It seems like every couple of weeks we have a new leader in the Republican field. Michele Bachmann has been there, so has Mitt Romney and Rick Perry, and now Herman Cain sits atop the field. Why can't Republican voters make up their minds?

Here's why - they don't even believe their own positions. They want someone who is massively conservative and at the same time agrees with them on policy. The problem is the voters aren't nearly as conservative as they think they are. So they love the tough talking governor from Texas until they find out he wants to get rid of Social Security. They like that Michele Bachmann doesn't believe in global warming until they realize that she doesn't believe in it because she's bat-shit crazy.

If you choose ignorance as your party ideology why should it surprise you that you have completely ignorant party leaders? But it does, every single time. Watch, it'll happen again. This time with Herman Cain.

The voters are going to wake up a week from now and realize they're not sure they want someone leading the free world who doesn't know what Ubeki-beki-beki-stan is or what his own position on abortion is. They love his ignorance when it comes to science and basic economics, but they hate it when it shows how unqualified he is.

Well, you can't have it both ways. Someone who is remotely competent or sentient recognizes that 97% of the world's scientists are right about climate change (including even Koch funded scientists), that cutting deficits during tough economic times does not stimulate the economy and that firing state workers means we have less workers. But those are all against the stated position of Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. So, what is a Republican voter to do?

The answer is to fall in love with another conservative politician this week and find out he is a blithering idiot the next. Or worse yet, find out you don't really agree with any of those positions when they affect you (get your government hands off my Medicare!). That's the schizophrenia of the Republican electorate -- they keep switching leaders because they don't even believe their own positions.

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The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office reports that over the last 30 years the top one percent of Americans more than doubled their share of the income.

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China is a place with massive regional inequality. A recent feature by The Economist magazine, titled Comparing Chinese Provinces With Countries, found a stark divide between the rich coast and the poor hinderland. Some of my previous obervations about that feature can be found here. In Shanghai and Beijing GDP per person is over $20,000 (as of 2010) - roughly equivalent to a high middle-income country.

In rural Guizhou GDP per person is almost seven times lower. Guizhou is the poorest province in China. It is the part of China the media does not visit and that China tries its best to hide. There are no skyscrapers in the rural parts of Guizhou, just decrepit stone houses dating back to the Maoist era (or earlier).

But there is something else very interesting about Guizhou: as of 2010 its GDP per person was almost exactly equal to GDP per person in India. That is, a person living in the poorest part of China is about as well off as the typical Indian. This fact says something about the constant comparisons between China and India – China is generally far ahead.

Let’s take a look at Brazil. Brazil is a typical Third World country, in the view of many Westerners. Surprisingly, while Brazil is infamous for its massive inequality, its regional inequality is not as great as that of China’s. Nevertheless, there are still vast differences of regional wealth in Brazil. As of 2008 GDP per person in the rich Distrito Federal (of Brasilia) was $25,000; in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro the high incomes of its wealthy elite raise the number to a respectable number as well.

In contrast, almost everybody is poor in the northern coastal parts of Brazil, populated by the descendants of plantation slaves. In the northern state of Alagoas GDP per person is a mere fraction of that in the capital. Alagoas is the third-poorest state in Brazil. It is characterized by a juxtaposition of beautiful beaches and violent gangs. Favelas of ill-built wooden structures dot Alagoas.

There is something very interesting about Alagoas as well: as of 2008, its GDP per person was almost exactly equal to GDP per person in China. A person living in the third-poorest province of Brazil is about as well off as the typical Chinese. So much for the Chinese dragon; the typical Brazilian is far better off than the typical Chinese. And let’s not even start comparing Brazil to India.

These comparisons put a stake through the heart of the BRIC acronym: the concept that Brazil, Russia, India, and China have much in common other than their high economic growth rates. And even the assertion that all four BRIC countries are growing at high economic rates is questionable; Russia certainly isn’t right now.

Indeed, the differences between the richest member of the BRICs (Russia) and the poorest member (India) are stunning. Just look at the map at the beginning of this post; almost everybody is literate in Russia, while literacy rates in India are comparable to those in Sudan and Nigeria.

Or think about hunger. Hundreds of millions of people in India are not getting enough food to eat; India has the highest number of malnourished people in the world. In Russia, on the other hand, everybody gets enough to eat. The last time large numbers of Russians didn’t get enough food was more than half a century ago, which had something to do with a man named Hitler. Check out the difference between google results for Russian malnutrition and Indian malnutrition.

All in all, the differences between living standards and relative global power of the BRIC countries are vast. One could say that the United States and Russia have more in common than Russia and India, with respect to living standards (or many other things, in fact). BRIC is a fallacy.

--inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/ 

Ackerman says it's a big deal the troops are coming home, but America's military efforts in Iraq are anything but over:

They are instead entering a new phase. On January 1, 2012, the State Department will command a hired army of about 5,500 security contractors, all to protect the largest U.S. diplomatic presence anywhere overseas.

The State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security does not have a promising record when it comes to managing its mercenaries. The 2007 Nisour Square shootings by State’s security contractors, in which 17 Iraqi civilians were killed, marked one of the low points of the war. Now, State will be commanding a much larger security presence, the equivalent of a heavy combat brigade. In July, Danger Room exclusively reported that the Department blocked the Congressionally-appointed watchdog for Iraq from acquiring basic information about contractor security operations, such as the contractors’ rules of engagement.

That means no one outside the State Department knows how its contractors will behave as they ferry over 10,000 U.S. State Department employees throughout Iraq — which, in case anyone has forgotten, is still a war zone. Since Iraq wouldn’t grant legal immunity to U.S. troops, it is unlikely to grant it to U.S. contractors, particularly in the heat and anger of an accident resulting in the loss of Iraqi life.

It’s a situation with the potential for diplomatic disaster.

And the cost of the transition may again be hidden in public accounting.

Via Stoller on Twitter, a blog hoping to elicit a constructive dialog on the Occupy protests and the future of the movement.  In response to George Lakoff's How to Frame Yourself advice to Occupiers at Common Dreams, one post in particular stands out:

1) Lakoff’s insistence that the movement focus on getting candidates with “its moral focus elected in 2012.” I couldn’t agree less. If OWS turns into a get out the vote drive for the Democratic Party, it would be a betrayal of it’s raison d’etre and its resonance with people who are thoroughly disillusioned with the political process, particularly after 2008, when Obama managed to sway a lot of people with his soaring rhetoric and promise of renewal. Election season is already well underway; the Republican candidate will be decided by January and Democrats will try to convince liberals and progressives to fall into line behind Obama. The possibility of OWS running its own candidates in this short period and with existing campaign finance laws in place, or supporting politicians from the existing bipartisan pool who share its ‘moral values,’ are slim to none outside of a few local races.

Agree that any appearance co-option by the party would dissolve what momentum is possible quickly, but I'm also reminded of watching the tea party in 2010 with their litmus tests and the "other" kind of influence they had on the elections (Sharon Angle, O'Donnell come to mind).  Anti-establishment and in the spotlight only gets you so far.  The tea party's influence on 2010 wasn't so much the candidates they ran and it definitely wasn't their independent fundraising as a "movement," but the exponential effect they had on disappointment with the Democratic Party.  They got out the vote.  Much more could be said about the decline of tea party popularity since.  Was it always going to fade, or are they paying the price for a hard line approach that a majority of voters now blame for gridlocked government? 

So you can't run your own candidates in 2012, but you can find issues or even specific legislation to rally behind.  Does a candidate have to be right on every issue to get some support, or can a candidate be right on the most important issues and draw the crowd?  And what about influencing members of congress throughout the campaigns?  You're not getting the ear of a single Republican, no question. 

I'm not sure the right answers for the movement.  Questions of where things could go and the role of Occupy in 2012 seem almost two separate dilemna's, yet in the end they'll be tied together.

Without a tangible influence of some kind in 2012, we won't be hearing much about Occupy after the elections.  Unfortunate reality, sure, but still the case.  Anyway, go speak your mind.

Declaration of Independence

Our politicians are bought. Everyone knows it. Conservatives know it just as much as liberals do. And libertarians have probably known it all along. The Democrats are bought and the Republicans even more so. They don't represent us. They represent their donors. We have taxation without representation. Our democracy is in serious trouble.

We must regain our ability to make a difference, to have our votes count. Right now, corporate interests and special interests dominate our politics because they can spend unlimited money. Unfortunately, in this current system money speaks louder than words. The pen might be mightier than the sword, but the checkbook is far mightier than the pen. In the congressional races in 2008, the candidate who had more money won more than 93% of the time. Our representatives don't serve us; they serve the people who pay them -- their corporate funders.

So, how can we change that? Well, we can build an army of American citizens willing to fight back against the corporate machines. We can also fight money with money. But we have to concentrate all of our resources into one single attack -- making sure we take corporate money out of politics. Now, you can never stop rich people from spending their own money on their political ideology. But that has happened throughout our history and we have survived that. What has changed in the last 30 years is the power of corporate money, which is nearly unlimited.

Starting in 1978, the Supreme Court opened the spigot to corporate spending in politics. Since then, the average American has seen their wages stagnate and their share of taxes rise significantly, while corporations have seen their tax burden shrink and the top 1% has literally tripled their income. There has been a massive redistribution of wealth in this country. And it's going straight to the top.

There is one answer though. It is the one thing that is above Congress and the Supreme Court -- a constitutional amendment. We must pass an amendment saying that corporations are not people and they do not have the right to spend money to buy our politicians. Corporations have no soul. They are profit-making robots. They are not endowed by their creator with inalienable rights. They are legally created fictions that are charged with maximizing profit without any concern for morality. They can and they must be stopped before they destroy our democracy.

We are not against the existence of corporations, we are only against their ability to buy and control our government. Robots can be useful, but that doesn't mean we should let them run our democracy. We must not allow multinational corporations to infringe upon American sovereignty. This is supposed to be a democracy run by citizens, not by international, unaccountable business and financial interests.

The objective of Wolf PAC will be to raise money and raise an army for the sole purpose of passing this amendment. We need a constitutional revolution. Please join us and help retake our democracy.

28th Amendment

Corporations are not people. They have none of the constitutional rights of human beings. Corporations are not allowed to give money to any politician, directly or indirectly. No politician can raise over $100 from any person or entity. All elections must be publicly financed.

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Now, in order to make this amendment a reality, we must take a series of concrete steps. The objective of Wolf PAC is not theory, it is results. We will pass the amendment and we will regain our democracy. Here is how we're going to do it.

We must gather up an a fighting force. We need programmers and organizers and lawyers and leaders. We need this movement to be in all 50 states. So, first we are doing a call for generals in this army. Please write into us and tell us what your expertise is and how you can help. If you can volunteer, great; if you can contribute, great. But we need you no matter what. There is no secret money behind this. There is no profit in it other than for our democracy. That's why this movement must be people powered.

Unfortunately it appears that our Congress is completely infected with the virus. So proposing an amendment through Congress seems hopeless. But luckily there is another way. We can do this purely at the state level. The states can call for a constitutional convention and they can ratify an amendment that comes out of one. And there is nothing our corrupt federal government can do about it.

We are hoping that the first wave of volunteers help us organize at the state level. Let's go occupy the states! Can you imagine all 50 state houses occupied until the people get what they want -- their democracy back! It can happen. You can make it happen. Joint the fight. Now, it's our time. Get up, it's time to get them back.

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Governor Rick Perry made a big display of presenting his energy policy last Friday. He positioned it as a bold new plan for America, but this drill, baby, drill approach to energy was already stale when Sarah Palin stumped for it three years ago.

It’s is déjà vu all over again. We've had a Texas oilman in charge of our country's energy policy: it worked out a lot better for Big Oil than it did for the American people. We wound up paying $4 a gallon at the pump while Exxon walked off with $45 billion in profits.

Now Perry is offering more of the same. I think the familiarity is part of the appeal. His campaign is going for the safe, tested messages here—the proven buzz words that poll well across a broad spectrum of the Republican Party.

When you have seriously considered succeeding from the union and you deny the existence of climate change, your Tea Party credentials are pretty secure. To win in the general election, however, you need the conventional GOP voters too. Perry can pick and chose from this “all of the above” approach to energy to appeal to whichever audience he is speaking to at the time: the mainstream and the radical fringe.

That may be savvy campaigning, but it doesn’t do much for America.

Perry’s plan calls for pursuing fossil fuels to the ends of the Earth. He wants companies to drill miles under the Arctic Ocean for oil and inject fracking chemicals deep into people’s backyards to bring up natural gas.

We can look in new and more extreme places for fuel, but Perry’s plan boils down to this: burning rocks to create energy. It’s the same technology we’ve been using for 200 years. Where is the innovation? Where is the vision that will carry America into the 21st century? Where is the leadership?

The rest of the world is racing to design the most cost-effective solar panels and most reliable wind turbines, because they know clean technologies will generate clean power AND lots of money. Worldwide clean energy investments were valued at $243 billion in 2010.

Perry’s plan disregards these market realities, and by doing so, hands over dominance of the clean energy market to China. He selling America short in a field we could actually lead in favor of one we never will: oil production.

Perry’s call for homegrown energy has a great ring to it, but when your home only has 1.6 percent of the globe’s proven oil reserves and you consume 26 percent of the world’s supply, there is a limit to what you can achieve—no matter how many wells you sink. That's not politics; it's geology. And no bumper-sticker slogan can change it.

America is already drilling more than we have in decades. Perry claims that President Obama has blocked domestic oil production, but companies drilled almost 21,000 oil wells in the first eight months of this year—the highest number in almost 30 years. That’s nearly double the amount drilling the same period last year, and nearly triple the number drilled in 2009.

Yet none of this protected us from $4 a gallon gasoline this spring. Nor will it protect us from China’s growing demand, Middle Eastern politics, or any of the other forces the shape the global oil market.

That’s where the innovation comes in. Better performing cars will reduce our oil dependence, and smarter policies will encourage technological advances. This summer President Obama’s announced new fuel efficiency standards. By 2025, new cars and light trucks in this county will go about twice as far, on average, on a gallon of gas, compared with today’s vehicles. The difference will save Americans $80 billion a year at the pump. It will also reduce our oil use by 3.1 million barrels per day by 2030 and cut automobile carbon emissions in half.

Now that’s a new direction for America, a way to move into greater energy security, cleaner air, and more prosperity. Perry’s plan is a retread. Sticking to the energy sources we have used for two centuries may help his campaign, but it won’t do much for our country.

Those who say they don’t know what the Occupy Wall Street protestors want fail to understand the nature of this quintessential 21st century movement.  It is true that they have no policy manifesto.  They have not yet released a list of shared demands, although they are working toward doing so.  But when you listen to the participants tell their stories, when you read their signs and hear their songs, their shared desires for our nation clearly emerge.

Their most fervent demand, not surprisingly, is for honest work that pays a decent, living wage, not only for themselves, but for their 14 million fellow unemployed Americans. But taken together, there is much more.

They seek accountability, including fair rules, oversight, and prosecution where appropriate of the corporations and individuals who wrecked our economy—often through fraud—then continued to pay themselves astronomical bonuses, even as they received an expensive rescue from American taxpayers.They demand a fairer tax structure in which the wealthiest companies, millionaires, and billionaires (the 1%) contribute their fair share to the nation that is giving them so much.

They want a political system in which every American’s voice and vote are equal, and in which large sums of money are not allowed to corrupt the democratic process. They reject the Supreme Court-made fiction that a corporation’s money is the same as a citizen’s voice under our First Amendment, and they want to explore amending the constitution to restore it’s real meaning in this regard.

They want to make college affordable to everyone with the ability and desire to attend, without the crushing burden of student loan debt that cripples graduates’ progress and deters many gifted students from attending at all.

They want recognition that it was lending industry misconduct, lax rules and enforcement, and unprecedented unemployment rates that caused the mortgage meltdown. And they see the basic truth that halting foreclosures, restoring devastated neighborhoods, and reducing mortgage payments to fair, realistic levels is in everyone’s interest—including lenders.

They want a rapid end to the costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, combined with care and employment for the troops coming home. And they seek to put the goal of deficit reduction in the proper context. Like most Americans, they not only see job creation as more urgent to our national health and prosperity, but they also see putting Americans back to work, combined with fair tax reform and a military wind-down, as the most effective path to growing our economy and closing our deficit.

Clearly not every Occupy Wall Street protester is walking around with this fully-formed list of demands in her or his head.But this is not that kind of movement. Just as the demonstrators famously rely on each other’s voices for amplification, their best ideas and demands are crowd sourced, a rough-and-tumble vetting process that befits a 21st century democracy.

Nor is it surprising that different participants in the movement will differ in their precise policy prescriptions. Members of the 1960s civil rights movement—including Martin Luther King, Jr. and now congressman John Lewis—often bitterly disagreed about what the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and other laws should include.

And Dr. King’s subsequent call for an end to the war in Vietnam was not initially shared by all members of that movement.There is an important, vibrant difference, it must be remembered, between a movement and a political action committee.

Occupy Wall Street’s organizers are now engaged in a deliberative, participatory process designed to identify more specific common demands. This is an important step for a movement that is growing in maturity as quickly as it is growing in size and diversity. But as that process moves forward, one need only visit Zuccotti Park and the many other dynamic sites of this movement around the country to understand what this movement wants.