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Monday, May 1, 2006 |
Rev. William E. Alberts: "The United Methodist Church should be bringing disciplinary action against President George Bush for war crimes. Evidence continues to mount that Bush, a United Methodist, deliberately used his religious faith to deceive the American people in the run-up to his administration's pre-meditated war against non-threatening, sanctions-weakened, defenseless Iraq. He then continued using his faith in 'the ways of Providence' to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq. He has violated a long-cherished United Methodist Book of Discipline social principle: that 'war is incompatible with the teachings and example of Christ... [and] we insist that the first moral duty of all nations is to resolve by peaceful means every dispute between or among them'."
MotherJones: "Today, the signature of modern American capitalism is neither benign competition, nor class struggle, nor an inclusive middle-class utopia. Instead, predation has become the dominant feature - a system wherein the rich have come to feast on decaying systems built for the middle class. The predatory class is not the whole of the wealthy; it may be opposed by many others of similar wealth. But it is the defining feature, the leading force. And its agents are in full control of the government under which we live.
For in a predatory regime, nothing is done for public reasons. Indeed, the men in charge do not recognize that 'public purposes' exist. They have friends, and enemies, and as for the rest - we're the prey.
In a predatory economy, the rules imagined by the law and economics crowd don't apply. There's no market discipline. Predators compete not by following the rules but by breaking them.
Law and economics argues that top accounting firms will protect their own reputations by ferreting out fraud in their clients. But, as with Enron, Tyco, and WorldCom, at every major S&L control fraud was protected by clean audits from top accountants: You hire the top firm to get the clean opinion. Moral hazard theory shifts the blame for financial collapse to the incentives implicit in insurance, but the large frauds were nearly all committed in institutions taken over for that purpose by criminal networks, often by big players like Charles Keating, Michael Milken, and Don Dixon. And there's another thing about predatory institutions. They invariably fail in the end. They fail because they are meant to fail. Predators suck the life from the businesses they command, concealing the fact for as long as possible behind fraudulent accounting and hugely complex transactions; that's the looter's point.
That a government run by people rooted in this culture should also be predatory isn't surprising - and the link between George H.W. Bush, who led the deregulation of the S&Ls, his son Neil, who ran a corrupt S&L, and Neil's brother George, for whom Ken Lay sent thugs to Florida in 2000 on the Enron plane, could hardly be any closer.
The questions are, in what ways will the failure hit the population? And what mechanisms survive for calling the predators to account? Unfortunately, at the highest levels, one cannot rely on the justice system, thanks to the power of the pardon. It's politics or nothing, recognizing that in a world of predators, all established parties are corrupted in part.
So, how can the political system reform itself? How can we reestablish checks, balances, countervailing power, and a sense of public purpose? How can we get modern economic predation back under control, restoring the possibilities not only for progressive social action but also - just as important - for honest private economic activity? Until we can answer those questions, the predators will run wild."
InternationalHeraldTribune: "Advocates of the new model capitalism, and the globalization project that goes with it, like to present it as an expression of historical necessity, rooted in classical economics and embodying irrefutable laws. It is progress itself, they say. Those who do not conform to the rules of modern market capitalism, and do not offer the human sacrifices of lost employment and diminished living standards that the market demands, will fall by the wayside of history.
This is simply untrue, although most of those who say it undoubtedly believe it.
The new American and British market capitalist model, which dictated deregulation of industry and privatization of state enterprises in the 1970s, and globalization of international markets in the 1990s, exists as a result of free political decisions and ideological choices that were anything but inevitable. History may one day describe them as having been perverse and socially destructive.
In the United States, the new model of corporate business has evolved toward a form of crony capitalism, in which business and government interests are often corruptly intermingled, the system resistant to reform because of the financial dependence of both major political parties on contributed money.
Frequently described by its supporters as a progressive step in the development of a new international economy, the political-economic system that has evolved in the United States has proved regressive in crucial respects, as well as inefficient and abusive of the public interest.
Europe, one would think, should be looking for social and economic evolution on its own terms. It is perfectly capable of doing so, as a modern industrial society that in aggregate terms is larger and wealthier than the United States, as well as less shackled by obsolescent ideology and entrenched special interests - its problems with union corporatism notwithstanding.
In the longer term, for Europeans to embark on this project, instead of conforming to the currently received wisdom concerning the globalized economy, would serve the international interest as well as that of the European Union. It might even prove a service to the United States, whose future is now jeopardized by economic error and excess, as well as unachievable global political and military ambitions."
12:43:53 PM 
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Observer: "The growing international crisis over Iran's nuclear programme could trigger a catastrophic oil price spike, sending crude prices over $100 a barrel, senior Wall Street analysts are warning."
IHT: "The Bush administration is putting pressure on the press as never before, and it is operating in a judicial climate that seems increasingly receptive to constraints on journalists."
WTOP: "Tens of thousands of protesters marched Saturday through lower Manhattan to demand an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, just hours after this month's death toll reached 70."
A criminal can only govern by breaching the law. Bush is a failed president.
12:07:04 PM
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© Copyright 2008.
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