Tuesday, October 18, 2016

bait and switch confidence scheme of conservatism

A friend of mine noted that "Trump rose on GOP's 3 pillars" [Trumps 3 Pillars]:

racism(birtherism),
xenophobia(build wall)&
Islamophobia(Muslim ban).

"Anybody who sez otherwise is full of sh!t",

....and I have to agree. But that is only part of what is going on. If you go to one of the Conservative Websites designed to recruit students. They will tell you that the "four pillars of Conservatism" are:

Bait:
1 liberty / freedom
2 tradition & order
3 rule of law
4 belief in God
Source: https://home.isi.org/pillars-modern-american-conservatism

This sounds nice, except the constitution explicitly prohibits inserting religion into politics, since it is generally divisive and there is no true catholic and orthodox religion unless authorities resort to authoritarianism and impose it; or religious authorities have the wisdom to stay out of areas where their knowledge fails to be helpful.

But nobody can argue with concepts like liberty and freedom. Nothing is wrong with tradition & order, except that imposing it on others means abrogating or infringing on personal liberty and freedom, and tradition is something that has to have some flexibility or it becomes a source for oppression.

So essentially liberty/freedom are in potential conflict with tradition/order -- so these pillars have to balance or they bring down the table they are supporting.

Conserving Things

Us Progressives argue that tradition should not be restraining on improving personal and public welfare. They'd agree on Items one and three, but argue with rigid adherence to authority. Tradition should guide us not bind us.

And of course there are religious progressives and religious conservatives. So on the whole most people are fine with all four traditions and just differ on the degree to which they feel bound by #2. Progressives included!

Progressives believe that "order" should not be an excuse to infringe on people's private behavior. We are the conservatives on matters of personal liberty, mostly.

So in theory conservatives would be environmentalists, conserving the traditions of public access to parks and recreation, our harmony with nature, and man's role as Gardner of the planet tending to God's creation. Conservation of Nature is a conservative value.

In theory conserving the public good would be a conservative principle. The bible enjoins conservatives to look out for "widow's and orphans" to help one's "brother", and to contribute to the public welfare. Under a conservative regime paying tithes would be mandatory and public welfare would be administered through the churches. In our secular society it is too much for Churches, who have no one to enforce their tithes. So those advocating dismantling the welfare state are not conservatives. They look for other excuses to nullify the constitutionality of such programs -- saying the Church should do them. But upholding that tithes should not be mandatory. Thus defenestrating Churches from doing that role.

I point that out because there is nothing conservative about building giant walls, abrogating treaties, or doing away with public welfare, privatizing public services and education, or turning over our resources to rich people. All that is not conservatism.

The Confidence Scheme

So what it is is that modern conservatism is a confidence scheme. Read the offered link and you'd think that conservatism is all about liberty and tradition, upholding the constitution and establishing order over criminals and terrorists seeking to invade and trouble the country.

But the sales of conservatism are aimed at convincing people that a particular religious ideology, a particular tradition and peculiar ideas of who, what, how and why we get and keep order in our society. Modern conservatives complain about Donald Trump, but he's only pushing ideas that the GOP has developed and used over the past 50 years in order to win elections by stoking fear, paranoia and anger. I could go into detail but I won't. I have other things I need to be doing right now.

Besides, I wrote on this 2 years ago, talking about Lee Atwater:

http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2014/09/southern-strategy-and-war-on-poor.html

People should read my article and it's references

But of course the 4 pillars are the bait in a confidence scheme!

The Switch

Unfortunately, the reality, the "switch" of the conservative confidence game is that the only thing conservatives are actually conserving is wealth.

Their economic distress is diverted, using scapegoating, to bigotry. Part of the con! Sell them on "conservatism" hook them with hate!

switch:
1 No liberty unless white
2/3 order & law = authoritarianism
4 belief in God unless Muslim.

So essentially the "4 Pillars of conservatism" translate to nativism and authoritarianism.

Trump is the creation of Lee Atwater, Reince Priebus and the GOP

I have a lot more to say, but I need to work on some other things right now.

Further reading

https://home.isi.org/pillars-modern-american-conservatism
http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2014/09/southern-strategy-and-war-on-poor.html

bait and switch confidence scheme of conservatism

A friend of mine noted that "Trump rose on GOP's 3 pillars"

[Trumps 3 Pillars], Grifters, Oligarchs and Pirates:

racism(birtherism),
xenophobia(build wall)&
Islamophobia(Muslim ban).
“Anybody who sez otherwise is full of sh!t”,

....and I have to agree. But that is only part of what is going on. Conservatism might have started out "conservative" but it has become more and more authoritarian over time.

Four Pillars

If you go to one of the Conservative Websites designed to recruit students. They will tell you that the "four pillars of Conservatism" are:

Conservative Bait:
1 liberty / freedom
2 tradition & order
3 rule of law
4 belief in God
Source: https://home.isi.org/pillars-modern-american-conservatism

The Trouble with These So Called Pillars

Hypocrisy on Liberty and Freedom

The Conservative movement obsesses about Liberty and Freedom the same way that the Fascists did in the 30s. But they obviously don't want freedom and liberty for everyone. Like their libertarian allies, they want liberty for the privileged, but economic slavery for labor and no rights for immigrants, brown people and anyone they decide to scapegoat. In otherwords their profession of being for "liberty" is hypocritical. Freedom for the wolf is death to the lamb.

The Trouble with trying to push Utility into a Free Market hole

Likewise they push a peculiar definition of “free enterprise.”, they extol "competition", and will quote early economists who talked about the power of free enterprise to regulate economy based on supply and demand and market theory, but they know full well that for a market to regulate prices it needs the freedom of multiple venders with freedom of choice:

  • Private Property: the property exchanged must legitimately belong to those making the exchange,
  • Freedom of Choice: Both Buyer and Seller free to enter and leave markets,
  • Motivation and Self Interest: Both Buyer and Seller benefit from the trades,
  • Competition: People need to be free to go to another vender if they aren't satisfied,
  • https://quizlet.com/18136377/5-characteristics-of-a-free-market-system-flash-cards/

A parent may give a child a choice between a red or a green shirt. That is not real choice. A genuine free market offers a panoply of choices. If players can't buy or sell any color, they are not free. Vital utilities cannot be governed on the same principles as a sook because both parties are not equally free. Doctors, lawyers, journalists, service workers, need to be fairly compensated and there need to be enough of them to serve everybody and to meet emergency needs. They are utilities not free markets.

Basic to free markets is good government. Judges who are fair to both parties in disputes. Laws that protect transparency so that people aren't swindled. For Profit Hospitals and medicine are a great deal for the monopolists who can offer crappy medicine for high prices, but they can never meet the attributes of a free market. Such markets are what I call "free-booting" markets. A market where weights, measures, prices can't be trusted, where there is no real competition by price, is a free-booting market. Even more so when the seller's idea of "free market" is "buyer beware" and economics as low level warfare. It's not a free market if prices are set by anyone's fiat. Those trying to turn healthcare, energy distribution or other vital services into a free market model, are conning you. It's a swindle.

https://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2012/07/starve-beast-destroy-democracy.html

The Trouble with Tradition and Order

Tradition and Order = regulation and rules. There is a tension between "liberty" and order. Even more so between tradition and liberty. Traditional societies didn't provide people with much liberty. They had to tythe to the church. They had to follow rules. Some of those rules are important. Some need to be updated to fit with current times. Many Conservatives have trouble distinguishing those traditions and things that need to be conserved from the arbitrary and convenient rules that they prefer to live under. I don't know too many bankers who take prohibitions against charging interest seriously. Paul might have prescribed women wearing head covers, but so does the Taliban. Certainly, Jesus is not recorded to have said a word about it, except when he endorsed "the Law" of the 5 books of Moses. But he broke with the letter of the Mosaic law, over it's expressed spirit.

Worse, "tradition and order" is often a euphemism for oppression and tyranny. Tradition and Order is about setting common rules and boundaries. Many things traditional now, were not 100, 500 or 2000 years ago. In some cases tradition and order is an arbitrary thing that represents dictates of long ago tyrants. Tradition and order are important. They are meant to be founded on basic principle. When they are arbitrary, they are not worth the ink and paper used to write them down, except as a template for discussing "why not" do certain things. Fearful people cling to Tradition. The wise revise and set new traditions. The trouble with "tradition and order" is that it is transmitted through very fallible people who like to set themselves up as authority -- instead of God.

Rule of Law

When a person talks about "government" they are talking about rule of law. Rule of law is massively important. There is no genuine liberty, no genuine freedom, without people under a "common rule, that all can accept." [paraphrase Locke] Private government of things that are a common heritage, like utilities, is privateering and tyranny by definition. Law that is exercised unjustly is unlawful. Unlawful law can be extralegal but it is unjustified and arbitrary. Corruption and injustice are also dysfunction. Rule of law breaks down when those who govern property and people rule arbitrarily. This is a conservative value more honored in the breach than the fealty.

Again conservatives talk about liberty and then immediately talk about:

  • Tradition, order and Rule of Law,
  • while protecting monopolies, privatizing utilities and other monopolies into private rule.

A Genuine Conservative respects tradition, order, rule of law; while applying the related principles reasonably and justly. It's not rule of law when judges always rule in favor of business over labor. It's not rule of law if ANYONE (like Kavanaugh or Trump) is exempt from it. A genuine conservative preserves the principles of these things, so that everyone can be free. By this definition I'm more conservative than 90% of the cons backing Donald Trump.

The Trouble with Belief in God

As a pillar of conservatism "belief in God" sounds nice. Except for two immediate points:

  1. The Constitution Expressly prohibits inserting Religion into Politics.
  2. Faith in a Higher Power/Ineffable One/"God" is individual, difficult to verify, and wouldn't be "faith" if any of us had full proof that there is a God, much less that His Attributes are what any particular religious tradition asserts they are. It is easy for a demagogue, narcissistic con artist or charlatan to pretend to speak for God and cherry pick scripture to assert what that person arbitrarily wants. Moreover, people go to war of whose definition of God is whose, and many of the worst Demagogues claim to speak for God, when all they really have is a "lying spirit" from God.

Thus this sounds nice, except the constitution explicitly prohibits inserting religion into politics, and until folks get to fighting over who owns God (no one does), which God to embrace (My God, Your God --> what makes you think you can presume to own the "ineffable one?" Thus belief in God as a litmus test is incredibly dangerous.

Worse yet, a litmus test of belief is generally divisive. There is no true catholic and orthodox religion, unless authorities can reasonably explain their authorities. So the tendency is to resort to authoritarianism, demand obedience and impose it. Religious authorities should have the wisdom to stay out of areas where their knowledge fails to be helpful.

Conclusion

But nobody can argue with concepts like liberty and freedom. Nothing is wrong with tradition & order, except that imposing it on others, arbitrarily, means abrogating or infringing on personal liberty and freedom. The reality is that tradition is something that has to have some flexibility or it becomes a source for oppression. It has to evolve!

Unfortunately liberty/freedom are in potential conflict with tradition/order -- these pillars have to balance or they bring down the table they are supporting. And unfortunately as our country transitions into Fascism, leadership is more and more con and less and less conserving anything except power and wealth. Certainly not basic conservative principles.

Conserving Things

Us Progressives argue that tradition should not be restraining on improving personal and public welfare. It should grow and evolve as people grow spiritually. We argue not with the value of traditions but with rigid adherence to arbitrary authority. Tradition should guide us not bind us.

And of course there are religious progressives and religious conservatives. So on the whole most people are fine with all four traditions and just differ on the degree to which they feel bound by #2. Progressives included!

Progressives believe that "order" should not be an excuse to infringe on people's private behavior. We are the conservatives on matters of personal liberty, mostly. To be a conservative people need to be conserving something like the Environment, or the productive livelihood of the masses.

In an ideal world conservatives would be environmentalists, conserving the traditions of public access to parks and recreation, our harmony with nature, and man's role as Gardner of the planet tending to God's creation. Conservation of Nature is a conservative value.

Instead, too many are Cons

Conserving the Public Good

In theory conserving the public good would be a conservative principle. The bible enjoins conservatives to look out for "widow's and orphans" to help one's "brother", and to contribute to the public welfare. Under a conservative regime paying tithes would be mandatory and public welfare would be administered through the churches. In our secular society it is too much for Churches, who have no one to enforce their tithes. So those advocating dismantling the welfare state are not conservatives. They look for other excuses to nullify the constitutionality of such programs -- saying the Church should do them. But upholding that tithes should not be mandatory. Thus defenestrating Churches from doing that role.

I point that out because there is nothing conservative about building giant walls, abrogating treaties, or doing away with public welfare, privatizing public services and education, or turning over our resources to rich people. All that is not conservatism.

The Confidence Scheme

So what it is is that modern conservatism is a confidence scheme. Read the offered link and you'd think that conservatism is all about liberty and tradition, upholding the constitution and establishing order over criminals and terrorists seeking to invade and trouble the country.

But the sales of conservatism are aimed at convincing people that a particular religious ideology, a particular tradition and peculiar ideas of who, what, how and why we get and keep order in our society. Modern conservatives complain about Donald Trump, but he's only pushing ideas that the GOP has developed and used over the past 50 years in order to win elections by stoking fear, paranoia and anger. I could go into detail but I won't. I have other things I need to be doing right now.

Besides, I wrote on this 2 years ago, talking about Lee Atwater:

http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2014/09/southern-strategy-and-war-on-poor.html

People should read my article and it's references

But of course the 4 pillars are the bait in a confidence scheme!

The Switch

Unfortunately, the reality, the "switch" of the conservative confidence game is that the only thing conservatives are actually conserving is wealth.

Their economic distress is diverted, using scapegoating, to bigotry. Part of the con! Sell them on "conservatism" hook them with hate!

switch:
1 No liberty unless white
2/3 order & law = authoritarianism
4 belief in God unless Muslim.

So essentially the "4 Pillars of conservatism" translate to nativism and authoritarianism.

Trump is the creation of Lee Atwater, Reince Priebus and the GOP

I have a lot more to say, but I need to work on some other things right now.

Further reading

https://home.isi.org/pillars-modern-american-conservatism
http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2014/09/southern-strategy-and-war-on-poor.html
Started back in October 2016. I never finished this due to Trump being elected.
Trump is in no way a Conservative. He's a Confidence man.

Sunday, October 16, 2016

The King and His Lament

Maybe when the battle is over I can pity the man
Whose Armies marched into my country
Raped and pillaged across my lands
But for now I must steel my heart.
 
I look at the army arrayed on this hill
Proud flying banners young naive soldiers
Brave, they don't know how brave, till they die
And already I can see them in the places they will lie.
 
I see them where they are standing, and I see them where they lie
Bent and broken things and blood every where.
They call this romantic, but for this grizzled hair I've had it.
I feel no glory, only shame. I sigh.
 
Maybe when the battle is over and the dead are buried
And this man and his armies are running, defeated and hurried.
I'll be able to try and understand his anger and his hate.
But I am standing with my army and the hour is drawing late.
 
And I must sound the horn to charge.
And now I go to my fate.
 
By Christopher H. Holte, channeling someone elses memories

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Population Growth and Disaster, Rebirth of Malthus or Time for Enlightenment??

Review of Scientific American Article

Population and Sustainability: Can We Avoid Limiting the Number of People?

This article in Scientific American is comprehensive and deals with the subject really well. I think anyone who is savvy on the subject would agree with their thesis that:

"Slowing the rise in human numbers is essential for the planet--but it doesn't require population control"

It is worth reading though I have a few critiques on some of the points.

Sunday, October 9, 2016

Three Dead Fingers

The dead don't care
Whether death came from a firing squad
Or from the air.
 
The dying don't care
Whether their enemies are religious
Or mindlessly shooting targets from a drone
 
The dead don't care
Whether the bombs that killed them:
Are stamped "made in the USA,"
"Russia,"
Home Grown,
Or made in China.
 
This old game
Is neither fun
nor Good for anyone
Or the least bit fair.
 
I hear the old ones
The fat, gray haired ones
In stuffed shirts,
Wearing uniform ties
and gray coats
Presenting their bombs in brief cases
As footnotes in floods of paper
Drowning the dead in words.
 
In rhetoric
About fanatic religion
And rebels
And no fly zones.
Pontificating
and pointing fingers
At each other
 
Like bombs of misunderstanding
Or wands of curses and imprecations
 
As if those words were the jet planes
RPGs and drones,
Rocks being thrown
Delivering up death.
 
They point
As if they were speaking spells
and they weren't all of them liars
And guilty instead.
Each revealing his own guilt
With three fingers.
 
These old Greybacks
Hominid standing gorillas
Send children to fight their battles
While playing at rhetoric
And objectifying the dead.
The dead are ISIL and rebels
Are Shia and Sunna
Yazidi, Christian and Jews
Tossed in makeshift trenches
In ecumenical horror
With lime thrown in to reduce the stench.
 
All the While the greybacks pontificate from the bench
And partisans rant and rage
At who is at fault
and who built this cage?
That is tearing people apart
And throwing the pieces in graves
Where they bury their own pretenses
To civilization.
Remember the three fingered thing
When you point.
 
Bombs of misdirection
Lies piled upon lies
And meaningless facts
Piled in manilla stacks
On bureaucratic tables!
 
Pooh pooh, the food won't reach you
We bombed the convoy
So your benefactors can number among the dead!
We send you our bureaucratic condolences instead!
Our cordon will kill the rebels
And their families, children, relatives, neighbors, friends
And enemies
In deadly efficiency
 
The machine of war has been unleashed
In all its efficient confusion
Assumptions leading to contusions
Well meaning horror
Generating even more misery
As folks use bullets to stop bullets
And bombs to stop bombs.
 
How much better to escalate?
Than to build mountains
Of mindless hate?
"I want revenge because I am scared of you."
And you want revenge on me too!
We have harmed one another
What else can we do?
We fight near magiddo
Yet another Armageddon!
And centuries of antichrists
 
3 fingers accuse me too.
And my ancestors.
We survive on grace
In hopes of atonement
But not merit.
 
The dead can't point fingers
Only the living can do that
Their fingers have been severed
And tossed in trenches
By guilty survivors
Who will point at one another
And say
"This is your fault"
That they were buried to day
 
And the three fingered principle
Says yes it is ours
 
I can only look on in horror
As once again mixed intentions
Spin out in insanity.
The Accuser does his job
Hoping someone will stop him
The Satan is a prosecutor doing his job
With a jury of angels
None of us humans can lie to.
It is just facts.
Bones in the ground
That tell a story of injury and fear
Hunger and privation
And cannibal violence done by man
Human graybacks mindlessly fighting
Over resources and power
Using fear.
 
The dead don't accuse us
But their spirits do
Each was a person
Not a skeleton
A friend maybe
Or a lover
Someone to get to know
Objectified in death
 
Only the suffering is left
In echos and waves of hurt and fear
In us, their relations.
That three fingered thing
Is also our hope for salvation.
 
When we no longer feel
For what we have done
We are numb
And we are dying.
 
It is the living who suffer
And we are fools
Because we see these things
Time and again
Yet we keep pointing at ourselves
Instead of pointing all our fingers
In outstretched hands
And clearing the rubble.

 

Christopher H. Holte

Wednesday, October 5, 2016

Who Fired General Michael Flynn?

I've been trying to figure out Trump's foreign policy. Key to my confusion is listening to Donald Trump. So I turned to Michael Flynn to try to resolve it. His views seem to have "evolved" from when he was still in the military to the present moment. Not too long ago he conceded that the rise of ISIS/Al Qaeda was the responsibility of George W. Bush and the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003. At one time he was in charge of our Defense Intelligence Agency. During that time he was in charge of interrogations. He was in charge of "torture lite" while in the military, he did shut down the amateur hour "torture heavy" efforts. Now he says;

"I felt the country was at such risk and I was advising five of the candidates running for president. They all reached out to me … Carly Fiorina, Scott Walker, Ben Carson Ted Cruz, and Donald Trump. … They would ask me about national security, what’s happening in the world, my thoughts on particular issues." CNN_Flynn

Trump firt went to Russia while still:

"in the military [while director of the Defense Intelligence Agency]. I went there on a fully approved trip. I had a great trip. I was the first U.S. officer ever allowed inside the headquarters of the GRU [Russian intelligence]. I was able to brief their entire staff. I gave them a leadership OPD. [Professional development class on leadership] and talked a lot about the way the world’s unfolding." CNN_Flynn

He admits that:

"We were working closely with them on the Iranian nuclear deal." CNN_Flynn

Ultimately with Russian and Chinese cooperation we got a Nuclear Deal. Thanks to Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry's efforts. He, like Kerry, doesn't want to give them any credit for making such a deal for partisan reasons.

Bullying the Arabs

Flynn talks about demanding respect in return for continual aid from the USA. He maintains that we have to demand a relationship with Arab (and NATO) members:

"to be one based on respect and acknowledging that there is a cost for not doing that. There is a cost." CNN_Flynn

In that first part it sounds like he is talking about mutual respect. But he's talking about "respect" mafia style. He literally contradicts himself later in the same interview:

"you can put a different set of demands on these guys. Our conversations have been too polite. Our conversations have been political conversations with political people who try to be politically correct and not with people who can say, okay, what is it we want to have going forward? CNN_Flynn

Flynn is closer to Trump's views than Pence is. Like with Bush signing the Status of Forces agreement they blame Obama for, they criticize our involvement and then call for more involvement. Both seem to want to send in more troops, but bully the Arab states to pay for them. Maybe they want to invade Saudi Arabia next.

Why was he fired?

But I wrote this article as a vehicle for answering the question of why Flynn was fired. The answer is that apparently Flynn had his own ideas about Military Strategy. The Wasington Post reports:

"In 2010, Flynn rankled many of his counterparts in the intelligence community when he published an article that was sharply critical of the information that spy agencies were assembling in Afghanistan. The effort was so focused on tracking insurgents that U.S. military and diplomatic leaders got little to help them understand the political, economic and cultural issues driving the insurgency." [Washington Post]

The reality is that the article illustrated Flynn's frustration with fighting an insurgency that it was obvious the senior brass wanted no part of. The Washington Post reported:

"Flynn clashed with other high-ranking officials, including Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Michael G. Vickers. Officials said Flynn had opposed Vickers’ efforts to make significant cuts to large intelligence centers established to support the U.S. military’s regional overseas commands. A former CIA operative, Vickers has sought to model the DIA’s training and overseas presence more closely on its civilian counterpart, according to current and former U.S. officials." [Washington Post]

Flynn wanted the DIA to be more involved in the conflict. Not less.

Business Insider shared the "water cooler" arguments:

"Flynn attempted to push DIA analyses and operators into the field and other high-intensity operations. This ran counter to how the DIA saw itself, leading many to believe that Flynn's vision for the agency was disruptive." BI Article

He wanted to make DIA more like the Joint Special Ops Forces he'd run before coming there.

"Flynn's critics also maintained that his management style was chaotic and that his aggressive push for changes often did not include an adequate follow-through." BI Article

If you are going to integrate field battalion level Intelligence with Brigade level and Division level intelligence, then you institute policies to do so with the collaboration and cooperation of the people involved. Flynn wrote an article on the subject, but he doesn't seem to have followed through with his talk. And since he was the man in charge, it was his job to develop a plan and execute. He had taken over an intel operation that was using "Torture Heavy" techniques strait out of the Inquisition or the Russian playbook. He would implement less heavy handed "torture lite" techniques that met the Geneva Conventions (barely). He'd take credit for the "new" methods.

"Flynn previously served as a senior intelligence officer for the Joint Special Operations Command. During this time he was credited with creating innovative interrogation techniques leading to significant breakthroughs in counterterrorism operations in Iraq and Afghanistan." BI Article

I'm not sure what he actually did. But I can guess that he stopped the heavy handed methods and had his interrogators applying more FBI style questioning methods. I'm not sure he stopped the extreme isolation and sensory deprivation techniques, but I know Obama ordered him to.

Michael Flynn seems to have been actually booted for not respecting the chain of command, assuming that the Obama Administration and joint chiefs, had "no strategy" and for pushing for changes that would have required more boots on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, than anyone wanted to put there. His 2010 report "Fixing Intel" pushed for better intelligence integration, and more focus on understanding the local politics and culture. However, the strategy that the administration is pursuing is to pull out of direct action in Iraq and Afghanistan not to send in more Troops and DIA agents.

Calling Out Islamic Extremism

Of course he says he was booted for calling out Islamic Extremism. In a Washington Times Article:

“As brutal as Saddam Hussein was, it was a mistake to just eliminate him,” Gen. Flynn said. “The same is true for Moammar Gadhafi and for Libya, which is now a failed state. The historic lesson is that it was a strategic failure to go into Iraq. History will not be and should not be kind with that decision.” [Washington Times]

After saying that, he then contradicts himself! Saying we need:

"Iraq-style boots on the ground operation and the same type of coalition Mr. Bush assembled for Iraq is needed to defeat the Islamic State. He stressed the importance of giving Arab nations a leading role in the conflict, but he said Western troops would have to do much of the heavy lifting." [Washington Times]

Essentially he seems to want us to re-invade the Middle East!

Which is of course exactly the strategy he criticized when talking about President George Washington Bush! So the problem isn't that Obama and the Joint Chiefs don't have a clear strategy it is that he has his own ideas and doesn't like any strategy they might come up with. But essentially has no strategy that would reduce the human carnage of folks from the United States.

He also hints at the real problem with our efforts against ISIS:

“if we catch them financing, if they funnel money to IS, that’s when sanctions and other actions have to kick in.” [Washington Times]

He blames Obama for financing ISIL, but he neglects that our real problem is that our Sunni Allies are often on both sides, or ambivalent, about stopping ISIL, that the rebels against Assad are often half in the ISIL camp and that this is a thorny diplomatic subject due to the oil regime. The strategy he seems to want to pursue is to enlist Russia and Assad to help us attack ISIL, while bullying the Sunni Arab Gulf States. I'm sure that would work as well as invading Iraq or toppling Qaddafi. Meanwhile Trump talks about simply stealing the Oil.

Oye Vey!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/08/15/trump-adviser-michael-t-flynn-on-his-dinner-with-putin-and-why-russia-today-is-just-like-cnn/
http://www.businessinsider.com/michael-t-flynn-fired-from-dia-2014-4
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/dec/1/michael-flynn-former-military-intel-chief-iraq-war/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/head-of-pentagon-intelligence-agency-forced-out-officials-say/2014/04/30/ec15a366-d09d-11e3-9e25-188ebe1fa93b_story.html
2010 Report "Fixing Intel: http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/AfghanistanMGFlynn_Jan2010.pdf

Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Sustainable Economic Policy VII

Responsible Fiscal Policy through Functional Finance IS Possible

On April 18 2016, Brookings Institute hosted "the Initiative for Policy Dialogue (IPD) and the Foundation for European Progressive Studies (FEPS), in partnership with the Global Economy and Development program", hosted a public discussion on “How can fiscal policy be growth-promoting and an anchor for macroeconomic stability?” They featured remarks by my favorite economists; Joseph Stiglitz, Massimo D’Alema, Jason Furman, Stephanie Kelton, and Ralf Stegner. The panel was chaired and moderated by Brookings Global Vice President Kemal DerviÅŸ. The webpage open:

"Fiscal policy has proven to be an effective way to stabilize macroeconomic growth and reduce the amplitude of the economic cycle. When used repeatedly, or excessively, however, it can lead to high levels of public debt that can undermine expectations of macroeconomic stability and so reduce or reverse the impact on growth. Getting the balance right is therefore critical in designing an optimal fiscal policy to support long-term growth." [Brookings]

Fiscal policy is currently restrained by our Privateering Private Banking System, moderated by Central Banks who govern the money supply in the interest of the private banking system -- and of "monied interests" who often wield massive power through their control of credit and ownership of properties directly or indirectly through debt.