Contra Baucus- selected comments and analysis

Revenge of the Vine -  the Baucus Cult in Western History

What's really wrong with Max Baucus?  

Not many of us are taking the opportunity to dance on Max's grave - not yet, anyway.  Of course, he isn't dead, yet, which you'd never know from yesterday's Tribune with about 4 pages of nothing but tributes and praise for the man I have long called "The worst Senator in History" - meaning US history, of course.  I'm sure there were a few Romans or maybe even Latin American oligarchs who were worse.
  
The fact is, he's at the most dangerous point in his long career of serving Wall Street and just about every murderous, corrupt constituency in our Body Politic.  He's about to "reform" the tax system, to even better reflect the interests and "requirements" of the 1%.  Watch closely.  There will be a lot of sleight-of-hand, here.  Not that it's necessary.  The evidence indicates that he has no serious critics outside the Green Party and the Occupy movement (and of course Single Payer Healthcare advocates, who he treated like common criminals.  That would include Brian Schweitzer.).  

The Pope and Archbishop of Canterbury acting in concert would not be able to persuade Baucus and his crew of the need for any sort of ethical principles or social responsibility.  They have adopted the "self-interest" ethics of Ayn Rand along with every sort of intellectual dishonesty and disregard of scientific understanding - all the while pretending to represent the highest realms of intellectual excellence and legal "professionalism", from Harvard to Stanford, Yale, and now, Chicago.  They're all Straussians, now - like the guy who took away Oppenheimer's security clearance as much as Leo, or the Nazi Party favorite, Richard.  Maybe they're all Waltz Kings, after all.  Look at the success of Schwarzenegger, that echt Viennese King of the video rental store.  

It's Nietzschean, too, in its descent from Emerson and the early environmental radicals like John Muir or Gifford Pinchot.  The pursuit of excellence for a few, and mass sacrifice and tyranny for the many.  The pattern is clear, and I was just reminded of it by one of my unknown friends' posts:

"What I want to fix your attention on is the vast, overall movement towards the discrediting, and finally the elimination, of every kind of human excellence – moral, cultural, social, or intellectual. And is it not pretty to notice how “democracy” (in the incantatory sense) is now doing for us the work that was once done by the most ancient Dictatorships, and by the same methods? You remember how one of the Greek Dictators (they called them “tyrants” then) sent an envoy to another Dictator to ask his advice about the principles of government. The second Dictator led the envoy into a field of grain, and there he snicked off with his cane the top of every stalk that rose an inch or so above the general level. The moral was plain. Allow no preeminence among your subjects. Let no man live who is wiser or better or more famous or even handsomer than the mass. Cut them all down to a level: all slaves, all ciphers, all nobodies. All equals. Thus Tyrants could practise, in a sense, “democracy.” But now “democracy” can do the same work without any tyranny other than her own."
~Screwtape, From Screwtape Proposes a Toast, C. S. Lewis, 1959

Paul Stephens: When I used to associate with a lot of intellectual conservatives, they were always trying to get me to read this - I was more or less anti-christian, though, based on personal experience, so never read him. The above is right-on.

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Steve Kelly was one of the first to count coup.  "God is alive," he said, e-mailing his lists the story from the NY Times of Baucus calling it quits.  

Melinda Gopher's tweets soon followed.  She supported Mike Taylor against Baucus in 2002, and most NA's I know have long-standing grievances against Baucus as well as the Baucus family, itself.  (Disclaimer:  The Baucus family is from Great Falls, and actually neighbors - lived on the same block with the Diehl's, Swanberg's, and Peter's - all close friends of my family, as well.)

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Melinda Gopher
I was the one #Democrat that vowed to primary the most powerful Senator, in the #USSenate, while other state Democrats cowered...
Share · 1 · 11 hours ago near Missoula, MT · 

I reply:  "John Driscoll did it, so did Bob Kelleher - major Democratic party leaders - real labor guys, and social democrats.  Both were crucified by the Baucus Machine.  Max always pretended he didn't know what was happening - "plausible deniability," they call it."

Melinda Gopher
Believe the next person to lead #Democrats should be #LandlessIndian descendant
Share · 12 hours ago near Missoula, MT · 
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Melinda Gopher
#Baucus failed in his ENTIRE Congressional career to address #LandlessIndians needs...#13starflag

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Doug Wendt
Max Baucus 'our' "Senator from K Street" because of his ties to corporate lobbyists is RETIRING which makes his vote for unhinged massacres last week even more despicable. The Waterton Police faced hundreds of rounds & only stopped the bad guys last week when they paused to reload huge magazines. 4,000 dead in US from guns since Newtown. This ad puts the wrong headed liberal interpretation of the 2nd Amendment in context:

The Best Gun Control Commercial Ever Produced?
http://www.buzzfeed.com/copyranter/the-best-gun-control-commercial-ever-produced
A man walks into his office with a rifle. He takes aim at his boss, and fires...

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Paul Stephens:

People assume I have some sort of personal grievance with Max.  I don't.  I've never had a conversation with him outside of public forums.  I just consider him one of most evil politicians I have ever seen or heard of, sellling out to the bad guys in nearly every case that matters, and getting nothing worthwhile in return - like closing Malmstrom, or promoting Single Payer healthcare, instead of destroying it.  He's also largely responsible for destroying Montana Power, via his connections with Goldman, Sachs, who under commission from PPL, packed the Board, paid off the preferred stockholders, and then liquidated the company, selling the generating assets to PPL, which was the whole point of the exercise (PPL was looking to replace its nuclear capacity, which it expected would soon be shut down).  Essentially, they were stolen, and Max or his people (along with Racicot) were in the loop all along.  

There are many other areas where Max's "leadership" has resulted in tremendous destruction to the economy (especially Montana's, and rural/small towns across the country),  "ending welfare as we [the 1%] know it," the health-care system, education (NCLB, the Race to the Top, etc), research & development ("intellectual property" for corporations, not for people), and foreign policy in general.  Max has supported all the wars, the PATRIOT Act, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (getting Clinton to sign it, which he was inclined to do, anyway), and other Republican, corporate "de-regulation" and "free trade" policies.  Max is the quintessential "neo-liberal" and was even one of the original "New Democrats" from the '70's which included Evan Bayh, John (and Bob) Kerry, Gary "Monkey Business" (Senator from CO - can't think of his last name), Bill Clinton, and Al Gore.  

While hanging, for many years, on Mike Mansfield's coat-tails, Max had none of the common touch or working class values of Mansfield, and thus has been the greatest disappointment to the Democratic base, although his effective use and doimination of the media, public and private, has largely obscured that fact.  Even more disappointing for more sophisticated observers is how shamelessly Max has maintained the support of some of the best activists and progressive leaders, who seem to ignore everything he has  done since the 1980's, when he may have actually tried to be one of the good guys.  But no good deed went unpunished, and like so many others, Max just caved in, and became the active agent of all that is wrong with our country and its government.  

Little-noted so far is Max's tremendous influence and even domination of the Obama Administration.  Jim Messina, a hero and complete creation of the Baucus Machine, got Obama re-elected, or at least takes credit for it.  So, add to the long list of Baucus's own sins and indiscretions, the creation of a President who might yet destroy the country which  once enslaved his people and ancestors.

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Truthout
The Obama administration is suggesting a compromise with Republicans to tie your benefits to something called "Chained CPI."

http://www.upworthy.com/you-will-not-believe-what-the-government-is-planning-to-do-to-your-poor-gentle-sweet-old-grandma-2?c=to1

You Will Not Believe What The Government Is Planning To Do To Your Poor, Gentle, Sweet, Old Grandma

www.upworthy.com

It doesn't mean you'll get your benefits cut. It just means you'll get less money. Totally not the same thing.

Paul Stephens: Especially pernicious because inflation is grossly understated by Soc Security, etc. Plus, those who lived freelance or in the black economy most of their lives get only the barest subsistence - my total income, with SSI and Food Stamps, is a little over $800/month. I could work part-time in a minimum wage job, but only a few of them are exempt from having your other benefits reduced in compensation. I'd have to make at least $500/month to have a worthwhile gain (i'd lose SSI, Food Stamps, etc), and I figure my time's worth $25/hr - that's what I'd charge for informal consulting, tutoring (to those with middle-class incomes - I do a lot of it for free), photography, writing, etc. But of course there is no work available for me. Somehow, I've been blacklisted. 
And that's a paradox in itself - no one has paid me or hired me for that sort of work in all the years since I most needed it, after being fired by Diamond Cab. It's like that was a punishment which all my other friends and associates recognized!

Peyton Farquhar LMAO. Obama the tyrant who will throw granny under the bus finally proves that he is no different from George the dumber. Both blue & red teams work for Wall Street.
Like · Reply · 5 ·

Brenda Roehrich Peyton. Obama is NO tyrant. That requires balls. He does this shit because he is spineless. I wanted Hilary Clinton as President; not Mr. fucking nice guy.
Like · 10 hours ago

Sarah Sparklers AND they're treating MILITARY retirees the exact same way. LIES and cheating.
Like · Reply · 3 · 11 hours ago

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The "free trade" and Pharma sell-outs for which Baucus was most culpable are described, below.   He was actually the deciding vote, and one of only a few Democrats who supported the "Part D" $50 billion/year giveaway to the drug cartels, as well as all the overprescription rackets and resulting health disasters attributable to it.  

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ZNet Daily Commentary: Tremendous Pharmaceutical Profits or Totally Protected Plunder? By Dawn Paley


Tremendous Pharmaceutical Profits or Totally Protected Plunder?

April 22, 2013 By Dawn Paley

http://www.zcommunications.org/tremendous-pharmaceutical-profits-or-totally-protected-plunder-by-dawn-paley

What the TPP really means for Latin America
Quieter is better. That seems to be the motto driving the negotiations of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The trade deal was initially called the P2, and it was a two-way affair between New Zealand and Singapore. Chile and Brunei joined the negotiations, which were renamed the P4. Then the US joined, and the deal was re-branded as the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement (TPP). Today, negotiating countries are splayed across the globe like a constellation only a highly trained astronomer could recognize. In addition to the first five, the TPP now includes Australia, Malaysia, Peru, and Vietnam. Canada and Mexico recently joined the talks and Japan is vying to participate in the negotiations
The next round of negotiations will take place in Lima, Peru, and proponents are pushing for a final agreement by fall.
But the language of TPP promoters rings hollow for those who have tracked the progress of other trade agreements, like NAFTA. “They’re saying that it’s going to open up opportunities for exporting more Mexican goods to other countries, like to Asia… That Mexico will become more competitive in other markets,” said Manuel Pérez-Rocha, associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, and member of the Mexican Action Network on Free Trade (RMALC). Pérez-Rocha pointed out there’s little concrete evidence that Mexican exports to Asia will increase as an outcome of the agreement. “Mexico has actually signed many Free Trade Agreements with other countries, and its dependency to the US market hasn’t changed a bit,” he told the Americas Program.

Another public radio Pledge Week.

Save your money.  You're going to need it when Baucus-Obama cut your Social Security


KUFM's "pledge week" has become a Montana institution, or at least one which needs serious psychiatric (as well as journalistic) help.  I listen to the professional liars and bullies like William Marcus, telling us what a great thing KUFM and "Montana Public Radio" is for us (of course, it's great for Missoula), and how they need all this money to pay for the vital NPR propaganda, without which  the corrupt Baucus Machine and AIPAC Zionism couldn't exist. 

I've been following KUFM and its "evolution" since 1979, when I was a volunteer participant at a station which was little better than what we have, now, at KGPR - the Great Falls station.  But it did get enough to pay several salaries from UM, as well as all the other bills.  Basically, fund-raising (the goal of which, in 1979, was about $40,000 - say, $100-150,000 in today's money) was just to buy and produce local, independent programming, upgrade equipment, and to pay for the NPR programming which KUFM then used sparsely, and at little cost.  
Terry Conrad imagined himself a much better programmer of jazz than the NPR staff, although they did use Piano Jazz (Marian McPartland), and some classical programming from NPR like the late Fred Calland's, St Paul Sunday Morning, the LA Philharmonic (produced by KUSC), Chicago Symphony and Lyric Opera, (from the venerable WFMT), etc.  Terry had a degree in music education, and extensive commercial jazz station experience, and had worked in both Chicago and Detroit.  KUFM didn't even carry the Metropolitan Opera in those days, which was commercially syndicated to private FM stations, and thus unavailable in that market. 

That was also the time-frame when KUFM started paying its announcers, who were previously only volunteers, or work-study students, etc.  It was still mostly a university station, not "community radio" which we hear so much about (negatively) here in Great Falls.  And as such, it was intellectually elitist, somewhat "New Age" or counter-culture, and otherwise socially concerned and a major cultural hub and resource.  As soon as I saw how it worked, I returned to Great Falls with the goal of starting one, here, or even a commercial "fine arts" station like KFAC, Los Angeles, which I had learned to rely on, there.  (KUSC was just a student station, but at a very good music school, so they had programming I listened to in the late 1960's).  

This was the time when Minnesota Public Radio, KUSC, and some other major stations quit NPR and started American Public Radio (now American Public Media), but it was mostly about music and cultural programming, not hard news.  NPR has managed to maintain rigid control over news programming at least since the Bush Administration, when several of the more "liberal" or independent voices were summarily dismissed. 

KUFM does well on two counts - the BBC (which was itself gutted during the Thatcher years, and made worse by New Labor, which was even more "connected" to the imperialist enterprise), and a few local news and public affairs programs, or independent ones like Alternative Radio from Boulder, CO (KGNU, which I  participated in starting, but didn't stay long enough in Boulder to see it completed).  Where they don't do well is in broadcasting any Pacifica content, which they have tried from time to time (the Pacific News Service). There are hundreds of people who yearly ask them to carry Democracy Now!, and Mr. Marcus and Sally Mauk, the News Director, unilaterally refuse to do. Why is this permitted - for them to veto the most valuable program they could possibly carry?

Locally controlled and programmed public radio is like a public library or history museum.  It's at the very center of a community's cultural and intellectual life.  And I've spent the  last 30 years trying to get local people to understand and support that.  Those who did were immediately captured by the charm of KUFM's programming, while ignoring  Missoula's monoply control over our local finances, programming, and "market share". 

Some of them were UM alums, and thus thought it was a matter of keeping the Bobcats (and KUSM TV, which originated there) out of the Great Falls market.  If we "went independent", and broke away from KUFM, they would lose money, as well as political influence.  That's what it's about, and why I haven't sent a dime to KUFM for more than 20 years.  

As  for the Bobcat-Grizzly rivalry, that has been resolved with MT-PBS studios in Missoula, and much closer cooperation between the two "official" stations.  However, MSU still has a campus volunteer station, and their main NPR station is KEMC from MSU-Billings.  (Originally, of course, EMC was not part of MSU, which is another big part of the problem of monopoly centralization of our intellectual and cultural lives and resources).  

Great Falls is the one city  in the country which needs a local, honest, truthful source of public information and analysis.  We're a world-power - something like the 5th largest nuclear arsenal in the world, and the most easily deliverable.  We can literally destroy 150 or more cities in less than an hour - anywhere in the world.  And there are still people here  - lots of them - who think that's a good idea!  See what I mean about crazy?  

We haven't had a local newspaper since the 1960's.  The Tribune continues to mock and ridicule the few remaining progressives and independent thinkers who are trying to save our local economy, dismantle the nuclear doomsday machines, and preserve the environment which sustains us all.  We need a local, full-time public radio station, financed by mill levies like the Library and County museums.  We can raise all the rest of the money through our own "Pledge week" which we started in 2000, but thanks to Dan Rice and Frank Clinch, was illegally shanghaied and diverted back to Missoula or somewhere.  

Now is the time to do it.  Don't send any money from the 594 zip codes to Missoula.  Just hold on to it, and maybe we can find a few Great Falls people who want to take back the station which the paranoid  Republican nut-jobs and Griz fans stole from us.  

The Ugly American, revisited

Why things keep getting worse


It often seems to me that the whole basis for our present education and cultural system is to PREVENT children (and others) from learning anything "controversial" which might be directed at or applied to "the powers that be."  This is the theory of totalitarianism, of one-party rule.  

"We know the truth, and we're going to make you believe it, too."  That is what they're  saying.  They're also saying "We're better than you" (more powerful, richer, etc), "so we get to tell you what to do, and make you do it if you refuse to "cooperate."  Certainly, this is the "theory"  of the modern public high school, libraries, museums, symphonies, and other parts of the supposedly highly-educated and sophisticated "cultural infrastructure."  

That's the theory, the principle, upon which our present system rests.  The Republicans might talk about Natural (God-given) Rights, the Constitution, the Rule of Law, and many other good things, but when you corner one and discuss it with her, you find that she doesn't understand those concepts at all, or at most, on an "operational" level.  (How can we use this concept, theory, etc., as a weapon against the Democrats, the Liberals, the Environmentalists, the Socialists, our workers, competitors, etc.?)

The Democrats used to be liberal, for civil rights, for protecting the environment, for curbing corporate power and excess military spending, for public education, public health, universal health care, etc., etc.  The prevailing Democrat Machine, today, has literally and figuratively abandoned every one of those positions!  It's unbelievable!  It's as though Royalists wiped out their own royal family and then went and found some foreign prince to be their king.  

Marxism has an explanation.  It's called "the dialectic."  The process by which things change, and the logical explanations how and why this happens.  It's perennial.  It's universal.  Therefore, it must be part of human "social genetics", which could also include actual cellular genetics, but not necessarily.  It's a "software vs hardware" issue.  

So, understanding what is happening, we can often second-guess the "leaders" who keep repeating the mistakes of the past.  But we can only do so if there is relative freedom to express and communicate what we know.  An "information-free society" is the same as one which is saturated with useless and counterproductive information to the exclusion (and disbelief) in any real truth or understanding.  

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I've just read a fascinating book, a best-selling novel (more than 6 million sold in the 1950's and early '60's) called "The Ugly American."  It was a sensation.  I remember it clearly, from the many book reports on it through my years of Junior High and High School.  I don't believe I completed it, myself, or maybe I couldn't use it because someone else in the class already had.  And the best of it is the last chapter, where these two working journalists (possibly with CIA connections, themselves - that was common, then) wrote about the defeat of the French and the moves by the US to take over and support the French Imperialist project.  Of course, we would have never fought in WWII if we'd known it was to maintain French colonial power in Indochina, and similar things.  India, Burma, and Pakistan explicitly said that they would help the British in WWII only with a firm promise of independence afterwards.  That happened, although the Old Guard monarchists who were still part of the Raj did a lot either to distort or prevent the governments from working.  It was the Partitioning that was disastrous, and we're still maintaining one in the Korean Peninsula, against all good judgement and historical perspective.  

The Ugly American even became an excellent movie starring Marlon Brando, which I've seen a couple of times in recent years.  The title character is a Republican businessman with a working-class wife (he is working-class, himself, but self-made worth $20 million in today's money) who take American values seriously, and help villagers with local materials and means to transform their subsistence economies into something compatible with health and cultural enrichment.  Their programs, which cost little or nothing, are successful while the $100 million "development" projects from the 1st world only lead to wars, ecological catastrophe, and enrichment of prevailing elites.  Almost certainly, Kennedy's Peace Corps was based on many of the same insights and experience.  

All this is clearly dramatized in the book, but is largely absent from the film.  [TUA was published in 1958, but written from experience in the 1954 Dien Bien Phu aftermath, as well as the whole "Asian situation".  The principle setting of the book is a neighboring fictional country which is in danger of collapse from the neighboring wars and revolutions.] The film (which I need to watch, again) seemed more intent on the personalities of the people involved (easier to dramatize than the policies, themselves).  And in a world like today's, where there literally are no "good guys" (and those who are portrayed as such are unspeakably ignorant and self-centered), we have no role models.  The best we have simply refuse to act outside the affective domain.  There is no theory; it's just "feel good and get along."  That's their highest virtue, which is more than most of the sociopaths who run things, now.