Daring to challenge St. Obama

People who are unhappy with some of the moves, or failures to move, by President Obama are being told, in effect, to sit down and shut up.

“Give the man a chance,” someone inevitably says when we complain that Obama's economic advisers are members of the same crowd that brought us our economic troubles –- most of them frequent passers through the revolving door between Washington and Wall Street jobs paying well upward of $1 million a year.

The same message is practically shouted when we note that the Obama economic program protects the very wealthy, helps the Wall Street and banking moguls consolidate their power (and become even more “too big to fail”) and ensures that more jobs are lost and that the incomes of those of us who are not enormously rich will continue to slip and that our economic perches become ever more precarious.

“Just wait. We'll see how it works out,” we're told when we point out that Obama has given the National Rifle Association it's latest boost toward arming the entire population –- or at least the far right side of the population –- by bowing without even a complaint to the latest ploy that allows the carrying of concealed weapons in national parks.

“Stop whining; would the alternative have been better?” we are asked when we note that Obama's approach to the Middle East, our ongoing senseless wars and the taking and treatment of prisoners around the world seems to be acceptance of Dick Cheney's policies. (And, boy, are the right wing fruit cakes warming up their voices to crow over that fact; the letters already are starting to appear in newspapers all over the country. See New York Times letters page for May 20 for one example.)

Health care? Self-proclaimed “liberals” and, especially, “moderates” are telling us to shut our pie holes when we object to the fact that single payer, government-run health care was taken “off the table” from day one of the Obama administration. Those already prepared to name schools after the young president snarl when we point out that the plans being espoused by Obama and the Democrats in Congress are at bottom little more than profit-assurance programs for insurance companies and pharmas.

Well, gang, I'm not going to shut up, and neither are a host of others who are paying close attention to the Washington dance.

Do you think the rich guys are keeping quiet and waiting to “see how it plays out?” Do you think the bankers –- who have been using millions of our tax dollars to lobby Congress since the moment they got the TARP checks –- are patiently waiting to see what Obama and their stooges in Congress do about the economy? Is the arms industry not talking constantly into the ears of their servants in government? Has AIPAC been silent since last November?

Well, gee, how about all the “progress” Obama and the Dems have made on things like –- uh, well, say protecting us from credit card predation?

If you believe the credit card moves really benefit us, I want to tell you about a number of deals I can offer you, for just a piddling fee, on bridges, land, insurance, mortgage refinancing and anything else you may want.

I'm sick to death of being taken and having no ability to do anything about it, so maybe it's time I join the takees.

Gee whiz golly gosh: Congress, with Obama's backing, intends to restrict credit card interest rates to –- what is today's number? Maybe 28 percent? Wow, what a deal huh? Meanwhile the banks are paying their suckers –- that is, customers -– as much as 3 percent in some cases. Even a point or two more for dollars you're willing to tie up for several years. Yessiree, a hell of a deal.

Also banks supposedly will be limited in when and how much they can jump the interest rates they charge on cards. Maybe.

But here's what people who don't know the banking game probably don't realize: In return for taking such punishment, the banks plan to bring back annual fees for the right to carry their credit cards. They intend to drop most or all of their “incentive” programs such as providing frequent flyer miles. They've said so; read the business pages.

The banks come out ahead. We pay fees for the right to buy on credit and pay interest rates that throughout history, up to the past few decades, were illegal (and even brought physical punishment up to and including death) in all societies throughout the world. The banks lose the costs of administering those bothersome incentive programs –- which came about, anyway, only because there was some competition among banks and other institutions for credit card accounts.

With the consolidation in the financial rackets brought about by the economic collapse and the resulting bailout and help -- actually, demand -- by government for further mergers, competition has been made all but obsolete. The big financial outfits still standing can carve up the credit card market with only minor squabbling. There is no further need for those costly competitive gambits.

Isn't it interesting that come high tide for them or low, the political right pitches and fights and demands and attacks for what it wants?

The left, when it wins an election or three, says “Let's be moderate” and “Let's see how it plays out,” and clears the field for the armies of the right to surround our politicians. And we go incrementally forever rightward. In or out of office, the right, the hugely rich, the Powers That Be, fight on. They gain three steps, perhaps the liberals take us back one, and then the right moves another three toward their goals.

Oh, you say, but we're making such wonderful progress on some important issues. We have stem cell research back, and it's obvious that prohibitions against gay people marrying will, in a few years, have gone the way of laws against interracial marriages, for example.

True, and those are good things. But they never were issues for the rich and powerful, who only went along with the religulous right on such things because those people were useful for a time. The wild-eyed preachers and their followers are much weaker now than they were even five years ago –- they'll be back, of course, but not for quite awhile -– and so the rich can get rid of them in the same way that they scrape muck from their boots after a stroll around the stable yard.

The rich have no religion but power and privilege, and they're still in charge. Our society is far, far to the right of where it was 50 years ago on all things that matter to the very rich and powerful, and we are still losing power and wealth to them. Jobs are still leaving the country, either abroad or into the ether. There is less economic security every day for the poor and middle class. The real powers of the country are effectively slicing away at health care, education, employee rights, safety protection for workers.

But, gee, “Shut up and give the man a chance.”

Meanwhile, let's see if you can find the pea under one of the three cups I will place on this little table....

Guns: Pimping for a dirty business

You have to give America's increasingly extreme political right great credit in one area.

Its propagandists, the ones it has right now, are the best at flaying facts and selling disinformation since things went belly up for Joseph Goebbels 1945.

The best of the best –- or, from a moral standpoint, worst of the worst -– are those who directly serve the makers and peddlers of military-style guns and other people-killing devices, the profiteering promoters of murder on a massive scale. In that, too, they have much in common with Dr. Goebbels.

They get great help from our cowardly politicians -– which is to say almost all of our politicians -– and from an equally cowardly press and a whole bunch of ignorant suckers among the American public, but that is largely a testament to their skill.

In late March, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton went farther than is usual for a U.S. official in admitting that our country bears substantial responsibility for the growing power and brutality of Mexico's drug cartels. Specifically, she admitted the obvious fact that demand for drugs in this country fuels the growth of the mobs and the less-known fact that the drug gangs get the bulk of their weaponry from suppliers in the United States.

The second piece of information, on weapons, was confirmed by Janet Napolitano, secretary of Homeland Defense.

Clinton's statement may have taken what passes for courage in American politics, unpleasant truths being widely regarded as untouchable. Few facts could more clearly demonstrate the political power our elected officials have granted those who produce and promote violence for profit.

Although there was little or no coverage in the establishment media, a couple of other people in the new Obama administration already had made such acknowledgments. The gun racket had anticipated Clinton's admission.

Fox Propaganda, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and various other screaming sociopaths were ready, of course, but their rants were predictable and dull. Everybody who can walk and chew gum had to have known in advance what they would say: Weak-kneed liberals apologizing to criminals, what we need is armed troops standing three feet apart along the entire border, it's all the fault of them furriners, and look-out-folks-they're-gonna-take-your-guns-away.

When it comes to carrying water for the murder businesses, those people are useful, but minor players. The gun nuts go elsewhere for the authoritative word on what they should think.

Their secret decoder rings are set for the National Rifle Association and dozens upon dozens of Web sites and blogs narrowly aimed at the kind of suckers who have bought into the fictions about impending gun confiscation and the need to be prepared for a socialist or fascist coup.

(Beck, for one, doesn't seem to know the difference between socialist and fascist, and it's a good bet that a high percentage of those who take him seriously are equally in the dark on that point and many other points of fact.)

So I looked in on several of the aluminum hat gun nutter sites, the ones that carry articles, and sometimes ads, about what body armor to buy and where to buy it, and rant after rant about the dire threat of a dictatorship of the left. The official position of the death peddlers became obvious within half an hour. The “talking points” had to have been distributed before Clinton's statement got it's brief flurry of coverage.

In a nutshell here they are, without most of the boilerplate rhetoric about “Mainstream Media's huge disinformation campaign to demonize the American gun owner,” etc., etc., ad nauseum:

-- The attempt to slow the flow of weapons to Mexican criminals will, as Michael Gaddy of LewRockwell.com assured his readers, morph into 'the war on guns'” planned by President Obama. (Fact: Obama has always taken a “moderate” -- that is, rather weak -- stance on guns and gun control.)

-- Obama administration people are pushing the idea that the weapons going into Mexico are coming from America's private gun owners. (Fact: No such claim has even been implied, let alone stated. Absolutely nobody, other than the wing nuts, is talking about individual American gun owners shipping their weapons to Mexico.)

-- And -– booga booga booga -– the real supplier of weapons to the drug gangs is the U.S. government, using the Mexican government as a middle man. (Too absurd for any rational person, but readily believed in the gun worshippers subculture. Government conspiracy, doncha know.)

In the hands of Gaddy, who describes himself as an army veteran of Vietnam, Grenada and Beirut, that translates to, “Our corrupt government, cooperating with Mexico's equally corrupt government, has embarked on a campaign to deprive American citizens of the means to defend ourselves from tyranny, screening their own involvement in arming violent criminal drug cartels.”

(One could assume from Gaddy's fantasy that Barack Obama is not only a secret Muslim and a citizen of some other country but also a secret employee of the drug cartels, specializing in armament.)

-- But the main story, put forth by one Ralph Weller of Gun News Daily, who claims to know all this because he “lived and worked in Mexico in a border town for about five years,” is that all of the assault rifles, machine pistols, hand grenades and other murder tools in the hands of Mexico's drug pushers are from “Europe, China, Russia and South America” or “they came from illegal arms manufacturers in India or Pakistan.” Take your pick, apparently; the two theories about source are presented separately within the same essay.

For added spice, Weller's piece charges that, rather than weapons going from the United States to Mexico, the opposite is true, that “illegal full-auto weapons and grenades” are flowing along with drugs from Mexico to this country. That creative claim appears to be unique to Weller at this point.

Weller's article, which carries no attribution for any statement and not a single checkable fact, has been picked up by more than a dozen other right-wing and/or gun nutter Web sites that I saw. I'd be very surprised if there aren't many more I didn't see. Those I got into all presented it as absolute proof that arms are not going to Mexico from this country and that the claim is just groundwork for a government attempt to seize Americans' god-given guns.

I tried to find reliable information on Weller's identity and background, but biographical information, other than a brief paragraph he apparently wrote, doesn't seem to be available. There was another Ralph Weller, a ranking executive of Otis Elevator Co., but he died in 1995, and I could find no link between him and the above-quoted water boy for the gun peddlers.

Most of the gun-nut sites push the idea that President Obama is a very busy man, hatching a great plot to take all guns away from all American civilians.

In truth, Obama is very timid about taking on the gun nuts. If you check his positions and statements going back to his days in the Illinois Legislature, it becomes clear that he's never called for a ban on guns, never even hinted he wants handguns made illegal. He has –- take a deep breath now -– suggested that handguns should be registered and that assault weapons and armor-piercing ammunition should be permanently banned.

Obama, to the horror of the gun nuts, also has suggested (nothing more) that we should return to a prohibition against carrying concealed weapons and the closing of a loophole that allows private sale (including at gun shows) of all kinds of weapons and ammunition without any record or registration of the weapons and buyers.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, the NRA, which speaks from Olympus in the minds of those who dwell in the gun-nut world, created a wholly fictional claim that Obama had a “ten-point plan” to alter the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The NRA said Obama will “ban the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns” and also “ban the use of firearms for home self defense.”

The aluminum hat crowd believes that with greater certainty than it believes the sun rises in the east.

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When Ralphy, the young hero of a wonderful movie titled “A Christmas Story,” got his first, greatly anticipated message from Little Orphan Annie after he at long last received his secret decoder ring, he was outraged, and threw the ring away.

The message: “Don't forget to drink your Ovaltine.”

It's a great pity the wing nuts and gun freaks, not to mention members of Congress, don't have the same ability to recognize and reject business-sponsored crapola.

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Lest anyone mistake me: I grew up with firearms.

My father lived for fishing and, especially, hunting. It was his great passion. But he lost a leg to a careless fool of a hunter when he was 18, and his “good foot” carried a piece of a bullet lodged there thanks to the idiocy of yet another careless hunter. Neither of the people who shot him were in his hunting party at the time of the incidents. He would not tolerate the slightest carelessness with a gun of any type, and twice that I can recall, he chased people from the field on the sheer strength of his anger -– no physical threats made or implied.

I owned both a rifle and a .410 shotgun by the time I was 11. I gave up hunting in my late teens almost entirely because of the dangerous behavior of other hunters. I continued to target shoot now and then for many years. I have nothing against well-behaved hunters, certainly nothing against people who use guns for target shooting, skeet and other non-lethal sport. If it were convenient, I might be one of them.

But as one who spent many hours of my youth in the field, I can see absolutely no legitimate civilian use for military-type semiautomatic and automatic weapons, let alone bazookas, rocket launchers and other types of iron designed specifically for the killing of human beings. The same goes for armor-piercing ammunition. I'm somewhat ambivalent on handguns. There obviously are many people who should not have them, and a considerable body of research shows that, despite NRA propaganda to the contrary, a vast majority of innocent citizens who think they can defend themselves and their homes with such weapons are deluding themselves and asking for trouble.

Guns 2: The hidden business

When Hillary Clinton declared in March that weapons are flowing from the United States to Mexico's drug cartels, you'd have thought she'd revealed that madwoman Ann Coulter is a drag queen, rather than stated a fact well known to law enforcement people and many others on both sides of the border.

(About Coulter: You didn't know? Where did you think Bill O'Reilly goes when he's not in the Fox Propaganda studio?)

There was hardly a newspaper that didn't carry the Clinton story on the front page, and, for a day or two, no television faux news station that didn't use it at least twice an hour.

In fact, the simple admission of the gun trafficking was hardly more shocking than Clinton's acknowledgment that demand from the U.S. is what put the drug mobs in business and keeps them rich.

The coverage faded quickly in establishment news outlets, however, leaving only the occasional uninformed television “reporter” or Fox flunky to ask some minor Obama administration official whether the president wants to “confiscate the guns of private citizens.”

Clinton's statement should have been the kickoff of big-time investigations of the gun-peddling business by at least a couple of news organizations. But that wasn't going to happen. The quick fade to black was as predictable as a Rush Limbaugh tirade. The gun trade is a dung pile very carefully avoided by establishment news outfits.

Just in case, though, I waited for a couple of weeks after the Clinton pronouncement to see if, just maybe, some news outlet, some small, surviving group of real journalists. would seek answers to the painfully obvious questions: Where do the weapons come from and who's selling them to Mexican killers? (A longer but still incomplete list of other necessary questions is included below.)

Hasn't happened, of course.

American newspapers and broadcast news presenters have avoided crossing gun makers and sellers since before I got into the news trade, and that's about 50 years ago. They were afraid to take on the killing business even before the National Rifle Association became almost entirely a propaganda and lobbying agency for the murder business and before it gained genuine political power through what often is delicately described as “distribution of wealth.”

No, I can't explain it. Like anyone else out here, I can only guess.

Every so often during my 30-year tenure on what was, through most of those years, a very good metropolitan daily newspaper, I pitched the idea of probing the gun manufacturing and selling rackets. More often than not, my bosses acted as though I were soundless and invisible. I got no response at all, neither aye nor nay. Once or twice, I was told -– as happened on other possible subjects occasionally -– that such an investigation would take too much work, too much time; the newspaper couldn't afford to have me or any other reporter devote that much effort to one subject.

If I pointed out that we did occasionally devote much time and work to a single story (or series of stories), the response was that afore-mentioned silence and invisibility. Although I could hear myself and see myself in mirrors, and co-workers could see and hear me, the bosses didn't seem to be aware of my presence.

Most of the time, I think the excuses were exactly what I was told, when I was told anything, but after years of periodically making the pitch, the scenes began to have an unpleasantly eerie feel.

The thing is, nobody else in this country did the obvious gun stories either.

During my career I did a number of “big” stories that my bosses were reluctant to embark upon. The stories that met with initial reluctance almost always involved unpleasant facts about some business or group of businesses – often businesses that purchased substantial amounts of advertising.

The reluctance of editors to take on such subjects was understandable. If we produced information that made some business guys sweat, the editors took much heat.

Sometimes, inevitably, reporting turns up information to show that what you thought might be something illegal or exploitive of the public or otherwise rotten actually is at least acceptable, if not benign. The work you put in on the subject is therefore “wasted,” though I never saw it that way.

Yet far more often than not, if I or another reporter had solid grounds for wanting to dig into something, we got a green light.

Not on the gun racket, though.

You might wonder what made me think the gun business -– manufacture and large-lot sales -– needed examination. It's the same sort of thinking that has led to countless journalistic investigations:

There are far more guns in this country and elsewhere in the world than there are legitimate users. Hunters, skeet shooters, competitive target shooters, hobby shooters, have all the guns they can use, and street gangs, drug cartels, terrorists and all sorts of ugly and evil people have many, many more guns than are required by or could be used by all of the legitimate users in the world.

Production of guns exceeds legal or legitimate purchases by multiples, though we don't really know by how much.

We need numbers. How many of what types of guns are made, how many of those can be shown to have been sold to legitimate users? Where have the rest gone? Who has them? How did they get them?

The gun business and its apologists like to talk about “stolen” guns arming the gangs and such in this country. But how many guns actually are taken in known thefts, and how does that match up with the armories of drug gangs, street gangs and all the other brutal thugs? On the face of it, it is obvious that the criminals have many more guns than have shown up on lists of stolen property. Perhaps someone needs to explain to people in the gun trade that they should lock up their inventory.

Terrorists around the world, war lords and small strongman governments, the Italian Mafia and the Russian Mafia and lord knows how many other mafias are armed to the teeth, despite prohibitions of weapons sales to those people by almost all established governments. So who is making the hundreds of thousands of weapons those large-scale thugs acquire in such numbers, and who is selling them? Do gun makers “lose” 40, 50, 80 percent of their production out the back door? Really? They have no effective security? Or, alternatively, they just “don't know” who's buying half or more of what they produce?

Show me a legitimate business of any size that doesn't know what it produces, what it sells, what it has in inventory and who its buyers are. If you know one, and they do show up from time to time, it will not be in business long. And it won't have been profitable for long, let alone for centuries.

What use to private citizens are automatic weapons, assault rifles, rocket launchers, antiaircraft rockets, body armor, armored vehicles and other killing devices obviously designed solely for the killing of human beings? Who makes those, who sells them and who are the buyers? Really, who are the buyers -– age, background, income, and psychology. (Dangerous ground, but on the face of it there are some seriously disturbed people stockpiling extremely threatening weaponry. Right here in the U.S. of A. Read the gun blogs)

Oh, yes: Who gets how much profit from such things? And which politicians get how much in “campaign contributions” from the people who make the profits?

About the gun bloggers' claim that the bloodthirsty mobs are getting their guns from illegal manufacturers in, say, Pakistan or India: Really? A bunch of little tin-shed copyists, presumably without heavy manufacturing equipment, are turning out machine guns and assault rifles and other sophisticated weapons by the millions? And they can't be located and shut down?

Those are just some of the questions that have popped into my head at various times, making me believe that some capable journalists -– there are some left, though their numbers are dwindling rapidly -– really need to look hard look at the weapons business.

Wish I could say I expect that to happen.

Guns 3: Dangerous people

This country needs to take a really good look at its semi-underground gun culture.

It probably needs two such investigations, one by some official organization, preferably under Congressional sponsorship, and one by a team, or several teams, of thorough and courageous journalists -– if such can still be found.

Both probes would have to be separate from the even more immediately needed hard looks at the business of manufacturing and selling the kinds of weapons that have as their only purpose the killing of humans. To try to combine serious investigations of the weapons business and the culture of gun nuts who, knowingly or not, front for the killing industries would be simply too big, and too likely to confuse issues.

The American gun culture harbors a lot of seriously disturbed people who, I strongly believe, are of more immediate danger to us, individually and collectively, than any group of overwrought religionists camped among the stony hills and valleys of Pakistan or Afghanistan.

Just seek out their publications and Web sites and read what they say, especially in comments posted with articles about supposed government plots to ban guns, or keep ammunition off the market, or the attempts they are absolutely certain “Barack Hussein” -- a frequent usage -- is going to make to ban all firearms in this country. You'll find a lot of calls for armed revolution and reminders that if anyone crosses them, “we have guns.”

“Maybe it's time to revolt and rid this union of socialists and communists, peacefully if possible but with force when all else fails,” said “Kevin, a Gun Owner” on “KeepAndBearArms.com. He also suggested that House Speaker Pelosi “is an outright idiot, she should be tarred and feathered and sent packing on a rail.”

On the same site, someone identified only as Tim quoted J.Edgar Hoover at length, warning of “a defiant, and lawless communist party, which is fanatically dedicated to the Marxist cause of world enslavement and destruction of the foundations of our Republic.”

In fact, the belief in an international communist conspiracy to take over the United States, abetted by Jews and civil rights organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union, is alive and well in the world of gun nuts.

The rants quoted above are among the more civil I saw. Some sites are little more than collections of obscene, hate-filled ravings against practically everyone who can in any way be called “liberal,” with special attention these days for Barack Obama. The president frequently is characterized as an agent of Islam, plotting to destroy the united States. I'm none too delicate about “bad” language, as regular readers know, but I would not quote here much of what I've read recently on the gun-nut Web sites.

There are a whole lot of potential Timothy McVeighs out there, folks, and since November 2008 election they seem to have shaken loose all the bolts that held them, however tenuously, to the floor of reality.

We need reporters to start digging and to report back to the public on who those people are and what they're really about -– and what they're about is not simple support for “Second Amendment rights,” despite the propaganda put out for general consumption.

What most people know of the gun culture, of course, is the National Rifle Association, which generally is seen as a benign supporter of hunters and sport shooters and from a liberal point of view, a somewhat over-zealous defender of “Second Amendment rights.”

A bit of nosing through books and current information on the Web suggests strongly to me –- supporting an impression I've had since I was a kid who did a lot of shooting and hunting -– that the NRA is a well-structured front for the gun makers and peddlers. Not the “defense industry,” but the people who provide the millions of weapons that magically find their way into the hands of huge criminal organizations, terrorist organizations, drug cartels and various other violently criminal mobs.

It is a machine for the production of brilliant propaganda, obfuscations, lies and double talk, and perhaps the biggest and most successful organizer of ignorant, paranoid suckers since the Third Reich died in a bunker.

Sporting guns and pheasant hunting ain't in it folks, and though many of the NRA's less involved members and adherents think of it as a support organization for sportsmen, it hasn't made a very serious effort to operate on that front for quite awhile now.

Oh, it still supports gun-safety programs for youth and such things, but those pretty much run themselves with volunteers, and don't seem to occupy much of the attention of the organization's paid operatives.

Also, it's simple fact that only the most paranoid of gun nuts think there is even the remotest possibility that any politicians in this country are out to take away hunters' shotguns and rifles. We all know that is never going to happen, and the vast majority of us would object powerfully if anyone tried.

Nope. What the NRA is about -– listen to any of its officers' speeches, catch interviews with them on TV, read any of their numerous articles –- is defending the “right” to purchase man-killing weapons and their ammunition. AK47s and bullets designed to tear up the insides of a living being hit by them, are not useful in the world of skeet shooting or hunting, folks. They're not much use, either, to a competitive shooter. Skiers don't carry fully automatic guns on their backs in the biathlon.

NRA officials dance delicately around the purpose of advanced human-killing weaponry. They generally turn the inevitably timid questioning of reporters on that subject to DEFENDING THE SECOND AMENDMENT. (Yeah, that's generally spoken in the verbal equivalent of capital letters.)

We have a RIGHT to “bear arms,” doncha see, and what might be done with them is something we shouldn't really discuss.

Quick fact: The NRA often trumpets the fact that it was founded in 1871. What it is less noisy about is the other salient fact about its beginnings: It was from its first day focused on supporting the ownership of military weapons by those whom we might now characterize as right-wing and anti-government. The organizers and officers of the organization through its early years were downright disdainful of “sportsmen,” historians say. Guns were for support of a certain way of life.

Some people connect the early organization with the Ku Klux Klan, but, to date, I haven't seen any evidence to that effect.

What is a demonstrable fact is that the NRA regularly puts out the most blatant lies imaginable to stir up its members and other gun nuts and make them and the wider public believe that good, honest folk are in danger of having their guns taken away. Any suggestion of regulating the manufacture and sale of any kind of weapon is taken as such a threat.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, the NRA blatantly lied about Barack Obama in its publications, in advertising and in every media it uses. The organization claimed that the then-candidate had a “10-point plan” to strip Americans of their guns. The claim was entirely fiction. Obama always has taken a very soft approach to gun control, suggesting only registration of handguns and restrictions on the sale of military style automatic weapons. He doesn't go anywhere near far enough for most liberals.

It's safe to say that most NRA members, and many others, still believe that Obama is a would-be confiscator of guns.

But the NRA is far too soft for the real gun nuts. They often rail on the Web sites of other gun organizations about the NRA's willingness to occasionally, and very slightly, compromise with Congress when it comes up with some toothless plan to keep heavy weapons out of the hands of the blatant madmen.

(I just read an on-line debate on whether people who have been diagnosed with severe mental illness should be prevented from obtaining weapons. The pros and cons seemed fairly evenly divided. Some writers thought “rights” come first, some allowed that maybe certain kinds of diagnoses should preclude gun ownership – although in such cases, the people in question should be locked up anyway.)

The thing is, the Second Amendment debate is phony.

What most of the country believes now – that there is an honest question of whether that amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees individuals the right to own whatever weapons they choose to have – is false.

That even most people who hope for some gun control believe it is an open question is the NRA's greatest success -– a triumph of false propaganda, a tribute to Joseph Goebbels assertion that some lies are too big not to be believed by an ignorant public.

Go to http://www.fair.org and look for a September/October 1996 article by Howard Friel, headlined “How the NRA Rewrote the Constitution.” You may have to go to an archives or advanced search page to find the article.

What it says, clearly and with considerable grounding, is that courts, including appeals courts, in this country have issued what the writer designates “an unbroken chain” of decisions over (then) six decades ruling that the Second Amendment does not confer an individual right to possess firearms. That “well regulated militia” mentioned in the amendment means exactly what it appears to mean.

The U.S. Supreme Court has never directly addressed individual gun ownership, at least not until the recent decision of the Bush court to strike down Washington, D.C.'s strong gun control law. But that decision, declaring the Washington regulations “over broad,” avoided the central issue of what the Second Amendment really means. It left room for substantial restrictions on gun possession and use.

With a substantial number of Bush appointees on the bench now -– some of them, such as torture promoter Jay Bybee, with worse than doubtful qualifications -– the legal battle may get rougher before long.

In the meantime, you will observe that our captive establishment news media inevitably behave as though the NRA interpretation of the law -– a false interpretation -– is correct or at least probably correct. They never, and I do mean never, mention the long history of judicial decisions declaring that there is no individual right to weapons.

But, a reminder: Very few Americans, and no politicians I know of, want to take anyone's sporting guns away. As for some of the psychotic paranoids whose writings I've been reading on the gun sites: we have to talk about strongly controlling the kinds of heavy-duty military weapons they favor.

Ken Poplawski, who killed three Pittsburgh policemen April 4 with an AK-47, was a guy very like those who spew hate daily on numerous gun-lover Web sites. As noted in Salon.com on April 7, he “believed that the United States was controlled by a secret Jewish cabal that had a master plan to abrogate freedom of speech and use the U.S. military to police Americans.”

I saw that very proposition mentioned five or six times on gun-lover sites the day I wrote this essay.

Car companies: Save or not save?

It's terrible to contemplate the lost jobs and the resulting suffering that the failures of the American auto industry have brought to our country.

If you understand what has happened, it's also impossible not to be angry -– no, furious –- at the foolish, narrow-minded, short-sighted, greedy executives who have killed or nearly killed what once was our greatest industry.

In some ways, they have been even more bullheaded and misdirected than their counterparts in the world of finance.

The auto industry, for one thing, had more and clearer warnings about their impending downfall than did the bankers, brokers and insurance grubbers, and the warnings started years earlier. Also, the essential part of what needed to be done was obvious to anyone with no more than an average ability to navigate life.

Lee Iacocca's 2007 book, “Where Have All the Leaders Gone?” was very clear about the fact that the industry had too many models, too many brands and too little awareness of the future, for example, but it was far from the first such warning. Many people wrote and talked in recent years about the need to improve quality and to begin shifting production from gas-guzzling behemoths to smaller, more efficient vehicles.

With the blind arrogance that is virtually the signature attribute of American corporate executives, but is multiplied by ten in the car business, the auto bosses refused to hear what they did not like.

The extreme right of the Republican Party –- which is to say, the people in control of that party –- now claims that it's all the fault of the people who do, or did, the physical work of building the vehicles. If they hadn't made solid, middle-class livings, and had good health care coverage, and livable pensions, the industry would have been just fine, in their absurd rewriting of the facts.

Just Monday (April 6), my local birdcage liner carried an op-ed piece by the Chicago Tribune's Steve Chapman declaring that President Obama is wrong to try to save the American car makers, mainly because their downfall would/will take down the unions. To Chapman and his ilk, anything that will do major damage to labor unions is wonderful, regardless of how badly others, and the country itself, are hurt. Their belief in the rights of the very rich to rule unchallenged is religious in its depth and passion.

But here's a rub: If you know what has happened, it's impossible not to be more than a little angry at the auto workers, too.

That's not because they managed through their unions to get good pay and good benefits –- I don't know when in this country it became evil to get a decent hunk of the profits from what you produce, somehow wrong to get enough of the pie to live comfortably –- but because they too solidly backed the self-destructive moves of the people who ran the companies they worked for.

How often over the years did you see the “buy American,” anti-Japanese bumper stickers and hear rants from union officials, and rank-and-file workers about it being anti-American to refuse to buy Detroit junk even though much better products were available at better prices?

We all saw the angry lectures on television, and several times I heard, in person, union members ranting about how buying Hondas and Toyotas was little short of criminal when we could purchase rattling, rust-prone Pontiacs, and Buicks with mushy suspension and sloppy steering, and Fords with windshields that tended to crack once a month, and uselessly gigantic vehicles that got less than ten miles to a gallon of gasoline.

Of course, the ranters didn't mention the innumerable faults, just that somehow it was our duty to pay excessive sums for the garbage rolling out of American factories.

Here folks, git yerselves a nice a three-ton Yugo. Only $52,000. How about a shiny version of the Lada that gets maybe 19 miles per gallon on the highway on a good day; only $37,000.

Up until quite recently, auto industry unions had enough clout that they could have asserted pressure on the companies to build better, more efficient, more reasonably priced vehicles. Instead, they added their voices to the chorus of industry denial and refusal.

Personally, I'm not sure what I want to see happen with the auto makers.

America should make things, not just shovel money -– or, rather, computer numbers that represent money –- from one place to another. And Americans should have the opportunity for work that provides solid incomes, security, health care and decent homes and, equally important, for jobs that provide them with the pride and satisfaction of producing something useful, something that works and has a real purpose.

If the American auto industry is ready to buckle down to designing and producing vehicles that we need and want now, I'll blow the horn for government support, and back politicians who will fight to make the industry whole and well again.

Sadly, there's no sign that it's ready. American car companies, and oil companies and some unions, fought to prevent Congress from mandating the present very modest goal of average fleet fuel consumption of 35 miles per gallon by 2020 – eleven years from now. European cars surpassed that goal a few years ago; they now average better than 40 miles per gallon and are improving annually.

(A grinding kicker to those mileage facts: According to a report by MSNBC.com, two-thirds of the 113 most fuel-efficient car models sold in Europe but not available in this country are made by American car companies or by foreign manufacturers with large sales in the U.S. -- companies such as Toyota and Nissan.)

Even more sadly, it is not at all clear that Americans –- American industry, or what's left of it -– still have enough of our self-proclamed “knowhow” plus the will to be able, in this country, to design and build attractive cars that also are fuel efficient.

There's quite a stink among the true believers of the right about the firing of General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner, and quite a few people not on the right are wondering by what authority the Obama administration told Wagoner to take a hike.

“Unprecedented” is a word being thrown around frequently, but inaccurately. You may recall that the government also demanded new top executives for AIG, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

By what right? When it's public money, the government has the right. Obama was perfectly correct, I believe, in saying that if General Motors wanted more taxpayer dollars, it would first have to replace Wagoner, who was obstinate beyond any semblance of reason in his adherence to the cult of big and inefficient vehicles.

Wagoner was a force behind the commercialization of the Hummer at exactly the wrong time in history, as noted a few days ago by Frank Rich of the New York Times, and he pushed hard for still greater reliance on huge SUVs exactly at the time the market finally began to shift toward more affordable, fuel efficient and less polluting vehicles.

The problem is that getting rid of the chief executive of one of the Former Big Three is a useless gesture if much more isn't done quickly. Wagoner -– a Harvard MBA, not surprisingly -– is a career General Motors guy. Most of the people on the next few management levels below him also are career GM guys. And the same thing applies, for the most part, at Ford and Chrysler.

Car company culture is as deeply embedded as it is wrongheaded. Everyone who has any power has been brought up in the business, and the people who have advanced are those who bought in entirely to the beliefs of the people who have run the companies for decades. Scorn is heaped on fuel efficient, small and inexpensive. Big and powerful is good. Bigger the better. Trends? Fugeddaboudit.

The Minneapolis Auto Show occupied the city's Convention Center for more than a week in late March. GM North American Vice President Mark LaNeve showed up late in the show's run to dispense wisdom to dealers and the press. He was quoted in the Star Tribune as saying that while the company has “introduced an onslaught of new fuel-efficient and crossover cars” GM is “already the truck leader, and we plan to stay there.”

LaNeve also declared that “Americans are not naturally inclined to buy small cars,” although he allowed that “they want good fuel mileage.”

Translated: GM is slowly and reluctantly bringing out some fuel-efficient cars, but with nowhere near the mileage easily available from foreign brands, or even from its own brand in Europe. It's idea of “good fuel mileage” for North America is to build hybrid SUVs that will do better than the usual nine miles to the gallon, but still only in the low 20s per gallon, at best.

Oh, and a big reason that Americans, to this point, have not wanted small cars is decades of relentless car company advertising pushing the false belief that bigger cars are better, strong and safer than standard-sized models. The industry's general line of advertising has been on a par with 1940s and '50s cigarette ads for honesty.

As it happened, I was at the Auto Show at the peak hours on its first Saturday, a few days before LaNeve showed up. Attendance was much smaller than I'd seen at previous shows -– I'm something of a car buff, and go to auto shows whenever I'm in the neighborhood –- and it was obvious that other attendees were mostly ignoring the big vehicles while paying very close attention to vehicles such as the new version of Honda's small hybrid and the Fit and Ford Focus.

Those who are concerned about style and pizzazz were paying a lot of attention to the Mini Cooper, and one or two other sporty little things. Almost everybody I saw walked past the big SUVs without a glance, or if they did glance, tended to shake their heads in a “they don't get it” way.

The only, and I do mean only, large vehicle that caught any serious attention during the two hours I wandered the building was a General Motors concept car, which was interesting, although no one expects to see it on the road.

Folks, the people who run the American car companies really, seriously, do not get it.

So now what?

Damned if I know, but the conversation is important and should not be left to the politicians, union haters and the awesomely out of touch industry executives who brought their companies down. Tens of thousands of jobs and even, possibly, the direction of our economy are at stake.

There is space here for thoughtful suggestions that could be passed on to those in power.

Senate race: Enough already

Minnesotans are inclined to let the election process take its course, and so we've been patient beyond reason with the drawn out battle to determine a winner in the U.S. Senate race between right wing Republican Norm Coleman and Al Franken, whose position on the left-to-right scale is pretty much unknown.

(Republicans, of course, scream that Franken is a lefty extremist, probably somewhere near Leon Trotsky is his views. That's just for the nutter “base.” In fact, he's probably too far to the right for genuine liberals. He has thus far refused to back a single-payer health care system, for example, and there are indications that he'll join fellow Minnesota Democrat Amy Klobuchar in slavish support of Israel, regardless of what evils it perpetrates.)

But the election is over. It's time to put away patience and start yelling.

It's been apparent for weeks now that the Republicans know perfectly well Coleman lost. The continued court charade has one purpose only: To keep Minnesota from getting its full representation in Congress, given that the newly elected senator is a Democrat. Coleman's own legal team admits they've lost. Some Republican officials also admit it, but, of course, their claim these days –- height of irony -– is that any election won by a Democrat was “stolen.”

Flat fact: We elected a Democrat, they don't want another Democrat in the Senate so long as they can prevent him from being seated. Democracy? Screw it. Full representation for Minnesotans? Screw it. Just keep the Democrat out as long as the courts allow the game to continue. It's the Republican Way.

Norm Coleman's career in elected office is over. He and the Republican machine know that, too. After the election court debacle, he probably couldn't be elected to the Apple Valley city council – although that may be overstating the case. At any rate, he couldn't be elected to any state-wide office or any Congressional seat except, no doubt, the one on which the incomparably ridiculous Michele Bachmann already squats like some crazed Easter bunny on a sparrow's nest.

There's no doubt that Coleman and those whom he really serves have come to some agreement about his reward for continuing the act; we'll learn what that is after the curtain finally drops.

But, c'mon folks. Enough is enough. Continuation of the farce should cost the Republicans more than legal fees. It should cost them votes, it should bring down a hard rain of contempt on the entire party.

You can email Minnesota party headquarters at Info@mngop.com. Better yet, email Republican State Chairman Ron Carey at Chairman@mngop.com

Keep it short, keep it clean, but make it bite.

Management: The book not written

For more than 30 years, I kept notes on the silliness, childish attitudes, wrong-headed assumptions, dishonesty, greed and frequent over-the-top stupidities of American business leadership.

Oh, yes: I also took notes when I ran across a genuinely intelligent and able business leader, but the stack of those notes was thin by comparison. The truly intelligent and mature top executives, and I did encounter some great ones, are stuck in my mind yet; they were shining rarities.

As a business and economics reporter who consistently dealt with the top levels of management in many industries, but especially financial businesses, I had plenty of opportunity for observation.

I planned for most of those years to spend some considerable amount of post-retirement time writing what I intended to be a funny but scathing book about corporate management.

Just a couple of months after retiring from full-time newspaper work, however, I decided (a.) I didn't want to spend any more time with or on the people who wear the big titles in American big business, (b.) there is no way to make a dent in their thick skulls anyway, and (c.) neither our politicians nor the average worker has the guts to take them on, so such a work would be a complete waste of my time at worst, and at best merely fuel for employee grumbling that was almost constant anyway.

In truth, most Americans admire and actually fawn on the rich and powerful, no matter how cretinous.

Out went the notes, and away went the responsibility I had laid on myself for producing the book.

Now and then I still get the urge to smack some executives upside the head, of course, and that feeling grew much stronger and more frequent over the past few years, as it became ever more apparent that they were leading us into an economic disaster that didn't have to happen.

So let me summarize in a tiny fraction of the space, and without the hundreds of items of specific evidence, the conclusions of my 40-plus years of reporting and editing:

The American management class is made up, in vast majority, of dimwitted, ignorant cowards who, while dodging genuine responsibility at every turn, believe themselves to be the best, brightest and bravest heroes in all the land. Delusion is, in fact, their most characteristic flaw.

Nothing is sillier than the constant bleating about the rarity of management talent – bleating that has become even louder in the face of our economic meltdown and the accompanying incontrovertible proof that the people at the top of our financial institutions and most of the rest of our corporations have been wrong about almost everything they have done, said or preached throughout their grotesquely over-paid careers.

Those guys still claim with straight faces that they have to pay themselves and each other and their little vice presidential toadies and market manipulators huge sums of money in order to retain “management talent” that might otherwise go elsewhere. (Where they might go in this stinking swamp of failure is left unsaid.)

The degree to which any of the claimants believes what he is saying about the need for “retention compensation” is a measure of his intellectual incapacity. The degree to which he's just blowing diversionary smoke is yet another measure of his crookedness.

For a solid, clear analysis of the falsity of financial industry executive claims that the present mess is someone else's fault and that they couldn't have done anything different from what they did, see the op-ed piece by William D. Cohan in the March 12 New York Times. Cohan nails it.

Speaking of the banking and brokerage hotshots, Cohan says: “Could these Wall Street executives have made other, less risky choices? Of course they could have, if they had been motivated by something other than absolute greed.”

At another point, after laying down more evidence, Cohan says, “So enough already with the charade of Wall Street executives pretending not to know what really happened and why.”

Hear! Hear!

Much the same thing could be said about auto industry executives who are now playing along with the right-wing flapjaws who, with the goal of using our present economic crisis to further weaken labor unions, are trying to lay the near collapse of that industry at the feet of the manufacturing plant employees who actually make (or made) the cars.

Again, along with dishonesty, delusion: A great many top executives have been coddled, feted and had their behinds kissed so regularly and amorously for so long that they really believe themselves infallible. Ergo, all mistakes must have been committed by someone else.

Before some unreconstructed right winger emails me:

Your question is, “If they're so bad, how come the companies did so well for so long?” The answer, though possibly not simple enough for those who can think only in bumper sticker terms, is not all that complicated:

First, a great many companies, including almost all of our big banks and the American auto makers, profited mightily, but temporarily, by following models that had no chance of long-term functioning. There simply was no way that the mortgage-based securities could go on producing profits indefinitely; collapse was inevitable, and many people recognized that even though the bank leaders did not – or would not.

There was no way that the American manufacturers' refusal to recognize environmental needs and the coming collapse of gas-guzzling behemoths could lead to anything but a sales implosion. Most of the world could see that; auto company executives shut their eyes to it.

Secondly, it takes no genius to profit in an up market. It took some sense and perspective to recognize that the decades of credit spending that kept the American economy moving so swiftly for so long had to slow drastically at some not-too-distant point. Almost no American corporate executives had that sense or perspective.

Neither did they have the sense to realize that their taking bigger and bigger pieces of the economic pie for themselves while using their purchased politicians to squeeze the incomes of the vast majority of the world's people inevitably would lead at some point to a huge dropoff in markets for the crap they peddled.

Along with delusional thinking, another of the primary characteristics of American corporate management is cowardice – particularly a paralyzing fear of doing anything that everyone else isn't doing and a terror of taking honest responsibility for one's decisions and actions. Evidence has turned up showing that some bankers were aware that the sub-prime mortgage market was going to cave in soon, but lacked the guts to pull out while all the other banks were still playing the crooked game. They didn't want to face their directors, even though they owned the directors, and talk about why they were “passing up profits.”

Do you know what the enormous growth of university MBA programs in recent decades is really about?

The simple, but essentially accurate, answer is that it is yet another manifestation of corporate executives' desire to lay off responsibility onto “experts.” I'll say more about that in an upcoming essay, but for now leave it at this: Everything that can be taught about managing people and businesses – to someone who has the capacity to learn – can be taught in less than a day. The rest is technical detail, the deconstructing of normal morality and replacing it with an insanely inhumane template for business, and providing elaborate lessons in how to create excuses for failure.

More evidence of the fear of simple decision making is found in the fact that for as long as I can remember – and that's a long way back – American corporations and executives and would-be executives have jumped on one “management” fad after another. There have been dozens of such fads, perhaps 30 or 40 over the time since I first started following business and economics as a reporter.

There was the period – what? maybe 25 years ago now – when everybody who wanted to be somebody or thought he was somebody in the American corporate world read at least two books about the wonders of the Japanese management style. That was before Japan's rigidly structured economy went into a decade-long tailspin, of course.

A few of the others that come to mind: Quality circles, Total Quality Management, Matric Management, Term-Based Management, Peak Performance (whatever that was), and two or three types of “re -engineering.” A quick Google search will turn up a couple dozen more such bits of nonsense.

And every one of those fads produced very high-paying work for “consultants.” Of course, some “consultants” didn't need such a fad. They had their little niches that could be used in conjunction with whatever the flavor-of-the-month management style was – speech consulting, appearance consulting, consulting on how to make a presentation, and on and on and on.

All of those vacuous ideas, and all of that consultant money had and has one purpose: To absolve executives from responsibility and to push the onus of making decisions onto someone or something else.

The only proper response to the claims that some executive is worth millions or even tens of millions of dollars a year for his (or, rarely, her) management skills is a ripe tomato in the kisser followed by a severance notice.

A personal story; bankers are idiots

You can hardly have a conversation these days that doesn't at some point include angry mention of bankers.

The anger is about the taxpayer bailout of banks and the fact that the same dribbling idiots who brought the banks and our economy to ruin are still in charge of those institutions, drawing down their millions in annual pay for incompetent and profligate performance.

Count me among those who are enraged by the fact that the bailouts have not included, as a requirement for payment, that at least the top three layers of management of the bad banks be fired.

(I'll write more on this soon, but do not believe the crapola about management talent being so rare that we must keep those people. In any substantial institution, there are dozens, in the really big ones even hundreds, of people well below the levels of top management who are smarter and better qualified than the top officers to run the organization. The nature of top executive selection in large American corporations guarantees that almost all of said corporations will be headed by jackassess, albeit jackassess of good appearance and impressive demeanor.)

I just was touched, personally, by a bank –- a bailed out bank -– in such a way as to demonstrate the ingrained foolishness of our MBA-addled management class and the wrongheadedness of corporate culture in this country.

It's a more personal story than I'm comfortable telling, and it reflects badly on my judgment, but it so perfectly exemplifies one type of nuttiness plaguing our banks and other big corporations that I'm going to tell it anyway.

For a goodly number of years –- I'm not sure how many, but at least 15, probably 20 or more –- my wife and I have had a U.S. Bank credit card.

U.S. Bank is the lead bank of U.S. Bancorporation, which recently sold $6.6 billion in preferred stocks and warrants (junk, in plain language) to the government. That “sale” was part of the bailout program.

Frankly, embarrassingly and carelessly, I let the balance on that card climb to a substantial (for us) level. Like so many others, I've been busy trimming monthly expenses over the past year, and figured to get to that card balance very soon. The balance came from a series of unexpected but necessary house repairs and our penchant for travel.

I wasn't overly bothered, not as bothered as I should have been, because, due to our very high credit score and top-of-the-heap credit rating, our interest rate on the card balance was less than 8 percent. That's real money, but not terrible in this day.

About two weeks ago, I paid slightly more than half the card balance, with the intention of making another substantial payment when this month's bill arrives.

A week ago, I received a notice from U.S. Bank that it is raising the interest rate on our card balance, as of April 1, to 20.99 percent. From, effectively, 8 percent to 21 percent -- a near tripling of the interest rate to a level that in most times and in most places would be classified as usury and would be illegal. But, of course, over the past 30 years or so, all usury laws have been erased by our governors and those they serve.

I called the “customer service” department of the bank and demanded an explanation. Today, as I write this, I got a brief note claiming that the near-tripling of the interest rate on our card balance was because of “late payments” and our having gone over the card credit limit.

Since I am never late with payments on any bill, and could recall no time at which our charges went over the card's limit, I started digging through my files. None of our bills for the past 15 months showed a balance over the limit, and none that I could find indicated late payment. So I called the bank again.

My mistake. It turns out that, undoubtedly because the mail was slower than I expected, two times last year my payments were two days late. And once, because of an automatic charge that I had forgotten about, the bank claims that I once went over the credit limit for two days –- although I believe that is wrong, given the balances recorded on my bills and the size of the charge in question.

But my mistake anyway. The rules of cut-throat American business mean one should never play it so close as to allow the possibility of a mail delay causing a late payment and never get within $1,000 of your credit limit on anything (or, probably, within $200 if your credit limit is $1,000 or less).

This has done my wife and I real damage. The reports from U.S. Bank have reduced us from an A credit score to a C-plus score, a very thin hair below a B score. Presumably that is temporary, but it could last a long time simply because credit issuers of all types believe it is to their advantage to charge as much as they can get from anybody at any time.

In America today, long-term high performance counts for nothing, and no slack is allowed for minor error, even by customers of many years.

The American management credo calls for gouging whenever and wherever possible. Grab what you can and to hell with relationships, common sense or mitigating factors.

Of course I knew that, and the carelessness was mine.

Being, still, more fortunate than the rapidly growing majority of Americans, I will pay off the U.S. Bank credit card this month. We will never use that card again. We won't cancel it, of course, because in the nasty wonderland of American banking, your credit rating is reduced for canceling a card account. But we won't use the damned thing again. Ever.

And what has U.S. Bank gained from its practice and from harming us, its long-term customers?

Well, it will receive no more interest on the credit card in question. Rather than slightly less than 8 percent on balances that tend to rise and fall with the events of our lives, it will get no interest because there will never again be a balance.

If my wife and I were in the financial shape of what now is a substantial majority of Americans, we probably would stop using that card, but we'd go on paying 21 percent interest on the balance. No doubt that is happening to many people. But a growing number of such people won't be able to reduce balances while paying such usurious rates, and, eventually, literally millions will give up trying.

The result of such vicious banking practices must lead to increased bankruptcies. It cannot be otherwise.

In the long run, the banks will lose.

But it doesn't matter to them. They can't see such obvious facts. The culture and the boobs at the top demand that the banks gouge and grab until there is nothing left to grab.

I'm grateful that I'm still able to step away and give them the proverbial raised middle digit in parting.

A final note: Today I received in the mail from U.S. Bank several checks, which could be used to draw against our credit card account. It offered a 1.9 percent interest rate on any balance we might create by using those checks –- unless there should be a late payment, of course, or it rains on a Thursday after a new moon, or the bank president's dog gets fleas. The bank sends us such checks several times a year. We never have used one. Never will. This batch has already gone through the shredder.

Execs err, employees are supposed to pay

The publisher of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Chris Harte, is outraged that the 116 members of the now flabby, right-leaning newspaper's pressman's union have thus far refused to agree to major cuts in pay and work rule changes that would significantly weaken their protections against overwork, forced overtime and similar abuses.

Avista Capital Partners, a New York investment (read financial speculation) firm that bought the Star Tribune in 2007, put the paper into a Chapter 11 bankruptcy a couple of months ago. It now is asking the federal bankruptcy court to cancel the pressmen's labor contract on the grounds that the union has failed “to enter serious negotiations for concessions needed because of a sharp decline in advertising revenue as well as debt from the 2007s acquisition...”

So the Strib's own reporter, David Phelps, said in a Nov. 20 story in the publication's business section.

In truth, the Avista move, and Harte's outrage -- Phelps called it “frustration” but the stronger feelings came through in the story -– are new, but hardly unexpected, examples of outrageous, jaw-dropping arrogance on the part of the lords of the universe class.

It is right up there with the chief executives of auto manufacturers flying to Washington on separate, hugely expensive private aircraft to beg for government money to hold off self-created ruin. It easily matches $100,000 office rugs and million dollar office redecoration for sheer, stupid gall.

Those guys, too, are angry because anyone dares to question their right to such goodies.

Harte's snit demonstrates, with no chance of misunderstanding, the sense of entitlement and superiority ingrained in the minds of the Avista speculators and corporate strippers.

The country is teetering on the edge of a depression that may exceed the misery of the 1930s. The great majority of the population is hurting financially and millions of people are falling into desperate straits, but the Avista guys think others should pay the cost of their stupidities.

To fully understand, the public needs to know some things that weren't in Phelps' story.

Avista bought the Strib from the McClatchy Company for $530 million. Avista borrowed most of the purchase price. It is what the business world, never fond of straight talk, calls a leveraged buyout.

Nobody among Avista's principals had ever before been involved in the news business, and it was clear none of them had any interest in journalism.

The almost-clearly-stated goal of the Avista crowd and Harte, who owns slightly more than 4 percent of the Strib, was to strip the newspaper company of major assets, such as real estate –- sell off the land, buildings and anything else with cash value –- and reduce operating costs by slashing staff, then sell what is left of the poor old rag to some sucker who wants to try running a newspaper.

If the Strib were a stand-alone business it would be profitable today. It reported an operating profit of $31 million for 2008. That's before taxes and other payments, so without Avista and Harte, as a stand alone business, its net profit would have been less than that -– but it would have shown a net profit.

What put it into Chapter 11, and what may put the Star Tribune out of business, is the enormous debt that Avista stuck it with. The company is strangling on those loan payments.

Harte and the rest of the Avista crowd miscalculated as badly as the boobs who run the big banks and brokerage houses. Like those other bozos, the Avista geniuses assumed that the money would just keep rolling in and their speculations would go on floating forever on tainted air.

Now Harte, and no doubt the rest of the Avista crowd, are outraged, yes outraged, that the pressmen don't much feel like cutting themselves out of the middle class to rescue the fools who put their livelihoods, and what was one of the country's best newspapers, in jeopardy.

I'm truly sad to say it -– I loved the Strib most of the years I worked there, and for most of my life before I worked there –- but it may be the best thing for everybody, including the beleaguered employees, if Harte and Avista go under, even if they take the Strib with them.

After all the moaning and whining, the United States will have newspapers. Minneapolis will have a newspaper. The Strib soon will be little more than a shell anyway, and it's outright collapse probably will hasten the day that someone who actually knows how to run a newspaper will show up.

As for Harte and his money-playing partners:

Really, they should shut up and take what's coming to them without trying to squeeze more out of the newspaper's dedicated employees, who are hurting badly enough but will hurt much more before this is over.