Palin/Bachman 2012.

There might be cause for unity among right and left wingers in opposing “Cap and Trade” legislation. If Congressman Peter DeFazio of Oregon is right, Democrats have replaced Republicans now as the people handing out “big sloppy wet kisses” to both Wall Street and polluters.

Here’s a brief interview from July 1st from the Thom Hartmann radio show.

HARTMANN: Congressman Peter DeFazio is with us. And you, along with Dennis Kucinich and a few others were among the few Democrats who actually voted against the cap and trade legislation in the House of Representatives. It’s not yet come up in the Senate. Congressman, why?

DEFAZIO: There were three progressives at least – me, Dennis, and Pete Stark of California, who understands financial markets, because we felt it’s not going to effectively deal with greenhouse gases, it’s loophole-ridden, it’s subject to massive manipulation (we already have some great quotes from people on Wall Street saying this is going to be the biggest market the world has ever had, much bigger than financial services.) They’re already creating, in Europe, carbon-offset futures derivatives.

HARTMANN:: This is the new bubble.

DEFAZIO:: Yeah – they’re going to create carbon offset derivative futures. They’re already talking about – the guy who’s head of Friends of the Earth got his economist somehow into a meeting of people on Wall Street – and they’re talking about traunching them into junk carbon and good carbon and gourmet carbon, so they’re going to traunch them, and then the bill says that if you are doing these exotic instruments on offsets, you have to buy insurance. That brings in the credit default swaps. So what it might do is get us our money back. Maybe AIG can go into the business of doing these as collateralized debt obligations and selling credit default swap insurance, and if we get the taxpayer money back real fast, before they collapse the next bubble, and if we don’t bail them out, maybe we won’t come out so bad. But this is really a bad way to deal with the issue.

HARTMANN:: So you’re of the opinion that a bad bill is worse than no bill. I’ve been taking the position that, and you’re causing me to rethink it, that a bad bill is better than no bill because at least a) the government’s acknowledging that we’ve got a carbon problem, and b) it’s making the right wing hysterical (I listened to part of Shaun Hannity’s show yesterday, and he spent half an hour – he calls it “cap and tax” – he’s hysterical about this, and c) once we’ve got that door open, maybe we can fix it. You think it’s just going to get worse?

DEFAZIO:: Well, I like to drive the right wing nuts, and that’s always part of the reason to do something or say something. But here’s the thing and most people miss this detail. The Supreme Court ruled two years ago that the EPA can regulate carbon as emissions, greenhouse gases …

HARTMANN:: So we don’t need this bill.

DEFAZIO:Right. The Bush Administration refused to [inaudible], Obama earlier this year – the Obama EPA said we are going to begin the process to regulate greenhouse gases. This bill prohibits them from continuing that process.

HARTMANN:: Oh no.

DEFAZIO:: Yes. That is a specific provision in the bill that the polluters wanted. They said we don’t want the EPA going ahead with these rules and regulations like they did with clean water and clean air.

HARTMANN:: So this is not only a big sloppy wet kiss to AIG and Goldman Sachs, but also to the coal industry.

DEFAZIO:: Oh, it’s very coal-friendly. In fact, in the end it took away allowances for utilities that have a lot of renewable generation and, if they don’t have fossil fuels to spend them on, they’re taking their allowances and transferring them to the coal industry. That was a last minute Colin Peterson deal in the Ag section of the bill. I think it’s one of the most coal-friendly pieces of legislation since I’ve been in congress.

HARTMANN: : Amazing. …

The Democrats seem to be basically nice people, but they have demonstrated time and again that they have the management skills of celery. They’re the kind of people who’d stop to help you change a flat, but would manage somehow to set your car on fire. I would be reluctant to entrust them with a Cuisinart, let alone the economy. The Republicans, on the other hand, would know how to fix your tire, but they wouldn’t bother to stop because they’d want to be on time for Ugly Pants Night at the country club. Also, the Republicans have a high Beady-Eyed Self-Righteous Scary Borderline Loon Quotient, as evidenced by Phyllis Schlafly, Pat Robertson, the entire state of Utah, etc.
Dave Barry, 1990

I just finished the book “The Authoritarian Specter, by Bob Altemeyer, Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Manitoba. It’s taken a while, I’ve read other books while I struggled through this one, but today I finally closed the back cover.

Altemeyer spends a great deal of time describing methodology, and then chapter after chapter detailing the results of various tests of students, their parents, legislators and and even Russian students. The implications of his work, controversial but replicable and defendable, are damning for the right wing.

The center of Altemeyer’s work is a test he developed over many years called the RWA. It’s a 34 question test with various statements to extract positive and contrait data from those who take it. The questions are answered on a -4 to +4 scale, to that there are nine possible responses to each statement. Only 30 of the 34 questions count in the scoring (the first four are table-setters), so that the highest possible score is 270 – anyone who scores that high is truly dangerous. (He says that a Texas Democrat and West Virginia Republican legislator each scored 257 – the highest ever. Eeek!)

I would put the test up here for observation, but since it is not available on the internet, I suspect it is proprietary. However, anyone wanting to see it can contact me via the comment section, and I will fax or PDF it it to you. I think that is legal.

Altemeyer has taken the scores on the test, and correlated them with attitudes of conservatives and liberals, progressives and right wingers. He found a very high correlation between Canadian conservatives and American Republicans and high RWA scores, and a lower one for liberals and Democrats. In other words, right wingers tend to manifest authoritarian traits, which I will list in detail below, while left wingers do not. The old saw that there are extremes of left and right, and that each side provides dictators, according to Altemeyer, is false. The right wing is providing the world its thugs …

… with one caveat. He uncovered an odd duck. He calls this person the “wild card” authoritarian, not a right winger, not a left winger, but standing at the ready to assume power. Altemeyer speculates that this is the origin of our Stalin’s and Pol Pot’s – non ideological psychopaths who like authority for its own sake, and kill and enslave people because they can, and because it pleases them. Pinochet was a right wing authoritarian, as is Cheney, but these men are also driven by right wing ideology.

Altemeyer studied Russian students (during the Cold War) to ascertain their attitudes, and found that those who supported the Soviet system were also … right wing authoritarians. Those in charge of the Soviet system were mirror images of American right wingers.

Anyway, here’s a list of traits exhibited by ‘most’ High RWA’s, and keep in mind that nothing is true of all, and to say that these traits manifest mostly on the right does not mean they do not exist on the left. It only means that they are far less prominent on the left.

Compared with others, right wing authoritarians are significantly more likely to:

Phew! I should say that I got a queasy feeling as I typed many items on the list, as I am no slouch when it comes to failings regarding evidence, hero-worship, or dogmatism.

There are those who like to compare parties and ideologies and claim that all exhibit mirror negative tendencies. According to Altemeyer, it’s not true. It’s a Republican/conservative/right wing thing more than anything.

Most interesting: The book was written in 1996, long before 9/11 and Naomi Kleins’ “Shock Doctrine”. But Altemeyer claims that right wingers are very dangerous in troubled times, as they look to authoritarians to govern them. This, before Bush/Cheney. I think that prescient.

And, among his many warnings in the concluding chapter, we should be very careful when protesting certain behaviors and policies, such as pro-abortion or single payer, never to engage in violence. This sets off right wingers, and is counterproductive. I guess that’s obvious.

Matt Taibbi’s article in the current Rolling Stone (The Great American Bubble Machine) about Goldman Sachs is very good. It’s not up on the RS website yet, but is worth the price of a paper copy.

It reminds me of a couple of things:

1. The Daily Show these days is doing NBC/CBS/CNN’s job, and Rolling Stone is doing NY TImes/WaPo/Wall Street Journal’s job. Pop culture has stepped in to fill a vacuum. Isn’t that interesting?

2. Years ago I was a victim of Goldman Sachs – I had invested for years in Montana Power for my kids. The price had skyrocketed, and I didn’t know what to do. I consulted a professional investment adviser who said that long-term prospects were very good. (I’ve never consulted one since – they don’t know any more than you or me, maybe even less.) I took a bath, and ended up buying out my kids at half of what the stock was worth at its high – the point where I should have sold.

Goldman Sachs was mentioned in a 60 Minutes piece on the demise of Montana Power, one of the stupidest business moves since New Coke. Apparently, Bob Gannon, CEO of MPC, used Goldman to sell of its power-generation assets and reinvest in fiber-optic cables. According to the 60 Minutes piece, Goldman was the “driver” of the deal, insisting it be done before the market for the MPC assets collapsed. Montanans took a bath (still do in the form of higher utility costs), employees of the once venerable institution were jettisoned, and retirees ate worms.

Gannon, in a boldface slap-in-the-face of everyone in the world, took a million dollar bonus. Goldman Sachs made $20 million on the deal.

Footnote: Check out Taibbi’s blog. He gets hammered pretty good by commenters.

“There are certain benchmarks that will be met, such as troops out of the cities by June of ’09.

Oh, you know, you devil. You watch the Daily Show too.

Here’s a question no one is asking: Where did the troops go?

And, those ghost people: Where are the mercenaries?

Dave Budge has challenged me in a number of areas, as usual, and go see Electric City Weblog to get the full dose. NSFW.

The one area I wish to address here is the notion he puts for that I am comfortable with government domestically, but do not trust it with foreign policy.

I quote General Smedley Butler (a widely known citation):

I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country’s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.

I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912.* I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.

During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

That’s only one man’s opinion, but one that I have shared for years, that foreign policy is run at the behest of American corporations, and that all of our foreign policy apparati were formed to advance those interests, among them the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Agency for International Development, the Alliance for Progress, not to mention the Jesuits and the Peace Corps. It is no accident that policy does not change as we switch from Democratic to Republican administrations. The people we elect are not in charge.

Do I trust my government to run foreign policy? Yes. I wish it would.

If these corporations are so big and powerful that they run foreign policy, why not domestic policy too? In large part they do, but there was an intervention of sorts called the New Deal, in which populist and progressive ideas were put in force – Social Security, unemployment compensation, SEC, Glass Steagall, and the Fair Labor Standards Act. Those things are slowly being undone. But these things were all done by government, and were good things. They are being undone not by government, but by private power, which has largely taken control of government.

So in answer to the question why do I favor government for domestic policy but not foreign, the answer is that I trust it to do both well, and wish it would.

*Part of the Bush Family legacy, and the source of much of its wealth.