Summary: What a wonderful week, bringing to even the most obtuse of Americans unmistakable evidence of our government’s growing power. These incidents are insignificant in themselves, more of the endless scandals that titillated members of America’s outer party (the proles don’t care about such things; the inner party knows their irrelevance). But they might give small pushes to help a few see the true state of America.
(1) The Tea Party discovered that the government will investigate even white conservatives! Watch their anti-reality screens glow as they deflect all evidence that it was routine low-level actions, not planned attack by the Black Pretender in the White House.
(2) Journalists discovered that the government has no friends, only subjects and targets. Even their supine support of the government — concealing secrets, spinning stories to their benefit, denying a voice to its opponents — gives them no immunity from government surveillance. Legal surveillance, due to the post-9/11 shredding of the 4th Amendment.
(3) During the five years posting warnings on the FM website, I have received many forms of replies saying Don’t worry; all is well. None say it in as few words as this tweet, which should be carved on the eventual memorial to the late great Constitution:
Summary: I’m often asked for solutions to the most serious problem facing the Republic, the erosion of its foundation. There is a simple answer. The question makes a false assumption. Understanding this allows a clearer vision of America, and our available choices.
There is no spoon.
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An incident from the Constitutional Convention:
Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia asked Dr. Franklin “What have we got, a republic or a monarchy”
“A republic, if you can keep it” replied the Doctor.
— Entry of 18 September 1787 in the Papers of Dr. James McHenry on the Federal Convention of 1887. He signed the Constitution, served as our 3rd Secretary of War, and is namesake of Fort McHenry.
Scores of posts on the FM website document the death of the Second Republic (of the Constitution, following the First under the Articles of Confederation). Readers often respond to these with impassioned requests or demands for solutions to this problem. They are mistaken. There is no problem.
Our Republic consists of machinery to govern America. Machinery which can worked by it’s people — or should they choose not to do so, by powerful factions. Both are choices. Neither choice is a “problem”.
Events since 9-11 make it obvious we have chosen to let our richest citizens run America, taking the responsibility and effort of self-government off our shoulders. We have an inalienable right to do so, to withdraw as active participants in the governance of the nation.
Our plutocrats will probably govern well. Of course they will make decisions in their best interest, not ours. In exchange we’ll have the freedom to complain about the result, so long as we do so quietly. Our ever-growing internal security agencies will handle unruly dissenters.
Loki helps us to see our true selves
Summary: We can learn about ourselves from our art, even from mass market movies. Sometimes they reveal unspeakable insights about ourselves. Here Loki speaks of our unwillingness to bear the responsibility and effort of self-government.
It is the glory and good of Art, that Art remains the one way possible of speaking truth …
— Robert Browning, The Ring and the Book (1868)
A valuable function of artists comes from their ability as outsiders to see into the soul of a society, and so reveal hidden truths. Often revealing things we hide from ourselves, refusing to see unless shown as entertainment. Much as the medieval Court Fools could commit lèse-majesté and keep their heads.
Today Americans carry an unspeakable truth: we have grown weary of the burden of self-government. Our passive acceptance of our government’s actions since 9-11 make this plain to see. The government’s lies about Iraq and Afghanistan, the expansion of government power, the conversion of police into para-military security agencies, the bank bailouts (our economic policy in service to the plutocracy) — all these and more accepted passively.
Our politics since 9-11 has been a series of comedy acts to minimize the cognitive dissonance created by the contrast between our self image as Americans and our actions. Only Hollywood can show us these truths in a form we can accept. As Loki does in The Avengers:
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Summary: Powerful interest groups provide a mirror in which we can see our true selves. Their well-funded expert opinion manipulators know our real hopes and fears, and manipulate them to mold public opinion. This is one of a long series of posts showing how both Left and Right have drawn the same conclusion, both sides basing their propaganda on our dominant emotion: fear. So long as we passively accept being lied to and manipulated, they will continue to do so.
A child with oddly clean clothes playing in the mud; from The Guardian, 13 May 2013
Contents
- A well-written article in The Guardian
- Conclusion
- For More Information
See the follow-up post Loki helps us to see our true selves.
(1) A well-written article in The Guardian
“America’s first climate refugees“, Suzanne Goldenberg, The Guardian, 13 May 2013 — “Newtok, Alaska is losing ground to the sea at a dangerous rate and for its residents, exile is inevitable.”
Goldenberg is the Guardian’s US environment correspondent, and a skilled propagandist. The article is quite misleading. Excerpt:
The people of Newtok, on the west coast of Alaska and about 400 miles south of the Bering Strait that separates the state from Russia, are living a slow-motion disaster that will end, very possibly within the next five years, with the entire village being washed away.
The Ninglick River coils around Newtok on three sides before emptying into the Bering Sea. It has steadily been eating away at the land, carrying off 100ft or more some years, in a process moving at unusual speed because of climate change. Eventually all of the villagers will have to leave, becoming America’s first climate change refugees.
Let’s examine the key points of the article.
(a) Setting the background: rising sea levels
Sea levels have been rising for millenia since the end of the last ice age, while the planet has had both warming and cooling cycles. It’s not clear that the rate of rise has substantially accelerated recently, although most scientists expect it to do so in the future). See the posts at the end for provide ample references to the work of the IPCC and relevant peer-reviewed literature.
(b) Evidence from a government report!
The article twice cites a March 2009 Army Corps of Engineers (ACE) report as evidence. But it mentions neither the 2017 date nor the role of climate change. It does discuss erosion, an omnipresent natural process.
The forecast of flooding Newtok by 2017 comes from a July 2008 ACE report: “Revised Environmental Assessment and Finding of No Significant Impact: Newton Evacuation Center”. I can find no online copy, so we do not know what it says about the causes of the flooding (if in fact it does discusses the causes).
(c) More scary evidence from the government!
She says: “A federal government report found more than 180 other native Alaskan villages – or 86% of all native communities – were at risk because of climate change.” That exaggerates the report’s finding:
While flooding and erosion is a long-standing problem that has been documented in Alaska for decades, various studies and reports indicate that coastal villages in Alaska are becoming more susceptible. This increasing susceptibility is due in part to rising temperatures that cause protective shore ice to form later in the year, leaving the villages vulnerable to storms.
Dramatic but photoshopped, Science, 7 May 2010
Summary: The news media focuses on the month-to-month changes in the jobs report, which consist mostly of noise. Strong months confirm the optimists; weak months confirm the pessimists. In fact the trend of growth remains the real story, with the US economy near stall speed — supported only (like the other developed nations) by massive multi-year fiscal and monetary stimulus. Slow growth bought at great cost. A cost we cannot long continue to pay, borrowing and squandering the money ($ which instead could be rebuilding America). Just like Japan since 1989.
Contents
- Conclusions
- About the recovery
- Household survey
- Establishment survey
- Unemployment
- Other important metrics
- For more information about US economy
(1) Conclusions
Here we examine the April employment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. They conduct two surveys: one of households, one of businesses. They are not directly comparable, each giving different perspectives on the US economy. This report paints a picture consistent with the many other streams of information about the economy: slow growth. Slowing slow growth, as shown by this from ECRI — through March. The April numbers (1.6%, 1.2%) are small ticks up in these lines.
From ECRI, 5 April 2013
(2) About the recovery
To understand the jobs report one must first understand the recovery of which it is one aspect: during this period the government’s public debt increased $1.03 trillion — 6.5% of GDP (see debt here and GDP here), one of the higher fiscal deficits in the world. Our shiny recovery results from massive borrowing and spending — plus increasingly unconventional monetary policy.
In other words, organic growth has not yet resumed. The US economy has stabilized and slowly improves only due to the massive “drugs” of monetary and fiscal stimulus (the former boosted with QE3 as the latter winds down). Both have severe side-effects, which at some unknown point in the future will become problematic or untenable. But the worst side effect was unexpected: the stimulus eliminated pressure for reform. We have had the New Deal stimulus without the New Deal reforms (some of which failed, but the others laid the foundation for the great post-war boom).
(3) The Household survey
The Current Population survey is a simple survey of households, with large error bars but no revisions. It’s worth watching because it’s the basis for the headline unemployment rate, it gives some useful data not in the more-accurate business (establishment) survey, and because some research suggests that the household report shows inflection points before the establishment survey.
Here are the numbers, in thousands, not seasonally adjusted. Note that 1/3 of the new jobs during the past year are part-time jobs. {That’s from the March report; appears here in error}
