Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Tonight's meme has been around for awhile but I thought that, in light of Congress recently coming back into session and vowing to help our adversaries Russia and China by pushing Tax Scam 2018-Part 2 thus sending our increasing national debt into unchartered waters, and Paul Ryan's vows to cut Social Security and Medicare, using the Trump/Ryan Tax Scams as an excuse... well, it's as timely as ever. The list in the meme is only a partial indicator of the Republican agenda in its war against all but the very richest Americans. Meanwhile, they fervently believe in socialistic billion dollar subsidy handouts of our money to fossil run fossil energy companies. All of this after decades of both parties being willing puppets of the military industrial complex.

Another Bad Vote In Congress-- A Bipartisan Attack On Americans' Basic Rights?

No One In Congress Remembers Dwight Eisenhower's Farewell Message To America?



Justin Amash (R-MI) has the least objectionable crucial vote record of any Republican in Congress-- 42.86. It's a better voting record than 7 Blue Dog "Democrats" have this cycle. Translation: Amash has voted more frequently for progressive positions on important roll calls than these monstrosities pretending to be Democrats (from bad to worst):

• Stephanie Murphy (FL-07)- 41.53
• Josh Gottheimer (NJ-05)- 38.14
• Tom O'Halleran (AZ-01)- 38.14
• Henry Cuellar (TX-28)- 32.20
• Jim Costa (CA-16)- 31.53
• Kyrsten Sinema (AZ-09)- 30.51
• Collin Peterson (MN-07)- 26.89

No, this is not another post about how the DCCC has recruited another ghastly batch of Blue Dogs who they know will be just as bad in Congress and those 7 pigs-- Clarke Tucker (AR), Brenden Kelly (IL), Paul Davis (KS), Gretchen Driskell (MI), Dan McCready (NC), Kathy Manning (NC), Jeff Van Drew (NJ), Max Rose (NY), Anthony Brindisi (NY), Ben McAdams (UT). No, it's a post about why it's important to elect candidates who believe in American values and act on those beliefs in Congress.

There was a vote on Thursday for the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Years 2018 and 2019 and Justin Amash complained to his twitter followers that "Today, by a vote of 363-54, Republicans and Democrats in the House quietly reauthorized funding for intelligence agencies and activities that have been used to violate the constitutionally protected rights of Americans."

I asked one of the 46 Democrats who voted against it, what happened. By any measurement, he's one of the best Democrats in Congress and someone who is destined for a leadership role. "The vote seemed to take everyone by surprise," he told me, "and there was very little organizing to educate people about it first. I’ve been caught up in the Peter Strozk hearings so forgive me-- I wish I knew more." Like I said, he was one of only 46 Democrats to vote correctly on this. Amash was one of only 8 Republicans to do so. 222 Republicans voted terribly-- no surprise-- but so did 141 Democrats, led by Pelosi, Hoyer and the rest of their leadership team.

It was no surprise that Ro Khanna voted against it-- as did super-progressives like Barbara Lee, Judy Chu, Jan Schakowsky (IL), Bonnie Watson Coleman (NJ), Katherine Clark (MA), Jim McGovern (MA), Jamie Raskin (MD), Adriano Espaillat (NY) and Pramila Jayapal (WA). This morning Ro asked, rhetorically, "Where are the Russ Feingolds of our party-- the senator with the courage to vote against the patriot act. Where are the profiles of courage? How can Democrats not stand up for civil liberties?" Harsh! Thank God South Bay California voters elected him!

Robert Kennedy Jr.: Syria Is Another Pipeline War

Proposed pipeline routes through the Middle East to gas markets in Europe. The purple line is the Western-supported Qatar-Turkey pipeline. All of the nations it passes through — Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey (all highlighted in red) — have agreed to it ... except Syria. The red line is the "Islamic Pipeline" from Iran through Iraq into Syria. See text below for further explanation. (Source: MintPress News; click to enlarge)

by Gaius Publius

Summary first: We have been at war in Syria over pipelines since 1949. This is just the next mad phase.

I'm not sure most Americans have figured out what's happening in Syria, because so much of what we hear is confusing to us, and really, we know so little of the context for it. Is it an insurgency against a brutal ruler? Is it a group of insurgencies struggling for power in a nearly failed state? Is it a proxy war expressing the territorial and ideological interests of the U.S., Russia, Turkey and Iran?

Or something else?

According to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. it is something else — a war between competing national interests to build, or not build, a pipeline to the Mediterranean so natural gas can be exported to Europe. Inconveniently for Syria, that nation lies along an obvious pipeline route.

Which makes it another war between interests for money — something not very hard to understand at all.

Here's Kennedy's argument via EcoWatch. This is a long piece, well worth a full read, but I'll try to present just the relevant sections here.

The Historical Context: Decades of CIA-Sponsored Coups and Counter-Coups in Syria

Kennedy's introductory section contains an excellent examination of the history of U.S. involvement in Syria starting in the 1950s with the Cold War machinations of the Eisenhower-appointed Dulles brothers, John Foster Dulles, the Secretary of State, and Allen Dulles, the head of the CIA. Together, they effectively ruled U.S. foreign policy.

Kennedy writes (my emphasis):

Syria: Another Pipeline War

... America's unsavory record of violent interventions in Syria—obscure to the American people yet well known to Syrians—sowed fertile ground for the violent Islamic Jihadism that now complicates any effective response by our government to address the challenge of ISIS. So long as the American public and policymakers are unaware of this past, further interventions are likely to only compound the crisis. Moreover, our enemies delight in our ignorance.

... [W]e need to look at history from the Syrians' perspective and particularly the seeds of the current conflict. Long before our 2003 occupation of Iraq triggered the Sunni uprising that has now morphed into the Islamic State, the CIA had nurtured violent Jihadism as a Cold War weapon and freighted U.S./Syrian relationships with toxic baggage.

During the 1950's, President Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers rebuffed Soviet treaty proposals to leave the Middle East a cold war neutral zone and let Arabs rule Arabia. Instead, they mounted a clandestine war against Arab Nationalism—which CIA Director Allan [sic] Dulles equated with communism—particularly when Arab self-rule threatened oil concessions. They pumped secret American military aid to tyrants in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon favoring puppets with conservative Jihadist ideologies which they regarded as a reliable antidote to Soviet Marxism. At a White House meeting between the CIA's Director of Plans, Frank Wisner, and Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, in September of 1957, Eisenhower advised the agency, “We should do everything possible to stress the 'holy war' aspect."

The CIA began its active meddling in Syria in 1949—barely a year after the agency's creation. Syrian patriots had declared war on the Nazis, expelled their Vichy French colonial rulers and crafted a fragile secularist democracy based on the American model. But in March of 1949, Syria's democratically elected president, Shukri-al-Kuwaiti, hesitated to approve the Trans Arabian Pipeline, an American project intended to connect the oil fields of Saudi Arabia to the ports of Lebanon via Syria. In his book, Legacy of Ashes, CIA historian Tim Weiner recounts that in retaliation, the CIA engineered a coup, replacing al-Kuwaiti with the CIA's handpicked dictator, a convicted swindler named Husni al-Za'im. Al-Za'im barely had time to dissolve parliament and approve the American pipeline before his countrymen deposed him, 14 weeks into his regime.

Kennedy then details the history of coups and counter-coups in and against Syria, and concludes this section with this:

Thanks in large part to Allan Dulles and the CIA, whose foreign policy intrigues were often directly at odds with the stated policies of our nation, the idealistic path outlined in the Atlantic Charter was the road not taken. In 1957, my grandfather, Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy, sat on a secret committee charged with investigating CIA's clandestine mischief in the Mid-East. The so called “Bruce Lovett Report," to which he was a signatory, described CIA coup plots in Jordan, Syria, Iran, Iraq and Egypt, all common knowledge on the Arab street, but virtually unknown to the American people who believed, at face value, their government's denials.

The report blamed the CIA for the rampant anti-Americanism that was then mysteriously taking root “in the many countries in the world today." ... A parade of Iranian and Syrian dictators, including Bashar al-Assad and his father, have invoked the history of the CIA's bloody coups as a pretext for their authoritarian rule, repressive tactics and their need for a strong Russian alliance. These stories are therefore well known to the people of Syria and Iran who naturally interpret talk of U.S. intervention in the context of that history.

While the compliant American press parrots the narrative that our military support for the Syrian insurgency is purely humanitarian, many Syrians see the present crisis as just another proxy war over pipelines and geopolitics. Before rushing deeper into the conflagration, it would be wise for us to consider the abundant facts supporting that perspective.

So much for our supposed interest in "humanitarian" intervention in Syria. From a Syrian point of view, it has never been thus. It has been about pipelines since 1949, and they understand that, even if we don't.

The Current Conflagration

Kennedy then turns to the present, or the near-present. Refer to the map above as you read:

A Pipeline War

In [the Syrians'] view, our war against Bashar Assad did not begin with the peaceful civil protests of the Arab Spring in 2011. Instead it began in 2000 when Qatar proposed to construct a $10 billion, 1,500km pipeline through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Turkey.

Qatar shares with Iran, the South Pars/North Dome gas field, the world's richest natural gas repository. The international trade embargo, until recently, prohibited Iran from selling gas abroad and ensured that Qatar's gas could only reach European markets if it is liquefied and shipped by sea, a route that restricts volume and dramatically raises costs.

The EU, which gets 30 percent of its gas from Russia, was equally hungry for the pipeline which would have given its members cheap energy and relief from Vladimir Putin's stifling economic and political leverage. Turkey, Russia's second largest gas customer, was particularly anxious to end its reliance on its ancient rival and to position itself as the lucrative transect hub for Asian fuels to EU markets. The Qatari pipeline would have benefited Saudi Arabia's conservative Sunni Monarchy by giving them a foothold in Shia dominated Syria.

The Saudi's geopolitical goal is to contain the economic and political power of the Kingdom's principal rival, Iran, a Shiite state, and close ally of Bashar Assad. The Saudi monarchy viewed the U.S. sponsored Shia takeover in Iraq as a demotion to its regional power and was already engaged in a proxy war against Tehran in Yemen, highlighted by the Saudi genocide against the Iranian backed Houthi tribe.

Which puts the Qatari pipeline squarely opposite to Russia's national interest — natural gas (methane) sales to Europe.

Of course, the Russians, who sell 70 percent of their gas exports to Europe, viewed the Qatar/Turkey pipeline as an existential threat. In Putin's view, the Qatar pipeline is a NATO plot to change the status quo, deprive Russia of its only foothold in the Middle East, strangle the Russian economy and end Russian leverage in the European energy market. In 2009, Assad announced that he would refuse to sign the agreement to allow the pipeline to run through Syria “to protect the interests of our Russian ally."

That was likely the last straw vis-à-vis the U.S. Which brings us to another pipeline, the so-called "Islamic Pipeline" (see map above):

"Assad further enraged the Gulf's Sunni monarchs by endorsing a Russian approved “Islamic pipeline" running from Iran's side of the gas field through Syria and to the ports of Lebanon. The Islamic pipeline would make Shia Iran instead of Sunni Qatar, the principal supplier to the European energy market and dramatically increase Tehran's influence in the Mid-East and the world. Israel also was understandably determined to derail the Islamic pipeline which would enrich Iran and Syria and presumably strengthen their proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas.

Another, competing pipeline which would run through Syrian territory, but this time carrying Iranian gas instead of Qatari gas. Thus the demonizing of Assad as evil in the mold of Saddam Hussein, instead of just a run-of-the-mill Middle East autocrat, as bad as some but better than others. Kennedy includes a good section on the history of the al-Assad family's rule of Syria, including this information from top reporters Sy Hersh and Robert Parry:

According to Hersh, “He certainly wasn't beheading people every Wednesday like the Saudis do in Mecca." Another veteran journalist, Bob Parry, echoes that assessment. “No one in the region has clean hands but in the realms of torture, mass killings, civil liberties and supporting terrorism, Assad is much better than the Saudis."

In September 2013, the Sunni states involved in the Qatar-Turkey pipeline were so determined to remove Syrian opposition to the pipeline that they offered, via John Kerry, to carry the whole cost of an U.S. invasion to topple al-Assad.

Kerry reiterated the offer to Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL27): “With respect to Arab countries offering to bear the costs of [an American invasion] to topple Assad, the answer is profoundly Yes, they have. The offer is on the table."

Obama's response:

Despite pressure from Republicans, Barrack Obama balked at hiring out young Americans to die as mercenaries for a pipeline conglomerate. Obama wisely ignored Republican clamoring to put ground troops in Syria or to funnel more funding to “moderate insurgents." But by late 2011, Republican pressure and our Sunni allies had pushed the American government into the fray.

The rest is a history of provocation and over-reaction — a great deal of both — and chaos and death in Syria. Kennedy provides much detail here, at one point adding:

[Syria's] moderates are fleeing a war that is not their war. They simply want to escape being crushed between the anvil of Assad's Russian backed tyranny and the vicious Jihadi Sunni hammer that we had a hand in wielding in a global battle over competing pipelines. You can't blame the Syrian people for not widely embracing a blueprint for their nation minted in either Washington or Moscow. The super powers have left no options for an idealistic future that moderate Syrians might consider fighting for. And no one wants to die for a pipeline.

I'll leave it there, but again, do read the entire piece if you want to truly understand what's going on in Syria, and what is about to go on.

Bottom Line

Bottom line, it's as Kennedy said: "No one wants to die for a pipeline" ... but many do and will.

I'll offer three thoughts. One, if we weren't so determined to be deeply dependent on fossil fuels, this would be their war, not ours. Two, we are deeply dependent on fossil fuels because of the political machinations of the oil companies, their CEOs, and the banks and hedge funds who fund them, all of whom pay our government officials — via campaign contributions and the revolving door — to prolong that dependence. We're here because the holders of big oil money want us here.

And three, keep all this in mind during the term of the next president. It will help you make sense of the phony warrior-cum-humanitarian arguments we're almost certain to be subjected to.

We have been at war in Syria over pipelines since 1949. This is just the next mad phase.

GP
  

Military Industrial Complex Threatening A Coup If Herr Trumpf Wins?

A couple days ago we looked briefly at Herr Trumpf's threat to chuck the constitutional prohibition on churches and religions openly endorsing candidates. Will we see a big TV spectacular on Inauguration Day featuring a bonfire with slimy little Eric Trumpf burning copies of the Constitution while Ivanka, dressed as Tzeitel, does a scintillating dance to the Kushner family anthem? Not likely, but God only knows what U.S. military officers will be thinking if that unlikely day ever comes to pass-- the Trumpf inauguration, not the Ivanka dance.

Watch the Bill Maher interview Friday (above) with former NSA and CIA head Michael Hayden. This is beyond shocking. Who knew the Wall Street Journal watches Maher! Damian Paletta reported Saturday evening on the extraordinary Hayden statement about how the military "would likely refuse to follow certain orders."

“I would be incredibly concerned if a President Trump governed in a way that was consistent with the language that Candidate Trump expressed during the campaign,” Gen. Hayden said during an interview will Bill Maher on Friday.

Mr. Trump, the frontrunner in the GOP primary, has vowed to use torture techniques against suspected terrorists if he wins the White House, going beyond waterboarding and doing things he described as a “hell of a lot worse.”

He has also suggested he would order U.S. forces to kill the family members of terrorists, a charge that some have alleged would be in violation of the Geneva Convention.

Gen. Hayden, who had been an adviser to the presidential campaign of Jeb Bush, said the military would be required to refuse to obey these orders if Mr. Trump handed them down from the White House.

“You are required not to follow an unlawful order,” Gen. Hayden said. Some of Mr. Trump’s proposals “would be in violation of all the international laws of armed conflict.”

Hayden is a retired 4-star Air Force general, a former director of the NSA for both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush and, later, Bush's and (for one day) Obama's CIA director. Hayden is now a principle at a bastion of spooky neocon shadow government, The Chertoff Group. He may look like a friendly old clown on the Real Time clip... but he's not. This is a very dangerous guy and represents very dangerous people and institutions. A showdown between these people and a crackpot President Trumpf could only end very badly for the American people and for our country.

The Republican Debate Over Deporting Millions Of Our Neighbors

Last month, People For the American Way ran Donald Trump ads on Spanish language radio in northern Virginia to help progressive Democrat Jeremy McPike win a crucial state Senate seat. It worked; McPike beat right-wing sociopath, Manassas Mayor Harry “Hal” Parrish II. People for the American Way's work was meant to help register Latinos to vote, not just for Pike but in preparation for the 2016 elections as well and they felt Trump's racism and xenophobia would be a boost among Americans who are revolted by how he has dragged the GOP into the ugly divisiveness that is at the center of his brand. As Heidi Przybyla wrote in USA Today, "The first signs of a major U.S. Latino voter mobilization are forming, and it’s Republicans turbocharging an effort likely to help Hillary Clinton."

Last night's Republican debate came just after the RNC had announced-- under pressure from some of the candidates-- that they were canceling the scheduled Telemundo debate, something, as RH Reality Check's Tina Vasquez explained, is likely to cost Republicans even more Latino votes-- because of the failures in building trust and making investments in the community-- than just what's been lost because of the outbreak of Trumpoid xenophobia and racism. On the most basic level, dissing Telemundo means the GOP is disrespecting American Hispanics. Of course one of the flashpoints in the debate was over immigration policy-- or more specifically, over Trump's racist deportation craziness. Writing right afterwards for the NY Times, Jonathan Martin and Patrick Healy noted that Kasich and Bush tried to "energize their campaigns by heaping scorn on Donald J. Trump’s plan to deport unauthorized immigrants."

In the most substantive Republican debate so far, Mr. Kasich and Mr. Bush, who have been fading in polls, presented themselves as experienced chief executives who had practical solutions to deal with national challenges like immigration. Yet Mr. Trump and another candidate, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, inveighed against what they called amnesty and argued that undocumented workers were driving down Americans’ wages.

...While several other candidates, like Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and the retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, received a pass from the moderators on immigration, Mr. Kasich took on the issue directly after Mr. Trump defended his plan to build a wall along the Mexican border and to identify and deport some 11 million people.

“Think about the families; think about the children,” Mr. Kasich said. “Come on, folks, we know you can’t pick them up and ship them across the border. It’s a silly argument. It’s not an adult argument.”

Mr. Trump, whose counterpunches were a memorable part of his early debate performances, replied coolly at first, citing President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s approach to deporting immigrants in the 1950s.

“You don’t get nicer; you don’t get friendlier,” Mr. Trump said. “We have no choice. We have no choice.”

But Mr. Kasich stayed on the attack. “Little false little things, sir, they really don’t work when it comes to the truth,” he said.

Mr. Bush then tried to pounce. He twitted Mr. Trump, his longtime rival in the race, for suggesting that Mr. Bush be allowed to speak-- “What a generous man you are”-- and warned that Mr. Trump’s harsh proposals would drive Hispanic voters to support the Democratic candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton.

“They’re doing high-fives in the Clinton campaign right now when they hear this,” Mr. Bush said.

We asked 3 of the Blue America candidates what they thought about all the hatefulness on display last night. Joseline Pena-Melnyk is the progressive candidate running for the seat Donna Edwards is giving up in Maryland. She told us that, "We need a humane solution for the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants already in the US. To leave them in the shadows risks creating an underclass that feels permanently alienated and never becomes 'American.' I support President Obama’s plan for a path for them to earn a green card and eventually citizenship. The indiscriminate deportation policy that Republicans favor would break up families and create more problems for America. Parents would be deported while their US-born children could be left behind and dependent on public support."

Nanette Barragán is also running in a solid blue district, although she faces a very corrupt and very conservative primary opponent, a non-Hispanic in a Hispanic-majority district. "For the party that claims to be family friendly," she told us this morning, "it’s shocking to see how committed Republicans are to dividing families instead of keeping them together. Last night, Donald Trump continued to tout his disastrous plan to deport 11 million people and build a wall, and Marco Rubio said nothing. For years families have suffered as a result of our broken immigration system, and that's unacceptable. In Congress, I will fight against the campaign of hate directed at immigrant families like the one in which I was raised. And I will advocate for comprehensive immigration reform that will keep families together and recognize the contributions that immigrants make to our communities and economy."

Ruben Kihuen is one of the most trusted progressive leaders in the Nevada legislature and he's running for a blue-leaning seat currently held by a weak and conflicted Republican freshman, Cresent Hardy, who would like to deport everyone but is too scared to agree with his GOP compatriots too loudly. Ruben has no problem expressing his sentiments loud and clear: "I am a proud immigrant to this country. My family moved here when I was eight years old with little more than the clothes on our back and today I am a State Senator and candidate for U.S. Congress. That's the American Dream. If Donald Trump wants to make America great again, he needs to end his racist, impractical and inhumane proposal to round up and deport 11 million people. Even the so called moderates of the GOP field like Bush seem to only oppose Trump's proposal for political purposes, saying it would give the election to Democrats. I can't tell which is worst but it's clear the Republican field is out of touch with working class Americans who want to fix our broken immigration system."

Watch Fox News' interpretation of the Republican immigration debate from last night on the video clip above above. This morning morning, the right-wing Washington Times had a headline: Jeb Bush, John Kasich seal their fates by pandering to illegal immigrants.

As if Jeb Bush’s campaign were not already finished, the candidate drilled several additional screws into his own coffin during Tuesday night’s debate here.

“Even having this conversation sends a powerful signal,” he whined as real estate mogul and presidential front-runner Donald Trump tangled with the Democratic wing of the Republican Party over the insanity of allowing 12 million illegal aliens to roam free in America without the slightest concern that our country’s laws might just apply to them.

Outside the debate hall, protesters beat drums and screamed for amnesty. One man with a bullhorn kept repeating over and over again that justice is not possible in America. And every third time or so he accused Mr. Trump of being a “racist” for vowing to enforce America’s immigration laws. No word on whether he was a plant, paid for by the Bush campaign.

On stage inside the debate hall, Mr. Trump stuck to his guns and said that immigration laws passed by both Democrats and Republicans in Congress and approved by presidents from both parties should simply be enforced. That is all he is saying.

Yet Mr. Bush not only thinks these laws should be summarily dismissed, he said during the debate that even having a discussion about enforcing our immigration laws is a terrible thing. We should dismiss these laws and there should not even be a debate about it.

“They’re doing high-fives in the Clinton campaign right now when they hear this,” Mr. Bush said.

Wow. Truly astonishing. Not only does Mr. Bush not belong in the White House or the Republican Party, he should just be deported. Perhaps to Mexico, where he might be happier and find greater success in politics.

Astonishingly, Mr. Bush was not alone on the Republican stage. “Think about the families!” cried Ohio Gov. John Kasich. “C’mon, folks!”

These people really have no clue how desperately frustrated and estranged American voters in both parties are over this issue of rampant illegal immigration and Washington’s absolute refusal to take simple, common sense measures to fix the problem.

John Kasich should be deported right behind Jeb Bush.

Trump's dramatic interpretation of Eisenhower's "Operation Wetback" was very sugar-coated-- and filled with incorrect information as is Trump's standard operating procedure. For one thing, "[t]he one-million-deported figure that Trump cites was the one that [Attorney General Herbert] Brownell trumpeted a year after Operation Wetback’s implementation, but researchers say that number is highly exaggerated." And Trump's 1 million figure isn't 11 million or 14 million or however many people he says he'll round up and deport now. Kind of embarrassing for Rubio to have to tip-toe around Trump's ugly xenophobic fantasy that is meant to solve nothing, just (momentarily) placate the worst elements of the Know Nothing Republican base.

This morning Univision analyst Javier Maza told host Satcha Pretto that Trump once again lead the rest of the Republicans down a tragic rabbit hole:

"Los analistas tenemos que ver no sólo las cosas que se dicen, sino las cosas que no se dicen. Marco Rubio y Ted Cruz se callaron la boca al momento de que se hablaban de deportar a los 11 millones de indocumentados. Es decir que son hispanos de origen, pero republicanos de corazón. Y eso va a ser un problema para ellos siempre cuando se trata de representar el interés y lo que realmente los hispanos queremos en este país."

"We commentators need to observe not only what they say but what they don’t say. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz kept their mouth shut in the moment [during the debate] when deporting the 11 million undocumented immigrants was discussed. That is to say that they are Hispanics by origin but Republican at heart. And that is always going to be a problem for them when it’s time to represent the interests and what we hispanics really want for the country."

File Under: What If...

If you're following the narrative on the blog with any regularity over the week, you probably noticed we've been taking a close look at Stephen Kinzer's brilliant new book, The Brothers, an intense look at the two worst and most destructive arch-villains in 20th Century American history. Having a major international airport named after John Foster Dulles is a slap in the face to all Americans who revere democracy and detest the aggressive fascism he espoused his entire miserable life.

The Dulles brothers had just finished deposing the democratically elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammed Mosadegh, and we getting ready to do the same to the democratically elected president of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz, when the 13th Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Fred Vinson had a heart attack and died. Eisenhower immediately offered his Secretary of State, former sleazy Wall Street lawyer, Foster Dulles, the position. Dulles immediately turned him down. He had monsters to slay all over the world and had no time for Justice, not even a chance to pervert it. Kinzer speculates that "Foster's decision to remain as secretary of state opened the way for the appointment of Earl Warren as chief justice. If he had decided otherwise and left the State Department, Allen would undoubtably have continued to press the anti-Arbenz project. Whether another secretary of state would have shared his passion for it is an intriguing question for which there can be no answer." And that's true. But, had he been interested in domestic matters rather than international affairs, Kinzer could have taken the other fork for speculation, one for which there are plenty of answers: what if John Foster Dulles, a dull-minded bigot and fascist operative, had become the Chief Justice instead of Earl Warren? America would be a very different place today, a far worse one.

Warren, who had served 3 terms as the Republican governor of California (although he was also nominated by the Democrats for reelection), served as Chief Justice from 1953 until 1969. He was one of the three or four most impactful Chief Justices in American History and there isn't a single decision he is best known for-- from Brown v Board of Education in 1954 to Miranda v Arizona in 1966-- that Foster Dulles would have agreed with. Both men were Republicans and elitists but Dulles was the preeminent American reactionary of his time and Warren was a lifelong idealist and progressive.

In fact, Warren turned out to be so unabashedly progressive on the Court-- and so persuasive in terms of forging a liberal activist majority on the Court-- that Eisenhower came to rue the day he ever appointed him. Eisenhower is said to have remarked that appointing him was "the biggest fool mistake I ever made," although this may be a right-wing myth.

Dulles would have never voted to desegregate American schools, the decision Warren is probably most well-known for. And Dulles, a dedicated anti-democracy fanatic certainly would never have championed the two big "one man, one vote" cases by which Warren ended the dominance of rural areas in state legislatures. Although conservatives in Congress frantically tried to pass a Constitutional Amendment to overrule Warren, they failed. "To the extent that a citizen's right to vote is debased, he is that much less a citizen," explained Warren defiantly. "The weight of a citizen's vote cannot be made to depend on where he lives. This is the clear and strong command of our Constitution's Equal Protection Clause." Had he been in a position to, John Foster Dulles would have ended universal suffrage entirely and gone back to a system in which only wealthy, white, male, property owners could vote.

In 1963, Warren's progressivism helped shaped the Gideon v Wainwright decision that requires that indigent defendants are entitled to legal counsel paid for by the government. Other Warren Court decisions that Dulles would have never allowed to slip through outlawed mandatory school prayer and enshrined a doctrine of privacy that led to abortion rights (Griswold v Connecticut).

Will Obama's Covert Actions In Egypt Haunt America In Future Decades The Way Eisenhower's Covert Actions In Iran Haunt Us Today?

Everyone blames Nazi-sympathizer John Foster Dulles, Eisenhower's Secretary of State, and his bumbling and incompetent brother, Allen, head of the CIA, for the unintended consequences brought on by the violent CIA overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddegh. History blames them-- and history was meant to blame them. Eisenhower's fingers are nowhere near any of that stuff-- only on his revered speech warning Americans about the Military-Industrial Complex. Eisenhower, who desperately wanted a cheap "victory" against communism, is more to blame than the venal Dulles brothers. He bought in to the fabrication-- a direct precursor of the Big Lie about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction-- that the anti-Communist Mosaddegh was a Soviet puppet or, when that became too implausible even for the most simpleminded of foreign policy observers, that he was so weak that the Soviets could and soon would overthrow him... and the next step would be landings in Omaha and Salt Lake City.

Eisenhower cut taxes on the rich and paid for that, in part, with slashing the Pentagon budget, primarily shrinking the size of the military. But he decided it would be cheaper and more effective to use covert wars against fifth-rate powers to project a sense of supposed American omnipotence around the world. The effects of the policy were an unmitigated disaster that is still playing out in Iran, the Congo, Cuba and several other countries. It was such an unmitigated disaster that Obama seems to have embraced an updated version of the dreadful strategy in, among other places, Egypt. We'll get back to Egypt in a moment. This is from Stephen Kinzer's fantastic new book about the Dulles brothers, The Brothers.

"Moscow's involvement with Iran was negligible," the historian Richard Immerman later concluded, but [Foster] Dulles could not distinguish between indigenous nationalism and imported communism."

..."Eisenhower participated in none of the meetings that set up Ajax [the overthrow of Mosaddegh's popular government and the installation of a repressive fascist dictatorship]; he received only oral reports on the plan; and he did not discuss it with his cabinet or the NSA," Stephen Ambrose wrote in his biography of Eisenhower. "Establishing a pattern he would hold to throughout his presidency, he kept his distance and left no documents behind that could implicate the President in any proposed coup. But in the privacy of the Oval Office, over cocktails, he was kept informed by Foster Dulles, and he maintained a tight control over the activities of the CIA."

Wednesday, the NY Times reported that the Obama-backed repressive military junta that overthrew Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi has now outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood. This is a very big deal and it is bound to play out over decades.

Egypt’s military-backed leaders on Wednesday designated the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, outlawing the country’s most successful political movement and vowing to treat anyone who belongs to it, or even takes part in its activities, as a terrorist.

Egypt’s leaders have been in conflict with the movement since July, when the military deposed Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president and a former Brotherhood leader. State forces have killed hundreds of the group’s supporters during protests against Mr. Morsi’s removal. Most of its leaders and thousands of its members have been imprisoned.

Now, with Wednesday’s decision, the government signaled its determination to cut off any air to the more than 80-year-old Islamist organization.

Analysts said the designation opened the door to the most severe crackdown on the movement in decades, requiring hundreds of thousands of Brotherhood members to abandon the group or face prison, and granting the military and the police new authority to suppress protests. The decision makes it a crime to promote the Brotherhood and could also outlaw hundreds of welfare and charitable organizations affiliated with the movement that help Egyptians with little access to government services.

The move came a day after officials blamed the Brotherhood for a suicide bombing at a police headquarters north of Cairo that killed 16 people, though on Wednesday a separate group-- Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, which has derided the Brotherhood for its lack of militancy-- claimed responsibility for that bombing.

The government was not swayed. In announcing the designation, it again blamed the Brotherhood for bombing the police headquarters, without supplying evidence that the Brotherhood was responsible.

Officials framed their decision as part of a long struggle between the state and a militant movement, making no mention of the Brotherhood’s more recent emergence as the most successful force in democratic elections after the fall of President Hosni Mubarak. “The Muslim Brotherhood remains as it has been,” the cabinet said in a statement. “It only knows violence as a tool.”

The designation represented a victory for government hard-liners who have sought to eradicate the Brotherhood since the military’s ouster of Mr. Morsi in July and who cast doubt on the repeated promises by officials of an inclusive, democratic transition. It appeared to set Egypt, which has been in crisis since the military takeover, on an even more precarious course.

Khalil al-Anani, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington who studies the Brotherhood, called the designation “a turning point” and said it could lead Egypt to a civil conflict like the one in Algeria in the 1990s.

“This is a big miscalculation from the government,” he said. “It is a massive social movement, whose supporters might retaliate or fight back.”

With most of the Brotherhood’s senior leaders already imprisoned, he said, “there is a lack of communication between the leadership and young Brotherhood members. And these people can be dragged to the violent path.”

With the decision on Wednesday, the current government moved against the group even more aggressively than had been the case under Mr. Mubarak, who ruled for three decades before being deposed by the uprising in 2011. In the Mubarak era, the Brotherhood was banned and its leaders were imprisoned, but some members could participate in politics, and the group’s social organizations and charities were permitted to operate.

Mr. Anani said that the cabinet decision would not have been announced without the blessing of the military and the powerful defense chief, Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi. The military was giving the police “carte blanche,” he said. “They don’t have a political solution,” he said.

In a statement, the cabinet said that the authorities would punish anyone who joined the Brotherhood or remained a member, as well as “those who take part in the activity” of the group or “promotes it by speech, writing or any other means and all those who fund its activities.” The law mandates a maximum five-year sentence for joining a banned group, but allows judges to impose lengthier sentences if terrorism is involved.

The Times dug deeper Thursday as the junta went on the offensive against Brotherhood members, announcing "dozens of arrests across the country, and the seizure of land, stocks and vehicles belonging to the Islamist movement’s members."

Social and charitable groups even loosely associated with the group struggled after their funds were frozen by the state. It was a new level of disruption to a society already riven by violence and suspicion in the months since the military ousted Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president and a Brotherhood leader.

Egypt’s new leaders clearly signaled that they had opened a wide-ranging and possibly protracted war on every facet of the Brotherhood’s activities, with the terrorism designation giving the security forces greater latitude to stamp out a group deeply rooted in Egyptian social and civic life. The government had also sought to deny the group foreign help or shelter, urging other Arab governments to honor an antiterrorism agreement and shun the organization.

...The defense minister, Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, set the official tone, vowing to eradicate those who try to harm Egypt from “the face of the Earth,” according to a statement released by the military.

“Don’t let these treacherous terrorist incidents affect you or your spirits,” he said, speaking of recent bombings by militants for which the government has blamed the Brotherhood. “We’re on the side of pronounced righteousness.”

The police announced the first arrests under the terror designation, charging 16 Brotherhood supporters in Sharqiya Province with belonging to a terrorist group. That charge carries a five-year prison sentence, the Interior Ministry said, but leaders of the Brotherhood potentially face execution.

Now let's skip back to an interview Terry Gross of NPR did with Kinzer in October. "The way you describe it, John Foster Dulles, as secretary of state, plotted a new kind of war; and then Allen Dulles, as head of the CIA, waged those wars covertly. So describe what their working relationship was when plotting to overthrow leaders they thought opposed what was in America's best interest," asked Gross.

KINZER: We have very little written record of the relationship between the two of them. And the reason is, they would speak on the phone several times a day; they would meet after work sometimes or on weekends; and it just took a wink or a nod, sometimes literally, for these huge operations to be carried out. They had the full blessing of President Eisenhower, and they didn't do anything behind his back. But he gave them, more or less, free rein, and they functioned as kind of two jaws of a serpent that are kind of not connected but working towards the same goal. Foster Dulles would provide the diplomatic backdrop and the political motivation that American citizens would hear, and then Allen would carry out the operation secretly.

GROSS: What were the major coups or overthrows they engineered?

KINZER: I think the main theme of this book that is new is that during the 1950s - which according to most histories, was a period of peace in the world - actually, we were involved in a continual secret war. Nobody noticed it because it was covert. I use this phrase monsters to describe the enemies that the Dulles brothers struck out against. That's a word that John Quincy Adams used in a famous speech, when he said America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. But the Dulles brothers did.

They saw enemies everywhere, and they waged one war after another, in a sense merging these into one single conflict. The first two monsters they struck out against were people against whom they had grudges from their days as corporate lawyers. Their job was to protect the interests of big American corporations in foreign countries, and in 1951they failed twice.

Two of their major clients were attacked by foreign leaders, and they couldn't do anything to protect their clients. In Guatemala, the United Fruit Company, which was a longtime client of the Dulles brothers, was affected by a land reform law. And around the same time, the government of Iran nationalized its oil industry, and the oil company that they nationalized had used as its financial agent a bank that the Dulles brothers represented and on whose board Allen Dulles sat.

So this represented an unaccustomed failure for the Dulles brothers. They developed deep grudges against President Arbenz of Guatemala and Prime Minister Mosaddegh of Iran. They carried those grudges into office, and within the first 18 months of their terms in office, they had disposed of both of those leaders. So those were the first two.

Then they began developing new ideas of who the real monsters in the world were. In my book I talk about their efforts to foment civil war in Indonesia; their terribly tragic decision to get involved in Vietnam, which led to the entire American war there; and their actions against Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba in The Congo and Fidel Castro in Cuba.

There were some others that they were interested in trying to topple, like Nassir in Egypt and Nehru in India, all of them believers in neutralism, which was a horrible concept to the Dulles brothers, but those operations didn't succeed, and we are now living with the legacies of both their failed operations and their successful ones.

GROSS: Yeah, we'll get to some of the legacies a little bit later. When you say neutralism, they saw the world as divided between communism and the free world, and if a country was neutral, why was that a bad thing?

KINZER: Actually, President Sukarno asked that question to Foster Dulles, and Dulles told him our policy is global. He even used the word immoral to describe the concept of neutralism. He believed that everything that happened in the world during the 1950s was part of the Cold War.

For example, it wasn't conceivable to him that land reform in Guatemala could be a project that Guatemalans had designed to deal with a Guatemalan situation. He just assumed that it had been ordered by the Kremlin. They had this view of the world, which I think was implanted in them from a very young age, that there's good and evil, and it's the obligation of the good people to go out into the world and destroy the evil ones.

...They had no concept of what we now call blowback. They had no idea that operations that seemed successful at first might have terrible long-term effects that wouldn't even be visible for decades, or even generations.

...The prime minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh, and the parliament of Iran decided in the early 1950s to nationalize their oil industry. That was a challenge not only to the oil industry worldwide but to the entire economic system by which the world was ruled. That system was based on the idea that corporations in rich countries had the right to extract resources from poor countries and find markets in poor countries.

And it also assumed that those companies should have the right to operate in those countries under rules that they themselves set. So Mosaddegh's nationalization of the oil industry was profound. In addition, it directly affected a key Dulles brothers client, that was the Schroder Bank, which was a bank on which Allen Dulles served as a board member, and both of the brothers represented it.

So that bank lost a huge client in Iran when Mosaddegh nationalized his oil industry. As a result, they saw Mosaddegh as a challenge to the stability of the world. Why? Because he didn't allow large international companies, in this case Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, to operate freely in Iran. The Dulles brothers were terribly afraid of the precedent this might set.

They could not let anyone get away with tinkering with the system that allowed large corporations to operate freely in weak countries. They saw Mosaddegh as a challenge, and they felt that if they let him get away with it, the entire edifice of the way the world economy was run might crumble.

...What would happen, and this happened in Iran and almost simultaneously in Guatemala, Is that John Foster Dulles would make speeches to the American people explaining that dangerous forces were at work in Country X. He wouldn't say what we were going to do about it. In fact he always denied that we had done anything about it.

But while he was creating the public climate in which Americans would come to sense Country X as an enemy, his brother would be actively working to bring down that government. Foster Dulles' role was to tell Americans that huge numbers of people in Iran opposed Mosaddegh, or huge numbers of people in Guatemala opposed Arbenz. That wasn't true in either case.

However, when Allen Dulles and the CIA brought those governments down, Foster Dulles was then able to complete the circle by going on television and saying the people of Country X have done just what we thought they might do. They've risen up to overthrow their tyrant. So he was certainly not above distorting what had really happened, and in fact he specifically said in his television address after the overthrow of the Guatemalan government the problem was solved by the people of Guatemala themselves.

This was completely untrue; he knew that. The problem had been solved by Allen Dulles. But Americans didn't know that and didn't realize it for decades.

Ironic that Obama is working to clean up the mess Eisenhower (and the Dulles brothers) left us in Iran 60 years ago, even while he is making a mess in Egypt for a future president to clean up.

Painted in 1954 by Diego Rivera, Glorious Victory has as its subject the infamous CIA coup in Guatemala of the same year. At the center of the mural, CIA Director John Foster Dulles is shaking hands with the newly installed U.S. puppet, Colonel Castillo Armas. Resting at their feet is an anthropomorphized bomb bearing the smile of President Eisenhower. Allen Dulles and the U.S. Ambassador are handing out money to members of the fascist junta as Mayan workers salve away loading bananas onto a United Fruit Company ship.

Bloated Military Budget Passes-- Here's One The GOP Didn't Filibuster

Thursday night, just before midnight, the Senate approved the Pentagon Budget 84-15. Disappointingly, only three Senate Democrats had the guts to vote NO, Bernie Sanders, Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden. In the video above, Bernie explains to his colleagues why had decided to vote against it. It's worth watching. The only Republicans who voted against it are just the regular extremists who oppose everything that Obama backs, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, Tom Coburn, etc. In his speech Bernie quoted from President Eisenhower's "Cross of Iron" speech on April 16, 1953.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.



This world in arms in not spending money alone.

It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.



The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.



It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. 

It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.



It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.



We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat.



We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.



This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.



This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.



These plain and cruel truths define the peril and point the hope that come with this spring of 1953.

Sixty years later, the mess Eisenhower warned us about has only gotten worse-- much, much, much worse. And as Bernie told his colleagues, "At a time when the United States has a $17.2 trillion national debt and when we spend almost as much on defense as the rest of the world combined, the time is long overdue for us to take a hard look at the waste, cost overruns and financial mismanagement that have plagued the huge Defense Department for years. The situation is so absurd that the Pentagon is unable to even account for how it spends its money. Earlier this year, the Government Accountability Office cited its inability to audit the Pentagon. They wrote that they were unable to do a comprehensive financial analysis due to ‘serious financial management problems at the Department of Defense that made its financial statements un-auditable.’ I support a strong defense system for our country and a robust National Guard and Reserve that can meet our domestic and foreign challenges. At a time, however, when the country has a $17.2 trillion national debt and is struggling with huge unmet needs, it is unacceptable that the Defense Department continues to waste massive amounts of money,” Sanders said.

Senator Merkley emphasized that his vote against the budget was primarily because of the funding it includes for continuing the occupation of Afghanistan. “The war in Afghanistan is now the longest war in American history and it’s long past time to bring our sons and daughters home," he said in a statement Friday morning a few hours after the late night roll call. "The administration is negotiating a pact with Afghanistan that would commit massive resources and thousands of troops to another decade in Afghanistan. I don’t think that makes sense, and I think the American people should be able to weigh in and Congress should vote before we proceed. A House provision requiring Congressional approval for another decade in Afghanistan was stripped from the Defense Authorization, and the Senate never had a chance to vote on my similar amendment. I voted no on the Defense Authorization because Congress needs to have a say before we extend our commitment in Afghanistan.”

I'm very proud that Merkley and Sanders did the right thing and voted against this monstrosity. Merkley is running for reelection this cycle and Sanders is keeping his options open for a presidential run if all the candidates running are, as widely expected, pathetic tools. The links on their names give you the opportunity to contribute to their respective campaigns.

300 Spartan Hoplites Saved Greek Democracy But Will 400 American Billionaires Destroy Ours?

Whether Huntsman was the one who revealed that multimillionaire GOP tax cheat Mitt Romney paid no taxes at all for years, what we do know for sure is that for the years he did pay something his rate was 13.9%, considerably less than the 35% the very rich are supposed to pay. And that doesn't count his non-taxable income-- nor the money he had stashed away in foreign accounts of dubious legality-- which probably accounted for more than half his wealth.

When Eisenhower, the last mainstream Republican president, was in office, the marginal tax rate on incomes over $400,000 was 92% and capital gains was taxed at 25%. In 1954 Eisenhower reduced the marginal rate to something Republicans felt was more fair… 91%. His greatest accomplishment-- aside from keeping the U.S. out of wars-- was the building of the Interstate Highway System, judged so not just by historians but by Eisenhower himself. Although his 1952 landslide gave Republicans control of both houses of Congress, they made no moves to reduce taxes beyond the modest 1% reduction for top payers. While Ike was in the White House the economy expanded and the Dow more than doubled.

JFK kept the top rate but LBJ made the effective top tax rate 75.25%, a gigantic tax cut for the very wealthy and Nixon kept that rate, while raising the capital gains rate to 36.5%. At that time Mitt's father, George Romney, ran for president and released his tax returns, showing a $2,972,923.58 income during 1966 and a total of $1,099,555.18, a very different story than the one his son's taxes told.

Ford's brief presidency saw no changes in the marginal rates but did see capital gains go up to 39.875%, the peak, as it turned out, which helps explain why the rich have gotten much much richer since the end of the Ford presidency. The decrease in capital gains taxes began under Jimmy Carter, decreasing by over 10 points to 28%. This just whetted the appetites and the greed of the very rich for more and bigger cuts. Reagan was glad to oblige. He slashed the top marginal rates from around 70% to just 28%, the seed for economic catastrophe and endlessly unbalanced budgets. George H.W. Bush tried to undo some of the damage Reagan's tax cutting had done and rates increased slightly. Clinton kept the marginal rate for top earners basically the same as Reagan and decreased the capital gains tax by 8 points.

Then came George W. Bush (or, more to the point, Dick Cheney, who was in charge of the economy). The rate for top earners sunk to 15.35% and the capital gains tax was pushed down to 15%, exploding the deficit and sending the U.S. economy careening towards the disaster that ended the 8 catastrophic Bush-Cheney years. Obama kept the unsustainable Bush tax cuts for the rich. according to James Stewart's widely discussed NY Times piece over the weekend, High Income, Low Taxes And Never A Bad Year, the rich just keep on getting richer and richer under the tax policies they pay for with their campaign contributions. "The fortunate 400 people with the highest adjusted gross incomes," he wrote, "still made, on average, $202 million each in 2009, according to Internal Revenue Service data. And this doesn’t even count income that doesn’t show up as adjusted gross income, such as tax-exempt interest." And for many rich people that tax-exempt interest is over half their income.

Yet the top 400 paid an average federal income tax rate of less than 20 percent, far lower than the top rate of 35 percent then in effect.

They also paid a lower rate than the top 1 percent, which were people with adjusted gross incomes in 2009 of at least $344,000. These affluent but hardly superrich taxpayers paid on average just over 24 percent of their adjusted gross income in federal income tax. Even the top 0.01 percent, people earning at least $1.4 million, paid 24 percent.



“The top 400 have enormously high incomes even after the dip,” said Leonard E. Burman, director of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center and a professor of public policy at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. “It’s still over $200 million each. And yet they’re still paying at a lower rate.”

Even in a bad year like 2009, the federal tax code at the very top is regressive, not progressive.

Of course, the top 400 are a tiny fraction of the overall population (there were over 140 million returns filed in 2009). But I’ve always found them to be a useful window to the otherwise hidden world of the ultrarich. And if the tax code is perceived as unfair to the wealthiest citizens, is it any wonder that there’s widespread resentment at lower rungs of the prosperity ladder?

It may seem surprising that some of the country’s richest people had a banner year in the depths of the recent recession, but recall that 2009 was a year that Wall Street paid itself big bonuses even after taking billions in government rescue money. And while the stock market bottomed in March of that year, it went on to rack up impressive gains. These were especially favorable conditions for nimble hedge fund managers.

…Among those at the top of the rankings that year were David Tepper, founder of Appaloosa Management, who earned an estimated $4 billion; George Soros, who earned $3.3 billion; James Simons of Renaissance Technologies, who made $2.5 billion; and John Paulson, at $2.3 billion, who famously bet against mortgage-backed securities and cashed in on the housing collapse.

Most of the income of hedge fund and other managers of investment partnerships-- so-called carried interest-- is treated as capital gains rather than earned income, and is taxed at a low preferential rate, which was 15 percent in 2009. This much-criticized loophole has survived repeated attempts to remove it, and was left untouched by the Obama administration’s 2009 tax increases.

The success of hedge fund managers as well as others who bet on both market declines and gains may help explain why members of the top 400 still managed to report average net capital gains of over $92 million in 2009. That was significantly lower than the peak year of 2007, when net capital gains for the top 400 averaged $228.5 million. Still, it represented 46 percent of their income, which is much higher than for most people.

This tiny sliver of taxpayers accounted for an astounding 16 percent of all capital gains in 2009, the highest percentage by far since the statistics started to be compiled in 1992.

…Dividend income for the superrich also hit a record in 2009, at an average of $10.6 million each, which accounted for 13 percent of the top 400’s total adjusted gross income. With interest rates hitting new lows, many superrich people apparently shifted more of their assets to stocks paying higher dividends. Dividend income is also taxed at a preferential rate.

“They’re still paying much lower rates because their income is dominated by capital gains and dividends,” said Edward Kleinbard, a professor at the University of Southern California School of Law and a former chief of staff for Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation. “As long as those forms of income are taxed at a preferential rate, the rich are going to benefit the most.”

It remains a pillar of Republican orthodoxy that taxes on unearned income, especially capital gains, should be low, or even eliminated. But it was Ronald Reagan who as president championed taxing capital gains at the same rate as earned income. This was a crucial part of his 1986 tax reform, which lowered overall rates by broadening the tax base.

“Capital gains have taken on a totemic significance to the Republicans,” said Professor Kleinbard. “But they’re just another way that you earn a return by investing capital in productive activity. There’s nothing magical about capital gains from an economic point of view.”

…Representative Dave Camp, Republican of Michigan, and Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, have been working on a much-anticipated bipartisan approach to tax reform, and the House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan has said, “They agree on the fundamental principles: Broaden the base, lower the rates and simplify the code.”

Last week, the Democratic Party's version of Sheldon Adelson, Haim Saban, hosted a $15,000 a plate lunch for Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton at his 23,000 square foot mansion in Beverly Hills. Not even counting the$10 million check Saban wrote to the Clinton Library, he's given over $12 million to Democratic Party candidates. He's worth something in the neighborhood of $3.5 billion-- and without that nice tax code both parties champion, that would have never happened. There were no billionaires when Eisenhower was president. It was mathematically impossible. And it was good for democracy and good for America.

After examining the voting records of freshmen Democrats-- not Republicans who are owned lock-stock-and-barrel by the plutocrats-- but Democrats who are supposed to be serving the interests of working families and the middle class, we have a list of the 13 freshmen-- a baker's dozen-- who have been the most slavish adherents class warriors on behalf of the rich for this session of Congress. This is what the DCCC gave us last year-- and this is in order, worst first:

• Sean Patrick Maloney (New Dem-NY)
• Patrick Murphy (New Dem-FL)
• Pete Gallego (New Dem/Blue Dog-TX)
• Kyrsten Sinema (New Dem-AZ)
• Raul Ruiz (D-CA)
• John Delaney (New Dem-MD)
• Cheri Bustos (D-IL)
• Scott Peters (New Dem-CA)
• Ami Bera (New Dem-CA)
• Bill Foster (New Dem-IL)
• Ann Kuster (New Dem-NH)
• Joe Garcia (New Dem-FL)
• Brad Schneider (New Dem-IL)

Big Business Has A Friend-- Congress

Monday we looked at Jason Farago's definitive Cory Booker analysis in the Guardian. One conclusion that struck me was about his lackey-like relationship with Big Business in general and Wall Street in particular.

Booker has the unwavering support of the big bad industry just across the river from Newark. Since his days as a city councilor, he has hoovered up cash from the financial services sector-- but unlike many other tri-state Democrats who seduce the Street in a marriage of a convenience, Booker legitimately thinks that big money knows best and the public sector should do its bidding. When, in May 2012, Booker confessed that he found it "nauseating" for the Obama campaign to impugn Mitt Romney's career in private equity, Democrats were shocked. They shouldn't have been.

Booker's whole career has been a testament to a poisonous financial-corporatist consensus, which dresses up the interests of big money in post-ideological garb. (That helped him win the support this weekend of the most powerful man in New Jersey: George Norcross III, the feared political boss and owner of the Philadelphia Inquirer, who said he liked Booker because he was "a Democrat that's fiscally conservative yet socially progressive.")

Because I used to be a corporate CEO, I still get corporate CEO magazines and communications. One came this week that I actually opened instead of deleting. It was celebrating the easy access corporate CEOs and their agents have to Members of Congress. They cited a study based on a survey by George Washington University that included 328 congressional staffers from both sides of the aisle. No telling how many of their bosses are as subservient to Big Business as Cory Booker, but the study found that "65 percent of Hill staffers have a positive opinion of corporations-- calling them very or somewhat trustworthy. Additionally, the poll finds that 71 percent of Hill staffers found meetings with CEOs and top executives to be helpful when learning more about the issues that affect business." Just under half the Capitol Hill staffers surveyed say the same positive predisposition towards organized labor. 64% of Hill staffers said that meeting with corporate lobbyists was a helpful activity in formulating policy, while only 45% reported that meeting with labor lobbyists was useful.

This is great news for the business community since many corporations and associations host congressional fly-ins for their employees and membership base. A face-to-face meeting with a legislator helps you connect with your legislator and his or her staff on a personal level and can be important in building relationships for you and your organization. As proven by the study, elected officials enjoy meeting with their constituents, but many people compete for their time. When meeting with your elected official or staffer, be sure to remember the following to ensure an effective meeting:

Be Flexible
When scheduling an appointment, provide as much advance notice as possible and try to be flexible about dates and times. If you have to schedule a meeting on your own, keep in mind that your legislator will be able to spend more time with you if you schedule the meeting at his or her district office when Congress is not in session.

Be Prompt and Professional
Once you have made the appointment, be sure to keep it. It is wise to confirm your appointment a day or two in advance and plan to arrive a few minutes early. Dress professionally and make sure you are prepared to deliver your message persuasively.

Respect the Legislator’s Schedule
Remember that your legislator’s time is limited, and you are there to discuss important issues. Know in advance how long the legislator can speak with you and make certain the meeting does not exceed the allotted time. Be sure to stick to your topic, keep your comments and questions brief, and allow time for your legislator to ask questions and provide you with feedback.

Be Organized for the Meeting
Know your issue and the facts behind it thoroughly before you reach the meeting. If several people will be attending, designate one individual to act as spokesperson for the group and make sure you are all agreed on the message you are there to deliver. When you arrive at the meeting, introduce all of the attendees and allow the spokesperson to explain why you have requested the meeting. Be as specific as possible to help your legislator better understand the big picture.

Clearly State Your Position and Seek Feedback
Explain specific reasons you support or oppose the issue, including the impact of the issue on your business, your community, colleagues and industry. Stick to the issue at hand; bringing up other topics will lessen the force of your message. Ask your legislator’s position on the issue, but don’t try to force him or her to commit to a position. Request that you be kept updated on the issue and be sure to provide your contact information.

Avoid Arguing
While you are entitled to disagree with your elected officials, remember that you are not just there to win: You are there to build a positive relationship. Becoming argumentative will not help. Even if you are unable to persuade your legislator to your point of view, it is always best to leave on friendly terms so that you will be welcome another time.

Provide Leave-Behind Information
Whenever possible, leave appropriate documentation that supports your position with the legislator. Such leave-behind information will help the legislator remember your views and allow him or her to refer back to them after the meeting is over.

Follow Up with a Personal Letter
Be sure to send a thank-you letter after the meeting, regardless of whether you were able to reach an agreement. A thank you letter demonstrates that you appreciate the value of your elected official’s time and allows you to reiterate your position and underscore your concerns.

I bet it didn't take many personal follow up letters from Steve Jobs and Tim Cook of Apple to members of Congress to curry favor with the government, not if you read a new report from the Associated Press about domestic spying the same way I do:

Apple says it received between 4,000 and 5,000 requests from U.S. law enforcement for customer data for the six months ended in May.

The company, like some other businesses, had asked the U.S government to be able to share how many requests it received related to national security and how it handled them. Those requests were made as part of Prism, the recently revealed highly classified National Security Agency program that seizes records from Internet companies.

Prism appears to do what its name suggests. Like a triangular piece of glass, Prism takes large beams of data and helps the government find discrete, manageable strands of information.

Prism was revealed this month by the Washington Post and Guardian newspapers, and has touched off the latest round in a decade-long debate over what limits to impose on government eavesdropping, which the Obama administration says is essential to keep the nation safe.

Apple Inc. said that between 9,000 and 10,000 accounts or devices were specified in data requests between Dec. 1, 2012, and May 31 from federal, state and local authorities and included both criminal investigations and national security matters.

...Facebook Inc. has said that it received between 9,000 and 10,000 requests for data from all government agencies in the second half of last year. The social media company said fewer than 19,000 users were targeted.

I had dinner with an old friend over the weekend who designed-- and then ran-- a computer system for a sensitive division of one of Wall Street's biggest banks. He told me the feds asked them for access to between 30,000 and 50,000 individual accounts annually and claimed it was covered by "money laundering" statutes, although it was clear to the bank that very little of it involved a search for money launderers. The news didn't come as a surprise to me, just as the revelations in the press about Prism and other NSA domestic spying didn't come as a surprise to me. I have, after all, always taken President Eisenhower's 1961 warning about the power of the Military Industrial Complex to heart. He was certainly in a better position to understand it than any president who came after him.