The class war by the oligarchy continues apace.

The recent budget deal that was struck by Obama and the Democrats with the Republicans to finalize the budget for the rest of the 2011 fiscal year lavished some more gifts to the oligarchy, cutting spending for science, education, health care, and the environment while defense spending got an increase of $5 billion.

Once that was out of the way Paul Ryan, the Republican congressperson from Wisconsin who is chair of the House budget committee, presented the Republican budget plan for the future, which was dutifully slobbered over by the elites in the media and business circles as ‘serious, ‘brave’, and ‘thoughtful’ because it attacked the poor and the middle classes and gave even more to the oligarchy. In the bizarre world of elite media commentary, it has become the norm to be praised when you kick the powerless in the teeth and grovel before the wealthy.

Paul Krugman describes Ryan’s plan as essentially a fraud.

Last week, Mr. Ryan unveiled his budget proposal, and the initial reaction of much of the punditocracy was best summed up (sarcastically) by the blogger John Cole: “The plan is bold! It is serious! It took courage! It re-frames the debate! The ball is in Obama’s court! Very wonky! It is a game-changer! Did I mention it is serious?”

Then people who actually understand budget numbers went to work, and it became clear that the proposal wasn’t serious at all. In fact, it was a sick joke. The only real things in it were savage cuts in aid to the needy and the uninsured, huge tax cuts for corporations and the rich, and Medicare privatization. All the alleged cost savings were pure fantasy.

Matt Taibbi also excoriated Ryan’s proposal in his usual style.

Paul Ryan, the Republican Party’s latest entrant in the seemingly endless series of young, prickish, over-coiffed, anal-retentive deficit Robespierres they’ve sent to the political center stage in the last decade or so, has come out with his new budget plan.
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Republicans, quite smartly, recognize that there is great political hay to be made in the appearance of deficit reduction, and that white middle class voters will respond with overwhelming enthusiasm to any call for reductions in the “welfare state,” a term which said voters will instantly associate with black welfare moms and Mexicans sneaking over the border to visit American emergency rooms.

The problem, of course, is that to actually make significant cuts in what is left of the “welfare state,” one has to cut Medicare and Medicaid, programs overwhelmingly patronized by white people, and particularly white seniors. So when the time comes to actually pull the trigger on the proposed reductions, the whippersnappers are quietly removed from the stage and life goes on as usual, i.e. with massive deficit spending on defense, upper-class tax cuts, bailouts, corporate subsidies, and big handouts to Pharma and the insurance industries.

Like Krugman, Taibbi takes to task the media for their willingness to declare the Ryan’s plan as ‘bold’, ‘courageous’ and ‘daring’, saying that “a huge part of the blame for the confusion and the national angst over our budget issues has to be laid at the feet of media a——- like [David] Brooks, who continually misrepresent what is actually happening with national spending.”

Brooks then goes on to slobber over all of Ryan’s ostensibly daring proposals, from the Medicare block grants to the more obnoxious Medicare voucher program (replacing Medicare benefits with vouchers to buy overpriced private insurance, which Brooks calls the government “giving you a sum of money” to choose from “a regulated menu of insurance options”).

What he doesn’t mention is that Ryan’s proposal also includes dropping the top tax rate for rich people from 35 percent to 25 percent. All by itself, that one change means that the government would be collecting over $4 trillion less over the next ten years.
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The last ten years or so have seen the government send massive amounts of money to people in the top tax brackets, mainly through two methods: huge tax cuts, and financial bailouts. The government has spent trillions of our national treasure bailing out Wall Street, which has resulted directly in enormous, record profit numbers – nearly $100 billion in the last three years (and that doesn’t even count the tens of billions more in inflated compensation and bonuses that came more or less directly from government aid). Add to that the $700 billion or so the Obama tax cuts added to the national debt over the next two years, and we’re looking at a trillion dollars of lost revenue in just a few years.
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No matter what, Ryan’s gambit, ultimately, is all about trying to get middle-class voters to swallow paying for tax cuts for rich people.

This cartoon by Tom Toles says it all.

Some of you may have heard about the dissatisfaction at the way that IKEA is treating workers at its US plant in Danville, Virginia. This was unexpected since the Swedish firm has a reputation as “a good employer and solid corporate citizen” back in its home country.

Workers complain of eliminated raises, a frenzied pace and mandatory overtime. Several said it’s common to find out on Friday evening that they’ll have to pull a weekend shift, with disciplinary action for those who can’t or don’t show up.
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Some of the Virginia plant’s 335 workers are trying to form a union. The International Assn. of Machinists and Aerospace Workers said a majority of eligible employees had signed cards expressing interest.

In response, the factory — part of Ikea’s manufacturing subsidiary, Swedwood — hired the law firm Jackson Lewis, which has made its reputation keeping unions out of companies.
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The dust-up has garnered little attention in the U.S. But it’s front-page news in Sweden, where much of the labor force is unionized and Ikea is a cherished institution. Per-Olaf Sjoo, the head of the Swedish union in Swedwood factories, said he was baffled by the friction in Danville. Ikea’s code of conduct, known as IWAY, guarantees workers the right to organize and stipulates that all overtime be voluntary.

[Read more…]

Glenn Greenwald points out what I have been saying all along, that Obama’s goals are not what his supporters think they are.

I was wondering how long it would be before some country that is lectured on human rights by the US government would turn around and hurl its own abuses back at it. It would have to be a country that was independent enough of US influence. Well, it looks like China has taken the lead, in response to Hillary Clinton’s criticism of human rights in China.

According to Reuter’s “The United States is beset by violence, racism and torture and has no authority to condemn other governments’ human rights problems, China said on Sunday, countering U.S. criticism of Beijing’s crackdown.” China also said that the US’s advocacy of free information flow was contradicted by its efforts to shut down WikiLeaks.

Now that China has said it, how long before other countries justify their own abuses in a similar fashion? When one country denies human rights to people, it starts a downward spiral in which other countries justify their own abuses by saying “Why pick on us when they do it?”

A long list of law academics, some of whom have been considered supporters of president Obama, have signed a letter strongly protesting the cruel treatment of Bradley Manning.

The existence of this letter was reported in the London Guardian:

The list of signatories includes Laurence Tribe, a Harvard professor who is considered to be America’s foremost liberal authority on constitutional law. He taught constitutional law to Barack Obama and was a key backer of his 2008 presidential campaign.

Tribe joined the Obama administration last year as a legal adviser in the justice department, a post he held until three months ago.

He told the Guardian he signed the letter because Manning appeared to have been treated in a way that “is not only shameful but unconstitutional” as he awaits court martial in Quantico marine base in Virginia.
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The intervention of Tribe and hundreds of other legal scholars is a huge embarrassment to Obama, who was a professor of constitutional law in Chicago. Obama made respect for the rule of law a cornerstone of his administration, promising when he first entered the White House in 2009 to end the excesses of the Bush administration’s war on terrorism.

I hope US news outlets pick up on this and publicize it widely.

We frequently get reports of how civilians, including women and children, get killed in air strikes by drones and other military aircraft. But why does this keep happening, when the technology is now supposed to be so advanced that people can be identified at long range? Surely you should be able to at least be able to make out children to alert you that you are not engaging fighters?

This article, based on military documents and transcripts of cockpit and radio conversations obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, describes in detail how one such tragedy came about. It shows the power of confirmation bias, how when you are determinedly looking for something, you interpret events as supporting your beliefs even if they do not.

While attention is focused on Libya, the authorities in Bahrain, aided by Saudi Arabian forces, are brutally cracking down on demonstrators in that country, turning it into an ‘island of fear’.

Joe Stork of the US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) described the apparent police beatings featured in the latest pictures as “extremely disturbing”.

“Bahrain is now a state where the police are acting with complete impunity. There is no accountability, not even an effort to cover up what is going on,” said Mr Stork, HRW’s Middle East and Bahraini expert.

This is a wonderful local organization that is trying to stop the US’s endless wars around the world. You can get more information at its website or by phone at 216-736-4716 or email to noacinfo@aol.com.

They are having a demonstration to end US/NATO Military Strikes on Libya.

‘Stop US/ NATO War on Libya’ Demonstration – Come to the Rally and Judge for Yourself
Friday, April 8, 3-4:30 pm,
the Federal Bldg., Lakeside Ave. and East
9th St., downtown Cleveland

[Read more…]

Barack Obama steadily accumulates king-like powers, an affinity for an imperial presidency that he deplored when Bush/Cheney displayed that trait in office.

PolitiFact finds that in the way he has gone to war against Libya, Obama has done the ‘Full Flop’, their term for an unambiguous 180-degree switch from what he said as a candidate, which was that, “The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.”

But that is not the only ‘Full Flop’ by Obama. As a candidate he advocated strong transparency and praised whistleblowers as important in preventing waste, abuse, and inefficiency and promised them greater protections. As president, he now attacks whistleblowers and journalists with a passion that exceeds even Bush/Cheney. The mainstream media did not seem to care as long as the targeted whistleblowers were merely government employees. Now that the ever-deferential New York Times is also being targeted, it will be interesting to see how they respond.

Glenn Greenwald talks about how Obama is now even attacking our Miranda rights. But everything is sunny in Obama Land where he can do no wrong and his reputation as a constitutional scholar remains unsullied.

[T]he good thing about being Barack Obama is that you’re justified in what you do even when you first do X and then do Not X.

Thus, when you argue that wars need Congressional approval, you’re standing up for the Constitution; when you start a war without Congressional approval, you’re a humanitarian. When you announce you will release torture photos in the government’s possession, you’re a stalwart defender of transparency; when you change your mind two weeks later and announce you’ll conceal those photos, you’re standing up for The Troops. When you give Miranda warnings to Terrorism suspects, you’re honoring the Rule of Law and protecting American values; when you turn around and deny those very same rights, you’re showing your devotion to Keeping us Safe.

Barack Obama must be channeling Mel Brooks as King Louis XVI in the film The History of the World, Part 1 who did anything he wanted without suffering any consequence, all the while saying, “It’s good to be the king.”

Obama is enabled in this by the amount of deference he receives from his followers, which is similar to what Bush/Cheney received from their fans. For example, Kevin Drum is a blogger at Mother Jones who can be labeled a centrist. He recently wrote about his concerns about Obama’s decision to attack Libya:

So what should I think about this? If it had been my call, I wouldn’t have gone into Libya. But the reason I voted for Obama in 2008 is because I trust his judgment. And not in any merely abstract way, either: I mean that if he and I were in a room and disagreed about some issue on which I had any doubt at all, I’d literally trust his judgment over my own. I think he’s smarter than me, better informed, better able to understand the consequences of his actions, and more farsighted. I voted for him because I trust his judgment, and I still do.

This is quite extraordinary. It is one thing to say that when someone whose judgment you respect disagrees with you, it gives you pause. That pause presumably makes you investigate further until you can justify your prior judgment or learn something new that changes your view. It is quite another to say that you would simply take that judgment over your own when you disagree.

One could also say that on an issue which one has no expertise to evaluate and arrive at a reasonably informed judgment because of the technical knowledge involved (say climate change or details of evolutionary theory or cosmology or monetary policy), one goes with the judgment of people whom one trusts to have the required expertise and judgment.

But that is not the case with Libya, which involves principles and policies that can and should be publicly articulated as part of the process of persuading the Congress and the nation that going to war is justified, unless one thinks that Obama has reasons that he cannot divulge to the country. But then we are entering “We have secret information that Saddam Hussein has WMD” territory and we know how that ends up.

James Madison got it right when he said, “I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedoms of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”

The Obama Department of Justice has announced that it is giving up on the original plan to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged leader of the 9/11 plot, in a regular court in New York City and will instead use a military tribunal in Guantanamo. This is shameful. As Glenn Greenwald says:

Indeed, as I’ve documented before — virtually every country that suffers horrible Terrorist attacks — Britain, Spain, India, Indonesia — tries the accused perpetrators in its regular court system, on their own soil, usually in the city that was attacked. The U.S. — Land of the Free and Home of the Brave — stands alone in being too afraid to do so.

Related to that: the notion that political opinion in America would not allow Obama to do anything differently on these issues is empirically disproven; he ran on a platform of opposing all the measures he now supports and won decisively. By itself, that proves that — when these debates are engaged rather than conceded — these positions are politically sustainable. Obama adopts Bush Terrorism policies because he wants to and has no reason not to — not because doing so is a political necessity.

Finally — and as is usually true for this excuse — the notion that “Congress made him do it” is totally false: aside from the fact that the Obama administration long ago announced that it would retain the military commission system, the White House — long before Congress acted to ban transfers of detainees to the U.S. — removed decision-making power from the DOJ in the KSM case and made clear it would likely reverse Holder’s decision.

[UPDATE: Dahlia Lithwick also excoriates the Obama administration on its reversal.]

Elsewhere, Jason Ditz recounts the history of excuses on not closing Guantanamo.