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What a McCain Victory Could Mean: No Money for Health Care and the End of Our Volunteer Army
By Robert Parry, Consortium News. Posted August 28, 2008

The price tag for John McCain's war lust would mean virtually every other national priority would be short-changed or neglected.

In judging the shape of a future John McCain presidency, there are already plenty of dots that are easy to connect. They reveal an image of a war-like Empire so full of hubris that it could take the world into a cascade of crises, while extinguishing what is left of the noble American Republic.

McCain has made clear he would continue and even escalate George W. Bush's open-ended global war on Islamic radicals. McCain buys into the neoconservative vision of expending U.S. treasure and troops to kill as many Muslim militants as possible.

McCain's tough talk -- for instance, his joking about "bomb, bomb Iran" and his vow to pursue Osama bin Laden "to the gates of hell" -- is indistinguishable from Bush's "bring 'em on," "smoke 'em out," "dead or alive" rhetoric.

Beyond the words, McCain's global war strategy is as hawkish, if not more so, than Bush's. In late 2001 and early 2002, McCain took the lead in pushing the neocon plan of a rapid pivot from the invasion of Afghanistan toward the prospective invasion of Iraq.

Even before the Taliban had been thoroughly defeated -- and as the Bush administration was failing to chase bin Laden to the gates of Tora Bora or to the gates of northwest Pakistan -- McCain was advocating a diversion of U.S. intelligence and military assets toward Iraq's Saddam Hussein, who had nothing to do with 9/11.

That premature pivot from Afghanistan to Iraq may go down as one of the worst national security blunders in the history of the United States. It has bogged the U.S. military down in two indefinite wars while fueling anti-Americanism around the world and especially among the billion-plus Muslims.

Yet, McCain and his neocon allies have never acknowledged this serious error of judgment, nor has the mainstream U.S. news media demanded that McCain accept responsibility for this catastrophic mistake.

McCain instead gets away with boasting about the supposed success of the recent U.S. troop "surge" in Iraq. (Meanwhile, Big Media stars -- many of whom backed the Iraq invasion in 2003 -- hammer Barack Obama for refusing to accept the conventional wisdom about the "successful surge," as Obama tries to offer a more nuanced analysis.)

So, as the U.S. press corps again gives cover to the Iraq War, the larger failure of U.S. policy goes substantially unaddressed.

Not only did the McCain/Bush/neocon strategy allow bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders to survive and reestablish themselves along the Pakistani-Afghan border, the policy let the Taliban exploit instability in Afghanistan to rebuild its forces and begin going on the offensive against hard-pressed U.S. and NATO troops.

Potentially even worse, the Bush-McCain-neocon neglect of Afghanistan has contributed to worsening instability in nuclear-armed Pakistan, where the Taliban and al-Qaeda are expanding safe havens and increasing influence.

In other words, while Bush and McCain rushed off to war against Iraq over the distant possibility that Iraq might some day have the capacity to build a nuclear bomb, they allowed disorder to spread in Pakistan, a country that already possesses nuclear weapons.

Future Draft?

Another casualty of McCain's endless Middle East wars, which soon could include Iran, would almost surely be America's volunteer army. Though McCain officially opposes a restoration of the draft, it is nearly impossible to envision how his multiple wars could be waged without one.

And McCain also had made clear that he favors a neo-Cold War confrontation with Moscow over another part of the neocon agenda -- the encircling of Russia with pro-U.S. regimes and the placement of strategic missile systems near Russia's borders.

The fencing in of Russia fits with the goals of the neocon Project for the New American Century that envisions an endless era of U.S. military dominance that tolerates no potential rivals, whether an emerging China or a resurgent Russia. The recent Russian-Georgian conflict underscores the risks from this neocon concept.

Containing Russia in this way ultimately would require dangerous brinkmanship. And the McCain/neocon belligerence -- like McCain's melodramatic declaration "we are all Georgians" -- would guarantee that one of these swaggering showdowns eventually would push the world to the brink of a nuclear confrontation.

From the perspective of U.S. taxpayers, the neocon strategy of permanent global dominance means funding the military-industrial complex at levels never before seen, especially when one factors in the simultaneous costs of the "war on terror," the Iraq War, the Afghan War and a possible Iran War.

The combined price tag for McCain's military adventures, at a time when the federal government is already running about half a trillion dollars in debt, would mean that virtually every other national priority would have to be short-changed or neglected.

There will be little money left to address the energy crisis, global warming, retooling the auto industry, health care, Social Security, education, infrastructure repairs, etc., etc.

Plus, as the United States solidifies itself under President McCain as a militaristic Empire, the remnants of the old Republic would inevitably be swept away.

Already, McCain has vowed to appoint more U.S. Supreme Court justices in the style of Samuel Alito and John Roberts, open advocates of an imperial presidency.

Currently, the Supreme Court has a slim 5-4 majority in favor of maintaining some limits on the President's power. But one more vacancy from the moderate majority -- to be filled by President McCain -- would mean that a right-wing Supreme Court would begin reinterpreting the U.S. Constitution to grant the President unlimited powers in wartime.

And since wartime would never end, the Founders' vision of a Republic -- with "checks and balances" and all people possessing "unalienable rights" -- would be negated by an all-powerful President who could do whatever he wished to anyone who got in the way.

In many ways, a McCain presidency would represent the logical culmination of America's failure to heed President Dwight Eisenhower's parting warning about the growing power of "the military-industrial complex."

The American people also would show that they had turned their back on another warning from another aging leader, Benjamin Franklin, who cautioned at the end of the Constitutional Convention in 1787 that the Founders had created a Republic, "if you can keep it."


http://www.alternet.org/election08/96687/what_a_mccain_...lunteer_army/?page=1

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/#96745

McCain's Million Dollar Parking Lot

McCain's Million Dollar Parking Lot
Post by Robert Greenwald
Video: A lot worth $1 million more than the average American home.



Posted by Robert Greenwald, Brave New Films on August 28, 2008 at 6:29 AM.


Not only does John McCain have at least 10 properties he can't remember, but he also owns a parking lot in Phoenix Arizona worth between $1.4 and $2.4 million. That's over $1 million more than the average American home!

It's no wonder McCain has said time and time again that the "fundamentals of the economy are strong." He's living in the land of affluence, and has no concept of just how terrible our economy has become under President Bush. According to the U.S. Census, 37.3 million people were living in poverty in 2007. 45.7 million (15.3 percent of the population) don't have health insurance—a staggering number that has risen by 6 million since Bush took office in 2001. And yet McCain extols Bush's economy and proposes his own policies that would sink our country further into debt.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said that when it comes to the economy,

"I think John McCain is wrong. He doesn’t even know how many homes he has. … We’ve seen the McCain position as just a continuation of the Bush Administration. It’s President Bush’s policies that got us into the mess that we have now. And it’s not only a short term crisis, it’s long term and it has to be addressed. Workers are having a tough time. The wage inequality that’s out there is unbelievable, and health care and retirement security are threatened. Those are some of the reasons that we’re not supporting John McCain."

When we launched McCain's Mansions, you recognized that McCain is out of touch with hard-working Americans. That's why you spread it around and got the mainstream media to take notice and question McCain on this issue. It exposed McCain for the elitist he really is, and turned our ailing economy into a number one issue for Democrats.

Now's your chance to keep the economy front and center by spreading McCain's Million Dollar Parking Lot. Let everyone know that while the majority of Americans are struggling to make mortgage payments and pay for necessities like health insurance and gas, John McCain has a parking lot worth $1 million more than the average home.

[URL=http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/#96745]http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/#96745[/URL

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/96644/bbc_reveals_h...ns_gaffe_snowballed/


BBC Reveals How McCain's Mansions Gaffe Snowballed

Posted by ZP Heller, Brave New Films at 12:00 PM on August 27, 2008.

How McCain's elitism came to light.


By now, over 370,000 people have viewed McCain's Mansions, a video depicting John McCain as a wealthy elitist whose views on the economy are out of touch with those of hard-working Americans. And this BBC segment (the full version of which can be found here) shows the far-reaching impact of this video. Because viewers spread McCain's Mansions with such tenacity, the video prompted Politico to question McCain on just how many mansions he owns. McCain's now famous gaffe then led the Obama campaign to slam McCain on the economy almost immediately. A media frenzy ensued, culminating with Joe Biden's comment over the weekend that McCain has so many kitchen tables, he can't figure which one to sit at.

Don't let this story fade. Don't let McCain hide his elitist ways behind his POW story or Republican talking points. Continue spreading McCain's Mansions. Let's continue drawing attention to McCain's support for Bush's failed economic policies, and the fact that McCain's so wealthy his proposals primarily benefit the rich at the expense of everyone else.

Be sure to watch the video!

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/96644/bbc_reveals_h...ns_gaffe_snowballed/

Bush Is Pouring Gas on Afghanistan's Bonfire

By Chris Hedges, Truthdig. Posted August 27, 2008
Mounting NATO bombing raids and widespread detentions of Afghans are rapidly turning the country into the mirror image of Iraq.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan grind forward with their terrible human toll, even as the press and many Americans play who gets thrown off the island with Barack Obama. Coalition forces carried out an airstrike that killed up to 95 Afghan civilians in western Afghanistan on Friday, 50 of them children, President Hamid Karzai said. And the mounting bombing raids and widespread detentions of Afghans are rapidly turning Afghanistan into the mirror image of Iraq. But these very real events, which will have devastating consequences over the next few months and years, are largely ignored by us. We prefer to waste our time on the trivia and gossip that swallow up air time and do nothing to advance our understanding of either the campaign or the wars fought in our name.



As the conflict in Afghanistan has intensified, so has the indiscriminate use of airstrikes, including Friday's, which took place in the Azizabad area of Shindand district in Herat province. The airstrike was carried out after Afghan and coalition soldiers were ambushed by insurgents while on a patrol targeting a known Taliban commander in Herat, the U.S. military said. Hundreds of Afghans, shouting anti-U.S. slogans, staged angry street protests on Saturday in Azizabad to protest the killings, and Karzai condemned the airstrike.



The United Nations estimates that 255 of the almost 700 civilian deaths in fighting in Afghanistan this year have been caused by Afghan and international troops. The number of civilians killed in fighting between insurgents and security forces in Afghanistan has soared by two-thirds in the first half of this year.



Ghulam Azrat, the director of the middle school in Azizabad, said he collected 60 bodies after the bombing.



"We put the bodies in the main mosque,'' he told the Associated Press by phone, sometimes pausing to collect himself as he wept. "Most of these dead bodies were children and women. It took all morning to collect them."



Azrat said villagers on Saturday threw stones at Afghan soldiers who arrived and tried to give out food and clothes. He said the soldiers fired into the crowd and wounded eight people, including one child.



"The people were very angry," he said. "They told the soldiers, 'We don't need your food, we don't need your clothes. We want our children. We want our relatives. Can you give [them] to us? You cannot, so go away.' "



We are in trouble in Afghanistan. Sending more soldiers and Marines to fight the Taliban is only dumping gasoline on the bonfire. The Taliban assaults, funded largely by the expanded opium trade, are increasingly sophisticated and well coordinated. And the Taliban is exacting a rising toll on coalition troops. Soldiers and Marines are now dying at a faster rate in Afghanistan than Iraq. In an Aug. 18 attack, only 30 miles from the capital, Kabul, the French army lost 10 and had 21 wounded. The next day, hundreds of militants, aided by six suicide bombers, attacked one of the largest U.S. bases in the country. A week before that, insurgents killed three foreign aid workers and their Afghan driver, prompting international aid missions to talk about withdrawing from a country where they already have very limited access.



Barack Obama, like John McCain, speaks about Afghanistan in words that look as if they were penned by the Bush White House. Obama may call for withdrawing some U.S. troops from Iraq, but he does not want to send them all home. He wants to send them to Afghanistan, or to what he obliquely terms "the right battlefield." Obama said he would deploy an additional 10,000 troops to Afghanistan once he took office.

The seven-year war in Afghanistan has not gone well. An additional 3,200 Marines were deployed there in January. Karzai's puppet government in Kabul controls little territory outside the capital. And our attempt to buy off tribes with money and even weapons has collapsed, with most tribal groups slipping back into the arms of the Taliban insurgents.



Do the cheerleaders for an expanded war in Afghanistan know any history? Have they studied what happened to the Soviets, who lost 15,000 Red Army soldiers between 1979 and 1988, or even the British in the 19th century? Do they remember why we went into Afghanistan? It was, we were told, to hunt down Osama bin Laden, who is now apparently in Pakistan. Has anyone asked what our end goal is in Afghanistan? Is it nation-building? Or is this simply the forever war on terror?



Al-Qaida, which we have also inadvertently resurrected, is alive and well. It still finds plenty of recruits. It still runs training facilities. It still caries out attacks in London, Madrid, Iraq and now Afghanistan, which did not experience suicide bombings until December 2005. Al-Qaida has moved on. But we remain stuck, confused and lashing about wildly like a wounded and lumbering beast.



We do not have the power or the knowledge, nor do we have the right under international law, to occupy Iraq and Afghanistan. We are vainly trying to transplant to these countries a modern system of politics invented in Europe. This system is characterized by, among other things, the division of the Earth into independent secular states based on national citizenship. The belief in a secular civil government is to most Afghans and Iraqis an alien creed. It will never work.



We have blundered into nations we know little about. We are caught between bitter rivalries among competing ethnic and religious groups. We have embarked on an occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan that is as damaging to our souls as it is to our prestige and power and security. And we believe, falsely, that because we have the capacity to wage war we have the right to wage war.



We divert ourselves in our dotage and decline with images and slogans that perpetuate fantasies about our own invulnerability, our own might, our own goodness. We are preoccupied by national trivia games that pass for news, even as the wolf pants at our door. These illusions blind us. We cannot see ourselves as others see us. We do not know who we are.



"We had fed the heart on fantasies," William Butler Yeats wrote, "the heart's grown brutal from the fare."



We are propelled forward not by logic or compassion or understanding but by fear. We have created and live in a world where violence is the primary form of communication. We have become the company we keep. Much of the world--certainly the Muslim world, one-fifth of the world's population, most of whom are not Arab--sees us through the prism of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. We are igniting the dispossessed, the majority of humanity who live on less than two dollars a day. And whoever takes the White House next January seems hellbent on fueling our self-immolation.

http://www.alternet.org/audits/96497/bush_is_pouring_ga...bonfire/?page=entire

John McCain: Running for War President at Any Cost

By Robert Scheer, Truthdig. Posted August 27, 2008.

In order to win, McCain needs a new Cold War.Lucky for him that Republicans are so good at whipping up false international threats.

Just great! Nuclear-armed Pakistan is falling apart, Iran's nuclear program is unchecked and congressional legislation on cooperation with the Russians on controlling nuclear proliferation is now dead in the water. Horrid news except for Sen. John McCain, who thrills to a repeat of the danger lines of the Cold War, and now stands a good chance of being our next president.

A very good chance, if the Russian recognition of the independence of two breakaway Georgia provinces can be elevated to the status of a major challenge to the security of the United States. It is an absurd claim: How can one justify uncritical support for the independence of Kosovo from Serbia earlier this year while denouncing a similar claim by a Georgian ethnic minority? It is also difficult to ignore that it was Georgia's president and close McCain friend, Mikheil Saakashvili, who upset the status quo by invading first.

Saakashvili's attempt to compare the Russian response with that of the "Stalinist Soviet Union" is a nutty reference to a Georgian-born tyrant who ruled Russia and who is still revered in much of his native Georgia. But when you need a new Stalin to get a Cold War going, President Dmitry Medvedev and the elected members of a unanimous Russian parliament will have to do. And McCain is very happy to have this card to play.

McCain can win only as a war president. He neither knows nor cares much about the economic meltdown, which is the consequence of the deregulation mania that he has supported at every turn during his career in the Senate. If McCain had to run on his economic policy record in the Senate, he might be a loser even in his home state of Arizona, whose residents are suffering mightily from economic disarray presided over by the Republicans. Better to dwell on the dubious success of the surge in Iraq than on the surge in home mortgage foreclosures and the price of gasoline that has crippled Arizona's and the nation's economy. Still better to change the subject to the Russians and Georgia rather than dwell overly long on the disaster of Iraq, which has cost our nation trillions of dollars and where the prime minister now is far more zealous than Barack Obama in calling for an early withdrawal of U.S. troops. But whatever McCain's problems from cheerleading for Bush's war, they pale in comparison to his vulnerability on the most pressing domestic issues.

Instead of learning the hard lessons of the need for stern government oversight of the financial sector from his own compromised involvement as a member of the Keating Five in the 1980s savings-and-loan scandal, he voted to have more of the same. McCain became a booster for all of the banking deregulation legislation advanced by the Senate Banking Committee's then-chairman, Phil Gramm, who, more than any other legislator in the past decade, should be held responsible for the current mess.

Instead of recognizing that Gramm had pursued a disastrous course as the subprime mortgage scandal was exposed, McCain appointed the former-senator-turned-banker to be his campaign chair. McCain fired Gramm over a verbal gaffe but has not retracted any of his key votes liberating the financial community to fleece those desperate to become homeowners, and, were that the subject of the presidential campaign, he would lag way behind in the polls. This is not the season for laissez-faire corporate capitalism.

That's why he needs a new Cold War, but it's a bad fit for the world we face. The danger from Russia is not that it has imperial ambitions driven by the remnants of an expansionist communist ideology. Even China, which is still a communist-run state, knows that old-fashioned imperialism doesn't pay. What drives nations to madness these days is not ideology -- communist, Muslim or any other flavor of the month -- but rather an assortment of nationalist and religion-fueled grievances. In the case of Russia, the evolution of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin from the man Bush so admired to the one McCain despises was driven by hostile U.S. policies -- from NATO expansion to placing anti-missile rockets near Russia's borders.

The first step in adjusting U.S. foreign policy to a multipolar world is to recognize that other nations, as well as the United States, have causes and concerns that may be legitimate, even when they differ from our view. The hope of the Obama campaign was that a less U.S.-centric view might be in the offing, but that might be too great an expectation in the midst of a presidential campaign.


http://www.alternet.org/story/96624/john_mccain%3A_runn...esident_at_any_cost/

Should Uncle Sam Be Helping CEOs Get Richer?

By Sam Pizzigati, Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality. Posted August 28, 2008.

America's overpaid corporate execs have plenty of people to thank for their good fortune, including average American taxpayers.

The just-released latest edition of the annual CEO pay report from the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy tells two stories. The first will likely remind most Americans why they get so angry about CEO pay. The second will get them even angrier.

The first of these two stories doesn’t take long to tell. Last year, the new Executive Excess 2008 report notes, top CEOs in the United States continued to pocket outlandishly large paychecks, $10.5 million on average. That’s 344 times the pay of an average U.S. worker -- and ten times the pay gap that existed 30 years ago.


The second story takes a bit more explaining: Our tax dollars are actually subsidizing this incredible excess. The federal government, through the tax code, is directly rewarding companies that overpay their top executives.

Executive Excess 2008 details five of these direct subsidies. Two involve rather arcane accounting conventions that corporations exploit to both cheat Uncle Sam at tax time and pump up their quarterly earnings. But the other three don’t require a CPA to decipher.

Many Americans, for instance, already have experience with the concept of “deferred pay” — through 401(k) plans. If you have a 401(k), you can have part of your income deferred from taxes. But you can only defer a limited amount -- usually just $15,500 a year -- and if the investments where you put that money go sour, you’re out of luck.


Top executives, by contrast, can have deferred pay plans with no limits whatsoever. They can defer millions every year -- and they quite often get a guaranteed, above-market rate return on all the dollars they stuff in these no-limit stashes. Last January, Target CEO Robert Ulrich retired with over $140 million in his deferred pay account.

America’s highest-paid power suits -- the managers of hedge and private equity fund partnerships -- have even a sweeter deal. The top 50 of these fund managers last year averaged $588 million each in earnings. These incomes don’t up show in the annual CEO pay rankings because fund managers aren’t technically CEOs. They don’t get paid like CEOs either.

Fund managers take their compensation in the form of fees they assess on the investments they manage. They typically cream off, as a “carried interest” fee, 20 percent of the profits they make buying and selling companies and other assets. On these windfalls, fund managers pay taxes at just a 15 percent rate -- not the 35 percent top rate on ordinary income -- because the tax code lets them claim their “carried interest” as a capital gain.


On every $1 million pocketed in carried interest, in other words, an investment fund manager saves about $200,000 in taxes. This subsidy costs taxpayers $2.6 billion a year.

Corporations save twice that much every year from an even more outrageous loophole, what Executive Excess 2008 dubs the “unlimited tax deductibility of executive pay.” Top companies can essentially deduct whatever they pay their executives off their corporate income taxes, so long as they define that pay as a performance-based incentive.

The more corporations pay their top execs, in effect, the less they pay in taxes.

Direct subsidies for America’s most powerful, Executive Excess 2008 estimates, add up to $20 billion a year. To place this $20 billion in context, the report also notes what the federal government is currently spending to educate America’s most vulnerable, children with disabilities and other special needs: only $10.8 billion a year.


Billions more in CEO pay subsidies, Executive Excess adds, flow indirectly, through government bailouts and procurement. Federal officials regularly let out contracts to corporations that pay their executives hundreds of times more than their workers.

One example: Lockheed Martin is currently getting about 80 percent of its revenue from the federal contracts. Lockheed Martin CEO Robert Stevens made $24 million last year, 787 times the pay of a typical U.S. worker.

Legislation that would end this indirect subsidy for lush CEO compensation, Executive Excess 2008 makes clear, is already before Congress. The pending Patriot Corporations Act would give preference in federal contract bidding to companies that pay their executives no more than 100 times the pay of their lowest-paid employee.

Bills that would end all the subsidies that encourage lavish CEO pay, Executive Excess 2008 takes pains to emphasize, are already pending before Congress. But this legislation is going nowhere, and neither Senators Obama or McCain have yet staked out a position of most of these needed legislative fixes.


Still, the tide may be shifting.

“Historically, troubled economic times in the United States have helped generate long overdue public policy reforms,” sums up the new Executive Excess. “We have now entered troubled economic times, likely our worst since executive pay started ballooning in the 1980s. Ballooning executive pay has helped create our current economic woes. Deflating that excess can help end them.”


http://www.alternet.org/workplace/96670/should_uncle_sa...ing_ceos_get_richer/

The Villains of the Housing Crisis Are Denying All Responsibility

By Dean Baker, TruthOut.org. Posted August 27, 2008.


The housing crisis is a result of reckless deregulation by specific individuals.

The central bankers of the world gathered last weekend for their annual meeting at Jackson Hole, Wyoming. This was an opportunity to talk about the major issues confronting the world economy, as well as an opportunity to spend some time in a very beautiful vacation spot.


When they met in Jackson Hole in 2005, the meetings were devoted to an Alan Greenspan retrospective, honoring his 18-year tenure as Federal Reserve Board chairman, which was due to end the following January. A number of papers were presented analyzing his record at the Fed, including one that raised the question of whether Mr. Greenspan was the greatest central banker of all time.


The elite Jackson Hole crew did not debate whether Greenspan was the greatest central banker of all time this year. The world is now facing the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression. At least, that is the assessment of Alan Greenspan. With house prices plunging, unemployment and inflation rates rising and banks failures mounting, Greenspan has a pretty good argument.


How did we get here? The centerpiece in this story is the United States allowed an $8 trillion housing bubble to grow unchecked. Between 1996 and 2006, house prices rose by more than 70 percent, after adjusting for inflation. In the previous century, from 1896 to 1996, house prices had just kept even with the overall rate of inflation.


When there is suddenly a sharp divergence from a long-term trend like this, it is reasonable to look for an explanation. Was there some fundamental factor on either the supply or demand side that was suddenly causing house prices to skyrocket?


A quick investigation revealed no obvious suspects. On the supply side, there were no major new constraints that were impeding construction. In fact, housing starts were at near record levels over the years 2002 to 2006, so there was no reason to believe any developments on the supply side could explain skyrocketing house prices.


The demand side also didn't feature any obvious culprits. The rate of population growth and household formation had slowed sharply. If demographics could explain a sharp rise in house prices, then we should have seen the surge in the 70s and 80s. That was when the huge baby boom cohort was first forming their own households. In the current decade, the baby boomers are preparing for retirement.


There also was no plausible income story. Income grew at a healthy but not extraordinary rate in the years from 1996 to 2000, but income growth has been very weak throughout the current decade.


Finally, if the run-up in house prices could be explained by the fundamentals of the housing market, then we should expect to see a comparable increase in rents. But there was no unusual run-up in rents. They did slightly outpace inflation in the late 90s, but they actually were falling behind inflation by the early years of this decade.


If the run-up in house prices could not be explained by the fundamentals, then it was a bubble, which would burst. This was easy to see for anyone who cared to look, but Greenspan and his sycophants could not be bothered. Greenspan insisted everything was fine - there was no housing bubble - and virtually the whole economics profession, including his fellow central bankers, acted an enablers touting Mr. Greenspan's wisdom.


While the exact timing and path of the housing market's collapse and the resulting turmoil in financial markets could not be predicted, the basic course of this tsunami was entirely foreseeable. The collapse of the bubble will destroy in the neighborhood of $8 trillion of housing wealth. Most of these losses will be absorbed by homeowners ($8 trillion comes to $110,000 per homeowner), but if just ten percent of the loss ends up on bank financial sheets, the losses will be $800 billion.


That is enough to put many banks under. Losses of this magnitude were virtually certain to sink Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two huge government-sponsored enterprises that created the secondary mortgage market in the United States. The current financial crisis was, therefore, an inevitable follow-on to the collapse of the housing bubble and will almost certainly amplify its negative impact on the US economy.


This all seemed painfully obvious from even a quick look at the housing data back in 2005 when the central bankers were honoring Alan Greenspan. In fact, it should have been obvious at least three years sooner.


But the Jackson Hole economists were convinced everything was just fine. Now, they are all saying no one could have foreseen the current crisis. And they say no one, at least among the Jackson Hole crowd, saw any problems coming.


The really tragic part of this story is there are no consequences. The same group of economists that led the economy into this catastrophe still has its hands on the wheel. Holding them accountable for their disastrous performance is simply not on the agenda.


Central bankers are not like dishwashers and custodians. They don't get fired when they mess up on the job. They don't even get a pay cut.


So, lets all hope the Jackson Hole crew had a good time at their summer retreat. We've paid a big price for it.

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/96433/the_villains_of...ibility/?page=entire

I Spent Years as a POW with John McCain, and His Finger Should Not Be Near the Red Button

By Phillip Butler, Military.com. Posted August 21, 2008.

A fellow Vietnam POW of McCain's warns of the candidate's "quick and explosive temper" and suggests McCain is exaggerating his imprisonment.

John McCain is a long-time acquaintance of mine that goes way back to our time together at the U.S. Naval Academy and as Prisoners of War in Vietnam. He is a man I respect and admire in some ways. But there are a number of reasons why I will not vote for him for President of the United States.

When I was a Plebe (4th classman, or freshman) at the Naval Academy in 1957-58, I was assigned to the 17th Company for my four years there. In those days we had about 3,600 midshipmen spread among 24 companies, thus about 150 midshipmen to a company. As fortune would have it, John, a First Classman (senior) and his room mate lived directly across the hall from me and my two room mates. Believe me when I say that back then I would never in a million or more years have dreamed that the crazy guy across the hall would someday be a Senator and candidate for President!
John was a wild man. He was funny, with a quick wit and he was intelligent. But he was intent on breaking every USNA regulation in our 4 inch thick USNA Regulations book. And I believe he must have come as close to his goal as any midshipman who ever attended the Academy. John had me "coming around" to his room frequently during my plebe year. And on one occasion he took me with him to escape "over the wall" in the dead of night. He had a taxi cab waiting for us that took us to a bar some 7 miles away. John had a few beers, but forbid me to drink (watching out for me I guess) and made me drink cokes. I could tell many other midshipman stories about John that year and he unbelievably managed to graduate though he spent the majority of his first class year on restriction for the stuff he did get caught doing. In fact he barely managed to graduate, standing 5th from the bottom of his 800 man graduating class. I and many others have speculated that the main reason he did graduate was because his father was an Admiral, and also his grandfather, both U.S. Naval Academy graduates.

People often ask if I was a Prisoner of War with John McCain. My answer is always "No - John McCain was a POW with me." The reason is I was there for 8 years and John got there 2 1/2 years later, so he was a POW for 5 1/2 years. And we have our own seniority system, based on time as a POW.

John's treatment as a POW:

1) Was he tortured for 5 years? No. He was subjected to torture and maltreatment during his first 2 years, from September of 1967 to September of 1969. After September of 1969 the Vietnamese stopped the torture and gave us increased food and rudimentary health care. Several hundred of us were captured much earlier. I got there April 20, 1965 so my bad treatment period lasted 4 1/2 years. President Ho Chi Minh died on September 9, 1969, and the new regime that replaced him and his policies was more pragmatic. They realized we were worth a lot as bargaining chips if we were alive. And they were right because eventually Americans gave up on the war and agreed to trade our POW's for their country. A damn good trade in my opinion! But my point here is that John allows the media to make him out to be THE hero POW, which he knows is absolutely not true, to further his political goals.

2) John was badly injured when he was shot down. Both arms were broken and he had other wounds from his ejection. Unfortunately this was often the case -- new POW's arriving with broken bones and serious combat injuries. Many died from their wounds. Medical care was non-existent to rudimentary. Relief from pain was almost never given and often the wounds were used as an available way to torture the POW. Because John's father was the Naval Commander in the Pacific theater, he was exploited with TV interviews while wounded. These film clips have now been widely seen. But it must be known that many POW's suffered similarly, not just John. And many were similarly exploited for political propaganda.

3) John was offered, and refused, "early release." Many of us were given this offer. It meant speaking out against your country and lying about your treatment to the press. You had to "admit" that the U.S. was criminal and that our treatment was "lenient and humane." So I, like numerous others, refused the offer. This was obviously something none of us could accept. Besides, we were bound by our service regulations, Geneva Conventions and loyalties to refuse early release until all the POW's were released, with the sick and wounded going first.

4) John was awarded a Silver Star and Purple Heart for heroism and wounds in combat. This heroism has been played up in the press and in his various political campaigns. But it should be known that there were approximately 600 military POW's in Vietnam. Among all of us, decorations awarded have recently been totaled to the following: Medals of Honor -- 8, Service Crosses -- 42, Silver Stars -- 590, Bronze Stars -- 958 and Purple Hearts -- 1,249. John certainly performed courageously and well. But it must be remembered that he was one hero among many -- not uniquely so as his campaigns would have people believe.

John McCain served his time as a POW with great courage, loyalty and tenacity. More than 600 of us did the same. After our repatriation a census showed that 95% of us had been tortured at least once. The Vietnamese were quite democratic about it. There were many heroes in North Vietnam. I saw heroism every day there. And we motivated each other to endure and succeed far beyond what any of us thought we had in ourselves. Succeeding as a POW is a group sport, not an individual one. We all supported and encouraged each other to survive and succeed. John knows that. He was not an individual POW hero. He was a POW who surmounted the odds with the help of many comrades, as all of us did.

I furthermore believe that having been a POW is no special qualification for being President of the United States. The two jobs are not the same, and POW experience is not, in my opinion, something I would look for in a presidential candidate.

Most of us who survived that experience are now in our late 60's and 70's. Sadly, we have died and are dying off at a greater rate than our non-POW contemporaries. We experienced injuries and malnutrition that are coming home to roost. So I believe John's age (73) and survival expectation are not good for being elected to serve as our President for 4 or more years.

I can verify that John has an infamous reputation for being a hot head. He has a quick and explosive temper that many have experienced first hand. Folks, quite honestly that is not the finger I want next to that red button.

It is also disappointing to see him take on and support Bush's war in Iraq, even stating we might be there for another 100 years. For me John represents the entrenched and bankrupt policies of Washington-as-usual. The past 7 years have proven to be disastrous for our country. And I believe John's views on war, foreign policy, economics, environment, health care, education, national infrastructure and other important areas are much the same as those of the Bush administration.

I'm disappointed to see John represent himself politically in ways that are not accurate. He is not a moderate Republican. On some issues he is a maverick. But his voting record is far to the right. I fear for his nominations to our Supreme Court, and the consequent continuing loss of individual freedoms, especially regarding moral and religious issues. John is not a religious person, but he has taken every opportunity to ally himself with some really obnoxious and crazy fundamentalist ministers lately. I was also disappointed to see him cozy up to Bush because I know he hates that man. He disingenuously and famously put his arm around the guy, even after Bush had intensely disrespected him with lies and slander. So on these and many other instances, I don't see that John is the "straight talk express" he markets himself to be.

Senator John Sidney McCain, III is a remarkable man who has made enormous personal achievements. And he is a man that I am proud to call a fellow POW who "Returned With Honor." That's our POW motto. But since many of you keep asking what I think of him, I've decided to write it out. In short, I think John Sidney McCain, III is a good man, but not someone I will vote for in the upcoming election to be our President of the United States.

AlterNet is a nonprofit organization and does not make political endorsements. The opinions expressed by its writers are their own.



See more stories tagged with: philip butler

Doctor Phillip Butler is a 1961 graduate of the United States Naval Academy and a former light-attack carrier pilot. In 1965 he was shot down over North Vietnam where he spent eight years as a prisoner of war. He is a highly decorated combat veteran who was awarded two Silver Stars, two Legion of Merits, two Bronze Stars and two Purple Heart medals. After his repatriation in 1973 he earned a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California at San Diego and became a Navy Organizational Effectiveness consultant. He completed his Navy career in 1981 as a professor of management at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He is now a peace and justice activist with Veterans for Peace.

http://www.alternet.org/election08/95825/i_spent_years_..._button/?page=entire

Michael Moore Dares to Ask: What's So Heroic About Being Shot Down While Bombing Innocent Civilians?
Posted by Liliana Segura, AlterNet at 11:35 AM on August 21, 2008.

Link
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/waroniraq/95906/michael_m..._innocent_civilians/

Like Iraq, Vietnam was not a noble cause. It's time we stopped letting politicians and the press perpetuate the McCain War Hero myth.


This post originally appeared in PEEK's blog.

Confession: I have not yet read all six (short, illustrated, large type) chapters of Mike's Election Guide 2008, Michael Moore's, latest work of jaunty political opinion. Am I supposed to discuss it with him on "Meet the Bloggers" tomorrow? Yes. But I'm not worried. It's a breezy read, has already made me laugh out loud, and besides, I may have already found the best part in Chapter One.

The title is "Ask Mike!" and, in it, ordinary voters, old and young, pose questions about politics and current events. Some are more serious than others ("If Iran has weapons of mass destruction, we should invade, right?"), which does not make Moore's answers any more subtle. ("Excuuuuuse me? Did you say the words, 'weapons of mass destruction?' Take it back. I SAID TAKE IT BACK!") Of course, the "questions" are really satirical jabs at the media -- "When a Republican wears a little American flag lapel pin, what is he trying to say?" "If Obama can't bowl, can he govern?" -- but there's one in particular that is worth paying attention to -- especially if you happen to be a member of the press and have been utterly unwilling to take McCain's supporters and opponents alike to task for perpetuating a narrative that would be central to a McCain victory, and which has already become a dominant theme in this election: The McCain as War Hero canard.

The "question" is posted thusly:

"Why did the Vietnamese shoot down John McCain and put him in prison for five years? He seems like such a nice guy."


ANSWER: I'm guessing, in spite of his anger management issues, he is a nice guy. He has devoted his life to this country. He was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice in the defense of our nation. And for that, he was tortured and then imprisoned in a North Vietnamese POW camp for nearly five-and-a-half years.

That's the set-up. It gets better. Moore proceeds, not to question, as Wesley Clark recently did to so many shrieks of criticism, whether McCain's capture really makes him qualified to be president of the United States -- the answer, any thinking person realizes, is "no" -- but whether the Vietnam war was a conflict that can really be said to have produced the breed of "American hero" McCain is so often celebrated as.

"Sadly," he writes, "McCain's sacrifice had nothing to do with protecting the United States. He was sent to Vietnam along with hundreds of thousands of others in an attempt to prop up what was essentially an American colony, South Vietnam, which was being run by a dictator whom we installed."


Lest we forget, the Vietnam War represented a mass slaughter by the United States government on a scale that sought to rival our genocide of the Native Americans. The U.S. Armed Forces killed more than two million civilians in Vietnam (and perhaps another million in Laos and Cambodia). The Vietnamese had done nothing to us. They had not bombed or invaded or even sought to murder a single American. President Johnson and the Pentagon lied to Congress in order to get a vote passed to put the war in full gear. Only two senators had the guts to vote "no."

But the parallel between Iraq and Vietnam is not the only point Moore is making. He makes it personal.


John McCain flew 23 bombing missions over North Vietnam in a campaign called Operation Rolling Thunder. During this bombing campaign, which lasted for almost 44 months, U.S. forces flew 307,000 attack sorties, dropping 643,000 tons of bombs on North Vietnam (roughly the same tonnage dropped in the Pacific during all of World War II). Though the stated targets were factories, bridges, and power plants, thousands of bombs also fell on homes, schools, and hospitals. In the midst of the campaign, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara estimated that we were killing 1,000 civilians a week. That's more than one 9/11 every single month -- for 44 months.

What's not heroic about that? Is it any wonder all politicians speaking in public about John McCain are required to preface their remarks with a fawning admiration for his war service?

Alas, McCain does have some regrets about Vietnam. As Moore points out, in his memoir Faith of Our Fathers, McCain called it "illogical" and "senseless" that he was limited to bombing only military targets.


"I do believe," McCain wrote, "that had we taken the war to the North and made full, consistent use of air power in the North, we ultimately would have prevailed."


In other words, McCain believes we could have won the Vietnam War had he been able to drop even more bombs.

When McCain was shot down, on October 26, 1967, he was busy bombing what he would describe as a "heavily populated part of Hanoi."

What follows is a a rather entertaining passage in which Moore then asks what you would do to a man who "fell out of the sky" after dropping bombs on you or your children. But the most important question comes at the end:


John McCain is already using the Vietnam War in his political ads. In doing so, it makes not just what happened to him in Vietnam fair game for discussion, but also what he did to the Vietnamese … I would like to see one brave reporter during the election season ask this simple question of John McCain: "Is it morally right to drop bombs and missiles in a 'heavily populated' area where hundreds, if not thousands, of civilians will perish?"

Of course, no member of the "mainstream" media is going to ask John McCain that question. (And given his famous quips on "Bomb-bomb-bomb-ing Iran" or, when asked to comment on the U.S. exporting cigarettes to the country, on the speculation that "Maybe that's a way of killing them,", the answer may be too disturbing to bear.) Regardless, this is the same press that obligingly calls McCain a "maverick" and McCain's campaign bus the "Straight-talk Express." Going after his war hero credentials? Why, that would be ... un-American.

Luckily, in the absence of an effective media -- or one that takes its cues from Michael Moore -- there are some people who are uniquely qualified to ask tough questions about the war hero John McCain, and they can't all be considered "surrogates" for Barack Obama. One of them is a man named Phillip Butler, who, on AlterNet today, has an article whose point, really, is laid out in the title:


I Spent Years as a POW with John McCain, and His Finger Should Not Be Near the Red Button

Originally published on Military.com, it's a scathing, point-by-point indictment of McCain that punctures the war hero mythology he has so successfully insulated himself in.

It is part fact-check ("Was he tortured for 5 years? No. He was subjected to torture and maltreatment during his first 2 years, from September of 1967 to September of 1969"), part much-needed perspective ("Because John's father was the Naval Commander in the Pacific theater, he was exploited with TV interviews while wounded. These film clips have now been widely seen. But it must be known that many POW's suffered similarly, not just John. And many were similarly exploited for political propaganda"). But perhaps its most compelling characteristic is that it is written by a former POW of a misbegotten war, who has seen the death and destruction firsthand, and who is fearful of what McCain would do as commander in chief. "I can verify that John has an infamous reputation for being a hot head. He has a quick and explosive temper that many have experienced first hand. Folks, quite honestly that is not the finger I want next to that red button."


Now that's a quote. Maybe it's time for a new 3 AM ad.

Financial Crisis Is Absent From Agendas of Parties, Candidates

Rich Miller
Wed Aug 27, 12:01 AM ET



Aug. 27 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. is facing the worst financial crisis since the Depression. You would never know that from the Democrats' platform in Denver or its Republican counterpart, or from listening to Barack Obama or John McCain.

While both candidates have bemoaned the ravages of the subprime crisis, they have yet to spell out steps for tackling it, such as using taxpayer money to shore up banks and housing.

``They fail to come to grips with the biggest danger that is going to hit the next president in his first few months in office: the crisis in the capital markets,'' said David Smick, a Washington-based consultant to hedge funds and author of ``The World is Curved: Hidden Dangers to the Global Economy.''

The Democrats' platform, adopted at their Denver convention this week, labels the crisis a ``debacle'' and promises to jump-start the economy with a $50 billion stimulus package. It says nothing about helping banks or bailing out the mortgage-finance firms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The draft of the Republicans' plank, to be adopted next week at their convention in St. Paul, Minnesota, supports ``timely and carefully targeted aid to those hurt by the housing crisis'' and opposes bailouts of private financial institutions. It doesn't mention Fannie and Freddie.

Fannie, Freddie

Many Democrats shy away from tackling the credit crisis because of the party's historical support for Fannie and Freddie. The Republicans, for their part, are reluctant to draw attention to a crisis that occurred on their watch. The subprime meltdown isn't the only item missing from the parties' agendas. The list also includes the Democrats' failure to set out a strategy for countering Russia's assertiveness and the Republicans' silence on income inequality.

Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, said conventions aren't the place to discuss detailed plans for dealing with the markets.

``The conventions are aimed at the average voter,'' he said Aug. 25 in Denver. ``You don't go into Quinlan's bar and ask them what to do about the'' Securities and Exchange Commission.

Democratic lawmakers also said Congress defused the issue by passing legislation last month to help homeowners refinance their mortgages and provide a financial lifeline for Fannie and Freddie.

`Big Step'

``We feel like we've taken a big step to stabilize the situation,'' said Senator Tom Carper of Delaware, a Democrat on the Banking Committee.

The situation is reminiscent of the 1988 presidential campaign between George H. Bush and Michael Dukakis, when there was little mention of the savings and loan bailout that the Bush administration later put in place. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has estimated the cost of that rescue at about $125 billion, though former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said the bill would have been about $300 billion in today's dollars.

The cost of the current crisis may be larger. Banks and securities companies have recorded $504 billion in losses related to the turmoil and the International Monetary Fund forecasts the bill will eventually be double that.

``We are in the midst of the worst financial crisis since World War II,'' Stanley Fisher, governor of the Bank of Israel and a former IMF official, told central bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, on Aug. 23.

Bank Failure

Harvard University professor Kenneth Rogoff, another former IMF official, predicted that a big U.S. financial institution would go bust. Neither Senator Obama of Illinois, 47, nor Senator McCain of Arizona, 71, has addressed such an eventuality, which would likely entail the use of taxpayer money.

Carly Fiorina, a top economic adviser to McCain, said the candidate views the economy as ``the most important domestic issue'' and has offered solutions to the housing crisis.

``He would not allow Fannie and Freddie to fail,'' she said in an interview yesterday on Bloomberg Television. ``He would reform them fundamentally.''

To help plug their losses, banks and brokers have raised more than $350 billion in capital from investors. That is becoming increasingly difficult, said Mohamed El-Erian, co- chief executive officer of Newport Beach, California-based Pacific Investment Management Co.

The government may have to step in to keep credit flowing to the economy, according to El-Erian, who managed the endowment of Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Harvard University until 2007.

Keeping Mum

Tom Gallagher, senior managing director at ISI Group in Washington, said it isn't surprising that Obama and McCain are keeping mum about the possibility of increased government money for the banks and housing market, given the uncertain outlook and the potential costs involved.

With the government unlikely to take many further steps to ease the crisis before the November election and the end of President George W. Bush's administration, Gallagher said the next president may be compelled to act soon after taking office in January.

Gallagher, who worked as an aide to former Democratic Senator George Mitchell, likened the situation to the early 1930s. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt talked little during the campaign about the bold steps he took after the election to try to turn the economy around.

The crisis ``will confront us from day one,'' said Jason Furman, an Obama economic adviser. ``It will be an issue that will require presidential attention.''

http://news.yahoo.com/s/bloomberg/20080827/pl_bloomberg/a7ogrdxkxse

Intelligence Committee Hearings on Iraq War Lies

The body of evidence proving George Bush deliberately lied to Congress and the American people about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction is overwhelming.

According to Ron Suskind's new book The Way of the World , Iraq's intelligence chief Tahir Jalil Habbush met with intelligence agents from Britain's MI6 in Jordan in the run up to war. Habbush told MI6 that Iraq possessed no WMD or WMD programs. Richard Dearlove, head of MI6, flew to Washington in late January 2003 to deliver this information directly to George Tenet. Soon afterward Tenet briefed the highest levels of the Bush administration on Dearlove's report, including President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Bush responded: "Why don't they ask him to give us something we can use to help make our case?"

CBS reported a similar story about Naji Sabri Ahmad Al-Hadithi, Iraq's foreign minister. Newsweek reported a similar story about Hussein Kamel Hassan al-Majid, Saddam Hussein's son-in-law and head of the WMD program in 1991 when all WMD's were destroyed.

Iraq's lack of WMD's was confirmed by the CIA, the IAEA, UNMOVIC, the Russian government, and the French government.

The Senate and House Intelligence Committees have never held hearings on all the well-placed sources who reported Iraq had no WMD's. To honor the U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians who have died for WMD's that did not exist, we urge immediate hearings. Sign our petition:
http://www.democrats.com/peoplesemailnetwork/143