The DISH

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Vol. 11 Issue 40…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…October 5, 2008

Intuit's Vibe

The Hand That Signed the Paper

By Dylan Thomas

The hand that signed the paper felled a city;

Five sovereign fingers taxed the breath,

Doubled the globe of dead and halved a country;

These five kings did a king to death.

The mighty hand leads to a sloping shoulder,

The finger joints are cramped with chalk;

A goose's quill has put an end to murder

That put an end to talk.

The hand that signed the treaty bred a fever,

And famine grew, and locusts came;

Great is the hand that holds dominion over

Man by a scribbled name.

The five kings count the dead but do not soften

The crusted wound nor pat the brow;

A hand rules pity as a hand rules heaven;

Hands have no tears to flow.

Venue for an Artist

'The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism' (Excerpt)

By Andrew J. Bacevich

Today, no less than in 1776, a passion for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness remains at the center of America's civic theology. The Jeffersonian trinity summarizes our common inheritance, defines our aspirations, and provides the touchstone for our influence abroad..... Yet if Americans still cherish the sentiments contained in Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, they have, over time, radically revised their understanding of those "inalienable rights....."

If one were to choose a single word to characterize that identity, it would have to be "more." For the majority of contemporary Americans, the essence of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness centers on a relentless personal quest to acquire, to consume, to indulge, and to shed whatever constraints might interfere with those endeavors.....

Placed in historical perspective, the triumph of this ethic of self- gratification hardly qualifies as a surprise. The restless search for a buck and the ruthless elimination of anyone--or anything--standing in the way of doing so have long been central to the American character. Touring the United States in the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville, astute observer of the young Republic, noted the "feverish ardor" of its citizens to accumulate. Yet, even as the typical American "clutches at everything, he holds nothing fast, but soon loosens his grasp to pursue fresh gratifications." However munificent his possessions, the American hungered for more, an obsession that filled him with "anxiety, fear, and regret, and keeps his mind in ceaseless trepidation."

Even in de Tocqueville's day, satisfying such yearnings as well as easing the anxieties and fears they evoked had important policy implications. To quench their ardor, Americans looked abroad, seeking to extend the reach of U.S. power. The pursuit of "fresh gratifications" expressed itself collectively in an urge to expand, territorially and commercially. This expansionist project was already well begun when de Tocqueville's famed Democracy in America appeared......

Preferring to remember their collective story somewhat differently, Americans look to politicians to sanitize their past. When, in his 2005 inaugural address, George W. Bush identified the promulgation of freedom as "the mission that created our nation....." America's "great liberating tradition....." now required the US to..... "ending tyranny in our world."

Many Americans find such sentiments compelling. Yet to credit the US with possessing a "liberating tradition" is equivalent to saying that Hollywood has a "tradition of artistic excellence." The movie business is just that--a business. Its purpose is to make money. If once in a while a studio produces something of aesthetic value, that may be cause for celebration, but profit, not revealing truth and beauty, defines the purpose of the enterprise.

Something of the same can be said of the enterprise launched on July 4, 1776. The hardheaded lawyers, merchants, farmers, and slaveholding plantation owners gathered in Philadelphia that summer did not set out to create a church. They founded a republic. Their purpose was not to save mankind. It was to ensure that people like themselves [white men] enjoyed unencumbered access to the Jeffersonian trinity.

From time to time, although not nearly as frequently as we like to imagine, some of the world's unfortunates managed as a consequence to escape from bondage. The Civil War did, for instance, produce emancipation. Yet to explain the conflagration of 1861-65 as a response to the plight of enslaved African Americans is to engage at best in an immense oversimplification......Near the end of World War II, GIs did liberate the surviving inmates of Nazi death camps. Yet for those who directed the American war effort of 1941-45, the fate of European Jews never figured as more than an afterthought.

Others have described, dissected, and typically bemoaned the cultural--and even moral--implications of this development. Few, however, have considered how an American preoccupation with "more" has affected U.S. relations with the rest of the world. Yet the foreign policy implications of our present- day penchant for consumption and self- indulgence are almost entirely negative. Over the past six decades, efforts to satisfy spiraling consumer demand have given birth to a condition of profound dependency. The United States may still remain the mightiest power the world has ever seen, but the fact is that Americans are no longer masters of their own fate.

About Me: Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston University. A graduate of the U. S. Military Academy, he received his Ph. D. in American diplomatic history from Princeton. Before joining the faculty of Boston University in 1998, he taught at West Point and at Johns Hopkins. He is the author of several books, including The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (2008), The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War (2005) and American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U. S. Diplomacy (2002).

News You Use

Where We Diverge

By John Burl Smith

Dr. Andrew Bacevich is a brilliant, perceptive and provocative scholar, totally unlike most so-called intellectuals populating academia today. His interview on Bill Moyer's Journal was my first opportunity to hear him express his often controversial views on America's history and foreign policy. Talking mostly about his new book Limits of Power, I found myself agreeing with him on every point. Particularly, his assessments of the real motivation of America's Founding Fathers - the insatiable drive to consume and total reliance on military power -- make Limits of Power a must read for anyone desiring a clear and concise reflection of America today. Moreover, his discussion recognized a point -- the role of slavery in the dysfunctional development of this country - that interests me deeply.

We diverge on the centrality of slavery's descendants as motive power or a cheap energy source up until the early 1960s. This is not to disparage his analysis but to indicate he discussed the energy question in America differently from how I view it. I view the energy crisis in the US much like the Chinese (namely Mao Tse-Tung) saw their problem in 1949. The greatest energy or power any nation possesses lies in it people. It is that energy that determines how prosperous a nation becomes and remains. Abundant natural resources are a great help, but they can disguise the importance of people and reduce the need to develop them as a resource.

The true failing of America consists in its refusal to develop all of its people as a natural resource. Thus, herein lies the source of America's energy crisis. Slave labor provided the South free labor for over three centuries and it grew rich. Blacks' energy powered the South's economy, as well as provided it extra political clout through the 3/5 Compromise. Realizing this, Northern industrialists desired access to the energy of slaves to power the growth of their economy. However, with the end of the slave trade (1830), there was no way to amass the bodies needed to fuel the industrial revolution.

Emancipation and the Civil War gave Northern industrialists access to millions of new laborers. Racism, discrimination, hostile work environments and disparate treatment allowed former slaves to be exploited and paid much less than white Northerners. Slaves and their descendants' cheap labor was like cheap oil; it gave America a huge economic advantage against the rest of the world.

The energy crisis began to make itself felt in America during the 1930s but WWII intervened and bought America time, while it promised slaves descendants change. Built on white privilege in order to satisfy it craving for more, American society continued to exploit and discriminate against black Americans to maintain their socioeconomic and political advantage. Whites felt granting slave descendants their "inalienable rights" -- freedom, justice and equality -- would mean less for them. Consequently, when the US Supreme Court outlawed discrimination in Brown v Broad of Education (1954), like driving gas guzzling SUVs today, whites refused to give up anything.

Rather than deciding as China did to develop the potential of all its citizens as a national resource, America fought to hold onto its racist practices. It tried to replace the cheap energy supplied by blacks it had grown to depend on with machines powered by cheap foreign oil. The ramifications of this decision, like Dr. Bacevich thesis regarding the Iraq War, were not well thought out. First, what would the country do with slave descendants, whose energy it no longer wanted? What would be the affect of relying on foreign suppliers for energy indefinitely and the cost of which could not be controlled, like slave labor?

Today, China is reaping the benefits of developing its greatest resource - all of its people - while the US it paying the price for its racism. Not only is it paying the higher cost of oil but the cost of the negative impact of forcing black Americans to live in a sub-culture predicated on scarcity, high unemployment, inadequate education, unfunded social needs, drug addiction, criminalization of the young and so forth. The high cost of energy only masks the real problem facing America.

Where we diverge as individuals and as a collective body is whether one believes America can survive as a racist society. I agree with Dr. Bacevich's assessment of the past and present, I urge all Americans to read his provocative book. It does not make my argument but if you can accept his thesis of the Limits of Power, you may be able to at least consider mine. Those who take his challenge and look in the mirror for the answer to the problems facing America may actually come up with some answers. My question is, if America refuses to change, what does the future hold? This scenario opens the door for demigods like Adolf Hitler and his "final solution." Saving energy is not the solution. Developing the energy of all of America's people as a natural resource is the only way out of this dilemma.

Hood Notes

The Unfolding of an Economic Crisis

By John Burl Smith

LEAP/E2020, a European Think Tank offered a scary expectation for the US dollar, The coming systemic global crisis: The US consumer, i.e. the US middle class has basically become insolvent victims of overwhelming debt -- a negative rate of saving, the bursting of the real estate bubble and rising interest rates. These elements will plunge the US into an economic, social and political crisis. The Global Europe Anticipation Bulletin predicted the tipping point in the US has passed for the collapse of the real economy and the US dollar's fall. This means a virtual freeze of the American economic machinery: private and public bankruptcies, massive companies and public services shut down.

Does the US stock market run on confidence or is the invisible hand the subtle manipulation of the gods. And who are these gods? Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve? "Such power, they won't let the housing market collapse and kill the economy?" Or would they? Enter Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who according to the Wall Street Journal, "Reinvigorated the President's Working Group on Financial Markets, which coordinates government policy on financial markets. It includes the heads of the Federal Reserve, Securities and Exchange Commission, and Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke are architects of the Wall Street bail out plan, which they say will save the American consumer.

A bit of history here is necessary to penetrate the fog clouding the eyes and minds of Americans. Traveling to China early in 2007 to discuss the US trade deficit and coax the Chinese into lowering the value of the yuan, Paulson and Bernanke saw the handwriting on the wall and tried to hide the dollar crisis, preferring to give the invisible hand a hand. Bernanke decided to cease publishing the M3 indicator in March 2008.

Paulson, as chairman of the President's Working Group, began meeting every six weeks, whereas before his arrival, the group met once a quarter. Racing a ticking time bomb of debt, Paulson publicly talked of making American financial markets more competitive to cover the frenzy. Digressing even further to make clearer Paulson's statement (9-27-08), "The Treasury's tool kit is substantial but insufficient," few people are aware that during the heady days of mourning in America, Ronald Reagan signed Executive Order12631 - Working Group on Financial Markets (3-18-88) to prevent another plunge, like "Black Monday1987." It gave the government the power to intervene in the market.

The purpose of E.O.12631 is to enhance the integrity, efficiency, orderliness, and competitiveness of our Nation's financial markets and maintain investor confidence. The Group is authorized to take actions and consult with representatives of the various exchanges, clearinghouses, self-regulatory bodies, and with major market participants to determine private sector solutions. The Department of the Treasury provides administrative support for the Working Group.

Paulson has taken this to mean backing private-sector requests for changes to laws and rules they claim handicap U.S. financial markets, namely Sarbanes-Oxley -- a law passed in response to corporate scandals. Crafted by the SEC and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, Sarbanes-Oxley rules require that companies assess their internal controls to ensure their financial reports are accurate and reliable.

A Wall Street insider, former chief executive of Goldman Sachs, Mr. Paulson often points out that more initial public offerings of stock are being issued on exchanges outside the U.S. Business leaders complain that the costs of doing business in the US are increased by provisions of Sarbanes-Oxley. Consequently, Paulson believes the regulatory pendulum "may have swung too far" in response to corporate scandals.

Again publicly, Mr. Paulson says the Working Group is looking at the systemic risk posed by hedge funds and derivatives, and the government's ability to respond to a financial crisis. What worries most observers is it sounds a lot like previous Bush administration initiatives that claimed one thing starting out but turned into monsters once they got their foot in the door. To put an even finer point on such concerns, simply look at the man Paulson put in charge of the Working Group's operations, Jim Wilkinson, his chief of staff. Wilkinson's job is to oversee the creation of a Treasury command center he is setting up in the market-monitoring center to track markets world-wide and serve as a crisis operations center.

Although it seems like a life-time ago, remember the Bush-Cheney supporters who reportedly spontaneously stormed the Miami-Dade 2000 Election recount center in protest, but were really high-level Republican aides and staffers. Well, Jim Wilkinson ran that operation. This was a conspiracy that interfered with the electoral process and influenced the outcome. Wilkinson helped block the counting of legally cast votes, which proved to be a pivotal act that helped George Bush steal the 2000 Election. Rewarded by Bush, now, this "dirty trickster" is in charge of what has become known as the Plunge Protection Team (PPT), manipulating the US economy as he did the 2000 Election.

President's Plunge Protection Team

By John Burl Smith

As financial markets tank from failures and loss of confidence, the economy continues to decline. New scandals are emerging, such as Jim Wilkinson, a "dirty trickster" running the President's Working Group and a sex for oil affair in the Interior Department. Americans know more about their local dog catcher than they do about what their government is doing and who is really running the economy. Shady politicians in the White House lied about weapons of mass destruction in order to invade Iraq, while stealing our freedom with the Patriot Act.

Former Treasury Department official Catherine Austin Fitts posed this proposition regarding the bail out, "Is their goal to get taxpayers to pay off corporate failures or centralize power? If your goal is total centralized control, this is a great way to achieve it. Between Freddie, Fannie, Ginnie Mae, FHA, VA and the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, the federal government no longer regulates or provides credit to the residential mortgage market -- it is the market." Its powers to support the markets in a crisis with a host of instruments, including buying futures contracts on the stock indexes (DOW, S&P 500, NASDAQ and Russell) and key credit levers the President's Working Group can fry "short" traders in the hottest of oils.

Operating in secret, the Working Group, a.k.a. the "Plunge Protection Team"(PPT), is reminiscent of Richard Nixon's "plumbers." The PPT has a very sophisticated war room with state of the art technology to monitor markets worldwide. It has emergency powers. It doesn't keep minutes and there's no freedom of information access to its deliberations. Four people control all the US markets through their ability to intervene with massive infusions of liquidity. Through banks like Citibank and JP Morgan Chase, they cover their activities behind the Fed, SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

The PPT is suspected of pre-911 manipulation when the U.S. markets showed an astounding and puzzling four months rise proceeding 911. Also the $400,000,000 put option scam on 911 that has never been solved is attributed to the PPT. The U.S. media dubbed the rise a "patriotic rally". The European Press called it a "PPT rally." Also, on 911 the London Telegraph reported that the market activity seemed to be "a coordinated measure in anticipation of what was to come" and called the PPT a "black arts unit. It concluded, "Obviously, the US markets were manipulated and rigged to an inflated value in advance of the 911 disaster."

Since 911, there have been at least three major long-term stock market rallies. In all 3 instances, when the markets opened all the indexes began to quickly plunge. In each incidence, by early afternoon the markets were brought back from the brink of collapse to the surprise of market analysts.

Outside the US, it's no secret who is behind these secretive "no-name" purchases of high risk derivative. On September 16th, 2001, The Guardian reported that "A secretive committee... dubbed 'the Plunge Protection Team'... coordinates intervention by the Federal Reserve on an unprecedented scale. The Fed, supported by the banks, buys equities from mutual funds and other institutional sellers..." On Feb 21, 2002, the Financial Times featured an article about Japan's Stock Buying Body. The article stated that "...government backed equity markets, as Japan has recently become aware, do not work... Plunge protection of the world's markets may be a hazardous pursuit." On Friday (9-27-08), Bush convened the so-called Plunge Protection Team for its first known meeting in the Oval Office.

Politics Y2K8

Anatomy of a Political Dirty Trickster

By John Burl Smith

While researching the President's Working Group on Financial Markets (PWGFM), which is known on the street as the Plunge Protection Team (PPT), one name, Jim Wilkinson, jumped out at me. Wilkinson, infamously, came to public notice as the leader of the gang of thugs, whose riotous behavior shut down the Miami-Dade County vote recount center. Speaking for the Bush recount team, outside the Miami-Dade canvassing room, Wilkinson said of his orchestrated protest, "Between 80 and 100 of us were outside the room. It was a very emotional group of young people that thought the election was being held behind closed doors. Hence we all walked outside the canvassing room and protested -- emotionally, but spontaneously."

Only later did the public learn that they were not spontaneous protesters but high-level Republican aides and staffers. Not only did Wilkinson and his group get away with interfering with the electoral process, he was rewarded handsomely by the Bush administration for helping them steal the White House. What lessons are young Americans to take away from such an incident about the political process and improper behavior?

James R. (Jim) Wilkinson grew up in Tenaha, Texas. He received an undergraduate degree in finance from the University of Texas at Arlington, and later received a Masters degree in government from Johns Hopkins University. He served as an officer in the U.S. Navy Reserves and also served as a professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Government.

Wilkinson got his first real experience "playing in the dirt" as an aide for Republican Congressman Dick Armey (1992). Armey, the go-to guy when the White House needed information it could use against its enemies, became House majority leader. Jim Wilkinson, his communications director, moved on to study under a new mentor, Ed Gillespie, chairman of the Republican National Committee (R.N.C.) In 2000 Wilkinson served as Director of Communications at the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), where being a mudslinger was a job requirement.

Wilkinson's career as a "dirty trickster" in politics began with the 2000 Presidential race. He helped fabricate, package and promote the lie that Al Gore claimed to have "invented" the Internet in March 1999. Then he organized the Miami-Dade County vote recount center caper. His reward, Wilkinson was made deputy director of communications for planning in the Bush White House. Dirty guys do win!

Gulf War II provided lots of opportunities for Wilkinson to hone his skills helping to manage the program of embedding reporters in combat units and selling US soldiers as heroes. He was also Director of Strategic Communications for General Tommy R. Franks at U.S. Central Command and directed the U.S. military's public affairs activities. His best trick as point man was the highly publicized, dramatized and fictitious heroics of Pvt. Jessica Lynch's rescue. He also helped concoct the story that Saddam Hussein tried to buy uniforms identical to American and British troops, so that atrocities carried out by Iraqi forces could be blamed on the allies. A dirty job but somebody's got to do it.

Slithering up the Bush command structure, dirty tricks made a name for Jim. Many consider Wilkinson a savvy politician, someone to watch. A throwback to the Nixon Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP) days, he would have felt right at home alongside E. Howard Hunt, G. Gordon Liddy and Donald Segretti. A modern day plumber, Wilkinson definitely bears watching, now that he's Hank Paulson's man at Treasury. The go-to-guy in charge of the President's Working Group on Financial Markets, a committee surrounded by secrecy and without oversight, a dirty trickster like Wilkinson should raise lots of eyebrows.

On the street, suspicions are rampant regarding market manipulation by the shady Plunge Protection Team. Knowledge that Wilkinson heads the PPT adds weight to fears that cagey Wall Streeters scammed taxpayers with the recently passed and signed bail out plan. There is only a short step from stealing an election to stealing billions when one has the blessings of the president and Congress. Would you buy a used car from Jim Wilkinson?

Mailbox: E-Mails, Faxes and Phone Calls

Email bilrum@knology.net...How the U.S. Saved the European Banking System"...But the AIG case shows the importance of another link across financial markets, namely massive regulatory arbitrage. The K-10 annex of AIG's last annual report reveals that AIG had written coverage for over US$ 300 billion of credit insurance for European banks. The comment by AIG itself on these positions is: "…. for the purpose of providing them with regulatory capital relief rather than risk mitigation in exchange for a minimum guaranteed fee". AIG thus helped to organise regulatory arbitrage on a gigantic scale. A formal default of AIG would have had a devastating impact on banks in Europe. This explains why AIG's problems had sent shock waves through the share prices of European banks. For the time being the US Treasury has saved, inter alia, the European banking system, but given that AIG is to be liquidated European banks now have to scramble to find other ways of obtaining the 'regulatory capital relief' they appear to need urgently..."

Email www.thenation.com ...New Orleans Redraws Its Color Line...By Lizzy Ratner...The stories sound like strange echoes from another era, as if someone had wound up the old Victrola of history and let the Dixie tunes rip. They begin on a half- abandoned street in St. Bernard Parish, an aggressively white community on the southeastern edge of New Orleans. That is where Daphne Clark, 39, an African-American supervisor at a group home, rented a house with help from a rental voucher last year, and that is where the harassment began. First, the Confederate flag hoisted over a neighbor's house followed by stares and sneers; then the official torment by the parish government as it waged a post-Hurricane Katrina crusade against the specter of rental housing. For Clark, this took the form of a series of "notices of violation" warning her that the parish would disconnect her utilities--not because she had done anything wrong but because her landlord had failed to apply for a rental permit, as required by a new parish law. According to Hestel Stout, a white contractor working on Clark's house, the parish official who delivered one of these notices explained to him, "How would you like those types living next to you?"

Email www.legitgov.org...The U.S. plans to hire five to 10 asset-management firms as Secretary Henry Paulson establishes the government's new office for handling the financial bailout, a Treasury official said. The department will also add about two dozen new employees, a mix of bankers, lawyers, accountants and others, the official said today on condition of anonymity. Some of the Treasury's new employees will be on the government payroll, while others will be contractors, the official said.