Niall Ferguson Again Shows What A Bozo He Is -This Time On JFK

Some four years ago (June 16 post to be exact) I skewered the semi-educated Brit twit named Niall Ferguson over his distortions of the fracking industry and its effects on water.. (Ok, actually I recounted Josh Fox's snappy takedowns of this puffed- up former Oxford don, noting how Josh  "ate his lunch" in the course of an appearance on Bill Maher's Real Time.)

Now, Ferguson is offering his inane, know nothing bloviations again, this time as part of a London Sunday Times polemic against John F. Kennedy. (One would have thought these latter day academic goofballs who know next to nothing of the Kennedy presidency would by now have steered clear of it, but like blind fools they put their feet into it every time).

In this specious polemic Ferguson makes use of a "contemporary" verdict on Kennedy's presidency to arrive at this sloppy conclusion:

"The resemblances between the two presidents are more than superficial. In particular both were too much inclined to see politics as a family affair. What the Trump presidency has revealed is not the way the presidency has changed as an institution but the way the American press has changed."

Implying that every major media piece blindly praised Kennedy as opposed to excoriating him. But anyone who paid attention to the media at the time knows this is bare bollocks.  For example,  the central organ of finance capital - The Wall Street Journal -  launched various diatribes accusing JFK of being a "statist" and other things. Some of those articles include:

- 8/6/62 'No Cause for Celebration'; p. 6;

- 3/26/63 'Too Much Money, Too Little Thought', p. 18;

- 8/15/63 'When Friends Become Foes', p. 8

Meanwhile, Henry Hazlitt, contributing editor at Newsweek (The Washington Post's sister publication) was airing many of the same complaints against JFK. These polemics, appearing regularly in Hazlitt's 'Business Tides', included taking JFK to task for his tax policies - including the proposed tax on U.S. business earnings abroad while he also chastised Kennedy for "welfare spending".

One month after the 8/15/63 WSJ article, Fortune implored Congress to stop JFK from using tax policy "as instruments to manage the economy". ('The Dream Businessmen Are Losing', Sept. 1963, p. 91).


As for the "contemporary  verdict" cited by Ferguson, it was undoubtedly excavated from one of the Reich wing nuts that detested him and all he stood for. Historian Arthur Schlesinger, in his book A Thousand Days, pulls no punches on how Kennedy was vilified:

“…in the domain of the radical right it all became much sicker and nastier. Not since the high point of the hate-Roosevelt enthusiasm of the mid-thirties had any President been the target of such systematic and foul vilification. Everything about Kennedy fed resentment: his appearance, his religion, his wealth, his intelligence, his university, his section of the country, is wife, his brothers, his advisers, his support of the Negroes, his refusal to drop the bomb.”


All this is germane now as we continue to see codswallop penned by semi-educated screwballs like Niall Ferguson.  The 'family affair' charge alone discredits everything else Ferguson writes. By way of historical note, JFK appointed his brother Bobby to the position of attorney general. A one off in terms of any claimed "nepotism". That was it. Trump meanwhile has had Don Jr. running campaign aspects and lying about meeting with Russkies (even getting the number he met with wrong), as well as son-in -law Jared making nice with the same Russkies and virtually taking over all State Dept. functions while wife Ivanka has set up her own office beside Daddy's in the White House. What exactly does Ivanka do? Who the hell knows?

How has Ferguson managed to make such an outsized mark for his over-inflated intellect? One theory advanced by Daniel W. Drezner in his book, The Ideas Industry  is that  "the extraordinary rise of the American superrich, a class interested in supporting a particular genre of ideas", has led to their wider dissemination.  According to a recent article in The New Republic ('The Rise of the Thought Leader: How The Superrich Have Funded A New Class Of Intellectual', June).

As the piece explains:

"Whereas public intellectuals like Noam Chomsky or Martha Nussbaum are skeptical and analytical, thought leaders like Thomas Friedman and Sheryl Sandberg “develop their own singular lens to explain the world, and then proselytize that worldview to anyone within earshot.” While public intellectuals traffic in complexity and criticism, thought leaders burst with the evangelist’s desire to “change the world.” Many readers, Drezner observes, prefer the “big ideas” of the latter to the complexity of the former. In a marketplace of ideas awash in plutocrat cash, it has become “increasingly profitable for thought leaders to hawk their wares to both billionaires and a broader public,” to become “superstars with their own brands,"

Ferguson is also included in this class of plutocrat- funded nattering nabobs, e.g.


"Similarly, the historian Niall Ferguson leapt headlong into brand-building: crafting books intended as scripts for TV series, giving lucrative speeches, and writing for a dizzying array of publications. Like other overstretched thought leaders, Ferguson landed in trouble when his Newsweek cover story on President Obama in 2012 turned out to be riddled with errors and misleading claims. Interviewed for The Ideas Industry, Ferguson is frank about his transformation from Oxford don to thought leader: “I did it all for the money.”

Well, it is pretty clear one can also conclude vast errors are replete in his pseudo-historical comparisons of JFK to Trump.  And if he's already produced a tract "riddle with errors" on a relatively recent president, why the hell should anyone trust him on one living more than fifty years ago? Ferguson may know some history all right, but all of it ersatz history.

The NR piece again:

"As Drezner notes, some of the marquee names in thought leadership are distinguished by their facile thinking and transparent servility to the wealthy."

So clearly it would serve Ferguson's purpose of servility to the plutocrats to enhance Trump comparisons to Kennedy despite the fact virtually none exist (apart from being the offspring of a rich guy). This also explain how Ferguson could write such twaddle as:

"Perhaps if JFK had been a Republican, he would have been treated with the same ferocious animosity as DJT is treated today for much less luminous acts".

But I already showed how false this claim is by reference to much of the financial press at the time. A real historian -   as opposed to a pretender like Niall Ferguson - would have been competent  enough at his job to turn up the many instances in the larger media where JFK was attacked. But, like his defense of fracking 4 years ago, his knowledge of Kennedy is half-assed.

But maybe we have another explanation (besides sheer incompetence)  for why Ferguson's pontifications are so patently half-assed. For example,  when he so aggressively defended fracking four yeas ago. The New Republic again (ibid.):

"Corporate sponsors, in turn, have grown bolder, pressuring scientists and others to steer their research away from conclusions that might threaten profits, and working to discredit those who insist on following the facts where they lead, particularly in climate science. "

Bottom line: the guy is a plutocrat's dream: a yapping 'yes' monkey and historical revisionist,  prepared to hock his principles for a fast buck and who merits no more respect now than he did when Josh Fox ate his lunch  four years ago.

See also:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2017/01/dont-even-think-of-comparing-trump-to.html

Greens' Jill Stein: Right About Bernie's Movement Having "No Place" In Democratic Party?

Green party presidential candidate Jill Stein, making a play and plea for Sanders' supporter to come on board.

I was astonished to read in the online Washington Post last night (after the Convention) that Jill Stein was in Philly and making pronouncements outside the Wells Fargo Center to the effect that Bernie's supporters ought to give up on the Democrats.  Jill Stein, of course, is the Green Party candidate for President and she basically said that the Democrats' own actions (including the disgusting  DNC emails) showed that there was no place for a movement such as Bernie's. She then made the case that the more natural place  for "Berners" was with the Greens.

This is a reasonable issue to examine so let's do so. First, IF there is a real place for Sanders' left political movement in the Dem party would they have done everything possible - from the email content and super delegate system- to derail his campaign? I do not believe so! Hence, check off one solid debate point for Ms. Stein.

Next, IF there is a real place for Bernie's energetic supporters in the formal Dem party would Hillary have moved to the center right and named a Neoliberal Wall Street crony as Veep? The answer again must be 'No'.   In fact, I am convinced the naming of Kaine as Clinton's VP pick, a guy known to be against just about every progressive initiative and position, shows the formal Dem Party has zero use for Bernie's people - never mind all the inflated rhetoric last night.

Let's now take a trip back along memory lane to see how and why this distrust of the left emerged and even reached a pinnacle of disrespect during the first Obama term when his aide Rahm Emmanuel sat down with liberals and referred to them as "fucking retarded" for not fully getting behind the Prez' Neolib agenda. See e.g.
https://shadowproof.com/2010/01/26/rahm-emanuel-liberals-are-f-king-retarded/

Real liberals have hated him ever since and also seen Obama for what he really is, a Neoliberal in the disguise of a liberal.

Back to the Democratic Party's genesis of distrust for liberals. This likely commenced with the McGovern presidency in 1972, when the Ds made a big bet and lost to Nixon. They vowed never again to be put in such a position, just as after Mondale's drubbing in 1984 by Reagan led them to confect the center right mutation known as the Democratic Leadership Council, i.e. "New Dems" (read Neoliberal Dems).

To do an end run around future true liberal candidates they implemented a gaming of election rules as well as creation of a "super delegate" system to put a final imprimatur on any "outsider".  True liberals then took stock and decided not to be railroaded by fear ever again. Hence, when Gore showed he disdained liberals by picking the odious neocon Joe Lieberman as running mate in 2000, the most diehard liberals either stayed home or voted Ralph Nader. They are still blamed for "handing the election to Bush" despite the facts that: 1) more than 200,000 Democratic voters voted for Bush in Florida (vastly more than the 57,000 who voted Nader) and 2) Jeb Bush himself knocked over 100,000 black voters off the voting rolls using Choicepoint listing them as felons.

But these election mutations have been minor compared to the rapid move of the entire D Party to the Right which I discussed before, e.g. in my post of May 31. wherein I cited a quote by Noam Chomsky:

“There used to be a quip that the United States was a one-party state with a business party that had two factions: the Democrats and Republicans—and that used to be pretty accurate, but it’s not anymore. The U.S. is still a two-party state, but there’s only one faction, and it’s not Democrats, it’s moderate Republicans. Today’s Democrats have shifted to the right,”

Chomsky's insights are spot on, and as I've posted before, the only reason some perceive me as a Marxist Socialist or "communist" (as opposed to FDR-JFK style liberal) today is because: 1) Their own positions have shifted radically right and 2) they're unaware how the political spectrum shift has been warped by propaganda, revisionist history. (Such as the Rightist trope that JFK was "really a cold warrior" and 'fiscal conservative' when all the evidence indicates this is balderdash,

The Dem mutation toward corporate elitism began when they embraced Neoliberalism via the Democratic Leadership Council  (DLC) in the Reagan era, and 'Fix the Debt' by 2010.  The Party effectively became Republican lite – though they've always tried to make us believe they’re the 2^nd coming of a new progressivism. Which is humbug.

Obama, far from being a true liberal, is merely the latest exponent of this Republican lite thinking, as evidenced by his earlier backing of cuts to Social Security, his support of the TPP, and - his proposal for Medicare cuts (putting more of the expense burden on beneficiaries) in his last budget proposal.

But people, most, are not fooled. I don't know - as I told Janice - whether the fear of Trump will scare enough Sanders' supporters into "getting Dem religion" but Hillary and the Dems certainly haven't helped themselves. Also, as we saw last night with the outpouring of raw emotion for Sanders, when you rope in millions of people - many new to the political system - beware of catching them "on fire" because at the end you may not be able to put all of it out.

The dilemma for the Dems is what to do about Bernie's movement and supporters. If they disrespect them like Emmanuel did then look for them indeed to take their passions to the Greens. Whether they will in this election - pulling the lever for Jill Stein - remains to be seen. A lot depends on how Hillary and her new Veep conduct themselves in the coming weeks and what they say. As one Sanders' supporter put it in the comments following a NY Times piece:

 'Hillary needs to change her policies to cater for them or lose them. It's as simple and fair as that. And yes I know the Trump arguments all too well. But Hillary, if you want Bernie supporters votes, they don't come automatically based on fear of Trump being the alternative. You are going to have to earn those votes with progressive policies (like banning fracking and other critical environmental issues), just as Bernie had to earn his votes."

See also:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/linn-washington/68263/clintonville-reflects-true-horror-of-poverty-in-us-green-party-s-stein-walks-with-poor-while-democr

And:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/ted-rall/68252/hillary-s-strategy-snub-liberal-democrats-move-right-to-nab-anti-trump-republicans

And:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/david-swanson/68262/dnc-now-less-popular-than-atheism

Janice Gives Robust Defense Of Colorado Care Single Payer Plan

As I wrote in a previous post, Colorado Care represents the next iteration in a state providing single payer health care after Vermont's efforts failed. Never mind, the backers of Colorado Care learned from Vermont's mistakes as I indicated in my   post, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2016/07/why-colorados-single-payer-health-plan.html

I also noted that my wife Janice is one of the activists contributing to the overall effort. She has helped in crafting letters to be published in several Colorado newspapers as well as websites, and Facebook forums. Most of this is beating back the extreme misrepresentations of the plan, mainly from libertarians and right wingers - most of whom don't even know the details.


In her most recent letter, Janice delivers a robust comment in support of Colorado Care to a Northern Colorado online paper. The full content is given below, reproduced with Janice's permission:

One Response to “Noam Chomsky endorses ColoradoCare Amendment 69”

Janice Stahl says:

July 21, 2016 at 6:00 pm

That is indeed good news! The current system is truly broken, not only here in Colorado, but in the U.S as a whole. As Professor Chomsky mentioned, we pay twice as much for a health system in which the health outcomes for people have not been great. Every effort to introduce universal healthcare has come up against the power of the huge and immensely deep-pocketed health insurance industry, which is determined to maintain its dominance and protect its considerable bottom line. Previous efforts have failed in part because too many political concessions were made to the insurance industry, resulting in a diluted hybrid system which doesn’t do anything very well.
Colorado citizens have the opportunity here to change that.

We can say no to deductibles (which often force people to pay for their treatment while still paying premiums), no to narrow networks, annual enrollment, unpredictable premiums and denial of service. In contrast to the insurance industry, whose primary interest is to earn maximum profits for its shareholders, ColoradoCare will be run like a cooperative business owned by Colorado residents – patients and providers- whose primary purpose is to provide quality healthcare for Coloradans.

We can say yes to continuous lifetime coverage for all residents when we vote YES on Amendment 69 in November.
----------------------------------

To see the actual link go to:

http://www.northdenvertribune.com/2016/07/noam-chomsky-endorses-coloradocare-amendment-69/comment-page-1/#comment-1363

Am I A ' Leftist Radical'? Nope, Just A JFK- Era Liberal Who Never Changed Over 54 Years!

JFK - denounced as a "statist" as well as a "commie"  - so I figure I'm in good company!

Back in in the mid-90s I was taken aback at the accusations of "commie"  hurled at me by unhinged lone nut defenders (e.g. of the 'lone nut',  Warren Commission codswallop) on the JFK usenet groups. It was particularly evident on alt.jfk.conspiracy (moderated) run by erstwhile Marquette political science prof John McAdams. The reason for their ire? My robust defense of JFK's decision to issue National Security Action Memorandum 263 to pull all U.S. personnel out of Viet Nam by calendar year 1965.

Of course, the original retort of Warrenite pawns was to insist JFK never intended any such thing. Then, I had to inform them that what has often been cited as the NSAM, i.e.

http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/w6LJoSnW4UehkaH9Ip5IAA.aspx


Is in fact only the cover letter by McGeorge Bundy. It has only passing relevance to the actual content of the NSAM, but it does clearly state “the President approved sections IB(1-3) of the report". Which report? To find these, the researcher must turn to Document 142 in The Pentagon Papers: ‘Report of McNamara Taylor Mission to South Vietnam'. Then the serious researcher will read:

IB(2) A program be established to train Vietnamese so that essential functions now performed by U.S. military personnel can be carried out by the Vietnamese by the end of 1965. It should be possible to withdraw the bulk of U.S. military personnel by that time.

IB(3): In accordance with the program to train progressively Vietnamese to take over military functions, the Defense Department should announce in the very near future presently prepared plans to withdraw 1,000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963.

When that clarification became impossible to refute, they jumped on the "commie" epithet bandwagon. This then brings us to: What happens in this country if one comes to a certain political position then retains that position while the entire political spectrum shifts around him?  This is a question I've frequently asked myself as I've beheld dozens of people around me shift their politics to suit the mood of the moment or the media's tune. It has included family, friends as well as others.

For reference, let me make it clear I am not only knowledgeable of JFK's many anti-war policies (including the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of Aug., 1963) but also embracing them. That's because I am an old line Kennedy-style liberal who has never altered his position an iota since the early 1960s.  (Even years before I could vote). I  make no apologies for that, though the party I once belonged to has now moved center -right and corporate. In the words of a recent salon.com piece: "The majority of Democrats have shifted to the right so far that the two-party system is almost unrecognizable, according to Noam Chomsky".

 The same piece quotes MIT Prof Noam Chomsky:

“There used to be a quip that the United States was a one-party state with a business party that had two factions: the Democrats and Republicans—and that used to be pretty accurate, but it’s not anymore. The U.S. is still a two-party state, but there’s only one faction, and it’s not Democrats, it’s moderate Republicans. Today’s Democrats have shifted to the right,”

This was originally related to an interview by RT America’s Anissa Naouai.

Chomsky's insights are spot on, and as I've posted before, the only reason some perceive me as a Marxist Socialist or "communist" (as opposed to FDR-JFK style liberal) today is because: 1) Their own positions have shifted radically right and 2) they're unaware how the political spectrum shift has been warped by propaganda, revisionist history. (Such as the Rightist trope that JFK was "really a cold warrior" and 'fiscal conservative' when all the evidence indicates this is balderdash, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/07/thats-right-now-blame-60s-jfk-for.html

For example, invoking moderate deficit spending of the type used during WWII, as noted by Prof. Donald Gibson "(Battling Wall Street: The JFK Presidency') :

"What Kennedy attempted to effect .....in the three years he was in office, was a moderate peacetime version of the federal policy during World War Two."

What was the result? Professor Gibson once more:

"During the years affected immediately by Kennedy's policies , 1962 to 1964-65, the U.S. economy returned to and even exceeded the rapid growth displayed during the pre-stagnation period" (of WWII).

But the philosophic conflation of liberals with commies  (as JFK himself was identified after signing the 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty) occurred long before JFK reached office. Commie hysteria - the "Red Panic"- probably began in the late 1940s soon after the Russians got the A-bomb.

The 1950s then became a decade of runaway paranoia which most of those who didn't live then can't even begin to imagine. One marker is shown below,  in one of the "Crusade Against Communists" trading cards produced by TOPPS, e.g.

 The aim was to inculcate ‘Communist Recognition’ in children 7 to 10 years old, and get them to hate this system even before they knew what it was about. The garish depictions, such as that shown of Mao Tse-Tung with ghoulish green face  - helped to reinforce the propaganda.   Hysteria grew as an admixture when millions of grade schoolers - like I was in 1952- had to duck under our desks in regular drills to "escape the fallout from Communist atomic bombs". Air raid sirens screamed as whole cities underwent "emergency drills" and CONELRAD broadcast its ominous messages and beeps. 

The TV at the time didn't help either, with propaganda shlock like "I Led Three Lives" fucking up viewers' brains to a far-thee-well.

Then there were the House Un-American Activities  Committee (HUAC) sessions convened by rabid, anti-commie ideologue, Sen. Joseph McCarthy - who makes Ted Cruz look like a wienie or wimp. McCarthy's insane crusade ended up tarring thousands of innocent Americans with the "commie" brush, because too many lame brains were caught up in his nonsense and never approached his hearings analytically until the very end.

By the 1960s, I'd had it with the American propaganda and began sending for 'Soviet Life' magazine from the Russian Embassy in D.C. Sure it was propaganda - I knew that - but I wanted to see what the other side had to say. After receiving about seven issues, however, I grew bored reading of all the "agrarian reforms". 

By the end of Reagan's 2nd term, commie myths and hatreds were well entrenched and Ronnie the pop-eyed fool (who once asked a Naval commander if cruise missiles could be "recalled")  could get away with calling the USSR the "Evil Empire". Never mind this "evil empire" saved the West's living ass as it turned back Hitler's troops in World War II, at the cost of losing 20 million of their own people. Think about that! How do you think America would have handled a vicious aggressor actually invading the nation and laying waste to major cities as the Hitlerites did to Russia? And losing 20 million?  (For some insight, google: "Battle of Stalingrad")


What about Trump who seems neither left nor right? One commenter's take on smirkingchimp.com encapsulates him:

"Trump is a giant sized real estate salesboy, nothing more. he is used car sales trash grown fat. Trump is a reflection of a society turned away from productive activity, belittling honest labor and skills as nerd stuff, glorifying sales trash and marketeer "sell the sizzle" non values. It is a reflection of a world that promotes "selling the brand" over the product. It is a reflection where the ONLY purpose of a business is to make money with no ethics, no expectation to produce anything, no obligation to the employees, no obligation to the community. It is a broken society. trump is not a healthy human being."

 

What  'Blood Red Sun' is writing here I pretty well agree with. Trump is more a carny barker or "sales pitch man" than actual politician - of the Left or the Right. Those party demarcations mean nothing to him so he can easily flip flop - whether on abortion rights, Social Security, military expenditure, taxes or whatever he wants.

Back to the Democrats. Their mutation toward corporate elitism began when they embraced Neoliberalism via the Democratic Leadership Council  (DLC) in the Reagan era, and 'Fix the Debt' by 2010.  The Party effectively became Republican lite – though they've always tried to make us believe they’re the 2^nd coming of true Dem liberal populists.

Bah!  If you want to behold true Democratic populists look at the Bernie Sanders' campaign. Then look how shabbily it's been treated by the Dem establishment, aka Neoliberals.

Some perspective on this is provided by Robert McChesney in his excellent book, The Problem of the Media, Monthly Review Press, 2004, p. 49:

"With the election of Ronald Reagan, the neoliberal movement had commenced. Neoliberal ideology became hegemonic not only among Republicans but also in the Democratic Party of Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Joseph Liebermann. Differences remained on timing and specifics, but on core issues both parties agreed that business was the rightful ruler over society.

It was a return to the 1920s - if not the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century. Few industries seized the neoliberal high ground as firmly as the media and communications industries.

A new generation of economists trumpeted the value of applying market principles to all communication policy matters, as one of them put it, 'the ancien regime was often dominated by ad hoc prescriptions premised on shaky economics applied to dubious histories'.

--snip--

Behind the mighty rhetoric, the stakes were clear. These corporations knew if they were granted First Amendment protection, their existence and operations "would be placed beyond the reach of majorities"

McChesney goes on to note (p. 51) that this is pretty well what DLC'er Clinton accomplished with his 1996 Telecommunications Act.  Which as we may recall, also set the stage for Bernie Ebbers' WorldCom scandal, as well as the Adelphia travesty.

Again, McChesney (p. 51):

"The corruption in media policy making culminated in the passage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, arguably one of the most important pieces of U.S. legislation. The law rewrote the regulatory regime for radio, television, cable television, and satellite communication - indeed, all of electronic communication including the internet.

The operating premise of the law was that the new communications technologies - combined with increased appreciation for the genius of the market- rendered the traditional regulatory market moot.

The solution therefore was to lift regulations and ownership restrictions from commercial media and communication companies, and allow competition in the marketplace to develop, and reduce the government's role to that of protecting private property.

There was virtually no dissent whatsoever to this legislation from either party, the law sailed through both houses of congress, and was signed by a jubilant President Clinton in February, 1996. Corporate CEOs regarded it as their "Magna Carta".

It was around this time I ceased membership in the Democratic Party and became an Independent instead. This meant I had the total freedom not to be bound by a party -  or its platforms -  that no longer embodied my old line JFK-FDR principles. Was I wrong? No!

The Democrats had indeed forgotten the foremost words of JFK himself:

For the Democratic Party is not a collection of diverse interests brought together only to win elections. We are united instead by a common history and heritage--by a respect for the deeds of the past and a recognition of the needs of the future.

Personally, I predict a schism in the D-party as it  drifts ever more rightward. On one side you will have the wine and brie eating elite Dems who man the investment banks, are CEOs of corporations and make up most of the "super delegates" that ensured Bernie's loss. On the other side will be the 10 million plus who voted Sanders in the primaries and are dedicated to  defending and speaking for its traditional constituencies - as well as the millions of new immigrants entering the country.

The choice of the current  Dems is this: do you continue your DLC ways - which have now cost three consecutive congressional elections (including the Dem loss of the Senate in '14) or do you change your ways?

Do you continue to whore for corporate America in the perverse belief that "business is the rightful ruler of the society" or do you return to the defense of the interests of the ordinary Joe and Jane?

The answers to these questions will ultimately determine the quality of life for the citizens of this country.

Why the ‘Ivy League’ Universities Really Comprise the Corrupt League – In Politics, Econ, Business

The Gaussian Copula Formula (top) used by economists to justify credit default swaps, and the Pareto distribution - used to justify the allocation of most wealth to the richest. These are two illustrations of the bunkum taught at 'elite' universities to subvert economics in our nation and the world at large.











It was actually a comment from a nitwit poster on a Guardian (UK) forum that caught my eye. It was in response to a previous poster’s eloquent contribution and a citation of Prof. Stephen Cohen of NYU.  The response comment read, taking on the source of the citation:

“From a 2^nd rate prof at a 3^rd rate university”

Really? Are there ‘third rate’ universities? In fact, not so much these days and hence the inexplicable  yen for so many t0 blow hundreds of thousands of bucks to  compile massive debt just to get into an Ivy league school for the sake of name cachet.  Or tens of thousands more merely to make futile efforts via applications, to enter the magic, golden doors.  The fact is, it makes very little difference which university you attend (assuming it isn’t a ‘for profit’ or online version). It is more the cachet and reputation of the specific department.  From the May 2011 issue of MONEY magazine: "Don't assume an Ivy League education is better than one from a public or state university."

However, as Chris Hedges observes in his remarkable book, ‘The Empire of Illusion’ it is the “Ivies” – the likes of Harvard, Yale, Princeton and others,  that are the source of a continuing flow of zombot, unthinking elites poisoning our nation and the world. To be clear,  this lot are being disgorged in specific academic areas, namely business, politics and economics. Their toxic views are infiltrating the memosphere and reinforcing the hegemony of the elites and their stranglehold on the country – including the ongoing inequality.

Thankfully, their scientific and math contributions remain relatively uncontaminated – unless they’re in the areas which receive corporate grants to support oil shale and natural gas fracking, or GMO foods. In astrophysics, for example, they’re generally fine.

Hedges’ takedown chapter is III: The Illusion of Wisdom and he comes out swinging for the fences with his opening paragraph (p.89):

“The multiple failures that beset the country, from our mismanaged economy to our shredding of Constitutional rights to our lack of universal health care to our imperial debacles in the Middle East, can be laid at the door of institutions that produce and sustain our educated elites. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Oxford, Cambridge, the University of Toronto and the Paris Institute of Political Studies, along with most elite schools, do only a mediocre job of teaching students to question and think. They focus, through the filter of standardized tests, AP classes, enrichment activities, high-priced tutors, swanky private schools, entrance exams and blind deference to authority, on creating hordes of competent systems managers. “

Adding:

“Response for the collapse of the global economy runs in a direct line from the manicured quadrangles and academic halls in Cambridge, New Haven, Toronto and Paris to the financial and power centers of the world.”

 

This is a breathtaking accusation but Hedges can fully back it up with his examples and citations. Nor is this simply a matter of “sour grapes from a loser” since Hedges did in fact lecture at Princeton for years. But what he shows is that the tolerance for divergent thinking in these assorted elite faculties and enclaves is almost non-existent. Hence,  the examples he provides shed light on the extent to which all the above named schools “disdain honest inquiry – which is by its very nature distrustful of authority, fiercely independent and often subversive.”

They therefore would have little tolerance for a remarkable political thinker like Neoliberal gadfly Henry Giroux,  who for many years was Waterbury Chair Professor at Penn State. But on account of his work and resolute critical voice (one of “the most vocal critics of the corporate state and destruction of American education”) he was driven to the margins of academia in the United States. The Neoliberal sock puppets and their assorted lackeys simply couldn’t abide his independent research and critical thought and so drove him to Canada where he now teaches at McMaster University. (Certainly not a ‘3^rd rate school’ if it has the likes of Giroux!)

But Giroux is only one of  many examples of the minds marginalized because of their outspokenness.  Hedges also cites those such as Noam Chomsky (linguistics prof from MIT),  consumer advocate Ralph Nader, the late historian Howard Zinn and others who are shut out once they critique the system keeping us all down, as serfs in the alleged ‘land of liberty’.

How do these wretched intellectual pretenders get away with this evisceration of faculty and critical thought? Well, by an entrenched and well-rehearsed, embedded template that sifts all yearly intakes to find the individuals that will be the most easily molded - the most confident carriers of the elite virus and zombie ideas. (Mainly, as Hedges also notes, little dweezils that follow their profs all around -  groveling-   while also grafting for 4.0 in all their subjects.)

As for the zombie ideas forced down the willing throats of these sycophant students, like:  “money is speech”, "corporate personhood", "free markets", "globalization"  and “trickle down economics”, they ought to have died ages ago .  But all are sustained via the publication of specious, pseudo-academic bullshit for which the dumpster would be the only rightful place in a rationally run institution of higher learning.

Hedges details the methods at the outset of the chapter:  

“They organize learning around minutely specialized disciplines, narrow answers …it allows students and faculties to retreat into these self-imposed fiefdoms and neglect the most pressing  moral, political and cultural questions.”

 

And then later elaborates some more (p. 103):

 

"This is what the Harvard Business School method is about, a didactic system in which the logic employed to solve a specific problem always, in the end, sustains market capitalism. These elites are not capable of asking the broad, universal questions, those staples of an education in the humanities, which challenge the deepest assumptions of a culture and examine the harsh realities of political and economic power. They have forgotten, because they have not been taught, that human nature is a mix of good and evil. They do not have the capacity for critical reflection. They do not understand that for every answer there arises another question- the very basis behind the Socratic method's search for wisdom."

 

One of the ways this occurs is the use of specialized vocabulary.  Thus, the pseudo-intellectuals or “quants” that helped develop the Gaussian Copula formula (see embedded graphic at top) were quite confident that when they applied it to the development of credit default swaps  few would figure them out before it was too late. Indeed choosing the name for this bastardized form of credit derivative ensured that they’d be virtually home free. On account of the arcane lingo used and the complex nature of the underlying formula, few ordinary mortals would have the time, intelligence or temperament to get to the bottom of it all.

These nasty devices were geared to enable commercial banks (the ones that hold your passbook savings) to leverage their assets to preposterous ratios just like investment banks, sometimes as high as 33:1.  In other words, their generation of profits would largely be based on phantom money – since they lacked the reserves to make good if the bets (which is what the credit defaults swaps were) failed. In the meantime, the Gaussian formula itself allowed the credit derivatives to be sliced and diced numerous ways to package them throughout ordinary securities such as collateralized mortgage obligations.  The failure of the credit agencies themselves to recognize this enabled them to be outfoxed by the specialized lingo and the presence of one fraction of ‘AAA’ bonds in each. This  then led directly to the misrepresentation of junk bonds as AAA and the collapse of the credit markets in 2008.

Since then  it’s become ever more evident why elite economics is a failure and can’t even be regarded as a science like Physics, or even in a “pre-scientific phase” as one respondent (Sanjay Bissessur)  to an original  Financial Times letter of mine showed. But economists' failure to even appreciate or use the Gaussian Copula formula correctly shows that they aren't even in the pre-scientific phase. And Bissessur’s pathetic efforts to compare the incident to “early physics” was plainly based on false analogy and disclosed his own lack of critical thinking.

 

In the case of the Gaussian copula, invented by David X. Li  and articulated in his (2000) paper: ‘On Default Correlation: A Copula Function Approach”  it isn't even a true mathematically sound equation analogous to those used in physics or celestial mechanics.. It is more an intellectual Frankenstein monster that never should have seen the light of day any more than a four-headed baby with a pointed tail. For example, Li's misuse of the distribution functions (F_A(1)) and (F_B(1)) would appall any genuine mathematician or physicist. Each is actually based upon significant uncertainties via survival law distributions which can vary enormously. There is no way to normalize any probability based on (T_A, T_B ) so there is no way to equate Pr[T_A, T_B] to anything on the left side. The equal sign is dangerous recklessness masquerading as math. Did elite economists or quants know any of this when they cranked out their credit default swaps? The evidence of failure to predict the 2008 credit crash shows they didn't.

All of which supports Hedges’ condemnation of these mental zombots, i.e. p. 98:

“They cannot grasp that truth is often relative. They base their decisions on established beliefs such as the primacy of an unregulated market or globalization, which are accepted as absolutes.”

 

In other words, they inhabit a self-confected, solipsist world of illusion devoid of critical, empirical testing or critical thought. I mean, Jeez, if any one of these so-called geniuses would have just taken the time to understand WHAT he was doing in applying the Gaussian Copula to credit derivatives he’d likely have seen it was the equivalent of a physicist taking a tiny piece of special relativity and trying to inject it into areas (i.e. thermodynamic systems at room temperature)  that had no relevance because the primary criterion (speeds near c, the speed of light) were not being met. But see, that sort of moral value perception would also have required a moral dimension to their research and its applications, and all the elites lacked it in spades.

At least physics has and uses empirical testing before advancing to hard claims  – so the odds are less that physicists will make asses of themselves. Not so with these economic, political elites.   Unlike astronomers,  who can accurately predict the position of Jupiter or Mars in 2050 or the next lunar eclipse or occultation of a star, the economists can't even predict simple stuff in their immediate domain - say like forecasting the U.S. economic growth would be 3.2 % in 2011 when it was only 1.7%

So why do we keep paying attention to these overpaid clowns? Just because they have Harvard, Cambridge, Princeton, Stanford or whatever degrees after their names? Well, mainly because the politicos who achieve high office (and have similar backgrounds)  tend to install them in their cabinets so instead of being relegated to some corner office behind the hallowed walls of ivy, they have the ear of Presidents and Prime Ministers. These clowns can then help determine national policy which result is usually to the detriment of the rest of us. (Think of the 'chained CPI' gimmick that Obama once entertained.)

Which elicits the question of whether Obama is caught up in this elitist matrix. It was clear in his recent salon.com piece Thomas Frank believes so, as he writes:

"The Obama team, as the president once announced to a delegation of investment bankers, was “the only thing between you and the pitchforks,” and in retrospect these words seem not only to have been a correct assessment of the situation at the moment but a credo for his entire term in office. For my money, they should be carved in stone over the entrance to his monument: Barack Obama as the one-man rescue squad for an economic order that had aroused the fury of the world. Better: Obama as the awesomely talented doctor who kept the corpse of a dead philosophy lumbering along despite it all.

The Age of the Zombie Consensus, however poetic it sounds, will probably not recommend itself as a catchphrase to the shapers of the Obama legacy. They will probably be looking for a label that is slightly more heroic: the Triumph of Faith over Cynicism, or something like that. Maybe they will borrow a phrase from one of the 2012 campaign books, “The Center Holds,” and describe the Obama presidency as a time when cool, corporate reason prevailed over inflamed public opinion. Barack Obama will be presented as a kind of second FDR: the man who saved the system from itself. That perhaps the system didn’t deserve saving will be left to some less-well-funded museum."

In other words, Frank's take is that Obama has helped to preserve and sustain the defunct market capitalism system taught at the elite schools, as well as the whole corporate hegemonic infrastructure. What does Chris Hedges think? He writes (p. 113):

"Obama is a product of the elitist system. So are his degree-laden cabinet members. They come out of Harvard, Yale, Wellesley and Princeton. Their friends and classmates made huge fortunes on Wall Street . They belong to the same clubs. They speak the same easy language of privilege, comfort and entitlement. The education they have obtained has served to rigidify and perpetuate social stratification."


Not that Obama is any different from Clinton before him and worst of all his immediate predecessor,  Bush Jr.,  who we learned benefited as a "legacy student" at Hah-Vahd. Hedges observes (p. 102) that Harvard sports something called the "Z-list" wherein 25 to 50 well-connected but borderline applicants "are told they can enroll if they defer for a year". Hmmmm.....nice trick if you can get it.  Especially if your pappy happens to be a wealthy SOB that can bestow personal grants on the universiy!

Will this corrupt system ever change to benefit the larger society? Not likely! So long as corporate money, personal wealth and advantage are extolled above principles, honor and moral decency, the myopic, amoral elites will lead their blind, greedy and obsequious students, the blind politicos and the rest of us (who aren't so blind) into oblivion. In this light, Hedges'  words are perhaps most trenchant (p. 103):
.
"A culture that does not grasp the vital interplay between morality and power, which mistakes management techniques for wisdom, which fails to understand that the measure of a civilization is its compassion, not its speed or ability to consume, condemns itself to death."

Will the elites take any notice of this and act to change their ways before the pitchforks really come out? Hardly! They are too smug, self-satisfied and arrogant to take seriously anything an outside critic has to say.

Which more or less resembles the stance of the French elites before the pitchforks - and guillotines - came out (during the French Revolution) , to lop off thousands of elitist heads and send them rolling into large baskets.

No, Nanette, Government is NOT Your 'Friend' or ' Daddy'!

Right: Nazi defendants wait to be tried at Nuremberg. It was the 'good Germans,' who saw no evil after Hitler came to power , who were responsible for the chaos the 3rd Reich caused.

"Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for the purpose of a temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin

"In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy, which cunning will discover and wickedness insensibly open." - Thomas Jefferson, in 'Notes on Virginia'.

"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves therefore are its only safe depositories. AND TO RENDER THEM SAFE, THEIR MINDS MUST BE IMPROVED." - Thomas Jefferson, 'Notes on Virginia'.

Yesterday, our dear friend 'Nanette' visited from Aurora, and we had a really good breakfast before having a heavy conversation about Snowden, the NSA, citizens and rights.  'Nanette' like so many 'Muricans, felt in her heart of hearts that Snowden had "betrayed" his country  and merely created hysteria about the NSA mass surveillance programs like PRISM. There was nothing whatever to fret about and the NSA was merely carrying out its mission to protect us from the millions who want to kill us. If you didn't do anything wrong, NSA wouldn't be tracking your every move. Just be a 'good guy' and move on, oh, and stop complaining!

When I mentioned the 'continuity of Government' (COG) program given teeth by the  Bushistas through Sec. 215 of the Patriot Act, and how it provided for domestic protestors (like Occupy Wall Street and anti-frackers) to be labeled "terrorists" - and noted  how the Occupy demonstrators were tracked and hounded-  she merely shrugged her shoulders:

"I don't protest or complain so I have nothing to worry about."

When I told her that the same Sec. 215 allowed federal agents to break into a home and rifle through computer files and other documents without having to tell you, she just smiled - that was for others to worry about because she had nothing to cause any alarm. Only photos of her two kitties.

When I noted the 'Main Core' program and how 8 million innocent Americans were already listed under it, people who'd done nothing except perhaps speak out against the Afghan adventure and the waste of money involved, she just laughed. It doesn't mean a thing and no one is going to do anything with it. She would become a true believer if people started to get arrested and their doors get knocked down.

To her it was quite fine and dandy and not worth worrying or fretting over because, after all, government was good to us, our "friend" or at least 'Daddy': it paved our roads, it paid our benefits - like her Social Security and Medicare- and it regulated her foods so there were no salmonella infections, and supplied money for our schools (ok, at least the better ones through 'No Child Left Behind' and 'Race to the Top') and it protected us from all those bad guys that Clapper and Alexander keep warning us about.

When I cited the stat - from a Gideon Rachman Financial Times article, e.g.






and that "the average American had only a one in 500,000 chance of being killed in a terrorist attack", compared to  a one in 346,000 chance of being annihilated by a large asteroid (> 0.5 km dia.) she again just shrugged. She still knew in her heart of hearts that the government was protecting her.

When I informed her the same gov't she praised for paving her roads also started wars that couldn't be paid for, she was mostly speechless. Finally, she agreed I had a point. When I added to that those unpaid for wars (as well as tax cut for the rich) meant cuts to her domestic S.S. and Medicare benefits she said she'd "wait and see". I added that, in case she forgot, the Supreme Court in a ruling some years back stated that no benefits are enshrined and the government could reduce them or even eliminate them.

In other words, her image of a benevolent government largely depended on who was in power:  which party - and who in that party had what agenda in the Executive branch. It was certainly not a 'slam dunk' that in each election cycle we'd get the government we need or want. (And no one can dismiss the power of money to trump our votes,  negating her argument that "we" get the gov't we deserve via our voting choices.)  It could be a malevolent one with no citizen rights at heart, and no incentive to "promote the general welfare" as stated in the Preamble of the Constitution. As for the Bill of Rights, it was a truism that if people didn't use them then they'd lose them.


'Nanette' in this sense did appear to see the paradox of the NSA going ape shit to reign in terrorists with its mass surveillance dragnet (that didn't discriminate good guys from bad)  but not attending to the millions of cockeyed gun owners with their AR-15s, Bushmaster .223s and other weapons - all 2nd amendment rights aficionados, when thousands of times more people were murdered than killed by terrorists each year.


But then these gun zealots - unlike 4th amendment civil libertarians - might go bonkers if threatened with the remote loss of any of their current rights.. At least she saw the divergence in government obsession between protecting 2nd and 4th amendment rights. The 2nd amendment folks struck fear in the heart of government, but not 4th amendment rights folks. (As I noted in an earlier blog post, protecting 4th amendment rights is always more difficult because they are largely intangible and people don't see when they're losing them. By contrast a gun owner can instantly see when he's losing his Bushmaster or Glock 9mm).

I tried my best to show Nanette it is the citizen's job to oversee and pay attention to what the government is doing, and not be asleep at the switch. I read to her Jefferson's quotes (above) and indicated that a real citizen had to treat government more or less like a toddler of immense power that might wander off the beaten path at any time -depending on political winds, or outside agents.

As MIT's Noam Chomsky put it in a recent interview:

"Governments are power systems. They are trying to sustain their power and domination over their populations and they will use what means are available to do this. By now the means are very sophisticated and extensive and we can expect them to increase. So for instance, if you read technology journals you learn that in robotics labs for some years there have been efforts to develop small drones, what they call “fly-sized drones,” which can intrude into a person’s home and be almost invisible and carry out constant surveillance. You can be sure that the military is very much interested in this, and the intelligence systems as well, and will soon be using it."

So true.  The saddest part of our exchange is the extent to which I realized that Nanette was like the millions of good Germans who, had they paid attention and done their homework, might have averted the catastrophe of the Third Reich - by not turning a blind eye to what was going on. (In Nanette's view that'd never happen today since we're more "civilized". Hmmm... I reminded her that the Germans with their Goethe and Bach also fancied themselves to be).

Ironically, we Americans - who had to sacrifice so many lives to liberate Europe from Hitler's grasp- had no tolerance for any of the 'good Germans' - a historical point many 'good Americans' today would do well to ponder.  Go back to the end of World War II and the American occupation of Germany in the years after 1945. We assailed the “weak” German people and mocked them for not standing up to the growing metastasis of Hitler’s Reich which they obviously saw but did nothing about. Hell, too many sided with Hitler, praised him and embraced his ideology while turning a blind eye to the wrongs. The last straw was the Enabling Act (1933) which essentially obliterated the last vestiges of the Weimar Republic. Our military also dragged out these “good Germans” and trotted them into the remnant concentration camps to see first hand what their Fuhrer and his minions did. They were marched in and forced to look at the naked, gassed bodies stacked like cordwood until they puked.

Meanwhile, our then military leaders rounded up the remaining high profile Nazis, including Hermann Goering (see photo) , and dragged them before a Tribunal to be accountable for their actions. (Read the book, ‘Judgment at Nuremburg’ or see the movie). Though they gave the excuse they were only “following orders” we didn’t buy it. We demanded a higher moral standard that NO one is obliged to follow orders to serve such vile ends and there exists higher moral law that trumps “orders” or “oaths”.

The U.S. insisted instead that violating a government order was mandated by the principle (VI) that the United States trumpeted in the Nuremberg war crime trials. Principle VI came to be known as the Nuremberg Code and clearly states: “The fact that a person acted pursuant to orders of his government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him."


Note this Principle’s injunction is exactly analogous to what Edward Snowden followed. He had allegedly binding orders and “oaths” by which the government found it expedient to limit his actions, but he saw (as the U.S. military leaders did at Nuremberg) that the option of a higher moral choice dictated he inform the American people – whose liberties were at stake and threatened – of what was being done in their name. As Robert Scheer noted in a June 25 blog, ‘The Good Germans in Government’:

Read the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and tell me that Edward Snowden is not a hero in the mold of those who founded this republic. Check out the Nuremberg war crime trials and ponder our current contempt for the importance of individual conscience as a civic obligation

I ended our conversation (moving back to more light-heated fare)  by suggesting to Nanette that she read the 4th amendment again and carefully, and take note that mass warrants were not permitted. The government had to seek out and issue individualized warrants specific to the perpetrators and context. It didn't matter if this "took time", or was "inconvenient" - that is what the amendment stated.

Why, I asked her, should we empower the government to take away our 4th amendment rights any more than the gun owners allow the government to take  away their 2nd amendment rights?

She had no answer, but she promised to read the Bill of Rights again as her first resolution for this year. Let us hope millions of our fellow citizens do the same, in between their shopping excursions, instagrams and Facebook-ing.

Meanwhile, the fathead fool and dickhead Peter King (R- NY) has flipped out at the NY Times editorial board calling them "apologists for terrorists"- for calling for clemency for  Edward Snowden. See,

http://www.salon.com/2014/01/02/gops_peter_king_flips_out_on_the_new_york_times/

This asshole still claims Snowden is a “traitor” -  despite the fact Ed has done more to protect this nation's honor and principles than the fat bag of blowhard gas has done in all his years sitting in congress.  The real traitors are pigs like King, and we need to call them out and say so!