USA ELECTION 2016

Trump Is the Symptom Not the Disease

GOP elites have only themselves to blame for the rise of Trump.

By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship / BillMoyers.com March 16, 2016


From their “Dark Money” bagman Karl Rove to their philosophical guru David Brooks, the GOP elites are in a tizzy over saving the Republican Party from Donald Trump and the other intruders, extremists and crackpots who have fallen in behind Trump as if he were the Pied Piper of Hamelin. But who will save the party from the elites?

Look around at just some of the other sheer lunacy their party perpetrates when it’s not trying to shut government down, redistribute wealth upward and prevent the president of the United States (who, the last time we looked, has the constitutional right and mandate) from filling a vacancy on the Supreme Court.

The Republicans in southern California just got a 7-6 majority on the region’s air quality board and have set out to reverse all of its safeguards, “reaffirming new smog rules backed by oil refineries and other major polluters,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

Mary Lou Bruner, a Republican crank in Texas who claimed that a young Barack Obama had worked as a black male prostitute, is on track to become a key vote on the state’s board of education, the group that, as Matt Levin at the Houston Chronicle writes, is, “already drawing intense criticism for textbooks that, among other issues, downplayed slavery and racial segregation.”

That’s important because the school board is such a major buyer of books its decisions affect editorial content in texts all over the country. So remember that Bruner is an eccentric whose Facebook declarations include “School shootings started after the schools started teaching evolution” and “The dinosaurs on the ark may have been babies and not able to reproduce. It might make sense to take the small dinosaurs onto the ark instead of the ones bigger than a bus.”

Huh? Yet Republican elites seem quite satisfied to have a Mary Lou Bruner as the arbiter of what their children read in schools.

And while we’re talking about education, travel over to Texas neighbor Louisiana and look at the legacy that former Republican governor and presidential candidate Bobby Jindal has left behind for his Democratic successor, John Bel Edwards.

At the Washington Post, Chico Harlan reported,

“Louisiana stands at the brink of economic disaster. Without sharp and painful tax increases in the coming weeks, the government will cease to offer many of its vital services, including education opportunities… A few universities will shut down and declare bankruptcy. Graduations will be canceled. Students will lose scholarships… Since the 2007-08 school year, Louisiana has cut funding for higher education by 44 percent, the sharpest pullback in the nation.”

Part of this can be attributed to the precipitous drop in oil and gas prices and loss of fossil fuel industry revenue crucial to the state’s economy. But the real problem, according to the Associated Press, is that,

“Jindal, burnishing his fiscal conservative credentials for his failed presidential campaign, refused to hike taxes or approve any action that even resembled a tax hike, including trimming expensive business tax credits, even amid an economic downturn… Legislators are hearing that cuts described by the Jindal administration as ‘efficiencies’ actually went much deeper, striking at services. They’ve learned about borrowing practices that increased state debts and about threats to Louisiana’s cash flow because it spent down reserves.”

The result? A calamitous budget crisis in the second most impoverished state in the country, a $900 million shortfall that has to be fixed by June 30 and another amounting to around $2 billion that will need to be closed next year. So that’s how you govern when you have the power. Thanks, Republicans!

While we’re at it, ponder the once-great state of Kansas, where, under the right-wing ideology and bumbling leadership of Republican governor Sam Brownback, the clowns are running the circus. The state legislature there is moving toward passage of a bill that would allow the impeachment of Kansas Supreme Court justices for, among other high crimes and misdemeanors, “attempting to usurp the power” of said same legislature or the executive branch.

The reason? As per Edward Eveld of the Kansas City Star, “A recent state Supreme Court decision, citing the Legislature’s constitutional duty to properly finance public schools, has demanded that lawmakers fix a school funding formula by June 30 or risk the shutdown of public schools for the 2016-2017 school year.”

The court also has overturned death sentences and is considering a case that would void anti-abortion rules. The Republican legislature doesn’t like any of this one bit, not to mention that four of the seven judges were appointed by former Democratic Governor Kathleen Sibelius. So in a classic, don’t-raise-the-bridge-lower-the-river solution, the GOP legislators, who outnumber Democrats by three to one, have decided the answer is to do away with the judges they don’t like and to hell with checks and balances.

In the words of Esquire’s inimitable Charlie Pierce, “They recognize no limits to their power, no curbs to their desire. There are few frontiers in democratic government that they will not work to violate, or to twist to their own purposes. And they absolutely will not stop. Ni shagu nazad, as Stalin said to his army. Not one step backwards.”

What happened to Kansas? A coup against common sense, sound principles and the “general welfare” hailed in the preamble to the US Constitution. And as it all has gone down, Republican elites seem to have developed a case of laryngitis.

We could go on. Let’s not forget what Governor Scott Walker has done to Wisconsin and Michigan Governor Richard Snyder to Flint. Check out how Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner is endeavoring to “fix” higher education there. Will Republican elites please tell us where they stand on their man’s ax-wielding mania?

And what Republican poobah has dared call out Grover Norquist, whose monomaniacal crusade against government has thrown public education into crisis, turned streets and highways into bottomless potholes, and produced stratospheric deficits? (Bobby Jindal, by the way, was just one of the many who signed Norquist’s no-tax pledge, a major reason his state is barely holding on by its fingernails.)

Finally, this is the party whose elites deceived America into war after cutting taxes on the wealthy so they wouldn’t have to pay for it. And so it goes. All of which leads us to the conclusion that what’s wrong with the GOP isn't just about Donald Trump, apoplectic, mendacious miscreant though he is. Over decades, the Republicans have built castles of corruption and citadels of crony capitalism across the country and now the angry villagers are climbing over the ramparts. Not one step backwards? Too late.

Refugees Escape Route

‘Leave children alone’ – Putin on gay rights in Russia

Published time: January 18, 2014 13:38

President Vladimir Putin explained to Sochi-2014 Olympic Games volunteers the difference between the ban on gay propaganda among underage minors in Russia and criminal prosecution of homosexuals in some countries.

“There is no ban for homosexual relations in Russia, yet propaganda of homosexuality among minors – and pedophilia in particular – are prohibited,” Putin said during a Q&A session with volunteers at the Sochi Winter Olympics.

The president stressed that a ban on certain kind of relations and an interdiction on propaganda of such relations are “totally different things.”

“We neither disallow anything [homosexual] nor bust anybody [who’s gay], we have no criminal liability for such relations – as opposed to many other countries of the world,” the president emphasized.

“So you can feel calm and relaxed – but leave the children alone, please,” Putin demanded, recalling that in some countries the issue of legalizing pedophilia has been discussed openly.

“We’re not going to take up that lead towards unknown consequences like weak-willed underlings,” the Russian president stated. “We have our own traditions and our own culture. We treat with respect all of our partners and we anticipate that our traditions and culture are respected.”

The so-called “gay propaganda” law introduces fines for propaganda of non-traditional sex relations to minors, including in the media, on the internet and via viral adverts. The law stipulates fines for giving children propaganda about homosexuality.

Earlier in January, a group of 27 Nobel laureates wrote an open letter to President Putin urging him to repeal the so-called “gay propaganda law” as it “inhibits the freedom of local and foreign” LGBT communities.

But the International Olympic Committee says that Russia’s legislation doesn't violate the Olympic movement’s rules.

Moreover, on Friday a senior Italian member of the International Olympic Committee has urged “not to let politics interfere with the Olympics” and slammed the US for its decision to include openly gay athletes in its official Sochi delegation just to “demonstrate” that in their country gay rights have been established.

Army of international volunteers

Once a contest for volunteer positions of the Sochi-2014 Winter Olympics was announced, nearly 200,000 applications were filed from all regions of Russia and nearly 60 countries.

As a result, 25,000 young people were chosen to work at the Sochi Olympics as volunteers. This makes up over 35 percent of all the personnel at the Games.

 “We rely on you very much. Volunteers create the atmosphere of the Games,” Putin told the volunteers in the Sochi’s Krasnaya Polyana winter sports center. He added that the festive atmosphere at the sporting event and the holiday spirit of sportsmen and guests greatly depends on the volunteers.

“A sports tournament is a festival. Sporting competitions are always associated with emotions, with the inner turmoil of its participants, which one way or another is projected on staff and on you. You need to be aware of this, have a good sense of humor to balance all this within yourself and your soul, to show externally only positive emotions,” the president said.

Russia’s Black Sea resort city of Sochi hosts the Winter Olympics on February 7-23, with the Paralympics to follow on March 7-16.

Supreme Court hands Monsanto victory over farmers on GMO seed patents, ability to sue

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​The US Supreme Court upheld biotech giant Monsanto’s claims on genetically-engineered seed patents and the company’s ability to sue farmers whose fields are inadvertently contaminated with Monsanto materials.

The high court left intact Monday a federal appeals court decision that threw out a 2011 lawsuit from the Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association and over 80 other plaintiffs against Monsanto that sought to challenge the agrochemical company’s aggressive claims on patents of genetically-modified seeds. The suit also aimed to curb Monsanto from suing anyone whose field is contaminated by such seeds.

The group of plaintiffs, which included many individual American and Canadian family farmers, independent seed companies and agricultural organizations, were seeking preemptive protections against Monsanto’s patents. The biotech leviathan has filed over 140 lawsuits against farmers for planting the company’s genetically-engineered seeds without permission, while settling around 700 other cases without suing.

None of the plaintiffs are customers of Monsanto and none have licensing agreements with the company. The group argued that they do not want Monsanto’s genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) and want legal protection in case of inadvertent contact with the company’s products.

The appeals court decision was based on Monsanto’s supposed promise not to sue farmers whose crops - including corn, soybeans, cotton, canola and others - contained traces of the company’s biotechnology products.

In a June 2013 ruling, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, DC said it was inevitable, as the farmers’ argued, that contamination from Monsanto’s products would occur. Yet the appeals panel also said the plaintiffs do not have standing to prohibit Monsanto from suing them should the company’s genetic traits end up on their holdings "because Monsanto has made binding assurances that it will not 'take legal action against growers whose crops might inadvertently contain traces of Monsanto biotech genes (because, for example, some transgenic seed or pollen blew onto the grower's land).'"

The panel’s reference to “traces” of Monsanto’s patented genes means farms that are affected by less than 1 percent.

The plaintiffs asked Monsanto to pledge not to sue, but the company rebuffed the request, saying, "A blanket covenant not to sue any present or future member of petitioners' organizations would enable virtually anyone to commit intentional infringement."

Monsanto’s GMO seeds are designed to withstand the company’s own ubiquitous herbicide, Roundup. Recently, questions have begun to arise from the bioengineered seed’s resistance to pestilence, which has caused some farmers to increase their use of traditional pesticides.

"Monsanto never has and has committed it never will sue if our patented seed or traits are found in a farmer's field as a result of inadvertent means," said Kyle McClain, the Monsanto's chief litigation counsel, according to Reuters.

"The lower courts agreed there was no controversy between the parties," McClain added, "and the Supreme Court's decision not to review the case brings closure on this matter."

Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association President Jim Gerritsen expressed disappointment that the Supreme Court reaffirmed the previous ruling, refusing to hear the case.

"The Supreme Court failed to grasp the extreme predicament family farmers find themselves in," said Gerritsen, an organic seed farmer in Maine. "The Court of Appeals agreed our case had merit. However ... safeguards they ordered are insufficient to protect our farms and our families."

In addition to Monday’s news and the appeals court decision against them, the plaintiffs - many of them non-GMO farmers and who make up over 25 percent of North America’s certified organic farmers - also lost a district court case.

“If Monsanto can patent seeds for financial gain, they should be forced to pay for contaminating a farmer’s field, not be allowed to sue them,” said Dave Murphy, founder and executive director of Food Democracy Now!, in a statement “Once again, America’s farmers have been denied justice, while Monsanto’s reign of intimidation is allowed to continue in rural America.”

“Monsanto has effectively gotten away with stealing the world’s seed heritage and abusing farmers for the flawed nature of their patented seed technology,” said Murphy. “This is an outrage of historic proportions and will not stand.”

The case is Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association, et al., v. Monsanto Company, et al. Supreme Court Case No. 13-303.

Fear and Loathing in the EU

Patrick L Young is expert in global financial markets working in multiple disciplines, ranging from trading independently to running exchanges.

EU, Crisis, Politics, Economy, Finance

It’s not just the eurozone that is increasingly derided as a failure: Now, the very European Union itself is mistrusted by its largest members. And who discovered this gem of Eurosceptic propaganda? The EU’s own statistics agency.

In the heyday of ancient Rome, the Emperor satisfied the citizens with ‘panem et circenses’ (bread and circuses). Alas, the Roman law-based empire the European Union is spluttering through waves of crises thanks to their odd belief that bread and circuses can be replaced by austerity. Nations have been left wearing hair shirts (and worse) in the masochistic belief that they can slim their way to health if sufficiently starved of stimulus.

So it may not be such a surprise that polling conducted by the EU’s own EuroBarometer agency has shown a simply staggering reversal in how major European nations view the EU. In 2007, Germany’s refusal to abide by Euro currency rules was copied by Mediterranean states, economic growth was taken for granted, and various asset bubbles propelled a sense of calmness, confidence and wealth. At the time, polling showed that the EU was widely trusted, except in the UK.

But now, even in Poland, where economic growth has continued, the percentage of people who distrust the EU has catapulted from 18 percent to 42 percent. The pragmatic Poles are wavering in their support of joining the Euro. Indeed, one poll showed some 20 percent suggested fiscally sound Euro nations should join the Zloty!

In five other nations a majority of citizens now clearly distrust the Brussels apparatus. In Britain, this amounts to a remarkable 69 percent, up from 49 percent in 2007, placing them second behind the Spaniards, where post-property-bust distrust has leapt from 23 percent to a resoundingly skeptical 72 percent.

This message from the heart of EU bureaucracy ought to be very clear: The European Union is utterly and completely out of step with the views of its citizens. Some 59 percent of Germans distrust the EU over frustrations at having to transfer billions in bailouts to Mediterranean states, while on the southern fringes of Europe the citizenry who trusted the EU are now being forced to deal with austerity that will deliver significant pain.

The EU remains an organization with plenty of presidents, but no leadership. The crumbling quasi-imperial edifice fails to appreciate the tectonic shifts shredding its influence. A democratic deficit at the top with limousine liberals on tax-free salaries looks as out-of-touch as the Soviet Politburo in 1985. A genuinely beneficial free trade zone has been hijacked by a crazed group of political integrationists convinced of their divine right to make Europe one big nation.

However, this is not one big happy family. Nor is the opposition a single unitary group. This may permit divide-and-conquer politicking within the EU, but the ultimate fissures will be very hard to paper over to achieve the foolish integrationist ideal. The EU itself may yet collapse.

Yet even though distrust is at record-high levels, the Eurosceptics are anything but harmonized. The Five Star Movement in Italy has little in common with Scandinavian True Finns or Britain’s UKIP. British Euroscepticism is tinged with a right-wing individual determinism and innate distrust of central government. In other places, Euroscepticism may wear the mask of Fascist or other unpleasant socialist extremists. In the Mediterranean, there is incredulity that the EU is not the ultimate lender of last resort there to bail out bankrupt welfare systems. Ironically, such models of patronage and state-assisted folly were not reduced earlier, because the Euro had artificially low interest rates as the ECB sought to keep the German economy healthy.

Brussels, aided and abetted by a generation of political pygmies, has played its cards so badly that while the Euro faces death by a thousand cuts, even the core universal benefits of the EU itself are endangered. Barbaric cures to sustain a flawed currency are being disowned by a formerly Europhile political generation, such as German Socialist Oskar Lafontaine and British Conservative Nigel Lawson. Both formidable finance ministers now see how the Euro threatens European unity at all levels.

Meanwhile, with a perfect demonstration of how his political skills have become more attuned to the Brussels trough as opposed to the problems of ordinary citizens, President Barroso has remarked that the clear path to a better EU is more federalism.

When politicians ignore the people from their position of privilege, the end result is usually upheaval.

BRICS: pros and cons

The Fourth BRICS Summit, hosted by New Delhi for the first time this year, looks like another milestone in a short, yet, impressive record of the fast-growing informal block of major emerging economies which includes Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa. The theme of the summit, formulated as “BRICS Partnership for Global Stability, Security and Prosperity”, spells out the ABC of the globalized and increasingly interdependent world as seen by the leading non-Western powers. In fact, the summit motto in itself describes what BRICS – be it a block or an alliance – is all about after six years into its existence.

No longer an enigma or geopolitical UFO, BRICS is making headlines as it rapidly evolves into a new global powerhouse with more say in restructuring the world economy, as well as in ending the political monopoly of the elite club (a club notorious for its division of the world into the West and the rest).

At first sight, BRICS, as a lose amalgamation of the five fast-growing economies, can really be described as an awakening giant. Young and ambitious, it’s come into a world of obsolete institutions with the guts and verve needed to shift global power structures and change the rules of the game.

Does BRICS have the potential to do this? If you look at BRICS in terms of statistics, the question seems irrelevant. In his recent article, contributed to the Moscow News daily, Prime-Minister Putin shares his vision on the matter: “BRICS brings together five countries with a population of almost three billion people, the largest emerging economies, colossal labor and natural resources and huge domestic markets. With the addition of South Africa, BRICS acquired a truly global format, and it now accounts for more than 25% of world GDP.”

“When BRICS is really up and running, its impact on the world economy and politics will be considerable,” Putin predicts.  

According to Brahma Chellaney, Professor of Strategic Studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research, BRICS “might also be dubbed the R-5, after its members' currencies – the Brazilian real, the Russian ruble, the Indian rupee, the Chinese renminbi and the South African rand." And let me add that if one day, say, the Chinese renminbi is endorsed as the new global currency, it will undermine the US dollar’s supremacy in the world financial structure, especially when it comes to trade and investment in emerging markets. No surprise, seeing that impatience to put an end to the Us dollars world monopoly prompted the South African government to say it was ready to discuss the issue at this week’s BRICS summit. It goes without saying that switching from the US dollar to the Chinese renminbi will help African businesses, seeing that a lot of their trade is with BRICS countries.

While some will call the idea to make the renminbi the preferred global currency premature, another proposal – to create a common development bank for the BRICS countries – has already topped the Delhi summit agenda. Initially a brainchild of India, the initiative to set up a five-nation bank is due to get a much-wanted stamp of approval on the part of BRICS nations at the Delhi summit itself.

And it won’t just be a mere formality. Once set up, the BRICS development bank will give the green light for indirect investment of central bank foreign reserves inside the BRICS countries. It is reported that the BRICS bank could issue convertible debt, which can be bought by central banks of all the BRICS countries. So, in practical terms, for it will serve as a vessel for investment risk-sharing for BRICS countries

As seen by financial analysts, the proposed BRICS bank is a way for emerging nations to try and pull out of the western dominated World Bank and IMF. “Basically India, China and perhaps Russia are now trying to show off their economic clout; to prove to the West they can get on just fine on their own. Above all, they need freedom from Western financial influence," John Mashaka, an expert with Wells Fargo Capital Markets, said.  

In the meantime, Moscow sees its way to set up a new trend to allow developing economies to increase their role in international financial institutions. As Russia’s presidential aide Arkady Dvorkovich put it on his way to New Delhi, “BRICS should play a more important role in the management of international financial institutions”. While BRICS had already injected a large amount of capital into the IMF, some European countries still think the amount should be enlarged. “Increasing the bloc’s participation in the IMF should be related to a rethinking of its share in the structure,” Dvorkovich said. All in all, if European countries need more capital from BRICS countries, the voice of BRICS’ in the IMF should be enhanced.

However, let us not allow ourselves to be overwhelmed with the euphoria over BRICS performance and regard it as an unbreakable alliance with five partners standing shoulder to shoulder to fight a Western monopoly in the global economy and world politics. The BRICS countries, which represent very different political cultures whose economic interests often clash, have certain limits to joint action, both in setting up the agenda of restructuring world financial bodies and in adopting common stand on the key geopolitical issues, like Iran or Syria.

Even the road to a common development bank seems to be more bumpy than was initially expected. While China claims it should have a permanent presidency in the BRICS bank, this approach will hardly be welcomed by Russia and India, which also demand the president’s chair.

Moreover, there is a serious, while not much-spoken economic rivalry and military standoff between the two key BRICS Asian members – China and India. Symbolically enough, just weeks before the Delhi BRICS summit, a group of Indian pundits, including well-known scholars, diplomats, military and public figures unveiled a report called 'Nonalignment 2.0'. The report labels China as one of the major threats to Indian security and her economic interests.

According to the survey, while China and India were equal in economic size a few decades ago, the Chinese economy today ($7.3 trillion in 2011) is nearly four times as large as that of India ($1.8 trillion).

Describing the tense situation at the Sino-Indian border after the 1962 war, the authors insist that in its dealings with China, India should be ready for responding to any Chinese occupation of Indian Territory in a future border war “with a land grab of it own across the current border with China in Tibet”. While 'Nonalignment 2.0' is not an official New Delhi doctrine, such rhetoric hardly corresponds with the goals of enhancing global stability, security and prosperity, as proclaimed by BRICS’ leadership.

So, the future of the five-member body is probably not as cloudless as described by its global army of its fans all over the world, inspired by the idea of challenging a world order built on the bedrock of American imperialism. The question of whether a common will might prevail over national egoisms is still up in the air.

No doubt, that BRICS is a new giant, and this is good news. However, the bad news is that it is a giant with a quite limited capacity to run, as a heavy weight remains chained to its feet.

Sergey Strokan, for RT