FROM: ALTERNET.COM:
The Real Reason Big Macs Are Cheaper Than More Nutritious Alternatives
By David Sirota, Salon
Posted on July 15, 2011, Printed on July 16, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/151660
This story first appeared on Salon.com.
The easiest way to explain Gallup's discovery that millions of Americans are eating fewer fruits and vegetables than they ate last year is to simply crack a snarky joke about Whole Foods really being "Whole Paycheck." Rooted in the old limousine liberal iconography, the quip conjures the notion that only Birkenstock-wearing trust-funders can afford to eat right in tough times.
It seems a tidy explanation for a disturbing trend, implying that healthy food is inherently more expensive, and thus can only be for wealthy Endive Elitists when the economy falters. But if the talking point's carefully crafted mix of faux populism and oversimplification seems a bit facile -- if the glib explanation seems almost too perfectly sculpted for your local right-wing radio blowhard -- that's because it dishonestly omits the most important part of the story. The part about how healthy food could easily be more affordable for everyone right now, if not for those ultimate elitists: agribusiness CEOs, their lobbyists and the politicians they own.
As with most issues in this new Gilded Age, the tale of the American diet is a story of the worst form of corporatism -- the kind whereby the government uses public monies to protect private profit.
In this chapter of that larger tragicomedy, lawmakers whose campaigns are underwritten by agribusinesses have used billions of taxpayer dollars to subsidize those agribusinesses' specific commodities (corn, soybeans, wheat, etc.) that are the key ingredients of unhealthy food. Not surprisingly, the subsidies have manufactured a price inequality that helps junk food undersell nutritious-but-unsubsidized foodstuffs like fruits and vegetables. The end result is that recession-battered consumers are increasingly forced by economic circumstance to "choose" the lower-priced junk food that their taxes support.
Corn -- which is processed into the junk-food staple corn syrup and which feeds the livestock that produce meat -- exemplifies the scheme.
"Over the past decade, the federal government has poured more than $50 billion into the corn industry, keeping prices for the crop ... artificially low," reports Time magazine. "That's why McDonald's can sell you a Big Mac, fries and a Coke for around $5 -- a bargain."
Yes, it is a bargain, but one created by deliberate government policy that serves the corn industry titans, not by any genetic advantage that makes corn derivatives automatically more affordable for the budget-strapped commoner.
The aggregate effect of such market manipulation across the agriculture industry, notes Time, is "that a dollar [can] buy 1,200 calories of potato chips or 875 calories of soda but just 250 calories of vegetables or 170 calories of fresh fruit."
So while it may be amusing to use Americans' worsening recession-era diet as another excuse to promote cultural stereotypes, the nutrition crisis costing us billions in unnecessary healthcare costs is more about public policy and powerful special interests than it is about epicurean snobs and affluent tastes. Indeed, this is a problem not of individual proclivities or of agricultural biology that supposedly makes nutrition naturally unaffordable -- it is a problem of rigged economics and corrupt policymaking.
Solving the crisis, then, requires everything from recalibrating our subsidies to halting the low-income school lunch program's support for the pizza and French fry lobby (yes, they have a powerful lobby). It requires, in other words, a new level of maturity, a better appreciation for the nuanced politics of food and a commitment to changing those politics for the future.
Impossible? Hardly. A country that can engineer the seemingly unattainable economics of a $5 McDonald's feast certainly has the capacity to produce a healthy meal for the same price. It's just a matter of will -- or won't.
© 2011 Salon.com
David Sirota is a best-selling author whose new book "Back to Our Future" is now available. He hosts the morning show on AM760 in Colorado and is a contributing writer at Salon.com. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com, follow him on Twitter @davidsirota or visit his website at www.davidsirota.com.
© 2011 Salon All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/151660/
[w1]
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Thursday, May 05, 2011
Toxic Parents and the Neglected Child
If you are having a hard time conceptualizing the irrelevance of the conventional political parties, Democrats and Republicans, to the well-being of the people in this age of the new class war, imagine that they are like toxic parents. That is, the political parties are like those parents who are always narcissisticly arguing with one another. Their venom leaks out all over the neglected children who can't figure out really why the parents are arguing. The parents are not about to let the children know.
Eventually the children will come to believe they are to blame for the dissension; the parents will eventually come to blame the kids. The dysfunctionality will continue into the next generation, unless of course the children realize they have to take their lives into their own hands and stop believing the parents will ever make matters right or explain why it all happened in the first place.
So, like the neglected children the people will some day have to realize they must take their well-being into their own hands and say good bye to conventional venomous politics as usual.
Eventually the children will come to believe they are to blame for the dissension; the parents will eventually come to blame the kids. The dysfunctionality will continue into the next generation, unless of course the children realize they have to take their lives into their own hands and stop believing the parents will ever make matters right or explain why it all happened in the first place.
So, like the neglected children the people will some day have to realize they must take their well-being into their own hands and say good bye to conventional venomous politics as usual.
Tuesday, March 01, 2011
Niagara Times Finally Publishes Useful Information
THIS IS AN ARTICLE POSTED BY "HOBBES" AT NIAGARA TIMES. MAYBE NIAGARA COUNTIANS WILL BEGIN TO WAKE UP TO THE RADIOACTIVE AND TOXIC SHIT HOLE THEY LIVE IN:
March 1, 2011
Welcome to Chernobyl at Niagara Falls
What does the Ukraine have in common with Niagara County, New York? We hear that Pripyat is wonderful this time of the year.
There are more than 100 spots (not counting landfills of more than one-trillion pounds and other radioactive burials at Niagara County) with similar activities spread around Niagara Falls streets, industrial sectors and private properties. For comparison please see:
The reconstruction of Lewiston Road in Niagara Falls is $1.4 million over budget and months behind schedule, according to a Niagara Gazette report earlier this month, and city officials are trying to shed the West Seneca contractor they hired last year to do the work.
The trouble is that the radioactive material that everyone knew was in the roadbed has proved to be more widespread and difficult to handle than city and state officials were willing to acknowledge.
We’ve been warning for three years that the current reconstruction of Lewiston Road and the upcoming reconstruction of Buffalo Avenue pose significant risks to human health and home values. For three years we’ve been warning that studies conducted by the federal government in the 1970s and 1980s suggest that the fill used the last time these roads were rebuilt contained significant levels of dangerous, exotic radiological wastes, which should not simply be shrugged off as “slag” left over from some benign industrial process.
The pre-project environmental surveys performed by defense-contracting giant Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) seemed to confirm our claims: SAIC reported some pockets of contamination along Lewiston Road that registered 100,000 counts per minute on a Geiger counter survey meter, or 4,000 times a reasonable definition of background level radiation. A spokeswoman for DEC recently acknowledged that levels as high as 140,000 counts per minute were discovered in the course of excavating the roadway.
Our opinion of the way the project was undertaken darkened when we learned that the city engineer who signed off on the project parameters, Ali Marzban, turned out not to be an engineer at all. (He has since left the city’s employ.) Our fears were exacerbated when the city handed the work to Man O’ Trees, a construction firm with no experience handling radiological waste. (Indeed, we received reports that Man O’ Trees was falling behind schedule almost from day one of the project, because the volume and activity level of the radioactive materials was much higher than city officials claimed to anticipate.)
The US military and government regulators have stringent rules about the cleanup and handling of radioactive materials such as those found in these Niagara Falls roadways. Why was the city not following those rules, at a bare minimum?
The initial answer to that question is simple: It’s because they would not acknowledge the nature and the volume of the material involved.
With the Lewiston Road project in apparent disarray, it’s tempting to write an I-told-you-so piece. After all, we’ve been doing what we can to chronicle Niagara County’s atomic legacy for 11 years, and warning about these road projects for three. But we’ve got bigger fish to fry, and an even hotter road to fry it on: Buffalo Avenue. SAIC’s study of Buffalo Avenue, where construction is slated to begin this spring, indicates radiation levels as high as 1,000,000 counts per minute. That’s 10 times as hot as Lewiston Road.
Discussions about levels of radiation and the dangers it poses quickly devolve into debates about systems of measurement, what is “natural” and what is “background,” what constitutes exposure, etc. It might therefore be useful to find a simpler context in which to judge the seriousness of the situation in Niagara Falls. The map on the right measures exposure rates to radiation in the Ukraine as a result of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. The areas in red measure up to 20 microroentgens per hour (20 mR/h). These are the exclusion zones, where people are not supposed to live or travel. The lower range, in blue, is seven micro- roentgens per hour mR/h.
In the mid-1970s, the federal government commissioned a company called Edgerton, Germeshausen, and Grier, Inc., (EG&G) to perform an aerial radiation survey conducted 300 feet above the roadways of Niagara County. The survey identified dozens of hotspots near the Whirlpool, around the golf course, along Lewiston Road and Buffalo Avenue, and elsewhere around the city. Some of these peaked at 86 microroentgens per hour (with other, higher rates expected on the Buffalo Avenue project). That level of contamination would seem consistent with that detected in subsequent surveys performed by the Oak Ridge National Laboratories and the recent surveys performed by SAIC.
We can all agree that Chernobyl is bad news. When will we take the contamination in Niagara County as seriously?
Submitted by Geoff Kelly, Louis Ricciuti & Stephanie Berberick
February 28, 2011
March 1, 2011
Welcome to Chernobyl at Niagara Falls
What does the Ukraine have in common with Niagara County, New York? We hear that Pripyat is wonderful this time of the year.
There are more than 100 spots (not counting landfills of more than one-trillion pounds and other radioactive burials at Niagara County) with similar activities spread around Niagara Falls streets, industrial sectors and private properties. For comparison please see:
The reconstruction of Lewiston Road in Niagara Falls is $1.4 million over budget and months behind schedule, according to a Niagara Gazette report earlier this month, and city officials are trying to shed the West Seneca contractor they hired last year to do the work.
The trouble is that the radioactive material that everyone knew was in the roadbed has proved to be more widespread and difficult to handle than city and state officials were willing to acknowledge.
We’ve been warning for three years that the current reconstruction of Lewiston Road and the upcoming reconstruction of Buffalo Avenue pose significant risks to human health and home values. For three years we’ve been warning that studies conducted by the federal government in the 1970s and 1980s suggest that the fill used the last time these roads were rebuilt contained significant levels of dangerous, exotic radiological wastes, which should not simply be shrugged off as “slag” left over from some benign industrial process.
The pre-project environmental surveys performed by defense-contracting giant Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) seemed to confirm our claims: SAIC reported some pockets of contamination along Lewiston Road that registered 100,000 counts per minute on a Geiger counter survey meter, or 4,000 times a reasonable definition of background level radiation. A spokeswoman for DEC recently acknowledged that levels as high as 140,000 counts per minute were discovered in the course of excavating the roadway.
Our opinion of the way the project was undertaken darkened when we learned that the city engineer who signed off on the project parameters, Ali Marzban, turned out not to be an engineer at all. (He has since left the city’s employ.) Our fears were exacerbated when the city handed the work to Man O’ Trees, a construction firm with no experience handling radiological waste. (Indeed, we received reports that Man O’ Trees was falling behind schedule almost from day one of the project, because the volume and activity level of the radioactive materials was much higher than city officials claimed to anticipate.)
The US military and government regulators have stringent rules about the cleanup and handling of radioactive materials such as those found in these Niagara Falls roadways. Why was the city not following those rules, at a bare minimum?
The initial answer to that question is simple: It’s because they would not acknowledge the nature and the volume of the material involved.
With the Lewiston Road project in apparent disarray, it’s tempting to write an I-told-you-so piece. After all, we’ve been doing what we can to chronicle Niagara County’s atomic legacy for 11 years, and warning about these road projects for three. But we’ve got bigger fish to fry, and an even hotter road to fry it on: Buffalo Avenue. SAIC’s study of Buffalo Avenue, where construction is slated to begin this spring, indicates radiation levels as high as 1,000,000 counts per minute. That’s 10 times as hot as Lewiston Road.
Discussions about levels of radiation and the dangers it poses quickly devolve into debates about systems of measurement, what is “natural” and what is “background,” what constitutes exposure, etc. It might therefore be useful to find a simpler context in which to judge the seriousness of the situation in Niagara Falls. The map on the right measures exposure rates to radiation in the Ukraine as a result of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. The areas in red measure up to 20 microroentgens per hour (20 mR/h). These are the exclusion zones, where people are not supposed to live or travel. The lower range, in blue, is seven micro- roentgens per hour mR/h.
In the mid-1970s, the federal government commissioned a company called Edgerton, Germeshausen, and Grier, Inc., (EG&G) to perform an aerial radiation survey conducted 300 feet above the roadways of Niagara County. The survey identified dozens of hotspots near the Whirlpool, around the golf course, along Lewiston Road and Buffalo Avenue, and elsewhere around the city. Some of these peaked at 86 microroentgens per hour (with other, higher rates expected on the Buffalo Avenue project). That level of contamination would seem consistent with that detected in subsequent surveys performed by the Oak Ridge National Laboratories and the recent surveys performed by SAIC.
We can all agree that Chernobyl is bad news. When will we take the contamination in Niagara County as seriously?
Submitted by Geoff Kelly, Louis Ricciuti & Stephanie Berberick
February 28, 2011
Thursday, February 24, 2011
GOV. WALKER: ASSAULT ON LAW AND DEMOCRACY
allowfullscreen>
REPRINTED FROM "THE BUFFALO BEAST: THIS IS AN ACCOUNT OF A PRANK CALL MADE BY THE EDITOR OF THE BUFFALO BEAST. EDITOR MURPHY CALLS GOV. WALKER OF WISCONSIN, PRETENDING TO BE DAVID KOCH, HIS BILLIONAIRE FINANCIAL BACKER. WALKER FALLS FOR THE RUSE AND DISCLOSES WHO HE REALLY IS, A WHORE OF BILLIONAIRES AND THE DESIRE TO CONTROL GOVERNMENT AND BUSINESS IN WISCONSIN:
Koch Whore
Posted by Murphy On February - 23 - 2011
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker answers his master’s call
“David Koch”: We’ll back you any way we can. What we were thinking about the crowd was, uh, was planting some troublemakers.
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker: You know, well, the only problem with that—because we thought about that…
***
whores
WHAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO WITNESS IS REAL. NO NAMES HAVE BEEN CHANGED TO PROTECT THE INNOCENT. THERE ARE NO INNOCENT.
-MURPHY
***
“He’s just hard-lined—will not talk, will not communicate, will not return phone calls.”
-Wisconsin state Sen. Tim Carpenter (D) on Gov. Walker (source)
Carpenter’s quote made me wonder: who could get through to Gov. Walker? Well, what do we know about Walker and his proposed union-busting, no-bid budget? The obvious candidate was David Koch.
I first called at 11:30 am CST, and eventually got through to a young, male receptionist who, upon hearing the magic name Koch, immediately transferred me to Executive Assistant Governor Dorothy Moore.
“We’ve met before, Dorothy,” I nudged. “I really need to talk to Scott—Governor Walker.” She said that, yes, she thought she had met Koch, and that the name was “familiar.” But she insisted that Walker was detained in a meeting and couldn’t get away. She asked about the nature of my call. I balked, “I just needed to speak with the Governor. He knows what this is about,” I said. She told me to call back at noon, and she’d have a better idea of when he would be free.
I called at noon and was quickly transferred to Moore, who then transferred me to Walker’s Chief of Staff Keith Gilkes. He was “expecting my call.”
“David!” he said with an audible smile.
I politely said hello, not knowing how friendly Gilkes and Koch may be. He was eager to help. “I was really hoping to talk directly to Scott,” I said. He said that could be arranged and that I should just leave my number. I explained to Gilkes, “My goddamn maid, Maria, put my phone in the washer. I’d have her deported, but she works for next to nothing.” Gilkes found this amusing. “I’m calling from the VOID—with the VOID, or whatever it’s called. You know, the Snype!”
“Gotcha,” Gilkes said. “Let me check the schedule here…OK, there’s an opening at 2 o’clock Central Standard Time. Just call this same number and we’ll put you through.”
Could it really be that easy? Yes. What follows is a rushed, abridged transcript of my—I mean, David Koch’s conversation with Gov. Walker. Listen to the whole call here:
***
Walker: Hi; this is Scott Walker.
Koch: Scott! David Koch. How are you?
Walker: Hey, David! I’m good. And yourself?
Koch: I’m very well. I’m a little disheartened by the situation there, but, uh, what’s the latest?
Walker: Well, we’re actually hanging pretty tough. I mean—you know, amazingly there’s a much smaller group of protesters—almost all of whom are in from other states today. The State Assembly is taking the bill up—getting it all the way to the last point it can be at where it’s unamendable. But they’re waiting to pass it until the Senate’s—the Senate Democrats, excuse me, the assembly Democrats have about a hundred amendments they’re going through. The state Senate still has the 14 members missing but what they’re doing today is bringing up all sorts of other non-fiscal items, many of which are things members in the Democratic side care about. And each day we’re going to ratchet it up a little bit…. The Senate majority leader had a great plan he told about this morning—he told the Senate Democrats about and he’s going to announce it later today, and that is: The Senate organization committee is going to meet and pass a rule that says if you don’t show up for two consecutive days on a session day—in the state Senate, the Senate chief clerk—it’s a little procedural thing here, but—can actually have your payroll stopped from being automatically deducted—
Koch: Beautiful.
Walker: —into your checking account and instead—you still get a check, but the check has to be personally picked up and he’s instructing them—which we just loved—to lock them in their desk on the floor of the state Senate.
Koch: Now you’re not talking to any of these Democrat bastards, are you?
Walker: Ah, I—there’s one guy that’s actually voted with me on a bunch of things I called on Saturday for about 45 minutes, mainly to tell him that while I appreciate his friendship and he’s worked with us on other things, to tell him I wasn’t going to budge.
Koch: Goddamn right!
Walker: …his name is Tim Cullen—
Koch: All right, I’ll have to give that man a call.
Walker: Well, actually, in his case I wouldn’t call him and I’ll tell you why: he’s pretty reasonable but he’s not one of us…
Koch: Now who can we get to budge on this collective bargaining?
Walker: …I think the paycheck will have an impact…secondly, one of the things we’re looking at next…we’re still waiting on an opinion to see if the unions have been paying to put these guys up out of state. We think there’s at minimum an ethics violation if not an outright felony.
Koch: Well, they’re probably putting hobos in suits.
Walker: Yeah.
Koch: That’s what we do. Sometimes.
Walker: I mean paying for the senators to be put up. I know they’re paying for these guy—I mean, people can pay for protesters to come in and that’s not an ethics code, but, I mean, literally if the unions are paying the 14 senators—their food, their lodging, anything like that…[*** Important regarding his later acceptance of a Koch offer to “show him a good time.” ***]
[I was stunned. I am stunned. In the interest of expediting the release of this story, here are the juiciest bits:]
Walker: …I’ve got layoff notices ready…
Koch: Beautiful; beautiful. Gotta crush that union.
Walker: [bragging about how he doesn't budge]…I would be willing to sit down and talk to him, the assembly Democrat leader, plus the other two Republican leaders—talk, not negotiate and listen to what they have to say if they will in turn—but I’ll only do it if all 14 of them will come back and sit down in the state assembly…legally, we believe, once they’ve gone into session, they don’t physically have to be there. If they’re actually in session for that day, and they take a recess, the 19 Senate Republicans could then go into action and they’d have quorum…so we’re double checking that. If you heard I was going to talk to them that’s the only reason why. We’d only do it if they came back to the capital with all 14 of them…
Koch: Bring a baseball bat. That’s what I’d do.
Walker: I have one in my office; you’d be happy with that. I have a slugger with my name on it.
Koch: Beautiful.
Walker: [union-bashing...]
Koch: Beautiful.
Walker: So this is ground zero, there’s no doubt about it. [Talks about a “great” NYT piece of “objective journalism.” Talks about how most private blue-collar workers have turned against public, unionized workers.]…So I went through and called a handful, a dozen or so lawmakers I worry about each day and said, “Everyone, we should get that story printed out and send it to anyone giving you grief.”
Koch: Goddamn right! We, uh, we sent, uh, Andrew Breitbart down there.
Walker:Yeah.
Koch: Yeah.
Walker: Good stuff.
Koch: He’s our man, you know.
Walker: [blah about his press conferences, attacking Obama, and all the great press he's getting.] Brian [Sadoval], the new Governor of Nevada, called me the last night he said—he was out in the Lincoln Day Circuit in the last two weekends and he was kidding me, he said, “Scott, don’t come to Nevada because I’d be afraid you beat me running for governor.” That’s all they want to talk about is what are you doing to help the governor of Wisconsin. I talk to Kasich every day—John’s gotta stand firm in Ohio. I think we could do the same thing with Vic Scott in Florida. I think, uh, Snyder—if he got a little more support—probably could do that in Michigan. You start going down the list there’s a lot of us new governors that got elected to do something big.
Koch: You’re the first domino.
Walker: Yep. This is our moment.
Koch: Now what else could we do for you down there?
Walker: Well the biggest thing would be—and your guy on the ground [Americans For Prosperity president Tim Phillips] is probably seeing this [stuff about all the people protesting, and some of them flip him off].
[Abrupt end of first recording, and start of second.]
Walker: [Bullshit about doing the right thing and getting flipped off by “union bulls,” and the decreasing number of protesters. Or some such.]
Koch: We’ll back you any way we can. What we were thinking about the crowd was, uh, was planting some troublemakers.
Walker: You know, well, the only problem with that —because we thought about that. The problem—the, my only gut reaction to that is right now the lawmakers I’ve talked to have just completely had it with them, the public is not really fond of this…[explains that planting troublemakers may not work.] My only fear would be if there’s a ruckus caused is that maybe the governor has to settle to solve all these problems…[something about '60s liberals.]…Let ‘em protest all they want…Sooner or later the media stops finding it interesting.
Koch: Well, not the liberal bastards on MSNBC.
Walker: Oh yeah, but who watches that? I went on “Morning Joe” this morning. I like it because I just like being combative with those guys, but, uh. You know they’re off the deep end.
Koch: Joe—Joe’s a good guy. He’s one of us.
Walker: Yeah, he’s all right. He was fair to me…[bashes NY Senator Chuck Schumer, who was also on the program.]
Koch: Beautiful; beautiful. You gotta love that Mika Brzezinski; she’s a real piece of ass.
Walker: Oh yeah. [story about when he hung out with human pig Jim Sensenbrenner at some D.C. function and he was sitting next to Brzezinski and her father, and their guest was David Axelrod. He introduced himself.]
Koch: That son of a bitch!
Walker: Yeah no kidding huh?…
Koch: Well, good; good. Good catching up with ya’.
Walker: This is an exciting time [blah, blah, blah, Super Bowl reference followed by an odd story of pulling out a picture of Ronald Reagan and explaining to his staff the plan to crush the union the same way Reagan fired the air traffic controllers]…that was the first crack in the Berlin Wall because the Communists then knew Reagan wasn’t a pushover. [Blah, blah, blah. He's exactly like Reagan. Won't shut up about how awesome he is.]
Koch: [Laughs] Well, I tell you what, Scott: once you crush these bastards I’ll fly you out to Cali and really show you a good time.
Walker: All right, that would be outstanding. [*** Ethical violation much? ***] Thanks for all the support…it’s all about getting our freedoms back…
Koch: Absolutely. And, you know, we have a little bit of a vested interest as well. [Laughs]
Walker: [Blah] Thanks a million!
Koch: Bye-bye!
Walker: Bye.
***
So there you have it, kids. Government isn’t for the people. It’s for the people with money. You want to be heard? Too fucking bad. You want to collectively bargain? You can’t afford a seat at the table. You may have built that table. But it’s not yours. It belongs to the Kochs and the oligarch class. It’s guarded by Republicans like Walker, and his Democratic counterparts across that ever-narrowing aisle that is corporate rule, so that the ever-widening gap between the haves and the have-nots can swallow all the power in the world. These are known knowns, and now we just know them a little more.
But money isn’t always power. The protesters in Cairo and Madison have taught us this—reminded us of this. They can’t buy a muzzle big enough to silence us all. Share the news. Do not retreat; ReTweet.
The revolution keeps spinning. Try not to get too dizzy.
***
____________________
REPRINTED FROM "THE BUFFALO BEAST: THIS IS AN ACCOUNT OF A PRANK CALL MADE BY THE EDITOR OF THE BUFFALO BEAST. EDITOR MURPHY CALLS GOV. WALKER OF WISCONSIN, PRETENDING TO BE DAVID KOCH, HIS BILLIONAIRE FINANCIAL BACKER. WALKER FALLS FOR THE RUSE AND DISCLOSES WHO HE REALLY IS, A WHORE OF BILLIONAIRES AND THE DESIRE TO CONTROL GOVERNMENT AND BUSINESS IN WISCONSIN:
Koch Whore
Posted by Murphy On February - 23 - 2011
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker answers his master’s call
“David Koch”: We’ll back you any way we can. What we were thinking about the crowd was, uh, was planting some troublemakers.
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker: You know, well, the only problem with that—because we thought about that…
***
whores
WHAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO WITNESS IS REAL. NO NAMES HAVE BEEN CHANGED TO PROTECT THE INNOCENT. THERE ARE NO INNOCENT.
-MURPHY
***
“He’s just hard-lined—will not talk, will not communicate, will not return phone calls.”
-Wisconsin state Sen. Tim Carpenter (D) on Gov. Walker (source)
Carpenter’s quote made me wonder: who could get through to Gov. Walker? Well, what do we know about Walker and his proposed union-busting, no-bid budget? The obvious candidate was David Koch.
I first called at 11:30 am CST, and eventually got through to a young, male receptionist who, upon hearing the magic name Koch, immediately transferred me to Executive Assistant Governor Dorothy Moore.
“We’ve met before, Dorothy,” I nudged. “I really need to talk to Scott—Governor Walker.” She said that, yes, she thought she had met Koch, and that the name was “familiar.” But she insisted that Walker was detained in a meeting and couldn’t get away. She asked about the nature of my call. I balked, “I just needed to speak with the Governor. He knows what this is about,” I said. She told me to call back at noon, and she’d have a better idea of when he would be free.
I called at noon and was quickly transferred to Moore, who then transferred me to Walker’s Chief of Staff Keith Gilkes. He was “expecting my call.”
“David!” he said with an audible smile.
I politely said hello, not knowing how friendly Gilkes and Koch may be. He was eager to help. “I was really hoping to talk directly to Scott,” I said. He said that could be arranged and that I should just leave my number. I explained to Gilkes, “My goddamn maid, Maria, put my phone in the washer. I’d have her deported, but she works for next to nothing.” Gilkes found this amusing. “I’m calling from the VOID—with the VOID, or whatever it’s called. You know, the Snype!”
“Gotcha,” Gilkes said. “Let me check the schedule here…OK, there’s an opening at 2 o’clock Central Standard Time. Just call this same number and we’ll put you through.”
Could it really be that easy? Yes. What follows is a rushed, abridged transcript of my—I mean, David Koch’s conversation with Gov. Walker. Listen to the whole call here:
***
Walker: Hi; this is Scott Walker.
Koch: Scott! David Koch. How are you?
Walker: Hey, David! I’m good. And yourself?
Koch: I’m very well. I’m a little disheartened by the situation there, but, uh, what’s the latest?
Walker: Well, we’re actually hanging pretty tough. I mean—you know, amazingly there’s a much smaller group of protesters—almost all of whom are in from other states today. The State Assembly is taking the bill up—getting it all the way to the last point it can be at where it’s unamendable. But they’re waiting to pass it until the Senate’s—the Senate Democrats, excuse me, the assembly Democrats have about a hundred amendments they’re going through. The state Senate still has the 14 members missing but what they’re doing today is bringing up all sorts of other non-fiscal items, many of which are things members in the Democratic side care about. And each day we’re going to ratchet it up a little bit…. The Senate majority leader had a great plan he told about this morning—he told the Senate Democrats about and he’s going to announce it later today, and that is: The Senate organization committee is going to meet and pass a rule that says if you don’t show up for two consecutive days on a session day—in the state Senate, the Senate chief clerk—it’s a little procedural thing here, but—can actually have your payroll stopped from being automatically deducted—
Koch: Beautiful.
Walker: —into your checking account and instead—you still get a check, but the check has to be personally picked up and he’s instructing them—which we just loved—to lock them in their desk on the floor of the state Senate.
Koch: Now you’re not talking to any of these Democrat bastards, are you?
Walker: Ah, I—there’s one guy that’s actually voted with me on a bunch of things I called on Saturday for about 45 minutes, mainly to tell him that while I appreciate his friendship and he’s worked with us on other things, to tell him I wasn’t going to budge.
Koch: Goddamn right!
Walker: …his name is Tim Cullen—
Koch: All right, I’ll have to give that man a call.
Walker: Well, actually, in his case I wouldn’t call him and I’ll tell you why: he’s pretty reasonable but he’s not one of us…
Koch: Now who can we get to budge on this collective bargaining?
Walker: …I think the paycheck will have an impact…secondly, one of the things we’re looking at next…we’re still waiting on an opinion to see if the unions have been paying to put these guys up out of state. We think there’s at minimum an ethics violation if not an outright felony.
Koch: Well, they’re probably putting hobos in suits.
Walker: Yeah.
Koch: That’s what we do. Sometimes.
Walker: I mean paying for the senators to be put up. I know they’re paying for these guy—I mean, people can pay for protesters to come in and that’s not an ethics code, but, I mean, literally if the unions are paying the 14 senators—their food, their lodging, anything like that…[*** Important regarding his later acceptance of a Koch offer to “show him a good time.” ***]
[I was stunned. I am stunned. In the interest of expediting the release of this story, here are the juiciest bits:]
Walker: …I’ve got layoff notices ready…
Koch: Beautiful; beautiful. Gotta crush that union.
Walker: [bragging about how he doesn't budge]…I would be willing to sit down and talk to him, the assembly Democrat leader, plus the other two Republican leaders—talk, not negotiate and listen to what they have to say if they will in turn—but I’ll only do it if all 14 of them will come back and sit down in the state assembly…legally, we believe, once they’ve gone into session, they don’t physically have to be there. If they’re actually in session for that day, and they take a recess, the 19 Senate Republicans could then go into action and they’d have quorum…so we’re double checking that. If you heard I was going to talk to them that’s the only reason why. We’d only do it if they came back to the capital with all 14 of them…
Koch: Bring a baseball bat. That’s what I’d do.
Walker: I have one in my office; you’d be happy with that. I have a slugger with my name on it.
Koch: Beautiful.
Walker: [union-bashing...]
Koch: Beautiful.
Walker: So this is ground zero, there’s no doubt about it. [Talks about a “great” NYT piece of “objective journalism.” Talks about how most private blue-collar workers have turned against public, unionized workers.]…So I went through and called a handful, a dozen or so lawmakers I worry about each day and said, “Everyone, we should get that story printed out and send it to anyone giving you grief.”
Koch: Goddamn right! We, uh, we sent, uh, Andrew Breitbart down there.
Walker:Yeah.
Koch: Yeah.
Walker: Good stuff.
Koch: He’s our man, you know.
Walker: [blah about his press conferences, attacking Obama, and all the great press he's getting.] Brian [Sadoval], the new Governor of Nevada, called me the last night he said—he was out in the Lincoln Day Circuit in the last two weekends and he was kidding me, he said, “Scott, don’t come to Nevada because I’d be afraid you beat me running for governor.” That’s all they want to talk about is what are you doing to help the governor of Wisconsin. I talk to Kasich every day—John’s gotta stand firm in Ohio. I think we could do the same thing with Vic Scott in Florida. I think, uh, Snyder—if he got a little more support—probably could do that in Michigan. You start going down the list there’s a lot of us new governors that got elected to do something big.
Koch: You’re the first domino.
Walker: Yep. This is our moment.
Koch: Now what else could we do for you down there?
Walker: Well the biggest thing would be—and your guy on the ground [Americans For Prosperity president Tim Phillips] is probably seeing this [stuff about all the people protesting, and some of them flip him off].
[Abrupt end of first recording, and start of second.]
Walker: [Bullshit about doing the right thing and getting flipped off by “union bulls,” and the decreasing number of protesters. Or some such.]
Koch: We’ll back you any way we can. What we were thinking about the crowd was, uh, was planting some troublemakers.
Walker: You know, well, the only problem with that —because we thought about that. The problem—the, my only gut reaction to that is right now the lawmakers I’ve talked to have just completely had it with them, the public is not really fond of this…[explains that planting troublemakers may not work.] My only fear would be if there’s a ruckus caused is that maybe the governor has to settle to solve all these problems…[something about '60s liberals.]…Let ‘em protest all they want…Sooner or later the media stops finding it interesting.
Koch: Well, not the liberal bastards on MSNBC.
Walker: Oh yeah, but who watches that? I went on “Morning Joe” this morning. I like it because I just like being combative with those guys, but, uh. You know they’re off the deep end.
Koch: Joe—Joe’s a good guy. He’s one of us.
Walker: Yeah, he’s all right. He was fair to me…[bashes NY Senator Chuck Schumer, who was also on the program.]
Koch: Beautiful; beautiful. You gotta love that Mika Brzezinski; she’s a real piece of ass.
Walker: Oh yeah. [story about when he hung out with human pig Jim Sensenbrenner at some D.C. function and he was sitting next to Brzezinski and her father, and their guest was David Axelrod. He introduced himself.]
Koch: That son of a bitch!
Walker: Yeah no kidding huh?…
Koch: Well, good; good. Good catching up with ya’.
Walker: This is an exciting time [blah, blah, blah, Super Bowl reference followed by an odd story of pulling out a picture of Ronald Reagan and explaining to his staff the plan to crush the union the same way Reagan fired the air traffic controllers]…that was the first crack in the Berlin Wall because the Communists then knew Reagan wasn’t a pushover. [Blah, blah, blah. He's exactly like Reagan. Won't shut up about how awesome he is.]
Koch: [Laughs] Well, I tell you what, Scott: once you crush these bastards I’ll fly you out to Cali and really show you a good time.
Walker: All right, that would be outstanding. [*** Ethical violation much? ***] Thanks for all the support…it’s all about getting our freedoms back…
Koch: Absolutely. And, you know, we have a little bit of a vested interest as well. [Laughs]
Walker: [Blah] Thanks a million!
Koch: Bye-bye!
Walker: Bye.
***
So there you have it, kids. Government isn’t for the people. It’s for the people with money. You want to be heard? Too fucking bad. You want to collectively bargain? You can’t afford a seat at the table. You may have built that table. But it’s not yours. It belongs to the Kochs and the oligarch class. It’s guarded by Republicans like Walker, and his Democratic counterparts across that ever-narrowing aisle that is corporate rule, so that the ever-widening gap between the haves and the have-nots can swallow all the power in the world. These are known knowns, and now we just know them a little more.
But money isn’t always power. The protesters in Cairo and Madison have taught us this—reminded us of this. They can’t buy a muzzle big enough to silence us all. Share the news. Do not retreat; ReTweet.
The revolution keeps spinning. Try not to get too dizzy.
***
____________________
Monday, January 17, 2011
Diagnosing Division in America
I reprint an article by Bob Confer published in the Lockport paper. I could not respond to it on his website because my post was too long. So I re-post Bob's article here and respond to it.
Divided by design
From the 17 January 2011 Greater Niagara Newspapers
DIVIDED BY DESIGN
By Bob Confer
America has been split in twain by the Tucson shooting. Those who align with the Democrats insist on painting those who lean Republican as enemies of our nation, breeders of hate so pervasive that they are more responsible for the murder of 6 innocents – and the attempted assassination of Congresswomen Giffords – than its conspirator Jared Loughner ever could be. It has been a sickening roller coaster ride that showed the left displaying the vitriol that it claims to be against.
Lost in the ensuing back-and-forth was what mattered most, the lives taken and lives affected by the gunman. Political gamesmanship dominated what should have been a period of time that highlighted a nation in mourning yet one so proud of itself that it would not waver in its principles of being a government by, for, and accessible to the people.
It was grossly un-American.
Or was it?
This division is nothing new. This post-shooting hysteria is a perfect snapshot of what American politics has been and will ever be. We are a nation divided by the contrasts of 2 parties, the Republicans and Democrats.
That conflict, though, is only a mask. The parties, especially within the inner-workings of our outsized federal system, are more intertwined than we’ll ever know. Think of how easily war was "declared" by President Bush at the behest of Congress or how the Patriot Act passed with limited fireworks or how Congress so tamely allowed trillions in economic rescue during the recession or how body scanners magically appeared within days of the attempted Christmas underwear bombing.
We, as a people, were made to be divided on those and similar issues, yet the dominoes had already been set into play beforehand by the powers-that-be on both sides of the supposed aisle. Big stuff like that slips by hurriedly under the public fray. Instead, it's the minor issues or those that are long-term in transformation (hot button issues like public assistance, corporate welfare, abortion and guns) where the party leaders play the political football that keeps us captivated while making us oblivious to matters affecting our everyday lives.
To make things like that happen requires a careful manipulation of the masses, brainwashing if you will, through the modern press and our educational system. The shooting fall-out has shown that Americans who were taught so very little about government and civics in our schools are ill-equipped to discern right from wrong, good from bad, truth from fiction in the amalgamation of so-called news and commentary spewed from television sets, the radio and the internet. Case in point, last week, like lemmings millions – yes, millions - of Americans followed lock-step the utterly stupid belief that right-wingers were responsible for the mass murder, even though it was apparent Loughner is anything but a Conservative.
The political leaders have created a perfect subterfuge. As we bicker over who made who kill who, think of the absurd legislation that's been mothballed for years by the Republican and Democrat powerbrokers that's just been begging for an incident like this: Are they devising means to limit public access to Congress and the entire federal system? Are they looking for ways to regulate the way you are allowed to speak – and even think -- about elected officials and bureaucrats? Are they developing methods of controlling peaceable assembly? Are they conspiring over ways to spy on our internet activities?
The answer is “yes” to all of those questions because once Tucson’s dust has settled and we’re all licking our wounds from the ongoing hate game, Americans will be more than willing to abandon some of their rights and privileges to “make things better”.
That’s how the game works: Drain our emotions and energy by forcing us to expend them on one another and then we’ll lack the vitality to fight the system. Our voices are and will be lost in the din of a divide manufactured by a big government intent on advancing its own interests. We’re being played.
......................................
MY RESPONSE TO BOB'S ARTICLE:
Dear Roberto, this is what I’ve been trying to argue for 15 years or more. Thank you for this piece. Absolutely wonderfully to the point! As I put it: America is divided not along Democrat/Republican lines but along the lines of, on the one hand, a New Class, i.e., the Washington elite of power and money brokers who are a new social and political class and, on the other hand, the amorphous, homogenized mass of people, i.e., their “clients,” dubbed the Client Class. But as you say so well, they, the New Class, hide their unity behind division, crisis and fabricated foreign enemies. We are divided by wealth, education, values and ideology. They pretend that we are a unified mass democracy, which by the way is a contradiction in terms. We can never be “unified” at a mass level on the terms of and in terms of the present pseudo-federalist, corporate and centralist organization of America. The revolution consists of a renewal of authentic federalism, a return to community as the source and locus of all politics, not these so-called political parties. Party politics is dead, except as subterfuge and control of the political behavior and discourse of the masses. And of course a new American “Individual” must emerge in this return to Federalism, community and a reconfiguration of the people in terms of a new “social individual.” This a political cultural revolution we are seeing if we let go of the “old skins” and prepare for the new wine. What we are seeing is a re-politicization of America. It is unfortunate but possibly inevitable that the wake-up call must be announced by a deeply disturbed individual, namely, Jared Lee Loughner. But I contend he is a congealed, symptomatic reflection of what we are as a whole. We are sick in our political hearts, desperate and in need of radically new direction. This is what all this gun toting is about: symbolism of a “radical” violent break with the past. But it need not be done with guns and more killing. It is done simply by returning to community, come home from the wars and military bases in foreign lands, around 800 of them, and build your life in community. Ye who are weary come home, come home. Withdraw the “blood supply” from Washington and watch it wither like the big, malignant cancerous tumor that it is.
Divided by design
From the 17 January 2011 Greater Niagara Newspapers
DIVIDED BY DESIGN
By Bob Confer
America has been split in twain by the Tucson shooting. Those who align with the Democrats insist on painting those who lean Republican as enemies of our nation, breeders of hate so pervasive that they are more responsible for the murder of 6 innocents – and the attempted assassination of Congresswomen Giffords – than its conspirator Jared Loughner ever could be. It has been a sickening roller coaster ride that showed the left displaying the vitriol that it claims to be against.
Lost in the ensuing back-and-forth was what mattered most, the lives taken and lives affected by the gunman. Political gamesmanship dominated what should have been a period of time that highlighted a nation in mourning yet one so proud of itself that it would not waver in its principles of being a government by, for, and accessible to the people.
It was grossly un-American.
Or was it?
This division is nothing new. This post-shooting hysteria is a perfect snapshot of what American politics has been and will ever be. We are a nation divided by the contrasts of 2 parties, the Republicans and Democrats.
That conflict, though, is only a mask. The parties, especially within the inner-workings of our outsized federal system, are more intertwined than we’ll ever know. Think of how easily war was "declared" by President Bush at the behest of Congress or how the Patriot Act passed with limited fireworks or how Congress so tamely allowed trillions in economic rescue during the recession or how body scanners magically appeared within days of the attempted Christmas underwear bombing.
We, as a people, were made to be divided on those and similar issues, yet the dominoes had already been set into play beforehand by the powers-that-be on both sides of the supposed aisle. Big stuff like that slips by hurriedly under the public fray. Instead, it's the minor issues or those that are long-term in transformation (hot button issues like public assistance, corporate welfare, abortion and guns) where the party leaders play the political football that keeps us captivated while making us oblivious to matters affecting our everyday lives.
To make things like that happen requires a careful manipulation of the masses, brainwashing if you will, through the modern press and our educational system. The shooting fall-out has shown that Americans who were taught so very little about government and civics in our schools are ill-equipped to discern right from wrong, good from bad, truth from fiction in the amalgamation of so-called news and commentary spewed from television sets, the radio and the internet. Case in point, last week, like lemmings millions – yes, millions - of Americans followed lock-step the utterly stupid belief that right-wingers were responsible for the mass murder, even though it was apparent Loughner is anything but a Conservative.
The political leaders have created a perfect subterfuge. As we bicker over who made who kill who, think of the absurd legislation that's been mothballed for years by the Republican and Democrat powerbrokers that's just been begging for an incident like this: Are they devising means to limit public access to Congress and the entire federal system? Are they looking for ways to regulate the way you are allowed to speak – and even think -- about elected officials and bureaucrats? Are they developing methods of controlling peaceable assembly? Are they conspiring over ways to spy on our internet activities?
The answer is “yes” to all of those questions because once Tucson’s dust has settled and we’re all licking our wounds from the ongoing hate game, Americans will be more than willing to abandon some of their rights and privileges to “make things better”.
That’s how the game works: Drain our emotions and energy by forcing us to expend them on one another and then we’ll lack the vitality to fight the system. Our voices are and will be lost in the din of a divide manufactured by a big government intent on advancing its own interests. We’re being played.
......................................
MY RESPONSE TO BOB'S ARTICLE:
Dear Roberto, this is what I’ve been trying to argue for 15 years or more. Thank you for this piece. Absolutely wonderfully to the point! As I put it: America is divided not along Democrat/Republican lines but along the lines of, on the one hand, a New Class, i.e., the Washington elite of power and money brokers who are a new social and political class and, on the other hand, the amorphous, homogenized mass of people, i.e., their “clients,” dubbed the Client Class. But as you say so well, they, the New Class, hide their unity behind division, crisis and fabricated foreign enemies. We are divided by wealth, education, values and ideology. They pretend that we are a unified mass democracy, which by the way is a contradiction in terms. We can never be “unified” at a mass level on the terms of and in terms of the present pseudo-federalist, corporate and centralist organization of America. The revolution consists of a renewal of authentic federalism, a return to community as the source and locus of all politics, not these so-called political parties. Party politics is dead, except as subterfuge and control of the political behavior and discourse of the masses. And of course a new American “Individual” must emerge in this return to Federalism, community and a reconfiguration of the people in terms of a new “social individual.” This a political cultural revolution we are seeing if we let go of the “old skins” and prepare for the new wine. What we are seeing is a re-politicization of America. It is unfortunate but possibly inevitable that the wake-up call must be announced by a deeply disturbed individual, namely, Jared Lee Loughner. But I contend he is a congealed, symptomatic reflection of what we are as a whole. We are sick in our political hearts, desperate and in need of radically new direction. This is what all this gun toting is about: symbolism of a “radical” violent break with the past. But it need not be done with guns and more killing. It is done simply by returning to community, come home from the wars and military bases in foreign lands, around 800 of them, and build your life in community. Ye who are weary come home, come home. Withdraw the “blood supply” from Washington and watch it wither like the big, malignant cancerous tumor that it is.
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