September 24, 2008
Socializing Debt, Privatizing Profits & Power
If I had pick one defining feature of the politics of the last 8 years it would be the tendency of the current US government to use any real or debatable or fictitious emergency to accrue greater executive power while curtailing transparency and accountability. Even a financial crisis seems to require Bonapartism. Karyn Strickler in Counterpunch:
“Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.”
-- Language from Section 8 Treasury Financial Bail-out ProposalBreathtaking in its scope and staggering dollar amount, the Treasury Financial Bail-out Proposal to Congress is a parting power punch from the Bush Administration. Even as the American economy melts down, George W. Bush and his cronies are taking advantage of the emergency situation to turn over $700,000,000,000 of American tax payer’s money to bail out the same greedy, corrupt corporations that got us into this mess; transfer most of the scant remaining congressional power into private hands and eviscerate judicial or administrative review of the process.
“The Secretary is authorized to take such actions as the Secretary deems necessary to carry out the authorities in this Act, including, without limitation,” and so begins the Proposal that is perhaps the biggest peacetime (or anytime) transfers of power from Congress through the Administration to private corporations, in history.
Democrats, the American people and patriots of every partisan position, should not drink the $700,000,000,000 Power Punch. There is no circumstance under which we should tolerate this open theft of public funds, and permanent transfer of Congressional and Judicial power through one man, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, directly to private sector corporations, without oversight, review or accountability.
The upcoming Congressional elections and the fear inspired in the heart of every incumbent politician are certainly no excuse to capitulate to this brazen, corporate power grab. Democrats, true-blooded Republicans and the American people should not be intimidated by the rushed, fear-mongering tactics of King Henry Paulson.
While our economy is in historic trouble, it’s simply impossible that more of the same power without oversight – the same unmitigated, unregulated nonsense that got us into this mess – is the cure to the precipitous plunge the American economy is taking.
Posted by Robin Varghese at 12:42 PM | Permalink
Comments
Ruchira- It sounds like my idea of a good time is your idea of a nightmare )))))!
Anyway, it all blends in after a while.
I'm off o the high country tomorrow, and it will be cold, but pure.
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Sep 26, 2008 5:58:09 PM
Ruchira, I grew up in Omaha, so I know whereof you speak. Of course it is not a good idea for anyone to vote Republican - what do you take me for? The point is that once upon a time pointy headed liberals could imagine themselves as part of a polity with poor farmers and other unsophisticated folk. Once upon a time, the midwest was not exclusively the abode of dull-witted sheeple. Ever heard of the Populist Party? Do you know why Omaha has a public power district and my current ultra-liberal enclave does not? Do you know what the "Wizard of Oz" is really about? Of course the Populists had their shadow side as well. And their idea of increasing political participation through the primary system really hasn't worked out that great, but oh well.
Posted by: Vicki Baker | Sep 26, 2008 6:14:08 PM
The party's platform, commonly known as the Omaha Platform, called for the abolition of national banks, a graduated income tax, direct election of Senators, civil service reform, a working day of eight hours and Government control of all railroads, telegraphs, and telephones.
Populist Party
Posted by: Vicki Baker | Sep 26, 2008 6:19:00 PM
Omaha? Whereabouts? I lived there for eleven years and still have many friends there. Except for the period between November and March, life was mostly balmy. But Houston feels more like home.
That is exactly what puzzles me. The ex-meat packers of south Omaha, the assembly line workers in Con-Agra, the handymen, the mine workers whose unions get busted by Peter Kiewit's labor relations officers, the pizza maker. Why should they vote Republican? It cannot just be because the pointy heads have become too remote. It is more than that.
Posted by: Ruchira | Sep 26, 2008 6:34:46 PM
Ruchira,
What I meant by saying that race is a distractor is that it has limited explanatory power in the question of why many people of a Populist bent vote Republican. It's the Thomas Frank line, more or less--What's the matter with Kansas? Kansas surely has many shits in it, but it would be too facile to end the conversation there.
I'm paying pretty close attention to the racial overtones of this campaign--earlier today I posted about the Cornerites (talk about shits) trying to pin the financial crisis on irresponsible brown people.
On the absolutism front, I'm erasing you from the rolls, but I still think this outbreeding business is a dicey one, for a number of reasons. (It's easier to raise fewer kids well, for one thing, and the world just needs less breeding right now, for another).
Posted by: Chris Schoen | Sep 26, 2008 6:47:00 PM
Speaking of Populism, this is a populist view of Simple Sarah:
While suturing a cut on the hand of a 75-year-old Texas rancher whose hand
was caught in a gate while working cattle, the doctor struck up a conversation with the old man. Eventually the topic got around to Sarah
Palin and her bid to be a heartbeat away from being President.
The old rancher said, "Well, ya know, Palin is a post turtle."
Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked him what a post turtle was.
The old rancher said, "When you're driving down a country road and you
come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a post
turtle."
The old rancher saw a puzzled look on the doctor's face, so he continued to explain.
"You know she didn't get up there by herself, she doesn't belong up there, she doesn't know what to do while she is up there, and you just wonder what kind of dumb ass put her up there to begin with."
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Sep 26, 2008 8:49:38 PM
Another good one, Dave! Speaking of Texans, don't you miss Molly Ivins right about now?
Ruchira: my family did live in South O. for awhile after moving from the farm. Dad thought he might be able to get a job with the railroad. Bad timing. Then we moved to a brand new little tract house right up against I-80. Growing up with all those exhaust fumes probably explains my asthma and maybe my warped mentality. As for your question, I dunno.But apparently we aren't supposed to try to figure it out, because Steven will call us bad names. I'm not saying Woody would have voted for Palin/McCain, or anything so stupid, just that Steven's tirade made me very sad.
Posted by: Vicki Baker | Sep 26, 2008 10:23:51 PM
Also, despite being a mom and taking that title seriously, I have serious doubts about breeding as a strategy for social change.
Posted by: Vicki Baker | Sep 26, 2008 10:27:03 PM
Vicki: I was joking about breeding. I too take motherhood seriously. But I was judicious enough to add just two more thinking people into the population pool.
Molly Ivins would have had a fine old time with Sarah Palin and also the grumpy McCain who did not look at Obama once during today's 90+ minute debate.
Posted by: Ruchira | Sep 26, 2008 11:17:16 PM
"Steven's tirade made me very sad..."
I think you're fairly well flummoxed (by professionals) if it's my *tirade* that makes you sad, all things considered, Vick.
Re: Populism: speaking as a guy who lives in the former heart of the former Third Reich, evil regimes don't wreak large-scale havoc at home and abroad without the tacit support of The People, whatever The People aver to the contrary. Again: why are we hammering the "Republicans" in this debate? The *key problem*, in the end, is that bi-partisan, across-the-spectrum sense of all-American entitlement: the divine right of Americans to do whatever the hell they want, whenever the hell they want to, however the hell they feel like it. The planet's too small for that crap.
To scale this back down to the psycho-political: Bush2 is certainly a figure of fun, but he's quite insidiously dangerous as a reverse symbol of "our" goodness. That's one definition of "leader": the guy (or gal) who conveniently takes the blame for shit when it all goes wrong.
Seeing Aunt Betty for what she truly is (a shit, the quality of her cobbler notwithstanding) is one thing, but trying to *blame* her for everything is nonsense.
Pop Quiz: how many so-called Liberals would have experienced unnerving side-effects, ranging from discomfort to panic, finding themselves alone with a pre-fame, tracksuited Obama in an elevator? Show of hands...
Posted by: Steven Augustine | Sep 27, 2008 2:13:52 AM
But what is the way out as you see it Steven, scolding from Deutschland? Europe’s two suicide attempts in the last century certainly laid the ground for a sobriety about the use of force that we could probably benefit from over here, but the rest of your dark generalizations, the “bi-partisan, across-the-spectrum sense of all-American entitlement: the divine right of Americans to do whatever the hell they want, whenever the hell they want to, however the hell they feel like it.” Have you actually ever met an American outside of a prison or mental ward that genuinely thinks they should be allowed to do whatever the hell they want? This is just bellicose slander and completely unhelpful.
Posted by: Jesse | Sep 27, 2008 7:09:30 AM
Steven, once you've been around the block a time or two, you'll realize that all people are shits, even you. (but they can also be great sometimes too)The thing about real, hands-on political and community organizing is that it requires close contact with these deplorable creatures, and in a situation where you have to create solidarity rather than just pontificate and condemn.
I'd back my street cred against yours any day. That you think your elevator question is meant to be a stumper just shows what a sheltered life you've led. How many precincts have you walked, and which ones? How many inner-city community gardens have you built? Ever stayed in a Catholic Worker House of Hospitality? Ever tried to negotiate with knife-carrying Albanians? Tried to work out what to do when you were the only staff member in a halfway house for parolees, and one of them asked you to unlock the drawer where the razor blades were kept? Ever tried to be a non-driver in a neighborhood where most of the other women out walking were prostitutes?
Posted by: Vicki Baker | Sep 27, 2008 12:05:12 PM
Jesse:
Don't take it personally.
But the focus of this debate is the world as it is *now*... you can go back as many decades or centuries as you feel necessary (or zoom ahead to some hypothetically sane America in the 22nd century) in order to heal your wronged sense of America-the-beautiful, but the obvious, and escalatingly grisly, facts back me up.
Mr. Hussein was punished for causing suffering and death on a scale that pales in comparison to what has since been unleashed by Iraq's looter-liberators... but how many Americans consider it genuinely thinkable that anyone in this administration will (or should) stand trial for war crimes? The very idea is laughable, right? I've heard Americans from "both sides of the political fence" (laugh) chide Russia over Georgia, or worry about Iran's "meddling" in Iraq: the double-standard is mind-boggling. But only if you haven't been thoroughly brainwashed.
You can't seriously be attempting to refute the notion that America is a law unto itself, Jesse. Or that Americans vote as though they have no responsibility to anything or anyone beyond their own selfish economic interests. If Bush had pulled off every single horror he's pulled off till now, *and yet had somehow managed to keep the American economy strong*, he'd go down in history as a popular president.
"But what is the way out as you see it Steven, scolding from Deutschland?"
You overestimate the point/function/responsibility of blog comments, man. I'm merely posting my opinions here, like everyone else.
If there *is* a way out, it won't make its first appearance on a blog comment.
Posted by: Steven Augustine | Sep 27, 2008 1:40:27 PM
Vick:
Of course I'm a *shit*, on some level, but not on the level we're discussing.
Posted by: Steven Augustine | Sep 27, 2008 1:44:49 PM
PS I'm *way* older than you seem to think, and every good liberal has her/his war stories.
Posted by: Steven Augustine | Sep 27, 2008 1:46:36 PM
Steven,
"If there *is* a way out, it won't make its first appearance on a blog comment." Unless it's in a Bilgrami blog. I liked Bilgrami's article, which I thought would be a "web seminar," but now it's downstream in archives somewhere and people are congregated here, still beating that dead horse of a Durkheim article the psychologist wrote. I'm returning to the Bilgrami post to listen to the video someone posted of Bilgrami and others on, I guess, "enchantment" or the possibility of its reappearnce in the world.
I'd like to live on an island, but not if you're only sponsoring chamber music there, the free violins and Suzuki lessons. I'd like a few Steinway baby grands at the least and free year-round concerts.
People here are so interesting, posting from Texas and the Left Coast and Germany. And Dave lived on an island and was apparently food self-sufficient via fishing. Amazing! I'm a little Northeast homebody without a pointy head. But I'd love to live on an island.
I thought your tirade was bracing, quite invigorating after reading Haidt. But then I wasn't a target of your acerbic wit.
Posted by: CriticalMassI | Sep 27, 2008 4:51:14 PM
Ruchira,
I'm glad your daughter is OK! As I'm sure you know, it was also thus in Minnesota, where the press and others were assaulted by police. Amy Goodman and others wrote about it on truthdig.com
Posted by: CriticalMassI | Sep 27, 2008 4:53:48 PM
Vicki,
Is this query addressed to Steven your c.v.? Or is it some kind of good citizen test people need to pass before being allowed to criticize the political scene?
"How many precincts have you walked, and which ones? How many inner-city community gardens have you built? Ever stayed in a Catholic Worker House of Hospitality? Ever tried to negotiate with knife-carrying Albanians? Tried to work out what to do when you were the only staff member in a halfway house for parolees, and one of them asked you to unlock the drawer where the razor blades were kept? Ever tried to be a non-driver in a neighborhood where most of the other women out walking were prostitutes?"
Posted by: CriticalMassI | Sep 27, 2008 5:01:24 PM
Steven,
I think you overstate your case about American exceptionalism. It's not at all true that if the economy were humming along the electorate would be utterly mollified. The Iraq war is enormously unpopular, and has been ever since its illegitimate and deceptive foundation has been widely known. Americans are divided on torture, wiretaps, politicization of Federal Attorneys, and sundry other abuses we've seen over the last 8 years. Granted, many people are ignorant about these things, but that's not the same of saying they approve of unchecked American power.
There's no doubt that Americans, on the whole, feel entitled to their Imperium. That's a big problem. But to say they are entirely in the thrall of their own exceptionalism is just false.
I also don't think it's fair to impute our being a "law unto ourselves" to some fundamentally American aspect. Contingencies of economics, geography, and politics have a lot to do with it.
It almost sounds as though you need to demonize your former country to make life as an expat more bearable. (Or maybe it's the other way around.) Since you like John Lennon songs, I'll add that "Whatever gets you through the night, it's allright, it's allright."
Posted by: Chris Schoen | Sep 27, 2008 5:15:05 PM
Chris:
"It almost sounds as though you need to demonize your former country to make life as an expat more bearable."
Well, no, actually. A) My country (to be known hereafter as The Imperium) is doing an adequate job of demonizing itself and B) the fact is, *my* selfish reason for not wanting The Imperium to blow up the planet is that my seriously beautiful (on every level of the word) wife and fabulously spunky 2.5-year old daughter and I are all quite astonishingly happy, and we'd like very much to stay that way.
CM:
"I thought your tirade was bracing, quite invigorating after reading Haidt. But then I wasn't a target of your acerbic wit."
The weird thing is, even when I'm being funny, people call it a "tirade"...
Posted by: Steven Augustine | Sep 27, 2008 5:50:11 PM
The American Imperium must be defeated... so let's colonize an island in the Indian Ocean???? I must be missing something. There are no more territories to light out for.
CM1 - maybe that was too much information, but seriously - the elevator question? And are you or aren't you part of the velorution?
Posted by: Vicki Baker | Sep 27, 2008 9:35:37 PM
Don’t worry Steven, I take none of this personally. Your picture of the world as it is “now” is precisely what I’ve contested and what you didn’t really answer, but that’s okay man. The “facts” do not back you up and sorry it is going to involve some time travel to get to “now”. A plain doozy of a fact is that the Congress and public were provided intelligence that turned out to be garbage, (Moynihan is sobbing and laughing from the grave) without this we would not be in Iraq and as Chris points out a lot of people are angry about this, everyone I know in “fact”.
Point to a nation that doesn’t put its own economic interest first Steven, to pretend that America is exceptional in this regard is ridiculous. A now painfully defanged Europe has allowed people in those countries to get on with the simple business of making a living, but are you suggesting that there aren’t selfish capitalists around you there who are obsessed with material acquisition?
I don’t see why a “solution” couldn’t appear on a blog. Modest journals, revolutionary pamphlets and posted theses by those who “could do no other” have all brought our species change. But perhaps the Imperial environment truly isn’t right and you can only develop more advanced forms of consciousness and taste in your Cytherean glade, though I would recommend packing Freud’s “Civilization and its Discontents” for some bracing beach reading.
Posted by: Jesse | Sep 27, 2008 10:51:31 PM
Hi Vicki,
Well, the island wouldn't have to be in the Indian Ocean. As Dave pointed out, they're starting to submerge. We could start an estate caretaker co-op on Nantucket or Martha's Vineyard, giving the rich the opportunity to fraternize with peace-loving quarky proles whose hearts are overflowing with empathy and compassion.
No, the CM1 is not related to the velorution. I live in Massachusetts. In fact, some day I hope I'll be able to learn culinary chemistry from Elatia.
Posted by: CriticalMassI | Sep 27, 2008 11:06:57 PM
"The American Imperium must be defeated... so let's colonize an island in the Indian Ocean???? I must be missing something."
A sense of humor... ?
Posted by: Steven Augustine | Sep 28, 2008 2:14:48 AM
I think, maybe -- having been kept up all night by my puppy for 8 straight days, and having just dropped in on this thread to read the WHOLE thing top to bottom -- I think it's that, that...Arthur C. Clarke lived in the Indian Ocean.
Jesse -- "Cytherean." As the Bama is wont to say, C'mon! You and I are alone here sometimes and this is one of those times, thinking of Freud and Watteau. Go ahead, go to the search box: Freud + Watteau.
Steven, it's just that it's a little recherche -- living in Europe, being happy, and hoping the USA with its awful long reach won't somehow foul it for you there. With so many native-born Europeans, at any given time, mulling that very one over, this could be the moment to wonder about repatriation, and what you would doing here if you were indeed reclaimed for the homeland. I think you're experiencing homesickness in deep disguise, that form occasionally recognized as virulent anti-nostalgia. You could be like whatisname in the final pages of _Daisy Miller_, "lingering too long in foreign parts." Just a thought.
Vicki, too right about not counting on outbreeding them. My niece, 18, is just thrilled to be about ready to vote Republican. I can't imagine what happened. She's smarter than anyone I'm related to, so it isn't that. Was it the badly skinned knee at CP middle school camp? Has she noticed that progressives have less money? Maybe she just needs to grow up...
Ruchira, thank Newton you're plugged back in. CMI, I'm sure we can arrange something.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Sep 28, 2008 9:05:23 PM
"Steven, it's just that it's a little recherche -- living in Europe, being happy, and hoping the USA with its awful long reach won't somehow foul it for you there. With so many native-born Europeans, at any given time, mulling that very one over, this could be the moment to wonder about repatriation, and what you would doing here if you were indeed reclaimed for the homeland. I think you're experiencing homesickness in deep disguise, that form occasionally recognized as virulent anti-nostalgia. You could be like whatisname in the final pages of _Daisy Miller_, 'lingering too long in foreign parts.' Just a thought."
Mon Dieu, now that's what we call *Nouvelle Jingoism*! Don't be offended if I chuckle with post-Enlightenment smugness at your thinly veiled hexes, Elatia. Hey, you and Vick both come off as such ersatz-Republicans in the tone and logic of so many of your comments that it's no wonder real change in my, erm, "homeland" is unlikely. Your niece is voting Republican because she's still young and in unconflicted touch with her inner self. I'm not saying that's good for the world, I'm just saying it's a lot more honest.
Sacrebleu, I'm glad this is merely a comment thread; what if Elatia had the *actual power* to make me conform? I can just see that Re-education Camp... designed to look like a Yuppie Mall (sorry: Galleria), with the inmates (scruffy dissidents like me, Dave Ranning and CM1) in puce (100 percent natural fiber) jumpsuits, mentally waterboarded with round-the-clock Andreas Bocelli and Enja, forcefed sea bass for mandatory brunch... hours of merciless reconditioning sessions of NPR and Nora Ephron audiobooks and looped episodes of "The West Wing"...
(shudder)
Posted by: Steven Augustine | Sep 29, 2008 2:36:24 AM
Tee-hee! That's the Retread Centre you already attended, Steven. I had in mind: franks and beans; large dogs that shed, mildewed frisbees bent out of true; Jonathan Livingston Seagull with foxed pages; Leroy Neiman; John Denver; Leo Buscaglia; and, Members Only wind-breakers. Because this is a nightmare, we'll throw in James Wood. That's Wood, not Woods. If you are truly shuddering -- that's a sign of very strong attraction. Just go for it.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Sep 29, 2008 10:27:31 AM
Ersatz Republican - obviously I haven't done a good job of communicating. I just think it's a bit rich for you to run away from the trenches and still come the high-minded preacher, my good man. I have an allergy to people who really consider themselves at some deep essential level *better* than other people who haven't had their advantages. And I smell that in your comments.
The entrenching of the class system in America drives me wild. My father worked as a janitor and had no money to put his five kids through college, so we did it ourselves. That just isn't possible, it literally isn't possible for people of our background to get the education we managed to wring from the system. Reagan was bombing the bridges even as I was crossing them.
What I meant about outbreeding is that zeitgeist often trumps parenting. My parents wanted to raise us to be sober god-fearing folk, but it didn't take, thanks to the hallowed trinity of sex, drugs and rock n roll. My brothers came of age in the sixties/early seventies, and bequeathed to me their radical politics along with their tastes in music.
Steven seems to me like an illustration of the Phil Ochs song "Love Me I'm a Liberal", so it's funny that he obviously sees me the same way.
Posted by: Vicki Baker | Sep 29, 2008 10:49:08 AM
"Leroy Neiman..."!
(SA clutches at heart, keels over; Elatia scores a bittersweet triumph at the tragic cost of an almost-human life)
Posted by: Steven Augustine | Sep 29, 2008 12:00:39 PM
So I need to get in touch with my inner Republican in order to be unconflicted and authentic eh, Steven? I suppose you have learned to embrace yours, and that is what makes you so compla... I mean well-adjusted. What do you recommend? Both your scenario and Elatia's sound like soft options after years of enforced church and Sunday School. I rejected all that, along with the politics, while still half-believing I would go to hell or be "left behind."
Posted by: Vicki Baker | Sep 29, 2008 1:20:52 PM
Well, I've had a good laugh, but enough with the jokes. Back to the topic at hand. Read this (Orwellian?) article (from The Army Times website) and ask yourself how this might in some way dovetail with the issue of the social unrest that's bound to result from the unprecedented financial crisis(es) under discussion:
***Brigade homeland tours start Oct. 1
3rd Infantry’s 1st BCT trains for a new dwell-time mission. Helping ‘people at home’ may become a permanent part of the active Army
By Gina Cavallaro - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Sep 8, 2008 6:15:06 EDT
The 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team has spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle, helping restore essential services and escorting supply convoys.
Now they’re training for the same mission — with a twist — at home.
Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.
It is not the first time an active-duty unit has been tapped to help at home. In August 2005, for example, when Hurricane Katrina unleashed hell in Mississippi and Louisiana, several active-duty units were pulled from various posts and mobilized to those areas.
But this new mission marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities.
After 1st BCT finishes its dwell-time mission, expectations are that another, as yet unnamed, active-duty brigade will take over and that the mission will be a permanent one.
“Right now, the response force requirement will be an enduring mission. How the [Defense Department] chooses to source that and whether or not they continue to assign them to NorthCom, that could change in the future,” said Army Col. Louis Vogler, chief of NorthCom future operations. “Now, the plan is to assign a force every year.”
The command is at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colo., but the soldiers with 1st BCT, who returned in April after 15 months in Iraq, will operate out of their home post at Fort Stewart, Ga., where they’ll be able to go to school, spend time with their families and train for their new homeland mission as well as the counterinsurgency mission in the war zones.
Stop-loss will not be in effect, so soldiers will be able to leave the Army or move to new assignments during the mission, and the operational tempo will be variable.
Don’t look for any extra time off, though. The at-home mission does not take the place of scheduled combat-zone deployments and will take place during the so-called dwell time a unit gets to reset and regenerate after a deployment.
The 1st of the 3rd is still scheduled to deploy to either Iraq or Afghanistan in early 2010, which means the soldiers will have been home a minimum of 20 months by the time they ship out.
In the meantime, they’ll learn new skills, use some of the ones they acquired in the war zone and more than likely will not be shot at while doing any of it.
They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack.
Training for homeland scenarios has already begun at Fort Stewart and includes specialty tasks such as knowing how to use the “jaws of life” to extract a person from a mangled vehicle; extra medical training for a CBRNE incident; and working with U.S. Forestry Service experts on how to go in with chainsaws and cut and clear trees to clear a road or area.
The 1st BCT’s soldiers also will learn how to use “the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded,” 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.
“It’s a new modular package of nonlethal capabilities that they’re fielding. They’ve been using pieces of it in Iraq, but this is the first time that these modules were consolidated and this package fielded, and because of this mission we’re undertaking we were the first to get it.”
The package includes equipment to stand up a hasty road block; spike strips for slowing, stopping or controlling traffic; shields and batons; and, beanbag bullets.
“I was the first guy in the brigade to get Tasered,” said Cloutier, describing the experience as “your worst muscle cramp ever — times 10 throughout your whole body.
“I’m not a small guy, I weigh 230 pounds ... it put me on my knees in seconds.”
The brigade will not change its name, but the force will be known for the next year as a CBRNE Consequence Management Response Force, or CCMRF (pronounced “sea-smurf”).
“I can’t think of a more noble mission than this,” said Cloutier, who took command in July. “We’ve been all over the world during this time of conflict, but now our mission is to take care of citizens at home ... and depending on where an event occurred, you’re going home to take care of your home town, your loved ones.”
While soldiers’ combat training is applicable, he said, some nuances don’t apply.
“If we go in, we’re going in to help American citizens on American soil, to save lives, provide critical life support, help clear debris, restore normalcy and support whatever local agencies need us to do, so it’s kind of a different role,” said Cloutier, who, as the division operations officer on the last rotation, learned of the homeland mission a few months ago while they were still in Iraq.
Some brigade elements will be on call around the clock, during which time they’ll do their regular marksmanship, gunnery and other deployment training. That’s because the unit will continue to train and reset for the next deployment, even as it serves in its CCMRF mission.
Should personnel be needed at an earthquake in California, for example, all or part of the brigade could be scrambled there, depending on the extent of the need and the specialties involved.
Other branches included
The active Army’s new dwell-time mission is part of a NorthCom and DOD response package.
Active-duty soldiers will be part of a force that includes elements from other military branches and dedicated National Guard Weapons of Mass Destruction-Civil Support Teams.
A final mission rehearsal exercise is scheduled for mid-September at Fort Stewart and will be run by Joint Task Force Civil Support, a unit based out of Fort Monroe, Va., that will coordinate and evaluate the interservice event.
In addition to 1st BCT, other Army units will take part in the two-week training exercise, including elements of the 1st Medical Brigade out of Fort Hood, Texas, and the 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade from Fort Bragg, N.C.
There also will be Air Force engineer and medical units, the Marine Corps Chemical, Biological Initial Reaction Force, a Navy weather team and members of the Defense Logistics Agency and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.
One of the things Vogler said they’ll be looking at is communications capabilities between the services.
“It is a concern, and we’re trying to check that and one of the ways we do that is by having these sorts of exercises. Leading up to this, we are going to rehearse and set up some of the communications systems to make sure we have interoperability,” he said.
“I don’t know what America’s overall plan is — I just know that 24 hours a day, seven days a week, there are soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines that are standing by to come and help if they’re called,” Cloutier said. “It makes me feel good as an American to know that my country has dedicated a force to come in and help the people at home.”
Posted by: Steven Augustine | Sep 29, 2008 2:20:57 PM
Glenn Greenwald writes on the "Homeland Brigade" in Salon:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/09/24/army/
Plenty scary.
Steven you were the one who talked about how great it was to live in the former Third Reich, because *all that* taught the Germans a lesson and now the Fed Republic is a great neighborhood with wonderful schools and health care and lovely playgrounds for all the liberal kiddies. (no mention of the Asyllager on the edge of town.)
For wanting to avert a similar lesson for America, mainly because I'm not willing for more Iraqi and Iranian and Afgani and American lives to to be consumed as "teaching materials" in this "lesson", apparently, I'm a crypto-Republican. Apparently, I should follow Dave Ranning's advice to lie back and enjoy the unfolding Apocalypse.
I'm not so stupid to think that Obama winning the election will mean much progress in the direction I want, but the last 8 years have proved that it does matter who wins.
GI Resistance to the Vietnam War. was a progressive, working-class movement that joined black and white soldiers with left-wing intellectuals (well, actresses, singers and such) Could those forces be mobilized again? I don't know, but please, support the GI resistance movement and your local GI Rights hotline:
http://www.couragetoresist.org/
Posted by: Vicki Baker | Sep 29, 2008 3:20:39 PM
Vicki,
"I have an allergy to people who really consider themselves at some deep essential level *better* than other people who haven't had their advantages."
Does the allergy mean you think you're better than the people who think they're better than the other people who haven't had their advantages?
This discussion is beginning to remind me of Paul Fussell's book Class:
amazon
Divide and conquer rules.
Since Dave's not here, I'll try to say someting funny. I once saw Paul Fussell and William F. Buckley Jr. on television discussing I can't remember what. The moderator got mixed up when he was asking Buckley a question and addressed him as Mr. Fuckley. Ha Ha.
Vicki asks: "Could those forces be mobilized again?" I doubt it, because thanks to Milton Friedman, whom we can also thank for the current deregulated fiscal mess, there is no draft.
I hope we don't get tasered. Maybe if we stay off fire escapes we'll be spared:
nytimes
Steven,
This dissenter doesn't eat sushi. I was hoping Elatia would practice her culinary artistry on the island, but look what you're doing!
CMI
Posted by: CriticalMassI | Sep 29, 2008 5:09:53 PM
CM1: Poverty draft is still a draft. It's working for now because of No Child Left Unrecruited and Stop Loss. Those who refuse to go on deserve our support and encouragement and should not be told "You signed up for it."
Remember it wasn't that hard to get out of the 'Nam with the right connections. And the draft classifications actually had a bit more humanity in some ways than the present system. My oldest brother was 3-A because he had a kid at 19. Another was 4-F because he can't roll one eye up, though his vision was otherwise OK. Neither of those would get you out of having your tour involuntarily extended today.
Posted by: Vicki Baker | Sep 29, 2008 5:41:00 PM
"GI Resistance to the Vietnam War. was a progressive, working-class movement that joined black and white soldiers with left-wing intellectuals (well, actresses, singers and such) Could those forces be mobilized again?"
That's an interesting question, Vick, and my response is that "They" have put quite a lot of effort into making sure that cross-cultural synergies like that won't happen again (or any time soon).
For example, the recent "race" polls that find that a substantial portion of white Democrats have problems with blacks (and therefore with Obama, which, when you think about it, sends a devastating message to black America: *even if you get as unthinkably far as becoming the Democratic nominee for POTUS, we'll still consider you too inherently "violent" and "lazy" to be trusted: wow). This puppet-mastering "They" is not a nonsensical or paranoid construct: *somebody* rules/owns the airwaves (and the content-providing mega-corporations) and it isn't a bunch of lower-middle-income hippies and jazz musicians. The Media has pumped so many gigatons of black-America-demonizing imagery (often in the guise of populist entertainment) into the cultural ecosphere... and exacerbated black/white antagonisms (think about it: who really appointed loud-mouthed-figure-of-fun Al Sharpton as a camera-ready "black leader"?), that the damage is done. And that's not even touching on the issue of public-record conspiracy *facts* like the Iran-Contra/ghetto-drug connection. Blacks make an ideal Law-n-Order boogieman domestically, while Muslims do the job abroad (and where the two groups overlap: Homeland Security gold!).
Further: the leaders/organizers capable of bringing the interests/attitudes of the key demographic of white working class males together with blacks/women/cultural elites... have a dispiriting tendency to die young (a la Paul Wellstone, John Lennon et al).
My personal opinion is that we have to take a step or two back and take a clear-eyed reading of the total picture before we can achieve an accurate sense of whether or not we're still in Kansas. My sense: we ain't.
Until then, voting Obama is the best thing we can do to slow down the apocalypse. But, again: real change will be (multi) generational. There is no quick fix. We may even, in fact, be talking about another century when we talk about things getting good.
Posted by: Steven Augustine | Sep 30, 2008 6:20:11 AM
McCain supports the bail out of banksters. Obama supports the bail out of banksters. Wall street owns Main street. Wall street owns the politicians. A deal will be passed. Wage slaves will be exploited. Everything is normal. And if I write another short sentence I will drive you crazy, so I won't.
Posted by: Jared | Sep 30, 2008 11:08:12 AM
S.A: Blacks make an ideal Law-n-Order boogieman domestically, while Muslims do the job abroad (and where the two groups overlap: Homeland Security gold!).
See what THEY are mailing with the morning paper in battleground states.
Posted by: Ruchira | Sep 30, 2008 12:24:47 PM
Does anyone know anything about this?
votestrike
votestrike
Posted by: CriticalMassI | Oct 1, 2008 9:12:10 AM
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