California Free Press

Off the Top of My Head

Toxic Masculinity

by John Lawrence

Traditional masculine traits are dominance, aggression, emotional repression, violence. These traits have been historically mostly expressed in terms of the military. In the First World War, many of the participants were more than eager to cover themselves in glory by proving their manhood in combat. Instead many of them ended up dying miserable deaths in muddy trenches or hung from barbed wire. The persistence of war in the human experience can be laid squarely at the feet of men and their interpretation of what is manly in my opinion. In fact peace or even world peace is seen as a feminine idea. Most traditional men would not consider peace in the form of world wide understanding and compassion even possible because it would be based on feminine values. The only peace even possible in the traditional male mind is "peace through strength." Traditional male values prevent even an acknowledgment of what peace would really consist of because it would consist of emotional values that are traditionally feminine. The predominant attitude is that joining the military will "make a man out of you." A real man is only supposed to express a limited and actually stunted set of emotions and certainly is not supposed to express any vulnerabilities. Physical force or the threat of force is acceptable in a man's world. Understanding, cooperation and diplomacy are not.

Traditional male activities are beer drinking (a man can hold his liquor), fast car racing or pickup driving (showing dominance by means of a powerful machine), participation in or spectating at competitive sports, participation in or admiration of the military. Dominance, competitiveness, the use or threat of violence, pugnaciousness, toughness, looking down on men who don't conform to this stereotype - these are all traditional male traits. None of these traits are physically or mentally healthy. For instance, holding your liquor can lead to cirrhosis of the liver. Emotional repressiveness can lead to an inability to relate to women even though some women are attracted to the traditional male type. In fact it can be argued that Trump's popularity is a result of his expression of traditional male values. In an article in FiveThirtyEight entitled With His Version of Masculinity, we find this:

But the quest to seem masculine is particularly complicated in this year’s GOP primary because Trump has been so successful at projecting a macho image that Republican voters have responded to. This masculine identity isn’t about demonstrations of physical prowess — nobody talks about how far Trump can run or whether he can bench-press a certain weight. His version of manliness is fueled by other kinds of behavior — including his belittling of other candidates, aggression toward women, “tell it like it is and don’t apologize” affect — that are associated with traditional ideas about how a man should behave. The other GOP candidates largely aren’t trying to imitate those aspects of Trump’s macho identity — but experts told us that without Trump’s signature belligerence, his version of masculinity might not resonate as much. And that means his rivals may have an especially difficult time convincing the GOP primary electorate that they’re as strong a leader as Trump.

“In this view of masculinity, men are supposed to be dominant, powerful, aggressive,” said Theresa Vescio, a professor of psychology at Penn State University who studies masculinity. “And the more that people — both men and women — think that good men should be high in power, status, dominance and toughness, the more they say that’s what a man is, the more they support Trump.”

It might seem strange to some that a man who is not particularly physically fit or athletic, never served in the military and eats junk food is an exemplary manifestation of manhood. It seems ridiculous that Trump's penchant for belittling his opponents is seen by some as "manly." That his getting away with stiffing contractors, creditors and not paying taxes are manly traits. But somehow Trump's unwillingness to apologize about anything or ever admit he did anything wrong is seen by some Republicans as the counter to "liberal values" like having compassion and respect for people who disagree with you. Instead Trump calls his detractors and competitors names, assails them as weaklings and asserts his macho masculinity while he hides behind a bevy of lawyers and uses his money to shield himself from any negative consequences. His seeming ability to get away with stuff is seen as quintessentially masculine. The article continues:

These are the voters who are especially likely to find Trump’s version of masculinity appealing. Trump is particularly effective at drawing on his supporters’ fears about threats to traditional masculinity, while simultaneously building himself up as a paragon of that version of manliness, according to the experts we spoke with. His image as president was aggressively militant, threatening other world leaders and avoiding compromise. And his refusal to apologize for a well-documented track record of sexual harassment and assault makes him seem authentically masculine and powerful to some voters, according to Dan Cassino, a political scientist at Fairleigh Dickinson University who studies male gender identity. “It’s as much about tearing others down as it is about building others up,” Cassino says. “The insults, the misogynistic behavior — these are very negative masculine traits but he’s willing to assert them in a way others aren’t, and that means nobody thinks he’s lying about who he is.”

By projecting an image of himself as a powerful, strong, dominant man who’s willing to shrug away modern conventions around how men and women should behave, Trump has reached people who support traditional gender hierarchies. “There are a lot of conservatives — men but some women too — in this country who increasingly feel like they’re on the outside looking in, while liberals run things,” said Paul Elliott Johnson, a professor of communication at the University of Pittsburgh who studies gender and politics. “Trump invites those people to feel victimized and then says, ‘I will fix the problem.’”

As detrimental to society in general as these toxic traditional masculine values are, they will even probably contribute to the annihilation of the human race altogether either through war or the ignoring of climate change. There is not even any talk of world peace any more. It's not even on anyone's radar. The militarization of the American psyche is complete. The Peace Corps is never even mentioned in the media. Most people would not even know that it exists. The Peace Corps represents the feminine values of help and caring for those less fortunate. The traditional male simply looks upon them as losers in the game of life, probably because of their inferiority to white males. As traditional white males, they believe that they have simply outcompeted those who come from as Trump has termed them, "shithole countries."  Let people with feminine values agonize over them and their claims that rich white men should help them out with their situations due to climate change. Macho men would scoff at their suggestions that the rich nations should bear the cost of ameliorating the effects of global warming or as U.N. chief António Guterres declared, "global boiling." As Trump and other macho men might say, "suck it up." There will probably never be world peace until women run the world. And where would that leave the traditional man and his toxic values? Healthy manhood, in my humble opinion, should be nothing more nor less than loving, supporting and cherishing the girls and women in our lives whether they be girlfriends, lovers, wives, daughters, mothers or grandmothers. All the rest of the positive values a man can manifest are simply personhood values which can be exemplified by both sexes.

Off the Top of My Head

Future Generations Will Analyze This Era and Judge Whether Autocracy or Democracy Was More Successful

by John Lawrence

So far autocracy is winning. The vast majority of the Chinese people are on the same page as the Chinese government while the US is a nation divided - one half diametrically opposed to the other half. The Constitution itself needs to be revised as its First and Second amendments are causing many of the problems. The Second amendment is contributing to the US being the mass murder capitol of the world, but the First amendment is also insidious as it has morphed into something perverted and toxic in the form of social media and spun out of control allowing the spread of vicious gossip and lies gone viral. This has given vent to the worst impulses among the American people. Facebook's very business model has contributed mightily to this outcome as it allows hate groups to identify one another and come together on a common platform provided all too profitably by Facebook.

Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state warns of the danger to democracy of lies flourishing online – and says big tech’s wings must be clipped in an article in The Guardian. She of course has been the victim of outrageous character assassination perpetrated by lies on social media over the course of 30 years or more. The Guardian reports:

"Her bid for the White House was engulfed by a tidal wave of fabricated news and false conspiracy theories. Now Hillary Clinton is calling for a “global reckoning” with disinformation that includes reining in the power of big tech.

"The former secretary of state and first lady warns that the breakdown of a shared truth, and the divisiveness that surely follows, poses a danger to democracy at a moment when China is selling the conceit that autocracy works."

Uncontrolled social media makes more money by perpetrating lies than it does the truth because the truth is often boring, bu lies especially when shared by a large group of people are often very entertaining, and the American people demand constantly to be entertained. Maybe this is because their lives are otherwise quite boring. Anyway boredom is the crux of the matter. The “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory, which made the preposterous claim that Clinton ran a child sex trafficking ring at a Washington pizza restaurant, entertained the masses in a viral manner. This segment of society loves them a reality show TV star like Donald Trump or even a B movie star like Ronald Reagan. They would rather have the impersonation of a competent leader than a competent leader him or herself, but then Hitler was very entertaining as well. So are most autocrats. Social media represents the First amendment run amok.

The Guardian continues:

"Far-right Republicans have become openly anti-democratic, endorsing Trump’s falsehoods and seeking to suppress voters of color.

"The traditional the-truth-is-somewhere-in-the-middle approach will no longer do, Clinton argues.

“They’ve got to rid themselves of both-sidesism,” she says. “It is not the same to say something critical of somebody on the other side of the aisle and to instigate an attack on the Capitol and to vote against certifying the election. Those are not comparable, and it goes back to the problem of the press actually coming to grips with how out of bounds and dangerous the new political philosophy on the right happens to be.”

"The press cannot be expected to restore a common baseline of truth on its own, however.

“The technology platforms are so much more powerful than any organ of the so-called mainstream press, and I do think that there has to be not just an American reckoning but a global reckoning with the disinformation, with the monopolistic power and control, with the lack of accountability that the platforms currently enjoy,” Clinton said."

News shows on TV need sponsors and sponsors want eyeballs glued to the tube. What is more gluing than some outrageous lie such as the ones Qanon perpetrates. So the "business of America is business" crowd is out there perpetrating lies because that is more profitable than perpetrating the boring truth. Entertainment is everything. We are entertained to death and that had resulted prepandemic in a full employment society where the lower 50% serve, bartend, cater, cook, work as baristas, housekeep, provide security, take tickets for the upper 50%. Profitable business decisions have made lies and deception profitable. Every day during the Trump administration, the media covered Trump's outrageous lies and behavior because it was more profitable than reporting the dull facts. Even Trump's adulterous affairs were "forgiven" because they made him a more vivid character providing juicy gossipy entertainment even for the tsk tsk crowd.

In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman argued presciently 35 years ago that television was reshaping our culture and trivializing public life—news, politics, religion, education, and business—by turning it into entertainment. He warned that we would become so inundated with irrelevant information that we’d lose sight of what was important—even worse, we wouldn’t care as long as we felt entertained. With the proliferation of digital media today and worries about excessive “screen time,” his analysis still resonates.

Hillary added: “In particular Facebook, which has the worst track record for enabling mistruths, misinformation, extremism, conspiracy, for goodness’ sake, even genocide in Myanmar against the Rohingya. So governments are going to have to decide right now that the platforms have to be held to some kind of standard, and it’s tricky.” So do the Chinese have a better idea to control the out of control lies perpetrated in the West? For one thing they wouldn't stand for it. Freedom of speech has morphed into something sinister and out of control. The same could be said about the Second Amendment. Maybe the moral of the story is that constitutions need to be updated at least once a century in order to keep up with new technological developments. The US Constitution is 233 years old.

Off the Top of My Head

In Defense of Governor Cuomo

by John Lawrence, March 23, 2021

In the Access Hollywood tape Trump said he would go up to a woman and "just start kissing them." He would even "grab 'em by the pussy". Yet no women "came forward" to testify to the facts that Trump had done this to them. At least there was no wide spread media exposure except for adult film star, Stormy Daniels. Yet women are coming forward to accuse Governor Cuomo of "ogling their legs." Cuomo has said he hasn't touched any woman inappropriately. Well, I guess the definition of inappropriate touching would be touching or grabbing their pussies or breasts or butts. No woman has accused Cuomo of doing what for Trump was standard operating procedure. So is there a double standard here? Since when does "ogling" rise to the level of a crime or even something a woman should "come forward" about? Maybe a sin, something that should be taken up between Cuomo and his priest confessor, but nothing he should lose his job over. Jesus said "But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." That's a pretty high standard and today adultery is defined as a married person having sex outside of married. Cuomo after all was single.

So is ogling a high crime and misdemeanor? What's the difference between ogling and simple observation? Is there video evidence to support the accusation of ogling? Where do you draw the line between ogling and disinterested observation? Is it possible that some men could be ogling but disguise this fact by adopting a demeanor of casual observation? What is the time frame after which a casual look becomes ogling - 2 seconds...5 seconds? Your honor, my ogling was within the time frame of casual observation. Give me a break. And the kissing? Some women accused Cuomo of trying to kiss them. Well, the time honored method of rejecting a kiss is to simply turn your head or pull away. Did Cuomo persist even after that? No. A kiss rejected with no follow-up persistence is no reason to come forward. An awkward or embarrassing moment, perhaps, but that should be the end of it. Did any of the women who came forward about Cuomo's behavior simply say to him, "Bug off, Bub. I'm not interested." Evidently not. That would be all that they would have to have said.

Now someone is even accusing Cuomo of saying, "Ciao Bella" to them. What? What country are we living in? Not Italy, I guess. There when you meet someone for this first time, you kiss them ... twice like Stanley Tucci does on his CNN program. You know there are a lot more serious issues to be concerned with than someone saying "Caio Bella", which some women might take as a compliment rather than a breech of demeanor. Again did the woman involved tell Cuomo not to say that to her or to quit ogling her or to bug off, you creep? No they just "came forward" instead to complain about something of little consequence. Poor Governor Cuomo. That guy has been working overtime as the only voice of reason for many months trying to get the COVID pandemic under control. He's lonely and horny. Won't some patriotic American woman go up to him and give him a kiss and a hug and tell him what a good job he has done? Instead these women who have come forward have effectively stabbed him in the back and threatened his job when they could have simply told him, "Bug off!" "Coming forward" is the modern day equivalent of pilloying someone in the public square.

Off the Top of My Head

My Horse, My Horse, My Kingdom for a Horse

by John Lawrence, January 9, 2021

Only in Trump's case: My Twitter Account, My Twitter Account, My Kingdom for a Twitter Account. Trump has been emasculated. He's been banned from Twitter, Facebook, Shopify and God knows what else. As well he should be. This guy was not so much a President as he was a Tweeter-in-Chief and rabble rouser. He roused a lot of rabble a few days ago when he almost had Congress persons killed and taken hostage. Who thought it was a good idea to have a rally on the day the votes for the next President were to be certified? Well, Donald Trump of course. He knew what he was doing. It's just that his doofus supporters were inept at coup planning or the outcome might have been entirely different. Trump, Rudy Giuliani ("trial by combat"? he was wrong and, according to his own words, has been made a fool of and should go to jail) and Don Jr should be criminally implicated for inspiring to riot. Trump should be criminally implicated also for not calling out the National Guard till it might have been too late. It seems that only he had the authority to do so, and he was allowing sufficient time for his acolytes to do their dirty work.

Joe Biden definitely has his work cut out for him. He has to deal with a global pandemic which may be mutating. He has to deal with 40 years of neoliberal economic policies which have made the rich richer and the poor homeless. And he has to deal with a cult of domestic terrorists. To those who think that China, Russia and Iran are the problems, I've got news for you: the American people, a huge contingent of them, are the problem. Gun violence is the problem. Trillions of dollars wasted on a sitting military, on the grounds that we have enemies who justify this, is the problem. The policies of George W Bush who caused millions of deaths in the Middle East with the result of ongoing chaos is the problem. It's enough to make your head spin. While the US is in chaos as a society, the rest of the world is moving forward. While Joe Biden must play catch up, the rest of the world is moving ahead. While much of the US citizenry is composed of cultish dingbats, the rest of the world are very clear eyed by comparison. While the US culture and militarization of mindset is descending into a cesspool of self indulgence, people in the rest of the world are using their brains and feelings of compassion for their fellow inhabitants of earth to move ahead. While religious bigots use Jesus as an excuse to do dastardly deeds in the same way that the Ku Klux Klan has always done, the rest of the world is coming from a more enlightened attitude toward ethics and morality, religion or no religion.

The result is that the US has become the equivalent of a Third World country with an outsized and bloated military. Pride goeth before a fall, and the US, if it cannot get its act together, will go the way of the Roman Empire when it descended into chaos. The best the US can hope for coming out of the putrefaction of the Trump era is to be a good partner with the rest of the world as we solve enormous problems including climate change and poverty. No more yelling "We're Number One" when clearly a significant number of us are spoiled brats and worse. Let's turn the military culture into a peace culture. Let's take megaphones away from demagogues the way Twitter has denied Trump his Twitter account. Let's police social media.

Social media has not ennobled the American people; instead it has allowed a large number of Americans to be turned into a cult the way radio allowed Hitler in the 1930s to encultify, to coin a word, the German people. Cults demand that people pay obeisance to a leader. Kim Jong Un is sitting there thinking that the US is just as big a cult as North Korea. The remedy for this is that people have to be educated to think critically and not to follow some powerful figure with a huge megaphone whether it be Hitler, Mussolini or Donald Trump. Trump's megaphone has been taken away the way a parent takes away a child's favorite toy if he or she misbehaves. Trump's following have a militarized mindset. I would lay dollars to doughnuts that most of them have served in the military the way Ashli Babbit, the rioter who was shot, did. Perhaps if young Americans were required to do two years of national service or service in the Peace Corps instead of being incentivized to become Marines, sailors and airmen, attitudes would change. Instead of their minds being molded to taking commands from superior officers, they might develop an alternative mindset in which serving the poor and unfortunate of the world would be their highest priority.

The US has become a degenerate society, composed of unthinking followers of a strongman who had promised them that they're number one, Americans are number one and we're the greatest society and nation on earth. This is misguided thinking doomed to failure. This is the fall of the Roman Empire, the people of which had become a bunch of degenerate spoiled brats. There are good people here of course. The new administration represents a great many of them. There are many changes that need to be made in US society that they will try to change. It will be a sisyphean effort. Much of what has been seen as essential to American culture will have to be discarded and we will have to join the rest of the world's nations humbly in a cooperative effort to combat global warming and create a culture of love, peace and compassion.

Was the Fed Just Nationalized?

Published on

Friday, April 03, 2020

 by

Common Dreams

Did Congress just nationalize the Fed? No. But the door to that result has been cracked open.

 

 

by 

Ellen Brown

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 13 Comments

 It took only a few days for Congress to unanimously pass the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, which will be doling out $2.2 trillion in crisis relief, most of it going to Corporate America with few strings attached.  (Photo: Public domain)

Mainstream politicians have long insisted that Medicare for all, a universal basic income, student debt relief and a slew of other much-needed public programs are off the table because the federal government cannot afford them. But that was before Wall Street and the stock market were driven onto life-support by a virus. Congress has now suddenly discovered the magic money tree. It took only a few days for Congress to unanimously pass the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, which will be doling out $2.2 trillion in crisis relief, most of it going to Corporate America with few strings attached. Beyond that, the Federal Reserve is making over $4 trillion available to banks, hedge funds and other financial entities of all stripes; it has dropped the fed funds rate (the rate at which banks borrow from each other) effectively to zero; and it has made $1.5 trillion available to the repo market.

It is also the Federal Reserve that will be picking up the tab for this bonanza, at least to start. The US central bank has opened the sluice gates to unlimited quantitative easing, buying Treasury securities and mortgage-backed securities “in the amounts needed to support smooth market functions.” Last month, the Fed bought $650 billion worth of federal securities. At that rate, notes Wall Street on Parade, it will own the entire Treasury market in about 22 months. As Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari acknowledged on 60 Minutes, “There is an infinite amount of cash at the Federal Reserve.”

In theory, quantitative easing is just a temporary measure, reversible by selling bonds back into the market when the economy gets back on its feet. But in practice, we have seen that QE is a one-way street. When central banks have tried to reverse it with “quantitative tightening,” economies have shrunk and stock markets have plunged. So the Fed is likely to just keep rolling over the bonds, which is what normally happens anyway with the federal debt. The debt is never actually paid off but is just rolled over from year to year. Only the interest must be paid, to the tune of $575 billion in 2019. The benefit of having the Fed rather than private bondholders hold the bonds is that the Fed rebates its profits to the Treasury after deducting its costs, making the loans virtually interest-free. Interest-free loans rolled over indefinitely are in effect free money. The Fed is “monetizing” the debt.

What will individuals, families, communities and state and local governments be getting out of this massive bailout? Not much. Qualifying individuals will get a very modest one-time payment of $1,200, and unemployment benefits have been extended for the next four months. For local governments, $150 billion has been allocated for crisis relief, and one of the Fed’s newly expanded Special Purpose Vehicles will buy municipal bonds. But there is no provision for reducing the interest rate on the bonds, which typically runs at 3 or 4 percent plus hefty bond dealer fees and foregone taxes on tax-free issues. Unlike the federal government, municipal governments will not be getting a rebate on the interest on their bonds.

The taxpayers have obviously been shortchanged in this deal. David Dayen calls it “a robbery in progress.” But there have been some promising developments that could be harnessed for the benefit of the people. The Fed has evidently abandoned its vaunted “independence” and is now working in partnership with the Treasury. In some sense, it has been nationalized. A true partnership, however, would make the printing press available for more than just buying toxic corporate assets. A central bank that was run as a public utility could fund programs designed to kickstart the economy, stimulate productivity and generally serve the public.

Harnessing the Central Bank

The reason the Fed is now working with the Treasury is that it needs the Treasury to help it bail out a financial industry burdened with an avalanche of dodgy assets that are fast losing value. The problem for the Fed is that it is only allowed to purchase or lend against securities with government guarantees, including Treasury securities, agency mortgage-backed securities, debt issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and (arguably) municipal securities. To get around that wrinkle, as Wolf Richter explains:

[T]he Treasury will create (or resuscitate) a series of special-purpose vehicles (SPVs) to buy all manner of financial assets, backed by $425 billion in collateral conveniently supplied by the US taxpayer via the Exchange Stabilization Fund. The Fed will lend to SPVs against this collateral which, when leveraged, could fund $4-5 trillion in asset purchases.

That includes municipal bonds, non-agency mortgages, corporate bonds, commercial paper, and every variety of asset-backed security. The only things the government can’t (transparently, yet) buy are publicly-traded stocks and high-yield bonds.

Unlike in QE, in which the Fed moves assets onto its own balance sheet, the Treasury will now be buying assets and backstopping loans through SPVs that the Treasury will own and control. SPVs are a form of shadow bank, which like all banks create money by “monetizing” debt or turning it into something that can be spent in the marketplace. The SPV decides what assets to buy and borrows from the central bank to do it. The central bank then passively creates the funds, which are used to purchase the assets backing the loan. As Jim Bianco wrote on Bloomberg:

In other words, the federal government is nationalizing large swaths of the financial markets. The Fed is providing the money to do it. BlackRock will be doing the trades. This scheme essentially merges the Fed and Treasury into one organization. …

In effect, the Fed is giving the Treasury access to its printing press. This means that, in the extreme, the administration would be free to use its control, not the Fed’s control, of these SPVs to instruct the Fed to print more money so it could buy securities and hand out loans in an effort to ramp financial markets higher going into the election.

Of the designated SPVs, none currently serves a public purpose beyond buoying the markets; but they could be designed for such purposes. The taxpayers are on the hook for replenishing the $425 billion in the Exchange Stabilization Fund, and they should be entitled to share in the benefits. Congress could designate a Special Purpose Vehicle to fund its infrastructure projects, and to fund those much-needed public services including Medicare for all, a universal basic income, student debt relief, and similar programs. It could also purchase a controlling interest in insolvent or profligate banks, pharmaceutical companies, oil companies and other offenders and regulate them in a way that serves the public interest.

Another possibility would be for Congress to fund these programs in the usual way by issuing government bonds, but to enter into a partnership agreement first by which the central bank would buy the bonds, roll them over indefinitely, and rebate the interest to the Treasury. That is how Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has funded his stimulus programs, with none of the predicted inflationary effects on consumer prices. In fact the Japanese consumer price index is hovering at a very low 0.4%, well below even the central bank’s 2 percent target, although the Bank of Japan has monetized nearly half of the government’s debt. Half of the US debt would be over $11 trillion. Assuming $6 trillion for the current corporate bailouts, that means another $5 trillion could safely be monetized for programs benefiting individuals, families and local governments. (How to do this without driving up consumer prices will be the subject of another article.)

Relief for State and Local Governments

State and local governments, which are on the front lines for delivering emergency services, have for the most part been left out of the bailout bonanza. While we are waiting for action from Congress, the Fed could make cheap loans available to local governments using its existing powers under Federal Reserve Act Sec. 14(2)(b), which authorizes the Fed to purchase the bills, bonds, and notes of state and local governments having maturities of six months or less. Since local governments must balance their budgets, these loans would have to be repaid, but the loans could be extended by rolling them over for a reasonable period, as is done with repo loans and the federal debt; and the loans could be made at the same near-zero interest rate banks can borrow at now. State and local governments are at least as creditworthy as banks – they have a taxpayer base and massive assets. In fact the private banking industry would have been insolvent long ago if it were not for the deep pocket of the central bank and the bailouts of the federal government, including the FDIC insurance scheme that rescued the banks from bankruptcy in the Great Depression.

There is a way state and local governments can take advantage of the near-zero interest rates available to banks even without federal action. They can set up their own publicly-owned banks. Besides giving them the ability to borrow much more cheaply, having their own banks would allow them to leverage their loan funds. A $100 million revolving fund issuing loans at 3% would gross the state $3 million per year. If that same $100 million were used to capitalize a bank, it could issue ten times that sum in loans, grossing $30 million per year. Costs would need to be deducted from those earnings, including the cost of funds; but the cost of funds is quite low for banks today. They can borrow to meet their liquidity needs from their own deposit pool, or at 0.25% in the fed funds market, or at about the same rate in the repo market, which is now backstopped by the central bank.

The blatant disparities in the congressional response to the current crisis have shone a bright light on how our financial system is rigged against the people in favor of a wealthy elite. Crisis is when change happens; this is the time for advocates to unite in demanding change on behalf of the people. As Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis admonished in a recent post:

[T]his new phase of the crisis is, at the very least, making it clear to us that anything goes – that everything is now possible.… Whether the epidemic helps deliver the good or the most evil society will depend … on whether progressives manage to band together. For if we do not, just like in 2008 we did not, the bankers, the spivs [petty criminals], the oligarchs and the neofascists will prove, again, that they are the ones who know how not to let a good crisis go to waste.

Ellen Brown is an attorney and founder of the Public Banking Institute. She is the author of twelve books, including the best-selling Web of Debt, and her latest book, The Public Bank Solution, which explores successful public banking models historically and globally.

 

Our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.

Off the Top of My Head

A Second Look at Middle Class Morality

by John Lawrence, September 4, 2018

Back in the 60s one of the things we were against, in addition to being against the "system" or the "establishment", was middle class morality. What was middle class morality because I don't think it is a relevant term any more? Basically, it said that you should study hard, get a good job, get married and be faithful to your spouse. In other words, do your job, keep you nose clean, don't fool around with other women and don't leave your spouse when the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. Today you have not only the breakdown of the middle class, but the breakdown of middle class morality and the family.

The idea was put forward that you would have a different partner for different stages of your life. These stages might be a high school girlfriend, a college girlfriend, a wife with possibly a girlfriend on the side and a second wife after the children are grown. This has pretty much led to the breakdown of the traditional family. It has led to a lot of broken families with bad consequences for the children involved. Loyalty to one another and sticking together should be a higher value than sexual freedom especially after a family has been started.

And then there was the guy who said "Turn on, tune in and drop out." "Turn on, tune in, drop out" is a counterculture-era phrase popularized by Timothy Leary in 1966. In 1967 Leary spoke at the Human Be-In, a gathering of 30,000 hippies in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco and phrased the famous words, "Turn on, tune in, drop out". Today that doesn't make too much sense. The hippie lifestyle turned out to be the precursor of homelessness. The drug culture has led to a culture of opioid and heroin addiction leading to death for many. Prescription and non-prescription drugs are the bane of society and leave many children parentless. That's why so many children are being raised by their grandparents.

Rather than dropping out, choose something that you will be comfortable with and enjoy doing rather than something your parents want you to do. This could be something that either requires or does not require a college degree. Not everyone has to go to college. The dominant culture put the screws to the counterculture by increasing college tuitions with the result that people had to go into a lot of student loan debt. This wasn't so in the easy days of the 60s. The dominant culture said as much as "oh so it's so easy and cheap to go to college that you don't even appreciate a college degree so let's just make it tougher for you. Then maybe you'll appreciate it more and not have time to tune in, turn on and drop out."

So in this synthesis of middle class morality and the counterculture, I present to you the concept of right livlihood, a healthy lifestyle and loyalty to family once a family has begun. Other than that sexual freedom is pretty much OK as long as you don't hurt people in the process. That would be the limiting factor.

"Pornography Is a Vast Graveyard Where the Left Has Gone to Die"

by John Lawrence

In his book, "Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle," Chris Hedges has a whole chapter on pornography, "The Illusion of Love". The title of this blog is taken from a quote from Andrea Dworkin which Hedges uses as a lead-in to the chapter. Recently, Michelle Bachmann has garnered some media notice for signing a pledge put out by the FAMiLY LEADER, an Iowa conservative group, to rid the country of pornography among other things. The pledge has gained notoriety for a phrase suggesting that African-American families were better off during slavery than they are today. But there is little discussion of the substance of the pledge including its stance on pornography (as usual the media is only interested in the most sensationalized aspects of reality). Bachmann, whom many have characterized as a right wing nut case, has championed Christian conservative family values including the definition of marriage as being "between a man and a woman." Irregardless, the Left has been mute regarding pornography which suggests that it adopts the "live and let live" attitude it has about homosexuality and marriage and the family in general which is really a libertarian attitude. After reading Chris Hedges' chapter on pornography, the Left might reconsider this stance at least with regard to pornography. What Hedges has to say is truly shocking and the faint of heart might consider discontinuing reading this blog right here.

Suffice it to say that pornography has gone mainstream. According to Hedges:

There are some 13,000 porn films made every year in the United States, most in the San Fernando Valley in California. According to the Internet Filter Review, worldwide porn revenues, including in-room movies at hotels, sex clubs, and the ever-expanding e-sex world, topped $97 billion in 2006. That is more than the revenues of Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo!, Apple, Netflix, and EarthLink combined. Annual sales in the United States are estimated at $10 billion or higher. There is no precise monitoring of the porn industry. And porn is very lucrative to some of the nation's largest corporations. General Motors owns DIRECTV, which distributes more than 40 million streams of porn into American homes every month. AT&T Broadband and Comcast Cable are currently the biggest American companies accommodating porn users with the Hot Network, Adult Pay Per View, and similarly themed services. AT&T and GM rake in approximately 80 percent of all porn dollars spent by consumers.

And Obama thought he was saving the American auto industry! Instead he saved one of America's largest porn purveyors! The mainstreaming of porn has openly flouted obscenity laws which like other regulatory laws have been largely missing in action. According to the website HULIQ, "According to Miller v. California (1973), the "Miller Test" became a Supreme Court-sanctioned ruling that set up a three-part array in which "community standards" could be used to determine whether or not an item was pornographic, obscene, and of no redeeming value. This allowed communities and regions to set their own obscenity standards, which is in keeping with Tea Party standards (as a federal law banning pornography would not)." So where are the community standards especially in the red Tea Party states that would ban pornography? Or is it OK because there's a lot of money in it? So what's the problem with the mainstreaming of pornography? It's innocuous adult entertainment, isn't it? Hardly. According to Hedges, "The largest users of Internet porn are between the ages of twelve and seventeen. And porn producers increasingly target adolescents." I've even heard this demographic referred to as "children"! "The age demographic has moved downwards, especially in the UK and Europe," explained Steve Honest, the European director of production for Bluebird Films. "Porn is the new rock and roll. Young people and women are embracing porn and making purchases. Porn targets the mid-teens to the mid-twenties and up."

Hedges interviewed porn star Patrice Roldan who has starred in nearly two hundred films including Lord of Asses, Anal Girls Next Door, Monster Cock Fuckfest 9, Deep Throat Anal, Trophy Whores, and  Young Dumb & Covered in Cum.  Roldan made good money in the porn industry so to say that these girls who entered the industry voluntarily were exploited is not wholly accurate. In addition to the money they made filming, they could go on "dates" with their fans who they met at the annual Las Vegas porn convention at $3000 -$5000 a pop and up. Some made great money as hotel-bound prostitutes. Just imagine if you could have met Marilyn Monroe or Lana Turner or Sophia Loren at an annual convention and "dated" them! But in those days movie stars couldn't even sleep together onscreen in the same bed much less "date" their adoring fans. But that's de rigeur in the porn film world. Tres ordinaire et normale. After Roldan's first film, she was handed $600. and contracted gonnorhea. Hedges again: "She began, once she had treated her gonnorhea, to do films three or four times a month. She would have several more bouts with gonnorhea and other sexually transmitted diseases during her career. She got pregnant and had an abortion. The demands on her began to escalate. She was filmed with multiple partners. Her scenes became 'extremely rough.' They would pull my hair, slap me around like a rag doll."

"The next day my whole body would ache," she recalls. "It happened a lot, the aching. It used to be that only a few stars, people like Linda Lovelace, would once do things like anal. Now it is expected." And this is how our teen-agers are learning about love, sex and relationships?! This is how they are developing their concept of how to treat a woman!

The physical pain and numerous surgeries to repair torn vaginas and anal tissues lead most porn stars to use excessive amounts of drugs and alcohol to deal with the pain and the emptiness of their emotional lives. Most end up being junkies and alcoholics. Hedges again: "Roldan would endure numerous anal penetrations by various men in a shoot, most of them 'super-rough.' She would have one man in her anus and one in her vagina while she gave a blow job to a third man. The men would ejaculate on her face. She was repeatedly "face-fucked,' with men forcing their cocks violently in and out of her mouth. She did what in industry shorthand is called 'ATM,' ass-to-mouth, where a man pulls his penis from her anus and puts it directly in her mouth." She explained that she washed herself good so this didn't bother her too much except when the man pulled his penis from another girl's ass and put it in her mouth because she didn't know about the other girl's standards of cleanliness!

"What does it say about our culture that cruelty is so easy to market?," Robert Jensen, author of Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity asks. "What is the difference between glorifying violence in war and glorifying the violence of sexual domination? I think that the reason that porn is so difficult to discuss is not that it is about sex - our culture is saturated in sex. The reason it is difficult is that porn exposes something very uncomfortable about us. We accept a culture flooded with women who are sexual commodities. Increasingly, women in pornography are not people having sex but bodies upon which sexual activities of increasing cruelty are played out. And men - maybe a majority of men - like it."

Finally Hedges sums up why pornography represents the "illusion of love":

As porn has gone mainstream, ushered two decades ago into middle-class living rooms and dens with VCRs and now available on the Internet, it has devolved into an open fusion of physical abuse and sex, of extreme violence, horrible acts of degradation against women with an increasingly twisted eroticism. Porn has always primarily involved the eroticization of male power through the physical abuse, even torture, of women. Porn reflects the endemic cruelty of our society. This is a society that does not blink when the industrial slaughter unleashed by the United States and its allies kills hundreds of civilians in Gaza or hundreds of thousands of innocents in Iraq and Afghanistan. Porn reflects back the cruelty of a culture that tosses its mentally ill out on the street, warehouses more than 2 million people in prisons, denies health care to tens of millions of the poor, champions gun ownership over gun control, and trumpets an obnoxious and superpatriotic nationalism and rapacious corporate capitalism. The violence, cruelty, and degradation of porn are expressions of a society that has lost the capacity for empathy.

Why would the Left cede this family values issue to the likes of Michelle Bachmann? Surely a libertarian attitude towards pornography acquiesces in the mainstreaming of pornography and the profits accumulated by large "respectable" US corporations like GM and AT&T. It also acquiesces in the purveying of pornography to young adolescent males who make up a large share of the audience and the attitudes that are being formed by exposure to such trash. American culture has gone in a few short years from one that was overly puritanical to one that is awash in degradation, obscenity and debauchery by anyone's definition. The sexual liberation of the 1960s, initially a salubrious renunciation of repression, has been thoroughly exploited and degraded by the commercialized pornography industry of the 2000s. It is the culture of the Roman Empire before its fall, of Caligua and Nero, a culture of debasement and depravity. Surely, it should not be left to the likes of Michelle Bachmann to point this out. While I don't agree with her on her stance against homosexuality or the definition of marriage, I do heartily endorse the fact that she purportedly is taking a stand against pornography. The American culture is so hypocritical that it outlaws legalized prostitution but mainlines pornography. I think legalized prostitution might serve an actual purpose for those who cannot find satisfaction in a normal relationship with a woman, but pornography is not helpful in formulating salubrious attitudes between the sexes nor is it protective of women who enter the industry despite the fact that they are paid well and do so voluntarily. When a "live and let live" libertarian attitude results in the degradation of a class of women and results in unhealthy attitudes towards sex, it should be prohibited while encouraging healthful relationships, not necessarily, but including, marriage.

Queue Cutting in China Almost Sparks International Incident With Singapore

by An Nguyen

Below is a recent article, published by a Singaporean tourist to China. His viewpoint about the Chinese is very typical in Singapore. It’s funny to know that Chinese-Singaporeans are originated from different parts of China at one point or another, and yet, they always think that they are the most refined people amongst all the Chinese.

In Singapore, I encounter more ill manners, rude and inconsiderate Singaporeans every day, from all walks of life, than any countries that I’ve travelled to. Despite the fact that their government is spending a million dollars every year to teach them manners, how to be gracious, to respect one another, it’s not really working. Without the cane from the government to whip them in line, the Singaporean’s behavior is no better than any unrefined Chinese that this tourist encountered in the streets of China, or, in any third world countries.

Speaking of loyalty to Singapore, I’m not sure if this guy or most of his fellow countrymen are willing to stay and fight for his country if it’s attacked. Unlike the U.S.A., which embraces anyone who is in despair, hungry, or needs shelter, Singapore only welcomes people with talent and money. Blue collar foreign workers are dispensable, being treated like animals, and rejected by their society. Most foreigners are having problem integrating into Singapore’s society because of discrimination against them. It’s not surprising that a lot of people are also using Singapore for an economic transit point. They will leave if the offers are better elsewhere.

Here is the article (my apologies for the fact that my blogging software could not reproduce the Chinese characters. Fortunately, the writer duplicated everything in English):

My name is Tommy Su Handa and I am a Singaporean teacher working in Shanghai. I have just visited the Expo 2010 earlier today (4 Sept 2010) and it is with a grave heart that I am penning this letter.

I was just an unsuspecting tourist queuing up (I was with a friend, who is a local Shandong Chinese and he is willing to vouch for the authenticity of my report of what has transpired) at the Uzbekistan Pavilion today when a Chinese man about fifty years of age shoved me aside with a rough swing of his hand in the queue and progressed to shove others in front of me and disappeared amidst the crowd – a classic case of queue-cutting.

But the man is too fast for me to intervene. However, his daughter (photo shown below) and wife shortly followed behind and the daughter proceeded to attempt to shove me aside with her hands. I clutched on the railing, blocking her way with my body and said sternly, "Please do not cut queue!", refusing to let her shove me aside like her father.

So the girl (consecutively to be known as ‘G’ in the report below) immediately said, "Why is this fatty [Chinese derogatory term] doing this? i.e. stopping her from cutting queue). Her mother (hereby to be known as ‘M’ in the report as follows) said, "Why is this ‘dead’ [derogatory term of added insult] fatty so serious? Will he die just by letting one person pass?" [hello? This is a family of three, apparently she was unable to count]

Indeed, I will not die letting a few people cut queue and pass by. But growing up in a country that does not have any natural resources has instilled in me an earnest respect for rules and laws and a topic of insult at all so I have no idea why they have started to attack the English standards of my fellow countrymen all of a sudden.

M: Yes! Singaporeans are miserly, stupid and inflexible; can’t even let others cut queue for a bit! You deserve to work hard without earning much. You’re all poor blokes but pretend to be so high and mighty! Singaporean men are not men at all. The whole country is good-for-nothing!

I: How can you insult my country? You started calling me names for no reason other than the fact that I refused to let you cut the queue. I tried to avoid further confrontation by keeping silent but now you insult my country? You were in the wrong first for attempting to cut queue, how can you bring yourself to make such a din now? Are you not embarrassed at the scene you are causing?

How did I refrain from using harsher language than this to protect my country? This is all thanks to my Singaporean upbringing and my personal dedication to my profession as a teacher. I constantly remind myself that I cannot afford to risk compromising my public conduct and decorum.

G: But you scolded China! So why can’t I insult your country?

I: When did I scold China? If I have been unhappy with China, how could I have worked so many years in this country?)

The mother started raising her voice, hoping to get the other Chinese people to support her.

M: Who said you didn’t scold China? We are Chinese, you scold China when you scold us!!! You scolded China!!! WE ARE CHINESE!!!

The girl looked around for support and tried to fuel her mother’s ridiculous accusation and inflame the general public.

G: Yes! What right do Singaporeans have to look down on us? What right do you have to scold us? What right do you have to scold China?

For the life of me, I really did not understand how the matter aggravated to my “looking down” on her and her country! Honestly, I firmly maintain that I have not in any way tried to aggravate the matter with any negative feelings or emotions. I merely wanted them to stop harassing me but they were bent on elevating the quarrel into a public dispute by fabricating lies and inciting anger in the other people in queue. Luckily the general public was very clear-minded and no one helped the unruly women to bully me. If I had said anything inappropriate, I would have been swarmed and probably attacked by the other Chinese – and I would have deserved that. The truth was I didn’t get swarmed nor yelled at by the general public: which was proof that I did not say anything that would undermine Singapore’s friendly ties with the general Chinese populace.

Sensing no support from the others, the mother was getting hysterical for no reason and started physically slapping me at the mid-riff with her fan, saying:

M: Yes! This is China, you are not welcome here! This is our country, roll back to your Singapore!

G: Bye bye, yeah, roll back home!

The mother continued to bodily slap me with her fan, until my local China friend (to be known as ‘F’) spoke up for me,

F: You are not Chinese people anymore! You have rushed at the first opportunity to renounce your Chinese citizenship to become Singaporean ‘flatulence’, what kind of Chinese are you? If you hate Singapore so much, why shamelessly beg for its PR-ship?

My friend really made a good point and a cat immediately caught the unruly woman’s tongue.

M: I, er, we… we’re there only for economic gains! Singaporeans are stupid! It is easy to make money there!

This is where I really feel that I have to speak to the leaders of my country: the women who were scolding me in public have no love for my country but have been approved PR-ship to come in to fleece money from my countrymen. They are here only for economic gains. How did they ever earn PR-ship from such base sentiments?

Sensing the disapproval and despise the other Chinese people were showering on them, the daughter tried to change the topic of attack:

G: (Ya, Singaporeans are so stupid and they still dare to scold China!)

I: When ever did I scold the Chinese people and China? Look at the other Chinese people queuing up now: these are civil people with a sense of decorum. If all the other Chinese people were queue-cutters like you, there would be unimaginable chaos for 13 billion people and the Expo wouldn’t have happened. You have given up your Chinese citizenship and you have no right to bring shame to China from your personal misconduct. China would not want citizens like you, and Singapore would never welcome unruly people like you! You have no proper reason or excuse to continue making this scene, when are you ever going to finish?

And so the mother, knowing that she has neither excuse nor reason, stooped to hurling a series of Chinese obscenities at me. With my last retort questioning her non-existent national alliance and shamelessly untrue pledge of loyalty, I felt I have made my case and I have refused to further respond to her and continued with the queuing despite the continued insults and taunts behind my back. Eventually we reached the entrance of the Uzbekistan Pavilion and I thought I could finally rid myself of this unruly pair behind me.

However, they suddenly proclaimed that they intend to follow us for the whole day in the Expo grounds so that they can continue to scold us! Now this is absolutely unprovoked bullying and an outright case of harassment bordering on felony.

My friend stared at disbelief at the extent of their bullying and said,

F: you can follow us and scold us all you want! We won’t care! If you think your unruly and unreasonable scolding can somehow even restore a tinge of your sense of shame…

I must say that my friend is quite capable of stumping her to silence for a while. But her daughter continued to verbally insult me and my country – and also bodily slap my back with her fan. The pair continued to harass us.

I could take the harassment no more, and so I took out my mobile phone and told them I would take pictures of their bullying and publish it on international social networks. They immediately started slapping my hand and mobile phone to stop me from taking pictures, which was why the photos taken were so grainy. They then retaliated by also taking pictures of us. I started to threaten them that I would call the local police if they do not stop harassing us. That was when they ran away from us.

My friend and I then proceeded to view the exhibits in the Uzbekistan pavilion, but the two women started to follow us, from a distance, with their cameras and persisted with their silent but nonetheless continued harassment from a distance. This went on for the next 30 minutes while we viewed the exhibits until I finally lost my control, walked up to them and yelled at them and their cameras,

I: You cut queues and yet you scold others! Now you continue to bully and harass us! You are ‘dirty’ queue-cutters! You are ‘dirty’ queue-cutters!

I deeply regret the slightly coloured insult I finally flung at them, to which they have no doubt recorded on their camera. But I am no saint, and I dare request to step forward anyone who could have put up with such persistent taunting and bullying, physically and psychologically, of one’s bodily person and country without coming to physical blows and resorting to more colourful vocabulary. The slightly coloured insult was childish, but was the meanest I ever had to be in my entire life in face of such unprovoked unruliness.

It is beyond the shadow of doubt that these two women have lived for some time in Singapore and have unquestionably been reminded and educated that their unruly ways of cutting queues, unprovoked taunting, persistent social bullying and harassment, and last but not least, the daughter’s total inability to communicate in simple English to save her life, are not socially acceptable in the Singapore community. They simply cannot function in Singapore and that has evidently caused them considerable stress.

I know for sure any self respecting Singaporean would openly request anyone who is cutting queue in Singapore to refrain from doing so – and the requests would be made politically correct to address the act of queue-cutting and would in no way be a personal attack. The chidings from my fellow Singaporeans, due to the women’s inability to comprehend simple English, must have definitely been wrongly misconstrued as “looking down on them” and had evoked grudge and malice.

Conveniently but inappropriately, they have chosen to unload all their grudge and malice on unsuspecting and innocent Singaporean tourists at the Expo grounds such as I. Their target was not specifically ME, but just their own twisted perception of Singaporeans! As a highly educated individual, how could I have not understood that? That was probably why I haven't punched the lights out of them for such barbaric bullying.

But I do worry: do the “Foreign Talents” recruited to my beloved Singapore really understand the basic common civility to integrate into the nation’s communities? If they harbour such grudge and malice to Singaporean citizens, why do they lust after our citizenship? What can they contribute positively to our nation if they pose such potentially hazardous social anomaly? I most certainly cannot imagine such unruly people to love and contribute to Singapore productively – and I do not see unruliness as a talent much needed by the nation. Moreover, I was shocked and aghast at the blatant lack of loyalty these new PRs have for my country.

Please understand that my intention for reporting this isolated case is by no means to cause a rift between China and Singapore. I respect China, have married a local Shanghainese woman, and have now a nine-month-old baby boy, testament of my love for this second home of mine. The greater general populace of the China has always warmed me on countless occasions of their willingness to work unconditionally and sacrifice unquestioningly to noble causes.

Here is one response to the above online letter:

Chinese are a whole lot of pragmatic, practical people. They are a hardy lot and can be found all over the world where there's money to be made with some of them even settling down for long term even in Africa and South America and overcome initial difficulties of strange culture and language. These type of people do contribute to the local economy as they add to the local economic statistics.

Today's Chinese are different from the past. They have a choice now, that is to stay or to leave their adopted countries. Spurred on by their booming economic opportunities in their motherland and sense of loyalty and pride, these first generation of emigrants do want to go back and contribute.

Although millions of young Chinese people dream of studying in America, the ones who actually get the opportunity don't necessarily want to stay in America after they graduate. In late 2008, the Chinese government launched an aggressive campaign to lure them back and is spending millions to entice accomplished investors, bankers, researchers and engineers to come home.

In the last two decades, an estimated 50,000 immigrants left the United States and returned to India and China. In the next five years, a projected100,000 more will make the return trip. A trickle is turning into a flood. Most of the present returnees are young, in their early 30s and nearly 90 percent had master’s or doctorate degrees.

Over back in Singapore, our government does not grant PRs or citizenship seemingly anyhow to applicants from China or to many other countries for this matter. Most of the ethnic Chinese PRs in Singapore hail from Malaysia. Many of them progress on to take up citizenship becoming first generation of Singaporeans in their family line.

Over the 10-year period to present, the number of Malaysia-born Chinese in Singapore (permanent residents and first generation Singapore citizens from Malaysia, combined) went up by 81,000, while that of China-born Chinese went up by just 13,000.

Hopefully, the new data may help correct a misperception on the ground.
This whole idea that we are being overwhelmed by mainland Chinese has no basis. The numbers should tell us that many from China are here only as foreign workers and, as the Prime Minister has said, we have to distinguish these workers from new immigrants.

There are good and bad from each country. In my work and travels, most of these foreigners I have to deal with in here or overseas, come across to me as intelligent, well mannered and polite. Of course, there is always the minority. However, I must add that we ourselves are not saints either. C'est la vie!!