Will the New Fascism Solve Global Warming's Challenge?

Growing Like Topsy

Autocracy, Fascism, Oligarchy and State Militarism

 Increasing Faster Than Global Temperatures

Is an intuitive, subconscious "extinction precursor" 
altering the preferred form of national governance?

After "spinning their wheels" for several centuries attempting to resolve the challenges of life on Earth with the chaotic voices of various "educated electorates," the democracies -- both the previously, proudly "pure" and the self-admittedly, "heavily blemished" -- have now taken the breathless, yet predictable, plunge into the somewhat less frightening embrace of autocracy's warm hands. The most promising nations on the planet are now, officially, oligarchies of one sort or another.

For any visitors who might consider such a gloomy conclusion a product of the geriatric ranting and railing of MeanMesa, perhaps the specifics will help. In the somewhat confusing mix of oligarchy, autocracy and fascism, the following nation states present a compelling argument which describes the newest, most modern choice for autonomous governance we see sprouting all around -- including here in the US.

Russia

Russian Federation

Russia is reinvigorating its colonial appetite. Within the country Putin is an unquestioned autocrat. Around him are "tolerated" oligarchs when "obedient."

Russia has made only modest efforts at sustainable energy infrastructure. The Federation is heavily reliant on nuclear and fossil fuel systems.

US

United States

United States has adopted a monolithic one party government not subject to influence by majority citizen opinion. The new autocracy is belligerent and functions independently of citizen rule. Oligarchic priorities supersede political priorities.

The US has made significant progress with sustainability in its energy sector, but fossil fuel based oligarchs will now have an opportunity to become resurgent.

EU

The EU states

The EU countries definitely have oligarchs with dynastic wealth, but priorities of the mature social culture limit their power. Fascist interests are rising in dominance. NATO militarism is traditionally moderate.

EU states, particularly Scandinavian and Germany, are global leaders for sustainability. EU social culture is currently investing in significant efforts to reduce green house foot prints.

Turkey

Turkey

Turkey is moving rapidly toward a strong autocracy with religious overtones. Its strengthening militarism is justified by local conditions but contradicts traditional NATO. Its vulnerable economy hosts both Turkish oligarchs and religious purists. The current government is "unofficially" fascist.

Under the growing autocracy, Turkey directs greater interests to internal stability than to sustainability. The country has economic limits and regional challenges preventing significant modernization.

China

Peoples Republic of China 

China is a "state autocracy." Its expansionist tendencies are state tendencies, not nationalistic or particularly imperial. Its military investment is at a sensible level. Its cultural investment is high. Chinese oligarchs, while globally wealthy, are firmly controlled by State Council policy.

The PRC public is pressuring the autocracy to remedy existing climate hazards, but the Chinese autocracy is "holding out" for a more profitable course forward which can be integrated with PRC priorities for increasing domestic demand.

Israel

Israel 

Due to regional policy challenges Israel's government prioritizes militarism. Illegal colonial expansionism consumes social, cultural and national resources which could be directed at sustainability.

Allocation of nation resources for sustainability is undercut by the necessity of expensive military spending. The priority for access to potable water is becoming a regional trigger.

Japan

Japan

Japanese oligarchs are largely accepted as a social phenomenon and exert only a "mature" influence on the government. Japan was forced to reconsider its national energy priority after the Fukushima disaster when it reverted to traditional generation for a while. However, the nation's economic needs have led a return to the "nuclear option" since then. Overall, the nation is clearly dedicated to sustainability.

Due to regional competition the next "economic adjustment" will probably be a resurgence of increased military spending.

The precise "metrics" in the charts [above] are quite speculative, yet these speculations represent a rough measure of conditions as they have been reported over the last few years. Additional nations can be included in the list, but MeanMesa will leave those further "intuitive conjectures" to the blog's visitors.

The point is not a pleasant one. All the responsible governments on the planet should, reasonably, be directing most of their national budgets to projects which might either mitigate or, at least, soften the impact of what is rapidly approaching. This is not a debate. The fact is that national governments have postured themselves to pretty much ignore the welfare of their citizens, controlled and contradicted scientific information about the climate and have, instead, primarily focused resources on military spending and the care and feeding of their already quite over weight billionaires.

Does this change as climate conditions grow steadily worse?

By "worse" MeanMesa means more lethal and painful. What capability is left of the traditional habit of sensible, "democratic" decision making is fading fast.

What the New Fascists Will Be Facing

Toxic ideology is practically invisible as long as everything is "roses, simply roses."

 In the view of hindsight 2016 [no matter how awful it's been] will look like "roses."

Most of the citizens in the First World are fully aware of what is approaching. The exceptions to this general rule are either those expending every effort to intentionally ignoring the matter or others with a financial stake in avoiding the reality of it at any cost. The level of "demographic disengagement" is unsettling.

However, once the "debating" activity is set aside, the common perception of what may be anticipated from global warming has been hampered by "too much science." The eyes of the laity roll back at once when "the parts per million" figures are presented. The helicopter videos of polar bears looking for enough ice to conduct their seal fishing are compelling enough, but reasonable prognoses of day to day life on the planet as the climate deteriorates are, too often, considered suspiciously over dramatic.

[MeanMesa posted a "engineering/project management oriented" paper on global warming several years ago which has been widely received. If you would like to review this, link  here - Managing Global Warming Solutions/MEANMESA]

In response to this "perception problem" MeanMesa has prepared the following "calendar" with a few of these "reasonable expectations" about what we might be seeing on the "news."

The next 40 years of global warming in 1. the US, 2. Internationally and 3. on a planetary scale.[MeanMesa]

As we thread our way through these "not too promising" [although painfully likely] headline events, MeanMesa encourages visitors to consider each of them with two, separate world views.

1. How would these developments be handled in an environment with more representative, democratic governments around the world?

2. How will these developments likely be handled by the new crop of autocracies and oligarchies which have taken control of such matters now?

The New Oligarchies' Approach to Management and Survival

The Strengths and Weaknesses of Authoritarian Control

Yes, some of these political developments might be "just what the doctor ordered,"

 but it's not likely. This is going to require significantly more than a handful of Tweets.

The failed domestic "news" reporting about global warming effects has become an agonizing blather as the same road weary questions and speculations are bandied back and forth endlessly. The overall effect on the public consciousness has been an almost narcotic "soothing."

"Nobody is sure what is really happening."

"The full extent of this remains uncertain."

"Planetary warming predictions have been ruthlessly exaggerated."

"Planetary warming predictions have been dangerously under estimated."

"Here's an interesting story about one specific place

 which is now under water -or- dry as a bone."

The US President [Obama] and more than a few other world leaders have made it a point that they regard global warming as real and extremely dangerous. In other words these voices have said that serious resources must be applied immediately to reduce the lethality of the impact. At the counter point the US President-elect [Trump] has taken great pains to express his opinion that "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive." [politifact]

So, can we expect that after conditions deteriorate to some certain level, that the autocrats will direct their un-opposed authority toward the climate problem? If this is to be the case, what state would those "conditions" have to reached before such a decision might be taken?

Make no mistake. Compared to the curiously durable "gaseous foam approach" which has ear marked the more "democratic" responses to the on coming calamity, these war lord types could, possibly, act quite decisively and effectively -- if they were to perceive such an action as consistent with their ideology and political goals.

Nonetheless, throughout history autocrats of all the various forms have demonstrated a real problem with empathy. The idea of actually cooperating "for the common good" is quite alien to them. This is a "motivation divide." Autocrats have difficulty being motivated to undertake "projects" which benefit others more than they benefit them. Or, for that matter, even benefit all more or less equally.

A billionaire is positioned to survive the worst conditions of climate change in fairly good order. Mansions and palaces can generate a breathable atmosphere if a sufficient amount of money is spent to accomplish this. Such places can certainly be refrigerated. If there are locations around the planet where the climate conditions are somewhat better than average, they can be purchased -- and defended.

Bear in mind that billionaires come in widely differing "flavors." FDR was a very wealthy man, but so are Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, Sheldon Adelson and the Brothers Koch.

State level efforts to mitigate
 climate change.[image]

In the US the onslaught to convert humanity's future into immediate profits will commence at the state level. The new US autocracy controls a large majority of state governments entirely -- governorships, state Houses and Senates. Further, many of the profit burning, "regulatory irritants" which might actually help with the climate problem are enforced at the state level, which means that anti-democracy organizations such as ALEC can begin their dissolution essentially without being contested.

Public opinion will descend even more deeply into the very profitable states of hopelessness and panic as global conditions become more violent. While such desolate sentiments are truly "bread and butter" for the billionaires manipulating national policy, the inevitable crescendo of frantic survivalism may be enough to "inspire" the oligarchs to actually act in the public interest at some point.

The picture at this stage will not be a pretty one. This possible, new "inspiration" will be emerging long after most of the effective mitigation policies might have been instituted.

The Climatic "Tipping Point"

When Global Conditions Begin to Render Dynastic Wealth Irrelevant

Higher ocean levels do more
 than move beaches. [image]

All sorts of unpleasant changes will patiently begin to arrive at the gated, front steps of the mansions and palaces. In addition to the mayhem of global chaos economic pressures targeting the "top 1%" will gradually become terminal. Enterprises which previously provided a dependable income flow to the oligarchs' coffers will begin to falter.

Consumers will have little interest in the "discretionary" purchase sectors. Market levels for automobiles, Internet services, gasoline, new houses and the like will lose ground to more immediate needs which used to be considered "givens."

Trump's ostentatious, top end hotels will be left to meet these new, violently reduced market demands with just a couple of inhabited floors of thousand dollar per night suites. Vice President Pence's curious obsession with Old Testament sexual authoritarianism will fade into the class of other, long ago abandoned "historical oddities."

Once again events will repeat the same lesson. Fascism cannot flourish in conditions of harsh austerity. This has been well established in the matter of political fascism, but no corrective "over throw" will be possible when the austerity is imposed on us by the planet herself.

ReWriting the 100 Years War: A Montana Primer

History's Irony Visits Big Sky Country

Two rather smelly developments were craftily scheduled to emerge under the covering illumination of the Supreme Court's unanticipated permission for Americans to purchase some sort of semi-rational health care.  First, anyone bored enough to follow the "evidence free," wing nut, Romney infomercial of House car thief Darrel Issa's indictment of the AG for contempt missed the whole thing -- it quietly evaporated during one of the inevitable yawns.

The second story, however, deserves at least a glancing blow from MeanMesa.  This other development was a Supreme Court ruling that, no matter what laws the local state citizens might pass, the toxic soup of Chief Justice Roberts' Citizens United will roll over state law just like the reactionary Juggernaut it has been at the federal level.

Read about the Montana Story.

From the Washington Post: Supreme Court's Montana Decision Strengthens Citizens United/2012/06/25/

From Huffington: /2012/06/25/Supreme Court Reversed Montana's Law Against Citzens United

The reason that the Montana Story is showing up here is because it follows the recent MeanMesa infatuation with the saturating irony of contemporary politics.

Right away, we might conclude that since this was a Supreme Court decision, it could, conceivably, have something to do with classical jurisprudence instead of the mark down counter "red meat" of 2012 politics.  Of course it doesn't.  Chief Justice John Roberts is a political creature down to his bones.  Any momentary remission of the normally well deserved disparagement for the man which might have temporarily surfaced from the health care verdict won't fly any farther than the nearest garbage can in MeanMesa's cluttered kitchen.

Let's Get Right To The Historical Irony

To set the stage for this exquisite comparison of grisly similarities, we must first visit the 100 Years War.  For MeanMesa visitors not familiar with this blood drenched saga of Medieval conflict, we'll settle for just a few of the facts.

Of course, the most pressing similarity should come first.  Both the oligarchs' Battle for Montana and the actual, blood drenched 100 Years War in Medieval Europe lasted 100 years.  This is notable for several reasons. Long wars, sometimes cited by liberal pessimists as "endless wars" -- such as the current conflicts in the Middle East, reflect a certain strategic stubbornness which is notably militarily suspicious and sinister. In these, military objectives slowly and painfully migrate from understandable tactical goals to far less comprehensible objectives of mercantile advantage, political manipulation, geopolitical posturing or domestic ambitions of all sorts.

The actual, historical 100 Years War began around 1337 AD when the respective royal families of England and France -- all sanguinely related, of course -- decided that both kingdoms were rightfully theirs.  The awful thing raged as a "world war" until the exhausted parties -- all, by then, the equally ambitious descendants of the initiators -- fought one last grisly deluge at Castillon in 1453.

Clockwise, from top left: John of Bohemia at the Battle of Crécy,
English and Franco-Castilian fleets at the Battle of La Rochelle,
Henry V and the English army at the Battle of Agincourt,
Joan of Arc rallies Valois forces at the Siege of Orléans

At this point, more sophisticated historians than MeanMesa rush in as apologists for the mess, citing every sort of "implied necessity" in play at various times through the struggle.  However, the analysis of motivation for the struggle seen on this post amounts to unmitigated royal greed.  Further, "royal greed" was, at the time, tacitly considered to be not only an inescapable element of "royal genetic make up," but also quite acceptable as a feature of the fundamental character of such a man.  How else would the King be able to make his Kingdom larger?  In other words, this following conversation was not ever heard in more than a fleeting whisper during the whole affair.

"Darn it, if that King of ours weren't so doggoned greedy, we wouldn't have to keep fighting this stinking thing year after year."

On to Montana

When the fever that is greed swells to avarice, the obsession becomes even more patient.

Let's have a look at some excerpts from the WIKI article about Anaconda Copper in Montana around the turn of the 20th century. (Read the whole article here.) This may seem to be quite a bit of "background," but this story tells everything about the ambitions of the US Supreme Court and the Citizens United decision.  This is a glimpse of the America about which the fascists on the Court and their oligarch masters have wet dreams.

Montana and Anaconda Copper

and, the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers, the Banksters and the Brokers

Superfund site

The area of Butte, Montana, Anaconda, Montana, and the Clark Fork River were highly contaminated. Milling and smelting produced wastes with high concentrations of arsenic, as well as copper, cadmium, lead, zinc, and other heavy metals. That’s why, beginning in 1980s, the Environmental Protection Agency designated the Upper Clark Fork river basin and many associated areas as Superfund sites - the nation's largest.

The EPA named ARCO as the "potentially responsible party." Atlantic Richfield Company was obliged to remediate (clean up) the area. Since then, Atlantic Richfield has spent hundreds of millions of dollars decontaminating and rehabilitating the area, though the job is far from finished.

ARCO, officially BP West Coast Products LLC, is now a subsidiary of BP.

Shows the terraced levels and access roadways of the open mine pits at the Berkeley Pit section. (image source WIKI)

Glorious No Holds Barred Capitalism In Montana (image source)

Beginnings

Anaconda Copper Mining Company started in 1881 when Marcus Daly bought a small silver mine called Anaconda near Butte, Montana. (Anaconda would eventually own all the mines on Butte Hill.) He asked George Hearst (father of publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst) for additional support, who agreed to buy one-fourth of the new company's stock without visiting the site. Huge deposits of another mineral, copper, were discovered soon and Daly became a copper magnate. Daly quietly bought up neighboring mines forming a mining company. He then built a smelter at Anaconda which he connected to Butte by a railway.

Butte, a small and poor town, became one of the most prosperous cities in the country, often called "the Richest Hill on Earth." From 1892 through 1903, the Anaconda mine was the largest copper-producing mine in the world. It produced more than $300 billion worth of metal in its lifetime.

The Rothschilds

In 1889 the Rothschilds attempted to control the world copper market. In 1892 the French Rothschilds began negotiations to buy the Anaconda mine. In mid-October 1895 the Rothschilds, French and British, bought one quarter of the stock in Anaconda for 7.5 million dollars. By the late 1890s the Rothschilds probably had control over the sale of about forty percent of the world’s copper production.

The Rockefellers

The Rothschilds' role in Anaconda was brief. In 1899, Daly teamed up with two directors of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil to create the giant Amalgamated Copper Mining Company, one of the largest trusts of the early 20th century.

By 1899 Amalgamated Copper acquired majority stock in the Anaconda Copper Company and the Rothschilds appear to have had no further role in the company. Marcus Daly had just become president of the seventy-five million-dollar holding company at his death in 1900.

The leading roles in the takeover were played by Henry Huttleston Rogers (John D. Rockefeller’s friend and a key man in his Standard Oil businesses) and William Rockefeller (John’s brother).They were aided by company promoter Thomas W. Lawson. Although Rogers and William Rockefeller were Standard Oil directors, Standard Oil itself did not take part, nor did its founder and head, John D. Rockefeller, who disliked such stock promotions.

Lawson later had a falling out with Rogers and Rockefeller, and wrote of the experience in a book Frenzied Finance. Although not totally objective (probably due to Lawson's bitterness) it offered insight into aspects of high finance. Publicity from revelations such as these fueled public sentiment for controls which led to U.S. anti-trust laws such as those championed by President Theodore Roosevelt.

The golden twenties

During the 20's metal prices went up and mining activity increased. Those were really the golden years for Anaconda. The company was managed by dexterous Ryan-Kelley team and was growing fast, expanding into new areas of activity: manganese, zinc, aluminum, uranium and silver.

In 1922 the company acquired mining operations in Chile and Mexico. The mining operation in Chile (Chuquicamata), which cost Anaconda $77 million, was the largest copper mine in the world. Then it was the source of two-thirds to three-fourths of the Anaconda Company's profits.

The same year ACM purchased American Brass Company, the nation's largest brass fabricator and a major consumer of copper and zinc. In 1926 Anaconda acquired the Giesche company, a large mining and industrial firm, operating in the Upper Silesia region of Poland.

At that time Anaconda was the fourth largest company in the world. These heady times, however, were short-lived.

Great speculation

In 1928 Ryan and Percy Rockefeller aggressively speculated on Anaconda shares, causing them to go up at first (when they sold) and then to go down (when they buy them back). Known today as a "pump and dump", at the time it was not illegal, and was actually quite common. The prices, under the pressure of a "joint account" set up by Ryan and Rockefeller of nearly a million and a half shares of Anaconda Copper Company, fluctuated from $40 in December, 1928 to $128 in March 1929.

Smaller investors were completely wiped out. The results are still considered one of the great fleecings in Wall Street history. The American Senate hearings concluded that those operations cost the public, at the very least, $150 million. A 1933 Senate banking committee called these operations the greatest frauds in American banking history and a leading cause of the 1930s depression.

Great Depression

In 1929 Anaconda Copper Mining Co. issued new stock and used some of the money to buy shares of speculative companies. When the market crashed on Oct. 29, 1929, Anaconda suffered serious financial setbacks. Moreover, at the same time, copper prices started going down dramatically. During the winter of 1932-33 copper prices had dropped to $0.103 per kg, down from an average of $0.295 per kg only two years earlier.

The Great Depression took its toll with massive unemployment in both the United States and Chile (up to 66 percent unemployment rate in the Chilean mines). On March 26 1931, Anaconda cut its dividend rate 40%. John D. Ryan died in 1933 and was buried in a copper coffin. His mighty Anaconda shares, once worth $175 each, had dropped to $4 at the bottom of the Great Depression. Cornelius Kelley became the Chairman in 1940.

The "Copper Collar"

The term copper collar, coined in the late 1800s, was a metaphor used to describe a person or a company directly influenced or controlled by the Anaconda Company. “From the 1920s until 1959, journalists working at the newspapers could write nothing that clashed with the company’s business enterprises. Journalists were thus not allowed to develop and exercise their professional skills through their news judgment—lawyers and accountants made news judgments, not journalists—and were frozen for decades in this pre-professional model.” By 1920, the Anaconda Company owned several of the states newspapers including the Butte Post, the Butte Minor, the Anaconda Standard, the Daily Missoulian, the Helena Independent, and the Billings Gazette.  The Anaconda Company controlled the economic and political dealings throughout Montana well into the mid-1900s.

As the state's largest employer, the Anaconda Company dominated Montana politics. In the political arena the "copper collar" symbolized influence, wealth, and power. In 1894, Montana held an election to decide which city would be its capital. Marcus Daly, an Anaconda supporter, used his power over the papers to further his cause. While campaigning, “Anaconda’s supporters portrayed Helena as a center of avarice and elitism while promoting their choice as the pick of the working man. In return, Helena’s backers claimed that if the victory should go to their opponent the entire state would be strangled by the “copper collar” of Daly’s Anaconda Copper Mining Company." Daly’s campaign was unsuccessful and Helena became the states capital. Flexing its political muscle again in 1903, the Anaconda Company closed down operations, putting fifteen thousand men out of work, until the legislature enacted the regulations it demanded. Montanans were angered by this decision and from that point forward to suggest that a politician “wore a copper collar” could cost him the election.

The copper collar symbolized oppression and control to the people of Butte. In the early 1900s, it was believed that Butte’s culture with its “perverse pride in its wide-open character was a response to the people’s belief in the all-encompassing power of the company. Butte’s bars, gambling dens, dance halls, and brothels were among the few public institutions not owned or controlled by Anaconda. It was not only the hazards of mining and the grim environment of Butte that propelled men and women to frenzied gaiety, but also the thought that here were arenas of self-expression denied them elsewhere in a city ringed by the 'copper collar'.”

Choosing sides in this battle was unavoidable. According to Author Fisher’s piece, Montana: Land of the Copper Collar, “Six months is the longest one may live in Montana without making the decision whether one is "for the Company" or "against the Company." The all-pervading and unrelenting nature of the struggle admits of no neutrals. Since the territory's admission to statehood in 1889 the struggle has continued.”

The use of the term "copper collar" has found its way into historical novels from that period. In The Old Copper Collar, a tale of the course of a senatorial election in Helena in the early 1900s, Dan Cushman makes a reference to the "copper collar": “At this point the galleries packed with Bennett sympathizers commenced heckling him with suggestions he wore the Copper Collar, but these hoots and catcalls he contemptuously ignored, reiterated his freedom from all cliques, factions, and corporations and that his purpose had been purely and simply to prove or disprove unlawful practices, and sat down.” Even the suggestion that a person wore the “copper collar” created pandemonium from the crowd.

Ivan Doig also makes references to the "copper collar" in his story Work Song. In 1919, Gracie resists the powerful Anaconda Company as they attempt to bully her into sell her property. She says, "Leave this house at once, Whoever-You-Are Morgan. I’ll not have under my roof a man who wears the copper collar." The workers who are under the “copper collar” are referred to as “snakes” and the Anaconda Company is referred to as an “ogre."

The "copper collar" symbolized different things to different people but one fact holds true, “the Anaconda Company used the tactics of an authoritarian state to quash a legitimate labor movement within its corporate fiefdom. That the press, an elemental part of democracy, was used in the assault marks a black period in the history of American journalism.” For decades Anaconda Company “mined and smelted metal, leveled forests, owned the newspapers, bribed the legislature, set the wages, murdered union organizers, exported the earnings, and finally shut down, leaving Butte and Anaconda the poorest cities in the states and the largest EPA Superfund site in the country.”

The phrase "copper collar" is also an example of metonymy when it is substituted for the act of the Anaconda Company controlling a person. It is closely related to the company because it is made of copper, which is what the company mined. A collar is device used to control, which is what the company used the copper collar for. [sic]

In the Semiotic Square for the "copper collar" (see illustration), Marcus Daly is considered the assertion and Miners is the negation in the first binary pair. The second binary relationship is created on the “control” axis. Union, the not Marcus Daly element, is considered to be the complex term, and "copper collar", the not Miner element, is the neutral term. Both a union and the "copper collar" are things that are used to gain control. The Anaconda Company used the copper collar to gain control of the papers and legislature and the Miners wanted to establish a union to gain some control over their working conditions.

 More Than Just the Unions

Of course, working conditions in this oligarchic monstrosity were terrible, but the WIKI article indulges a common and convenient mis-perception and, consequently, an over simplification.  The picture unintentionally painted is that the conflict was entirely between the mine workers and the Anaconda oligarchs.  There were other parties with an interest in Montana ranging from the cattle ranchers, conservationists and middle class merchants to everyday Montana residents with simple ideas of fairness and freedom.

By 1912 the corporate outrages of this beast had driven Montana residents -- and not just union workers -- to the end of what could be tolerated.  The precise mechanism of the revolt doesn't matter as much as the spirit of it.  One thing led to another, and the voters of Montana pushed a law by referendum over the skeletal bones of the remnants of their representative state government to stop it.

All this would have amounted to an understandable reaction on the part of those citizens.  Although this post is already a little lengthy, let's have a look at the statement of Montana Governor Schweitzer (D - Montana) when he heard the news of the Supreme Court's decision.  (Read the entire article here.  There is also a nice video interview with the Governor and Chris Hayes, MSNBC.)

Campaign spending limits helped Montana create a "pure democracy" that the Supreme Court has now overturned, said the state's governor, Democrat Brian Schweitzer. On Sunday's Up with Chris Hayes, he explained the history of Montana's Corrupt Practices Act, which the Supreme Court struck down on Monday in a 5-4 ruling.

Schweitzer said that the Corrupt Practices Act, which was passed in 1912 by referendum, was designed to check the power of the Montana "copper kings" who ruled the state.

"They owned everything," Schweitzer said. "They owned the mines, they owned the newspapers, they bought the legislature outright."

One of the most famous copper kings was William A. Clark, who Mark Twain once described as "as rotten a human being as can be found anywhere under the flag." Clark, Schweitzer said, "advertised in his newspapers that he would pay $10,000 cash money to any Montana legislator who would vote to send him to  Washington DC as a US Senator." (This was back when senators were appointed by state legislatures, not democratically elected.) It was such an egregious act of bribery that senators from other states—who, according to Schweitzer, "all bribed their way into the US Senate," albeit by more subtle means—felt obliged to refuse him a seat in Congress.

Clark's malfeasance was an extreme example of what the Corrupt Practices Act was designed to check. The law, which sharply limited outside expenditures on political campaigns, was seen to conflict with the Court's Citizens United ruling.

Schweitzer touted the act as a success and excoriated the Supreme Court for striking it down:

The people of Montana in 1912, we passed the anti-corruption act. We said, look, we're not going to allow these corporations to continue to loot and rape our land, and kill the miners that are working in them. We're going to have a legislature that works for the people. And so, for 100 years, we did. We had a pure democracy. We had legislators who were farmers and lawyers, they're doctors and nurses. They would serve just 90 days every other year, and they would raise three to six thousand dollars. Maximum contributions is $160. We had a system that actually worked

And the Supreme Court in Washington DC—a place where nothing works—they told us, 'No, we don't like your system. You oughta go to the corrupt system we're using in Washington DC. What could go wrong?'

When host Chris Hayes asked a question about differences between the current state of money in politics and that of the Gilded Age, Schweitzer scoffed.

"Gilded Age?" he said. "You're calling that the Gilded Age and this is not? They were pikers compared to what we're doing now."

The Vision of Things to Come

Make no mistake.  The Montana prior to 1912 represents exactly what Citizens United is designed to ultimately create all across the country. Further, the insult has occurred on two important planes.

First, The Supremes have effortlessly -- without so much as an oral argument -- vaporized Montana's plebiscite referendum, the Montana Corrupt Practices Act.  The state is staring at oligarchs today who make the violent thugs of 1912 "look like pikers."  21st Century Montana is rich with natural resources.  The oligarchs sponsoring the Supremes' attack in the hands of their servant, Chief Justice Roberts, are faced with the alternatives of simply "recapturing" the state government politically or dealing with the modern reality of legislatively regulated extraction practices.

Second, as the Chief Justice and his dependably loyal minions delivered the edict that Citizens United style corruption was once more legalized in Montana, he effectively neutered the political will of the State's citizens.  They would now be prey to the toxic corruption empowered by the federal Citizens United ruling whether they agreed or not.

It's MeanMesa's opinion that Roberts, being the reactionary creature he is, decided to reach into his Supreme Court bag of "Constitutional laws" -- there is no judicial foundation for most of what the man is spewing forth on command weekly -- and give the "little people" a respite on the Affordable Care Act in order to obscure his larceny on the state level in Montana -- and, eventually everywhere else.

And, by the way, that Affordable Care Act's "Congressional Tax powers" gizmo is perfectly designed for a painless Congressional dissolution should Romney become President.  The ruling is not a durable rescission of the claims by the corporate health insurers that they enjoy rights to a perpetual "cut" of every health care dollar spent in the country.  It amounts to no more than a conveniently temporary hiatus -- a few more chips cast on the poker table which will be the 2012 election.

The CIA Profiles World Oligarchy

MeanMesa's on-going penchant for railing about the rise of  the American oligarchy is hardly "late breaking news." Still, some very interesting information surfaced recently on our faceBook account which is important enough to share here on Short Current Essays.

The bumbling MeanMesa communications technology has been unable to provide an operational link directly to the source document, but any visitor who cares to view the original can reach it through this faceBook link to my wall. MeanMesa's thanks to Daniel Secrist who first posted the link.

The sources cited for the information in the chart are interesting.  They range from the CIA Factbook to UNICEF to Kings College, that is, they range pretty convincingly through a robust spectrum of data from both conservative and liberal institutions.  Also of interest is the unique collection of categories for the columns of data presented for each of the countries analyzed in the chart.

Because the actual graphics were not suited for insertion in the blogger format, the chart is regenerated here.  The original column headings had to be abbreviated, but the descriptions provided in the original are provided below.  Please take a look before you try to interpret the chart data.

The following index will explain the labels at the top of the chart.

Wealth

Income inequality (Gini index)  Higher numbers indicate more income inequality.

Unemployment

The unemployment rate - most recent estimates.

Democracy

The Level of Democracy -- (Scale 1 to 10, 10 is most democratic)

Well Being

The Gallup Global Wellbeing Index (percentage thriving, 2010)

Food

Food Insecurity "Have there been times in the past 12 months when you did not have enough money to buy food that you or your family needed."  Percentage answering yes.

Life Times

Life Expectancy at birth.

Prisoners

Prison population per 100,000 citizens.

Math Grades

Student performance - Math Scale Store

Science Grades

Student performance - Science Scale Score

Sources:  

• The CIA's "The World Factbook"
• U.S. unemployment rate from the Bureau of Labor Statistics
• The Economist Intelligence Unit's "Democracy Index 2010"
• Gallup, UNICEF, King's College London's World Prison Brief
• Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's  Program for International Student Assessment

The overall picture of global oligarchy profiled in these data is unsettling, indeed.  MeanMesa visitors, stalwart pursuers of media source credibility that they are, are not surprised at the dismal state of wealth inequality around the economically developed nations of the planet.  We have watched the relentless moves to concentrate all "extractable" wealth into the pockets of the ruling class for some years already.

Worse, we have watched this process be cleverly redefined in the oligarchic media, always presented as something besides what the facts might suggest.  We now find ourselves in a world populated with "media consumers" who have  actually believed all this "mouth junk"as it has been trotted out under the disguise of the exclusive truth.

Yet, here are the numbers.

Visitors to this blog have previously been presented with the scope of the radical redistribution of national wealth to our latest crop of well-fed billionaires.  We see more examples of the process with every day's "news."  The example are now legion.

Senator Sanders tells us about the top 400 richest Americans with increases to their personal wealth of $630 Bn during the reign of the autocracy [W].  Hartmann routinely reminds us that the top "earners" in the country enjoy over 80% of the annual total while the lowest 80% share less than 10%.  We watch in disgust as Wisconsin Governor Walker, the product of Koch Brother millions channelled through a Citizens United-style "cash laundromat,"  brazenly lurches forward with his plan to destroy organized labor.

All these outrages which are accompanied by dollar signs are only the "easy part" of the campaign to permanently destroy our democracy.  When we penetrate this swamp only a couple of inches deeper, we see that the destructive effects of this well organized effort creates a literal shocking cloud of even more associated bad results.  These are not nice people.

Perhaps the most puzzling of all the aspects of the scheme is the mysterious willingness of these social and economic psychopaths to risk the violent civil unrest which will be the unavoidable progeny of their "class war."  They are already wealthy and powerful beyond measure, yet their avarice seems to compel them "wring out the cloth" even more.  Apparently it has not yet occurred to them that their parasitic model will fall apart when they have finally starved their victim to death.

Spend a few minutes reviewing the information in the chart.  Spend a few more minutes letting these numbers "soak in."  Make your own conclusions about where this out-of-control Juggernaut is heading.  

If you are willing to ride this thing all the way to the inevitable train wreck, just relax.  If you are not, do something.

The Size of Armies, The Size of Ambitions

Although history never actually becomes fluid, the interpretation of history seems to have no problem conforming its message and meaning to the issues of the moment. Regardless of the issues. Regardless of the moment.


Fifty years ago in 1961 President Eisenhower delivered his farewell address as he was leaving office. Quite aside from the contemporary inclination to deify old Presidents, MeanMesa must insist that the General be only given his kudos when they turn out to be deserved, but that they, nonetheless, be given.


Eisenhower cannot be allowed to become a metaphor. He was a man. Quite a man.

(image source)

Dwight David Eisenhower

34th President of the United States

Ike was a man comprised of many sides. Some were humanizing -- his alleged connection to Marilyn Monroe. Some were indisputable evidence of vision and political savvy - the interstate highway system. Some were military accomplishments so immense that they threatened to leave the flesh and bones of the actual man behind -- the invasion and recapture of Europe as a five star, General of the Armies in WWII. Some revealed a quiet, steadfast bravery -- staring down the USSR as the ghostly reality of nuclear MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) floated across the Warsaw Pact. Some were marked by questionable motives and unpleasant consequences -- the CIA's destruction of the Iranian democracy.

(image source)

Dwight D. Eisenhower, General of the Army

Now that the "feathers have been furled" one more time, we can return to the now famous speech. Most MeanMesa visitors are quite familiar with the "military-industrial complex" part, but right here, we can also take just a little bit more comprehensive look at a bit more of the speech's content. For visitors wishing to read the speech in its entirety, link here.


MeanMesa's appreciation to www.ourdocuments.gov.

Eisenhower's 1961 Farewell Address (excerpted)

III

Throughout America's adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among people and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt both at home and abroad.

Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We face a hostile ideology-global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily the danger it poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle - with liberty at stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.

Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small,there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defense; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research-these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we which to travel.

But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs - balance between the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped for advantage-balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between action of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgement seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration.

The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their government have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well, in the face of stress and threat. But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise. I mention two only.

IV

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.

Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peace time, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea. 

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United State corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence-economic, political, even spiritual-is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been over shadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system-ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

Please pay especial attention to the highlighted sections.

Looking at Eisenhower's Words in 2011

The title of this posting notes the sizes of armies and the sizes of ambitions. In the time since Eisenhower was President, the world has continually changed. The current state of the world, the current state of our US national ambitions and the idea of "balance" are all not only new but also dynamically fluid. In our midst, as a nation, are those who have not yet noticed that the earth has shifted under their feet.

All the ideas of force which guided Dwight Eisenhower have been transformed, too. We can see a few of the inevitable incongruities when we apply our conclusions over our present situation.

Since the time of the speech in 1961, the military industrial complex has grown more voracious every year and more expensive with every budget. During the Cold War, this "tit for tat" approach seemed to make sense. Now, it turns out that we as a country continue to "tat" long after the rest of the world -- including our current competitors and opponents -- has ceased to "tit."

In WWII the US was actually pleasantly surprised to discover that we could so effectively arm ourselves and fight. Military approaches during that conflict and a few following it, notably Korea, amounted to massed troops and total industrial commitment. This strategy was basically successful in the Cold War, too. Further, we have seen our more modern military opponents adopt this strategy. Iraq, for example, had a massive army equipped with rather respectable Soviet hardware. Other countries such as North Korea and Iran have taken this same dubious course. Both are starving themselves and their faltering economies trying to sustain such an immense expense.

Our great national competitor, The Peoples Republic of China, however, has not fallen for the bait. In that case, we see a highly reasoned approach to military expenses. The gigantic Peoples Liberation Army is primarily designed for internal and border operations, a claim made credible by its lack of mobility. Strategic arms designed to project power, although formidable, pale with respect both to ambition and cost when compared to those of the US. MeanMesa believes that the PRC's economical response to the necessity of an arm's build up is probably fairly consistent with at least the pragmatic essence of Eisenhower's warning. (see chart below)

Continuing, the most recent "ambition" of this nation was to capture and exploit the Iraqi oil reserves to the benefit of our own local oligarchs. Given the nature of the Iraqi military, our own forces were well suited to the job. Suddenly, however, our national opponents, seeing that waging any more of these "old wars" was both militarily foolhardy and too expensive, switched tactics to projection of power through the mechanism of the promotion of terror.

This could have been a moment of clarity for our realizations about our military industrial complex, but it occurred in an environment where the same sinister complex enjoyed a well crafted control of the very media which might have exposed it. In fact, the day which will greet tomorrow at dawn sees these oligarchic reactionaries in charge of the House of Representatives, the Supreme Court and the Fourth Estate (the media). The oligarchic influence in our Senate, although incomplete, remains capable of obstructionism and manipulation unseen before in the country -- a sickening shadow of the concept of representational democracy.

Further, it would be an overly limiting mistake to continue to think strictly of the military industrial complex, per se. That categorization will be far more useful when we direct it simply to encompass our unruly collection of oligarchs. Given Eisenhower's long service in the US military, the dangers he saw in the military industrial complex were understandable. What Eisenhower saw as a select threat, it turns out, was only the first, visible evidence of  what would, by this present day, have the quiet but robust trappings of oligarchy and class war.

Those who benefited the most from the fiscal military industrial largesse during the Cold War served as an example for their equally "cash infatuated" peers of today. This group of highly organized and politically protected (at least, protected from competition if not prosecution) oligarchs saw the "treasure" at hand, and that "treasure" was entirely defined as access to the remarkable flow and reservoir of US tax dollars.

The bad habits rapidly spread to other areas beyond the initial "military industrial" sector. Highly profitable petroleum corporations received huge tax subsidies. Congressmen argued not about the security requirements of the nation, but instead, about which contributors, contractors and plants were in which Congressional Districts. Highly profitable pharmaceutical companies received the free product of massive, federally financed research not to mention huge federal payments for medications at non-negotiable, "no-bid" prices.

The ugly mechanism is always the same. Voters could be frightened by international enemies, their well developed petroleum dependence, their illnesses -- many of which derived from unregulated industrial pollution, the future of their jobs and wages or simple abstractions concerning the destruction of their religious freedom, guns or other features of a carefully fabricated, yet perilously unexamined "exceptionalism."

If we were to translate Eisenhower's concern with the "military industrial complex," adding the now inescapable corporate socialism of the present day, to our present situation, we would be forced to redefine and expand the threat far beyond what was becoming apparent in 1961 with those over eager bullet and missile factory owners. 

Regardless of the precise terms in his farewell address, Eisenhower was describing a class war.

The last remnants of anything resembling "balance" are a thing of our modern past. Processes such as this one have embedded "tipping points," fulcrums, the position of which will determine the direction of any further, social motility. When every aspect of government protection of such corporate interests is coupled with the grotesque products of "reciprocal maintenance" harvested from a constant flow of new threats each eliciting a new set of expensive, "undeniably necessary" counter measures, all that remains constant is the relentless extraction of more tax money to corporate coffers.

For any MeanMesa visitor interested in charts and schedules which might depict this problem more graphically:

(graphic source)

The comparison noted between the US and the Chinese approach:

Military Expenditures of the PRC (graphic source)

And a glimpse of the relative costs of various, recent US military adventures:

The Wars of Defense and Oligarchy (image source)

Finally, in hopes of bringing this to a more personal level for MeanMesa visitors, comes the final chart.  It presents the actual spending per citizen in the respective countries listed.  The circular chart to the right compares the total amount of spending for the same countries.

Military Spending per Person (image source)

Facing the Consequences

As we review the incredible amount of our personal fortune which has been diverted to this small class of economic opportunists -- oligarchs, by any other name -- we see the price we have already paid for this grave misdirection of our national effort and our national wealth. We know the names of the players, both corporate and Congressional. We have patiently watched as the endless cycle of threat, fear, greed and response has played out during our own lifetimes and during those of our parents.

Now, as we watch our nation slowly advance to its likely nadir of respect and power, we can see -- or, at least, imagine -- what might have been done with such immense resources. We see the same faces who cajoled, voted and validated all this looting, cheaply redecorated, in our government now claiming to having "turned over a new leaf." They expect us to be as easily fooled as we always were before.

At this point, MeanMesa could address more recent outrages -- for example, the trillion dollar F22's and F35's, war satellites, H-bomb systems, and undoubtedly dozens of "secret" other cases -- but the point is made. The rampage may have been painted in more comfortable colors, but it continues unabated.

We must now direct our attention to Eisenhower's last paragraph. It speaks of statesmanship, balance and principle. This is the timeless part of his speech. It is the part which reaches us perhaps more clearly than any of the rest.

We must locate candidates with these qualities. After that, we must support them. elect them and hold them to such attractive promise.

Exaggerated? MeanMesa sees this challenge as immediate as that of holding our future as a hot coal in one's palms.

MeanMesa's compliments to the President