First the FUNDRAISER. My annual fall fundraiser really does make the difference between me having a roof over my hear or living in a cardboard box under an overpass, so please help if you are able.

Second, I was sorry to hear that a woman has come forward today to accuse Herman Cain of sexual assault in 1997. I regret the right-wing smear job that is about to fall upon this woman, Sharon Bialek, who held a press conference today with her attorney, Gloria Allred.

I also regret that this may derail Herman Cain’s presidential campaign, as I was beginning to hope he would derail Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. But, so far, Cain’s supporters on the blogosphere are dismissing the charge as “rent-seeking” and note that the accuser is from Chicago.

See also: Decline and Fall by David Remnick.

Once again the I find myself looking at a negative cash flow situation, and I have plumbing issues and car repair issues and several other looming expenses that I’ve put off too long and must be addressed asap. It’s been a whole year since my last fundraisier, so I’m once again passing the hat and asking for whatever donations you can spare.

Those of you who have issues with PayPal: I am working on an alternate payment method that I hope to have set up later today, so hang in there.

Update: I don’t want to go through my whole song and dance about my pathetic financial situation, and I’d just about rather pull out my own teeth than ask for money. But pulling out my own teeth doesn’t actually co much good, so … all help muchly appreciated. Even a couple of dollars here and there would make a huge difference to me right now.

Update: Well, I’m still working on the alternative method payment, but I might have something tomorrow.

Just for fun, if I sold T shirts or coffee mugs as a promotion, what should be on them? Any ideas?

What caused the financial crisis? The Big Lie goes viral.

Update: Worth reading — Why Wall Street Can’t Handle the Truth. By an insider.

… and it’s not just the fact that it isn’t 1980 any more.

Kristol, having noticed that Ronald Reagan is dead, compares the election of Ronald Reagan to a famous quotation of William Faulkner about Pickett’s Charge. This is Faulkner –

For every Southern boy 14 years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it’s all in the balance, it hasn’t happened yet, it hasn’t even begun yet, it not only hasn’t begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armstead and Wilcox look grave yet it’s going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn’t need even a 14-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose and all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory the desperate gamble, the cast made two years ago .  .  .

—William Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust

Faulkner, of course, is describing a desire to go back to the moment before the Cause was Lost, before Robert E. Lee sent 9 infantry brigades across an open field to attack the center of the Union line at Gettysburg, resulting in a bloodbath from which the Confederacy never recovered. The war continued, but for a time it was commonly felt the South lost the war on that field.

Kristol evokes Faulkner to wax nostalgic about the election of Reagan –

For every American conservative, not once but whenever he wants it, it’s always the evening of November 4, 1980, the instant when we knew Ronald Reagan, the man who gave the speech in the lost cause of 1964, leader of the movement since 1966, derided by liberal elites and despised by the Republican establishment, the moment when we knew—he’d won, we’d won, the impossible dream was possible, the desperate gamble of modern conservatism might pay off, conservatism had a chance, America had a chance. And then, a decade later—the Cold War won, the economy revived, America led out of the abyss, we’d come so far with so much at stake—conservatism vindicated, America restored, a desperate and unbelievable victory for the cast made so many years ago against such odds.

And I’m thinking, WTF? Because it’s really the rest of us who ought to be comparing November 4, 1980, to Pickett’s Charge. “For every American liberal there is the instant when Ronald Reagan wasn’t elected yet …” That would be the parallel to Faulkner.

America didn’t actually end that day, but someday historians may say November 4, 1980, was the beginning of the end.

Kristol doesn’t actually concede the election to Democrats as much as say that none of the pack of mutts running for the nomination could fill Reagan’s shoes, and if elected, that president will not lead us into a Second Morning in America. Well, thanks for that, anyway.

I learned about “near enemies” and “far enemies” from Buddhism, although I see that Muslim jihadists have developed a similar theory under the same name. What I’m going to talk about is closer to the Buddhist version.

For purposes of this discussion, a “far enemy” is someone who flat-out opposes you. The far enemy thwarts your efforts and tries to do you injury. The far enemy’s interests are the opposite of your interests. Far enemies are easy to spot.

“Near enemies” are harder to spot, and more insidious. Near enemies may appear to be friends and allies. Their goals appear to be your goals. But they are really “enemies” because they can’t be trusted to help you, and if you aren’t careful they will hurt you.

Note that when I talk about “near enemies” I am not talking about provocateurs or infiltrators. Those are far enemies in disguise. More often the “near enemy” is someone who identifies his far enemies as your far enemies. You may even share some of the same goals and ideals. But he’s still your “enemy,” because if you aren’t careful he will undermine everything you are trying to accomplish.

An example from Buddhism is that the “far enemy” of love is hate, and the “near enemy” of love is neurotic or selfish possessiveness. The near enemy is something that you mistake for a virtue or a benefit, but really isn’t. As I understand it, the jihadi version is about geography; “near enemies” are governments in the Middle East they want to bring down, whereas “far enemies” are governments further away they want to bring down. A whole ‘nother thing.

Applied to progressivism — Far enemy = Paul Ryan. Near enemy = Raph Nader.

See how it works? Of course, you can’t always draw clear, bright lines. Nader isn’t always wrong, for example. But there’s a kind of logical fallacy among the naive that if someone (like Nader, or Ron Paul) is right about something (political corruption; the war in Iraq), then that person is right about everything. That fallacy is a kind of near enemy.

Most of the time, in politics, the “near enemy” is someone who really is on “your side” in a broad sense, but his motivations are contaminated by ego, greed, immaturity, hotheadedness (excessive anger combined with a sense of righteous entitlement and poor impulse control), or plain ol’ stupidity. For example, a progressive who is stupid enough to brag about voting for Ralph Nader is a near enemy. Count on it.

(I found a classic example in this very recent Salon article. A guy planning some demonstrations in Iowa not only brags about voting for Nader; he also wants to know why Larry Summers hasn’t been kicked out of the Obama Administration yet. Summers left the administration in January. This guy obviously doesn’t care about anything but marching around with a megaphone. Such people are near enemies)

With that in mind — Ian Welsh has written some posts about OWS with which I mostly agree. Here’s one –

These folks would not believe those of us who told them that simple peaceful protest would not accomplish anything. Only the police, and a Democratic mayor whose resume is that of a DFH, could convince them of that.

I have said little about OWS, because there is little to say. OWS is necessary. People needed to try for peaceful redress, to make an attempt to convince elites to do the right thing, and see the response of the elites. The response was foreordained, but you can’t tell anyone anything, so they have to learn at the end of a nightstick, or while suffering from tear gas or pepper spray, or while being forced away from helping a critically injured man.

I agree, but I also think that what they are learning (or, at least, I hope they are learning) is a little more complex than that. From the beginning I didn’t think the OWS efforts were sustainable, and not just because of the NYPD. I didn’t think they were sustainable because — on the Left, anyway — as soon as you start demonstrating, the near enemies show up and ruin it. You can count on that as sure as the sun comes up in the morning.

And if you don’t have a plan in place to nip the nonsense in the bud as soon as it starts, it will destroy everything you are trying to do. These tired old eyes have seen it happen too many times.

For example, Ian writes in another post,

At the current time, one ideological fight is over absolute non-violence, and an attempt is being made by many in the Oakland/SF area to drive the anarchists completely out of the movement. Problem being that since non-violence is the rule, they have to rely on the police to remove the anarchists and the police aren’t cooperating any more.

What do you want to bet a lot of the Oakland OWSers already are thinking, next time, we’re going to have to do things differently …

Regarding OWS, one of their near enemies has been the OWSers inflated notions of their own power. They have none. Nor have they posed a genuine threat or even a mild challenge to the status quo. The political/economic landscape has not yet been changed. There is more open talk of income inequality than there was before, but so far, it’s just talk.

The only surprise to me is that the financial/power establishment reacted as forcibly as it did. This overreaction is the establishment’s near enemy, and no doubt comes from a deep fear that OWS — or somebody — might grow into a genuine threat someday. Sort of like the way antebellum plantation owners lived in terror of slave rebellions, even though there were remarkably few slave rebellions.

Police brutality gave OWS a veneer of credibility and a sense of importance that it hadn’t yet earned. As Ian says elsewhere, power does not give in to demands until there is an “or else.” OWS doesn’t have an “or else” that the establishment is bound to take seriously. And, rather famously, the OWSers have no agreed-upon demands.

As has been said earlier, for OWS to succeed on its own terms would require millions of people in the streets and a financial threat that would require the establishment to either negotiate or declare martial law. OWSers have been thinking way too small to put something like that in effect.

Outreach, bringing people from across the political spectrum together in the common cause of getting financial corruption out of politics — that would be a glorious thing. It would be a real coalition of the 99 percent. And it could put real pressure on the status quo. But a movement like that will not come out of some horizontal, consensus-based process. It will come out of very clear, and smart, messaging and leadership.

This will continue to play out, as it must. It is necessary and insufficient, but it will produce the cadre of radicals who will go on to the next steps.

This could be true, and it may be that, 20 years from now, people will say that the revolution was born in Zuccotti Park. But I don’t know if we need “radicals” in the ideological sense as much as we need strong, committed, and smart people to grow something that really does threaten the status quo. That something may come up with a radical approach and methodology, of course. And it may be that among the OWSers will come people who will lead that something.

Ian links to an article he says jives with what he’s heard elsewhere. If this article is to be believed, the crew at Zuccotti Park already has broken up into factions at odds with each other. I hope they are learning that organizational structures have a purpose.

“It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.” — American officer in Vietnam, 1968

Conservatives like to portray the history of the late 20th century as the triumph of capitalism over communism. However, it’s looking like capitalism could be about to collapse, also. And, ironically, the chief agents of its destruction are its most ardent supporters.

However, I fear we’re going to be in for a very rough time before the dust settles. And the destruction of capitalism as we know it might not be all that collapses.

We have a society in which money is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few people, and in which that concentration of income and wealth threatens to make us a democracy in name only. — Paul Krugman

Democracy in America already has been seriously compromised, although I’d like to think it’s not beyond hope of revival. The Plutocracy has done a masterful job of keeping us proles divided against ourselves, however. The truth could set us free, if only we could hear it above the noise.

… we’ve conjured up images of very sensible highly educated wonky people doing the right thing, even as they destroy the world.– Atrios

Paul Krugman has written one blog post after another explaining why response of the Very Serious People to the financial crisis has been entirely wrong and based on ideology rather than data; on faith rather than facts. Here’s his most recent one.

The Very Serious People keep talking about austerity, by which they mean forcing deprivation on everyone but them in an attempt to put things back they way they were before Bear Stearns went belly up. The Actual Economists, meaning the ones not taking money from any right-wing think tank, keep saying this is nuts, and that things are going to get worse, and that restricting the flow of money is exactly the worse thing to do right now.

So, basically, the Very Serious People are destroying capitalism to save it.

There’s an interesting article at Salon that argues capitalism’s failures are systemic, not political.

The systemic problem is obvious. While using very different rhetoric, progressives like former Labor Secretary Robert Reich and Marxists like Richard Wolff agree, first, that the economy is failing for lack of demand — and, second and most important, that this failure is now “built in” to the system. Labor unions once were powerful enough to raise wages and stabilize the system (and consumer demand). Those days are over: Union membership peaked at 35.4 percent of the labor force at the end of World War II; it is now at 11.9 percent, and falling (a mere 6.9 percent of private sector workers are now union members).

The banks and Wall Street are an appropriate first target. But the deeper reality is that the economic “system” that defined a particular brand of corporate capitalism held (weakly) in check by labor is fading before our eyes. Moreover, the same labor base gave liberalism sufficient power to enact modest reforms — including regulations to try to keep the bankers in line. That “system” is decaying too. It is further complicated by global competition, which continues to weaken the entire structure, undermining both labor and communities, even as major corporations flee the country for global markets.

I don’t know that I agree with the author’s recommendations for remedies, but I think his diagnosis of the disease is spot on. Ironically, for the past few decades capitalism has been dismantled by capitalists. The push against labor unions, deregulation of financial markets, etc. etc., all the stuff the capitalists wanted to happen, has destabilized capitalism. It will not necessarily collapse, but the longer the Very Serious People continue to steer the wrong course, the more likely collapse becomes.

The parable of the goose that laid golden eggs, or the mallard with golden feathers, applies.

Until the late 1950s, academic economics remained one of the social sciences, like anthropology, sociology and political science.. After it became the chief ideological counterweights to Marxism-Leninism during the Cold War, its practitioners tried to extract it from the social sciences and re-create it as a hard science…[and] terms like “resources”..,”markets” [were] transformed into abstractions.. Economics no longer studied the economy; it spoke ex cathedra about what was orthodox and what was heresy. — Chalmers Johnson, 2000

At some point, the virtues of capitalism became part of our national religion. And we’ve replaced the old divine right of kings with the divine right of corporations. The moneyed elite are the ruling aristocracy. And a lot of Americans seem to think that if Exxon Mobil were forced to pay taxes, the gods will curse us with barren sheep and failed harvests.

People get attached to fixed views about the way the world is supposed to be, and are afraid of change, even when the change is for their benefit. It’s like horses running into a burning barn, because that’s where they feel safe. The aristocrats are so afraid of change they can’t bring themselves to make the kind of adjustments that might actually save their asses. So they cling to the fiction that they can hang on to their way of life by squeezing the peasants.

Spotted on Memeorandum today (click image to enlarge):

CLick for Larger Image

The “pro” poll is by CNN/Opinion Research Corporation (ORC) and the “anti” poll is by Quinnipiac. Notice that mostly leftie bloggers link to the article suggesting favorable polling for OWS, and mostly rightie bloggers link to the article about the unfavorable poll.

I have no particular expertise at criticizing poll data, but note that the two polls did not ask exactly the same question. CNN/ORC tells us that Americans have a favorable view of OWS positions. Quinnipiac tells us that Americans have an unfavorable view of OWS.

Shakesis writes,

Nearly any protest movement that can just hang in there inevitably grains credibility among the general population, for the sheer appearance of having unwavering principles and not just being the dirty hippies/crackpots/fools/lowlifes/extremists/whatever that their opponents, with the help of the media, make them out to be.

Hmm, is that really true? In my experience, if the movement itself doesn’t take great care to not reinforce negative media stereotypes, those negative stereotypes stick and much reduce the effectiveness of the protest movement. I’ll throw that open for discussion. I say the Bigger Asshole rule is still in effect.

Update: This is what I’ve feared all along. [Update: If Salon is being balky, try the New York Times. If stuff like this continues, OWS is over. It would be better to withdraw from public places and re-organize as a more conventional movement.

Spotted at Forbes, in an endorsement for Rick Perry’s flat tax plan:

The plan’s central feature, as Perry explained in today’s Wall Street Journal, is an optional flat tax of 20 percent, in which those opting for the flat tax will be able to deduct $12,500 for each household member, along with mortgage interest, charitable and state and local tax exemptions for families earning less than $500,000 a year.

Some conservative policy bloggers are apoplectic about the optional nature of the Perry plan. But these critics appear to be entirely ignoring the central political flaw of a mandatory flat tax: that a mandatory flat tax necessarily raises taxes on lower- and middle-income earners. The only way to rebut this political criticism is to make the flat tax optional, so that the middle class doesn’t face higher taxes. This is especially important for those who depend on the employer tax exclusion for their health benefits.

See, the fact that lower- and middle-income earners would have to pay more to make up for the tax cuts of the rich is only a political flaw, which is solved by telling the peasants that they don’t have to pay the higher tax if they don’t want to. Now, what could possibly go wrong there?

This is my favorite part:

On the other side, some wonks are complaining that the Perry plan will reduce tax revenues, and thereby expand the deficit. But this, again, is asking too much of comprehensive tax reform. The only way to propose a deficit-neutral flat tax is to massively raise taxes on lower- and middle-class earners. As Voltaire once suggested, it’s unwise to make the perfect the enemy of the good.

In other words, it is asking too much of comprehensive tax reform to provide adequate revenue to keep the country going.

And now we come to it …

It’s worth mentioning that the plan also lowers the corporate tax rate to 20% and moves to a territorial tax system, provisions that will have a huge impact on the U.S. pharmaceutical industry, allowing biotech and pharmaceutical companies to repatriate their overseas profits without penalty, thereby increasing investment in domestic pharmaceutical R&D.

Of course.

Charles Pierce has a delicious takedown of Bobo’s latest, in which the amazing keyboarding cabbage tells us that the discontent in the peasant class is really about (a) Harvard grads jealous because they are not gaining in prestige as rapidly as some of their classmates; or (b) the lesser educated, who don’t appreciate the virtues of chastity and hard work.

Seriously. If Marie Antoinette had been a New York Times columnist, she might have written this.

Elsewhere — perhaps concerned that the New York Post‘s accounts of orgies and STDs in Zuccotti Park aren’t doing the job, the latest smear of OWS is that the protesters are mostly spoiled rich white kids. The Daily Caller and David Brooks must have gotten the same memo.

Among addresses for which information is available, single-family homes listed on those police intake forms have a median value of $305,000 — a far higher number than the $185,400 median value of owner-occupied housing units in the United States.

As Steve M points out, $305,000 actually is below the median home price in the New York metropolitan area. Here’s a home for sale for $305,000 in Queens. [Update: The link isn't displaying the photo, so I'm adding it here.]

In Manhattan, $305,000 can get you a co-op in Washington Heights (see Washington Heights).

“The median monthly rent for those living in apartments whose information is readily available is $1,850.” Again, that’s way below the median. I did a bit more searching and found what looked liked habitable studio and 1 bedroom apartments at $1,800 in Manhattan, but we’re not talking luxury. The young folks tend to squeeze three or four roommates into little apartments like that and split the rent.

Yesterday John Cole asked an interesting question:

While Cain’s bizarre and shifting responses to the sexual harassment charges are interesting, I think the weirdest thing about this whole incident is what provoked it. Who fed this to the Politico, because we know for a fact they weren’t doing due diligence on Cain and just stumbled across it. They don’t do journalism, they do rumor and innuendo and fluff pieces, mixed in with planted trial balloons and horse race analysis and he said she said crap from anonymous sources and unnamed officials.

So who fed them this? Rove? The Romney team?

The allegations against Cain really do have Karl Rove’s modus operandi written all over them. Steve Kornacki walks us through the Scandal Thus Far, and while there’s a heck of a lot of smoke, the actual fire seen so far doesn’t seem to amount to that much.

I’ve been holding back talking about the allegations, partly because part of me would like to see Cain continue to challenge Romney for the GOP nomination. (I’ve been looking at Cain’s policy proposals on his campaign website and much of it is in Ron Paul territory. In other words, he doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning the general election.) So far, the sex scandal has been dismissed by righties as an evil libruhl plot, even as they slaver over New York Post stories about sex among the OWSers at Zuccotti Park.

There’s also been an attempt to smear Cain with the background of his cigarette-smoking campaign manager, but frankly I don’t see that getting any traction, either.

Several rightie bloggers have picked up on an interview of Cain by Judy Woodruff, in which he says he is concerned that China might get nuclear weapons in the future. WTF? It’s possible he just misspoke, as Gerald Ford did in 1976 when he said “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration.” That possibly cost Ford the election.

But that was 1976. Right now the isolationists seem to be shouting out the neocons over in Wingnut World, and baggers would be challenged to find China on a map, never mind have a clue about its nuclear capabilities. So I don’t know if that little flub is going to hurt him, either. We’ll see. If a Democrat were to have said something like that, that’s all we’d hear about from now to election day. And if Karl really is the one behind the sex scandal stories, this is the sort of thing he would seize upon to club Cain. However, he’s going to have to find a proxy somewhere to do the actual clubbing.

Update: “The Fringe Frontrunner.”