RSN: Norman Solomon | Biden and Buttigieg Are Showing How Corporatism and 'the Madness of Militarism' Go Together

07 January 20 It's Live on the HomePage Now: Reader Supported News RSN V. WALL STREET - STABILITY V. GROWTH - We raise money, companies listed on Wall Street “make” money. The difference is profits, specifically profits defined by Wall Street investors. We raise money to achieve financial stability for our organization that provides services directly to the community we serve. Wall Street companies make money to distribute as “profits” to investors. The investors serve themselves. And they run the game. Simple enough? / Marc Ash, Founder Reader Supported News Sure, I'll make a donation! RSN: Norman Solomon | Biden and Buttigieg Are Showing How Corporatism and 'the Madness of Militarism' Go Together Norman Solomon, Reader Supported News Solomon writes: "There's nothing like an illegal and utterly reckless U.S. act of war to illuminate the political character of presidential candidates. In the days since the assassination of Iran's top military official, two of the highest-polling Democratic contenders have displayed the kind of moral cowardice that got the United States into - and kept it in - horrific wars from Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq." Eager to hedge their bets, Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg have offered merely tactical critiques of President Trump’s decision to kill Qassim Suleimani. In sharp contrast to Elizabeth Warren and especially Bernie Sanders, the gist of the responses from Biden and Buttigieg amounted to criticizing the absence of a game plan for an atrocious game that should never be played in the first place. Many journalists have noted that only in recent days has foreign policy become prominent in the race for the 2020 nomination. But what remains to be addressed is the confluence of how Biden and Buttigieg approach the roles of the U.S. government in class war at home and military war abroad — both for the benefit of corporate elites. Let’s be clear: More than 50 years ago, when Martin Luther King Jr. bravely condemned “the madness of militarism,” he was directly challenging those who included the political ancestors of the likes of Buttigieg and Biden — Democratic politicians willing to wink and nod at vast death and destruction, courtesy of U.S. taxpayers, equivocating while claiming that the war machinery would operate better in their hands.  On war-related issues, Buttigieg’s rhetorical mix offers something for just about anyone. “Mr. Buttigieg is campaigning as an antiwar veteran,” The New York Times oddly reported in a January 5 news article. Yet on the same day, during a CNN interview about the drone killing, Buttigieg functioned more as a war enabler than opponent. In response to anchor Jake Tapper’s first question — “Are you saying that President Trump deserves some credit for the strike?” — Buttigieg equivocated: “No, not until we know whether this was a good decision and how this decision was made, and the president has failed to demonstrate that.” His elaborations were littered with statements like “we need answers on whether this is part of a meaningful strategy.” As for Biden, in recent months his shameful war-enabling history has drawn more attention while he continues to lie about it. And — given how hugely profitable endless wars have been for military contractors — Biden’s chronic enabling should be put in a wider context of his longtime service to corporate profiteering on a massive scale. Biden has no interest in discussing his actual five-decade history of serving corporate power, which can only discredit the renewed “Lunch Bucket Joe” pretenses of his campaign. Meanwhile, as Buttigieg gained in the polls amid a widening flood of donations from Wall Street and other bastions of wealth, he moved away from initial claims of supporting such progressive measures as Medicare for All. The military-industrial complex, inherently corporate, needs politicians like Biden and Buttigieg. One generation after another, they claim special geopolitical (Biden) or technocratic (Buttigieg) expertise while striving to project warm personas in front of cameras. The equivalents, one might say, of happy-face stickers on corpses. Such dedicated political services to militarism are also political services to the corporate power of oligarchy. Political positions on class warfare don’t always run parallel to positions on military warfare. But they have now clearly aligned in the race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. Days ago, Bernie Sanders summed up: “I know that it is rarely the children of the billionaire class who face the agony of reckless foreign policy, it is the children of working families.” One of the many reasons I’m actively supporting Sanders for president is that (although hardly flawless) his track record on military spending, war, and foreign policy is much better than the records of his opponents. Devastating impacts of nonstop war are all around us in the United States, from deadly federal budget priorities to traumatic effects of normalized violence. And it’s difficult to grasp the magnitude of harm to so many millions of human beings in other countries. Sometimes, while trying to clear away the fog of the USA’s political and media abstractions, I think of people I met in Baghdad and Kabul and Tehran, their lives no less precious than yours or mine. Norman Solomon is co-founder and national coordinator of RootsAction.org. He was a Bernie Sanders delegate from California to the 2016 Democratic National Convention and is currently a coordinator of the relaunched independent Bernie Delegates Network. Solomon is the author of a dozen books including War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News. READ MORE Contribute to RSN Update My Monthly Donation

DemocracyNOW!: Ralph Nader on TPP, GM Recall, Nuclear Power & the "Unstoppable" Left-Right Anti-Corporate Movement, Cowboy Indian Alliance Protests Keystone XL Pipeline..., et al

Ralph Nader's interview on DemocracyNow! is worth listening to.
Among his comments to protect consumers from defective vehicles, Ralph Nader included:

Better funding for government agencies to protect consumers

Protection for WHISTLEBLOWERS

Ralph Nader on TPP, GM Recall, Nuclear Power & the "Unstoppable" Left-Right Anti-Corporate Movement Former presidential candidate and longtime consumer advocate Ralph Nader joins us to discuss his latest book, Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate ... Read More →

Cowboy Indian Alliance Protests Keystone XL Pipeline in D.C. After Latest Obama Admin Delay Thousands of people rallied in Washington, D.C., on Saturday calling on President Obama to reject the Keystone XL pipeline. The protest was organized by the Cowboy Indian Alliance, a ... Read More →

"We Need to End the Fossil Fuel Age": Music Legend Neil Young Protests Keystone XL Oil Pipeline The legendary Canadian musician Neil Young joined Saturday's protest against the Keystone XL pipeline in Washington, D.C. "We're all children of Mother Earth, and I'm here because I feel ... Read More →

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Will Pope Francis Help Stop the Growth of European Fascism?

FOCUS | Will Pope Francis Help Stop the Growth of European Fascism?

Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News
Weissman reports: "Will Pope Francis stand up against the growing threat of a new European fascism? Or will the Catholic Church under his leadership aid and abet the 'fachos' as the controversial Pope Pius XII and so much of his Church has been accused – rightly or wrongly – of doing in the 1930s?"
READ MORE

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I RELY UPON RSN AS MY MAIN NEWS SOURCE: I rely upon RSN as my main news source because the mainstream media cannot be trusted to report anything truthful. RSN is precious to me. I am only able to pay $10 per month because of my financial situation; but RSN is precious enough that if I had more I would absolutely give it. / Doris, RSN Reader-Supporters

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Howard Kurtz Would Like the FCC to Just Quit it Already

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Romneyism

I've always appreciated the insight and perspective Robert Reich offers --

Romneyism

Saturday, November 3, 2012

By now, in these last remaining days before the election of 2012, we have learned enough about the beliefs of the Republican presidential candidate to see them as a worldview all its own – a kind of creed that explains Mitt Romney. Those who say he has no principles are selling him short.

 

Despite its contradictions and ellipses, Romneyism has an internal coherence. It is different from conservatism, because it does not intend to conserve or protect any particular institutions or values. It is also distinct from Republicanism, in that it is not rooted in traditional small-town American values, nationalism, or states’ rights.

 

The ten guiding principles of Romneyism are:

 

1. Corporations are the basic units of society. Corporations are people, and the overriding purpose of an economy is to maximize corporate profits. When profits are maximized, the economy grows fastest. This growth benefits everyone in the form greater output, better products and services, and higher share prices.

 

2. Workers are a means to the goal of maximizing corporate profits. If workers do not contribute to that goal, they should be fired. If they cannot then find other work that helps maximize profits in another company, their wages must be too high, and they must therefore accept steadily lower wages until they find a job.

 

3. All factors of production – capital, physical plant and equipment, workers – are fungible and should be treated the same. Any that fail to deliver high competitive returns should be replaced or discarded. This keeps an economy efficient. Fairness is and should be irrelevant.

 

4. Pollution, unsafe products, unsafe working conditions, financial fraud, and other negative side effects of the pursuit of profits are the price society pays for profit-driven growth. They should not be used as excuses to constrain the pursuit of profits through regulation.

 

5. Individual worth depends on net worth — how much money one has made, and the value of the assets that money has been invested in. Any person with enough intelligence and ambition can make a fortune. Failure to do so is sign of moral and intellectual inferiority.

 

6. People who fail in the economy should not be coddled. They should not receive food stamps, Medicaid, or any other form of social subsidy. Coddling leads to a weaker society and a weaker economy.

 

7. Taxes are inherently bad because they constrain profit-making. It is the right and responsibility of individuals and corporations to exploit every tax loophole they (and their tax attorneys) can find in order to pay the lowest taxes possible.

 

8. Politics is a game whose only purpose is to win. Any means used to win the game is legitimate even if it involves lying and cheating, as long as it gains more supporters than it loses.

 

9. Democracy is dangerous because it is forever vulnerable to the votes of a majority intent on capturing the wealth of the successful minority, on whom the economy depends. The rich must therefore do whatever is necessary to prevent the majority from exercising its will, including spending large sums of money on lobbyists and political campaigns. The most virtuous among the rich will go a step further and run for president.

 

10. The three most important aspects of life are family, religion, and money. Patriotism is a matter of guarding our economy from unfair traders and undocumented immigrants, rather than joining together for the common good. We owe nothing to one another as citizens of the same society.

 

On Tuesday we’ll decide whether these should be the guiding principles of America.

 

http://robertreich.org/post/34910261055

 

ROBERT B. REICH, Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, was Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration. Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written thirteen books, including the best sellers “Aftershock" and “The Work of Nations." His latest, "Beyond Outrage," is now out in paperback. He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine and chairman of Common Cause.