The Dark Wraith Forums

Biden Blasts Bush for Anti-Obama Belch

wraith@dark-wraith.com — Thu, 15 May 2008 15:29:21 -0500

CNN.com is reporting that Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) used the word "bullshit" to describe President Bush's statement before the Israeli Knesset that "some" Democrats want to "appease terrorists" by trying to negotiate with Iran. Senator Biden further coarsened the political dialogue by calling Mr. Bush's accusations "malarkey" and pointing out that both Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates have both called for talks with Iran.

In his speech before the Israeli parliament marking the 60th anniversary of the birth of the Jewish State, Bush invoked memories of the military expansion of the Third Reich across Europe, describing those who would sit down with "terrorists" as laboring under "foolish delusion" similar to those who sought negotiations with Adolf Hitler. The remarks were met with substantial applause from the audience of lawmakers of our most subsidized ally, which has threatened to attack Iran if the United States does not do so.

Although the White House is publicly denying that the comments were aimed at Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, who has called for negotiations with Iran, aides to the President privately acknowledge that Bush was taking direct aim at the man who is appears likely to be the Dem nominee.

At the end of the article CNN.com published about Sen. Biden's response to President Bush's remarks, readers were invited to comment on the story. As I have done with previous articles at CNN.com, I did so, although none have ever been subsequently presented anywhere at the CNN.com Website. To diminish the importance of CNN's disinterest in publishing my response, below is the comment I submitted.

Yes, what Mr. Bush said is, indeed, bovine by-product.

It is, however, also the sign of a desperate man, one who uses incendiary, false assertions to buttress the flagging ramparts of a unitary executive for whom defiance of the rule of law offered no protection from the lessons of history. To the same extent that he has crafted from the whole cloth of delusion the claim that the economic crises now looming are somehow the fault of the Democrats, he now erects his ludicrous monument of self-exoneration for the utter collapse of our foreign policy into miserable, useless, lost wars that have debilitated our military to the point where genuine threats to our security, threats that will loom larger and larger in the coming decades, face no clear, present, and viable long-term deterrence from what was once a credible war machine in the United States. Instead, Mr. Bush has squandered our future security on a Global War on Terror that is nothing more than a staggeringly expensive exercise in chasing a handful of bearded religious maniacs around the world while imposing greater and greater degradations of personal privacy at home.

Mr. Bush will soon be at the end of the time in which his incompetence can blight the American experience. Although he will likely be replaced by one fool or another from one party or another, at the very least we shall be relieved of the tiring nonsense of a unitary executive without a clue.

The other bright note, of course, is that the likes of mainstream news media outlets like CNN, along with The New York Times, the Washington Post, and far too many others, will be able to claim to an ever-gullible public that they were not really every bit a part of the madness of these first eight years of the 21st Century in America.

The great news is thus: the more the mainstream media cry their lack of culpability, the more they will sound just like the President who disclaims his own failure.

History will be most unkind both to Mr. Bush and to his propagandists. That's what makes history so much more fun to those who read about it than to those who must live through it.

The Dark Wraith still cannot imagine why CNN did not publish this erudite reply to one of its articles about President Bush.

Bush · Biden · Obama · Iran · Israel

The Gospel of Impending Doom

wraith@dark-wraith.com — Sun, 11 May 2008 22:04:31 -0500

The YouTube video below is a capture of the CNNMoney interview of February 28, 2008, with economist John Williams of Shadow Government Statistics, a site that keeps track of key economic data, including figures no longer published by the federal government, as well as data for which government calculation methods have been altered over the years, often with the effect of casting economic conditions in a better light than would have been the case under previous methods. Among the crucial numbers Williams reports is the year-over-year growth rate of the broadest measure of money, M3, a key economic indicator on which the Federal Reserve stopped publishing information in early 2006 under various pretenses, none of which can be characterized as anything other than disingenuous and self-serving. In my two-part series, "The Federal Reserve under Fire," I set forth the importance of the growth rate of the money supply and, in particular, the growth rate of the broadest aggregate, M3, which is critical to an understanding of the direction of the economy insofar as inflation is concerned. Previously, in my series "The Economics of Wreckage," particularly in Part Two and in Part Three, I laid out the neo-Keynesian theory and policy of aggregate demand management and how it had gone awry on several occasions prior to the current era, illustrating why the policies that have been pursued by the Bush Administration and its rubber-stamp Federal Reserve, first under the addled Alan Greenspan and then under the obsequious Ben Bernanke, are predictably and inexorably leading the nation to the brink of hyperinflation coupled with deep recession.

The above-mentioned articles at The Dark Wraith Forums incorporate by reference links to a number of other published articles I have written over the past nearly three-and-a-half years forewarning of the coming economic catastrophe. In my January 2005 article, "Prologue to the Book of Consequences," I wrote the following:

The calculus of where the economy is headed is quite simple. Mainstream news media outlets bend over backward to avoid appearing biased, so they avoid describing the future consequences of current political actions, even though the consequences are governed by rock-solid principles of economics and finance that are not open to disagreement among the learnéd. Unfortunately, the neo-conservatives have made a craft of disputing the indisputable, giving observers an impression of debate where none exists.

At that time, I still had hope that the Federal Reserve, which had begun to clamp down on the growth rate of the money supply, would stick to its guns, even though that course would have thrown the economy into a recession. Financial markets were sending the classic signals that this is, indeed, what was coming, as I pointed out in several articles, including "Toward Full Yield Curve Inversion," which I wrote and published in March of 2006.

By that time, however, the reckless mendacity of this Administration was returning to fashion at the Fed: as it turned out, the Fed had rather swiftly and quietly untethered the broad monetary aggregates M2 and M3, once again causing them to grow out of control, leaving only M1—the kind of money ordinary people use—under an approximately zero growth rate regimen. The broader aggregates M2 and M3, feeding as they do the financial sectors and the wealthy, are now growing at rates that have absolutely no justification whatsoever other than to forestall economic catastrophe until the Bush Administration leaves office.

The growth rates of M2 and M3 are breath-taking. As mentioned above, the Fed no longer publishes M3. Including as it does M2, which in turn includes M1 (which, until recently, was not growing), this broadest measure of the money circulating in the economy is now in the growth rate range of 20 percent.

Two years ago, the yield curve inverted, which has historically signaled a good possibility of economic downturn that might become a recession. Shortly after full inversion, and notably in what was the Spring of a mid-term election year, the Fed panicked, backing down from tight monetary policy and thereby leaving only the people who use cash and checking account types of money to labor under a money supply being held at zero growth. As it turned out, the Fed was commencing the second phase of what would be a nearly unprecedented expansionary monetary policy that continues to this very day. Under this regime, not only is the Federal Reserve increasing the money supply at a rate in excess of the real growth rate of the economy, but the Fed is accelerating this growth rate! Although the chart below has been published here on several recent, prior occasions, it is worth publishing again, and it should be noted that John Williams of Shadow Government Statistics showed an almost identical chart in the video offered above.

The Federal Reserve is pouring hundreds of billions of excess dollars into the economy to hold off an economic crash. The longer it does this, the worse the resulting inflation will be; more importantly, however, the longer it pursues this radically irresponsible policy, the worse the recession will be when a new Federal Reserve Board must crush the money supply long enough to drain out the staggering greenback overhang. Interest rates, which will already be rising because of inflation expectations embedded in them, will skyrocket because interest rates are the price of money, and when the supply of anything contracts, its price goes up. Business investment, already laboring under tight credit conditions, will grind to a standstill, as will consumer spending on anything other than basics, which will absorb a greater and greater share of income in the spiral of accelerating inflation caused by the almost incomprehensible oversupply of money progressively eroding the purchasing power of each dollar circulating in the economy.

On the international front, as the dollar continues its inexorable plunge into Second World currency weakness, U.S. exports to other countries will rise as our goods become cheaper overseas, and foreign imports to the United States will become more expensive. That has two sour notes. First, as imports become more expensive on American shelves, the domestic substitutes right beside them on the shelves will rise in price by the so-called "substitution effect," fed as it will be by the excess money that will fuel the demand-pull inflation at the retail level. Second, as Americans buy fewer imports, foreign reserves of dollars, which are the means by which our government, our businesses, and our households have been able to borrow so much money for the past several decades, will begin to dry up; and with the U.S. government spending in stupendous excess of the tax revenues it draws, the U.S. Treasury in the years ahead will suck up what little there will be of foreign capital available for lending, leaving both households and private businesses with virtual bread crumbs of lendable funds, especially once the Fed begins the long, gruesome process of letting the economy slowly absorb in real output gains what will ultimately be the trillions of dollars in excess liquidity poured in by the Bush Administration's Federal Reserve.

All of the righteous, legitimate, and perhaps even understated condemnation of the Bush Administration and its Federal Reserve aside for a while, the pertinent questions on most people's minds revolve around what is to come; and by no means are the answers pleasant. Even under the most responsible, intelligent, and take-charge President—of which none appear to be on hand for the up-coming election—the economy and its constituents will suffer, and the suffering will be severe.

No, the United States economy is not in a "recession," yet, despite the premature squealing of quite a few people. Although some parts of the country might already be experiencing negative economic growth, according to the latest figures released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis of the Commerce Department, the overall economy actually grew in the first quarter of 2008, albeit at an anemic rate of just 0.6 percent, matching the growth rate for the final quarter of 2007; and, although the Commerce Department is notorious for revising such GDP growth rate numbers several times, the signs simply are not there of a widespread recession underway for the U.S. as a whole. Americans have not seen a severe recession in more than a generation. The last bad one was caused by the contractionary monetary policy of the Federal Reserve under the leadership of Chairman Paul Volker, President Jimmy Carter's appointee; Volker's Fed aggressively clamped down on the money supply to drain out the excess money that had been building at a greater or lesser pace for more than a decade. Volker did not let go until not only the inflation had abated, but so too had the far more important expectation of future inflation. Recessions since then have been relatively short and mild by comparison, and the "recession" that heralded the beginning of the current Administration was not a recession by the technical measure of two consecutive quarters of negative real GDP growth, but it was certainly more than enough of a pretext for George W. Bush and his Republican allies in Congress to get their way with drastic tax cuts to "stimulate" the economy, a siren call the GOP has used in the past, most notably at the outset of the Reagan years and, before that, near the end of the Eisenhower Administration. Unlike Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, who led their party's parade to the trough of wildly generous tax cuts for the rich, Eisenhower resisted the tax cut bleatings of his fellow Republicans and, in so doing, was able to deliver several years of balanced federal budgets, unlike either Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush. Of course, in all fairness at least to the current President of the United States, few are those even among the professional apologists for Mr. Bush who would accuse him of being the latter-day incarnation of President Eisenhower in fiscally responsible leadership, much less in statesmanship and general intelligence.

As a touchstone for reference, the table below presents the record of recessions in the United States from the third decade of the 20th Century to the present.

U.S. Recessions 1920 to Present
Peak before Recession	Trough of Recession	Duration of Recession (months from peak to trough)	Decrease in Real GDP (percent from peak to trough)	Duration of Following Expansion (months from trough to peak)
January 1920	July 1921	18	8.7	22
May 1923	July 1924	14	4.1	27
October 1926	November 1927	13	2.0	21
August 1929	March 1933	43	32.6	50
May 1937	June 1938	13	18.2	80
February 1945	October 1945	8	11.0	37
November 1948	October 1949	11	1.5	45
July 1953	May 1954	10	3.2	39
August 1957	April 1958	8	3.3	24
April 1960	February 1961	10	1.2	106
December 1969	November 1970	11	1.0	36
November 1973	March 1975	16	4.9	58
January 1980	July 1980	6	2.5	12
July 1981	November 1982	16	3.0	92
July 1990	March 1991	8	1.4	120
March 2001	November 2001	8	0.0	76*
*As of end of First Quarter 2008

With that data providing helpful historical guidance, and with some well-established macroeconomic principles being applied, what follows is a summary, if highly preliminary, assessment of what interested readers should expect of the economy in the coming months and years.

First, the economy will not go into recession for a while. The current scenario appears too much like the U.S. economy in 1979, except that the incumbent Federal Reserve is far more out of control than the pre-Volker Fed was. We will experience what in Carter's time was called "stagflation": paltry real growth of GDP coupled with accelerating inflation. Eventually, as that inflation becomes more and more embedded in interest rates, the Fed's efforts to hold interest rates down by pouring money at greater and greater rates into the economy will begin to fail, and the economy will teeter closer and closer to the brink of negative real growth in GDP.

As far as inflation is concerned, a quick, dirty way to generate a forecast is to take the year-over-year growth rate of the money supply and subtract from it the real growth rate of GDP: that's the "overhang" of dollars the economy's real (that is, production-based) spending growth cannot use, so that overhang must, sooner or later, become inflation. If the broadest money aggregate, M3, is growing at close to 20 percent, and the real GDP is growing at around half-a-percent, that means inflation will eventually hit 19.5 percent or so on an annualized basis. As a nice, round number, call it a forecast of 20 percent inflation. As mind-numbing as that number is, the worse part is that, the longer the Federal Reserve under the new President fails to crush the money supply, the closer expected inflation will get to that 20 percent figure, which means interest rates will climb to the point where economic activity in the United States will grind to a virtual halt; but that's not the worst part.

The expected inflation premium does not affect only interest rates; it becomes embedded in the forward expectations of compensation for all factors of production, perhaps most notable among them being labor, which has been on its back for years in terms of its ability to successfully project bargaining power into management-labor wage negotiations. That will change: under mounting pressure from rank-and-file workers who will begin to experience real deprivations as their nominal purchasing power withers in the accelerating inflation, people will forcefully demand far greater performance from their unions and, in the absence of union representation, from the employers themselves. Long dormant (in some cases, even intergenerational) frustrations with the inability to get ahead economically will translate, at best, into far more active, vociferous workers and, at worst, widespread agitation and activities that will bring down what has become a swift, efficient, often merciless fist of retributive law enforcement surveillance, actions, and violence, which will be wholly and prejudicially supported by courts packed by the Bush Administration with extemist conservative and Right-wing judges.

The next President, regardless of which nominee it is, will be faced with the choice of either forestalling the application of draconian remedies for the hyperinflation or forcing the Fed to quickly and resolutely clamp down on the money supply, this latter choice sending the economy into a hard recession near the depth and length of the Great Depression. Either way the new President decides to play it, by 2010 or 2011, unprecedented, severe, unavoidable demands on the federal budget will emerge, and they will get worse with each successive budget cycle. At the same time, the utter debilitation of the U.S. armed forces will have become apparent not merely to the U.S. brass, but to the heads of state of adventurous countries in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a nascent South American alliance, the European Union, and loner countries like Japan, all of whom will shed at least some pretense of disinterest in taking command of land, the seas, the sky, and space in the growing chasm between continued American military posturing and viable, multi-theater engagement capability.

And if all of that is not enough, the growing independence of the world economy and its sovereign participants from the U.S. dollar will mean that U.S. goods and services, although cheap and well received in other countries, will become not just more expensive here at home, but also subject to much more price volatility as the greenback no longer serves as the anchor in international contracts for everything from foodstuffs to hydrocarbon products.

Other catastrophes will attend and succeed those listed above, but that's a good start, although, as cautioned earlier, this is just a preliminary and quite summary impression of what is to come. Indeed, it could get much worse.

One way or the other, despite the greatest efforts of the stupefyingly irresponsible Bush Administration and its swirling cacophony of apologists in the Right-wing think tanks, the mainstream media, academia, the courts, the religious community, and the general population, reality will soon arrive on the unstoppable freight train of dire consequences to which each of the aforementioned groups will no doubt find its own means by which to dismiss personal responsibility for national calamity. That, no doubt, was why the gallows were so popular in a by-gone era: a good noose not only kills the mendacious, it shuts them up, too.

The Dark Wraith will offer further economic forecasts as events merit.

economy · macroeconomics · recession · inflation · Bush · Fed

The Dark Wraith Lecture Series: Lecture 3

wraith@dark-wraith.com — Wed, 7 May 2008 22:21:42 -0500

Dark Wraith Publishing presents The Dark Wraith Lecture Series, specially edited versions of academic lectures in economics and business offered as a public service to visitors at this Website.

Lecture 3: "Constitutional Rights and Fiduciary Duty"
Duration: 0:04:19
Size: 3.95 Mb

Constitution · law · rights · fiduciary · duty

A Conspiracy Theory Primer

wraith@dark-wraith.com — Sun, 4 May 2008 23:39:28 -0500

The 2002 horror movie The Ring wove a tale about a horrific video that would predicate the death in seven days of anyone who watched it. The only way to avoid this fate was to further propagate the video, allowing others to suffer its fatal curse. Personally, I enjoyed the movie; but, then again, I'm a sucker for scary movies, although I can pretty much always do without gore-galore festivals (unless the victims were really, really bad actors). The Ring was satisfying for me to the extent that it presented a kind of terror too remote to make me worry about some real-world version of its central premise coming true.

Therein was my potentially grave error in assessing the story line of The Ring, and I have now decided that the only way I can dispense with what could otherwise be an unwanted curse upon my soul is to invite—indeed to encourage—readers to watch a 139-minute film by über-conspiracy theorist Alex Jones of Prison Planet. The movie is herewith embedded near the end of this article.

Long-time readers of my articles might recall that I have mentioned Mr. Jones in the past, specifically with respect to the fact that maverick Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul appeared in a film of his. In my tradition of diplomatic understatement, I wrote of Alex Jones that, "[He is] believed by at least some rational people to be a few cheese cubes short of a snack tray..."

That aside, for readers who want a remarkable, although incomplete, rundown of a principal branch of conspiracy theory, allow me to recommend Alex Jones's 2007 movie, Endgame. It is sweeping, and it is compelling. It is also deeply flawed, primarily by the way it, like most conspiracy theories, constructs conspiracy by virtue of mere associations, some of them familial, others chronological, still others even less well-defined. For example, Jones connects the evolution theory of Charles Darwin to a cousin's twisted ideas on eugenics, and then he goes on to associate the early eugenics whackos—admittedly including a number of Charles Darwin's subsequent family members—to the later eugenics whackos like Adolf Hitler and the better-race promoters in the U.S., including the predecessor to Planned Parenthood. In all fairness to Jones, however, he does not directly attack the theory of evolution, nor does he condemn the idea of the right of women to choose abortion; but he does seem to have an intense interest in offering a less-than-dim view of the foundations of many modern-day organizations, including everything from the World Wildlife Federation to the Federal Reserve system. Along the way, as well as going after the predecessor to Planned Parenthood, he jumps on the usual list of conspiracy theory hot buttons like the United Nations, the European Union, and NAFTA. I roll my eyes every last time the conspiracy theorists trot out these worn-out whipping boys, although the matter of that trans-America highway corridor is a little less of an eye-roller than meets the eye, particularly since officialdom in Washington acts to this very day like the thing doesn't even exist.

I must admit that, within the sweep of his attack, Jones goes after some of my favorite rich-boy charlatans. One of them is Al Gore, a gentleman who in my own, personal opinion is a PowerPoint-wielding, sky-is-falling elitist-opportunist. My published writing and comments about him are harsh and unyielding, and I am not in the least impressed by his Nobel Peace Prize, awarded as it was to a quite comfortable, upper-class gentleman at the same time in history that genuine heroes the world over are rotting in prisons, being tortured, and getting executed for demanding such trivial things as freedom in unfree lands. Yes, the Presidency of the United States was stolen from Mr. Gore; but, no, sometimes it is not better for the Republic that its wronged meekly stand down, for their surrender is not theirs alone, but is also the sacrifice of the millions who will then suffer under the reign of the venal thieves wretchedly proclaimed victor.

Enough with grinding the personal axes; this post is about Endgame, which is, as noted above, incomplete. While it fabulously explains the Bilderberg Group—a favorite sore spot of any self-respecting conspiracy theorist—it completely avoids mentioning the Illuminati, Opus Dei, Freemasonry (although a stylized version of the All Seeing Eye is presented several times), the Jewish conspiracy, and anything whatsoever having to do with UFOs. (Those who know about these matters will, however, notice in the movie all kinds of visual hints of other conspiracy theory threads.) Strangely, avoiding a free-fall involvement of all these other branches of conspiracy theory keeps the movie from drifting into complete silliness.

Along the way, the movie gets a little slow in some places, but the tenor re-attains fever pitch at several places in the last half. Without giving away too many details, the mention that Hillary Rodham Clinton did a half-day appearance at the 2006 Bilderberg Group conference is worth noting. No, she's not a Bilderberger: a half-day visit would mean she was there to briefly present herself for the core group to consider. At that 2006 conference, by the way, Jones got photographs of none other than the disgraced Ahmed Chalabi of Iraq pre-invasion disinformation fame; Chalabi was slithering around at the hotel like some kind of creepy denizen from the depths, apparently a welcome participant in the confab of the rich and powerful.

Another fun part of the movie is the interview into which Jones suckered a young Rothschild heir, a fellow heavily into promoting save-the-planet concerts. Jones threw a rather ludicrous "fact" at the dear boy, who took the bait like an idiot and responded with one of the most self-defeatingly stupid answers I've ever heard from an ostensible heir to shadowy greatness. I actually had to get out of my chair and walk a few feet away during the Rothschild pup's blithering oral dance. Whether or not Jones knew his "fact" about other planets in the solar system exhibiting signs of warming was ridiculous, he certainly got a future Bilderberger to make an ass of himself.

I should also point out that Endgame touched a soft spot in my heart as it took on such historical icons as Bertrand Russell, a man whose bizarre statements about depopulation made him someone I have reviled both as a person and as an intellectual inspiration my whole adult life; Russell resides in the same level of my esteem with self-fawning sods like Ayn Rand and Henry David Thoreau. Another joy to my heart came in the mention that Vice President Dick Cheney, in making his triumphal return to the Council on Foreign Relations some years back, commented on the use of ethnic bio-weapons. (Gee, with stuff like that being talked about by White leaders of the Free World, it's no wonder people like Rev. Wright are considered total lunatics when they start their bizarre rants about AIDS being human-manufactured to kill Blacks.)

I tell you, if all that wasn't enough, I became downright giddy when Bill Gates and Warren Buffet were trotted out for a brief flogging.

Yes, for me, Endgame was a veritable orgy of evil, sinful, wrongful delight, the kind of stuff I know very well is just plain mind-rotting in the same way a rare, fatty, 20-ounce steak cooked on an open fire and a nose-piercing, mucous-clearing cigar are bad for me. God! but it was sweet.

For me, the list of pleasure points in Endgame was rather long; but just because Jones and I have a common manifest of disliked creeps and just because we share a deep concern for the emergence of an authoritarian state, I simply cannot allow that I agree with the scope of his conspiracy theory. I do not, and the reason is quite simple: even though the Bilderbergers really do imagine themselves controlling the fate of the world, and even though their idiocy has caused actual harm, they are pathetically incompetent in their silly plans, schemes, and dreams. Unless their master plan really was to crater the world economy with a blithering combination of neo-liberals, neo-conservatives, communists, Right-wing thugs, religious nutcases, and assorted other thunderously ignorant operatives, where we are headed would be the very last place putative global controllers would have wanted to go: down this path we are plunging lies what will in all likelihood be a horrendous, destructive clash of classes over everything from food to shelter to freedom. As enfeebled of mind as Americans have been for a long time, and as weak and reckless as political opposition has been to the insanity of the Bush Administration, its military adventures abroad, and its ever-expanding, ever-more-intrusive law enforcement machinery at home, the dynamic will change, and the change will be dramatic.

It will also be ugly.

Shadowy, filthy rich cretins who meet once a year to plan the fate of the world would be awfully stupid to risk a global economic collapse that could just as easily lead to anarchy as it could to some pretext for a one-world, authoritarian government solution.

Certainly, those shadowy, filthy rich cretins are not that stupid. Such an idea is every bit as crazy as saying that the richest, most powerful nation on Earth would allow itself to be ruled, and thereby economically destroyed, for eight long years by a vicious, moronic, inarticulate, power-mad, secretive, incompetent fool.

The very idea is laughable.

Anyway, grab some popcorn, pour a drink, close the curtains, and spend a little more than two hours watching Endgame. If nothing else, it's certainly worth a laugh.

The Dark Wraith gives it two thumbs way up.

Bilderberg · conspiracy · authoritarian · one-world · government

In RE: The Rule of Law v. Justice

wraith@dark-wraith.com — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 12:15:54 -0500

With respect to the verdicts exonerating three New York City police officers of all criminal charges for killing Sean Bell, an unarmed, innocent man, the mainstream news media have taken a largely muted, matter-of-fact tone in reporting the acquittals, although shades of support for the decisions by Queens State Supreme Court Justice Arthur Cooperman have come from surprising sources like The New York Times, which sought to characterize the incident in terms of "nuance" in a "...complicated case that unfolded in a city less racially divided than 10 years ago," thereby lending further weight to the reasoning advanced by the judge who presided over the bench trial of the three officers, Detectives Michael Oliver and Gescard Isnora, who were charged with manslaughter, assault and reckless endangerment, and Detective Marc Cooper, who was charged with reckless endangerment.

Justice Cooperman, in acquitting the officers, asserted from the bench that inconsistent testimony by, and prior criminal records of, prosecution witnesses, principally the victim's friends, "had the effect of eviscerating" their credibility.

Not only was Justice Cooperman's means of arriving at his verdicts wrong, it was broadly outrageous on its face, and it speaks to the distortion of justice by courts over which preside judges who use their position to promote their own classist views. The detached assertions of The New York Times notwithstanding, the use of courts to craft justice by class has the invariable effect of promoting racism, sexism, and all manner of other ills the elites would furiously disclaim as their intent, even as they repeatedly ensure the endurance of inequality in both their refined and brutish instrumentalities of maintaining the status quo.

The rule of law cannot exist when, in any way, justice is shaded to the victim's general righteousness, nor should the quality of that victim's grievance before the bar of justice be diminished by some diffuse notion held by a judge that testimonial evidence is "eviscerated" when those who have already been marginalized by the courts, the police, and the larger society are invited to speak to the matter at bar. The misunderstanding of such fundamental principles is one of the primary means by which defense attorneys have historically elicited not guilty verdicts from juries, and it is appalling that any judge, extensively trained and long in experience, would allow such tactics by defense counsel to have any impact whatsoever on trial outcome. To the extent that Justice Cooperman is certainly not alone in permitting his court to become a proving ground for the character and quality of victims and their witnesses, the courts of this land allow themselves to become yet one more formidable wall by which law enforcement authorities deter citizens from seeking redress within the justice system.

That a sitting judge would be so essentially, fundamentally flawed in reasoning that he would incorporate into adjudication his own biases, shaped as they are by his own socio-economic standing, is outrageous on its face. That he would actually speak in his opinion of how he found wanting and thereby suspect the words and demeanor of the prosecution witnesses speaks not only to his classist mentality, but also to a deeper elitism inconsistent both with proper judicial temperament and, indeed, with any claim to legitimacy as a representative of a society that poses to render equal justice for all.

A trial court finds facts; it then applies the law to those facts it has derived from material, circumstantial, and testimonial evidence.

The judge's finding of facts was wrong: it was wrong because he found facts based upon the divergence of his preconceived expectations of testimony from the reality of those providing that testimony whose degraded experience in the society and with the courts had already individually and historically marginalized them.

The verdicts in this case were not examples of the rule of law protecting society and its enduring principles; these acquittals of policemen who used 50 bullets to butcher an unarmed, innocent man were the pernicious rule of an elite advancing the interests of his own class.

Res ipsa loquitur: the thing speaks for itself.

The Dark Wraith has spoken.

law · court · Cooperman · Bell · NY · justice

The Dark Wraith Lecture Series: Lecture 2

wraith@dark-wraith.com — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 21:00:45 -0500

business · law · economics · agency · duty · fiduciary

The Torch and the Spear

wraith@dark-wraith.com — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 13:44:13 -0500

Today, I am taking a break from having too much to do. Later this afternoon, I will get back to work. I need to write a couple of quizzes for classes; a few graphics for future articles could use some attention, too, but the concentration I need for such matters eludes me at the moment.

In early January, the community college at which I teach finally posted a position for a full-time faculty member who could teach economics, finance, business law, and accounting, a daunting combination for which I have more than two decades of classroom experience. It seemed to me that the position had been crafted for me, and I almost got the impression that this is, indeed, what had been done. I�ve been at this school (while teaching at others off and on) now for five-and-a-half years. I had once been passed over when a position opened and an administrator was slotted into it via a back-door contract provision available to those who serve their time in administration. I imagined in January that, given the requirements for this new faculty position, the Powers That Be were constructing a means by which old matters would be tied up as the school moved into an era of rapid growth, prominence, and independence from the nearby state university that had been, as if by some divine right, forever imposing its will upon higher education in the region.

The grueling process of faculty hiring moves through ponderously slow stages. First, public notice is given in professional publications; then a slate of eight preliminary candidates is selected; then those individuals are each given a phone interview by the hiring committee, which, in this case, included the chairwoman, herself, and two solid friends of mine. After the phone interviews, the list of candidates is culled to four, each of whom is brought to campus for a series of on-site interviews and to deliver a teaching demonstration.

From early January, this process finally came to its conclusion a week ago last Thursday. That day, after I had taught my own classes, I was �brought to campus� for the big interview. I had already arranged for several other faculty members to make the recommendations they are allowed to do as part of the evidence that is used in the hiring decision, so I had those recommendations, along with three of the six members of the hiring committee fairly certainly in favor of my appointment; in addition, I had a whole slate of credentials, including my Faculty Member of the Year award from last year. It did not hurt, of course, that I have published over four hundred articles on the Web, many of them nothing other than teaching exercises in economics, business, and related fields; and it did not hurt, of course, that the New Age information technology fad had not eluded me one bit, what with how I manage not only to podcast my lectures, but also to ensure that those podcasts are available from heavy-hitter sites like Apple iTunes, Yahoo! and other places virtually no faculty member could dream of designing RSS feeds to accommodate.

Geez, what more could a college want? Unless one of those other finalists was a Nobel Prize winner, I had it in the bag. Thursday was going to be a great day.

Because of morning classes I teach, I was already on campus before the interview. Such convenience! They did not even have to drive to the airport to pick me up; I just wandered over to the office of the Division Chair, the first person with whom I would meet so she could explain in detail the position, the salary, the duties, and all of that. I met her, and we spoke at length on matters of which we both knew, agreeing in many ways on issues having to do with the school and the important things coming to the fore in this period of substantial growth through which the college is now going. This particular woman has been quite a star since she took over from the gentleman who preceded her. Everyone has been impressed both by her ability to get things done and by her interest in creating more cohesiveness among faculty she oversees in business, economics, social sciences, and computer software skills and office technology. I have considered her something of an ally of mine and have introduced her to some of my articles published here at The Dark Wraith Forums.

After I had my meeting with her, I was taken to meet with the Director of Education, an old, retired astrophysicist from a monster-big university. He had held a grudge against me for some years because of a math program I fielded that was very popular with the community but was condemned (in the newspaper, no less!) by the chairman of the math department at that nearby university. That was an ugly affair, one for which I was blamed, that caused a rift between the community college and the university. The old astrophysicist had wanted a scholarly, interactive relationship with the hard science people over at the university, and my blustering, high-profile program (sort of like a math boot camp) had disrupted that. Interestingly, though, in that meeting Thursday, the Director of Education and I spoke in an entirely amicable, mutually edifying way about all the things upon which we agree about the state of education and the political landscape of modern America. It was almost disconcerting how well and how comfortably we spoke. It was like two old curmudgeons sitting on a park bench railing against the bleak prospects offered by the pervasive ignorance of modernity.

After that relatively short meeting came the full-blown, one-hour interview with the six-member committee, which included, as I noted, the Division Chair, two faculty members whom I consider good friends and solid colleagues, one faculty member who does not dislike me on a professional level (but probably does, to some extent, on a personal level), a representative from Academic Advising (a lady with whom I have worked productively in the past), and a representative from Information Technology Services (a young man who seems unaware of the long-running war between older teachers and the technology-is-everything crowd in ITS).

In that interview, I answered a battery of questions with what I considered excellent, well-worded, highly informed responses. I was right on my game: I had all the right answers for the sake of political correctness, with just the right measure of independence of thought to make for a productive professor who would never rock the boat so much as to tip it over. Nods, smiles, and positive facial expressions abounded.

The last part of the day's agenda was the teaching demonstration. I used the occasion to present one of my locally famous lectures, one that involves everything from graphs of money supply, inflation, and economic growth to rubber chickens, Kool-Aid, apple pies, and the theme from the '60s television show Gilligan's Island. Students young and old just love this one. (I simply must figure out a way to make a video of this to publish here.)

At the conclusion of the teaching demonstration, the head of the division told me that a decision would be made within two weeks, and she would be personally calling each of the four candidates to convey the news about the hiring decision. Actually, the decision was going to be made the next afternoon; I knew that because I had heard that this was when the committee was going to meet. The two weeks was for the Board of Trustees, itself, to internally signal an �official� decision.

I left campus that Thursday feeling quite good. Although I had not been my best in that teaching demonstration, I had gotten pretty darned close. As I was walking through the parking lot to my car, something entirely strange, fleeting, and most subtle happened to me. It was such a brief incident, too quick to rattle me even though it should have, given how genuinely odd it was. As I thought about it later, I concluded that it had been something positive; but at the time, I misunderstood why.

I was not on campus very long the next day, Friday, but I was there long enough. No one said a word about the meeting, but it was pretty obvious to me. Indeed, the sense I had was palpable.

I had not been selected.

All my fantastic thoughts, convictions, and certainties were gone. I had finally opened my eyes.

For just a moment—an awful, long moment—such a wave of sadness overcame me: that impenetrable, inconsolable grief no longer held at bay in forethought, no longer to be set aside for another time.

Then came relief: utter, complete, life-giving relief, as if from a great and terrible illness, years in its duration, I could not help but arise.

I departed the building in which my department is located, and as I was walking through the parking lot, I understood why what had happened there in that fleeting moment at that same place just the day before was not merely a good sign, but something better than I had been given in many, many years. I wish only that I knew whom to thank for it.

Today, official confirmation came. I was given face-to-face notification. I had the vague sense of being consoled like a favorite pet whore; but that's alright. I am not. At peril are the apparachiks of the establishment, the jackboots of government, the politicians, the Right-wingers, the Leftists, the Democrats, the Republicans, the religious zealots, the science lovers, the technologists, and all the other authoritarians, imbeciles, and fools who would think otherwise.

I am set to the task of regaining my concentration now that I am once again, as always, free.

Destiny lights the way; fate then rends from darkness the future.

The Dark Wraith has so much work to do.

academia

The Dark Wraith Lecture Series: Lecture 1

wraith@dark-wraith.com — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 11:57:28 -0500

Dark Wraith Publishing presents The Dark Wraith Lecture Series, specially edited versions of academic lectures in economics and business offered as a public service to visitors at this Website.

Lecture 1: "The Road Ahead for the American Economy"
Duration: 23:50
Size: 28.1 Mb

economics · economy · inflation · recession · macroeconomics

American Food: The Blow-Chow Festival Continues

wraith@dark-wraith.com — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 23:10:01 -0500

Just as the deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control admits little progress in the fight against food-borne illnesses, the Food and Drug Administration is announcing that at least 23 people in 14 states have contracted salmonella from several cereals sold under the Malt-O-Meal name.

That's right: cereal may now be added to the list of foods that can make you sick or kill you because of lax federal regulation, sloppy corporate manufacturing processes, free-market greed, and disdain by this Administration and its apologists for the essential role of government in providing basic protections for its citizens.

Sooner or later, perhaps Americans are going to notice that, not only does the Bush Administration's miserable incompetence let foreign terrorists kill thousands of our citizens, but that same stunningly incompetent horde of ignoramuses, neo-cons, religious zealots, and simpletons lets foreign and American corporations kill, maim, and otherwise harm a whole lot more than thousands of our citizens. Maybe once citizens figure that out, some people might want to ask their leaders why more than half-a-trillion dollars has been spent on a never-ending War on Terror when that money could have been used to prosecute a far more productive war on corporate greed, sloth, and mendacity. It's certainly a fair question; but it's not one for which Mr. Bush and his Republican corporate apologists will ever have to answer.

They're going to get away with what they've done.

The Dark Wraith recommends cooking everything to well-nuked before eating.

food · poisoning · salmonella · regulation · USDA · FDA · CDC

In Cheney's Sunglasses

wraith@dark-wraith.com — Wed, 9 Apr 2008 00:51:01 -0500

Long-time commenter tali sent the link to a thread at Democratic Underground where an on-going discussion concerns a picture of Vice President Dick Cheney. The specific topic of conversation has to do with what is being reflected in his sunglasses. The picture in question is reproduced below.

Some observers are of the opinion that Mr. Cheney is looking at something naughty, but others are of different opinions, so your host here at The Dark Wraith Forums decided to do some computer enhancement of the image reflected in each lens. A different enhancement technique was applied to each reflection to provide differing perspectives. Readers should be aware that computer enhancement entails both technical skill and some degree of subjectivity, and the end result, at least in this case, is open to some interpretation. Ultimately, it is up to each observer to decide what he or she is seeing in the final renderings.

Look at the original image above, then click on each link below to see the computer-enhanced version of the reflection.

Computer-enhanced left reflection Computer-enhanced right reflection

The Dark Wraith awaits opinions on what Vice President Cheney was looking at.

Cheney · sleaze