Yet another bait-and-switch on the way

The infrastructure in the US is in sad shape and requires massive expenditure to upgrade it. The Obama administration, like pretty much everyone else, knew that and tried to push for such spending but the Republican majority in Congress thwarted it at every step for three reasons. One is that they had made it their policy to oppose Obama on anything that did not benefit the oligarchy. The second was to deny Obama the opportunity to point to any kind of success anywhere. And the third was because such spending would stimulate the economy and create jobs and make people think the economy was improving.
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Banana Republicans

One of the signs that even the most superficial trappings of democracy are being undermined is when the rules of operation are changed willy-nilly to suit the interests of the ruling party. I have seen this play out in Sri Lanka that when one party gains overwhelming control, they do not use it to just push for the policies they favor (which is what elections are about) but use it to rig the system in their favor to prevent any reversal of power.
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Black atheists and feminism

One strong stereotype about the African-American community is that they are one of the most religious ethnic groups. There is good reason for this. Slave owners, like colonial rulers, used Christianity as a means of control, deflecting the hopes of the oppressed people to a wonderful afterlife to distract them from their present state of exploitation. During the harsh period of slavery, many slaves placed their hope in some kind of miraculous salvation, either in this life or at least in the afterlife and there is no question that this enabled them to endure horrific conditions. So religion became both a means of imposing oppression and also of surviving it.
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US meddling in other countries’ elections

As the rhetoric over the possibility of Russian interference in US elections heats up, Sam Kriss reminds us of all the times that the US did not merely meddle in the elections of other countries in order to put their own person in power but when those efforts failed, actually overthrew the democratically elected leaders in order to install their preferred candidates, causing decades of immense suffering to the people of those nations.
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Head over to Marcus’s place for two important posts

I am a little too busy today to blog much but I did have time to read Marcus’ Ranum’s two pieces here and here about the latest flashpoint concerning the capture of US intelligence gathering drone by China, that explains what might be going on. It is important to get this kind of perspective to counter the jingoistic coverage that dominates much of the mainstream media.

Trump’s choice for US ambassador to Israel is an extreme right wing zealot

Josh Marshall says that David Friedman is about as far right on the spectrum of Israeli politics as one can imagine, calling him the ‘worst of the worst’.

Friedman represents the extremes of the most vicious and destructive elements of rightist Zionism and the indeed the most radical elements of American Jewry.
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Amnesty is a dirty word only when applied to people

Critics of providing some kind of pathway to legal residence, however minimal, for the undocumented immigrants in the US are quick to scream ‘Amnesty!’ whenever any such proposal is made. But they do not utter a peep when wealthy companies seek amnesty for their offshore assets. Many US companies have shifted their operations to other countries thus enabling them to take advantage of cheap labor and avoid paying US taxes. They also use the tactic of ‘inversion’ where they will buy a small company in a low tax country and make that company their nominal parent company with headquarters in that country, even though nothing actually has changed except for the filing of some paperwork. This too enables them to avoid paying US taxes since they are now a ‘foreign’ company. The only catch for them is that in both cases, if the profits are brought back into the US, taxes will have to be paid.
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The highly uncertain future facing us with the Trump administration

The incoming Donald Trump administration is taking shape and the invaluable site ProPublica has compiled a continuously updated list with brief backgrounds of what we know about the people being proposed so far for cabinet and cabinet-rank posts. It seems to be a mix of bankers, corporate executives, political hacks, and military people, plus one nutty person (Ben Carson) to liven things up at cabinet meetings when he is not spaced out. None of them has a background that suggests that they are likely to work for the benefit of many of the less-well-off Trump voters. So the betrayal of the working and middle classes, many of whom voted for Trump because of his grandiose promises to solve all their problems, is well under way.
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The ‘Russian hacking’ story gets curiouser and curiouser

The perpetual ‘Red Scare’ mentality that has sustained the high levels of US military spending for a century has taken a curious turn. The basic charge is that the Russian government materially involved itself in the US presidential election by hacking into the websites of the Democratic party, and especially the emails of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair John Podesta, and released those emails through WikiLeaks in order to hurt her campaign and aid in the election of Donald Trump, and that the Russian government was actively in communication with the Trump campaign. An additional charge against the Russians is that they doctored some of the documents leaked through WikiLeaks to make them look worse than the originals and that they also helped in the dissemination of fake news.
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