Unaffiliated fan Doug in Wisconsin has set up an unofficial message board system for all thinks related to Stand Up! with Pete Dominick. We encourage listeners/readers to check it out, and we thank Doug for being so damn cool.
Sorry I haven’t been able to post much lately. I don’t mean to stifle the dialog. If you’ve got a topic, let it rip!
In the wake of the Blagojevich scandal, Pete resurrected his theory that the best way to stave off political corruption would be to elect and appoint more women into political positions. Not sure there’s much data on this, except very few women on this list of most-corrupt politicians. All opinions are valid (I suppose), so what do you think?
Friday on the show author Ivan Eland, PhD, stirred up some controversy by using the term empire to describe US foreign policy and presence. Pete agreed, mostly because, as a later caller pointed, the US has over 700 bases in 130 countries around the world. Others noted the US economic dominance that gives a sort of peaceful or passive imperial look and feel to the US — an 800-pound gorilla in a business suit. Eland’s book The Empire Has No Clothes: U.S. Foreign Policy Exposed makes the case.
I chimed in to suggest I don’t think calling the US an empire is all that valuable, even though I agreed with every other word Dr. Eland said. Even he admitted the US is not technically an empire by the traditional definition. In my experience, that term just polarizes conversations between people who might agree on the actual substance of the issues involved. I wish there was a better word for whatever the US is. To muddy the waters further, other callers claimed the US is a benevolent empire, using its superpower status for good around the world.
While I was on, regular caller Deep Breath Steve claimed that US bases in the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman existed in part to help the Navy protect food shipments that were threatened by potential blockades. I said I had not heard that argument and that it sounded like Steve invented it. He countered with the claim that he was on those Navy ships, which Todd from Florida later used as evidence that Steve had “pantsed” me during the argument.
I have two responses. First, I can’t find any reference to the US Navy being used to protect food shipments in the Gulf region. Even looking at the Navy’s own history, there’s not so much as a claim that food shipments had anything to do with its presence or patrols. While Steve was right in his claim that the Navy was considered a countermeasure against a potential Iranian blockade of the Straight of Hormuz, even the Navy does not pretend that was even peripherally about protecting food supplies. It does make at least 9 references to oil, including explicit assertions that petroleum was a major motivator:
Maintaining political stability and the free flow of oil to the global economy have been the overarching objectives of U.S. foreign policy in the Persian Gulf for almost half a century.
Second, on the matter of the importance of bases in Muslim countries, I’m not sure they were remotely necessary to maintain a US naval presence in those waters. Contrary to Steve’s implication, there are no actual US Navy bases in the region, and have not been in the modern era. And that presence of bases was, in fact, the topic of conversation on the show — not the presence of ships in international waters. In fact, again referencing the Navy’s own history of involvement in the region, it actually bolsters my argument that regional bases were not necessary to keep US warships in operation. About the Gulf War, the official history boasts:
Backed up by facilities in the United States and the major overseas bases at Subic Bay, Naples, and Diego Garcia, naval logistic forces maintained a steady flow forward of personnel, fuel, ammunition, and supplies. The warships in the Central Command theater could count on the flotilla of oilers, ammunition, stores, repair, and salvage ships, fleet resupply aircraft, and shore-based logistic support sites to keep them in the fight for the duration of the war.
Now, all that being said, I’m still not certain I’m 100% correct in suspecting that the US Naval presence in the Persian Gulf has had little if anything to do with making sure food shipments got through potential blockades. I can’t find any evidence for it, but that does not prove a negatiev. Steve seems to have been told this was his purpose for being stationed there, as he claimed on the air: “We were feeding people [deep breath]; we were allowing the food to come in.” But it may also just be that he thought the oil tankers his ship was escorting actually contained canola oil. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt on that matter, rather than suggest he was lying outright.
But what really bugs me is this idea that winning an argument by coming off better makes one right, or even makes one the true winner. There’s still actual, objective truth in this world, right? If I say, “The sky is neon green; I know this because I was just in an airplane,” would Todd from Florida call in and say I “pantsed” my opponent who claimed the sky is blue? Since when did getting to the truth of a matter take a back seat to being able to sound like you won the argument? I’m sure Steve sounded like he won, since I admitted I did not know if protecting food shipments was a significant part of the Navy’s mission in the region, never having heard the claim (that not even the US military makes). But at least I had the integrity to say I wasn’t sure, rather than invent an answer.
I just had to get that off my chest. Now, is the US an empire or not? Discuss…
When the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee considered extending benefits to same-sex domestic partners of federal employees, one government official lost his grip on reality. Howard Weizmann, deputy director of the U.S. Office Of Personnel Management, said the proposed policy change could “lead to fraud and abuse in the programs we administer.” But dude really stepped it up when he referenced the movie I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry as evidence that manipulative federal employees would be quick to commit fraud.
Take a listen:
Here’s the transcript:
First of all, to suggest that we are being far-fetched in the sense that these benefits are open to fraud or abuse. It’s not an unrealistic concern. I would suggest even Hollywood has discussed this in a movie with Adam Sandler. In which, I think, ‘Chuck and Larry’ get married, which the subject of the movie, was quite frankly, was insurance fraud, along the lines of what we’re discussing. This is not far fetched and it’s not disingenuous to suggest such.
So Hollywood comedies are now grounds for public policy? Does this mean we should beef up our space defenses, since Hollywood has on many more occasions portrayed invasions by hostile extra terrestrials? Perhaps we should be wary of robots taking over the world and exterminating humans, since that’s the plot of at least two major Hollywood trilogies. And if we’re sticking with Adam Sandler movies, does that mean there is a remote-control device that can manipulate reality?
See ThinkProgress for more analysis.
The New York Times has assembled a table of which financial institutions are getting how much capital infusion from the Treasury department.
Top recipients of the $290 billion allocated so far?
AIG ($40 billion)
Citigroup ($25 billion)
JP Morgan Chase ($25 billion)
Wells Fargo ($25 billion)
Good to see the needy getting taken care of by government. I’m pretty sure that’s what this country was founded for — to help gigantic financial corporations get a leg up…
It of course does not include the $2 trillion the Fed is secretly doling out.
Does anyone think this is not insane?
Pete’s first guest today was independent Iraq correspondent Dahr Jamail. His website is here, and the book is Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq.
Pete and Dahr discussed the so-called “Status of Forces Agreement,” which Iraqis are calling a “Withdrawal Agreement.” You can check out the full text of the latest draft which has been approved by the Iraqi cabinet but not yet by Parliament. And an article giving a rundown of some highlights.
On the show yesterday, there were a couple of factual disputes that I think were more or less dealt with. One was whether diesel is “dirty” or not, and whether it is the solution to all our fuel problems. According to Grinning Planet and the Union of Concerned Scientists, the answer is that diesel is better than gas in some ways but worse in others:
Good diesel performance may mean better fuel economy and less carbon dioxide, but what about diesel’s problems with other types of air pollution? What about the higher up-front cost of diesel technology? There’s also a catch when it comes to comparing mileage estimates for diesel and gasoline vehicles.
So much for diesel being the end-all, be-all solution, but that doesn’t mean we should not be looking at it as an option in the interim, before something fundamentally better (like hydrogen fuel cells?) is devised.
At the end of Monday’s show, the question was raised of who pays taxes, who does not, and how much is fair. One caller complained that a third of his $300,000 income gets taken for taxes. Another caller, who grosses just $50,000 a year but has been unemployed before, said he would give half his pay if it meant people wouldn’t have to suffer the poverty of unemployment in this country. And another caller, who later honorably recanted the claim, tried to spread the disinformation that poor people pay no federal income taxes.
Assistant producer Alexandra and I both pointed out that we’ve recently been taxed on earnings less than the $22,000 floor the caller claimed below which one would pay no taxes. And eventually some tax experts called in to point out that if your taxable income is above zero, you pay federal taxes. All in all, the discussion was exactly the kind we love to have on the show. An issue gets raised, rumors get exposed, and everybody learns something.
On the larger matter of how much should we pay in taxes, how much is fair, etc — we probably all have different opinions on that, to be sure. But the point I always try to make is to look at what a person is left with after taxes, not the portion of one’s income that gets taken out. This is because we don’t all get paid fairly in the first place. One person who works 70 hours a week as a social worker or community organizer, trying desperately to make their neighborhood or city or world a better place, might bring home $25,000 a year, then lose $1500 of that (after deductions) in federal income taxes, leaving them with $23,500 with which to pay for food, housing, transportation, and lots of other taxes. Meanwhile, an arms merchant or a junk-bond trader — who contributes nothing to society, or detracts from it gravely — can make millions a year even after taxes, even if he or she pays the very highest tax rate. So where’s the fairness in that?
For the record, while deductions and tax credits get about a third or more of working Americans out of directly paying federal income taxes each year, this common argument and its implications are deceptive, since everyone who gets a paycheck loses a chunk to federal payroll taxes. Besides, plenty of people who would be considered poor by nearly any North American standard pay painful amounts in federal income taxes, with the lowest rate being 10%. And in the end, poor people pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes than rich people do, especially considering state and local taxes. And if we want a common enemy, let’s look at all the corporations that get away with paying no income taxes at all!
Here’s an interesting interview with a progressive tax expert, to counter all the garbage being floated around.
Okay, even if you haven’t heard the show in the last couple of days, the new look of the site should tell you that Pete’s show(s) made it through the merger, and his potential audience has doubled. Raw Dog has been picked up on XM, and Indie Talk is now POTUS — Politics of the United States/People of the United States. The show is now 3-6pm, and the replays have moved, too (check the right-hand column).
Pete will be blogging on the matter soon, or so he has promised, and I’ll hold him to that. But for now, let’s hear what long-time listeners think about the changes. And more importantly, welcome to all the new XM listeners. We are confident you’ll grow to love Pete as much as we do.
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