Sensible Views

Ending the Great Recession

Before the Making Sense Podcast, there was Uncommon Sense.

Avoiding Depression 101

Unemployment over 10%, defaults on mortgages still rising, states on the verge of bankruptcy: What do we do? Here are some unorthodox methods open for discussion.

First: Increase employment. Cut employees hours by 10 % and have the government subsidize the difference in wages for participating companies. The workload remains the same, so employers hire 10% more people to make up the difference. It’s working for Germany.

Second: Institute MAXIMUM wage laws. The CEO wants $10 million a year? Well, he or she cannot earn more than 30x (pick a number, currently it is over 400x) of the wages of the lowest paid employee. At 30x, I’ll manage on $333,333.33. How about you? When working class people have money, they spend it; when rich people have money, they hoard or gamble it. Duh. This will encourage living wages for employees and discourage Board of Directors from awarding obscene salaries.

Third: Restore manufacturing. Withdraw from the World Trade Organization, repeal all “free trade” agreements, and impose matching tariffs and quotas on all nations that the U.S. imports from. For example, South Korea limits U.S. automobile imports to less than 7000 and we imported over 600,000 of their automobiles. And coming soon: Chinese automobiles. Our tariff on China: less than 2%, their tariff: 19%. Yes, the Koreans and Chinese are protectionists, we should be protectionists too. Let’s not stop there, include textiles, automobile parts, you name it.
Until the U.S. Civil War, the U.S. Treasury was fully funded by tariffs. Alexander Hamilton, one of our most conservative founding fathers, believed in protecting domestic manufacturing. The argument can be made that one of the reasons the American Revolution was fought because the British would not allow the colonies to manufacture goods, only export raw materials (George Washington “imported” a tailor to make his inauguration suit because there were none here).

Fourth: Enforce anti-trust laws: Too big to fail, too big to exist (think Wall Street). Merger and acquisition mania started in the 1980′s and went berserk in the 2000′s. It’s not just banks, it’s energy, communications, and retail. Small business does not stand a chance until they can compete against these giants (See step 3 Wal-Mart). Break them up like Teddy Roosevelt did.

Fifth: Cut the corporate tax rate to 25% and eliminate ALL tax loopholes. Currently, corporations account for less than 10% of treasury revenue (before the 1980′s, it was over 25%), you and I pick up the rest of the tab. Time for them to pay their fair share. After all, they use the roads, power lines, and courts more than we commoners and we pay for it with our tax dollars. If you do business in the U.S., you pay OUR taxes (hear that, Dubai-based Halliburton). No more Cayman Island headquarters.

Finally: End the empire. Institute an UNCONDITIONAL draft for the military. We’ll exit Iraq and Afghanistan tomorrow when politicians and lobbyists have to send their children to die. Close the over 600 foreign military bases not on our soil (How many other nations have foreign bases? India has one.). Cutting appropriations to the military industrial complex (Defense budget over 50% of U.S. discretionary spending) by 20% amounts to over $100 BILLION. Does the U.S. really need to spend more than the rest of the world (combined) on “defense?” That’s offensive (pun and cliche intended).

Techniques of Propaganda

(Subset of Wikipedia entry on the topic).

A number of techniques based in social psychological research are used to generate propaganda. Many of these same techniques can be found under logical fallacies, since propagandists use arguments that, while sometimes convincing, are not necessarily valid.

Some time has been spent analyzing the means by which the propaganda messages are transmitted. That work is important but it is clear that information dissemination strategies become propaganda strategies only when coupled with propagandistic messages. Identifying these messages is a necessary prerequisite to study the methods by which those messages are spread. Below are a number of techniques for generating propaganda:

Ad nauseam This argument approach uses tireless repetition of an idea. An idea, especially a simple slogan, that is repeated enough times, may begin to be taken as the truth. This approach works best when media sources are limited or controlled by the propagator.

Appeal to authority Appeals to authority cite prominent figures to support a position, idea, argument, or course of action.

Appeal to fear Appeals to fear and seeks to build support by instilling anxieties and panic in the general population, for example, Joseph Goebbels exploited Theodore Kaufman’s Germany Must Perish! to claim that the Allies sought the extermination of the German people.

Appeal to prejudice Using loaded or emotive terms to attach value or moral goodness to believing the proposition. Used in biased or misleading ways.

Bandwagon Bandwagon and “inevitable-victory” appeals attempt to persuade the target audience to join in and take the course of action that “everyone else is taking”.

Inevitable victory: invites those not already on the bandwagon to join those already on the road to certain victory. Those already or at least partially on the bandwagon are reassured that staying aboard is their best course of action.

Join the crowd: This technique reinforces people’s natural desire to be on the winning side. This technique is used to convince the audience that a program is an expression of an irresistible mass movement and that it is in their best interest to join.

Beautiful people: The type of propaganda that deals with famous people or depicts attractive, happy people. This makes other people think that if they buy a product or follow a certain ideology, they too will be happy or successful.

Big Lie: The repeated articulation of a complex of events that justify subsequent action. The descriptions of these events have elements of truth, and the “big lie” generalizations merge and eventually supplant the public’s accurate perception of the underlying events. After World War I the German Stab in the back explanation of the cause of their defeat became a justification for Nazi re-militarization and revanchist aggression.

Black-and-White Fallacy: Presenting only two choices, with the product or idea being propagated as the better choice. For example: “You’re either with us, or against us….”

Classical Conditioning: All vertebrates, including humans, respond to classical conditioning. That is, if object A is always present when object B is present and object B causes a negative physical reaction (e.g., disgust, pleasure) then we will when presented with object A when object B is not present, we will experience the same feelings.

Cognitive Dissonance: People desire to be consistent. Suppose a pollster finds that a certain group of people hates his candidate for senator but love actor A. They use actor A’s endorsement of their candidate to change people’s minds because people cannot tolerate inconsistency. They are forced to either to dislike the actor or like the candidate.

Common Man: The “plain folks” or “common man” approach attempts to convince the audience that the propagandist’s positions reflect the common sense of the people. It is designed to win the confidence of the audience by communicating in the common manner and style of the target audience. Propagandists use ordinary language and mannerisms (and clothe their message in face-to-face and audiovisual communications) in attempting to identify their point of view with that of the average person.

For example, a propaganda leaflet may make an argument on a macroeconomic issue, such as unemployment insurance benefits, using everyday terms: “Given that the country has little money during this recession, we should stop paying unemployment benefits to those who do not work, because that is like maxing out all your credit cards during a tight period, when you should be tightening your belt.”

Cult of Personality: A cult of personality arises when an individual uses mass media to create an idealized and heroic public image, often through unquestioning flattery and praise. The hero personality then advocates the positions that the propagandist desires to promote. For example, modern propagandists hire popular personalities to promote their ideas and/or products.

Demonizing the Enemy: Making individuals from the opposing nation, from a different ethnic group, or those who support the opposing viewpoint appear to be subhuman (e.g., the Vietnam War-era term “gooks” for National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam aka Vietcong, or “VC”, soldiers), worthless, or immoral, through suggestion or false accusations. Dehumanizing is also a termed used synonymously with demonizing, the latter usually serves as an aspect of the former.

Disinformation: The creation or deletion of information from public records, in the purpose of making a false record of an event or the actions of a person or organization, including outright forgery of photographs, motion pictures, broadcasts, and sound recordings as well as printed documents.

Door-in-the-Face Technique: Is used to increase a person’s latitude of acceptance. For example, if a salesperson would like to sell an item for $100 but the public would only be willing to pay $50 for it, the salesperson will first offer the item at a higher price (e.g., $200) and then the salesperson will subsequently reduce the price to $100 to make it seem like a good deal.

Euphoria: The use of an event that generates euphoria or happiness, or using an appealing event to boost morale. Euphoria can be created by declaring a holiday, making luxury items available, or mounting a military parade with marching bands and patriotic messages.

Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt: An attempt to influence public perception by disseminating negative and dubious/false information designed to undermine the credibility of their beliefs.

Flag-Waving: An attempt to justify an action on the grounds that doing so will make one more patriotic, or in some way benefit a group, country, or idea. The feeling of patriotism this technique attempts to inspire may not necessarily diminish or entirely omit one’s capability for rational examination of the matter in question.

Glittering Generalities: Glittering generalities are emotionally appealing words applied to a product or idea, but which present no concrete argument or analysis. A famous example is the campaign slogan “Ford has a better idea!” This technique has also been referred to as the PT Barnum effect.

Half-Truth: A half-truth is a deceptive statement, which may come in several forms and includes some element of truth. The statement might be partly true, the statement may be totally true but only part of the whole truth, or it may utilize some deceptive element, such as improper punctuation, or double meaning, especially if the intent is to deceive, evade, blame or misrepresent the truth.

Labeling: A Euphemism is used when the propagandist attempts to increase the perceived quality, credibility, or credence of a particular ideal. A Dysphemism is used when the intent of the propagandist is to discredit, diminish the perceived quality, or hurt the perceived righteousness of the Mark. By creating a “label” or “category” or “faction” of a population, it is much easier to make an example of these larger bodies, because they can uplift or defame the Mark without actually incurring legal-defamation.

Example: “Liberal” is a dysphemism intended to diminish the perceived credibility of a particular Mark. By taking a displeasing argument presented by a Mark, the propagandist can quote that person, and then attack “liberals” in an attempt to both (1) create a political battle-ax of unaccountable aggression and (2) diminish the quality of the Mark. If the propagandist uses the label on too-many perceivably credible individuals, muddying up the word can be done by broadcasting bad-examples of “liberals” into the media. Labeling can be thought of as a sub-set of Guilt by association, another logical fallacy.

Latitudes of Acceptance: If a person’s message is outside the bounds of acceptance for an individual and group, most techniques will engender psychological reactance (simply hearing the argument will make the message even less acceptable. There are two techniques for increasing the bounds of acceptance. First, one can take a more even extreme position that will make more moderate positions seem more acceptable. This is similar to the Door-in-the-Face technique. Alternatively, one can moderate one’s own position to the edge of the latitude of acceptance and then over time slowly move to the position that was previously.[8]

Love Bombing: Used to recruit members to a cult or ideology by having a group of individuals cut off a person from their existing social support and replace it entirely with members of the group who deliberately bombard the person with affection in an attempt to isolate the person from their prior beliefs and value system—see Milieu control.

Lying and Deception: Lying and deception can be the basis of many propaganda techniques including Ad Homimen arguments, Big-Lie, Defamation, Door-in-the-Face, Half-truth, Name-calling or any other technique that is based on dishonesty or deception. For example, many politicians have been found to frequently stretch or break the truth.

Managing the News: According to Adolf Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels “The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly – it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.”[9] This idea is consistent with the principle of classical conditioning as well as the idea of “Staying on Message.”

Milieu Control: An attempt to control the social environment and ideas through the use of social pressure.

Name-Calling: Propagandists use the name-calling technique to incite fears and arouse prejudices in their hearers in the intent that the bad names will cause hearers to construct a negative opinion about a group or set of beliefs or ideas that the propagandist would wish hearers to denounce. The method is intended to provoke conclusions about a matter apart from impartial examinations of facts. Name-calling is thus a substitute for rational, fact-based arguments against the an idea or belief on its own merits.[10]

Obfuscation, Intentional Vagueness, Confusion: Generalities are deliberately vague so that the audience may supply its own interpretations. The intention is to move the audience by use of undefined phrases, without analyzing their validity or attempting to determine their reasonableness or application. The intent is to cause people to draw their own interpretations rather than simply being presented with an explicit idea. In trying to “figure out” the propaganda, the audience forgoes judgment of the ideas presented. Their validity, reasonableness and application may still be considered.

Obtain Disapproval or Reductio Ad Hitlerum: This technique is used to persuade a target audience to disapprove of an action or idea by suggesting that the idea is popular with groups hated, feared, or held in contempt by the target audience. Thus if a group that supports a certain policy is led to believe that undesirable, subversive, or contemptible people support the same policy, then the members of the group may decide to change their original position. This is a form of bad logic, where a is said to include X, and b is said to include X, therefore, a = b.

Operant Conditioning: Operant conditioning involves learning through imitation. For example, watching an appealing person buy products or endorse positions teaches a person to buy the product or endorse the position. Operant conditioning is the underlying principle behind the Ad Nauseam, Slogan and other repetition public relations campaigns.

Oversimplification: Favorable generalities are used to provide simple answers to complex social, political, economic, or military problems.

Quotes Out of Context: Selectively editing quotes to change meanings—political documentaries designed to discredit an opponent or an opposing political viewpoint often make use of this technique.

Rationalization (making excuses)Individuals or groups may use favorable generalities to rationalize questionable acts or beliefs. Vague and pleasant phrases are often used to justify such actions or beliefs.

Red Herring: Presenting data or issues that, while compelling, are irrelevant to the argument at hand, and then claiming that it validates the argument.

Scapegoating: Assigning blame to an individual or group, thus alleviating feelings of guilt from responsible parties and/or distracting attention from the need to fix the problem for which blame is being assigned.

Slogans: Nationalist slogan “Brazil, love it or leave it”, often used during the Brazilian military dictatorship.A slogan is a brief, striking phrase that may include labeling and stereotyping. Although slogans may be enlisted to support reasoned ideas, in practice they tend to act only as emotional appeals. Opponents of the US’s invasion and occupation of Iraq use the slogan “blood for oil” to suggest that the invasion and its human losses was done to access Iraq’s oil riches. On the other hand, supporters who argue that the US should continue to fight in Iraq use the slogan “cut and run” to suggest that it would be cowardly or weak to withdraw from Iraq.

Stereotyping: This technique attempts to arouse prejudices in an audience by labeling the object of the propaganda campaign as something the target audience fears, hates, loathes, or finds undesirable. For instance, reporting on a foreign country or social group may focus on the stereotypical traits that the reader expects, even though they are far from being representative of the whole country or group; such reporting often focuses on the anecdotal. In graphic propaganda, including war posters, this might include portraying enemies with stereotyped racial features.

Straw Man: A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent’s position. To “attack a straw man” is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by substituting a superficially similar proposition (the “straw man”), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.

Testimonial: Testimonials are quotations, in or out of context, especially cited to support or reject a given policy, action, program, or personality. The reputation or the role (expert, respected public figure, etc.) of the individual giving the statement is exploited. The testimonial places the official sanction of a respected person or authority on a propaganda message. This is done in an effort to cause the target audience to identify itself with the authority or to accept the authority’s opinions and beliefs as its own.

Thought-Terminating Cliché: A thought-terminating cliché is a commonly used phrase, sometimes passing as folk wisdom, used to quell Cognitive dissonance.

Transfer: Also known as association, this is a technique that involves projecting the positive or negative qualities of one person, entity, object, or value onto another to make the second more acceptable or to discredit it. It evokes an emotional response, which stimulates the target to identify with recognized authorities. Often highly visual, this technique often utilizes symbols (e.g. swastikas) superimposed over other visual images (e.g. logos). These symbols may be used in place of words.

Unstated Assumption: This technique is used when the propaganda concept that the propagandist intends to transmit would seem less credible if explicitly stated. The concept is instead repeatedly assumed or implied.

Virtue Words: These are words in the value system of the target audience that produce a positive image when attached to a person or issue. Peace, happiness, security, wise leadership, freedom, “The Truth”, etc. are virtue words. Many see religiosity as a virtue, making associations to this quality affectively beneficial. Their use is considered of the Transfer propaganda technique.

Manning, Khadr: Cases of Conscience

At present there are two young men sitting in prison who have never met but are nonetheless intimately connected.

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2010/081110a.html

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Brad Geyer: Liquidate a few assets

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With all the budgetary issues we seem to be having, our infrastructure falling apart while we are stuck in this horrendous economic situation; maybe the federal government could have a sale of sorts.

The Department of Defense, DOD, owns a lot of real estate and more other assets than they can even track. In 2001, the Pentagon lost track of $2.3 trillion dollars*, trillion… with a T.

*The War On Waste: Defense Department Cannot Account For 25% Of Funds — $2.3 Trillion

Maybe they could sell a bit of the assets we don’t need. Maybe just a little real estate … some golf courses possibly. I’m sure some real estate on Oahu, Hawaii would fetch a few dollars. There are at least 10 DOD sites on this one island alone.

Hickam Air Force Base on Oahu has the 18 hole Mamala Bay Course, and the 9 hole Ke’alohi Golf Course. There is the Navy Marine 18 hole course in Honolulu and also the Barber’s Point at Pearl Harbor. What would this much property fetch in Oahu I wonder, some of it on the ocean?

Conservative estimates state that the Pentagon owns almost 30 million acres in the United States, controls 20% of Okinawa and owns 25% of the island of Guam. As of 2004 the United States had 725 bases in 38 countries, and facilities in many others. (In actuality, that 725 may be closer to 900 according to Congressional research.)

In 2005, the Pentagon acknowledged having personnel in 140 countries in 571,900 facilities.

According to 2006 figures the Army had 39 bases each at least $1,500 billion. ($1,500,000,000,000 each x 39)

The Air Force had a few more than that. The Air Force had 43 bases worth $1,500 billion or more.

This is not counting the ships, aircrafts, vehicles, weapons, inventory equipment, stockpiles of precious metals and industrial diamonds.

And then there is the beautiful castles that all the banks have built. Maybe instead of a bake sale they can ship us a bank or it’s headquarters. U.S. tax dollars bought some of them. Maybe they could send one of those castles here to Jefferson. We need a new high school. Castle AIG would work fine.

Sources:

Countries with a US Military Presence
“http://www.militarybudget.info/overseas.html“

- The Pentagon as Global Landlord by Nick Turse
“http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174818“

- The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (January 13, 2004 ed.). Metropolitan Books. pp. 400. ISBN 0805070044. by Chalmers Johnson

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