Lies and the corruption of democracy
US issues - - Posted on September, 6 at 5:20 pm by Ken L
Democracy depends on a certain level of ethical conduct on the part of those who stand for public office. One of the main reasons I despised Howard and his cronies so much was their preparedness to be deliberately dishonest with the electorate when it suited their purposes.
The US presidential campaign is witnessing not just deception and dishonesty but blatant, outright lies. Latest example: John McCain said this about his new running mate who is suddenly the darling of the Republicans and looks a fair bet to sweep him into the White House:
“You know what I enjoyed the most? She took the luxury jet that was acquired by her predecessor and sold it on eBay — and made a profit!” McCain declared in Wisconsin at a campaign stop on Friday. It could not be immediately determined what that profit was.
The truth is:
But in fact, the jet did not sell on eBay. It was sold to a businessman from Valdez named Larry Reynolds, who paid $2.1 million for the jet, shy of the original $2.7 million purchase price, according to contemporaneous news reports, including a story in the New York Times.
Dan Spencer, the director of administrative services for Alaska’s Public Safety Department, said that the Republican speaker of the Alaska House, John L. Harris, brokered the deal. Reynolds made campaign contributions to both Palin and Harris in 2006 and 2007.
What happened? It appears that, as promised during her bid for governor in 2006, Palin did try to sell the plane on eBay but that doing so was not as easy as it might have sounded. After putting it up to auction, there was one serious bid, in December 2006, and it fell through. Still, the Westwind II was sold about eight months later, achieving Palin’s goal of ridding the state of a luxury item.
But that hasn’t stopped Palin, or John McCain, from implying — and, on Friday, claiming outright — that Palin did sell the jet on the Internet.
I’m sure McCain’s campaign won’t miss a beat. They’ll go right on telling the lie because it supports their chosen ‘narrative’ … i.e. a work of creative fiction in which Sarah Palin is the heroine (not based on a true story). They have also invented a wholly fictitious account of Obama’s policies which they repeat every chance they get, because they know most of their supporters would never read anything published by the Democrats but will swallow whole the myths promulgated by their candidate … and will in turn spread them throughout the wider community.
It’s not just the Republicans who do this of course. Who can forget Hillary Clinton’s idiotic claim to have come under sniper fire in Sarajevo or wherever it was, when nothing of the kind ever happened either there or anywhere else? This was not some trivial memory lapse but a brazen lie (unless she truly believed it actually happened, in which case thank god she lost the nomination).
Once candidates for high office start to behave in this amoral manner, the requirements for a genuine democracy break down. Democracies are like markets - participants need a reasonable amount of information before they can function effectively. The problems are compounded these days by the tendency of so many in the media to join enthusiastically in helping to promote the lies, instead of exposing them for what they are. When lies become the everyday currency of political discussion, the whole system of governance inevitably becomes corrupt.
Is there a solution? We’ll know that in November. If McCain’s evil warmongers win office then it will be clear that lies and deception are the way to succeed in American politics. If Obama wins, he might - possibly - be the harbinger of an ethical renaissance. But I won’t be holding my breath.
Posted in US issues |
September 6th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Howard not only turned political lying into an art form, he made it almost compulsory.
Voters are so swamped with it now that they’re battle-weary and simply expect more of the same. From Nixon swearing that he’d done nothing wrong and would never resign to Clinton’s wayward spermatazoa, from Bush’s WMD bullshit to Howard’s endless litany of lies, and from Blair’s ‘dossier’ to the Axis of Evil crap, it’s never been any different nor likely to be.
Perhaps lying merely represents human society but the danger rests with those who lie while holding great power. As the great scientist Carl Sagan once said:
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. The bamboozle has captured us. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
Or the words of Otto von Bismark “People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election.”
September 6th, 2008 at 6:25 pm
For too many voters the lies to not matter. They are EXPECTED. The citizens are disengaged, disillusioned, distracted and disgusted. As long as the lies do not impact on them personally they don’t give a rat’s arse.
When the slimy rodent’s lies (interest rates and Workchoices) threatened the wallets of his darling “aspirationals” they finally turned on him. The bullshit about Iraq, kiddies overboard, Peter Reith’s phone card, AWB, brother Stan etc was shrugged off by the punters. As long as a candidate has a fair fable about keeping YOU rich and safe, all else is forgiven.
Demockracy is not foolproof.
September 6th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
And the pollies themselves?
I suspect they look at their fabrications as “noble lies” which facilitate a greater good. They are superior. They are born to rule and can’t trust the voters to make the correct choice based on facts. It’s mythology constructed to ensure the right people get elected.
For the good of the people, of course.
September 6th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
From Sarahs ‘blog’, “discriminated against me because I am not a mormon,racism is terrible”..
September 6th, 2008 at 7:39 pm
From the link to Anonymous Lefty Ken - I think the commenters pretty much demolished his whole argument quite well.
September 6th, 2008 at 8:06 pm
Ummm Peter I know I’m slow sometimes, but can you please explain WTF you are talking about? Where did I or anyone else link to Anonymous Lefty (and can you tell us what site it is? Or do you mean An Onymous Lefty … which I can’t see any links to either?)
September 6th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
I thought they’d have beamed up Sarah the Impaler by now. Her otherwordly charm is about as seductive as her voice…ever wanted to set a murder of crows on someone just to stop them talking?
I imagine the good peoples of Alaska are in raptures over Sarah’s invitation to every energy corporation to come to their pristine neighborhood & rape the living daylights out of it.
Still, it must be panties wet exciting for your average Country First, City Last Mom with apple pies for eyes & buttocks of hog for cheeks to think of having a female Vice President that can head down to the shed and throttle the Thanksgiving turkey without a flinch, marinate it with the dripping, hot sweat of a hockey Mom in child motivating over-drive…and stuff it with gun powder so the taste literally explodes in your mouth.
September 6th, 2008 at 10:45 pm
Sorry Ken - http://www.anonymousliberal.com - your second link. And I don’t think you’re slow at all.
September 7th, 2008 at 12:45 am
Ah I see … liberal = lefty … your Freudian slip is showing Peter
September 7th, 2008 at 1:46 am
Indeed it is
September 7th, 2008 at 4:07 am
and stuff it with gun powder so the taste literally explodes in your mouth
Now thats a classic Nasking
I think I’ll have some of that, with a bottle of Alaskan Gold Nugget Hefeweizen.
The political lie would have to be as old as politics itself. Like the chicken egg thing, one came with the other. By nature, lies are more common in democracies than other forms of government, re-election being the key word. The electorate wants to be told how every thing is going to be just fine, and the fatter you put the lipstick on the flying pigs, the finer they look.
Might just be time for a complete overhaul of our democratic system. What do we need parliamentarians for if they always vote along party lines anyway? Machines can do that, surely.
I suggest we introduce a similar system as we have with jurors, MP’s are randomly picked from the enrolled population, for one term in office. Three birds with one stone, as this way we would end up with a more representative assembly of people, the punk sitting next to the monk, each the same amount of time to speak on matters, MP’s with no party line to follow will vote on the issues by their received merits, and best of all, no more need to come up with propaganda every three years.
September 7th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
What about a ban on electronic media reporting and advertisments for 100 days before an election?
Too tired to think that through…
September 7th, 2008 at 6:59 pm
Juan, imagine if Sarah the Impaler had Putin round for Christmas dinner…gunpowder in the turkey…arsenic in the eggnog…an attempt to mow him down with a snowmobile, that highly identifiable shriek they call a voice echoing thru the buildings of Washington, curled lip frozen into place as our Northern Bush heads for her Russky target with a cry of:
“Take this you Godless axis of evil supporting evil SOB spawned from the seed of evil Commies from a nation that evilly plays hockey like evil puck lickin’ pussies…think your evil oil & gas grabbing evil nation can threaten our land of the good & holier than thou you evil bastard?…well, I have seen evil in you and know how evil is overcome…eat my snow evil fuckin’ Putin!!!…
(Rides over him)
oh…and Merry Christmas you evil sucker” (irritating cackle similar to witchy-poo).
Sarah the Divider will bring PEACE to the world as a negotiator…once she’s flattened most of it. Can’t wait.
N’
September 7th, 2008 at 10:44 pm
Please see NEW YORK TIME article of August 25, 2007:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/25/us/25jet.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
It WAS sold on eBay.
The “Palin lies” SMEAR PROPAGANDA is so vulgar.
September 8th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
I’d give my left nut to be her speechwriter. I’d also go huntin’ with her on Labor Day! How refreshing to have some real women enter public life, rather than those crew-cutted bearded barren misogynist bints we are stuck with.
You Go Girl!
September 8th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
“I’d give my left nut to be her speechwriter.”
I doubt anyone from the Rove crew has any nuts. Those gutless shrivelled sack types send those w/ large nuts to do their dirty work in Iraq & Afghanistan for them…& convince the large nut types to have plenty more potential warrior babies for them…who grow up and become pumped up fast food consumers who leave school early…go fight an empire campaign or two just like “good ol’ Dad”…return home if they’re lucky w/ big balls intact…have heaps of potential warrior babies, get in debt big time & guzzle gas for breakfast, lunch & dinner just to keep shrivelled sack type & his corporate aristocratic mates bathing & tanning under the neon lights of the slimey-fuckers cave.
Sarah the Impaler will easily rule that den of limpness…takeover from Condi the Lash…
I wonder if Sarah knows how to wax shriveled fruit?
N’
September 8th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
If the Dems wanna win they might want to take a look at Virginia Governor Tim Kaine’s performance on ‘Late Edition’…he kicked arse imho. A determined, steely-eyed when it matters, yet compassionate character who gets the message across.
At the Republican National Convention Dem traitor Joseph Lieberman kept talkin’ about how “American” he was…& how he believed in “Country first”…when we know that he really thinks
ISRAEL FIRST.
I hope the people in America bring in more Tim Kaine types…& give the flick to the traitors & profiteers.
N’
September 8th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
James Carville & Donna Brazile kicked arse on CNNs Late Edition too (going thru it slowly).
Carville’s rapid fire citing of global problems & why America needs a Vice President who has left the country more than once ending w/ the direct, sensible comment that “I believe the world is older than 5000 years old” was SPOT ON.
As was Donna’s mentioning that Jesus was probably a community organiser & Pontius Pilate would be viewed as a Governor.
Two grand slam home runs.
September 8th, 2008 at 9:51 pm
If you want a demonstration of the con-artists & fakers behind the McCain camp, look no further than the aristocratic sounding cosmetic job that is Nancy Pfotenhauer. She’s been popping up on CNN regularly as an adviser to defend & promote the man who has embraced Bush’s tax policies for the rich…John S. McCain (the S. must stand for SYCOPHANT considering how much he votes w/ Bush & gives him tongue during election campaigns).
Well, it turns out Nancy P. worked for Koch industries & then became a Bush fave in 2001 (ahhh, that year again).
Koch Industries, (pronounced “coke”), is the largest privately-held company in the United States, with annual sales of $90 billion. (Cargill comes in second for privately-held companies with sales of $75 billion.) Koch’s owners, brothers Charles and David H. Koch, are leading contributors to the Koch Family Foundations, which supports a network of conservative organizations and think tanks, including Citizens for a Sound Economy, the libertarian Cato Institute, Reason Magazine, the Manhattan Institute, the Heartland Institute, and the Democratic Leadership Council.
Pollution
Koch Industries is also a major polluter. During the 1990s, its faulty pipelines were responsible for more than 300 oil spills in five states, prompting a landmark penalty of $35 million from the Environmental Protection Agency. In Minnesota, it was fined an additional $8 million for discharging oil into streams. During the months leading up to the 2000 presidential elections, the company faced even more liability, in the form of a 97-count federal indictment charging it with concealing illegal releases of 91 metric tons of benzene, a known carcinogen, from its refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas.
Republican Ties
If convicted, the company faced fines of up to $352 million, plus possible jail time for company executives. After George W. Bush became president, however, the U.S. Justice Department dropped 88 of the charges. Two days before the trial, John Ashcroft settled for a plea bargain, in which Koch pled guilty to falsifying documents. All major charges were dropped, and Koch and Ashcroft settled the lawsuit for a fraction of that amount.
Koch had contributed $800,000 to the Bush election campaign and other Republican candidates.
The company spent $3,528,750 for lobbying in 2006. $820,000 was to outside lobbying firms with the remainder being spent using in-house lobbyists.
In February 2005, the Hill reported, “Top White House official Matt Schlapp is joining the Washington office of oil-and-gas conglomerate Koch Industries, the latest example of high-level administration and congressional staffers making post-election leaps to the lobbying world.” Schlapp had headed the White House’s Office of Political Affairs. At Koch, Schlapp will be the executive director of federal affairs, directing Washington lobbying.
(SourceWatch)
and:
Charles G. Koch may be the richest and most politically connected mogul you’ve never heard of.
Koch (pronounced coke) heads Koch Industries, the world’s largest private company with oil refineries, gas pipelines, cattle ranches, paper mills and financial services that produce an estimated $90 billion in revenue a year. Although Koch is richer than George Soros or Carl Icahn - and spends millions each year to lobby Congress and to bankroll libertarian causes - he is largely unknown outside of his hometown of Wichita, KS.
Which is apparently just the way he likes it.
But though Charles Koch, now 72, prefers to fly below the radar, he is a true believer in what he refers to as the “science of market-based management…Koch Industries contributes more money to candidates through its political action committee (KochPAC) and its 80,000 employees, than any other oil or gas company - donating $1.15 million during the 2008 election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The lion’s share of that, or 85 percent, went to Republicans; 15 percent went to Democrats.
(For comparison’s sake, the next biggest contributor, among major oil or gas companies, was Exxon Mobil, which donated $674, 359 in the 2008 cycle so far).
Very little, however, went to presumptive Republican nominee John McCain, though McCain has received millions from other oil and gas companies.
Although Koch Industry’s former top lobbyist - Nancy Mitchell Pfotenhauer – advises McCain on economic issues - the company has contributed only $6,750 to the GOP candidate thus far, according to the CRP. It has given nothing to Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee.
But Koch has donated generously to several Republican committees, including the Republican National Committee ($30,000), the National Republican Congressional Committee ($30,000), the National Republican Senatorial Committee ($30,000) and the National Democratic Senatorial Committee ($30,000), as well as to a slew of mostly GOP lawmakers.
(Billionaire Charles Koch plays politics, but out of public eye, By Carol Eisenberg August 8, 2008…sourced on Muckety .com)
MORE ON NANCY:
Prior to her appointment to IWF in 2001, she directed the Washington Office of Koch Industries, the second largest privately held company in the United States. A biographical note from 2004 stated that “at Koch, Pfotenhauer experienced first-hand the legislative and regulatory labyrinth that faces American companies and ultimately has an impact on consumers.”
And Nancy’s word is about as trustworthy as the rest of the corporate sucking Repugs:
Energy policy position
On August 4, 2008, on Newshour, Ms Pfotenhaur stated her belief in the the safety of offshore oil drilling. “And we had evidence, because we had survived some really fairly horrific storms, with Katrina and Rita, and seen that the technology was pretty remarkable and that there were no significant spills during that period of time.”[citation needed]
However, a Houston Chronicle review of the hundreds of spills reported after the two hurricanes concluded, “The quantity and cumulative magnitude of the 595 spills, which were spread across four states and struck offshore and inland, rank these two hurricanes among the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history.” The reported spills were from “oil and chemicals stored at massive industrial facilities, in pipelines and on platforms.” The breakdown of onshore versus offshore spills is not clear.
(SourceWatch)
Nancy loves McCain…& sounds like Sarah Palin in her manicured approach to hating Obama…but Palin is a DISTRACTION from the real stuff going on behind the scenes in the McCain camp.
yep…FOUR MORE YEARS OF THE SAME
Deceit, lies and taxpayer’s money used to bankroll corporate aristocrats projects…like war-mongering & energy bulldozing & stealing peoples rights…& creating a busted government that then can’t offer needed services like affordable health & dental care…
N’
September 9th, 2008 at 12:31 am
Imagine a creature from somewhere north of the Lacerta constellation observing our planet…
“WTF is the big deal about who becomes the next President of the United States? Why should that matter any more than who becomes the President of Portugal?”
Yet for the people of Earth it matters a great deal. Because we let it.
September 9th, 2008 at 11:31 am
“Imagine a creature from somewhere north of the Lacerta constellation observing our planet”
I wonder if they’d confuse the Republican yells of “drill, drill, drill!!!” with the same GROTESQUE words uttered by ruthless death squads and militias in Iraq that were partially trained by American intelligence & funded by greenbacks interestingly coming out of the Iraqi Interior Ministry?:
Throughout 2005, thousands of young Sunni men were arrested (officially) by the Iraqi police commandos (a major arrests operation in Baghdad was in May 2005, given the name of “Lightning”, when hundreds were arrested). Weeks later, some of their bodies were found in different places of Baghdad, or Iraq, mainly to the east. The names of the Wolf Brigades, the Ra’ad (thunder), the Nimr (Tiger), the Karrar (Imam Ali), the Imam Hussien, the Scorpion; Al-Borkan (volcano)…became familiar names of police commandos brigades (Maghaweer). They are supposed to be counterinsurgency, intelligence based troops. They were created, trained, armed, and directed by the American intelligence officers who are well known for serving in central and South America where death squads were a major part of the political scene. The Maghaweer were so brutal, that one of the prominent Iraqi personalities, who publicly denounce the occupation, told us that the American prisons are more merciful than the Iraqi. Those detainees told stories of the kinds of torture they were exposed to in the Iraqi Interior Ministry prisons. In many ways, they were similar to the traces seen on the bodies found in the garbage or the sewage daily in Baghdad nowadays, connected to the death squads.
HOLES DRILLED in the head, feet, lungs… etc are trade marks…Broken bones, smashed sculls, burnt or pealed skin, savage beatings, electric shocks, pulled out right eye, are familiar in both cases.
It was the American Governor of Iraq, Bremer, who engineered the Shiite militias join the Iraqi security forces, according to article 91 of the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL) put by Bremer himself, to fight the (Sunni insurgency) by Iraqi hands. Death Squads in Iraq are units inside the security forces, whose members are not just religiously fanatic sectarian militias, by foreign intelligence: American, Israeli, Iranian or any other country. They are also Iraqis “educated” and trained outside Iraq, brought into Iraq before the occupation, and shortly after it. Their job is to instigate sectarian conflict leading to create a (federal) Iraq, e.g. a divided Iraq.
It is true that the hands are Iraqis, but the minds and the money are not. It is also true that some political sectarian militias are involved in the death squads, especially those who are connected to the Iranian project in Iraq. But it is interesting to notice how the mainstream media, and the Iraqi government keep on nurturing the idea that the sectarian killings are done by the Sunni insurgency, what they call the rogue units in the police, and the Mahdi Army.
The other militias who are involved in the sectarian killings and violence are set aside. But who are those Iraqis whose job is to instigate a civil war? Why? Many of us remember very well the few hundreds of military men who accompanied Chalabi (head of the National Congress party, well known for being the Pentagon man) into Iraq directly after the occupation. They were highly trained outside Iraq, many say in an isolated island in the Pacific, by American, Israeli, and south African officers. There are reports that some were trained in the Israel, Hungry and Poland.
Early after the occupation, there were few individual assassinations, mainly of Baathists, especially in Adhamiya, where the community still remembers a man called Mohammad Saddam. He was responsible for the arrest and killing of many Iraqi resistance members and advocates. There were some assassinations of Baathists and security individuals in Nassiriya too, where these troops were moved. There was strong reaction against their activities. The press talked then about the American authorities disarming the Chalabi militias.(6) They disappeared for a while.
But all the Iraqi families, whose houses were raided by the American troops, especially in 2003, remember masked men who speak Iraqi, accompanying the American troops in these raids. They were called informers. Maybe some were, but the way they quickly joined the occupation troops was curious. A member of these forces (they were called the Forces of Iraq Freedom) recently sent out a sheet of facts exposing the rule they were playing in assassinating Shiites and Sunnis to create sectarian problems. After explaining how they were brain washed and recruited, and trained before ( and some after) the occupation, he said that these forces were infiltrated in the New Iraqi Army, the National Guards, the Iraqi police, the Maghaweer (police commandos), the Interior Intelligence and the Iraqi Special Forces. They are actually called the Iraqi Special Forces and their headquarters are in the Baghdadairport. They are not connected to any Iraqi security body, and are supervised by American and Israeli officers.
This man, who promised to expose his identity once the death squad’s leadership is arrested, said that they were attacking Sunnis “in uniforms, IDs, and police cars”, and they were attacking Shiites “in cars normally used by the Mujahideen”. He gave an example of the biggest operation they did which was the Kadhimiya bridge stampede last summer, in which more one thousand were killed. He gave a list of some members of these forces. Among the 67 names he gave, only 14 were Arabs, the rest were Kurds, mainly from Barzani (president of Kurdistan’s party). Two were Jews, and one Iranian.
Nothing in this paper was news to us, may be some of the details, but to come from a member of the death squads talking about the dirty war they are waging in Iraq is very important at this point, when many Iraqis begin to believe that this is a sectarian war. In some ways it is, and increasingly tribal too, especially after the Samara Shrine explosion, although in fact, there is a wide understanding that it was not the Salafists who did it, simply because Samara was under their control for months until last December, and they did not do it. In fact, the Iranian intelligence, or their Iraqi allies are accused of bombing the Shrine, just to unleash the sectarian violence through retaliatory attacks, which is what is happening the last 4 months.
When will the mainstream media give us this side of the story?
(Death Squads in Iraq: Fanatic Militias Used in a Dirty war, Global Research, June 8, 2006,
Name of Iraqi author withheld for security reasons)
——————-
JOHN S. MCCAIN voted for the Iraq war & wants to continue it for MAYBE 50 to 100 years.
Barack Obama spoke at a large rally oppossing the invasion of Iraq.
I bet he can sleep at night.
And the REPUBLICANS and their war enablers go
DRILL DRILL DRILL…
No wonder they desperately screech like the DAMNED about doing God’s work…& fool themselves with kooky ideas like refuge in Alaska in during so called END DAYS.
The thought they could be the BADDIES…the real SINNERS, drives them into paranoid delusional states & talking to imaginary characters. GUILT has its way w/ you until you admit your failings & errors.
Sarah Palin helps keep the delusion & deceit alive.
And THE TRUTH at bay.
N’