No Consumers, Only Patients

Coming back to the bit of health care psychosis explored the other day, the article entitled:  "Consumers Will Choose Safer Hospitals 97% of the Time, Regardless of Cost" is really a tour de force in wrong-think.  The title seems to write the article.  Based on that title, wouldn't you just thing "well, duh!"  But it all goes spectacularly wrong from there.  Because the title is actually very wrong - and very political. 

People who receive medical care are "patients."  They are not "consumers." 

All humans are, at some level, consumers.  We eat, we drink, we breathe.  We 'consume' food water, air, and other things that are treated as commodities in the world today.  But that does not make us 'consumers' in the sense that is meant by this ideology.

In this market philosophy, a 'consumer' is someone who uses money to purchase consumable goods.  Penniless refugees certainly 'consume' food water and air, but are not Consumers because they have no market power, and therefore no market value.  A Consumer in this ideology is someone with an impact on the market.  Wealthy Consumers are attractive to industries because they have more money to spend.  Poor Consumers count next to nothing and have no influence on the market, aside form the power of a deep discounter to push all their pennies and nickels into a big enough pile to make themselves wealthy. 

So Consumers make purchasing choices that influence business, and business does stuff like advertising to change Consumer selections.  So far so good. 

This all falls apart when human health care comes to be treated as a Consumer good, selected like a Volvo or a box of Lucky Charms.  People have no opportunity or capability to 'shop' for health care.  Aside from choosing the ACA coverage that fits the family budget and current health needs, personal care decisions are not a marketplace.  When a doctor says you need a medication, you do whatever you can to get it. 

When a doctor says your kid needs an operation, within the bounds of getting a second opinion, you will do anything to get that operation done. 

You and your kid are not Consumers.  You are not going to seek a cheaper alternative - a cut-rate doctor.  It's not an occasion to go shopping.  The price only matters when you can't afford it - which was true for millions of Americans before ACA.  It doesn't matter for the civilized world outside of the US where universal health care is a human right. 

Price is a factor in the system, but only after the health outcomes are taken care of - not before.  The US system is still a desperate greedy morass because the profit motive remains the driving force, well before the lives of patients.  So, in the American formulation, 'let the buyer beware.'  Get your money right, or don't get sick.

So, the study that shows 97% of people don't care the first damn about costs should prove to everyone who knows what a 'percentage' is that people don't care what medicine costs.  It's not a 'market' full of 'Consumers' when everybody wants to be healed no matter the cost.  How can it be a "market" when nobody cares about cost?  Who are you negotiating with???

But this just proves Upton Sinclair right for all occasions:  “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” 

According to the article"  “These results indicate that consumers are well equipped to assess the tradeoffs of price and safety,” said Wendy Lynch, director of CCCHC." 

Sorry:  tradeoffs?  TRADEOFFS?  The results indicate that people don't want any "tradeoffs."  People want to have good care, period.  Nobody is willing to trade price for safety. 

Sadly, it get worse:  “It’s wonderful to see the data reinforce the value of the Hospital Safety Score,” said Leah Binder, president and CEO of The Leapfrog Group. “If you give the consumers a simple, understandable metric about safety, consumers are fully capable of making their own, informed choices about where to get their care.”

That's a staggering misreading of these results. 

Patients are not Consumers.  They can't make informed choices - they can't debate their doctors about the care they need.  However much money they pay for care, they can't intelligently evaluate the diagnosis of one doctor against another. 

The Leapfrog Group does the nation a great service by gathering and reporting hospital safety scores, which have been closely hidden in the past.  But the purpose of these scores is not and should not be intended to aid a shopping trip.  The value is in forcing worse hospitals to get better.

Are we expecting the market to fix the worse hospitals by having people try to choose better hospitals and therefore have the market drive them out of business?  How big does the body count have to be before the invisible hand makes a fist and crushes the place? 

What about the unfortunate rich people who are taken to a poor hospital because they're having a heart attack?  They're wealthy!  Why should they suffer??

We can't let Consumers suffer and die because we're expecting the market to fix a system that it doesn't influence in the first place.  If a hospital (or clinic, or doctor) is shown to be substandard, it needs to be fixed, not driven out of business by competition.  Health care, by its nature, is non-competitive.  If you were given the choice of getting better care if someone else got worse care, if you're human you don't play that game.

So why are we encouraging the system to play the game? 

Market function by having winners and losers.  Do we really want to build a health care system predicated on the belief that there will be 'health care system losers"'  Are those people acceptable losses for a market system? 

Even if you're a Rightist Social Darwinian and think that the poors are lazy and deserve their poverty, at least realize that their kids didn't have a choice.  The babies aren't inherently lazy, are they?  If you're joining Ted Cruz on that road to racism, please don't drag the rest of the country down into that ugly pit with you. 

If you offered a choice between drinking a glass of clean water vs. drinking a glass of Drain-O, would the cost be a factor?  What if I told you the Drain-O was half the price of the water?  Would you be interested?  What is the price point that makes the Drain-O option more attractive?

Right - there is no price.  It's not an economic question. 

Forbes Presumably Knows Poverty Better than Bernie

I haven't even read it yet.  I just saw the headline in Forbes and kind of lost it.  Bernie Sanders Doesn't Seem To Understand What Poverty Really Is.  I am going to read it.  I know, I know.  I will, really. 

I'm just trying to picture the Koch-level billionaire looking at this headline and hissing along "yeeeeeessss..."  And we can't leave out Dr. Evil.  I mean, throw me a frickin' bone over here.  What do you mean Trump bought all the frickin sharks with frickin lasers on their heads?  Or of course, the great Mr. Burns.  Who, in the final analysis, really knows poverty better than Mr. Burns and his good friends and publicists at Forbes? 

Certainly not cranky Bernie with the bad hair and the cheap suits!  You'd never catch Mitt wearing that stuff! And if some bird landed on his podium during an important speech, he's have it stuffed and mounted on his seventh or ninth home's mantle - if he could find it - oh fine!  You try finding all your homes and putting stuffed birds on all those mantles!  Not easy! 

So, again I have not read this bit yet, but I really will.  Why would I pre-judge an eminent publication like Forbes on what promises to be a hard-hitting expose on what poverty may or may not be, as long as it's not what Bernie thinks it is?  I wouldn't - I'm just saying.  I mean, it's not like you're going to find the latest copy of the magazine - do they still print it on paper?  Don't tell me!  I'm going to be hitting their website any minute to find out about poverty.  I'll also discover whether trees are being routinely sacrificed for the reading pleasure of Forbes subscribers. 

Not that you have to subscribe (though you really should).  You could find printed copies of Forbes in your financial planner's office, or perhaps at the orthodontist's.  But they're probably old copies.  Unless you're not a 'moocher class' and have a decent financial guy who only leaves the latest copy in the waiting room.  But you have no time to read that!  Non-moochers get in right away (you're not a moocher are you?  Or did I ask that already?).  If you're glancing at the latest Forbes in the good finance guy's office, you're not reading this commie blog. 

Unless you are!  In that case:  Welcome!  Please leave a large financial donation in some way (it's only polite). 

Before I read how much Forbes has to tell the Senator about poverty, I'm struck by how much I want to put an exclamation mark in after "Forbes."  So:  Forbes!  doesn't that seem more appropriate? 

So, poverty, right?  I mean, how can you really understand it unless you've caused it?  There are so many downer stories about "oooo I was so poor I had to go to a State school" and "my golf clubs were off-the-rack longer than my suits were."  We - and I mean myself and Forbes! because we're like total besties now - have walked that lonely yellow brick road paved only with dreams and, in the case of about 3,200 of the best Americans who own 99.999% of the country, actual gold. 

You don't want to do it, but when your finance guy tells you that your manufacturing sector is only making 10.56% profit, you know it's time to cut that mooching workforce who are all likely pen-stealers and where are all those staplers anyway?  There are places where the magic of the market pays salaries in twigs and feathers and after costs your profit will be around 10.56% 

That's not a typo!  You just don't understand FINANCE! 

Sorry.  So Bernie's got everything twisted because he likes to talk about Poverty without having gone to Forbes! to understand it's causes and effects.  The poors who make Poverty, I'm guessing, are moochers (we know that) who do nothing but take from the government that is given to them by the Job Creators (no, Jobs as in the things where people work to feed their families, not the Bible story about Job the Job creator who is made into a divine moocher). 

So just because people decide to become poor as a lifestyle choice, the real Americans are supposed to bring their money home from Panama to become taxed into lesser beings.  Why?  Because the moochers choose Poverty, clearly. 

Look, me and my bro's at Forbes! want our money to have as safe and secure a future as our Corporate fellow-citizens.  If our money comes home from it's life of untaxed leisure in foreign banks, that will  cause it to be taxed and not be as big a comfort to Mr. and Mrs. Corporation (who are people, too!)  and the many Forbes! readers who depend on it. 

A growing percentage of Americans suffer from regular food insecurity and live not just paycheck-to-paycheck, but half say they couldn't come up with $400 to meet an unexpected expense.  Elitists at Forbes! and their ilk (our ilk!) look at them with no recognition of the needs of fellow human beings.  Or that the money they do spend at places like Wal-Mart goes to buy the Faberge Eggs that the Walton family use to throw at the help when they don't bring the moonshine and lard sandwiches quick enough.  "Keep it movin, Cooter!  This one here's a heavy one!"

They don't have the most fundamental understanding that if their daddy hadn't handed them their great-granddaddy's fortune, they would be displaying the sort of lazy careless uselessness that defines their lives today - only they'd be doing it at the expense of the other people who won the genetic lottery and become Forbes! readers. 

As a matter of fact I'm not going to read what Forbes has to say about poverty in general and Bernie in particular.  What the hell could they possibly have to say? 

P.S.  Fuck I read it and it's worse than I thought it was going to be. 

The Invisible Hand Kills

Let's face it:  Americans are a pretty deadly bunch.  Over the years, they've had a very impressive body count - around the world but (even more impressively) domestically.  But the part that's truly impressive is their (our) ability to rationalize it.  Yankees won't like the first sentence of this paragraph.  They don't see themselves as aggressors or killers.  There's always a reason - they believe a good reason - for making folks not live any more.  But why do they kill so many of their own?

Putting aside international killings like the ongoing drone murder program (since nobody in the world outside a handful of Washington insiders knows anything about it anyway) and the generally deadly mayhem we let the W. Bush junta inflict on Iraq et.al. in our name, let pause for a moment to look at the body count that Americans generate within their own 50 states. 

Gun deaths are a good first stop on the tour.  According to the BBC research:  "So many people die annually from gunfire in the US that the death toll between 1968 and 2011 eclipses all wars ever fought by the country." 

Home on the Range indeed. 

These deaths are largely preventable.  Americans could pass the type of laws that civilized countries have to introduce a domestic cease-fire.  In the US, we choose not to.  As a nation, our decision is that we are willing to have mass shootings like Sandy Hook.  Those 20 children and six school staffers are dead, and it's because America wants firearms more than it wants safe kids.  Sorry.  The country has had since around 1776 to do something about loose access to deadly firearms, and has chosen, in 235 years, to do nothing. 

Maybe by 2116 it'll seem worth doing something to stop? 

But guns are clearly too easy to pick on.  Americans sit in the back of the international classroom with the full dunce cap for their gun stupidity already.  No need to remind anyone of that.

But what's really dumbfounding in the belief system is health care.  Or specifically, the denial of health care to fellow citizens, who then get sick and die. 

It's not that there is no money - the money is there, and spent wastefully every day by private health care companies.  It's not the lack of available public support - the ACA offered to cover the uninsured who 'fell through the cracks' of the law. 

What gets me is the choice that is made daily and constantly not to cover the remaining uninsured. 

In the years leading up to the ACA, around 45,000 Americans died needlessly every year for lack of health insurance.  I don't know what that number is today, but the success of Obamacare has most likely reduced it significantly.  The needless killing that continues is in the states which played right-wing death politics and refused to expand Medicare as the law offers.

In those 24 of our 50 states, up to 17,000 will die annually because...  What, exactly?  Without getting into the details, nearly half the states in the US think that their working poor - not their poorest (they're covered) - don't deserve to live.  They don't deserve support to be healthy.  They don't deserve to have preventative care.  They don't deserve to have curable stuff get cured. 

This is true insanity.  It's not a fiscal question - the money is spent and wasted if not on patients then on healthcare administration.  Governors and legislatures in those 24 states gain only a political talking point for their most backward voters. 

Racism clearly has a lot to do with it.  Poor whites vote against their own interests because Republicans tell them that non-whites will gain if they don't cut off benefits for everyone.  Nice. 

Invisible Hand

What really gets me is the delusion that market forces belong anywhere near health care.  Americans who are otherwise regarded as non-brain damaged will make market-based arguments about health care.  As if we shop for hospitals.  As if anyone but the 1% shops for hospitals, I should say.  And not even the 1% does much shopping in he ambulance after their heart attack. 

There is a raw, unrefined stupidity in this view.  It's so raw that it must be on purpose.  Somebody doesn't continually try to jump off a bridge if that's not what they really want to do.  They're not just strolling and the street runs out.  Somebody is paying them well to make this point.  And just as valuably, they are made to feel as though they're 'insiders.'  All the cool people in Washington think that the Invisible Hand of the market drives health care - not the beating heart of an actual human being.

Here's a typically shameful bit in a new study that finds - get this - that people want good health outcomes more than they care what it costs.  Nice job, Perfesser!  So, human beings given a choice of better health outcomes don't give a dry shit what the cost is?  Huh. 

Well, they had to spend the research grant on something.

But the real boneheadism comes from the conclusion that is arrived at from this shocking bit of insight  (next project:  what will drowning consumers pay for air?  Who picks up the cost?).  That is, that this goes to prove that people can make good shopping decisions because they can understand the factors involved.  So we need more market-based competition in health care.  Huh?

What we need are better health outcomes across the board.  We don't need to rate hospital quality to use shopping skills to choose a better one.  We can't play with people's lives and health outcomes by using quality metrics like Consumers Reports.  Quality scoring is is great - to drive quality improvements, not to support some pathological homicidal drive to build a better death trap.

Look:  the market is intended to have winners and losers - that's the whole basis of the concept.  My store goes under, you build a commercial empire, and I come work for you.  Fine.  but you can't set up a medical system that intends to have winners and losers.  With human health, we can'yt have any losers by choice.  If we're not among 24 fascist Republican Medicare-refusing governors (who must like to watch sick working poor people die slowly in the streets) we have a moral obligation to fix all of it, not just the profitable bits.

The fact that this has to be explained to Americans shows how deep they are in their echo-chamber.  They are so focussed on their greed-based for-profit ideology that they are blind to the damage that they willfully do to one another.  Their rich and powerful live on an island protected by armed guards - who never cross paths with the unfortunates who are bankrupted and killed by their policies.

If the Trump & Cruz Rightists want to torture some people for killing Americans, they don't have to look further than those 24 state houses. 

Doughboys and Drones

It's been a century since the First world War was raging.  A century that's been the bloodiest in human history.  Losses in The Great War added up to around 18 million at a time when there were under two billion folks on the planet.  There are more of us to kill these days - around seven billion - making WWI losses around 70 million dead today.  Pretty grim.  That immense tragedy started as a giant mistake.  Nobody understood what war meant in the age of new technology.  Machine guns ate cavalry.

Are we making the same mistakes today?

As we mark the century that has passed since this first modern war occurred, the conflict seems more senseless than ever.  It was like a bunch of foppish over-privileged inbred narcissistic Nobles challenged each other to a duel, and then all showed up with five million or so 'seconds.'  It was a modern war in the sense that entire nations clashed for the simple reason that they were nations.  Previously, only professional career soldiers and mercenaries fought in wars.  The British army that defeated Napoleon started at 40,000 and topped out at 250,000.  Napoleon never commanded as many as 700,000.

Large numbers, to be sure,  but to understand wars of nationalism you have to stick a zero at the back of each figure.  Nationalism meant posters of Lord Kitchener pointing at YOU to join the British army.  They never wanted the rabble from the streets and pubs before.  War was a game and not everyone was invited to play.  There was no such thing as 'total war' as we understand it today.  After WWII and the Cold War, people generally understand that if the country goes to war against an equal or greater power (not since WWII, but still...), it is total.   Food and material goods are going to be rationed for the war effort.  Young men will be conscripted to fight and die.  The society, in every facet, will be turned immediately to the single purpose of victory.

It's important to understand, too, that WWI was the first great nationalistic war, but it was not ideological.  None of the sides were fighting for their particular system of government.  Since the primary adversaries were nearly all decrepit empires ruled by monarchs, there weren't a lot of political theories at play.  The main outcome of the war - aside from a seven digit figure of unnecessary casualties - was to eliminate feudalism as an organizing principle in Europe. 

The Second World War was really a continuation of the First.  WWII can be seen as a natural resumption of hostilities after a 20-year hiatus for each side to re-arm.  In that time, major government became more representative of the wishes of their people, beyond simple national aspirations.  The British, French, and Americans retained their capitalist republics.  Germany traded in an artificial empire under the Kaiser for an unsupported democracy, then for the racist genocidal Nazi government they'd been wanting since Bismarck.  The Austro-Hungarians fell apart into their more-or-less natural state of being many nations behaving badly toward one another.

And, of course, Russia went from being a backward violent oppressive totalitarian dictatorship under the Czar to a progressive violent oppressive totalitarian dictatorship under the Soviets. 

All that took place because the violence of WWI begged for a reason.  Why did all those people suffer and die?  Was it really because Kaiser Willie didn't want to look like a jerk to the Hapsburgs?  Did the Czar not want to hear Emperor Franz-Josef hum "The Coward of The County" when they got together for Emperor-Czar sleepovers?  Could a generation of European manhood been tossed into abattoir for absolutely nothing? 

Sadly, yes.

But here's the thing:  in July 1914 (the month before the tragic hostilities), nobody thought it was an abattoir;  most thought it was a simple block of flats. 

The graceful movement of brightly uniformed cavalry flowing across the field of honour was the image most thought of when the subject of war came up.  The thinking was that in previous (glorious) wars, their chaps took care of what was needed.  Even a fiasco like the Crimean War only cost a couple thousand dead.  Why should a European war be much different?

Plus, when you build a million-man war machine for the first time, you are inclined to use it.  If Wellington (and allies) could beat Napoleon at Waterloo with an army of 118,000 to the French 68,000, war could only get easier when you field 2,000,000 men, right?  With the new artillery and machineguns at their disposal, they expected a quick, clean outcome.

And they more or less had a right to.  Today, after the century of war we've lived, we know what happens when people line up should-to-shoulder and run at a machinegun nest.  But how could they?  They had war games, but if it's never happened before, how do you simulate it?  You can't account for factors you don't know are factors.

And while there were some examples of the man v. machinegun outcomes in the colonial wars, those factors didn't get through to the incredibly stuffedness of the stuffed shirts in charge of the military forces in 1914.  They don't even make shirts like that any more. 

So the major European powers were sitting on what should have been a nuclear stand-off.  They revelled in their million-man army without understanding that the other guy had a million too.  In the same way that nobody could ever win a nuclear war, nobody could possibly 'win' the Great War.  There were just different grades of losing.  Nuclear war has been deterred from the earliest days of the nuclear age by MAD - Mutually Assured Destruction.  No first strike could destroy one side but not the other.  Any nuclear war is a loss for all sides. 

If the decision-makers in 1914 could have been given knowledge of the capabilities of each military on the continent at the time, none would have fought.  They all would have realized the impossibility of a long total war.   WWI was a MAD war.

Which leads to the question of drones.  Today, a handful of decision-makers, mostly in Washington, make daily - hourly, minute-by-minute - decisions about who to kill or not kill.  They do this with no oversight, no questions from non-believers.  They are the Hapsburg Emperor Franz-Josef of Austria-Hungary, an intelligent octogenarian who two primary advisors constantly lied to him about Serbian attacks on his empire.  They got him to approve the quixotic invasion of a Serbian nation which had already agreed to Austrian terms. 

What is President Obama approving today?  We don't know.  A self-styled democracy, in many ways the US is as closed a book as the Hapsburgs or the Romanoff's.  We the People don't know how many people are targeted and how many are killed by drones.  They are flown in our name but we know nearly nothing about them - and then only by leaks that are savagely prosecuted by the administration. 

We're all becoming more used to this type of conflict.  We hear about drone 'successes' - the death of unnamed and unnameable "terrorists" ten time zones away.  We never hear about failures.  We, as the population "protected" by drone activity, have no independent view of drone activity. 

Like the power-mad monarchs and republicans who unravelled the lives of 20 million or so human beings, the prosecutors of drone - and commando ("special forces")  attacks around the world don't know what they're getting us into.

It was nice for about a decade when the US could fly the hostile skies as the only drone in town.  But today?  Every industrialized country has drones, and weapons to attach to them.  And the less developed countries can afford to buy them.  So the world in the foreseeable future will be one in which the skies are filled with expendable intelligent munitions. 

Think about it.  A drones literally has no 'skin in the game.'  There is no threat to sending any number of low-cost drones anywhere to do anything.  And now everyone has them. 

But why stop at the sky?  Certainly, there are lots of smart guided object in orbit.  Most of them just look at us.  I'm sure there's lots more a smart satellite could do. 

What about on the sea or under it?  Why put 5,000 sailors on an aircraft carrier when you could run drone strikes from an unmanned barge?  Why put 300 sailors in a nuclear sub when the torpedoes can run themselves around the ocean?

The point is not that robots are going to kill us all (they are).   The point is that we're playing with a new kind of fire.  We're doing things - deadly things - because we can. 

What is the endgame of the Drone war?  Where does it stop?  Because under the current 'rules' that the US more or less follows, there is no point at which we win.  Trump says "we don't win anymore" and in this sense he's right.  It's not that there's somebody we can't beat militarily.  It's that we have no defined place to declare victory.  We will continue to indiscriminately blow up bunches of people we can't actually name, using munitions that each cost the annual income of  any 10 Yemini villages, until what?  Until they love us enough to stop joining ISIS and AQAP? 

This approach to war has no logical conclusion, and that should scare the hell out of us.  Since we started drone attacks, we've only increased the frequency and ferocity of the strikes.  The trend line goes up and up with no downward arch in site.  And our chief politicians either ignore it or call for major increases.  We perceive it as 'low-intensity warfare' - it's not the British Army going 'over the top.'  Sure.

But that's because right now we're the only ones doing it.  And I'm not just talking about the drones - what about the Special Forces attacks - in 168 countries world-wide?  There are more US troops and Apache attack helicopters going to fight in Iraq today.  There is a massive war effort ramping back up using a new generation of weapons and we have zero democratic control over it. 

We're in August 1914 again, and we're just as blind. 

Br'er Goldman

So, the mighty crafty US Department of Justice (DOJ) finally settled on a fitting punishment for Goldman Sachs, one of the 'too-big-to-fail' megabanks who crashed the world economy to enrich a few of their employees.  They're imposing a $5 billion dollar fine on old Goldman.  Or possibly much less.  Whatever. 

They'll never do that again!

The global economic collapse (2008 to today and the foreseeable future) was totally worth it.  Our financial Betters need to aggrandize themselves, but can't do that properly without debasing all the 'takers' out there.  What fun is buying a $2 million hat if the ordinary suckers don't miss a few meals over it - amIright?

To be clear, what Goldman did (and admitted to doing in the settlement, which is rare) is present toxic smelly piles of offal to investors packaged as AAA perfume.  While selling this material they knew to be noxious as being made of solid gold and diamonds, Goldman also bought financial positions that would reap huge profits when the gold was inevitably revealed to be manure.  Imagine buying a car from a dealership that secretly signs a life insurance policy on you because they know the car has major defects that will certainly kill you. 

These investors weren't just (or even mainly) from the 1% investment class who could lose a few billion.  The investors were pension funds who thought they were buying safe assets.  They were funds that we depend on to safeguard our meager assets for out scanty retirements.  And, of course, many of the assets were in the form of residential mortgages sold by predatory lenders.  Millions of Americans lost their homes and life savings.  Goldman and friends got a government bailout and gave each other six-figure bonuses. 

Hey! This is America!  That's not a bug - it's a feature!

Which brings us to Br'er Rabbit and Br'er Fox.  I'm no good at parables, but let me try Br'er Rabbit 2016, or as I like to call it, Br'er Goldman and Br'er DOJ:

Br'er Goldman (stuck and at the mercy of Br'er DOJ):  "I know I did wrong and I'm willing to pay.  Please - arrest my board members and CEO as criminals - they got rich from financial fraud and made millions of people lose everything they had.  Or ban me from trading in equities or bonds or mortgages so I can't repeat my terrible behavior!  But please -PLEASE!  Don't fine me a few billion dollars!  Anything but that!  Have mercy!"

Br'er DOJ:  "Weeeeell...  I could do anything I want.  You sure did a lot of harm to lots of folks who depend on me.  I'm supposed to make sure that ordinary folks aren't devastated by big-money trickery they have no chance of understanding or fighting." 

Br'er Goldman:  "Yes!  True!  I was a bad animal.  Arrest all of my managers - they did crimes!  Stop our business - we've proven time and again we can't be trusted to trade fairly!  But don't fine us a few billion dollars!  We only profit a trillion or so a year!"

Br'er DOJ:  "That's it!  I'm putting my foot down!  $5 billion in penalties!"

Br'er Goldman:  "Seriously?  I skip away laughing like, every time.  This is like the tenth time I've done it this year.  $5 billion means nothing to me - if I even pay it.  Aren't you supposed to be representing the whole country I just ripped off?"

Br'er DOJ:  "Hah!  You'll never do that again!"

Aaaaaaaand Scene!

Israel - A Bad Rap

First:  I am biased in favour of Israel.  I was raised in a Conservative Jewish household by parents who were raised in the 1950's in the shadow of the Holocaust and knew well what the failure of the Jewish state would mean for Israelis (genocide at the hands of Egyptians, Jordanians, and Syrians) and the world's Jewish diaspora (more virulent eliminationist anti-Semitism).   Israel's military victories were each a temporary lease on life until the next genocidal invasion would start.

I don't usually write about Israel because it puts me at odds with those I'm usually in agreement with, and because the current Israeli government is thoroughly odious and in bed with some really noxious political plays in the US and elsewhere.

Now Israel stands accused of being the same kind of oppressor as Apartheid South Africa.  The Israeli government - and people - are accused by groups all over the world as a massive on-going violator of human rights.  Is that really the case? 

No.

I'm not going to get into the tangled history - 100 histories of Israel will give you 100 different versions of events.  The question is:  what's happening now?  What's right and wrong? 

Glenn Greenwald is a good person to start with.  A Jewish American lawyer and journalist, in my opinion he's been right about almost everything in his amazing career and writings.  I have all his books.  He's the power behind The Intercept and the person Edward Snowden was smart enough to reach out to with his NSA leaks (as brilliantly documented in the Oscar-winning "Citizenfour").   I've been reading him since he started his first blog after 9-11. 

But Glenn has  a problem with Israel.  I won't try to capture all his views - they're easily found on the Intercept and in his previous (and widely available) work for The Guardian and Salon, as well as his published work.  As an insightful analyst on many subjects, Glenn (hey - he's free to call me "Abe") has over-pursued his enemy into a bad spot.

By that I mean that the real forces of evil that Glenn has brilliantly exposed are right-wing neo-fascists who control governments and corporations.  They've invaded (Iraq) and murdered without just or legal cause (drone strikes among other things), and because they are in control of the mechanisms of "justice" they've avoided all repercussions. 

In part because these ideologues support Israel the way concrete pillars support a bridge, it's easy to continue the rightful attack on them over the line to attack Israel.  It's a step too far, and it's grossly unfair. 

Israel controls three land areas that were once in Arab hands:  Gaza, Golan, and the West Bank. 

Gaza is run by Hamas, a Muslim religious organization dedicated to Israel's destruction, and that does not accept Israel's 'right to exist.'  Israel once had Jewish settlements there, but has removed them.  Hamas periodically attacks Israel with rockets and physical assaults on individuals (civilians and soldiers).  Israel retaliates militarily.  Wouldn't you?  If Toronto was firing rockets at Buffalo, the US would have something to say about it. 

Gaza is controlled at sea by Israel and on land by Israel and Egypt.  Egypt has a very tight border on the Sinai where Gazans often tunnel to bring in weapons.  This is another area of contention, as seen by the  "Freedom Flotilla" in 2010.  Certainly, the import-export controls on Gaza are a hardship, but without those controls, Hamas will import massive amounts of weapons to use against Israel.  how could Hamas ever be trusted to run a port system hat's isn't the world's greatest arms market?   Who  would allow their neighbors to import weapons to kill them?  It would be suicide. 

There may some day be a fair peace between Israel and Gaza, but until Gazans stop trying to kill Israelis, that's not going to happen.  For those who think Israel is the instigator of the violence - try stopping the attacks and see what happens.  We'd all be pleasantly surprised at that. 

But violent hatred of Jews is what keeps Hamas in power.  If they can't stoke the hatred of Jews, they can't stay in charge. 

The Golan Heights are another thing altogether.  Taken from Syria in 1973, the area overlooks Israeli settlements and was the source of continuous bombardment of Israeli civilians for decades.  It's in Israeli and UN hands now and will hopefully be demilitarized forever. 

The West Bank was originally part of the British mandate which became Transjordan (now the Kingdom of Jordan).  There are Israeli settlements there, and they seem to be growing, which is a major source of consternation for Glenn and others.  This one puzzles me.

It's a problem for Glenn because the land has not been officially annexed by Israel, and remains technically 'occupied.'  In one sense, this is an international fiction that Israel has participated in.  When was the last time a country expanded and then returned the expansion?  Treaties aside, aboriginal populations would love to have a massive international force on their side the way the world has aligned against Israel.  The Iroquois would really like to discuss the occupation of New York. 

And certainly European borders have moved around quite actively over the centuries, as have borders on every continent. 

If they took the area by conquest - and not just took it back from previous British, Ottoman, Persian, and other conquerors - and may someday 'return' it to Jordan or donate it to a future Palestinian State, why does that preclude Jews from living there? 

The settlements are on purchased land, nobody stole the deeds.  If they end up living in a Palestinian state - so what?  I don't think there's a single Arab state that does not have a Jewish population.  Why does the concept of an independent Palestine hinge on being free of Jews? 

But it's not anti-Semitic, right? 

Glenn had a typically insightful piece in The Intercept the other day.  Sadly, he again used his powers to do harm rather than advance the cause of justice for which he is usually a dependable champion. 

The article, Fighting Israeli Occupying Forces Is “Terrorism.” Boycotting Is “Anti-Semitism.” What’s Allowed?, compares the response to violent Arab attacks on Israelis to the response to non-violent so-called "Boycott Divestiture Sanction (BDS)" efforts.

They are two wildly different subjects, but Glenn is intellect enough to join them.  But here's what's wrong.  First - are Arab attacks on Israelis (including uniformed soldiers) really 'terrorism?'  I think this is a Straw Man argument.  As we all know, there is no one definition of the work "terrorism."  So because that's what it's been called, it's - what?  Prejudicial against murderers?  Is it the wrong word?

Glenn thinks so because the Israelis are an occupying army.  Just like the killing of American troops in Iraq, can we blame the occupied people for fighting back?  Umm, yes. 

Palestinians have no more right to murder Israelis - in and out of uniform - than Israelis have to murder Palestinians.  The difference is that when Israelis unlawfully kill Palestinians they are arrested and tried.   When Israelis are murdered, Palestinians plant trees to honor their blessed memory. 

In any conflict, soldiers wear uniforms and assume the risk of being killed in action.  Killers out of uniform do not identify themselves as combatants.  When they kill people, it's not combat, and it's not law-enforcement.  It's murder.  And the point of the violence is to send a message - that's a form of terrorism.  Murder to create fear and uncertainty.  Clearly, Israel will not be defeated in any way by the knife attacks or even the rockets fired at their civilians.  But it will make people afraid, and make them vote for lizards like Netanyahu as Prime Minister. 

Glenn asks:  'is it really terrorism?'  The better question is:  'is this kind of violence right or justified.'  No.  Not in any way, no matter what you call it.  No matter who does it. 

The second contention is that the BDS efforts are, by the same token, a rational non-violent response to Israeli actions.  No, it's not.  It's based on the assumption that Israel is a uniquely evil oppressor in the world.  The nation and its citizens should be made pariahs because of the conflict and occupation.  Additionally, those who are actively fighting against BDS are unjust in calling the movement anti-Semitic. 

As we've discussed, Israel is fighting to stay safe against angry violent populations who want to murder them.  When Arafat used the eve of the Oslo Accords to start a massive terror campaign in Israel, it was clear that there was no Palestinian partner who wanted peace.  Palestinians were in it all-or-nothing - no two-state solution would do.  So Israel turned to a series of right-wing strongmen who would supress and wall-off the Palestinians. 

But none of that is Apartheid.  The only thing keeping Arabs from a just settlement is their own violence and intransigence.  It's not racism and it's not oppression.  It's a bad situation that keeps getting worse as both side dig in with solutions that involve force. 

Glenn also points to Netanyahu for using the 'what about the other guy?' excuse.  In other words, you condemn us for bad things, where were you when the other guy did bad things?   I think that's too simple.

Yes, that can be a facile and empty response in the individual instance, but I think it's valid in the broader sense.  That is:  where is all the is outrage for the many real atrocities in the world?  Why launch a massive institutional protest against a democracy of 3 million in a world of 5 billion or so, in a region where violence an oppression of civilians is the rule rather than the exception? 

There are at least 47 countries in the world which are designated 'not free.'  Millions of people across the globe living under government oppression.  And Israel is the one which needs to be singled out and made to suffer by boycotts, divestiture, and sanctions?  Really?

But it's not anti-Semitic.

We all know that's a lot of crap.  Israel under it's current administration is no buttercup of sweetness to people who would do harm.  They have no obligation to be.  But neither are they the monsters they're made out. to be.  Israel has turned to walls rather than outreach because the hand they extended to Palestinians got blown off. 

When the day comes that their kids happiness means more to them then their kids martyrdom, we'll have a shot at peace.  But in the meantime, Israel's enemies need to stop pretending that this is some even-handed cause of justice.  It's not.  It's another shot at Jews and the Jewish state, with some unfortunate jewish frontmen giving them cover. 

Sorry Glenn.

Crime & Punishment

We live in a time when the Lords of Finance have become a global oligarchy. The Big Money Boys (almost all men) who run the global financial world have purchased the power of governments around the world.  It was not always thus.  There was a time not too many decades ago when corporations and wealthy individuals actually obeyed the laws. 

Canadian regulators announced a $1.1 million fine against a bank they refuse to name.  The bank failed to act on some questionable transactions including taking deposits over $10,000,  no-questions-asked.  They didn't even take the reputational harm from being named. 

So they'll never do that again! 

Banking regulation is a sadder joke every time the regulators tell it.  Canadian banks post multi-billion dollar profits every year.  That's money they take from us, the sucker who have to rely on them.  They spend $1.1 million on lunch (and then white it off for a tax break). 

American regulators act like horseflies in a barn.  When piles of refuse get too him, they land on them and extract 'penalties.'  American banks made, in the second quarter of 2014 alone, around $40 billion in profit.  The $5-6 billion in fines was not only paltry, it was paid by us suckers in our bank fees.  The bankers themselves still got record bonuses.  Take that, Justice!

Fines are a non-punishment, and that's clearly well known.  It's a 'Please Don't Throw Me into the Briar Patch' defense.  'Oh, no!  Don't take 1% of our profits and make us charge the suckers 1% more!' 

And the SEC and "Justice" Department think we don't know. 

They seem to be happy bragging about the staggering sums that they've assessed in penalties, most often without admitting to any guilt.  Yes, we get it.  We know.  And we know how much it hurts these companies:  not at all. 

But we're hurt.  We lose our homes and life savings.  They penalize banks for criminally foreclosing on mortgages - thousands at a time.  We lose our houses and meager fortunes one at a time.  We feel the hurt and humiliation of being broke and losing our jobs.  The actual human harm is just a write-off to the banks and regulators.  They feel nothing because they are beyond justice.  They bought justice. 

Justice would be in charging and convicting the actual people who do financial crimes.  The corporations who did the crimes that they're penalized for are made of people - people who did evil.  Nothing will change as long as we're throwing Bre'er Rabbit into the briar patch - not once, but again and again long after we know it won't touch him. 

Bankers are people.  People stole money from others.  The victims of the financial fraud perpetrated by these banks had no opportunity to even understand what was done to them.  Government is supposed to protect us from scams and financial fraud that we have no ability to see as just one person with just one mortgage or income.  Instead, they've become a protection racket, taking our tax dollars and a few pennies in fines to guarantee that financial criminals stay out of prison. 

Put a few of these bankers in real prison for a stretch and see how quickly things change. 

The US Supreme court under it's odious and temporary Rightist majority has enshrined the concept of corporate personhood into law.  When corporations can be drafted and take a bullet for their country, I'll start to see a case.  For now, the shield of a corporate entity (and a few rounds of golf with the DOJ) is enough to keep these reptiles out of the jail cell (and exercise yard, and prison shower) they belong in. 

If they won't punish the actual people who do us deep criminal financial harm, can they at least stop insulting us with these ridiculous fines?  Goldman-Citibank-RBC-UBS-HSBC - the money means less that nothing to them.  They throw parties to celebrate getting away with monstrous money-laundering, narco-financing - even terror financing.  HSBC set up US dollar ATM's in Mexico for the drug cartels.  Cash machines for drug lords.  They paid a small fine.

Can't we at the bare minimum say:  "we know what you fuckers did."  Can't we even have that much satisfaction?

Districts

Why are both houses of Congress controlled by the political party that is less popular and has gained fewer votes that the other major party?  The word of the day is:  Gerrymandering.  In a world that is increasingly multi-cultural and diverse, the Republican party is Caucasian and working class - meaning they are increasingly part of the not-working class.  What that means is that Republican state legislators, who get to draw Congressional districts, drew their maps to disenfranchise minorities and other voters who are not white and reliably stupid. 

When the Rightist money machine cranked up to 11 in preparation for the 2010 mid-term elections, they focussed on taking state houses, not just the Congressional races.  Since 2010 was a census year, it was the once-in-a-decade chance for the forces that oppose progress to really put a wrench in the works of democracy.  And they did.  Having the power to do wrong, they used it.  Think of them as the party of Dr. Evil.  If there is a wrong to be done, they're just the guys to do it.  Magnificent.

The 2010 local wins were really the apex of Rightist power.  It's a move to keep illegitimate power where real people-derive power can no longer exist.  By moving to a neighborhood well outside the borders of the rational world, and by becoming extraordinarily narrow in their approach to voters, Republicans seem to be erasing their own future, vote by vote. 

Hispanics are a growing portion of the American population.  Republicans not only want to deport millions of them from the US, they want to build a wall to keep them out.  This isn't just a Trump thing - remember the 4,600 Central American kids that they turned away.  Clearly those children were a risk to our way of life. 

And never mind that large segments of the US economy depends on their cheap labour - just ask all the corporation-citizens who aren't so keen on the idea of closing the tap.   

Women make up half the population, and one would think that the simple proportion would make them good candidates for an outreach effort.  Not to these clowns.  Their assault on Planned Parenthood is only one piece of the misogynistic puzzle.  At every turn, they reduce the role of women in society to that of chattel.  No need for equal pay or access to fair health care options, not to mention reproductive health.  Getting reproductive benefits out of Obamacare has been one of the cornerstones of their political mission.  They look at it as some motivational slut-shaming, without seeming to realize that they're talking about their own sisters, mothers, and daughters. 

They've long given up on African Americans, despite the sleepy and off-putting efforts of Dr. Carson, the mother-hammering saved-again former surgeon to whom the President isn't 'black enough.'  Carson's efforts were doomed from the start because the entire party he belongs to is dedicated to return to the antebellum South.  They don't let black kids grow up to be neurosurgeons in Rush Limbaugh's America. 

The other lie they tell is that 'those people' (non-white, non-Christians) take up more tax dollars that they produce, because they're lazy.  The 'lazy' part may be true - but for the Republican base.  Right-wing states take in much more federal tax money than their produce.  Blue states effectively subsidize their empty-hearted Red state moochers with their tax dollars.  And they are thanked but having the fly-over states steal power by rigging elections. 

That's because their gambit utilizes a scapegoat.  "Government is always the problem and never the solution," why?  Because the government works for all citizens, including the darker ones who we didn't have to pay wages to in the good old days.  The 'Republican Coalition' is the former 'Dixiecrat' coalition of Southern racist Democrats who voted "D" until Lyndon Johnson broke their hearts with e Voting Rights Act (among other things).  Nixon grabbed those voters, even though he'd been an anti-segregation in the 1950's.  Added to the real Republican constituency of rich people and corporations, they had a nice racket going for a long time.

One of the changes has taken place in the hearts and minds of a surprising number of people.  That is, compassion and rights for the LGBT community.  I didn't think I'd live to see it, but the day has come when Gay marriage is the law of the land in not just Canada but the US as well.  Barriers are being removed and rights - such as spousal rights, adoption rights, and health benefits- are being put in place. 

And Republicans are responding with "Religious Freedom" laws which legalize discrimination against LGBT people.  Who vote.  Good luck with that. 

Not to mention the millions of Muslim Americans who won't be voting Republican any time soon. 

It's a grand scheme to protect a narrow (minded) base of bigots and billionaires, while rejecting any new group of voters.  So how can they expect to govern when they are basing everything on a motivated, crazy base?

Gerrymandering.  The more the fact-based world grows, the more its voters are disenfranchised by the right.  Instead of having government change to meet the changes in the will of the people, the people are thwarted by power and money - and ignorance.  Republicans are playing a short game that they must know cannot last.

But now the clock has started on their ugly scheme.  The Supreme Court has decided unanimously against the Rightist Gerrymander.  We'll have to wait until a new census in 2020 before some of the districts can be put right.  Probably, some will never be balanced toward the truth again.  And they are no doubt working in the Evil Labs to come with their next Evil Scheme.

Pretty nice for the Right to have stolen an entire branch of government for a decade.  As grand national frauds go, you can't top Republicans.