Barclays Bankers Show Banking is Bent

So Barclays Bank have been fined a fortune for fiddling their books in cahoots with other banks to seem more prosperous than they really were when other banks were in dire muck a few years back. Bob Diamond, Barclays CEO has offered to forgo his bonus this year, presumably therefore accepting responsibility. He was in charge of the fiddling division at the time. What an honest Joe he is!

My understanding is that insider trading is a serious crime. How is senior bankers fiddling interest rates to their advantage any less a serious crime? How is it even possible. We poor dumbos down here thought interest rates were set by governments or by a state bank, the Bank of England in the UK, but now we find that is not so. bankers set their own rates, and evidently can set them to their own advantage.

Can we be told why an autistic computer hacker can be extradited to the USA for alleged potential threats to computer networks, with the prospect of a long period of incarceration in some US semi-feudal dungeon full of violent muderers and psychopaths, but the genial, smiling mega crook, Bob Diamond, is not even investigated by the police here in the UK?

And whose money pays those massive fines? Is it Diamond's? Even his annual bonus of £several million is puny by comparison, and he is careful to tell us he will not be receiving it this year. Next year he will receive double to make it up!

This man and his weaselly fellow crooks throughout the bent banking kingdom should be arrested and properly brought before the courts of justice, with no permissible excuses like suspected senile dementia, no last minute conversions to the way of God, truth and light, and no fobbing off the case with some legal technicality. All of these have been used to get rich crooks off the punishment they deserve. Where then are the police? Where are the MPs asking questions like these in defence of the rights of the citizens who elected them?

The truth is that they are all cheaply bought by men like Murdoch and the bankster mafiosi. If no one in public office demands action over this criminality, then we know what a diseased state western society has fallen into. All our public servants are greedy opportunists, cheaply bought by latter day robber barons. Are there any honest people of principle left in public office? If so, let them show themselves!

A Year After Fukushima, Nuclear Madness Persists

A year on from the Fukishima nuclear meltdown, and the strong warning against the dangers of nuclear fission energy it offers, the United States is moving forward with nuclear power, and the United Kingdom’s coalition government intends to do the same.

In the US, for the first time since 1978, the National Regulatory Commission has approved two new plants. The $14 billion facilities will be built just outside Augusta and operated by the “Southern Company” based in Atlanta, Georgia. They’re scheduled to be operating by 2016 and 2017, and be producing 10 percent of Georgia’s power.

Marilyn Brown, professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Public Policy, said:

It’s smart to continue generating nuclear power in the United States. It is a reliable, cost competitive option that doesn’t contribute to air pollution or contribute to greenhouse gas emissions.

Brown helps shape the nation’s energy policies as a board member of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and chair of the company’s Nuclear Oversight Committee. She added that nuclear power plants are expensive to build, compared to natural gas facilities…

But they are clearly worth the investment. A nuclear plant produces no carbon dioxide emissions and four times the power of a typical natural gas facility. Fourteen billion is a big number, but the plants should stay online for 50 to 70 years.

Despite the benefits, critics will always point to the risk of a nuclear catastrophe. These are the nation’s first approved nuclear facilities since Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island accident in 1979. Experts contend that modern plant designs are much safer than those built previously. Glenn Sjoden, Georgia Tech professor of nuclear and radiological engineering, said:

The new plant designs are passively safe, so there are far fewer issues to worry about, like those that occurred with the older plants at Fukushima with the loss of offsite power. With the new plants, you have a convection cooling loop that uses gravity and runs by itself for days in the event of lost power. There would be no active pumping required… The more modern designs and precautions taken make nuclear the best option to satisfy our energy needs.

Since last year’s Japanese incident, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been reviewing existing US plants to ensure that they can withstand earthquakes, floods and other natural disasters and making retrofit upgrades when necessary.

Critics point to nuclear waste as another challenge with nuclear power. Each of the nation’s 104 plants store the radioactive waste onsite in steel casks protected by concrete and other safety systems. These are safe too, Brown said, because of careful construction and maintenance.

Nuclear waste would be a nonissue if the US reprocessed its spent fuel like other nations such as France, Sjoden said.

Like most nations, they recycle their used fuel, since 95 percent of the fuel can be recycled back into the reactor and used again, making nuclear power the most green energy source out there. Burying the waste, as we do in the United States, is completely wasteful.

The United States generates almost 20 percent of its energy from nuclear plants, the same amount as natural gas. Coal supplies 50 percent. The remainder is generated from hydropower and other natural sources. Brown says:

We must develop more renewables sources, such as wind, solar and biopower. Industry leaders, business and the general public must also become more energy efficient. That is the key to our future.

Unknowns

Yet, contrary to all these sweet siren voices, in a review article in the journal Science, the University of Michigan’s Rodney Ewing, a member of the US Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, and his two colleagues note that a year after the March 11, 2011, magnitude 9.0 earthquake, and subsequent tsunami, at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, scientists and engineers still do not know how nuclear fuels behave under extreme conditions. They are calling for a national research program to study how nuclear fuels behave under the extreme conditions present during core melt events like those that occurred at Fukushima.

Three of the plant’s six boiling water reactors suffered partial core melt events that involved tremendously high temperatures and powerful radiation fields, as well as interaction between seawater and nuclear fuel. Many tons of seawater were used to cool the overheated reactors and nearby spent fuel storage ponds, and direct discharge of contaminated seawater to the ocean and groundwater occurred for a month. The paper reviews the current understanding of interactions between nuclear fuel and the environment during core melt accidents. Ewing said:

What I realized while watching all of this was how little we actually knew about what happens if you take hot seawater and pour it on nuclear fuel.

Ewing is also a professor in Environmental Sciences, Nuclear Engineering. He is, in short, an expert on nuclear radiation and waste.

No one, as far as I know, had asked the question, “Well, what happens when you do this? Are we doing something really good or really bad?”. That kind of information really wasn’t available, and that expertise, as far as I could see, wasn’t there to be called upon.

He thought that, despite all the uncertainties and unknowns about the short and long term effects, using seawater to cool the Fukushima reactors was probably the right call.

You have a crisis, you have to cool the cores, and you can’t afford to wait around. Using the seawater sounds like the right thing to do.

The use of seawater at Fukushima underscores the need for fundamental knowledge about nuclear fuel that can be applied over a range of unanticipated situations. The research should include studies of the various radioactive materials released from damaged fuel during a core melt incident, as well as a thorough examination of how nuclear fuel interacts with fresh water and seawater. Such studies would help nuclear plant operators respond to unforeseen events, taking appropriate and timely action to minimize impacts on the environment and human health. Ewing pointed out:

An accident will be something that puts you in a situation that you didn’t anticipate, so the research focus should be on the situations you don’t expect to deal with. Right now, that kind of knowledge is fragmentary, at best.

These studies are both difficult and expensive, but are essential to reduce the risk associated with an increasing reliance on nuclear energy.

Fukushima, 11 March 2011

Most of the fuel in the reactors was uranium dioxide. When the tsunami inundated the site about 40 minutes after the earthquake, electrical power was lost, followed by the loss of onsite backup power, resulting in a station blackout and the loss of reactor coolant. A partial core melt event ensued in units 1, 2 and 3. The Japanese operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company or TEPCO, guessed there was a nearly immediate loss of core cooling in unit 1, and almost all of its fuel assemblies melted and accumulated in the bottom of the pressure vessel. Partial melting of the cores in units 2 and 3, damaging a third of the fuel assemblies in each, occurred over the following days.

Reaction of the zirconium alloy fuel cladding with water at high temperatures generated hydrogen gas that accumulated and exploded in four of the reactor units. The release of radioactivity, other than gaseous and volatile fission products, was dominated by the many tons of seawater used to cool the cores and storage pools.

A month on, Tokyo finally upgraded its assessment of the severity of the nuclear emergency to a maximum seven on an international scale—equal with Chernobyl. It was not until May 5 that workers were able to get inside the reactor building for the first time, to see the size of the task ahead of them.

During the nuclear crisis that followed, hundreds of people were exposed to increased levels of radiation. 80,000 or more people were evacuated from the area nearest the Fukushima plant. A year later, all but two of Japan’s 54 nuclear reactors remain shut following the precautionary closure of nuclear plants, in a country where nuclear power once supplied nearly 30 percent of the electricity, and all those people remain displaced. Although the Japanese government has declared the plant stable, and it is awarding an initial $13 billion in contracts to begin decontamination and rehabilitation of the more than 8,000 square mile region most exposed to radioactive fallout, the cleanup will be expensive and is expected to take decades, perhaps 40 years.

Under Control? Dissenting Voices!

TEPCO and the Japanese government say things are under control at Fukushima—the tsunami crippled reactors are all in a “state of cold shutdown”—and they are keen to give the impression that there is just cleaning up to do. But that is not how those who spend their days inside the plant see it. One worker in his 50s, a subcontractor who has been working on the plant’s cooling system since September, said:

I can clearly say it’s not safe at all. There are many spots where radiation levels are extremely high,

The man said subcontractors like him were treated like animals. He did not want to be identified for fear of losing the 8,000 yen ($100) daily paycheck he receives.

There have been deaths on site—a 60 year old subcontractor’s fatal heart attack in May was put down to overwork, according to a labour standards inspector—although TEPCO says none related to radiation exposure. In the height of summer with the mercury rising to 38 degrees Celsius (100 Fahrenheit), workers had to go for up to three hours at a time without water because they were unable to take off their masks.

Chie Hosoda, a spokeswoman for the utility, admits conditions at the plant were unacceptable in the past, with the radiation exposure of some workers left unmeasured because of a shortage of dosimeters:

But working conditions have improved now and we are strictly checking the radiation exposure of all workers

TEPCO says at least 167 workers are no longer able to work in nuclear plants because their lifetime radiation exposure has topped 100 millisieverts—the upper limit for workers. Engineers, nuclear experts and ordinary electricians are among the 3,600 people working at the plant every day and TEPCO says it has no problems securing a work force despite the obvious hazards. But one worker told the Tokyo Shimbun:

Those who used to work at the Fukushima nuclear plant for a long time do not go to Daiichi because it’s dangerous. Payment is not good and many of them do not want to lose their jobs by risking exposure to high levels of radiation.

Katsuyasu Iida, secretary general of Tokyo Occupational Safety and Health Centre, a support group for low paid workers, warned the utility may face a labour shortage “if it fails to improve working conditions”. Many with experience in the industry shy away from the plant.

Experts warn that few permanent safety measures are in place at the plant, where the initial rush to contain the accident saw a series of improvised solutions. They say that in another natural disaster—a big earthquake or another large tsunami—the plant could prove very vulnerable. Kazuhiko Kudo, a nuclear reactor expert and professor at Kyushu University said:

The cooling system is not a proper one for normal nuclear reactors and is still a stop-gap measure.

News of setbacks regularly emerge. In early February, TEPCO said radioactive water had spilled out of one of the reactors after a valve in the cooling system jammed, frozen by subzero winter temperatures.

One of the biggest challenges, as Professor Ewing said, is that scientists do not know exactly what they are up against and can only speculate what the inside of the reactors look like—how much of the fuel has melted and how far through containment vessels it has eaten. Kudo said that containment was still a priority and the risk of radiation was still high:

Stabilisation of the plant is a prerequisite for an end to the accident.

Freelance journalist Tomohiko Suzuki, who has written a book based on his experience working undercover at the plant last summer, said it was clearly still “in a state of crisis”. He said:

[TEPCO] was pushing for sloppy construction as it has been in a hurry to achieve cold shutdown as quickly as possible. TEPCO has to maintain this cold shutdown status for years and years to come, but can they make it happen without exposing plant workers to radiation? That’s the question.

The Reaction of the Authorities

The Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation (RJIF) established an independent investigation panel to review how the government, TEPCO, and other key organizations responded during the disaster. The foundation’s chairman, Yoichi Funabashi, and staff director of the investigation panel, Kay Kitazawa, explain the reasons behind the lack of disaster preparation. Their findings are based on interviews with nearly 300 people involved in the accident, including then Prime Minister, Naoto Kan.

Kan secretly instructed Shunsuke Kondo, chairman of the Japan Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), to draw up a “worst case scenario” for the nuclear accident as the crisis deepened—that is, six increasingly drastic scenarios that would play out as various systems at the nuclear plant failed. The RJIF panel obtained a copy of this plan and published it in the Bulletin. The most extreme scenario would have involved evacuation of all residents living within 170 km or more of the Fukushima plant, and, depending on the wind direction, could have meant evacuating the 30 million residents in the Tokyo metropolitan area.

According to the investigation, the tsunami could and should have been anticipated. Earlier research on the Jogan tsunami of 869 AD showed that high water levels should not have been considered unprecedented along the Japanese coastline where Fukushima is located. TEPCO’s own nuclear energy division understood the risk, but the company dismissed these probabilities as “academic”. Regulatory authorities also encouraged the company to incorporate new findings into its safety plans, but did not make these measures mandatory.

Many human errors were made at Fukushima, illustrating the dangers of building multiple nuclear reactor units close together. Masao Yoshida, the director of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station at the time of the accident, had to cope simultaneously with core meltdowns at three reactors, and exposed fuel pools at four units. The errors were not the fault of one individual, but were systemic. When onsite workers sought answers in the official guide, the Severe Accident Manual, they were not there. And those who misjudged the condition of the emergency cooling system had never actually put the system into service. They had not been trained for such a crisis.

The reports says TEPCO bears the primary responsibility for incompetent handling of the disaster’s aftermath. The organisation failed to make rapid decisions, losing government trust in the process. It highlights government regulators, including the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), and the Nuclear Safety Commission (NSC) for their poor response. The Japanese government’s System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information (SPEEDI) was designed to help governments decide when to evacuate in the event of a radioactive leak. The system was not used, negating the time and money invested in developing the system in the first place. The Japanese government is now considering the creation of a new nuclear safety agency to replace NISA and NSC and be constructed as an external organ of the Environment Ministry.

A public myth of “absolute safety”, nurtured by nuclear power proponents over decades, and being echoed afresh by Marilyn Brown, et al, contributed to the lack of adequate preparation. The public was also ill informed about the meaning of reported radiation levels. The authors conclude:

It’s clear from our investigation of the Fukushima Daiichi accident that even in the technologically advanced country of Japan, the government and the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, were astonishingly unprepared, at almost all levels, for the complex nuclear disaster that started with an earthquake and a tsunami. And this grave oversight will affect the Japanese people for decades.

Worries of Concerned Scientists

In a study by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) entitled, “The NRC and Nuclear Power Plant Safety in 2011: Living on Borrowed Time”, 15 cases of safety equipment problems and security shortcomings at 13 nuclear plants were reported during the last year, a “high” number, although no employees or members of the public were harmed in the incidents. Even so, the lapses were serious enough to warrant special inspections by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which has oversight of the industry and which had itself a mixed record in responding to the problems.

In some instances the NRC did an outstanding job of addressing safety problems before they could lead to a potentially dangerous situation, but there were other times when the federal agency did a less than adequate job of cracking down on nuclear plant owners, who in some cases have flouted agency regulations for decades. Dave Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer with 17 years of experience working at nuclear plants, lead author of the report, and the director of UCS’s Nuclear Safety Project, said…

…the agency too often does not live up to its potential, and we are still finding significant problems at nuclear plants that could too easily trigger a serious accident.

Lax NRC oversight has allowed some problems to fester for decades, and found there are 27 reactors with inadequate protection against earthquakes, and 47 nuclear reactors—nearly half of the 104 nuclear plants operating in the United States—still do not comply with fire regulations established by the NRC in 1980 and amended in 2004. Lochbaum said:

That US plant owners could have avoided nearly all the near misses in 2011 if they had addressed known problems in a timely manner suggests that they and the NRC have not learned the lessons of these accidents. Someday their luck may run out.

The vulnerability of nuclear reactors to earthquakes was underscored after problems following a magnitude 5.8 quake that rattled the US East Coast last August, damaging two reactors at the North Anna plant in Virginia, some 12 miles (20 kilometers) from the epicenter of the tremor. Owners of atomic plants too often either close an eye to problems or fail to address them adequately.

Do we want to put our lives, and more importantly, the lives of our children in the hands of smug self-congratulatory back-slappers whose perpetual optimism in the face of warning after warning can be nothing other than insanity? This planet gets enough energy everyday from the sun, and some from the moon, and we can tap it naturally whether directly, or when it has changed into wind power water power, wave power, tidal power, and so on. It is sustainable energy. And we have the technology to overcome problems of the variability of supply.

Fossil fuels are poisoning the air now, and causing global warming. Nuclear energy can never be totally safe, and the waste from it will be radioactive when no one knows where it has been buried. If we do not destroy the human race soon, we will set up a time bomb for its destruction. No one motivated by greed and self aggrandisement will care a toss, but the rest of us do, or should, and we should not be taken in.

The Upper Classes are More Dishonest—Official!

A series of studies conducted by psychologists at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Toronto in Canada and reported by the NSF reveal something the well off may not want to hear. Those who are relatively high in social class are more likely to engage in unethical behavior. Lead researcher Paul Piff of UC Berkeley said:

Our studies suggest that more positive attitudes toward greed and the pursuit of self-interest among upper class individuals, in part, drive their tendencies toward increased unethical behavior.

Relative to the lower class, the upper class are more likely to break the law while driving, more likely to exhibit unethical decision-making tendencies, more likely to take valued goods from others, more likely to lie in a negotiation, more likely to cheat to increase their chances of winning a prize and more likely to endorse unethical behavior at work.

Piff explained:

The relative privilege and security enjoyed by upper class individuals give rise to independence from others and a prioritization of the self and one’s own welfare over the welfare of others—what we call greed. This is likely to cause someone to be more inclined to break the rules in his or her favor, or to perceive themselves as, in a sense, being “above the law”.

They therefore become more likely to committing unethical behavior.

Procedures

Piff and colleagues conducted seven survey, experimental and naturalistic studies to determine which social class is more likely to behave in unethical ways—to engage in behaviors that have important consequences for society such as cheating, deception or breaking the law.

In two naturalistic field studies that examined unethical behavior on the road, researchers were surprised by the differences between upper and lower class people, finding upper class drivers were significantly more likely to pursue their own self-interests and break the law while driving than were lower-class drivers. In these studies, the researchers defined social class by an observable cultural symbol of social class—namely, their car. Drivers of higher-end automobiles were four times more likely to cut off other vehicles before waiting their turn at a busy, four way intersection with stop signs on all sides. In addition, they found upper class drivers were significantly more likely to drive through a crosswalk without yielding to a waiting pedestrian.

In another laboratory study, the upper classes were more likely to cheat to improve their chances of winning a cash prize. Piff and colleagues first measured social class using the MacArthur scale of subjective socioeconomic status, where participants rank themselves on a 10-rung ladder relative to others in society in terms of their wealth, education and the prestige of their jobs. Participants then played a “game of chance” in which a computer presented them “randomly” with one side of a six-sided die on five separate rolls. Participants were told higher rolls would increase their chances of winning a cash prize, and were asked to report their total score at the end of the game. In fact, die rolls were predetermined to sum up to 12. The extent to which participants reported a total exceeding 12 was a direct measure of their cheating. The researchers concluded greed was a “robust determinant of unethical behavior”.

Plato and Aristotle deemed greed to be at the root of personal immorality, arguing that greed drives desires for material gain at the expense of ethical standards.

Due to their more favorable beliefs about greed, upper class people are more willing to deceive and cheat others for personal gain.

Study 4 sought to provide experimental evidence that the experience of higher social class has a causal effect on unethical decision-making and behavior. It was the only study in which researchers manipulated participants into temporarily feeling either higher or lower in social class rank to test whether these feelings actually caused people to behave more or less unethically.

At the end of the study, the experimenter presented participants with a jar of individually wrapped candies, ostensibly for children in a nearby laboratory, but informed them that they could take some if they wanted. This task served as a measure of unethical behavior because taking candy would reduce the amount that would otherwise be given to children. People in this study, who were made to feel higher in social class rank, took approximately two times as much candy from children than did people who were made to feel lower in social class rank. Piff concluded:

Across all seven studies, the general pattern we find is that as a person’s social class increases, his or her tendency to behave unethically also increases.

Impose a Supertax to Recoup the Money Robbed from our National Treasuries

After the UK bank bailouts in 2007-8, which the National Audit Office said emptied the British exchequer by almost a trillion pounds, UK Labour Chancellor, Alistair Darling, said the banks were henceforth to show restraint, and boasted of the 50 percent supertax he had imposed on bankers’ bonuses. Actually, it was a one-off payroll tax that would only raise £550 million—about 0.06 percent of the money the robbers had received. The bleating professional defenders of the City called it a fresh attack on that sacred institution, but nothing is being said about it now that banks are rewarding their executives, like Stephen Hester of RBS, for that staggering robbery of the treasuries of all the leading capitalist countries, leaving everyone except the ruling junker class tantamount to being bankrupt.

The measure, feeble and ineffective as it was, would prompt defections from the City, the publicity lobbyists claimed. All of these bankers can, apparently, get immensely rewarding jobs anywhere else in the world, and now they shall! It is their own propaganda, though doubtless, like all greedy opportunists, they believe it. And Darling said the banks would actually pay the bonuses tax, so the burden again falls on us, guileless slaves of the rich, whether it is through the exchequer or through the banks that we are robbed. John Whiting, tax policy director of the Chartered Institute of Taxation, immediately warned that the banks would find ways around the tax!

Bonuses are only part of the problem. Income tax is not merely unfair, it is regressive—the richer you are, the less you pay. One of the very richest men in the USA, Warren Buffett, has openly admitted that his tax rate (18 percent) is lower than that of his lower class secretary (30 percent). Can anyone deny that it is grossly unfair that the rich should pay less national tax than those who are much poorer? How is it possible? When income tax was introduced temporarily in 1842, even Queen Victoria paid it. The monarchy later, when it became a normal feature of government funding, was excused it. But in 1992, the British Queen volunteered to pay it again—no doubt with some persuasion—but hoping to gain popularity at a time when monarchy was under criticism.

In 1909, British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lloyd George, set income tax at 9d (9 pence) in the pound (3.75 cents in the dollar), for incomes less than £2,000, which amounts to about £160,000 at 2012 values. He set a higher rate of 12d (one shilling, or 5 percent) for incomes above £2,000, and an additional “surtax” or “supertax” of 6d (another 2.5 percent) on the amount by which incomes of £5,000 (£400,000 today) or more exceeded £3,000 (£240,000 today). This scheme, applied today, would mean rich people simply pay tax, not supertax, on earnings up to £240,000, but would owe the exchequer £4,000 as soon as they earned £400,000. Effectively, the rich would experience a hike in tax of just 1 percent of their income when they went through the £400,000 barrier, hardly a backbreaking jump. As things stand, the megarich would simply hire top accountants, lawyers and lobbyists to ensure the nation never gets the money they owe it, if everyone else does! But, if this sudden hike were sufficiently large, and avoidance and evasion of it were treated strictly as criminal, banks and corporations would not be inclined to overpay directors, and they would not want to recieve more than the limit and suffer the penalty of the tax barrier.

Republicans brag that, when they took Congress in 1994, they lowered taxes creating an improvement in the economy, and higher tax revenues. Since then they have perpetually called for the same strategem, even though the improvement they boasted of was short lived. What they want is lower taxes for the rich, but it is cutting taxation of the poor and middle classes that improves spending, business transactions, and ultimately the economy as a whole. Money rises like a gas through the classes of any capitalist society like ours, it does not trickle down like water, at least, if it does, it does not trickle down at home where it is needed!

Time series suggest that governments resist raising tax from the rich except in crises. Then they have sometimes lifted taxation into the supertax category of over 90 percent. When this is done, the revenue is fed in at the base of the economy in public projects and better benefits, lifting spending power at the base and thereby stimulating the economy throughout by the multiplier effect—the way each dollar or pound is spent over and over again, once someone poor gets it to spend in the first place, and the way an initial expenditure triggers further ones, like a tin of paint for the front door stimulating the decoration of the rest of the house, which now looks shabby, then new furniture, and with fresh aspirations, a new car, a new home, and so on. It is Keynesianism. It works! So, taxing the richest boosts the economy. Reducing taxes on the rich induces them to accumulate more capital which they regretably are too often ready to invest overseas for even better profits. Meanwhile, our own economy is deprived of liquidity and unemployment and poverty rise. Tax rates for the richest were being cut until 1928, but they failed to stop, and arguably exacerbated the Great Crash of 1929 and the following long depression, ended only by WWII. Our situation today is frighteningly similar.

Curiously, considering that the upper classes in the USA—not to mention many of the middle classes too, albeit perhaps influenced too much by patriotic propaganda—constantly demand foreign wars, the top rates of income tax go up while wars are being fought and afterwards when their costs have to be met. In WWI, the top US rate of income tax reached 77 percent, but in the aftermath of WWII it went as high as 94 percent. The US Right Wing, who bleat their propaganda line that Obama is a “commie” when he is not being a Moslem or a Satanist, would be certain that supertax equates to communism. Yet it has inevitably preceded the US economy picking up, so that the supertax was soon lifted. Perhaps too soon. UK supertax was lifted in 1973, but replaced by rates of income tax progressiing from zero for the very poorest to much higher levels for the rich, albeit falling short of a supertax. Maybe now, it should be a permanent feature of the modern capitalist state.

HM Revenue and Customs (UK) claims that twice in the post-war years, special tax rates have pushed income tax above 100 percent. Sad parasites of other people’s work received unearned income from stocks and shares, and apparently paid the taxman more than they earned. They must have been Warren Buffets living in cardboard boxes under railway arches. It is a highly dubious calculation which must assume that the different rates are applied additively. They were not. Some rates were either/or, not both in succession. No wonder the tax men leave the calculations to each of us ourselves to submit via self assessment. The people who do pay rates of over 100 percent are the poorest—those on benefits who lose all of certain benefits when they earn above certain levels of income. Unless the increase in income exceeds that lost by loss of benefits, income declines, so the effective tax rate of such poor people is over 100 percent. This is very common indeed, and explains why many people give up looking for work.

When a nation is divided into two contending classes, both cannot have their own way. Democracy is meant to ensure the majority rules, subject to its laws not oppressing the minority, but, for that, it has to be fair. It is not fair when one section owns all the media, and the rich can do that through their wealth. The American paranoia about socialism leads ordinary Americans to accept the rich man’s propaganda, and support the rich man’s interests contrary to their own. So that when sensible policies are proposed the people are confused by those who want a less practicable and more greedy policy, so that what emerges is precisely the wrong kind—acquiescence in wasteful policies, such as militarism and imperialism, rather than taking steps in the right direction.

The British Labour Party has exactly the same problem. Beguiled by Blairism and topped up in the Blair years with careerists and opportunists, it is quite incapabale of taking the right decisions. Even though the Con Dem coalition is on shaky ground, and the people are sick of the succession of Thatcherite policies over the last thirty years by successive governments, the Labour leadership is tied to its outdated mode of thinking—deregulated neo-liberalism—when something new, and actually left wing is needed in the face of the bankers and the junkers.

The 30 Year War Against The American Dream: Henry Schoenberger

Henry Schoenberger, the author of How We Got Swindled By Wall Street Godfathers, Greed and Financial Darwinism, subtitled The 30 Year War Against The American Dream, points out that the OWS protests simply display the plethora of anger around in the USA. The level of poverty is now at its highest level ever—the poor are angry. The successful elderly planning on retirement after a lifetime of hard work are being hit—elderly retirers are angry. Young entrepreneurs, the foundation of our future economy, and those in their prime, whose enterprise should be creating new jobs to give a living to ordinary folk and a first step to the young—even many of those are angry.

Capitalism, as an economic philosophy, is only 200 years old, based as it is on the book by Adam Smith (1723-1790), the title of which is always given now as The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776. The United States declared its independence that same year.

Since then, the abuse and misuse of Capitalism has paralleled the use and abuse of Democracy.

Henry Schoenberger

Smith is often presented by right wing libertarians, Republicans, neoliberals, and assorted conservatives as the model entrepreneurial hero. Yet, he first held the chair of logic at Glasgow University, and then in 1752 became its chair of moral philosophy. So he was really one of those timeserving wasters lolling around a university with students and living off someone else's hard earned income! That, at least is how the right wing regard university teachers and research workers.

In 1759, he wrote the Theory of Moral Sentiments about the standards of conduct that hold society together, explaining how benevolent human motives and activities lead to a society beneficial for all, and thereafter a virtuous circle. Adam Smith had a lifelong interest in the value of morality for the public good. In his book, The Wealth of Nations, he expressed a belief that allowing the entrepreneur to pursue his own interest essentially unfettered would lead to the betterment of all because it would lead to the better use of resources, including time. He never imagined that his theories could be so distorted by the ultra rich cornering one particular resource to the detriment of most of the rest of us—money!

Darwin published his book on the Origin of Species 85 years after The Wealth of Nations, and, although most Protestant pastors in the USA and their theologians who run the Republican Party cannot now abide the thought of evolution, for the first century of so they loved it. The survival of the fittest was a perfect expression of capitalism. So Darwin's theory applied even within human society. It was not restricted only to the wild.

This extension of Darwinism into society was dubbed “Social Darwinism”. It even made it respectable for the protestant churches to abandon Christianity—Christ blessed the poor and damned the rich—but now Social Darwinism made it clear, they thought, that God meant the rich were blessed and the poor were damned! It was a creed that was soon attacked by social scientists, and began to fall into disrepute. Reaganomics and deregulation revived it.

We all need to know a little about economic theories to understand the fallacious arguments advanced today for unfettered greed. For thirty years after WWII, the rate of growth of the incomes of rich and poor were broadly the same. John Maynard Keynes, before the War had shown how economies can be controlled by regulation, such as using taxation to slow down growth when the economy was overheating, and feeding back into feeble economies some of the tax take to boost spending during recessions. It worked wonderfully well.

Controlling self interest worked for decades in the aftermath of the Great Depression. The top tax bracket went up to 90% and still the ultra rich survived, but so did our middle class and our society was not demoralized. There was enough concern on both sides of the aisle to pass Civil Rights legislation and CEOs did not earn more than 40 times the average wage in their industry.

Henry Schoenberger

Interestingly, it was a closer match to Adam Smith's teaching than libertarian capitalists like to admit. Smith knew that regulation was sometimes necessary, and did not pretend otherwise. He believed that once the boundaries were suitably set, and the operators accepted them, then they would work to better themselves and society as a whole through the so called “invisible hand”. The trouble is, when things work well, smug, greedy people always want to try their luck at extending the conditions to their advantage.

That is what Reagan in the USA and Thatcher in the UK tried in the 1980s. In what was imagined as an economic “Big Bang”, a bonfire of the regulations was arranged on both sides of the Atlantic, neoliberalism became the watchword, and Social Darwinism was born again. Survival of the fittest became survival of the richest. In the last thirty years, the workers and even some middle class have lost income, the better off middle classes have maintained theirs, and the rich have multiplied their riches several fold!

In 1776, Adam Smith could not have seen that unregulated Wall Street financiers enjoying tariff free transfer of money anywhere in the world could manipulate markets and the rewards they had from them to the advantage of themselves as a new Brahman class in the supposedly classless western societies. Greed became endemic. Like the living dead they sucked the economic life blood—money—from the middle and working classes. The insatiable greed and selfishness of the rich has killed millions and millions of jobs, people's savings, their livelihoods and increasingly their lives, quite contrary to the ideas of the capitalists' holy book, The Wealth of Nations, by their innocent prophet, Adam Smith. Henry Schoenberger sums up:

Wall Street is a problem because for 30 years it has practiced innovative financial investment at the expense of our economy. Wall Street has turned away from real investment based on innovation for capital formation to create jobs to benefit our economy. Wall Street Trojan megabanks are a major part of the problem.

Government ought not to be the problem because it is the role of government to regulate, to ensure that the balance of society and its economy are right. Our governments neither guard the public good nor the public. The politicians lack all morality themselves, themselves infected with the zombie infection endemic among the rich and aspirants to riches, with the taste for more and more blood, salivating at the thought of more victims, us, and more dollars, ours.

Schoenberger points out that Goldman has inveigled the government at the highest level for three decades. The OWS movement should demand the removal of any Wall Street executive from any important government post, and equally that government servants should be banned from transferring their allegiance to Wall Street until 10 years after leaving government. Consulting and “Atlantic Bridge” style “charities” and think tanks should be illegal as soon as they get near to government in any direct way, or even indirectly, if the influence can amount to bribery, or any similar illegal approach. That applies too to lobbying, nothing more than approved bribery.

High Street deposit banks must be severed from the high risk investment banks. Bonuses should be illegal. As compensation they must be treated as pay and seriously taxed. Taxes must reflect the reality that 1 percent has 40 percent, so that taxation is at least fair by percentage, and preferably progressive, so that richer people should pay a higher percentage. If a rich man faced with a 60% tax rate gets a rise of $1 million, are we seriously to believe he would refuse to work rather than receive $400,000 after tax.

Schoenberger concludes it “is the time for a movement to kick out all members of congress who vote against jobs! And stop wall street godfathers from taking advantage of the 99% who do not practice unbridled greed!”

A Systemic Concentration of Power and Wealth

In 1906, an Economist named Vilfredo Pareto discovered that around 20 per cent of the population in his native Italy controlled around 80 per cent of the land. This observation has come to be known as Pareto’s Principle. He also found that, while ratios of wealth and control varied in detail from country to country, the broad distribution is always the same—wealth, regardless of human effort, tends to accumulate. That accumulation is also called wealth condensation, by analogy with the condensation of a gas. The popular expression is “money makes money”.

Now the New Scientist reports on a study of 43,000 transnational corporations and the share ownership which connected them. The Swiss Institute of Technology in Zurich used for the study a 2007 Orbis database of 37 million companies and investors spanning the globe.

A core of companies, mostly banks, has excessive power over the global economy. 1,318 companies with intertwined ownership structures, representing 20 per cent of global operating revenues, were on average connected to 20 other companies. This group of 1,318 controls most of the largest blue chip and manufacturing firms—the real economy—taking in 60 per cent of global revenues from goods and services. This group included a “super entity” of 147 companies that controls 40 per cent of the network’s wealth, several of the top 25 of which have familiar names:

1. Bank of America Corporation
2. Morgan Stanley
3. Goldman Sachs Group Inc
4. Merrill Lynch & Co Inc
5. JP Morgan Chase & Co…

The 147 of the surveyed companies controlling 40 per cent of the network have condensed—concentrated—a vast level of wealth into their coffers, just as Pareto would have predicted.

Should the Poor be allowed to Die, or the Rich?

Al Dahler, a retired Air Force veteran highlights in the Virginia Newsleader the latest propaganda of Republican bloodsuckers. According to Robert J Samuelson writing in the Washington Post, America’s budget deficit is the fault of elderly Americans, people who are too greedy—they depend on social security and medicare to keep themselves alive. The Wall Street bailout had nothing to do with it. Irresponsible tax cuts for the 1 percent of Americans, who are already so well off they haven’t a clue what to do with their money, are also innocent of blame. The US permanent war economy, that has gotten worse since Bush and Cheney held the reins of power, naturally has no role at all in wasting the country’s wealth. The fault, according to the unspeakably selfish US right wing, rests with the poor and old folk, who should recognize they taking up some of the wealth that the rich could salivate over counting it again.

The poor have always been at fault. The conservative gospel is that the poor, the unemployed, the people unable to afford health insurance and the handicapped are scroungers, refusing to work to better themselves as all Americans should. Did they, the greedy rich? Some may have done but most have inherited wealth left to them by their enterprising fathers, grandfathers and even more distant ancestors. Far from money trickling down, the rich employ clever managers, not being clever enough themselves, to accumulate more money in exchange for a share of it called bonuses.

These rich billionaires have nothing in common with any of the remaining 99 percent of the population, but they fool those with aspirations to riches, many of the middle classes, and those unable to see that they are dupes of the rich, encouraged in their American Dreams, but with zero chance of ever realizing them. The Republican lie is that everyone is responsible for themself only and their immediate family, having no responsibility for anyone unable to work because they are elderly, sick or simply unable to get a job in the face of millions of unemployed better able and qualified than themselves.

These conservatives, so fond of boasting of their godliness, would have joined the crowds demanding the crucifixion of their “Lord” Jesus Christ, had they been there at the time. After all, this Jesus wandered around with a gang of ex-workers, ex-fishermen, ex-tax collectors and even ex-prostitutes, and, although described as the son of a carpenter, he never seemed to have built anything of wood himself. Moreover, he repeatedly backed the poor against the rich, so was obviously in the opposite camp from the parasites who drain us of our our fair share of the national product.

They have just enough religion to make them hate, but not enough to make them love others.

Jonathan Swift, paraphrased

If the Christian God were incarnated today, he would be organizing and addressing the OWS demonstrations, and once the state decides to clamp down on the occupiers of Wall Street, he as a leader would have had his death sentence again.

Veteran Dahler noticed that the sentiments of president F D Roosevelt were closer to those of Jesus than the odious hypocrites calling themselves Republicans. He said:

The test of progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much. It is whether we provide enough for those who have little?

It is as plain as day that for the last thirty years the US has ceased to progress, and has instead slid backwards. Republican candidates, trapped by the hypocritical piety of the religious right, have to deny the validity of the theory of evolution, because these so-called Christians have decided that their God is so feeble He cannot bear it. Yet despite it they do believe in evolution applied to society. It is wrong that the cleverest and most ruthless ape should eventually have human brains, but it is right that the cleverest and most ruthless entrepreneurs should have all the wealth—give or take a percent or two. They call this application of “nature red in tooth and claw” to society “Social Darwinism”.

Society exists to protect each of us from the hazards of living separately in the wild. Being together allowed us to use our intelligence and our new found ability to respect each other and cooperate together to do remarkable things like building civilization. It required us to be concerned with others in our society even when they were not coping too well. Without assistance from us, they would have seen no sense in remaining with us, and our ur-band of mutuality would have soon fallen apart.

That is what these Republicans are advocating now. They have no concern for the poor and those unable to cope with pressures that most of the wealthy 1 percent could never imagine experiencing day in and day out. Jesus Christ ordered Christians to help the poor or be damned. But now Republicans cry in outrage that elderly people should have medical care as a reward for having contributed to society all their lives. They say they owe them nothing. Their idea of society owes them nothing. They have outlived their welcome and should do the decent thing and die! If they do not, then they will be charged large premiums to cover their health insurance, and as they will not be able to afford such expenditure, they will die in any case through being deprived of care. Limited health care leads to shorter lifespans, relieving the pressure on the social security system, and leaving more money for the rich to stash away.

President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton are fond of encouraging people in countries whose regimes they do not like, mainly because they assert their right to what is their own, to riot and even rebel, as in the case of Libya, to establish their basic human rights. Well, we have human rights too, and if Arabs have a right to rebel and kill their former leaders, H G Wells must have been correct to say that we have the same right. Wells, author of War of the Worlds, was a mild mannered man but wrote in despair, towards the end of his life, that we shall get nowhere in bringing about a fairer world until the rich were swinging from the lamp posts. Indeed, if it is a necessity in Libya, then why should it not be a necessity in the US? The fact is that revolution is one way societies end when they become too unjust. The greedy 1 percent of the USA are inviting their own destruction.

They could pay off much of the national debt themselves if they wanted to avoid it!

America Stops Laughing to Correct Apoplectic Republican Comic, Rush Limbaugh

Alternet has a plethora of interesting articles and often more interesting and informative comments. This link is to a comment thread to a short article about the right wing propagandist Rush Limbaugh, who is no repecter of the truth or even of facts. A comment by passnthru2 noted:

1. The richest 1 percent has 43 percent of the nation’s wealth—6 times that of the bottom 80 percent, which has just 7 percent
2. the richest 5 percent has 72 percent of the nation’s wealth—10 times that of the bottom 80 percent
3. the top 20 percent has 93 percent of the nation’s wealth—23 times that of the bottom 80 percent
4. the top 50 percent has 97.5 percent of the nation’s wealth—39 times that of the bottom 50 percent which has 2.5 percent

44 percent of Americans couldn’t get $2000 together if their lives depended on it, while the richest 400 families:

1. have $1.4 trillion, and yet,
2. pay under 14% income tax

These rich people and the big corporations they own are sitting on piles of cash, yet they refuse to pay decent wages, and do everything in their power to lower the workers wages, for example using professional bigots like Rush Limbaugh whose splenetic rants impress a substantial section of the redneck population. It explains why there is a recession, and illustrates the huge fault in capitalism.

The rich always want more, and have to drive up profits to get more. They can do it by charging more and by paying their workers proportionally or absolutely less. They can even move their businesses abroad and pay the domestic worker nothing at all! But when people have less to spend whether it is absolutely less through wage cuts or relatively less by price inflation, they cannot afford to buy as much as they could previously. The retail trade goes into recession, and manufacturing businesses follow.

RustyCannon observed that if they were to pay people better, retail and therefore industry would be stimulated. Poor workers necessarily spend what they receive in earnings. They do not earn enough to save it. So the economy would be stimulated if the rich would just realize that they are starving the economy of liquidity by their greed. If the rich will not do it then the government must. President Carter created jobs, then Reagan came in, cut taxes for the rich, and drove unemployment through the roof.

The theory was “trickle down”. Give the rich more tax breaks and less regulations and they will spend more readily, employing people to expand their businesses. It doesn’t work. Republican President, George W Bush did not create as many jobs in the two terms of his presidency as did Carter in the single term he had. The rich just begin to expect more tax breaks to accumulate more risk free wealth—it is easier than taking the risks of trading. 30 years of this has just lead to manufacturers closing factories and destroying lives at home to move maufacture abroad to low labor cost countries. 50,000 manufacturing companies went in the Bush administration alone.

The large and enterprising middle class that was the economic engine of the USA is being impoverished by the stranglehold the rich have on the nation’s ready money—the top 400 wealthiest own more than the bottom 150 million. The economy is starved of demand. Middle class wages have been flat for 3 decades, yet the cost of living has continued to climb. Two income homes are now needed just to get by. The middle class no longer has as much disposable income, and what it has is falling, leaving its demand for products and services lower, with knock-ons to other small businesses dependent on them.

When people, encouraged by the sleepwalking bankers, began using the equity in their homes, they created a false demand bubble, and a false sense of prosperity. Disastrous greed among bankers who thought our money was theirs, led them to gamble with those unsound derivatives. Trading them backwards and forwards each day yielded immense bionuses for doing nothing in the least bit useful. That bubble burst, leaving us in the mess we are in, yet with no will to regulate the banksters and the rentiers, and sustained “head in the sand” insanity among Republicans determined to tie down Obama, and bring him down, if at all possible.

Further cuts as demanded by the Republicans can only make the situation worse, and that is the fault of the Republicans themselves who ought to have accummulated in the good years to spend in the bleak ones. They spent through the good years and now, when spending is the only way out of depression, they want to cut. Strong financial regulation and a New Deal like FDR’s will be necessary to reinvigorate the economy—measures that Republican bigots like Limbaugh call socialism for the sake of their indoctrinated disciples.

Is the Wagon Rolling Against the Robbing Rich?

Amid the recent fiscal carnage in Washington several studies of the US have been published concerning the situation of the average American. First, IMF economists analyzed the US public deficit and debt levels, and their relation to the demands aging Baby Boomers will place on the government’s Medicare and Medicaid healthcare programs, while the birth rate lags at a record low:

The United States is facing an untenable fiscal situation due to the combination of high fiscal deficits, an aging population and rapid growth in government provided healthcare benefits.

IMF study, An Analysis of US Fiscal and Generational Imbalances:
Who Will Pay and How?

To “go a long way in returning the United States to a fiscally sustainable path”, the US government must cut the entitlement programs and especially healthcare—among the most expensive in the world—that face rapidly rising costs in coming years. Americans will have to pay more taxes and the government will have to cut spending on Baby Boomers—those Americans between about 45 and 65—and their immediate heirs.

To eliminate all current deficits and long term shortfalls on social plans for the current generation “would require all taxes to go up and all transfers to be cut immediately and permanently by 35 percent”, and “delay in the adjustment makes it more costly”.

Unless currently living Americans pay more in net taxes or unless government spending on current generations is curtailed, future Americans will face net tax rates that are about 21.5 percentage points… higher than those facing current newborn Americans.

Of course, the IMF is an arm of US foreign policy, or rather, an arm of the international policies of the US uber rich class who rule the world for the sole purpose of making themselves richer than their already obscene levels of riches. The IMF always makes the people pay whenever the rulers of any country get its finances in a twist by their greedy machinations. The ruling clique in the US are among the main beneficiaries usually. It is time they paid! Normally, they pay least, often nothing!

But the average Yankee seems amazingly placid, or gets worked up over the wrong enemy, all too often supporting the greedy manipulators because they are all too easy to fool. Often, they seem to think that they are themselves among the uber rich, but less than a single percent of the population are. That one percent have gotten three times richer in real terms over the last 30 years, while the average Yankee has got poorer once inflation is accounted for.

Not surprisingly, more Americans say that their financial situation is worse not better in recent years. For the first time since 1972, 31.5 percent of Americans are “not at all” satisfied with their financial situation compared with 23.4 percent who are “pretty well” satisfied (General Social Survey, NORC, University of Chicago).

Americans are also more insecure about employment. A record 16.4 percent thought it “likely” (fairly or very) that they would lose their job or be laid off. As few as 52.2 percent thought it “not at all likely” that they would lose their job or be laid off, easily the lowest confidence ever recorded by the GSS. Those who thought their standard of living was “much better” or “somewhat better” than their parents declined.

The General Social Survey—which NORC has conducted for forty years based on 2,044 interviews—is a biennial survey that gathers data on contemporary American society to monitor and explain trends and constants in attitudes, behaviors, and attributes.

On top of these, American “happiness” has been measured and took some blows, but some American stoicism shone through here. While only 28.8 percent of Americans, the lowest percentage since 1972, were “happy”, another 14.2 percent were “not too happy”. Happiness was hit mainly because of the economy and people’s own finances. Even so, 85.8 percent of Americans were “happy”.

Not all aspects of happiness fell during the downturn. 97 percent of marriages were judged to be “happy” (very or pretty), and 86.0 percent of Americans claim to be “very satisfied” or “moderately satisfied” with their work, a steady average since 1972.

If anything, it suggests that the average American lives in a cocoon. They are concerned for themselves and their immediate family, and are satisfied that they are not being repossessed like the family over the street, and still have a job to hang on to. Despite the hugely vaunted Christianity of the Christian nation, the average American is indifferent to his neighbour, as long as he’s all right.

The motto is not “Do unto others as you would be done by”, it is “I’m all right, Bud, You look after yourself”.

Fortunately, recent proposed cuts in public services have been firmly rebutted by encouraging united strength and purpose. Is the US sleeping Leviathan waking up? Let’s hope so, then you smug financiers, corporate bosses, bankers and bought men will have to watch out! Once enough of the people stop being taken in by the great Washington Repucrat-Demoblican farce, then the wagon of unity may be rolling, and the callous and greedy exploiters of the rest of us will be crushed by its irresistible momentum.

A Tale of Two Countries

Libya—a Rogue State

We found out last night that the British parliament is not a coalition of the Conservative party and the Liberal Democrats, it includes the Labour Party. When it comes to warfare, the UK has only one party—the Gang of Three. The House of Commons voted by 557 to 13 to support the UN resolution 1973 on Libya. The thirteen MPs with the principle to vote against were:

John Baron (C: Basildon & Billericay), Graham Allen (L: Nottingham North), Ronnie Campbell (L: NBlyth Valley), Jeremy Corbyn (L: NIslington North), Barry Gardiner (L: NBrent North), Roger Godsiff (L: NBirmingham Hall Green), John McDonnell (L: NHayes and Harlington), Linda Riordan (L: NHalifax), Dennis Skinner (L: NBolsover), Mike Wood (L: NBatley and Spen), Katy Clark (L: NNorth Ayrshire and Arran), Yasmin Qureshi (L: NBolton South-East), Caroline Lucas (Green: Brighton Pavilion), Mark Durkan (SDLP: Foyle), Margaret Ritchie (SDLP: Down South).

The rest either abstained, showing they are good for nothing, or voted for yet another middle eastern war. These people have no excuse. They have seen what Blair and Bush did in Iraq and what is happening in Afghanistan, but they are so lacking in principle and dripping in opportunistic self satisfaction that they ignored what they know… for self advancement. They are not fit to be MPs. They are not fit to be in Parliament. Parliament requires an opposition or it is as much a dictatorship as Libya. What is the point of choosing a representative when all of them vote according to the script that suits the MP and not what the citizens they represent want.

These people have killed democracy as we know it. As we know it it is pointless, and it needs now to be re-thought. The present system is a careerist gravy train for crooks, who, on this vote, outnumber principled MPs 43 to 1. We cannot expect Parliament to reform itself, so we, the people, will have to reform it as we have had to do in the seventeenth century, and twice in the nineteenth century by revolution and the threat of revolution. Britons died on these occasions, and doubtless the same will again be true. To achieve fairness and justice ordinary people always die.

Will the French, Americans and Arabs be organizing a humanitarian “No Fly Zone” over the UK when our government turns the troops against its people? No chance! If anything, they will do the same as in Libya. The “No Fly Zone” over Libya is obviously… obviously… not a humanitarian venture.

Just how do you save people from being killed by bombing them? It is exactly the same in Afghanistan where even Karzai, the US stooge, now wants the US and its lapdogs out, after a series of mass murders of civilians, often by US drones. It shows the poltroonery of the US and its allies. They are doing their best to engage the enemy by robots in case they might get killed themselves, so they sent pilotless aircraft to target schools and weddings, anywhere where there seems to be a gathering of people on the assumption that it is a troop of rebels.

And to what purpose? How does an ordinary Briton or American benefit from this wanton brutality? We do not. A few people employed servicing the military will briefly enjoy secure employment, but the rest of us will have to pay for this adventure, as we paid for the previous ones, by job losses and tax hikes. The beneficiaries are the rich, not us. And, when we choose to rebel against our rich dictators, the rich will use the technology they are perfecting abroad against us.

Israel—a Rogue State

Perhaps something will come out of it. It is wishful thinking, but goes like this.

Since all these MPs think it proper to support the bombing of nations that they claim a humanitarian reason for doing, they ought now to be willing to support the bombing of Israel, a rogue state which has different laws for Jews and Arabs among its own citizenry, and frequently raids Gaza, a small patch of land packed with millions of Arabs who are not Israeli citizens. Israel’s “democratic” authorities have even revoked the residency permit of the Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem. Despite efforts by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the British Foreign Secretary and the British ambassador, the Israelis have not relented.

After maintaining a deafening silence about Israel’s atrocities against civilians, Britain suddenly wants a “day of reckoning” for war criminals—as long as they are Libyan.

Stuart Littlewood

The UK Foreign Secretary William Hague, promised retribution for Gaddafi’s crimes, and to refer Libya to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court:

That sends a clear message to all involved, in the regime and any other groups that if they commit crimes and atrocities there will be a day of reckoning for them.

Crimes will not go unpunished and will not be forgotten. There will be a day of reckoning and the reach of international justice is long.

British diplomats expressed the ConDem coalition’s policy as taking whatever steps were necessary…

…to ensure that those responsible for the awful human rights violations that are currently occurring in Libya are held to account… [because] we are appalled by the levels of violence… [so] The United Kingdom will do everything we can to make sure those responsible in the Libyan regime are held accountable for their actions…

Why then did we not hear this highly principled, humanitarian Foreign Secretary call for a reckoning with the Israeli regime? It murdered 1400 of Gaza’s civilians, including hundreds of children, two years ago, at Christmas! Besides the murder, the attacks left thousands maimed and myriads homeless, having to live in rubble. One UN resolution was sufficient for the bombing of Libya, but very many UN resolutions have been passed regarding Israeli oppression of Palestinians with absolutely no response at all from these humanitarian leaders of ours.

HMS York instantly appeared unloading medical supplies for the Benghazi Medical Centre, donated by the Swedish government, but nothing was available to assist when Gaza was under attack from Israeli bombers, or when Israeli soldiers acted as pirates on the high seas hijacking a Turkish ship carrying similar humanitarian aid to Gazans who are oppressed, humiliated, and impoverished every day by Israeli attacks.

Instead of seeking justice for Israeli crimes the Foreign Office is trying to change international law to let the Israeli criminals who authorized and justified them, like Tzipi Livni, Avigdor Lieberman, Ehud Barak and Binyamin Netanyahu, to move freely in the west.

Prominent Zionist Jews, who are knee jerk supporters of Israel, whatever atrocities they commit, are among the supporters of western political parties, and western leaders pander to these Zionists because they will finance them. David Cameron told a Jewish dinner, according to the Jerusalem Post:

With me you have a prime minister whose belief in Israel is indestructible… I will always be a strong defender of the Jewish people. I will always be an advocate for the State of Israel.

Cameron promises to support the Zionist state of Israel “always”—whatever crimes it commits! And then he cynically equates “the Jewish people” with Israel, so is it any wonder that some people do the same and attack Jews wherever they are for the crimes of Zionist Israel? Anti-Semitic attacks are on the increase, the Chief Rabbi of the UK tells us, as if it should be surprising when so many of them are Zionists—Jewish fascists! But all Jews are not Zionists, and all Jews do not support the racialist attitude of Israel, including some Israeli Jews.

Western uncritical support of Zionism is why Israel gets away with what Gaddafi cannot, why anti-Semitism is increasing, and why also the megarich oil sheiks of the Arabian peninsula can oppress their own people without a word of criticism from western leaders like Hague, Cameron, Obama and Clinton, all of whom get more two faced and slimy by the second. If you are an Arab rebel make sure you choose who you are rebelling against. If it is Gaddafi—OK, you are a democrat. If the king of Saudi Arabia—bad news, you are a terrorist.

War is a massacre of people who don’t know each other for the profit of people who know each other but don’t massacre each other.

Paul Valery

Invading foreign countries is for the benefit of a narrow class of megarich people, who like to steal other people’s assets and benefit from war bucks whatever else happens.

Downturn in Housing—Nothing has Changed

Nothing has changed in the last two years. Bankers still get obscene bonuses, and the ordinary Joe is still being robbed by a system arranged to suit the rich. A report from the W P Carey School of Business at Arizona State University suggests a new downturn in the housing market.

Foreclosures had been held steady by foreclosure moratoria, but as these played out, it seems the rate of foreclosure is going up to where it would have been otherwise. In the last few months of 2010, foreclosures had fallen to 30 percent, but, in January and February 2011, it had risen again to 43 percent of recorded sales. Associate professor of Real Estate Jay Butler, who wrote the report, said:

January 2011 showed a re-emergence of troubled times, which continued through February.

Housing prices were also being influenced by foreclosure related activity. 40 percent of normal market sales were resales of previously foreclosed on houses. Adding these to the 43 percent of sold foreclosed houses means 66 percent of the market in January and February related to foreclosed buildings. That and the absence of a strong move up market, which is fundamental to a housing recovery, is restricting growth in home prices, leaving many home owners in negative equity.

The median price for the traditional market in February was $127,500, which is an improvement over the $125,000 in January, but down from $140,000 last year. The foreclosed properties in February had a median price of $141,385 in contrast to $143,580 for January and $153,695 for a year ago. Even expensive homes continued to be foreclosed, with 19 being over $1 million in February, so people who consider themselves middle class are being hit too.

The ones who are not being hit are the 0.1 percent of the population who rule the country, the mega rich, whose wealth equals that of the poorest half of Americans. Half of Americans is around 150 million! The mega rich, have as much money as 50 percent of all Americans and the proportion is rising each year. These people are never satisfied by however much they have.

The sad thing is that so many Americans are intoxicated by the American dream, that they can, somehow, be one of the mega rich. A dream is all it is for 99.9 percent of Americans.

Wise up, Yankees!

How the Bankers’ Greed is Ruining the US Internationally

The United States has slipped from second place to 13th out of 34 countries in the number of students enrolled in university, and it is stagnating in science teaching—in 17th place—and doing poorly in math, in 25th place. In contrast, more Chinese are enrolling in universities, which means there will be more scientists in China than there are in the US, driving up Chinese scientific output, said Penn State professor Caroline Wagner at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

At a time when the greed of bankers has forced United States and Europe to make severe cuts in government spending on social services, but also on support for industry and science, China has significantly increased spending on science and technology, said Denis Simon—a professor at Penn State University who is also the science and technology adviser to the mayor of the Chinese city of Dalian—at the AAAS meeting. Simon said that the Chinese hope to spend around 2.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), the sum of a nation’s annual output, on research and development by 2020.

In the United States, Republican lawmakers are talking about trimming a billion dollars from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the world’s largest public research institute, and slashing funds for other science and research agencies, negating the billion dollar boost President Barack Obama proposed for science and health research in his 2012 budget. Republicans want to make Joe and Jane pay in poorer wages and conditions for the trillion dollar US deficit, much of which was incurred by the treasury in bailing out moribund banks “too big to fail”. Knowing that, the mainly Republican banksters milked their bonus scam—collecting huge bonuses for selling and reselling junk bonds in a type of Ponzi scheme which inevitably would collapse, but not before bankers and financiers had lined their pockets at the expense of the taxpayer.

The Republicans also want to slash funds for education by some $5 billion, even though Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, has warned that the United States must better educate its kids, especially in science and math, or risk becoming uncompetitive in the global economy.

Another sign that China is moving to the top of the science league, the number of quality scientific papers coming out of the country—measured by how often they are cited in other studies—is growing exponentially. How often a peer reviewed scientific paper is cited by another scientist is a key measure of quality. The proportion of Chinese papers being cited is up, while the proportion of citations of US and European papers is down. China already produces more research papers in the fields of natural science and engineering than the United States, which as yet remains in total the biggest producer of scientific papers in the world. But Wagner warned:

On current trends, China will publish more papers in all fields by 2015.

Getting Conned by Bogus Investment Schemes—and Real Ones!

University at Buffalo sociologist, Lionel S Lewis, author of four articles in the journal Society about Madoff investors, explains how the Ponzi scheme works. He says:

To understand how confused thinking is, you need to understand how a con game works and the fact that it requires a “mark” willing to suspend his or her judgment.

First, the “roper”, who could be a brother-in-law, approaches the “mark” and says, “Listen, Bernie can make you a lot of money—a 16 or 20 percent return”. Now this is a far greater return than the standard investment produces, but the “mark” is greedy, like many people, and suspends reason in pursuit of easy cash. Remember, the “mark” is always a willing participant in pursuit of an unlikely outcome.

The con man—Madoff in this case—takes the “mark”’s money and spends it. He doesn’t invest it. He doesn’t realize a “return” on an investment. He just pays millions of dollars in finder’s fees to the “ropers”, gets them to pull in more “marks”, and uses that cash to pay off any of the “marks” who pull out of the scheme early, and spends the rest on estates, cars, vacations and yachts until the money is used up. Eventually the scheme collapses. The “marks” lose their money. In con terms, they’re “trimmed”. At this point, it is the job of the roper and other inside men in the con to “cool the mark out”—calm the waters to protect those perpetrating the con.

They do this, Lewis says, by pointing out to the mark that “he knew he was taking a risk (‘16 percent return? What were you thinking?’) and could have lost more, then sends him off, embarrassed, with his tail between his legs, but with a little cash, glad he’s not living on the street in a refrigerator carton”. The well cooled mark, according to Lewis, recognizes his part in the con. He’s not happy but he doesn’t call the cops, grouse about his losses on TV or blow up Madoff’s house.

Lewis is saying that people are voluntarily conned. They take a silly risk with their own money, knowing it looks fishy, but are so greedy, they do not accept a quick profit themselves from the scam, and get out while they are in the black. Instead, they hang on and on, reaping in the ill-gotten gains, maybe investing some of it anew, until the scheme inevitably falls apart. It is a pyramid selling scheme. It is illegal, and no one is justifying Madoff. He is in jail where he belongs, but the victims are still beefing, though it was a case of caveat emptor. They were buying a share in the scam, and were getting paid as long as new “marks” were being found. Now, they say they are victims of an investment con, that there were proper investments and they did not get their proper share. But there never were any proper investments! Lewis says:

Despite the fact that Madoff never ran an investment fund, no money was “made” on their behalf and there are no profits to return to them.

The scheme got so big and collapsed so swiftly that the “marks” were never cooled out:

So we find them posturing loudly as enraged victims online and off—in the papers, on television and radio—demanding “profits” they apparently think actually exist—they do not—and are owed to them—which is not legally the case.

Lewis focused on 167 people who invested with Madoff. He collected oral and written testimony, including lengthy interviews, from 42 of them and used other written material. Some investors, however angry and ashamed they are, and regardless of how much money they lost, have not sued and made a fuss. A lot of those people won’t talk to anybody. Lewis says:

Some who lost a lot were grateful they hadn’t invested more or glad to get back even a tiny percentage of what they lost, while others who lost less want everything they were “promised”—the 16 or 20 percent profit. They won’t accept that the “promise”, along with their gullibility, was part of the con, that they never could have won at this game, and still can’t, no matter how many attorneys they hire or how often they get on television.

What is sad is that many of those “trimmed” in the scam had worked hard to put together some cash, then greed got the better of them, they thought they could join the ruling class, and make buckets of money, and opted for Bernie Madoff’s shortcut to riches. They were gambling with their life’s savings, and gamblers know that they should only play on their gains, and should cut their losses. Of course, any pyramid scheme ends up with far more losers than winners, but the few winners can make fortunes out of all the little steers who are roped in.

The answer with any gambling—investing, if you prefer to call it that—is not to invest more than you can afford to lose. The trouble these days, is that the ruling caste are forcing the small guy into risky investments because the return at interest has been cut to zero. We can leave our life savings in the banks earning nothing, but eroding away by inflation and bankers’ bonuses, so we have to put the cash into something riskier.

Stockmarket crashes suit banks and financial speculators because it is the small investor who loses by bad timing and their inability to swing markets with sheer volume of investment, or influence, by buying stocks, talking them up with rumours of takeovers and such like, then selling at a profit while the stock is high. Joe and Jane will read the rumours and buy in too late when the stock has started to rise, then find the stock crashing again when the big man sells out. They lose! These are not strictly scams because it is all legal since Reagan had his bonfire of the regulations, a reason for much closer new regulation of the money markets. But Republican propaganda has it that regulation is a bad thing. Yes, it is bad for the crooks at the top, but just fine for the rest of us.

What Makes Working People Happier? Labor Unions!

In the UK the latest fraudster to head the government is keen to find out what makes us happy, while doing his utmost to make us unhappy by destroying the services we treasure like the National Health Service, free schooling, and a fairly neutral but certainly professional civil service. Maybe David Cameron wants to know what makes people happy so that he can all the more effectively make them miserable.

An associated project which he laughingly calls the “Big Society” while dramatically making society considerably smaller, for many of us at least, would be more appropriated called “Yet Another Big Lie” (YABL), Cameron doing his utmost, it seems, to out-Blair the Great Liar Himself, Tony Blair.

Social Psychologists know a lot about social happiness, but Cameron pretends no one knows anything about it, in an attempt to give himself kudos. One thing is certain, and that is that happiness is a relative emotion. It is popularly said that “money cannot bring you happiness, but it helps”, and that is about the gist of it.

People can be unhappy because they yearn for something, and may feel ecstatic to get it, but the pleasure quite quickly wears off, and lack of some new object or experience kicks in to make people again feel unhappy. Being wealthy removes a lot of the fears that the poor have to endure through lack of sufficient cash, but having it just leaves people open to a new desire and new unhappiness. The greedy rich simply set themselves new targets of wealth. If a media mogul owns two newspapers, he will not be happy till he has three and a TV station. Then he wants Three TV stations, and so on.

These very rich people will unquestionably be very unhappy that the ordinary Joe and Jane often want to organize into trades unions to try to safeguard the pay and conditions that they have. Good pay and conditions cost money to the corporation boss, so they are much happier, for a while, when the unions are weak, or in their pocket, or when their lackeys in Washington and London are bringing in anti-union laws. That has been the situiation recently in Wisconsin where Governor Walker suddenly realized he meant to campaign over union power, but conveniently forgot while he conned the voters, so he has just reminded himself and the electorate that he aims to trash the unions as much as he can.

University of Notre Dame political scientist, Benjamin Radcliff, calls it “a perennial ideological debate in American politics—whether labor unions are good or bad for society”. You don’t need to be a professor of poliutics to know that effective unions are good for the members and bad for the members’ employers.

Are they good for society, though? Well, if, ultimately, the unions disappeared and bargaining was entirely at the whim of the boss, most people would be far worse off, and bosses would be therefore better off, at least initially. Unfortunately for the bosses, and this is something that oddly doesn’t make many of them unhappy, when the people do not have much cash to spend, they cannot buy things and industry collapses. That ought to make the bosses very unhappy one would imagine, but too few of them are intelligent enough to realize. Only the intelligent bosses do realize this, and they are very unpopular in their own circles for being wishy washy liberals or even hard nosed socialists.

Anyway, the general upper crust view is that Joe and Jane get too much, and should have less, so that is the message of the right wing media and the right wing puppets called politicians. Most academics too go along with the popular orthodoxy, however insane it is, but not all. Some academics warned against the 2008 crash, not many, but a few, but the rest, the bosses and the politicos, ignored them as Weary Willys.

Now, according to a study co-authored by Radcliff, people who live in countries with strong labor unions were happier, regardless of whether or not they belonged to a labor union themselves. Data from several European countries as well as Japan, Australia and the US, showed that happiness in life meant happiness at work. And the dominating factor that made people happier at work was the security they felt through having a strong union to help them. Happiness relates to the density of unions in a given country. Denmark ranks near the top in both categories, but the US ranks near the bottom for happiness in all the countries studied.

Radcliff found there was a direct effect and an indirect effect of strong labor unions. Members have obvious benefits—job security, fair wages, benefits and decent hours. But for those who are not members, there is the “indirect effect”.

People who have unionized jobs like their jobs better. And that puts pressure on other employers to extend the same benefits and wages to compete with the union shops.

Not surprisngly, lower paid labor union members found more contentment through organized labor than union members on the highest salaries. It’s no coincidence that American workers have never been more dissatisfied with their jobs.

Clever employers, those interested in long term stability rather than short term greed, would encourage trades union membership. They might have to lose some excessive short term profits, but would enjoy the benefits of stability over the long term. As it is, they should look on the Middle East in fear, and wonder what they might be stirring up at home by their unshackled greed, unjust treatment of the ordinary person, and bogus democracy. That goes in the UK for Cameron’s Conservative and Liberal democratic (or ConDem) coalition. People will only put up with so much, notably when they can see that the system is blatantly unfair.

Radcliff specializes in comparative and American politics. He is one of the world’s leading authorities on the study of politics and happiness, having published articles on it in scholarly journals including the American Political Science Review, Perspectives on Politics, Social Forces, and the Journal of Politics. He is author of the book Happiness, Economics and Politics.