Nuremberg, Eichmann and Terror Trials Today

There can be no greater argument for holding the imminent terror trials in a fair, transparent setting than the two photographs in this posting, the top from Nuremberg, below from Jerusalem.

These barbarous men, instruments of evil during the Nazi era, were responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people and property destruction the likes of which the world had never known, and has not known since. Many of these deaths were not part of the so-called normal course of war, but systematic terrorist acts against helpless civilians.

Yet, in front of the whole world, they were put on trial, evidence was brought, weighed, deliberated upon, and sentences passed. It would have been easier to summarily shoot these fiends, but then billions of eyes would never have seen, billions of ears would never have heard of the scale and scope of their monstrousness.

I don't argue for holding the contemporary terror trials in either civilian or military courts, nor do I argue for lower Manhattan versus a secure military base. The cost of the Manhattan scenario seems repellently high, on the order of $1 billion+.

Regardless of venue, I do argue for the same complete transparency that Nuremberg and the Eichmann trials gave civilization, two complicated acts of juristic courage that will color history forever.

The terror trials should be wide open to the press from all corners as were the World War II trials: 250 journalist covered Nuremberg, 500 Eichmann's.

Eichmann's was the first war crimes trial to be treated to full television coverage. For those of us old enough to remember, he was the Man in the Glass Booth, flickering across the airwaves, a sinister manifestation of a past we knew only in legend.

From where does the argument come to make Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and his devilish brethren "Men in Concrete Bunkers?" From the right wing, naturally.

Senator Lindsey Graham, an extremist Republican who wants the trials to be held away from the eyes of journalists, said disingenuously today: "These Al Qaeda terrorists are not common criminals." Thank you for that sunning insight, Mr. Graham.

In comparison to Goering, Hess, Ribbentrop, Speer, Neurath, Fritzsche, Bormann, Eichmann and the rest of the devil's disciples?The radical Sheikh is a two-bit murderer who should at least get a clean undershirt for the trial.

In a mere 10 months, the Nuremberg trials dealt with six years of war crimes and 21 accused. For all the complaints at the time of "victors' justic," the trial was astonishingly fair to the accused, with three being acquitted. Eichmann's trial was short, as well, although appeals put off his death sentence for a year after the trial.

Keep the trials open, well-covered by all members of the press around the planet, hold dear to our system of openness and fairness. Let the Republican radicals understand that vengeance and justice are two distinct ideas, let the world know that proper evidence has been brought and serious deliberation been made in an open society.

The Price of Tea

Solar Power 1954 - Yep

Here Comes The Sun King (click to listen and watch a static YouTube screen)

For my own obscure reasons I was looking up the word "solanum" (a kind of nightshade shrub) last night in bed when my eyes glanced down to the next set of words, all of which contained, "solar."

Here they are, alongside their dates of entry into English: solar battery 1954, solar cell 1958, solar collector 1955, solar panel 1961, solar pond 1961, and solar sail 1958.

In 1954 Dwight Eisenhower was President. Since Ike, we have had 10 more Presidents. A few thousand people have rotated through Congress.We have gone to the moon; the Computer/Internet Age has dawned and matured; our phones are now marvels of mobility and connectivity, and so forth.

Yet, the European Union leads the United States in solar generation by a factor of 4.5 to 1*, despite our having much sunnier conditions in many more places than Europe, and a relatively large technological lead that has grown out of our space program. 

Solar power is more important than ever, especially if coupled with a solid domestic jobs program.

Places like Detroit, Ohio, northwest Indiana, Pennsylvania, New York, and other so-called rust belt metro areas have armies of idle skilled industrial workers. The construction industry across the country has been socked hard by declining employment. What could be a better marriage at this point?

A good first step was Congress's extension of tax credits to the solar industry in September of 2008. However, it doesn't go far enough.

From the time of first settlement, government has taken the lead in transformative projects.

The building of the Erie Canal turned New York City into the nation's leading port. The Panama Canal, which had strategic importance as well as commercial importance, was built by the U.S. government. The system of railroad land grants - fair or not - by the federal government after the Civil War was undeniably instrumental in creation of what became the world's greatest rail system. The Interstate Highway System. which one can today fairly argue is an albatross around our collective neck, nevertheless spurred enormous economic activity and could not have been managed by any entity other than the central government.

Today, every major transit system in the country is run by municipal governments or their factotums, regional transportation authorities.

New York City's transit system, to cite one instance, moves close to 3 billion people a year. There are currently at least 7 MAJOR transit projects born of government planning and foresight currently in the building phase, accounting for tens of billions of dollars in taxable payroll, and secondary economic activity.

So, why exactly is the federal government such a laggard when it comes to development of solar, among other alternative sources? One could reflexively say "big oil," but it seems as if integrated energy companies would welcome some sort of involvement now, given the volatility of oil prices and oil producing regions.

It seems to me that, more crucially, the culprit lies in the anti-government philosophy that has gripped the extremist Republican Party, our tried and true philosophy of "Can Do," being challenged by their philosophy of "Can't Do." The hatred of government in a genuine democracy seems to me to be a form of self-hatred and defeatism.

So, after 50 years - the rough mean time since the entry into the dictionary of words that today still define our technology - what's the delay? "How long?" as was said for expansion of civil rights. "Too long," is also the answer about the slow arrival of solar power.

Interestingly, the same brand of radical naysayers who were responsible for holding civil rights legislation up are responsible for keeping us dependent on foreign energy. The plantation mentality is alive and well, my friends.

 * 3.8 Terrawatt hours vs. .83 TW-h.  A TW-h is 1,000,000 KW hours.

In total renewables - hydro, wind, bio, solar and geothermal - we rank 4th, mainly because hydro figures so highly among those ahead of us - China, the EU and Brazil. It should be noted, however, that Canada's hydro production is almost totally consumed by the United States, so when one combines the two North American countries, they would far outstrip any other region. Contrapuntally, as most environmentalists know, hydro creates its own set of ecological nightmares. 

Minority in a minority of a shrinking minority party

Many reports have said there were 1200 people at the Nashville Tea Party "Convention." (Heck, there are bigger family reunions than that.) But let's be generous and double it. Let's say 2400 fringies attended. 

So where does all the hysterical (pro and con) media coverage spring from? Is there something all that engaging about a group of very white, slightly over-the-hill, angry Americans that morbidly draws us in, like rubberneckers passing a bloody car accident? 

Is the infotainment industry so incapable of separating urgent national issues from political bloodletting? Why do they insist on running from the right side to the left then back again, gasoline cans in hand, to keep the fires of division stoked?

The TP-ers are an extremist sliver of the right wing minority residing within the minority Republican Party, which itself has shrunk to a self-identifying group of 21% of the electorate. (Democrats are still in the 35% range, nothing to beat the chest over, but 1.6 times greater than Republicans. Independents make up about 38% of the total. Small party enrollments make up the rest.) 

We look at the TP-ers "through a glass darkly," seeing the worst angels in ourselves, fascinated and appalled by their tribal lust.

I am reminded of Beat poet Delmore Schartz's poem that puts its finger on our barbaric impulses, ones that the Tea Partiers indulge themselves in with no moral compunction:

The hungry beating brutish one
In love with candy, anger, and sleep,
Crazy factotum, dishevelling all...

Moves where I move, distorting my gesture,
A caricature, a swollen shadow,
A stupid clown of the spirit's motive,
Perplexes and affronts with his own darkness,
The secret life of belly and bone,
Opaque, too near, my private, yet unknown...

Click here for the entire Schwartz poem

Two Ladies Reading Crib Notes

Runaway Boys on Wall Street

Scenario: Mother inherits valuable 100 year-old family heirloom, instructs son, 8, to never, ever touch it. Bad angel on shoulder pipes up, "Awwww, g'wan. What could happen?" Boy shatters heirloom. Mother scolds and punishes. Boy runs away. Smirking, cynical uncle takes boy in so he avoids consequences. Prodigal is eventually welcomed home and such is relief of mother that he's never truly punished. Mother places  freshly acquired heirloom in conspicuous spot...

So goeth Wall Street's boys. Without giving home buyers who fed of the poisoned trough a free pass, we all know who fashioned and filled the trough. 

Rumbling like a runaway train come reports of bonuses that have been "cut."  Jamie Dimon of J.P. Morgan Chase will get $17 million. Goldman's Lloyd Blankfein is facing the bleakness of 2010 with a cut to a mere $9 million. Bank of America sets aside $4 billion for 2009 bonuses. Click here for Tom Petty's Runaway Train

(It would take a somewhat above-average worker earning $60,000 a year about 150 years to earn the same amount as Blankfein's one year bonus, and almost 283 years to earn what Dimon will make.)

While there are certainly ample social good arguments against such bonuses, and ample remedies through taxes to help Mainstreeters return to productive lives, there is little talk of either the morality of the doling out of such great bacon slabs, or of any sort of compensatory, voluntary actions by the recipients to right their wrongs. (How about creating a few hundred community banks with the cash?)

Instead these executives are stuck in Neverland, boys clothed in $5,000 suits instead of woodland-inspired togs.

Never gonna be a man,
I won't!
Like to see somebody try
And make me.
Anyone who wants to try
And make me turn into a man,
Catch me if you can.
I won't grow up. 

(Click for video clip of Mary Martin singing I Won't Grow Up in Peter Pan)

They argue straight-faced that these goitrous bonuses are necessary to "retain talent." There are about 125,000 people in the United States alone with MBAs. (In 1960, there were about 5,000). Then there are people with advanced degrees in economics, all those with undergraduate degrees in some sort of finance or business related field, and finally there are legions of smart, tough people who learned finance through working retail sales. The domestic pool of talent is enormous. And, because the world economy is globalized, the pool is now the size of an ocean. So much for the need to retain talent through sacrilegiously sized bonuses.

Now to the trickier issue of morality. Everyone's happy the bank bailout loans and other funds are being repaid to our treasury. But, that is like chipping in on gas money if you've wiped out someone's family in a car crash.

Until the financial world's leaders - leaders with names and faces and homes and private, interior lives like you and I have - take full responsibility, they will and should remain pariahs in our country. And the heaviest hammer of economic justice available should come down on them for waging war on the middle class, and the aspiring middle class.

Finally, the best part: as Democrats push harder for restitution through higher taxes and tighter control of the industry, the Wall Street boys are beginning to give more money to the Republicans. 

The NY Times reported today: Senator John Cornyn of Texas, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said he visited New York about twice a month to try to tap into Wall Street’s “buyers’ remorse.” 

“I just don’t know how long you can expect people to contribute money to a political party whose main plank of their platform is to punish you,” Mr. Cornyn said."

Lost the boys of Wall Street may be, but ever so slick and ever so self-serving.

A Tale of Two Ladies

Of Deficits and Demons

We're Not Gonna Take It - The Who (Click to play song) (a nice exploration in song of why blindly following leaders who pander to groupthink isn't a super idea...)

From Paul Krugman's Column, February 4, 2010 (click for full article)

So once the economic crisis is past, the U.S. government will have to increase its revenue and control its costs. And in the long run there’s no way to make the budget math work unless something is done about health care costs.

But there’s no reason to panic about budget prospects for the next few years, or even for the next decade. Consider, for example, what the latest budget proposal from the Obama administration says about interest payments on federal debt; according to the projections, a decade from now they’ll have risen to 3.5 percent of G.D.P. How scary is that? It’s about the same as interest costs under the first President Bush.

Why, then, all the hysteria? The answer is politics.

The main difference between last summer, when we were mostly (and appropriately) taking deficits in stride, and the current sense of panic is that deficit fear-mongering has become a key part of Republican political strategy, doing double duty: it damages President Obama’s image even as it cripples his policy agenda. And if the hypocrisy is breathtaking — politicians who voted for budget-busting tax cuts posing as apostles of fiscal rectitude, politicians demonizing attempts to rein in Medicare costs one day (death panels!), then denouncing excessive government spending the next — well, what else is new?

The trouble, however, is that it’s apparently hard for many people to tell the difference between cynical posturing and serious economic argument. And that is having tragic consequences.

For the fact is that thanks to deficit hysteria, Washington now has its priorities all wrong: all the talk is about how to shave a few billion dollars off government spending, while there’s hardly any willingness to tackle mass unemployment. Policy is headed in the wrong direction — and millions of Americans will pay the price

Are We Less Well-Informed Than We Used To Be?

First, I'd like to say that I am not planning to fully answer this question, but rather put a bit of perspective on it and offer one possible solution. Someone recently sent me an article from September, 1999 from Salon.com. It makes the head spin. (There's a "reward song" at the end of this post that will stop said head from spinning too much.)

Here are some pull quotes from the various studies in the Salon article:

On a typical election day, 56 percent of Americans can't name a single candidate in their own district, for any office.

A poll by the nonprofit Pew Research Center, released in 1999... showed that 56 percent of Americans could not name a single Democratic candidate for president. Things weren't better for the Republicans: Only 63 percent could recall the name "Bush."

One month after the Republican revolution in 1994, in which conservatives, led by Newt Gingrich, finally took control of the House of Representatives, 57 percent of the electorate did not know who Gingrich was.

Nor is this a new development or the product of young minds warped by MTV. In 1964, at the height of the Cold War, only 38 percent of Americans could say for sure whether the Soviet Union was a member of NATO.

A 1996 Washington Post-Harvard survey found that “only 26 percent knew the 6-year term of office of a U.S. senator” and less than half the public knows that a member of the House of Representative is elected to a two-year term.

Although surveys were not methodically taken then, we know anecdotally that an outcry over such ignorance was raised as long ago as the 1870s.

Naturally, ignorance was more understandable in the 19th century because information was more difficult to obtain, and campaigns of misinformation less developed, and perhaps issues were less confusing. (Although the reaction to slavery was certainly not uncomplicated.)

Blind ignorance had been going on for generations apparently though. James Madison warned:

A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. 

I think there is a larger discussion to be had, however. Dilution.

In 1910 when there were 391 members of the House, each represented about 236,000 people. Today, its 435 members represent an average of 707,000 people, a dilution factor of 3 over the course of the last 100 years. (In 1820, the number was around 6,000 - small enough so a Representative could know every enfranchised voter by name!)

Worse off is senatorial representation in many modestly populous to very populous states. Wyoming, the least populous state, has 544,000 people represented by two Senators. California has 37 million. How close can citizens in a big state realistically hope to get to a Senator's decision-making process? 

Finally, across the breadth of the entire country, we still only have 9 Supreme Court Justices, the same number as in 1869. (The Court has gone from as few as 5 members to as many as 10 in its history.) No wonder liberals and conservatives so often feel frustrated, angry and betrayed by many of the Court's decisions. Of course, Justices are not supposed to be strictly representative of the electorate, but it bears mulling over that there is only one of them for every 34 million of us. Could they possibly be reflective of a huge, diverse population? I think not.

A liberal take on this imbalance would see the House grow by at least double, and the Senate completely re-apportioned, while still ensuring some sort of voice for small states. (I can feel a rant about my views on the filibuster welling up, so I will wind this post down.) And the Supreme Court could certainly be expanded to 17 or 19.

People unarguably are ignorant about politics. But, we grow farther and farther away from a reasonable connection with their Federal representatives with each year of new population growth. Why keep attuned and informed when you feel so out of touch?

Chain of Fools - Aretha Franklin

College Loan Revamping Threatened By Greedy Lobbyists and Complicit Senators

From The New York Times February 5, 2010 (Click here for full article):

"Sallie Mae, a publicly traded company that is the nation’s biggest student lender with $22 billion in loans originated last year, led the field in spending $8 million on lobbying in 2009, more than double the year before, and other lenders spent millions of dollars more, according to an analysis prepared for The New York Times by the Center for Responsive Politics." 

As discussed on New York Liberal State of Mind, January 29, 2010, the revision/rehabilitation of the way Federal college loans are administered is being threatened by self-serving lobbyists. (See original blog post).

The projected savings in the bill over 10 years would be $80 billion dollars.

The private lenders are often enormous institutions like Sallie Mae, Citi, and Wells Fargo, although there are many mid-size competitors, many of which are not household names unless you're in the market for a student loan.

Industry lobbyists claim that some, although they can't or won't say how many, of the 35,000 jobs will be lost if the government takes the reins of the out-of-control profits the companies are making. Let's make an extreme case: one quarter of those 35,000 jobs will be lost under the new plan, or 8750 jobs.

By distributing that $80 billion dollars in savings amongst those theoretical 8750 workers if they are not laid off, each of those jobs would be subsidized by taxpayers at the rate of $91,000 per year, every year over the ten year cycle. Who wouldn't love to run a company with that kind of government subsidy? I volunteer immediately to receive my $91,000.

Put another way, the financial institutions will be receiving $266 from every man, woman and child in America in order to save these pointless jobs. (We know that children don't pay taxes, and we also know that about 1/4th of all adults pay little or no taxes, so you can figure your real share is more along the lines of $400 to support big banks and the like. Great, isn't it?)

There are many alternatives to the current system leaving aside straight up federal administration. States could administer the loans, as could colleges, or scholarship foundations. Direct grants could be made to students using the savings.

Interestingly, Sallie Mae, while it was spending $8 million in lobbying last year maintains a "scholarships" program. The amount they give away? $250,000 - about 3% of what they spend for lobbying. Click here for their "scholarships" page.

There has also been a shocking degree of corruption and lack of oversight of the program as now administered. Educational institutions are entwined with the lenders on an unimaginable scale. Click here to read some highlights - or low-lights, as the case may be.

Factoid(s) of the Day February 4, 2010 and some music

Before you read on... here are a few "work" songs: Working At The Car Wash Blues (Jim Croce), I've Been Working (Van Morrison), Get Back In Line (Kinks)

Now that you've been entertained, you can proceed to feel appalled (again).

When Ronald Reagan was president, unemployment was over 10% for a solid ten months and over 9% for another 9 months. Republicans canonized Reagan.

1982-09 10.10 10.1

1982-10 10.40 10.4

1982-11 10.80 10.8

1982-12 10.80 10.8

1983-01 10.40 10.4

1983-02 10.40 10.4

1983-03 10.30 10.3

1983-04 10.20 10.2

1983-05 10.10 10.1

1983-06 10.10 10.1

When Bill Clinton was president, unemployment at one juncture was under 5% from July of 1997 through the end of his term in January of 2001, occasionally dipping to 3.9 and 3.8%. The Republicans tried to impeach President Clinton.

Now that another Democrat is in the White House, we are going through the same drill with the extremist right wing Republican Party. They simply don't take ownership of their disastrous policies. Let's split 2009 in two, however, and give all responsibility for the first half to Bush and all responsibility for the second half to Obama. (After all, the current administration was not going to come in and flip a switch and make things better in the first six months - at least.)

In the previous 6 months while we struggled to get out from under Bush policies, unemployment was up 2.3%. Under Obama unemployment has ticked up 1.5%.

In fact, from a low of 4.4% in October of 2006, unemployment directly related to Bush policies caused it to rise to 9.5% in mid 2009, a difference of more than 5 full points.

And the radical Republican Party is calling for Obama's head?

Bring ME the head of George W. Bush and Jerry Garcia. 

The Music Man and The Burqa

Heed the warning before it's too late!
Watch for the telltale signs of corruption!

The first Broadway musical I ever saw, way back in 1958 on my eighth birthday, was The Music Man. It took me another 12 years to comprehend that the show lampooned American closed-mindedness about sex, leisure, the Puritan work ethic, alcohol use, and a plain old verve for life.

One fine night, they leave the pool hall,
Headin' for the dance at the Arm'ry!
Libertine men and scarlet women!
And rag-time, shameless music
That'll grab your son and your daughter…

We rightly find the burqa disturbing, and I think the French – heavens forbid in this francophobic country of ours – are on the right track in curtailing its use. The burqa is degrading to women, all women, of any faith or ethnic background, a slap in their collective face casting them as somehow being responsible for “sin.”

It is also an insult to men, positioning them as eternal adolescents who somehow can’t control their surging hormones when they see an uncovered woman outside the home.

As Robert Preston sang as Professor Harold Hill in “Trouble,”

The first big step on the road
To the depths of degradation…
I say, first, medicinal wine from a teaspoon,
Then beer from a bottle!

This is the reactionary impulse embodied in the burqa. One little glimpse, one little glance, a hint, a nuance… and the dam will break and a pent up reservoir of lust will be loosed upon the world. France, and Gaul before it, among other places, has gotten along quite nicely without women covering their faces for a few thousand years.

While Western values are not the only path to social and cultural improvement, in our fitful, too-slow way we proceed. And more importantly, we hope to proceed.

Finally, the Koran makes no reference to the wearing of a burqa. This is some dreamed up vision of society – not unlike that imposed by St. Paul beyond the four gospels upon Christianity – in which women are cast in roles as temptresses, harlots, and adulterers, with men their witless, childish victims ensnared in an endless teenage boyhood.

The burqa has no place in the Western World. It has no place in the Islamic World either, but that is a larger discussion.

We've surely got trouble!
Right here in River City!
Remember the Maine, Plymouth Rock

and the Golden Rule!