a hierarchy of vulnerability.
Many victims, ignorant of society’s larger purpose, innocently
protested. Such was the power of economic faith that some victims accepted
their fate and even endorsed it as necessary. The moral justification was
expressed in Schumpeter’s ringing phrase, ‘creative destruction,’ which suggested
that, from time to time, capitalism must burn off its dead and obsolete parts
in order to grow freely again. The implication was that only deserving victims
would be destroyed, punished for their inefficiency. But this article of faith
did not correspond to reality. It would be more precise to say that victims
were punished for not being stronger or larger. For the most part, their
inefficiency consisted of not having the accumulated financial resources to
protect themselves.
The religious subtext of economic recession helped to explain why people
put up with it. The public’s tolerance for the contraction and loss was
conditioned by a deeper sense of religious awe. Moral objections and democratic
qualms were stilled or at least moderated by primitive fears. The gods would be
angry if the price was not paid . For a time at least;
most Americans acquiesced, with pious sympathies, to the necessity that some
among them must be punished. The authority to perform the sacrifice, whether
people realized it or not, was implicitly in the powers they had conferred, but
democratic process, on their national government. The secular temple on
Constitutional Avenue fulfilled its sacred purpose.
Public acceptance of recession declined proportionately, however, as the
ritual continued and the suffering spread. The longer it went on, the more
distressing it became to people. Atonement was necessary, but perhaps the
priests were going too far. The sacrifices began to seem greater than the
burden of guilt required. As failure and unemployment spread through the
society, it occurred to more and more citizens that they too might be chosen as
victims.(pp.420-423)
In an earlier chapter, entitled “The Liberal Apology,” Greider discussed the atmosphere of moral change that
American society underwent before the counter-revolution of the 1980s, an
ideological change with historic precedents from medieval times:
For
some years [before 1980], American society had been engaged in an era of moral
liberation, a period when long-standing religious commandments and inherited
social taboos fell before the new popular desires. Protestant disapproval of
gambling was displaced by multimillion-dollar public lotteries, sponsored by
state and local governments. The Catholic sin of abortion was legalized.
Pornography, once forbidden and furtive, became freely available; homosexuality
and even prostitution were reconsidered in a more tolerant light. Moral
inhibitions that had held authority for centuries were abandoned. Old notions
of sinfulness were redefined as largely private matters, no longer subject to
public regulation.
In this climate of
moral change, American finance was also liberated to do what had once been
forbidden. The sin of usury was legalized, by act of Congress. Religious
injunctions against usury were as old as the Book of Genesis and given specific
definition in American law: lending at interest rates above certain limits was
ruinous to the hapless borrower and therefore prohibited. When it enacted
financial deregulation, Congress declared that, given the circumstances of
double-digit inflation, the usury laws must be set aside. The interest-rate
ceilings imposed by state governments on home mortgages were abolished by
federal legislation, and the limits on business and agricultural lending were
suspended for three years. Many state legislatures, responding to the same
pressures, repealed their own usury limits on consumer loans.
Unlike the eclipse of
other moral taboos, usury provoked no great controversy when it was
decriminalized. The new leniency toward private sexual behavior inspired storms
of popular reaction and political movements, but usury provoked little or no
reactions. Lending money at ruinous interest rates would now be regarded, like
sex, as a ‘victimless crime,’ a private act between consenting adults.
The suspension of the
usury law, though less important than the other provisions, accurately
reflected the moral logic that propelled the deregulation package. A deep
transformation was underway in the political values shared by American elites,
both Democratic and Republican, and it cut across many areas beyond finance.
The values inherited from the New Deal – the idea that government would serve
as regulator and protector in the raw struggles among private economic
interests – were in eclipse. The commitments of liberalism – providing shelter
for weaker combatants in the marketplace in order to insure certain social
goals – were being displaced. An older faith was reviving and regaining its original
hegemony, the belief that social justice was best served by an unfettered free
market.
The biblical meaning of
usury defined the obligations of those who had accumulated wealth toward others
who had none and were in need. It imposed limits on the power that the wealthy
could exercise, through lending, over the poor. By 1980, the moral argument was
reversed. Creditors were now portrayed in political debate as the victims, the
virtuous citizens who were exploited by the political interference. Borrowers
were described as morally suspect – people who did not themselves save, whose
‘speculative’ spending was ‘subsidized’ by the virtuous savers. The original
social contract implied by the concept of usury – the obligations of wealth
toward the needs of others – was inverted. The congressional debate described a
new political obligation: the savers must be set free, free to seek the highest
rate of return on their money.(pp.170-171)
.
. .
The moral concept of
usury was always in fundamental conflict with the dynamics of capitalism. Usury
implied social obligation; capitalism depended on individual gain. When they collided in Western history, the
capitalist imperative prevailed. Until the late Middle
Ages, the Catholic Church still taught that lending at interest – any interest
rate whatever – was a sin against God, ‘ignominious,’ as the Second Lateran
Council of 1139 described it. Usurers, though they might be wealthy merchants
and prominent in Church affairs, were excommunicated and refused burial in
Christian ground, condemned with robbers, prostitutes and heretics. Their
eternal damnation was described in the most grisly terms: toads and other
demons gathered on the usurer’s corpse, plucking silver from his purse and
driving the coins into the heart and mouth of the cadaver. The moral offense
was profit without work. The usurer sold time, which belonged only to God.
Christian theology
eventually yielded to the new reality. By the thirteenth century, the primitive
networks of capitalism – were flourishing across Europe. To function, even in
its dimpliest forms, capitalism required the linkage across time that credit
provided – lending today for transactions that would be completed in the future. . . . A theological innovation opened the way for
absolution of their sins – the elaboration of purgatory. After death, the souls
of condemned usurers might yet be resurrected for eternity through the
intervention of prayer and other considerations. Many primitive capitalists
plunged forward into sinfulness, counting on purgatory for their eventual
salvation.
‘The
birth of purgatory,’ the French historian Jacques Le Goff wrote, ‘is also the
dawn of banking.’
.
. .
John Maynard Keynes
himself wrestled with the moral contradictions. Keynes deplored high interest
rates and the inequitable distribution of wealth and incomes, but he
nevertheless celebrated the creative possibilities of capital multiplication.
‘The power of compound interest over two hundred years,’ Keynes wrote, ‘is such
as to stagger the imagination;’ In 1930, at the depths of global depression,
Keynes wrote a prophetic essay entitles ‘Economic Possibilities for Our
Grandchildren,’ which predicted a golden future for mankind, thanks to the labor-saving
inventions of science and the driving force of compound interest. Amid the
gathering despair, Keynes was able to see that the capitalist economies were on
the brink of vast breakthroughs in agriculture and other technologies –
advances that would dramatically multiply the productive potential.
He went on to predict that
the standard of living in most progressive countries would improve as much as
eight fold within the next hundred years and that ultimately:
[M]ankind would be freed of the morbid
love of money to confront the deeper questions of human existence – ‘how to
live wisely and agreeably and well.’(pp.171-173)
The task of liberation still lies before us all: to free
ourselves from the ideological bondage of possessive
individualism, which blinds us to the vicious collective behavior of our
masters whom we never see or hear from. The financial establishment, according
to William Greider, has a long history of staying out
of sight and out of mind, meticulously following their logic of “the ends
justify the means”, the purpose being to enrich the owners of capital as much
as possible, while maintaining a general will for sacrifice and self-discipline
in society.
The 17 items below should serve as a wake-up call to
citizens, on this anniversary day of US independence for the British Empire
some 241 years ago. What followed were more than two centuries of Amerindian
genocide, chattel slavery for millions of Africans, imperialist invasions of
other countries, and cruel domination of populations around the world. Only a
tactic of “divide and rule” would permit such control, and the few who were rewarded by money and
reforms had to be constantly disciplined so that they would keep their side of
the Faustian bargain of selling their souls to capital pursuits and when called
upon collaborating with the forces of repression.
Sincerely,
Francis Feeley
Professor emeritus of American Studies
University Grenoble-Alpes
Director of Research
University of Paris-Nanterre
Center for the Advanced Study of American Institutions and
Social Movements
The University of California-San Diego
a.
Central Bank Intervention Serves The One Percent
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/47340.htm
by Paul Craig Roberts
The crooks who run the
Western financial system set up the gold market in a way that lets them control
the price. Gold is not priced in the physical gold market where bullion is
bought and sold. Gold is priced in a futures market where uncovered contracts
that are settled in cash are bought and sold. As the futures contracts do not
have to be covered in the way that shorting a stock has to be covered, the
bullion bank agents of the central banks can create paper gold by printing
naked contracts. In other words, it is possible to inflate the supply of gold
in the market in which the gold price is determined by dumping futures
contracts on the market. The huge increase in supply of paper gold drives down
the futures price of gold. This Western policy is stupid, because it drives
down the price of real gold for the major Asian purchasers—China, India, and
Turkey. But the policy protects the value of the US dollar by preventing a
rising gold price that would show the growing lack of confidence in fiat paper
currencies.
===========
b.
Imperialism in the 21st
Century
http://therealnews.com/t2/story:19420:Jayati-Ghosh-On-Imperialism-in-the-21st-Century-Pt.13
Pt.1/3
Imperialism,
explains renowned economist - whether explicit or implicit - is about the
struggle to control economic territory such as markets, workers & labor,
natural resources and new kinds of markets that are developed
===========
c.
The Necessity for
Urgency
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=19381
by Paul Jay
On the
need for an independent news source that's not beholden to the partisan
political warfare that's covering up the danger of war and the existential
threat of climate crisis
===========
d.
Trump Competes With Clinton in U.S. War of Lies and Terror Against Syria
https://blackagendareport.com/trump_competes_with_hiilary_in%20lies_and_war
by Glen Ford
Donald Trump is out to prove that he is
as bloodthirsty as Hillary Clinton and better than anyone at brinksmanship. Has
he gone “play-crazy,” or is it the real thing? “By pushing Trump into a corner
and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked
as a ‘puppet’ and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media
and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may
consume us all.”
===========
e.
Trump Bombed
Syria Ignoring Important U.S. Intelligence
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/47324.htm
by Seymour M. Hersh
+
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/47348.htm
In
April 6, United States President Donald Trump authorized an early morning
Tomahawk missile strike on Shayrat Air Base in
central Syria in retaliation for what he said was a deadly nerve agent attack
carried out by the Syrian government two days earlier in the rebel-held town of
Khan Sheikhoun. Trump issued the order despite having
been warned by the U.S. intelligence community that it had found no evidence
that the Syrians had used a chemical weapon.
===========
f.
Pursuing Hard Truths in Syria
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/07/02/pursuing-hard-truths-in-syria/
by Scott Ritter
A
U.N. agency says it found sarin in victims of an
April 4 attack in Syria, but lack of a plausible weapon and unreliability of
pro-rebel witnesses make the pursuit of truth difficult, says WMD expert Scott
Ritter at The American Conservative. On the night of
June 26, the White House Press Secretary released a statement, via Twitter,
that, “the United States has identified potential preparations for another
chemical weapons attack by the Assad regime that would likely result in the
mass murder of civilians, including innocent children.”
===========
g.
White
House Says It Will Fake "Chemical Weapon Attack" In Syri
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/47337.htm
by Moon Of Alabama
The White House claims that the Syrian government is preparing
"chemical weapon attacks". This is clearly not the case. Syria is
winning the war against the country. Any such attack would clearly be to its
disadvantage. The White House announcement must thereby be understood as
preparation for another U.S. attack on Syria in "retaliation" for an
upcoming staged "chemical weapon attack" which will be blamed on the
Syrian government.
===========
h.
Intel Behind Trump’s
Syria Attack Questioned
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/47325.htm
by
Ray McGovern
"We KNOW that there
was no chemical attack … the Russians are furious".
The
mainstream media is so hostile to challenges to its groupthinks that famed
journalist Seymour Hersh had to take his take-down of
President Trump’s
April
6 attack on Syria to Germany, says ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.
Legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh is
challenging the Trump administration’s version of events surrounding the April
4 “chemical weapons attack” on the northern Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun – though Hersh had to
find a publisher in Germany to get his information out.
In
the Sunday edition of Die Welt, Hersh reports that his national security sources
offered a distinctly different account, revealing President Trump rashly
deciding to launch 59 Tomahawk missiles against a Syrian airbase on April 6
despite the absence of intelligence supporting his conclusion that the Syrian
military was guilty.
===========
i.
Capitalism in
Crisis :
Chris Hedges And Richard D. Wolff
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0BW3bNZasw
(Mar 25, 2017)
Chris Hedges explores capitalism in crisis with Richard
Wolff, professor of economics emeritus at the University of
Massachusetts-Amherst. From Brexit, to labor protests
in France, to Italy’s financial woes, they discuss the effects of austerity on
the working class. RT Correspondent Anya Parampil
looks at the fallout of Britain’s decision to leave the European Union.
===========
j.
The War Against Workers and the Poor
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/47343.htm
A Review of Plutocracy: Class War from Metanoia Films
By Kim Petersen
In
2017 the United States finds itself with a billionaire president who defeated,
as adjudged by electoral college votes, the multimillionaire Hillary Clinton. In fact, high
political office in the US has become a stepping stone to personal enrichment.
Barack Obama is cashing in now with exorbitant book deals and
speaking fees. It is highly illustrative of the divide between the working
masses and the 1%-ers of Wall Street who effectively
own the American political system. The politicians know the voters want change,
but they also know who butters their bread. Empty campaign promises are
followed by endless betrayals.
While
the common folk fight asymmetrical US wars far from American shores, the fat
cat Wall Street investors profit from the violence. It is nothing new. In the
introduction to Scott Noble’s Plutocracy: Class War we
find 19th century president Rutherford B. Hayes writing in his diary that the
United States had become a government “of corporations, by corporations and for
corporations.”
===========
k.
Wall St. Democrats vs.
Working Class Democrats
http://therealnews.com/t2/story:19310:Wall-St.-Democrats-vs.-Working-Class-Democrats
Nina Turner and Paul Jay discuss the fight within the
Democratic Party and the need for the Sanders movement to more seriously take
up the question of war and U.S. foreign policy
===========
l.
From: "Robert Cruickshank, Democracy
for America
Sent: Sunday, 2 July, 2017
Subject: A disturbing NRA video you ought to see
Francis --
The National Rifle Association (NRA) just put out a very troubling and
scary video -- and we think you ought to know about it.
The video, which you can see here,
features conservative TV host Dana Loesch stoking
fear as a series of images show the news media, schools, anti-Trump protests,
and more. It ends with her calling to fight back against progressives with
"a clenched fist of truth." It's a threat that we need to take
extremely seriously.
Our goal isn't to scare
you, though the video is disturbing. The reason I'm telling you about it is so
you can help resist this wave of hate and threats coming from the NRA.
This fall, DFA-endorsed
candidates will be running for critical offices in elections across America.
Many of them will face a tidal wave of NRA money -- especially in the
all-important state of Virginia.
One of the best ways you
can push back against the threats emanating from the extreme right, whether
they're coming from a Donald Trump tweet or an NRA ad, is to support
grassroots, people-powered campaigns that will defeat the NRA the right way --
at the ballot box.
This NRA ad has gotten a
lot of attention from organizers and reporters, who believe it is inciting
violence against people who oppose Trump and the NRA. Vox
said the ad "comes this close to calling for a civil war
against liberals."
Newsweek quoted a former
CIA analyst who said "The NRA is feeding an us vs them narrative of the kind that fuels all extremist
movements."
Dana Loesch
herself freely admitted the ad targets progressives -- and suggested it's also
intended to attack the movement for Black lives. Here's what she said in a New York Times
interview:
"Asked what violence
she saw the ad as addressing, she spoke at length about protests in Ferguson,
Mo., that turned violent in 2015 and mentioned the chaos caused by some
protesters during President Trump's inauguration."
America has a long
history of using gun violence to support racial oppression. The NRA is doing
the same thing in this ad. We need to stand up and
resist.
Thank you for helping
DFA take on the NRA.
- Robert
Robert Cruickshank,
Senior Campaign Manager
Democracy for America
===========
m.
Fact Check : The US Senate Health Care Plan
See also:
This past week, the Senate
began debating the American Health Care Act (AHCA) with a vote on that bill
expected to take place soon. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 14 million more people would be uninsured in 2018 under the new plan than under current law; and by 2026 the
number of uninsured would reach 51 million Americans. While the
Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) has made strides to
cover more Americans, it is estimated that 28 million would still not have
health insurance in 2026. Either way, we have a long way to go.
===========
n.
The Age of No
Privacy: The Surveillance State Shifts Into High Gear
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/47338.htm
by John W. Whitehead
“We
are rapidly entering the age of no privacy, where everyone is open to
surveillance at all times;
where there are no secrets
from government.”
~ William
O. Douglas, Supreme Court Justice, dissenting in Osborn v.
United States, 385 U.S. 341 (1966)
The
government has become an expert in finding ways to sidestep what it considers
“inconvenient laws” aimed at ensuring accountability and thereby bringing about
government transparency and protecting citizen privacy. Indeed, it has mastered
the art of stealth maneuvers and end-runs around the Constitution.
It
knows all too well how to hide its nefarious, covert, clandestine activities
behind the classified language of national security and terrorism. And when
that doesn’t suffice, it obfuscates, complicates, stymies or just plain
bamboozles the public into remaining in the dark.
===========
o.
Justice Neil Gorsuch Proving to Be "Far to the Right"
of Antonin
Scalia
https://www.democracynow.org/2017/6/27/dahlia_lithwick_justice_neil_gorsuch_proving
===========
p.
Robert Parry Wins Prize For Journalism
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/47358.htm
by John Pilger
There
are too many awards for journalism. Too many simply celebrate the status quo.
The idea that journalists ought to challenge the status quo - what Orwell
called Newspeak and Robert Parry calls 'groupthink' - is becoming increasingly
rare. More than a generation ago, a space opened up for a journalism that
dissented from the groupthink and flourished briefly and often tenuously in the
press and broadcasting. Today, that space has almost closed in the so-called
mainstream media. The best journalists have become - often against their will -
dissidents.
===========
q.
The Democratic Party’s Deadly
Dead-End
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/07/03/the-democratic-partys-deadly-dead-end/
by Nicolas J S Davies
By
playing for centrist and neoconservative votes, national Democrats have left
the party floundering with no coherent political message
and creating a daunting challenge for
democracy, says Nicolas J S Davies.
===========
r.
Bernie Sanders on Resisting Trump, Why the Democratic
Party is an "Absolute Failure" & More
https://www.democracynow.org/2017/7/3/bernie_sanders_on_resisting_trump_why
Last
month more than 4,000 people gathered in Chicago for the People’s Summit.
Independent senator, former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders delivered the
keynote speech. During his speech, he repeatedly criticized the Democratic
Party, calling it an "absolute failure," and blaming it for the
election of President Trump.
"I’m
often asked by the media and others: How did it come about
that Donald Trump, the most unpopular
presidential candidate in
the modern history of our country, won
the election?" Sanders said.
"And my answer is that Trump didn’t win
the election; the Democratic
Party
lost the election. Let us be very, very clear: The current model and
the current strategy of the Democratic
Party is an absolute failure."