miller's crossing

It's time to revive this nearly dormant site. To that end, I will post something everyday for the month of April.

I've been splitting my time between reading up on the finance industry, plowing my way through a thick pile of periodicals, and watching Dr. Who.

Two articles I recommend:

• "Infinite Debt: How Unlimited Interest Rates Destroyed the Economy," by Thomas Geoghegan, Harper's April 2009
• "The Quiet Coup," Simon Johnson, The Atlantic, May 2008

While Geoghegen, a labor lawyer, makes a few arguments in his piece that I don't feel are fully supported, I think he's really on to something linking the current financial crisis to the repeal of usury laws in the late 70s and earlier 80s. Johnson, former IMF chief economist, observes how the finance industry has "captured" our government. Read together, these articles illustrate the negative impact experienced by manufacturing and the US economy resulting from the ascension of the finance industry.

I'm gonna keep this short. So, that's it for now.

Today, I walked into the bookstore of the college where I'm now working to find a book in which I have a chapter. It was the first time I'd seen the book. What a happy surprise ... and somehow a strange vindication.

I've been watching a lot of movies now that I'm back working at the video store. In case you missed it at the Wisconsin Film Festival, the documentary Our Brand Is Crisis came out earlier this month on DVD. Filmmaker Rachel Boynton takes us on a fascinating ride, following U.S. campaign consultants with the firm Greenberg Carville Shrum and their client Bolivian presidential candidate Gonzalo "Goni" Sanchez de Lozada.

My former colleagues at the Center for Media and Democracy have released their new book The Best War Ever: Lies, Damned Lies and the Mess in Iraq.

There's even a video to promote it. I did some research for the book. It's good stuff. Check it out.

"We're eager to work with Congress on legislation that would further codify the president's authority," the New York Times reports White House spokeswoman Dana Perino as saying. "We remain committed to our principle, that we will not do anything that undermines the program's capabilities or the president's authority."

She's referring to the Senate Intelligence Committee's failure to provide any meanful oversight of or investigation into Bush's secret, domestic wiretapping. But really, it's a plain statement of the Bush doctrine: the president has the authority to do whatever he wants and nothing shall undermine that authority. (Thanks to the smart and saavy Laura Rozen for pointing out this quote.)

In their "Statement of Objectives for Global Media Development, Production and Dissemination Support," the Lincoln Group's prose plumbs the depths of meaningless PR blather. You might recall the Lincoln Group was outed by the LA Times in November for paying Iraqi journalist to run U.S. military authored stories on how great things are going in Iraq. Keep in mind that the Lincoln Group, along with SYColeman and SAIC, were awarded a contract of up to $300 million to do psyops work for the Pentagon.

The PR wordsmiths write for their "Contract Objectives":

2.1 Media Approach Planning: Apply subject matter expertise to develop media approaches that effectively convey messages to foreign audiences to achieve specified goals and objectives. Based on market research and analysis develop and/or validate proposed themes, symbols, and messages that will elicit responses from the recipients that achieve stated goals and objectives. Media campaign plans should include recommendations on type of media, timing, frequency, and proposed methods of distribution and dissemination to include locations, resources, and cost.

Blah.

 

Why, when there is so much going on in the world and even in my head, do I choose to post pictures of squirrels to the blog?

Sometimes all that I want to do is to look at a nice picture. I could post more pictures of the house cats, but that seems even too self-indulgent for me. ... So, let it be know that the political leadership of the United States is guilty of corruption, heavy-duty delusional thinking, and while we're at it, mass murder. Yuck. ... Just how far away are We from the detention camps? Am I? Are you? How far in days? Weeks? Months? How much freedom do we even have now?

I know, I've been remiss with my squirrel blogging. I'll work on it.

I think I've probably been a little too cranky this week, too. I apologize for that. I've been reading a lot of military documents lately for a story. I'll have more on that later.

I'm coming unglued, unhitched, unhinged. I've got that feeling that the ground beneath my feet may not fully be there as I expect it should. Space has more space in it. And there are extra figures and faces lurking at corners, popping up in unusual places.

I'm still feeling solid, though.

At long last, I'm back with another entry. My excuse: knitting. (Expect pictures soon.) Oh ... and I've had articles to write for work.

President Bush at the U.S. Naval Academy on Nov. 30. (White House photo by Paul Morris.)

Here's an excerpt from "The Victory of Spin" posted over at my work website:

As the LA Times was reporting on the Lincoln Group's media manipulation, George W. Bush was announcing to cadets at the U.S. Naval Academy the latest repackaging of the bloody mess in Iraq - the pollster-vetted "Strategy for Victory in Iraq."

Using the now-familiar White House rhetorical technique of simple repetition to get its message across, The New York Times reported Bush "used the word victory 15 times in the address; 'Plan for Victory' signs crowded the podium he spoke on; and the word heavily peppered the accompanying 35-page National Security Council document titled, 'Our National Strategy for Victory in Iraq.'" According to the Times, the speech's "relentless focus on the theme of victory strongly reflected a new voice in the administration: Peter D. Feaver, a Duke University political scientist who joined the N.S.C. staff as a special adviser in June and has closely studied public opinion on the war."

But unlike earlier media campaigns, the attempt to spin away Americans' sinking feelings towards the President and the war may not bear fruit. White House propagandists appear increasingly blinded by their own delusions, so out of touch with the grim realities in Iraq and Afghanistan - not to mention U.S. communities - that their ability to construct new propaganda is weakened.