Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree
AMERICAN HYPOCRISY AND THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL OF OUR DEMOCRACY
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This will be an unwelcome comment but I believe we should shut off this thread at least overnight and have a space while we think about the officers killed today in Baton Rouge and the black former marine who shot them. And the families of all of them.
by Flavius on Sun, 07/17/2016 - 11:28pm
This will be an unwelcome comment but I believe we should shut off this thread at least overnight and have a space while we think about the officers killed today in Baton Rouge and the black former marine who shot them. And the families of all of them.
by Flavius on Sun, 07/17/2016 - 11:28pm
Flavius,
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Your comment is not unwelcome at all, because it clearly points out a very serious area of hypocrisy that we have in this country. We'd have to shut down the site indefinitely if we decided to honor all of the innocent Black people and their families who are being brutally murdered by rogue cops - and this comes from the father of a federal agent, so I'm definitely not a cop hater. In fact, I love one.
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So the tension that led to the brutal murder of both these officers, and the scores of innocent Black people who have been killed is exactly what this thread is SUPPOSE to be about - unequal justice under the law, and its inevitable consequences.
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Your comment is not unwelcome at all, because it clearly points out a very serious area of hypocrisy that we have in this country. We'd have to shut down the site indefinitely if we decided to honor all of the innocent Black people and their families who are being brutally murdered by rogue cops - and this comes from the father of a federal agent, so I'm definitely not a cop hater. In fact, I love one.
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So the tension that led to the brutal murder of both these officers, and the scores of innocent Black people who have been killed is exactly what this thread is SUPPOSE to be about - unequal justice under the law, and its inevitable consequences.
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But what makes your comment particularly enlightening is out of all the threads on this site, why should we shutdown THIS particular thread? While your comment may have been completely innocent and well meaning, it speaks volumes regarding our social conditioning in this country. In fact, you couldn't have said more if I had written it for you myself. It begs the question, what makes one person's life more valuable than another? That's what all the hoopla is about. It seems that no matter how "liberal" some White people profess to be, Black lives just don't seem to matter as much - either by rogue cops, White juries, or even many Black accommodationists.
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But this is a question that White people need to be very concerned about - especially if they are a part of the working class - because we are now knee-deep in a class struggle, and race is meaningless to the corporate oligarchs and their political cronies. They'll send your child to his or her death in a heartbeat if it means they can make a dollar, as they've already demonstrated.
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So White working-class people should be very concerned about the growing devaluation of human life, and start putting the value of life in perspective. Because this hierarchy of injustice starts at the top with the political elites, and then it trickles it's way down. The elitists can do no wrong and we can do no right, unless we're in complete lockstep with their desires. Then the legal impunity of the elitists filters its way down to their surrogates, the rogue cop on the street, and then finally ends in the mass brutalization of the average citizen who is not in complete lockstep with their plutocratic agenda.
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And we can witness no better example of how that system works than the sham that took place in the FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton. Just imagine what would happen to you if you worked for the State Department and put classified files on your home computer. Do you think they would worry about your "intent?" I don't think so. What Hillary did is called "Gross (criminal) Negligence," and "Endangering National Security," both, very serious crimes. She should have, at the very least, lost her security clearance, but that would have prevented her from running for president. So in Hillary's case it was just fluffed off, while in another case, Sandra Bland was dragged from her vehicle, brutalized, and died under "suspicious circumstances" while in custody, for smoking a cigarette in her own car.
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So anyone who supports the double standard at work with respect to Hillary Clinton and Sandra Bland is guilty of supporting classism, plutocracy, and the perpetuation of the White supremacist system, and that includes President Obama. I hate to admit that, because I've always been a big supporter of Obama, but one cannot edit truth. We must follow it wherever it leads.
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So anyone who supports the double standard at work with respect to Hillary Clinton and Sandra Bland is guilty of supporting classism, plutocracy, and the perpetuation of the White supremacist system, and that includes President Obama. I hate to admit that, because I've always been a big supporter of Obama, but one cannot edit truth. We must follow it wherever it leads.
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That said a lot to me. The most benevolent spin that one can put on Obama's actions is that it was politically clumsy. But Obama is not known for being a clumsy politician. He is known, however, for acknowledging the political lay of the land - that's why Bush and Cheney aren't in prison. So while I have always been a strong Obama supporter, I support truth, justice, and a fully functional democracy much more. I don't see President Obama, or any other politician, as my leader. I see them as my employees, and as one of his employers, I don't like what he did, at all. For that reason, I will always criticize him for failing to take action against Bush and Cheney, and now, I will always criticize him for this Clinton decision.
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I mean, this was a woman who tried to dog-whistled his assassination! So something MUST be going
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| JEEVES, GO FETCH ME A SENATOR . . . ANY ONE OF 'EM WILL DO. |
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But this hierarchy of "justice" is nothing new; it's simply becoming more blatant, and much more pronounced. It started with the pardon of Richard Nixon, and then Reagan committed outright treason in the Iran-Contra affair, and then flooded the Black community with crack cocaine (with Bill Clinton's help) with complete impunity. Thereafter, George Bush Sr. sent our troops to die in Iraq, for the first time, in order to take his son, Neil Bush's, name out of the news after an investigation found him guilty of "breaches of his fiduciary duties involving multiple conflicts of interest." The story regarding the investigation was reported by UPI on June 29, 1990, and we invaded Iraq one month later. Then, of course, we had George W. Bush and Dick Cheney sending our troops back into Iraq where 4500 of our troops were killed, and countless others maimed for life (this time with Hillary Clinton's help) in order to enrich war profiteers.
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This kind of thing has been going on every since the corporate and political elitists found out just how gullible the American people have become when we bought into the supply-side economics scam. It's been open-house on the American people every since, and the American middle class has been in a downward spiral every since.
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Supply- Side Economics was a scheme hatch by U.S.C. economist Arthur Laffer and the Reagan crowd which was supposed to cut the deficit and balance the budget. The theory behind Reaganomics was ostensibly, if you cut taxes for business and people in the upper tax brackets, and then deregulated business of such nuisances as safety regulations and environmental safeguards, the beneficiaries would invest their savings into creating new jobs. In that way the money would eventually "trickle down" to the rest of us. The resulting broadened tax base would not only help to bring down the deficit, but also subsidize the tremendously high defense budget. When the plan was first floated, even George Bush, Reagan's vice president to be, called it "voodoo economics."
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Reaganomics, for the most part, sought to undo many of the safeguards put into place during the Roosevelt era and create a business environment similar to that which was in place during the Coolidge Administration. That's also what Bill Clinton did when he ripped the guts out of Glass-Steagall, and with the very same result.
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Instead of taking the money and investing it into creating new jobs, the money was used in wild schemes and stock market speculation. One of these schemes, the leveraged buy-out, involved buying up large companies with borrowed funds secured by the company's assets, then paying off the loan by selling off the assets of the purchased company. This practice cost the citizens of this country its industrial base. In addition, the bottom fell out of the stock market. On Monday, October 19, 1987 the Dow-Jones Average fell 508.32 points. It was the greatest one-day decline since 1914 - 15 years before the Great Depression.
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And what about Ronald Reagan's promise to balance the budget and lower the deficit? By the time he left office he was not only the most prolific spender of any president, but he also added more to the deficit than all of the other presidents from George Washington to his own administration combined. And what does the Republican Party propose to do about that? One of the Republican proposals was their "contract with America," a capitol gains tax cut -- for the rich.
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Supply- Side Economics was a scheme hatch by U.S.C. economist Arthur Laffer and the Reagan crowd which was supposed to cut the deficit and balance the budget. The theory behind Reaganomics was ostensibly, if you cut taxes for business and people in the upper tax brackets, and then deregulated business of such nuisances as safety regulations and environmental safeguards, the beneficiaries would invest their savings into creating new jobs. In that way the money would eventually "trickle down" to the rest of us. The resulting broadened tax base would not only help to bring down the deficit, but also subsidize the tremendously high defense budget. When the plan was first floated, even George Bush, Reagan's vice president to be, called it "voodoo economics."
.
Reaganomics, for the most part, sought to undo many of the safeguards put into place during the Roosevelt era and create a business environment similar to that which was in place during the Coolidge Administration. That's also what Bill Clinton did when he ripped the guts out of Glass-Steagall, and with the very same result.
.
Instead of taking the money and investing it into creating new jobs, the money was used in wild schemes and stock market speculation. One of these schemes, the leveraged buy-out, involved buying up large companies with borrowed funds secured by the company's assets, then paying off the loan by selling off the assets of the purchased company. This practice cost the citizens of this country its industrial base. In addition, the bottom fell out of the stock market. On Monday, October 19, 1987 the Dow-Jones Average fell 508.32 points. It was the greatest one-day decline since 1914 - 15 years before the Great Depression.
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And what about Ronald Reagan's promise to balance the budget and lower the deficit? By the time he left office he was not only the most prolific spender of any president, but he also added more to the deficit than all of the other presidents from George Washington to his own administration combined. And what does the Republican Party propose to do about that? One of the Republican proposals was their "contract with America," a capitol gains tax cut -- for the rich.
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HERE ARE BUT A FEW OF THE GAMES RUN ON THE AMERICAN PEOPLE BY THE ELITISTS WITH IMPUNITY
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Due to the continued freewheeling fiscal policies of conservative Republicans, between 1986 and 1989, spanning the presidencies of Reagan and Bush Sr., the FSLIC had to pay off all the depositors of 296 institutions with assets of over $125 billion.
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Then in 1988 Silverado Savings and Loan collapsed, costing the taxpayers $1.3 billion. It was headed by Neil Bush, brother of George W. The investigation alleged that he was guilty of "breaches of his fiduciary duties involving multiple conflicts of interest." The issue was eventually settled out of court with Bush paying a mere $50,000 settlement.
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Then there was the Lincoln Savings and loan scandal in 1987, involving John McCain. The scandal was very similar to the one that is currently playing out on Wall Street. He was one of a group of senators dubbed "The Keating Five" involved in a scandal by the same name.
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In 1976 Charles Keating moved to Arizona to run the American Continental Corporation. In 1984, shortly after the Reagan era push to deregulate the savings and loan community, Keating bought Lincoln Savings and Loan and began to engage in highly risky investments with the depositors' savings. In 1989 the parent company, which Keating headed, went bankrupt, and it resulted in over 21,000 investors losing their life savings. Most of the investors were elderly, and the loss amounted to about 285 million dollars.
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After having received over a million dollars from Keating in illegal campaign contributions, gifts, free trips, and other gratuities, the Keating Five--Senators John Glenn, Don Riegle, Dennis DeConini, Alan Cranston, and Sen. John McCain--attempted to intervene in the investigation into Keating's activities by the regulators. Later, they were admonished to varying degrees by the senate for attempting to influence regulators on Keating's behalf. Charles Keating ended up being convicted for fraud, racketeering and conspiracy, for which he received 10 years by the state court, and a 12 year sentence in federal court. After spending four and a half years in prison, his convictions were overturned. But prior to being retried, he pled guilty to a number of felonies in return for a sentence of time served.
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Then came the George W. Bush administration that caused close to a million people to die uselessly in an illegal war in Iraq, robbed the American people blind, whose fumbling ignited the longest war in American history in Afghanistan, and whose greed came very close to sending the nation into yet another depression, so people of every race need to open their eyes, because we're being treated like pawns.
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So it hasn't been lost on me that no matter how much evidence is brought to the table about how unjust the Clintons have been to Black people - Bill’s role in flooding the Black community with crack cocaine, followed by the mass incarceration of Black people, and then creating the prison industrial complex - it's been like spittin' in the wind. It’s simply been either brushed off or outright denied and other issues are brought up in their place. The reason for that is regardless to what people say, or what their political persuasion, they've been conditioned to believe that Black lives don't matter. But now, just one or two White cops are killed and you want an evening of silence to commemorate their deaths. Are you completely blind to the gross hypocrisy in that!!!?
Due to the continued freewheeling fiscal policies of conservative Republicans, between 1986 and 1989, spanning the presidencies of Reagan and Bush Sr., the FSLIC had to pay off all the depositors of 296 institutions with assets of over $125 billion.
.
Then in 1988 Silverado Savings and Loan collapsed, costing the taxpayers $1.3 billion. It was headed by Neil Bush, brother of George W. The investigation alleged that he was guilty of "breaches of his fiduciary duties involving multiple conflicts of interest." The issue was eventually settled out of court with Bush paying a mere $50,000 settlement.
.
Then there was the Lincoln Savings and loan scandal in 1987, involving John McCain. The scandal was very similar to the one that is currently playing out on Wall Street. He was one of a group of senators dubbed "The Keating Five" involved in a scandal by the same name.
.
In 1976 Charles Keating moved to Arizona to run the American Continental Corporation. In 1984, shortly after the Reagan era push to deregulate the savings and loan community, Keating bought Lincoln Savings and Loan and began to engage in highly risky investments with the depositors' savings. In 1989 the parent company, which Keating headed, went bankrupt, and it resulted in over 21,000 investors losing their life savings. Most of the investors were elderly, and the loss amounted to about 285 million dollars.
.
After having received over a million dollars from Keating in illegal campaign contributions, gifts, free trips, and other gratuities, the Keating Five--Senators John Glenn, Don Riegle, Dennis DeConini, Alan Cranston, and Sen. John McCain--attempted to intervene in the investigation into Keating's activities by the regulators. Later, they were admonished to varying degrees by the senate for attempting to influence regulators on Keating's behalf. Charles Keating ended up being convicted for fraud, racketeering and conspiracy, for which he received 10 years by the state court, and a 12 year sentence in federal court. After spending four and a half years in prison, his convictions were overturned. But prior to being retried, he pled guilty to a number of felonies in return for a sentence of time served.
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So it hasn't been lost on me that no matter how much evidence is brought to the table about how unjust the Clintons have been to Black people - Bill’s role in flooding the Black community with crack cocaine, followed by the mass incarceration of Black people, and then creating the prison industrial complex - it's been like spittin' in the wind. It’s simply been either brushed off or outright denied and other issues are brought up in their place. The reason for that is regardless to what people say, or what their political persuasion, they've been conditioned to believe that Black lives don't matter. But now, just one or two White cops are killed and you want an evening of silence to commemorate their deaths. Are you completely blind to the gross hypocrisy in that!!!?
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It clearly demonstrates that regardless to how well-meaning many White people are, they just can't see life, death, or gross injustice from the perspective of a Black person. That's exactly why I'm often misunderstood as being militant, but it's also why I don't give a damn. Not all, but most White folks are completely blind to reality, along with many of their accommodationist Black stooges - though I suspect that many of the stooges choose to be blind, because it helps to promote their accommodationist agenda. But it can really be a frustrating thing to watch, because most people want to think that their fellow citizens have, at the very least, simple common sense. When they cease feeling that way this can be a very scary and lonely place. So I must admit, after what I've seen in this past primary year, and watching many of my fellow citizens just sitting on their hands and letting it happen, the chill is beginning to roll in on me.
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So the bottom line is this - while demonstrations do have their place, we'll never be able to resolve this problem by simply shaking our fists in the street and then going home to be misinformed and distracted by the five corporations that control everything that we see, hear, or read in the media. We've got to come together as a people and clean house in Washington. We've got to get rid of all the plutocrats at the top (like Trump and the Clintons), two-thirds or more of both houses of congress, and then take back our democracy. If we don't, it'll be you and your family's turn soon, because the plutocrats don't care any more about the White working class than they do Black people. When they send your children to war, send your jobs out of the country, or rob you of your lifesavings (and the Clintons have done all of those things), they're clearly demonstrating that your lives don't matter either - it's just not as politically acceptable to shoot you down in the street . . . yet.
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So the bottom line is this - while demonstrations do have their place, we'll never be able to resolve this problem by simply shaking our fists in the street and then going home to be misinformed and distracted by the five corporations that control everything that we see, hear, or read in the media. We've got to come together as a people and clean house in Washington. We've got to get rid of all the plutocrats at the top (like Trump and the Clintons), two-thirds or more of both houses of congress, and then take back our democracy. If we don't, it'll be you and your family's turn soon, because the plutocrats don't care any more about the White working class than they do Black people. When they send your children to war, send your jobs out of the country, or rob you of your lifesavings (and the Clintons have done all of those things), they're clearly demonstrating that your lives don't matter either - it's just not as politically acceptable to shoot you down in the street . . . yet.
Eric L. Wattree
http://wattree.blogspot.com/
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)
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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)
.
Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.