Politics and Press

The interaction of the press and politics; public diplomacy, and daily absurdities.

Hillary Clintom

Vikings in Panama

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So – just about everybody you think of as overpaid – from soccer players to petty politicians to tough-guy dictators – have something in common. They invest in Panama Virgin Islands Co-operation companies. And it’s all legal – sort of – and moral – less sort of, but hey what do you expect in the modern world. Non-diving soccer players, truth-telling politicians, people-oriented  dictators? Okay okay, Bernie Sanders is from Brooklyn, where you’ve got to tell the truth or you know what! So he’s an exception. Maybe. And let’s hope he wins, so there is an exception that counts!

In the meantime, as expected from all serious history buffs, only one  society has demanded the consequences. Just as they did in Egil’s or Hrafnkls Saga or the Saga of Grettir the Strong, (until he was exiled to an isolated uninhabited Arctic island), the Vikings of Iceland know how to handle tax avoiders.  Sigmundur David Gunlaugsson (can’t match those Icelandic names), the PM, was caught with  his fingers in the Panama pot, presented himself with the *eatingest grin in photographic history as he entered parliament (the kid was caught with his fingers in the cookie jar as well) and only left it after he had been kicked out of his office, which had been pelted with  eggs and bananas by an angry mob, and joined the ranks of the unemployed – a contemporary mild version of medieval punishments.  No if only the US presidential candidates (pace Sanders)could be convinced after being pelted by eggs and bananas to get the hell out before it’s too late, we would all breathe easier.

America’s Road to Oligarchy

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Chris Christie was all over the Sunday talk shows and the national press/media after his re-election as Governor of New Jersey, supposedly all but ensuring his nomination – or anointment – as Republican nominee for President in 2016. Time Magazine went so far as to put him on the cover under the oh-so-clever title: “The Elephant in the Room”. Then a piece in the New Republic comes along pursuing the possibility of Elizabeth Warren capsizing the USS Hillary in the race for the Democratic nomination. But, it seems to me to be waaay premature to be worrying about the candidates for 2016; too much can happen between now and then and in some ways the 2014 congressional elections may be more important, especially for domestic policies.

While Christie will have his detractors – both within and outside the Republican party – Clinton and Warren would likely be presented as polarizing figures. But it seems that any candidate for the Democratic party inevitably becomes a polarizing figure because the system  is broken.

We are a country moving in an almost inexorable way toward oligarchy with the help of the current Supreme Court, people like the Koch brothers, major financial institutions and international corporations.  While Bill Clinton was able to raise a lot of money from Wall Street his presidency was under the most vicious kind of attack from day one of his presidency, with the complicity of a mediocre press and a well-financed right-wing hate machine. The same has happened to Obama and would most certainly also happen to Hillary Clinton or Elizabeth Warren.

The combination of an electorate unable to identify their own interests let alone vote for them, a courtier press unable to extricate itself from the ordinary thinking that dominates political discussion in America, the corrupting influence of money and the breakdown of Americans’ commitment to the common good has led to a broken country. Warren understands this and her candidacy would be welcome simply to get some very basic political issues on the table. But first, let’s see if the Democratic Party can figure out how to win back the House of Representatives in 2014. Not that I am especially hopeful.