Author: Mark Tokarski

Just a man who likes to read, argue, and occasionally be surprised.

Scrabble Pills

I am an aging specimen fighting the rampages of time on my body. Hair has redirected itself inward, reemerging from the ears. The tummy sags, joints ache. I work out three times a week, running ten miles total and lifting and pushing and grunting and observing all those young bodies – look away! Look away! Time and gravity are winning.

I take daily doses of glucosamine for the joints. I have no idea if it works. But it doesn’t hurt me, they say. And, I take what I call “Scrabble” pills. (They help me beat my wife at that game, sometimes. About half the time.) These are otherwise known as Omega 3 fish oil tablets. They are all the rage. And they taught me something about our Internet.

There are a wide array of sources for the pills, and the cost can be anywhere from a lot for a few to a little for a lot. WalMart wants $9.00 for a thousand. But what’s a good pill? Which of them do what they say they do? This is America, so only one thing is for sure: Everyone is probably lying.

I did some Internet “research”. I went to various sources who say they have “compared” all of the pills on the market, and found “one” that was better than all the others. One came from New Zealand and had to be ordered by mail. Others had special mumbo-jumble-hocus-pocus light saber magic done to them, and were very expensive – $16.00 for 60 pills. Still others warned that “cheap” pills might be rancid, made from fish that had sat on the dock for a week, like Mrs. Paul’s Fish Sticks.

All I wanted was an objective source that had done some testing and gave an honest and non-self-promoting opinion on the worth of the various pills. It turns out there are two: Consumerlab.com, and Consumer Reports. But both require that you join and pay them money for these opinions. They are worthy, no doubt – no problem. But I only wanted one opinion on one product, and was not willing to pay $30 for it.

The Internet started out as a wonderful source of freely-shared information, and so it was hostile to the American way where everything is for sale and everybody lies. Advertisers are yet to find a way to make a dishonest buck on a regular basis on anything other than porn and books, but they are trying. Any venture now in quest of objective information is like a walk down the concourse at the local carnival – hucksters and barkers yelling at you from every booth. My foray into the Omega3 pill market showed me that the Internet is not very useful anymore. Advertising is winning out, useful information is dwindling and getting harder to find.

Regarding Omega3 pills, there was scads of useless information and outright lies, much of it masquerading as medically sourced.

But someone committed a sin. Someone broke the code. Someone put up an excerpt from a Consumer Reports piece on the pills. It said they are all pretty much the same. None of them will hurt you. If there is any good to be had from them, all of them offer that good. So when shopping, just buy the cheapest one. It took about half an hour to find this piece of information.

And once again, the local Food Co-op, supposedly offering us alternatives to all of the corporate food scams going on, is doing a scam of its own. They want $26.59 for 250 Scrabble pills. They insult us with wholesome fervor.

Common Ground?

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. …

True in 1990, True Today

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

Eager to tap Iraq’s vast oil reserves, industry execs suggested invasion

As if I didn’t know it. What’s simply amazin’, is how something so obvious can be so muddled, obfuscated, ridiculed and disdained. It was so painfully obvious, as U.S. troops protected the oil ministry, put out the oil fires, and passively looked on while Iraq’s (and all of our) priceless heirlooms were looted in 2003.

But that’s the power of the Emperor in this supposed land of free thinkers. Name one mainstream talking head, one editorial writer in the past six years that has dared make the oil connection. One!

Anyway, the title of this post is also the title of an investigative piece from Public Record by Jason Leopold.

Insight into Right Wingers

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:

Accept unfair and illegal abuses of power by government authorities.

Trust leaders who are untrustworthy.

Weaken constitutional guarantees of liberty, such as the Bill of Rights.

Punish severely “common” criminals in role playing situations, and admit they get personal pleasure from doing so.

Go easy on authorities who commit crimes and people who attack minorities.

Be prejudiced against many racial, ethnic, nationalistic and linguistic minorities.

Be hostile towards homosexuals and support “gay bashing”.

Volunteer to help the government prosecute almost anyone.

Be mean-spirited towards those who have made mistakes and suffered.

Insist on traditional sex roles.

Be hostile towards feminists.

Conform to opinions of others, and be more likely to “yea-say”.

Be fearful of a dangerous world.

Be highly self-righteous.

Strongly beleive in group cohesiveness and “loyalty”.

Make many incorrect inferences from evidence.

Hold contradictory ideas – cognitive dissonance.

Uncritically accept insufficient evidence that supports their beliefs.

Uncritically trust people who tell them what they want to hear.

Use double standards in thinking and judgments.

Be hypocrites.

Be bullies when they have power over others.

Seek dominance by being competitive and destructive.

Believe they have no personal failings.

Use religioin to erase guilt over their acts and to maintain their self-righteousness.

Be religious “fundamentalists”.

Be dogmatic.

Be zealots.

Be less educated.

Be conservative/Republican (U.S.), Reform (Canada) and have a conservative economic philosophy.

Believe in social dominance.

Oppose abortion.

Be ethnocentric.

Support capital punishment.

Oppose gun control.

Say they value freedom but actually want to undermine the Bill of Rights.

Do not value equality.

Not be likely to rise in the Democratic Party, but likely to rise among Republicans.

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.

Pop Culture Does the Work of the Pros

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.

The Late Great John S. Adams

I listened to John S. Adams’ last interview (listen here and here) with Senator Max Baucus. I mean “last” not in the sense of “most recent”, but rather that he’ll never get another, having broken the journalists’ code, which works something like this:

Wait in line. Do not take cuts. Enter the office looking down. Do not attempt to make eye contact. Step sideways two steps, forward two steps. Ask your question. Do not be confrontational lest you hear the words ending your tenure in journalism: “No access for you!”

There were some interesting highlights in the interview, many actually. At one point an aid cuts in, telling the Senator he had another call. (Apparently Baucus has an elaborate call-waiting system that kicks in when he is in a dangerous interview.) Again, later in the interview, the aid simply tells the Senator he has to move on. (Adams named the aide who was interrupting in his post, but that post is now gone.)

Adams grilled the Senator about his treatment of single payer advocates. Baucus said he was planning to meet with some advocates in Montana. Adams asked who he would be meeting with and Baucus got testy. He told Adams not to get “confrontational”. Adams reminded him that it was a worthy question, and the Senator said that it was his tone that was “telling”.

Baucus didn’t answer the question, by the way. That was the whole point of the maneuver. It was a dodge. The single payer people he is going to meet with are your aunt and her dog, and the meeting will be held on the tenth of Never, 5:00 sharp.

Later, the senator said that there was no bill in the senate for single payer. He’s wrong – Senator Bernie Sanders introduced S. 703: The American Health Security Act of 2009 way back in March. Baucus doesn’t know this. That’s … how would you phrase it … telling?

Adams then raised the matter of money … campaign contributions from health insurance companies and pharmaceuticals. Baucus seemed indignant. He said money means nothing to him, that he pays no attention to it.

He’s raising a worthy point. We who advocate campaign finance reform dwell too much on the money aspect. It’s much more than that – it’s power. Many times if a politician does not take money from one side of an issue, he’ll get it from the other. Money can be neutered.

But with the Senator and single payer, there is only one money tap, so it does matter. But power factors in – it is revealing how Baucus dealt with single payer advocates at his health insurance “hearing”. He had them arrested, holding them in literal and figurative contempt. That’s … how would you phrase it … telling?

Baucus understands power – who has it, who doesn’t. He acts accordingly.

Money is but one tool of power, and perhaps not even the most important one. Powerful people have many means at their disposal: They can threaten to finance opponents in either primary of general elections. They can generate bad publicity through newspapers they own or advertise in. (Right wing newspaper publishers abound, after all.) (Baucus has a cozy relationship with most Montana newspapers, the Great Falls Tribune apparently an exception at this time. Journalists ought to look into that.)

More tools: powerful people can lure politicians into compromising situations involving women or drugs or back-door sex. They can offer privileged flights on private jets to exotic locations or to sporting events. (Baucus’s staff members once watched the Super Bowl from a private box.) They can hire relatives to lucrative jobs for which they are not qualified – think Wendy Graham or Beau Biden, or Elizabeth Dole running the Red Cross for $700, 000. Perhaps most importantly, powerful people can offer delayed bribes – jobs and riches after politicians leave office. Tom Daschle has made $220,000 in health care doing “consulting” work since his electoral defeat. His wife pulls down a lucrative salary for lobbying for defense contractors. And of course former Senator Conrad Burns immediately went into lobbying after his 2006 defeat.

Powerful people can also use wiretaps and spying. We are probably seeing only the tip of that iceberg. And then there are prostitutes and seductresses who are as common around power as plastic phasers at a Star Trek convention. Here’s an interesting anomaly: Elliot Spitzer was actively challenging corporate power. He was exposed for using high-priced hookers. That’s not something that I can afford approve of – the question is, why him, and not the countless others who are likely sampling the expensive candy?

Senator Max Baucus is corrupt*, but to say that it is due to taking money from a certain industry for legislative favors is to give that industry far too little credit. It’s more than money – it’s both positive and negative incentives. It’s not something applied haphazardly – these are serious people who want serious favors, and who know how to get their way. It’s not a game – it’s a business. High-priced talent does persuasion for a living. So when Baucus says “Money means nothing to me”, he may be right in a narrow sense. He merely left out the last part of the sentence: “… but power owns me”.

Towards the close of the interview, Baucus rattled off a list of things that he had done that had offended health insurance and pharmaceutical companies. There was no time for follow-up, of course, as the breaker was hovering. Given more time, Adams might have asked how many of these offensive initiatives actually came to fruition, how many Baucus actually took a leadership role on. Baucus has a display window voting record. Much of what he does has no effect, and is mere dressing for that window.

The Adams interview is rich, and John was courageous, confrontational and incisive. American journalism has long been in need of a compass – reporters long ago lost sight of the fact that they are often our only window to power. They are more than stenographers, and they need show only perfunctory courtesy to political and corporate office holders. Their role is to hold powerful people accountable. One can only speculate, but if Baucus had been annoyed by pesky journalists of Adams’ caliber from the day he took office, he’d probably be herding sheep right about now.

If current journalists hold true to form, John will get the tap. He will meet with his editor and advised to tone it down. He should not, he will be told, become “partisan” or “emotional”. Those are code words for “disrespectful of power”.

Footnote:Adams’ post and the interview are gone from his blog. Fortunately, a link to was put up at Left in the West by a commenter, and thus the YouTube links above. I hope they stay in place.

*The word “corrupt” is used here not to mean that Baucus is storing money in his freezer, but rather that he is corrupted as a computer file might be: No longer useful and in need of replacement.

Vapid Pretty Faces

Torture wouldn’t exist in our countries if it weren’t effective; formal democracy would continue if it could be guaranteed not to get out of the hands of those that hold power. (Eduardo Galeano)

The events in Iran are encouraging, with caveats:

One, we will not know for years, perhaps decades, how much of a role the U.S. and Britain have played in fomenting the crisis. If it is of Western making, the ends are assuredly not democratic.

Secondly, even if it is a true democratic movement, it will exist only in the shadow of a monster – the U.S. has surrounded Iran will military bases and fire capability. They are perpetually threatened, and such threats usually result in oppressive governments to “protect” the population. (Example: The U.S. has been threatening Cuba for decades, the Cubans rely on oppressive government to protect them from dangers, real and imagined. The U.S. then complains that Cuba is not “democratic” enough for us. A true democratic movement in Iran will taste similar blatant hypocrisy.)

I’ve listened to Obama’s words on the subject. If actual policy were conveyed by a mouthpiece, it would be encouraging. But remember, this mouthpiece serves an apparatus that invaded a neighbor of Iran’s, murdered half a million (at least) of its civilians. This apparatus installed a “democratic” regime, but only in the sense envisioned by Galeano above – that if it falls under the control of our power centers, people are allowed to vote among various choices we offer them. If not under our control, we will attack.

I used to put up a piece here on the anniversary of 9/11 called “September 11, 1973” to commemorate the overthrow of the democratic government of Chile by the United States. We cherish our democracy here, hold it up as an example for the rest of the world, but when others enact true democratic reforms of a type that we ourselves are not allowed to experience, we trample them.

Iran is on a precipice – many of their people remember what it was like before 1979, when a U.S. toady, the Shah, ruled, and didn’t even bother with sham democracy, as they have now.

Iran, not unlike Venezuela, has a chance to break free of both of local Mullahs foreign thugs alike. There is always hope. If it is truly a democratic break, we will isolate and attack. If it is a for-show only government that takes power, if it has cut a deal in advance with us, then the country will be submerged yet again in an abyss of darkness. Let us pray.

—-

The Daily Show has done some remarkable work by sending correspndent Jason Jones to Iran. (See here, here, and here.) Their goal was comedic, but as in so many countries under oppressive rule, the best outlet for political protests is by means of comedians and court jesters.

Jones has been exposed to everyday Iranians, and found them kind and intelligent. To contrast this, he interviewed Americans in Times Square, asking them basic questions about our government. It’s pathetic. It’s a comedy show, of course, and so exaggerates for effect, but Jay Leno made mockery of this same phenomenon by asking ordinary Americans very basic questions about news and government. It was painful.

A very large percentage of us are pathetically ignorant. We on the blogs are better informed, but let’s not kid ourselves that ordinary everyday Americans are in any way affected by anything but the highest and most visible news. They know we have a new president, that there is turmoil in Iran, and are fed images of various demons to keep their minds right. Beneath awareness of only the most painfully obvious events dangled before them is mush. The American people are so easily manipulated that it doesn’t even take skilled propagandists anymore, as it did prior to World War I.

We are not a functioning democracy – we don’t have an educated citizenry, our institutions are controlled by powerful moneyed interests. There is a rumbling of discontent, as most of us understand that our health care system doesn’t work very well and is too expensive, and that international cooperation is a good thing. We all know this on some level, but we have no effective mechanism for translation of those impulses to government policy. We have only the comedians, who these days deliver our real news.

I’ll take one Daily Show over ten Russert’s, and fifty Brokaw’s, or a thousand of the vapid pretty faces that mock us from their perches as CNN and Fox and all the others.