Common Myths

  • Republicans are against unions
    Republicans are not always anti-union, but generally side with big business over the interests of labor. But lost in much of the discussions, is the awareness that big business usually consists of unions of owners. These owners collectively bargain with their employees, either with the employees singly or in groups. Quite often those groups of employees are not based on unions, but instead on bureaucratic determinations made by the corporation. Republicans, and often Democrats, will side with the more powerful union of owners against the employees. Why is there a false understanding of corporations? Because clearly the market supports unions of owners over individual large owners and because of decades of misconceptions often fostered by corporations. Somehow many believe unions of owners are efficient and unions of employees or consumers are inefficient. Of course, democracy, a system based on the equality of humans, can be portrayed as inefficient in the short terms and tyranny of the powerful much more efficient. And that gets to the main distinction in the form of unions of owners versus employees, generally corporations are anti-democratic (power decided by wealth) versus unions of labor or consumers (power decided by people).
  • Republican leaders are against regulations
    Look it up, regulations are essentially laws. What Republicans tend to be against are both laws and regulations that force corporations to favor protecting life over profits. Republicans tend to be strongly for regulations and laws that protect corporation profits and protect corportations being held accountable by a democratic society.
  • Social Security is running out of money
    Repeating a lie doesn't make it so. Williams repeats the myth that Social Security is running out of money despite evidence and protestations to the contrary by Krugman. Unfortunately this myth is designed to allow a wealthy minority to steal the savings of generations of Americans.

Cures for the common myth

  • HeadlineUpdate
    William Klein tears apart the headlines to get to the real story.
  • On the Media
    Show that savages co-opted and self-censored media coverage.
  • RIP - Wall Street Journal
    Until recently, perhaps, the best newspaper in the United States. Murdoch decided to squeeze the life out of this golden goose. Previously had fantastic muckracking pieces. The ruling class preferred WSJ to the whitewashed and watered down mass media.
  • Technorati

    Hidden among the millions of blogs and RSS feeds is the vox populi.

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A Correction

There are many arguments going on now about who knew what and when concerning Iraq and WMD's. Our president claims that the intelligence reports were wrong and that everybody believed that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in 2003. My memory and I have gone back and checked it is that there was never any evidence of weapons of mass destruction.
No evidence? Yes, evidence was asked for on several occasions by the United Nations inspectors of the United States. All the evidence that the United States gave was checked out and refuted. There was evidence that there were once WMD in Iraq pre-1994, but there was no evidence that any survived the United Nations disarmament efforts in the early 1990s. Hans Blix and the United Nations begged for real evidence so that they could find and destroy it if it existed as they had been doing with some of the weapons that were questionable (rockets that flew a few miles past the limit).
The President decided to go to war before the United Nations inspectors were done. I believe that the reason was that had the inspectors found weapons of mass destruction, the weapons would have been destroyed and there would be no reason given to attack Iraq. It was important to attack Iraq before any real evidence of prohibited weapons were found.
Let's not rewrite history. There was no real evidence. The inspectors never finished their inspections due to the war. 

November 15, 2005 in Iraq War | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Can I Go to the Eupeimism?

Sometimes it is more politic to use a euphemism. But it is usually bad politics and lets your opponents create straw men arguments. Today in the New York Times, John F. Manning, was able to make a reasoned argument against considering "balance" as a consideration for considering Judge Alito. Indeed if balance were the issue, he would be right. However, "balance" is a euphemism for "standing on a precipice." We should not consider Alito based on which side of reasonable he sits, but rather on whether the Supreme Court is teetering towards a destroying the rights of citizens and non-citizens. The independence of the Judiciary is crucial not for esoteric reasons, but because it is the last stop for justice for all of us and the Justices must be able to say no to power. Judge Alito could be the justice that sides with power against the helpless and allows the righs and privileges of all of us to shrink to useless rhetoric.

We have an administration that is fighting to stop investigations of its conduct. We have an administration that is fighting against anti-torture laws. We live in a era when huge corporations whose bottom line is often in direct conflict with people (and their own charters), and who have much greater access to the courts. And at the same time the ruling party is trying to severely limit the access that non-corporate citizens have.

We must not consider balance, but rather, if this fifth justice leads to the demise of our social contract where we are all equals before the law.

November 10, 2005 in Current Affairs | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Survival of the Unfit? or Superstition and Bird Flu

President Bush, under-fire for poor leadership and gross misconduct charges against staff, stood up at a podium and announced his leadership on dealing with a potential avian flu pandemic. Unfortunately for all us humans, his beliefs may conflict with his ability to lead on this issue. Bush has publicly announced his skepticism about evolution and his interest in pushing "intelligent design" into schools. "Intelligent design" is a rogue anti-science movement where unexplained natural mechanisms are chalked up to extra-natural powers. Avian flu is a disease which will only be dangerous to humans if it evolves. Scientists are battling to understand this mechanism of evolution in time to come up with methods of containing the spread and diminishing the effects. The threat of an outbreak of a deadly flu is bad enough, knowing that the guy in charge does not believe in the science that could save us is downright frightening.

UPDATE: Today, the New York Times has an article about superstition and the bird flu in South East Asia. The article explains that superstition of many people in that part of the world may interfere with stopping the possible flu pandemic. The article also explains that the lack of education, poverty, lack of a modern medical system are factors. What the article does not touch on is how superstition (relying on non-scientific beliefs) of our president and that unlike villagers in poverty stricken regions our president got an education at one of the best schools in the world and gets the best medical in the world and is very wealthy.

November 03, 2005 in Health Care | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)