The Rag Blog

Don’t be fooled by NY Times Magazine’s feature story this weekend about the religious right’s nice, new image. Christian power is not about holding hands and thinking good thoughts.

Is the religious right ready to get their hands out of America’s underwear? Is the shame margin not paying off the way it used to?

New York Times reporter David Kirkpatrick takes apart “The Evangelical Crackup” in this past Sunday Magazine, in what is sure to be one of the most talked-about stories of the pre-election season.

He interviews a number of pastors and politicos from the conservative churches — the bedrock of the “Moral Majority” and the base that won the Bush family their votes.

This is the movement that could be relied upon to do anything at the flick of an abortion-shaming or homo-hating switch. Get them on their high horse, with a sexy leather crop in their hands, and you had them sweating and frothing their way to the finish line.

By Kirkpatrick’s assessment, the coalition is now blown to smithereens, for a number of reasons. I was disappointed with his analysis, but the raw material is fascinating to review:

1. The Oedipal Split. The old dudes of the Moral Majority are dying, or at least creaking — and the hip young pastors coming up can’t wait to dethrone the old poops. The younger congregations — which are the only ones growing — don’t wanna listen to grandpa scream “Get Thee Behind Me, Satan” — they’re embarrassed by him. They don’t want to look stupid about evolution. They wish they were as cool as The Daily Show.

2. The religious right got tied like a tin can to the tail of the GOP, and lately, that’s like being dragged through the streets on a bed of nails. The new line among the moderate church folk is, “We shouldn’t have gotten involved in politics in the first place.” They say the religious community should be a pure covenant that doesn’t take partisan sides. Besides, the current crop of Republican presidential weirdos candidates make their stomachs hurt.

3. “Be the first one on your block to have your boy come home in a box.” The War is unpopular, and everyone blames Bush. The Fundie rank and file have seen their kids killed and maimed, and they don’t see the Bush clan making any sacrifices. Meanwhile, the oil profiteering is hurting everyone who doesn’t have a major share in Halliburton. The class divisions between the have-nots, have-littles, and the White House are finally deep enough to hurt, and all the flag-waving and fag-bashing won’t make it go away.

Kirkpatrick got a lot of the young ministers on the record speaking about how they didn’t want to be known for what they were against, they want to be associated with positive efforts, like fighting poverty and racism in their own communities. Taking global warming and environmental issues seriously! Promoting peace rather than blood or oil thirst. He even got one pastor to admit he didn’t think having an an abortion or being gay was necessarily going to send anyone to hell. My, my!

On the face of it, these developments are very touching, and they reflect the changes I see in my own small town. The white Christian churches in Santa Cruz have thrown themselves into helping people with drug rehab, especially those suffering from the meth scourge. The old-school surfing community here is divided between dealers and born-again’s, and the Xtians have really gained a lot of ground. They do food fund-raising drives, the pastors are famous for their marital counseling services, they clean up the beaches. They sponsor straight-edge hardcore music shows. They are supportive to families who’ve been devastated by the war, and the obvious sentiment is, “This was so unnecessary, Jesus doesn’t like it.”

But.

I think this “kind” face is the one the church puts on whenever they’re in trouble.

The sex shame has not gone away; I meet the causalities all the time: the young women looking for a way out of a secret pregnancy who “can’t tell anyone” and hate themselves for it. The painful closet cases who hide behind “purity pledges” and the threat of “porn addiction” as a way to keep anyone from seeing that they’re queer, and as horny, as any other human being. The revolving door between drug addiction and choir practice because the underlying problems are never addressed.

The church can’t help these poor sinners, no matter how “nice” they are, because fundamentally, they have sinned. If you believe in that shit, even if you’re not getting a straight ticket to hell, purgatory’s flames are burning your hair off anyway.

Successful missionary work encourages conceit, and aggression. It always does. When it was “fun” to be a Bush Family supporter, when W. was a “winner,” then being a fag-bashing bully and killing a few more abortion doctors was righteous. Bomb Iraq! Your credit card is limitless! Gas is cheap! National Guard duty is a cakewalk! Jesus did a lot of kicking ass and taking names.

Of course the elite like Ralph Reed, Falwell, Dobson, et. al., sold out to the corporate GOP cash trough long ago. Year after year, the Republican economic and military policies destroyed their own base. But the Fundie Kings were distracted by all their velvet cushions and private jets. A scandal here, a scandal there — they just couldn’t be bothered to take it seriously.

The only candidate who could save them now would be a wholesome middle-of-the-roader who promises to end the war, and put some major money in working-class (i.e., debt slave) pockets. Like Hillary. Or Barak. And those two are pumping out the prayer breakfasts to prove that very point. The leading Democrats aren’t campaigning to get religion out of politics, they’re encouraging it.

Dobson may still be screaming in his piss-pot about how children need to be beaten harder to turn out right, but he shook Hillary Clinton’s hand a few weeks ago. What does that say about the two of them?

There is no such thing as religion staying out of politics; I find it incredible any reporter can let a whopper like that slip through without rebuttal. Christian power is not about holding hands and thinking good thoughts about the little people. Instead, what we have is a very tense waiting game.

Kirkpatrick describes one dethroned older minister, Pastor Terry Fox, who got ejected from his Wichita Baptist mega-church by the younger deacons, and is now holding small gatherings in a Best Western hotel room.

“Hell is just as hot as it ever was,” he reminded [his remaining congregation]. “It just has more people in it.”

“… I think the religious community is reflective of the rest of the nation — it’s divided right now. This election process is going to reveal a lot about where the religious right and the religious community is. It will show unity or the lack of it.”

But liberals, he said, should not start gloating. “Some might compare the religious right to a snake,” he said. “We may be in our hole right now, but we can come out and bite you at any time.”

“So, ironically, in the end it does come down to us after all. There’s nothing left but that long-term cultivation — person by person, moment by moment — plowing on despite our utter abandonment by the national leaders and civic institutions that could have stopped or slowed the horror of the present and the horror to come. We will have to go through it now.” – Chris Floyd

How does it become a man to behave toward this American government to-day? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it. — Henry David Thoreau

Every day it becomes clearer that Thoreau’s answer is the only basis for a genuinely effective resistance to the accelerating depredations of the Bush-Cheney regime. Disassociation, boycott, filibuster, strike — call it what you will, but the Gandhian tag might be the best: “non-cooperation with evil.” The corruption and authoritarian tyranny that the regime has imposed on the nation are evil. The war of aggression it has launched against Iraq is evil. The war of aggression it is fomenting against Iran is evil. If you would not be complicit in evil, then you must not cooperate with it, and you must not acknowledge its power as rightful or legitimate (however powerless you may be to resist its application by brute force).

If there is to be any way out of the nation’s death spiral into darkness, ruin and dishonor, this noncooperation must begin at the top. There is not enough time left now for a broad movement from the general public to rise up and force the ouster of these criminals. Naturally, any and all efforts to raise consciousness of the dire situation and mobilize the public against the regime are welcome and should continue. But even putting aside the mass lethargy and media-addled distraction and indifference that have characterized public reaction to the filth heaped upon them by the regime year after year, it is simply a logistical and organizational impossibility to put together the kind of unprecedented outpouring of street protest and civil disobedience it would require for a grass-roots effort to dislodge the regime in its remaining time in office. Yet in that time, the regime will have mired the nation so much more deeply in intractable evil that even the most well-intentioned successor will be left with nothing but monstrous choices between atrocious and somewhat less atrocious outcomes, with each decision drenched in innocent blood.

So while we can all hope and work to see such noncooperation and dissent spread throughout the general public — a long-term cultivation looking toward the harvest of a better, more honorable society down the line — the immediate evil embodied in the crooked Bush-Cheney regime can only be thwarted by action on the institutional level. As I’ve noted elsewhere, Thoreau’s answer should be taken up by every person in public life, beginning with the senators and representatives in Congress. There should be noncompliance, nonrecognition of this illegitimate authority, disassociation from taking part in its workings. No Bush appointees should be approved; indeed, they have already shown their unfitness for office by agreeing to work under the criminal regime in the first place. All legislation offered by the regime should be rejected outright; it is dishonorable to treat with a faction whose unprovoked, unnecessary “war of choice” in Iraq has now killed more Americans than were murdered on 9/11. The only “negotiation” acceptable with such bloodstained wretches is settling the terms of their exit from power.

For above all, impeachment should be moved to the top of the congressional agenda. It should be the overriding, all-consuming priority of the people’s representatives. For this is the inescapable, stone-cold truth: nothing, absolutely nothing but impeachment, will stop the Bush-Cheney regime from carrying out its criminal agenda.

We have seen in recent days some heartening moves toward restraining the regime. The effort led by Sen. Christopher Dodd to put a hold on legislation that would excuse the telecoms’ complicity in Bush’s illegal surveillance schemes is a welcome development. And as Jonathan Schwarz reports, MoveOn.org is launching a major public awareness campaign to try to head off a war with Iran. These are very small straws in a howling wind — but then again, it only takes a few straws to start a fire. And as noted above, all efforts to put fetters on the regime should be encouraged. But the history of the past seven years has proved over and over and over again that the Bush-Cheney regime will simply ignore any attempt by Congress or the courts to limit its rapacious agenda and its exercise of arbitrary power.

Congress passes laws forbidding torture; Bush and Cheney ignore them. Congress issues subpoenas and demands documents for its corruption probes; Bush and Cheney ignore them. Bush’s “signing statements” explicitly state that he will follow only those parts of the law that suit him. Congress could vote tomorrow that Iran cannot be attacked without a formal declaration of war, and Bush would attack whenever he chooses anyway, calling it an extension of the congressionally authorized action in Iraq, a “defensive” action to protect the troops. Congress can pass any law it wants, but if you have an executive branch that considers itself above the law — as this one demonstrably does — then it doesn’t matter. As long as Bush and Cheney remain in power, their criminal enterprise will go on.

Thus impeachment is not a “distraction” from efforts to end the war in Iraq, or stop a new war with Iran, or quell the vast and sickening corruption of the regime. It is their prerequisite. And even if impeachment is “politically impossible in the present circumstances,” as Bush enablers like the pusillanimous Nancy Pelosi likes to tell us, it should be shoved to the forefront of national debate nonetheless. Let us have a “constitutional crisis;” let us bring our festering sickness to a boil. Let’s lay it all out, and let people declare once and for all where they stand. Are you for the republic, or do you hold with tyranny, torture and mass murder? Let’s draw the line at last, and be done with all pretense.

But we know that what should be done will not be done. We see that the Democrats have taken impeachment “off the table.” We see that far from stopping or curtailing the war in Iraq, Pelosi and the Democratic leadership punish those among their number who dare speak the truth: that Bush has indeed sent American soldiers to have their heads blown off for his amusement, for his aggrandizement, for his radical agenda of loot and dominion. We see that far from stopping the rush toward a new war with Iran they are instead abetting it, declaring their overwhelming assent to the deceitful casus belli Bush has offered. We see, with despair, that the national Democrats share the regime’s radical agenda of endless militarism and hegemonic sway, differing only on a few points of style and decorum, and a desire to see more “competence” in Iraq and “future wars.”

So, ironically, in the end it does come down to us after all. There’s nothing left but that long-term cultivation — person by person, moment by moment — plowing on despite our utter abandonment by the national leaders and civic institutions that could have stopped or slowed the horror of the present and the horror to come. We will have to go through it now.

But in closing, I’d like to quote something I wrote a few weeks ago that sums up my feeling about where we stand and what we are called upon to do in this bleak historic hour:

Yet we must keep sounding the alarm, even in the face of almost certain defeat. What else is our humanity worth if we don’t do that? And if, in the end, all that we’ve accomplished is to keep the smallest spark of light alive, to help smuggle it through an age of darkness to some better, brighter time ahead, is that not worth the full measure of struggle?

I am a psychologist and writer in Lincoln, Nebraska. All of my adult life, I have worked for human rights organizations. In 1965, when I was 17-years-old, I marched for de-segregation in Kansas City. As a therapist, I have spent my career repairing the psychic damage of traumatized people, whether they be rape or assault victims, family members of murder victims, or refugees and asylum seekers. I have worked with torture victims since the 1980’s and I know that many of them are innocent of any crime whatsoever and all of them suffer irreparable damage to their lives.

In August of 2007 I made the difficult decision to return my 2006 Presidential Citation, awarded to me by then President of the American Psychological Association, Dr. Gerald Koocher. I was deeply appreciative of this honor and proud to be a member of the APA. Over the years I have enjoyed an excellent relationship with this organization. I received my first Presidential Citation in 1998 from Dr. Martin Seligman and have been the keynote speaker at the APA’s national convention. With this action, I feel as if I am betraying a good friend.

For the past few years, I have been troubled by various media and Department of Defense reports that psychologists have designed protocols and trained and supervised interrogators in the use of sophisticated methods for breaking the human spirit and destroying mental functioning. When this August, at the APA’s annual convention, members passed Substitute Motion Three instead of a ban on psychologists’ involvement in military interrogations, I felt I needed to act.

Substitute Motion Three looks fine on the surface, but the devil is in the details, and the devil always dresses in the tuxedo of lofty rhetoric. While it has been argued that this resolution bars psychologists’ participation in the CIA’s enhanced interrogation program, the motion did not place a moratorium on psychologists’ involvement in all national security facilities that operate outside the law. This lack of firmness puts our profession at odds with the Geneva Conventions, Red Cross standards, Department of Defense guidelines, The U. N. Declaration of Human Rights, and the ethical codes of the American Psychiatric Association and the American Medical Association. In ratifying this document, the APA has made a terrible mistake.

With sorrow, I have concluded that the United States government is committing war crimes with the help of individual psychologists and our professional organization. Without psychologists’ presence to lend legitimacy to these interrogations, our government would find its position utterly indefensible. The behavior of psychologists on interrogation teams violates our own Code of Ethics, in which we pledge to respect the humanity of all people. As psychologists, we vow to do no harm.

I learned this lesson from my mother, Dr. Avis, who was a small town doctor in rural Nebraska in the 1950’s. She often quoted Hippocrates remark, “Make a habit of two things, to help, or at least, to do no harm.” She took her Hippocratic vows seriously. Two of them I remember specifically, “Never do anyone harm for someone else’s interest.” And, “Keep the welfare of your patient as your highest priority.” My mother gave free medical care to any one who showed up at our house or her office. Sometimes she was paid in smoked hams and sweet corn. She also taught me this, “Morality isn’t pretty words; morality is action.” I hope I am honoring my mother’s values with my decision.

When any of us are degraded, all of human life is degraded. This is not just about the prisoners; it is about who we are as people. Once we decide certain people are beyond the pale and give them less respect than we would want for ourselves if our situations were reversed, we make we ourselves vulnerable to also being treated as less than human.

I know that the return of my Presidential Citation is of small import, but it is what I can do to disassociate myself from what I consider to be a heinous policy. My belief is that psychology should be solely a helping profession. When we become anything else, we destroy ourselves.

I acted as a matter of conscience and in the hopes that the APA will reconsider its current position. We have long been an organization that respects human rights and promotes tolerance, kindness, and peace. It is my deepest hope that the APA will reclaim its reputation as a beacon of integrity and compassion.

As The Office of the Vice President continues to scheme and plot for war with Iran, which would also likely correspond with martial law at home, the American worker continues to sink deeper and deeper into a horrifying abyss of economic, moral, and spiritual slavery. Even during the worst days of the Depression, never was the American worker more crushed, more beaten, more defeated. Never was he more atomized, more alienated, more alone.

Listen to what people are talking about on TV, on the streets, and in restaurants, and it is clear the American people are pathologically disconnected from reality. This disconnection from reality is particularly pronounced in both the media and academia, where the most critical issues of our time are either completely ignored, or drowned in a barrage of hyperbole and euphemistic blather. It is as if, due to so many decades of brainwashing, Americans are no longer capable of reason, no longer capable of independent thought.

It is also becoming harder and harder to obtain a good paying job without compromising oneself ideologically due to the destruction of the public sphere. The role that the military and prison industrial complexes play in providing employment, and the role played by the media and the education system in indoctrination, pose grave questions about whether constitutional democracy and American capitalism can continue to coexist, or whether the elite will sever the marriage entirely ushering in a military form of government. The unprecedented domination of work in American society, and the cult of placing one’s career above and beyond all other considerations, has dehumanized the American people and turned them into collaborators.

In the education system, where universities are increasingly owned lock, stock and barrel by corporations (many universities are corporations), free market dogma reigns unchallenged. The education system, together with the unprecedented power of the mass media, have ushered in a brave new world where Newspeak reigns over the enlightenment, madness over empiricism, and barbarism over reason.

As Americans, we are so fond of saying how we have freedom of speech, but all too often, this simply is not so. How many students at expensive private colleges are permitted to speak out against any number of the vast myriad of unspeakable issues: the destruction of families and communities in American society, the likelihood of war on Iran, the prison-industrial complex, the use of outsourcing and offshoring to destroy unions, the current genocide being waged against black Americans, the censorship in American society? If a student wants to get good grades so as to be able to secure a good paying job later on, the rules are clear: say what you are supposed to say, write what you’re supposed to write: shut up and do as you’re told. The almost total absence of meaningful intellectual discussion in many colleges and universities, along with the unprecedented corporate consolidation of the media, has put American society in a totalitarian ideological vice. Tenured liberal professors, or even professors that secretly harbor genuinely radical views, often think things privately that they would never dream of saying in class.

The American worker is more enslaved to his employer than ever before, but instead of rebelling against this enslavement, he feels resistance to be impossible or too dangerous to risk, or he embraces it as proof of his toughness and loyalty to his country.

Public school teachers that teach poor and disadvantaged students are under enormous pressures by authoritarian administrators to keep the level as low as possible and to not intellectually challenge their students. Those who resist are marginalized, harassed, and eventually forced out. This tyranny is blindly embraced in the name of multiculturalism, and enforced by morally bankrupt liberals who view students in troubled inner city schools as incapable of serious academic work.

The liberal adage “You have to work within the system” embodies the total moral spiritual, and intellectual collapse of the American people. The Democrats “work within the system,” and consequently we have a one party system. Tenured liberal professors have worked within the system, and have gotten so good at it that they have become the system, feeding Amy Tan and The House on Mango Street to poor students so as to keep them illiterate in the name of protecting diversity.

Expensive private colleges are dominated by almost total unanimity of thought in the liberal arts and social sciences, particularly in politics and economics. What are one’s chances of getting hired for a tenure-track economics position at a four-year university when you have written polemics attacking the impoverishment of third world countries by the World Bank and IMF? Almost zero. Is this our great freedom, our great liberty of thought? This overwhelming pressure to conform ideologically in the legal system, the media, and academia, and the relentless pressures to be as obsequious and sycophantic as possible at work, is a cancer that is slowly tearing at the heart of American civilization.

Blind obedience and brainwashing through Newspeak begin in school. The media, and other social pressures complete the process. The destruction of family and community life has made resistance at work extraordinarily difficult, because the loss of a decent job that can so easily come from speaking out against unconscionable abuses of power, puts the now atomized American in a void, a zone of nothingness, a banishment into purgatory.

Americans are constantly lying to themselves about the degree to which they have allowed themselves to become ideologically compromised at work. Even more disturbing than the collapse of the New Deal is the inherently reactionary nature of so many jobs in the twenty first century United States. It is almost absurd to talk about unions if you work for the military and are assisting in the manufacturing of new weapons. Jobs in the mass media and mainstream press are often equally as dubious. The education system, viewed by liberals from the 1960’s in such an innocent light, bears at least as much responsibility as the media in the lobotomizing of the American mind.

Instead of desperately trying to ward off a looming martial law, Americans are busy trying to get ahead at work. Fascism hasn’t come to America with rallies and bonfires but in the fight for the corner office.

Take a good look at what Americans will put up with at ten dollars an hour, and it is clear that unionization and solidarity have reached their nadir in American history.

The idea of not making much money, yet waking up in the morning and feeling good about oneself is a myth if you are a public school teacher whose hands are tied by anti-literacy administrators, or a defense attorney forced to betray clients and plea bargain innocent people into jail.

There is still time for the American worker to awake and take back his country. There is still time to resist, to stand up for freedom of expression and worker’s rights. For the elite are rapidly taking us to a place where it may soon no longer be possible to resist. Once that Rubicon is crossed, there will be naught but demons all around us, the bough will be broken, and constitutional democracy will drown in a sea of death and darkness.

11/01/07 “ICH” — — Fast forward to Election Day 2008: Network anchors, cable pundits, and state and local election officials are going nuts as evening hours pass and voter turnout is hardly approaching 20 percent nearly everywhere. “What’s going on?” everyone is asking incredulously. TV and computer screens all over the planet show Americans in streets celebrating and shouting things like “We’ve had enough political corruption. We’re not going to take anymore!”

In contrast, news anchors are grim and aghast with little help from spin-fatigued and stammering Democratic and Republican spokespeople. At 2 A.M. on NBC Brian Williams sits with Tim Russett and Keith Olbermann, and sums up: “Americans have spoken and American politics have changed forever.” “It’s like the nightmare of entertainers: nobody shows up for their event,” says bemused Olbermann. Russett grimly observes, “We should have seen this coming; people have been fed up with both parties for a long time.” Meanwhile, the Internet is buzzing with talk of voiding the presidential and congressional election results, that President Bush may declare a national state of emergency, and that the Supreme Court might step in again. Did anyone think that the Constitution required a minimum voter turnout to make elections legit?

11/01/07 “The Guardian” — — Warren Buffett, the famous investor known as the “Sage of Omaha”, has complained that he pays a lower rate of tax than any of his staff – including his receptionist. Mr Buffett, who is worth an estimated $52bn (£25bn), said: “The taxation system has tilted towards the rich and away from the middle class in the last 10 years. It’s dramatic; I don’t think it’s appreciated and I think it should be addressed.”

During an interview with NBC television, Mr Buffett brandished an informal survey of 15 of his 18 office staff at his Berkshire Hathaway empire. The billionaire said he was paying 17.7% payroll and income tax, compared with an average in the office of 32.9%.

“There wasn’t anyone in the office, from the receptionist up, who paid as low a tax rate and I have no tax planning; I don’t have an accountant or use tax shelters. I just follow what the US Congress tells me to do,” he said.

Mr Buffett also took a pot shot at hedge fund managers. He said: “Hedge fund operators have spent a record amount lobbying in the last few months – they give money to the political campaigns. Who represents the cleaning lady?”

His intervention comes amid an increasingly rancorous debate on Capitol Hill about tax. Shortly after taking office, President Bush pushed through $2 trillion in temporary tax cuts, including sharp reductions for high-earners. These expire at the end of 2010 and the White House wants to renew them.

A leading Democrat, the Harlem congressman Charlie Rangel, published alternative plans this week that would impose a 4% surcharge on people earning more than $200,000 a year, while delivering tax relief to 90 million working families.

Republicans say the net effect would be a $2 trillion tax increase that would hurt small businesses and farmers. Meanwhile, Mr Buffett’s remarks drew a robust response from the US Chamber of Commerce, which said the top 1% of US earners accounted for 39% of tax revenue – and the highest earning 25% of the population delivered 86% of the tax-take.

The chamber’s chief economist, Martin Regalia, said: “Mr Buffett has made an awful lot of money and if he wants to pay more taxes, I think that’s fine. But I think he should get his facts straight.”

He added: “There’s no question in my mind: if you were to impose [the Democrats’] tax increases, you would see the US go into a recession.”

A perfect example of the integrated threat that U.S. foreign policy and federal domestic regulations pose to the freedom, privacy, and well-being of the American people is the current telecommunications controversy.

Soon after the 9/11 attacks, the feds approached various U.S. telephone companies and asked them to illegally share private information about their customers. The argument, of course, was “national security” and the “war on terror,” the magic words that have come to justify all sorts of federal wrongdoing since 9/11 (e.g., torture, the invasion of Iraq, cancellation of habeas corpus, indefinite incarceration, and denial of due process).

In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court, the plaintiffs are alleging that some of the telephone companies agreed to cooperate with the feds, illegally and secretly sharing their customers’ private information with them. If the allegations are true, the obvious question arises, Why would these companies choose to become secret informers for the feds rather than fight to protect the rights and interests of their customers?

One possibility, of course, is that they fell for all the “national security, war on terror” nonsense, just as many other Americans did, failing to recognize that such nonsense has always been the time-honored way that governments seduce people into giving up their rights and freedoms for the pretense of security.

But there is another possibility, as former Qwest CEO Joe Nacchio can attest. Unlike the other telephone-company CEOs, Nacchio refused to play ball with the feds, deciding, correctly, that the federal request was illegal and deciding, correctly, that he had a duty to protect the privacy of his customers.

What was Nacchio’s reward for such heroic action? The feds indicted him and convicted him of a federal crime, for which he has been sentenced to serve six years in a federal penitentiary. What was the heinous crime that Nacchio was convicted of? Insider trading, that heinous economic crime in which there are no victims.

In other words, the message delivered by the feds to the telephone companies after 9/11, when the federals were feeling the full force of their power, was, “You need to play ball with us, or else.” Some of the other companies, in an act of extreme cowardice, apparently folded, kneeled, kissed the rings of federal officials, and did what the feds wanted them to.

Not Nacchio and Qwest, for which they deserve the praise and accolades of every freedom-loving American.

At Nacchio’s trial, the federal judge refused to permit him to introduce evidence that his prosecution was retaliation for his refusal to go along with the federal request to violate the law and the rights of his customers. (See “Documents: Qwest was targeted,” by Sara Burnett and Jeff Smith, in the Rocky Mountain News, October 11, 2007.) The judge said the evidence wasn’t relevant. All that was relevant, the judge said, was whether Nacchio had sold some of his Qwest stock as a result of insider information he had acquired as a Qwest executive.

There are two important points to note about what is going on here.

First, as we have long pointed out, the real value of the regulated society is not any protection it provides to people. All that protection talk is just a sham. The real purpose of the regulated society is to keep the business and banking community in line — meaning in conformity with federal policy. The real purpose of the rules and regulations is to serve as a Damocles sword, ready to fall on any business or bank that refuses to go along with the feds.

The rationale behind the federal regulated society was best summed up by what a bureaucrat from the State Science Institute said to Hank Rearden in Atlas Shrugged:

“‘Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?’ said Dr. Ferris. ‘We want them broken. You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against — then you’ll know that this is not the age for beautiful gestures. We’re after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you’d better get wise to it. There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted — and you create a nation of law-breakers — and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system, Mr. Rearden, that’s the game, and once you understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with.'”

Of course, the feds would argue that the law is the law and that Nacchio broke it and therefore has to pay the price. That, of course, is not the point. The point is that in the regulated society, everyone breaks the law, one way or another, which then provides the feds with the option of prosecuting anyone they want whenever they want.

Consider, for example, the IRS code. Despite never-ending railing among political candidates about how complex the code is, the feds love the complexity. Why? Because they know that no one can ever file a perfect income-tax return and especially not wealthy and influential businessmen. If the feds looked hard enough, they could prosecute anyone they wanted at any time for income-tax violations.

It’s the same with insider-trading laws, Sarbanes-Oxley, hiring illegal aliens, or a multitude of other economic crimes. If they hadn’t gotten Nacchio on insider trading, they would have undoubtedly gone after him for other things. The point is, he refused to go along with illegality and wrongdoing, and they went after him for it.

To add insult to injury, President Bush and some of his federal cohorts in Congress are seeking to give civil immunity to the telephone companies that allegedly chose to become federal informers. They are trying to get Congress to pass a law that would prohibit the customers of the telephone companies from suing for the companies’ allegedly wrongful (and cowardly) misconduct.

In other words, become a federal informer and we’ll protect you. Refuse to do so, and we’ll send you to jail.

What is the difference between neighborhood captains in Castro’s Cuba, who report people’s activities to their government, and U.S. telephone companies who report people’s activities to their government? Don’t they all rationalize their conduct under the same warped sense of “patriotism”?

And why are the telephone companies seeking immunity from civil liability in lawsuits brought by their customers? At trial, wouldn’t they have ample opportunity to show that the only records they turned over to the feds were those of terrorists? Why should they be let off the hook if they have illegally and secretly betrayed their customers in order to ingratiate themselves with the feds?

Another critically important point to note in all this is how U.S. foreign policy is at the root of it all. Follow the logic: With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the feds lose their official enemy — communism. Throughout the 1990s, they poke hornets’ nests in the Middle East, knowing that they are provoking anger and rage among people in that part of the world. That anger and rage ultimately erupts into terrorist blowback. The blowback is used to bludgeon American telephone companies into allegedly selling out the rights and privacy of their customers. Those who refuse are prosecuted for violating domestic rules and regulations.

Thus, while the short-term answer to all this involves a refusal to grant civil immunity to the telephone companies that allegedly became federal informers as well as dismissal of all charges against Joe Nacchio, there is only one long-term solution to this noxious weed — pull it out by its root by bringing an end to the U.S. government’s overseas empire and its interventionist foreign policy.

What color is your disaster? It makes a difference. A life and death difference.

Dig:

Population of San Diego fire evacuation zone: 500,000
Population of the New Orleans flood evacuation zone: 500,000

White folk as a % of evacuees, San Diego: 66%
Black folk as % of evacuees, New Orleans: 67%

Size counts, too. Size of your wallet, that is:

Evacuees in San Diego, in poverty: 9%
Evacuees in New Orleans, in poverty: 27%

The numbers would be even uglier, though more revealing, if I included evacuees of the celebrity fire in Malibu.

The President didn’t do a photo-strafing of the scene from 1700 feet this time. Instead, we have the photo op of George, feet on the ground, hanging with Arnold the Action Man. (However, I’m informed that the President was a bit disappointed that he didn’t get to wear one of those neat fireman hats like Rudi G got at Ground Zero.)

In 2005, while the bodies were still being fished out of flooded homes in New Orleans, Republican Congressman Richard Baker praised The Lord for his mercy. “We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did,” he said about the removal of the poor from the project near the French Quarter much coveted by speculators.

But as this week’s flames spread, no Republican Congressman cried, “Burn baby burn!” to praise the Lord for cleaning up the ‘Boo, the sin-and-surf playground of Hollywood luvvies.

In New Orleans, God’s covenant with real estate developers has been very profitable. Over 70,000 families remain, two years after the waters receded, in mobile home concentration centers far away from the N.O. re-building boom. Let’s see how long it takes to get Tom Hanks back on his beach towel.

Standing next to Governor Schwarzenegger, a smug little Bush said, “It makes a big difference when you have someone in the statehouse willing to take the lead” – a snide attack on the former Democratic Governor of Louisiana on whom the White House successfully dumped the blame for the horror show in New Orleans.

Mr. Bush never mentioned – and the media would never give away his secret – that 15 hours before the levees broke, the White House and FEMA knew the flood barriers were cracking, yet failed to inform the Governor and state police. Nor did Mr. Bush mention that his Department of Homeland Security’s FEMA trolls took away evacuation planning from the state and gave it to a crew of crony contractors who, for a million bucks, came up with a plan that came down to, “If a hurricane comes, get in your car and drive like hell.”

In California, plans were in place, money poured down with the flame retardant, and no one is suggesting that Mel Gibson move his swastika collection to a FEMA trailer.

Not comparable, the ‘Boo and the N.O.? You can say that again. But as a kid who grew up in the ass end of Los Angeles, I can tell you that disaster apartheid applies on the local scale as well. Look at the tarry filth of Compton and Long Beach shores versus the panicked reaction when a bit of garbage or oil sheen hits Malibu sands. (I remember, standing on the crude-covered shore of an Alaska Native village in March, 1991, the day Exxon announced it would end the clean-up from the Exxon Valdez spill. That same day, the papers showed the careful scouring that week of every pebble on Malibu beaches hit by dinky spill incident.)

Please don’t get the idea I’m slap-happy about the California inferno. My parents live in San Diego – and one of my favorite Air America hosts had to evacuate from her Del Mar hot tub, poor dear. (I’ve heard, however, that billionaires well done taste just like chicken.)

What I’m saying is: Besides the flames, there’s a class war raging in America. Or, should I say, Class Massacre. Because only one side is taking all the bullets. Malibu, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica are “incorporated communities” – islands of privilege politically fenced off from the riff-raff sea of Los Angeles. These self-incorporated Bantustans of the wealthy have their own fire departments and schools. The money islands are relieved of having to pay for the schools and hospitals of the city where their gardeners live. (I can’t tell which is the worst disaster that can befall an Angelino – a fire, an earthquake or the LA public school system.)

Now, it’s easy to say it’s just George Bush who’s the class clown of the class war. But it’s an old story. When a flood took out the tony homes at Westhampton Dunes, the Clinton Administration picked up the full tab for rebuilding these summer hideaways of investment bankers. While today, death-by-poison stalks the environment of Black townships of Louisiana (the FEMA ‘guests’ are parked in a zone called Cancer Ally), Al Gore can’t be found. But when speaking of rising sea levels that can take out the homes of his buddies in ‘Boo or the Hamptons, Gore goes ga-ga.

The one thing I’ll say in favor of that vile little Louisiana Republican cheering the drowning of public housing residents, at least he’s honest about how the system works. He’s not afraid to remind us of the gods’-honest truth: disaster response is class war by other means.

So let me not forget to report the war’s body count:

New Orleans flood deaths: 1,577.
California celebrity fire deaths: 5.

Tonight and this weekend, listen to “The Fire Next Time,” on the Palast Report, aired each week on Air America’s Clout with Richard Greene, on the Nova M network with Cynthia Black (from KPHX), on the Solution Zone with Christiane Brown (KJFK) – and live, in Chicago, this weekend, for Buzzflash.com, The Chicago Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights and WCPT, Chicago’s Progressive Talk – and, on this Sunday morning on the Bree Show, KTLK Los Angeles, with host/evacuee Bree Walker, slightly charred (or is that a tan?) but undaunted.

It’s not quite signing statements, where President George W. Bush used legal means to “interpret” laws, allowing him to avoid Congressional directives, but the White House is now planning to implement as much new policy “as it can” by administrative order “after concluding that President Bush cannot do much business with the Democratic leadership.”

According to officials who spoke to the Washington Post, Bush blames Democrats for the holdup of Judge Michael Muskasey’s nomination as attorney general, the failure to pass budget bills and an inability to reach compromise on child healthcare.

Bush vetoed the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, saying Democrats hadn’t found a way to offset spending for the expansion of the program. Democrats have reservations about Mukasey because he has refused to denounce the president’s policy on waterboarding.

“White House aides say the only way Bush seems to be able to influence the process is by vetoing legislation or by issuing administrative orders, as he has in recent weeks on veterans’ health care, air-traffic congestion, protecting endangered fish and immigration,” the Post authors write. “They say they expect Bush to issue more of such orders in the next several months, even as he speaks out on the need to limit spending and resist any tax increases.”

House Democrats disagree with Bush’s assessments.

The article gave little information about Bush’s plans for administrative orders, focusing mostly on Congressional infighting and legislative disagreements between the White House and Congress.

On Wednesday, a diarist at the liberal blog Daily Kos noted that administrative orders differ from executive orders and directives, citing a University of Tulsa research document on executive power.

“Administrative Orders include numbered documents called determinations, and notices or memorandum designated by date,” the document states. “These orders often concern foreign policy decisions but may also include management decisions made by the President that concern Executive Departments.”

Recent examples of such documents, as listed by the National Archives, include “Continuation of the National Emergency With Respect to Significant Narcotics Traffickers Centered in Colombia,” “Memorandum on Waiver and Certification of Statutory Provisions Regarding the Palestine Liberation Organization Office,” and “Memorandum on Waiver of Limitation on Obligation and Expenditure of $1,051.6 Million in Fiscal Year 2007 Economic Support Funds for Iraq.”

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Calling it “a potential death sentence,” several hundred diplomats expressed their resentment Wednesday over a new State Department policy that could force them to serve in Iraq or risk losing their jobs.

Some diplomats may be forced to serve in the new U.S. embassy complex under construction in Baghdad, Iraq.

Some at the hourlong town hall-style meeting questioned why they were not told of the policy change directly, learning about it instead from news organizations last week.

Others pointed out the risks of such a rule, considering the dangers of a war zone, lack of security and regular rocket attacks on U.S. personnel.

One State Department worker complained she was not provided medical treatment for her post-traumatic stress disorder after she voluntarily served in Iraq.

The session was marked by angry exchanges, according to an audio recording of the meeting held at the State Department.

The sharpest comments came from Jack Croddy, a 36-year veteran of the Foreign Service.