As it stands presently, however, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM is a fraud...

Above all, I must not play God

Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise. - Sigmund Freud

By J.M. Hamilton 5-29-13

We'd like to think we've come a long distance from the Dark Ages but in the field of diagnosing illnesses of the mind - we've barely taken a step forward.  In the practice of modern medicine, doctors and scientist make breakthrough after breakthrough utilizing real scientific evidence, biology, facts and studies that can be replicated by their peers; but in one field, the division of psychiatry - there is little in the way of hard scientific evidence or biology, backing their diagnosis or their recommended cures.  In the field of psychiatry and the behavioral sciences, it's as if we never left the dark ages, and are still dependent upon quacks and witch doctors.

This was recently on full display for all to see when the head of Psychiatry in this country, Dr. Thomas Insel, criticized the DSM - the bible for the pseudo-science of psychiatry - as lacking in scientific evidence.   Instead mental diagnosis is based upon symptoms, and consensus - conjecture - and opinion among mental healthcare professionals.  It took great courage for Dr. Insel to tell the truth about his own profession, and hopefully his candor will open the door to more scientific enlightenment, biological links to illnesses of the mind and brain, and greater knowledge on how the mind and brain actually operates.

As it stands presently, however, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM is a fraud, utilized in courtrooms, prisons, schools, as an excuse to put people away, or dose them with often harmful psychotropic drugs.  In effect often giving millions of American adults, and sadly children, a chemical lobotomy.... Subjugating the mind, body, and perhaps the soul, with chemical handcuffs in an attempt to help the patient achieve some perceived “societal norm.”

We all know that prescriptions for Adderall and Ritalin (aka kiddie coke) have soared to epidemic proportions in this nation because young children - often boys- allegedly "act out," in increasingly feminized and over-crowded classrooms, where physical education is cut out of the curriculum.  I believe this is now a nine billion dollar industry. 

It's become the new fall back dejure for student, parent and teacher failings:  Namely, if little Johnny or Sally are struggling in school or with life in general, don't worry. It's not their fault, nor is it your fault dear parents, but we have some wonderful meds for your children to take the edge off.  Big Pharma, of course, makes billions off these diagnosis’ and the resulting prescription; and the DSM and psychiatry are complicit in turning this nation into a bunch of pharmaceutical speed and benzo junkies.

Again, this is done because these adults and children do not fall within the parameters of what the psychiatric community perceives to be the societal norm.  That there is literally no scientific evidence backing these eminentos suppositions of what constitutes the "norm, “and that the so-called societal norm is ever evolving and changing never seems to dawn on many coven members.  To admit that they were frauds, no better than witch doctors and shamans, could be damaging to their professional standing, their careers -and their livelihood.... Not to mention the legitimacy of billions of dollars in prescribed psychoactive medications annually.  By way of example, the DSM used to call homosexual behavior a sociopathic mental disorder, and now it is absent from more recent DSM editions, which just goes to prove that the DSM is based upon arbitrary and capricious whims of what constitutes the "societal norm," and little in the way of hard scientific fact.  In the latest DSM addition, if you grieve for a loved one for more than two weeks, you’re damaged goods with a mental health issue; and presumably in dire need of therapy and medication. 

How convenient.

What will be the result of the new DSM 5.0?  More of the same.  More drugs. More junkies. More aggrandizement of shaman/mental health professionals, and the Big Pharma cartel growing richer off your misery and addiction, and spiraling healthcare costs.   More people labeled with disorders and pathologized, the majority of whom are just suffering through life's travails.

The WSJ's Kristen Gerencher noted as much in a recent piece, when she quoted a former chair of a DSM task force, Dr. Allen Frances:  “Drug companies take marketing advantage of the loose DSM definitions by promoting the misleading idea that everyday life problems are actually undiagnosed psychiatric illness caused by a chemical imbalance and requiring a solution in pill form.  This results in misallocation of resources, with excessive diagnosis and treatment for essentially healthy persons (who may be harmed by it) and relative neglect of those with clear psychiatric illness (whose access to care has been sharply reduced by slashed state mental health budgets.)”

Moreover, “We’re treating childhood like a disease,” said Frances, author of “Saving Normal” and professor emeritus and former chair of psychiatry at Duke University.

By way of analogy, say Aunt Rita is showing signs of illness, shortness of breath, and red blotches on her body... A medical doctor would look for causes of the illness, shallow breathing, and the subdural hematoma, and treat the illness not the symptoms; but modern psychiatry would treat the bruise, and shallow breathing with meds, perhaps oxygen, and therapy without understanding the underlying cause or the symptoms..... Meanwhile Aunt Rita very well might die from internal bleeding, because her metaphorical mental healthcare professional never bothered to discover the source of her medical problems.  Of course diseases and disorders of the mind are rarely fatal in the short run, which probably explains why there has been a complete lack of a sense of urgency to expose this field to real science.  That and surely, the complexity of the brain and human mind present a huge challenge. 

To be totally candid with my readers, my interactions with mental health professionals, although limited, have been less than superlative.  I've watched one psychologist lie on a witness stand and completely botch his investigation into the abuse of a child.  I've watched this same doctor threaten said child for requesting to live with the non-abusive parent.  In the middle of a contentious child custody hearing, the good doctor authorized one parent to conduct an investigation on the other parent’s property.  While the child was suicidal, the psychologist left the child in the custody of the offending parent.  Separately, I've heard – first hand – a mental health professional subscribe to the belief that the entire nation should be in therapy (perhaps it is so?)  I've heard yet another state that they went into this field so as to study their own personal demons, and properly medicate, a not uncommon practice I was assured.  

We often forget that in totalitarian states, such as the former Soviet Union and Red China, that psychology and psychiatry are often used to control political dissidents, since anyone who would dare disagree with the state should obviously be committed. Spend a week or two in solitary confinement and the totalitarian prophecy becomes self-fulfilling.  Indeed, after a tour within solitary confinement, one would begin to manifest mental illness and pathologies. 

At what distance are our nations schools, courtrooms and prisons from this totalitarian nightmare, when we allow mental healthcare professionals considerable say and sway over the medication and lives of children and adults, based purely on conjecture, perceived notions of societal norms, and pseudo-science?

The Hippocratic oath mandates that doctors do no harm.  However, when mental health care is based upon popular beliefs as to what constitutes societal norms, speculation, and anything but science.... Then our mental health professionals are potentially straying into another admonishment made by that same oath: That of playing God with the lives of their patients.

Most telling was a quote from an eminent psychiatrist in a recent NY Times piece:  Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman, the chairman of the psychiatry department at Columbia and president-elect of the American Psychiatric Association, which publishes the D.S.M., said “The last thing we want to do is be defensive or apologetic about the state of our field. But at the same time, we’re not satisfied with it either. There’s nothing we’d like better than to have more scientific progress.”

Sounds like the good Doctor has taken half a step forward by acknowledging his profession’s problem. To which I respond:  Doctor, heal thyself!

To see just how insidious a mental health care professional can behave in a courtroom -please read Mrs. Marshfield available today on Amazon.com.

Check out the NIMH findings here.

 Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2013

Mr. Demagogue?

Mr. Demagogue?

“The State Department is infested with communists. I have here in my hand a list of 205—a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department.”

-Senator Joseph McCarthy – Wheeling, Virginia speech (2-9-50)

“Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness …   Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency.”
 

 - U.S. Army’s chief legal representative, Joseph Nye Welch – Army\McCarthy Hearings  (June 9, 1954)

By J.M. Hamilton (3-17-12)

They seem to arrive during troubled times, be they economic or political.  A leader arrives on the scene, and offers up a seemingly simplistic reason for a nation’s problems, and often a simpler solution.  They may be charismatic and, ultimately, enjoy a cult of personality following.

Demagogues play upon the public’s fear, and often their ignorance.  The elementary, and often times extreme, positions they take offer solutions for a bewildered and frightened public, all too eager to put a bad situation behind it and looking for an earthly messiah.  Above all, what a demagogue offers is a short cut to thinking.  The fear and misery that propels these individuals into a nation’s spot light can be so great that otherwise sane, rational and intelligent academic, business, political and spiritual leaders offer no rebuttal, for fear of being ostracized, castigated or worse.

It reminds me of Mr. Burke’s famous quote:  ”All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

The spell is weaved, the die is cast, and the next thing one knows a nation has an even bigger problem on its hands; the fallacious and specious solution that was offered often delays the inevitable (the more arduous path to resolution), or serves only to aggravate and prolong the crisis.  Examples of U.S. demagogues in the 20th Century would include Huey P. Long of Louisiana.  Visualize Governor Long calling the shots in the Louisiana legislature, from the dais with a bottle of whiskey in his hand.

Or Wisconsin’s Senator Joe McCarthy – who actually did more harm than good to the anti-communist movement.  Across the pond and beyond, Adolph Hitler – another demagogue – offered up a final solution and in the process, nearly killed off a race of men, destroyed a nation, and obliterated a generation’s collective soul.  Mr. Stalin was indiscriminate in the genocide he perpetrated within the USSR, but according to Andre Solzhenitsyn, Stalin’s body count made Hitler look like a piker (that is not to diminish Hitler’s crimes against humanity in any way).   Further east think of Pol Pot and the killing fields in Cambodia.  These men often possessed by messianic and revolutionary vision, lead their nations to destruction.

Fortunately, this country’s demagogues – at least in the last century – have been less harsh in terms of generating body count, but potentially were just as dangerous.  Here and now in the 21st Century, we appear to have a demagogue presently in our midst; and like Senator Joe McCarthy before him, Mr. Norquist – who holds no elected office, and with no binding legal authority whatsoever – has a list.

The list, however, doesn’t name communist but rather, a list of Republican congressmen, who have pledged to Mr. Norquist not to raise taxes.

To which JMH responds:  When did the Republican Party become Mr. Norquist’s sock puppet, or this weeks buzz word – “muppet?”  Ninety-five percent of all Republican congressman and, I believe all Republican Presidential candidates, have suspending rational thought, and have signed Mr. Norquist’s pledge, maintaining that they will not increase taxes.  (I remember another highly respected Republican President, who your humble blogger voted for twice, who lost his re-election bid in ’92 over a similar commitment, in which he stated “read my lips;” his own political party turned on him when he rationally bailed upon his pledge not to raise taxes.)

Now nobody, including Democrats, likes paying taxes but as stated by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes:  ”Taxes are what we pay to live in a civilized society.”  Besides, the only thing worse than taxes is government debt and deficit spending – and the U.S. has mountains of debt brought upon it by successive Republican administrations.

Just how fiscally conservative is the Republican Party, and Mr. Norquist then, when they offer no concrete or realistic recommendations to reduce government spending, but are all for tax cuts for the wealthy, when we are running trillion dollar deficits per annum?

The answer is:  Not very!  Analysis from major news organizations reveals that Mr. Romney’s budget plans for the nation, if elected, would lead to an even greater accumulation of debt than the present administration.  And lets not forget Republican Vice President Cheney’s infamous quip that President Reagan proved deficits don’t matter.  One only has to look to the PIIGS in Europe to see where this fiscal insanity will eventually lead; and but by the grace of the printing press and possession of the world’s fiat currency, the U.S. doesn’t find itself among the PIIGS already.

Of course rarely mentioned, if ever, by Mr. Norquist, or his minions – the Republican Party, is that the wealthy, the rich, and any major corporation worth it’s salt, often don’t pay taxes, or pay taxes at exceptionally low rates versus the middle class.  Now, if your middle class, say within the ninety-nine percentile, you likely cannot afford lobbyist, or pay to hire former U.S. Treasury personnel to run your tax department, or spend exceptional amounts of money electing politicians – who will vote for and protect your favorite tax loophole(s) or dodge.   But for the elite, it’s just another day in a tax paradise.

Mr. Norquist is correct in that marginal tax rates are too high in this country, for the individual and the corporation; but where many part company with Mr. Norquist is in the belief that closing catalogue upon catalogue of tax loopholes, exploited by the powerful economic and political interests, is tantamount to a tax increase, and must be fought at every turn.

The middle class and future generations are being robbed by U.S. tax policy, as it presently stands.

The middle class, what remains of it, cannot escape paying taxes, and pay a higher rate to subsidize those entities, individuals and organizations, which often pay at half the tax rate we do, that is if they pay any taxes at all.

Here’s what Mr. David Brooks of the NY Times had to say on the matter.  Mr. Brooks isn’t exactly known for his liberal views.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development recently calculated how much each affluent country spends on social programs. When you include both direct spending and tax expenditures, the U.S. has one of the biggest welfare states in the world. We rank behind Sweden and ahead of Italy, Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark, Finland and Canada. Social spending in the U.S. is far above the organization’s average.

You might say that a tax break isn’t the same as a spending program. You would be wrong.
David Bradford, a Princeton economist, has the best illustration of how the system works. Suppose the Pentagon wanted to buy a new fighter plane. But instead of writing a $10 billion check to the manufacturer, the government just issued a $10 billion “weapons supply tax credit.” The plane would still get made. The company would get its money through the tax credit. And politicians would get to brag that they had cut taxes and reduced the size of government!

And we are not talking about the usual list of suspects here when it comes to IRS avoidance, but rather, when we talk about those who make a sport of ducking payment into government’s revenue stream (be it America’s or Europe’s), we are talking about a pantheon of venerable corporate entities and institutions, some of the finest America has to offer.

How do they do it?

We know that private equity likes to front load profits by soaking balance sheets in debt, and via the tax deductibility of interest payments on same.  It’s what makes private equity work.  Moreover, private equity dividends paid for with debt are not taxed until the debt is retired.  And a takeover target that is saddled with debt is likely to have diminished earnings, if any, to pay taxes on.  In fact, it might carry forward financial loss (brought on by excessive debt) to offset future earnings for purposes of cutting taxes.  Separately, payment of carried interest to the pirates of private equity is at the capital gains tax rate, presently set at 15%.  So in many instances, not only is private equity doing harm to the U.S. labor force by stripping away CAPEX and human capital (which actually does pay taxes), in order to service an artificially high debt load; but private equity loads take over targets up with debt so as to pay themselves and in turn, coincidentally, lower the effective tax rate paid on debt encumbered earnings.  In short, Americans get robbed both ways, when private equity runs a company, through the loss of jobs and the debt-ladened company’s diminished tax receipts.

On a side note, private equity likes to say they only rehabilitate sick and dying businesses, but they also like to take up healthy organizations, or fully recovered entities, and load them up with debt, repeatedly.   Take HCA for example or private equity’s greatest failure to date, TXU.  And to think of all those union and state employee retirement plans, which dump retirement money into private equity, which operates directly at cross-purposes with these same employees economic and political interests…?  One wonders if these unions and state employees, and their leadership, will ever wise up?

But wait it gets better, because the crème de la crème of Silicon Valley also has a deep disdain for paying taxes, take Apple and Google as yet another example.  Both companies exploit a tax scheme called a “double irish” or “dutch sandwich,” whereby overseas earnings are sent to Ireland, then the Netherlands, and onto Bermuda.  As reported by Bloomberg in 2010, the result is from 2007 to the date the article was written, Google paid less than a three percent tax rate, per annum, on offshore earnings.  Tax arbitrage defined!  Google’s actual payroll and revenue generated from Ireland, the Netherlands, and Bermuda maybe negligible or non-existent, but international revenues and earnings are repatriated around the horn.  All perfectly legal, and we wonder why the U.S., and assorted Western democracies – like Ireland, is running catastrophic and unsustainable fiscal deficits, and their respective citizens suffer fiscal austerity.  Last I read, Facebook, America’s favorite on line toy, was about to join the ranks of Apple and Google, by deploying the double irish tax dodge.

Meanwhile, Apple, America’s – indeed the world’s – largest market cap, or stock valuation, has more cash on hand than the U.S. Treasury – most of it safe and secure offshore.

And there is where it will lie until such time as the Republican Party breaks the spell of Mr. Norquist, and decides to stop mortgaging America’s future with debt and deficit spending.  Of course this blog has written extensively as to why the Republican Party favors deficit financing… all the better to allow the Wall Street Cartel to dictate fiscal and government policy.   And to think this is the party, or used to be, of rugged individualism and the “maverick” mentality.  Today’s Republican Party looks more like a flock of woolly mammals than proud and iconic mustangs I once knew it to be.  It’s only a matter of time before Republicans wake up and see Mr. Norquist for who he is.

Could you imagine if the middle class rose up and demanded to be paid by their employers, through stock manipulation and debt turned to dividends, at the capital gains rate?  We’d all be a little richer, since our tax rate – like Candidate Romney’s – would effectively be fifteen percent; but the government would come crashing down.  The elimination of government, ultimately, maybe the goal of certain elements within the Republican Party, like Mr. Norquist and the billionaire Koch Brothers!

Starve the beast of funds, and it will eventually parish, and along with it the social contract.  Alas, greed makes the world go around.

PS:

And speaking of unmitigated greed… the present administration knows that rising fuel prices at the pump are not due to any short fall in supply (America in fact has stockpiles of oil in Cushing Oklahoma and more natural gas coming on line than this country knows what to do with); but rather excessive speculation in oil – brought about by central banks flooding the world with paper currency – is driving fuel costs ever higher.  When zombie-banking institutions aren’t hoarding the tsunami of central bank currency, they are speculating with it.

And hence, Americans are being bent over the hoods of their cars at the pump, which is a direct threat to Mr. Obama’s second term.  To mitigate this greed and it’s threat to the nascent economic recovery, either the state or federal government should purchase, or support the purchase of the Sunoco refinery in Philadelphia, presently up for sale, and operate it at maximum capacity.  All the better to keep both Cartels worst tendencies in check, the American consumer protected, and help insure President Obama’s second term. Heh, if you’re going to operate a Cartel – the public and the Cartel should expect government intervention to protect the consumer and the economy from monopoly’s worst tendencies.

Unleashing a flood of oil from the Strategic Reserve would also send a message to the speculators that it is no longer open season on the American consumer.

 Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2013

Always cutting edge.... Often Prescient.... J.M. Hamilton!

05/22/2013 04:46 PM

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, shown here with his wife Nancy

Unlikely Heir

Obama Returns to Kissinger's Realpolitik

By Gregor Peter Schmitz

Henry Kissinger, the hawkish national security advisor to Nixon who popularized realpolitik, turns 90 this week. Few would have expected President Obama to pick up his mantle, but the erstwhile idealist resembles Kissinger more every day.

When Henry Kissinger was at the height of his power, the US media dubbed then President Richard Nixon's national security advisor "the true president." At the time, he was traveling around the world at such a breakneck pace that journalists speculated that there must be five Kissingers (four doubles and one real). Around that time, a reporter asked him a question: Why are Americans so fascinated by a young man from Fürth in the German region of Franconia, who fled the Nazis at the age of 15?
Kissinger replied: "I've always acted alone. Americans like that immensely. Americans like the cowboy who leads the wagon train by riding ahead alone on his horse."

At Harvard University, the German émigré wrote his senior thesis about Austrian statesman Count Clemens von Metternich. Some 388 pages long, it prompted the university to introduce a page limit. His theory was that while Metternich might have temporarily destroyed the beginnings of liberalism in 19th-century Europe with the help of his secret diplomacy, he also preserved the balance of powers.

Kissinger, who celebrates his 90th birthday on May 27, has more in common with Metternich than he would like to admit, after having made his mark in history with a number of cool diplomatic strokes. He balanced the fragile equilibrium of horror among the nuclear powers in the Cold War. And, to his credit, Kissinger's secret negotiations with the North Vietnamese communists secured the relatively orderly withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam.

Kissinger secured Mao's China as a strategic partner and practiced Bismarckian realpolitik in Latin America. In the Kissinger system, unrest was more dangerous than injustice, and a functioning balance of power was more important than human rights.

His policies, however, often collided with America's self-image. The country likes to think it can save the world, if not actually reinvent it. But it also wants to be loved, a wish Kissinger neither could nor wanted to fulfill.
 
Realism without Moral Scruples

During the election campaign, Democratic candidate Obama portrayed himself as an idealistic "citizen of the world." But he was hardly in office before he began pursuing the maxim that idealists give nice speeches, while realists shape policy.

In this fashion, the president turned himself into a lone judge who personally approves which Islamist is to be killed with a drone attack somewhere in the world. He launched a new era of conflict with massive investments in "cyber war." And Obama prosecutes betrayers of state secrets even more relentlessly than any of his predecessors.

The president has coldly recognized that war-weary Americans prefer progress at home instead of elsewhere in the world. This is one reason he has threatened Syrian dictator Bashar Assad while following up with little in the way of action. Not unlike Kissinger's approach in Chile, Obama looks the other way when America's allies, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, subjugate their people, or when China harasses dissidents. US author Jacob Heilbrunn calls this approach "neo-Kissingerism," and notes: "Obama may even start speaking about foreign affairs with a German accent."

Kissinger is a realist with a weakness: He is vain, and he was never indifferent to how other people felt about him. It must make him jealous to see that Obama is so popular in many parts of the world, despite his cold-blooded actions. But as he turns 90, Kissinger probably relishes the notion that the president resembles him more and more every day.


Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/realpolitik-of-henry-kissinger-making-a-comeback-under-obama-a-901195.html

 

http://www.jmhamiltonpublishing.com/2013/05/roll-tide_11.html

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Tan, ready and rested… indeed.

Tan, ready and rested… indeed.

Richard Nixon and the Southern Strategy

“If the Republican Party cannot win in this environment, it has to get out of politics and find another business,” declared George Will on ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos.”

By J.M. Hamilton  (11-6-12)

Yesterday marked the 44^th anniversary of former President Nixon’s defeat of Mr. Hubert Humphrey.  Mr. Nixon won that election’s popular vote by the slenderest of margins (the complete inverse of the thorough stomping Mr. McGovern endured four short years later at the hands of then President Nixon).  More important than the result itself, the 1968 election achieved a built in GOP electoral hedge, in modern presidential campaigning, that was to last to the present day.  That hedge came to be known as the Southern strategy and counted on a white southern electorate to vote Republican and against the Democratic Party.  The Southern strategy, with the Bible belt superimposed in the same geographic region, has been a boon to the GOP and the bane of the DNC ever since.  To such an extent that even conservative Democrats need not apply for office, in nearly all southern districts.

Up until ’68, white southern voters were deeply committed to the Democratic Party, as the Republicans were associated with Mr. Lincoln, carpetbaggers, and the awesome power of the Federal government, versus state’s rights.  For approximately a hundred years, post-civil war, white southern constituents voted largely as a block with the Democratic Party.  The Kennedys and President Johnson changed all that with the passage of 1960’s civil rights legislation.

Sensing an opportunity and a wedge issue, the Nixon campaign swung in to embrace disaffected southern whites.  This voting block helped to cement every Republican President’s ascent and hold on power ever since, starting with Mr. Nixon.

But this year, this block’s power and the Southern strategy seems to be on the wane.  Mr. Romney’s showing in the polls, despite a still struggling economy and high unemployment figures, appears to illustrate that the strategy is doomed – if not now then certainly longer term.  Two generations later, demographic shifts account for much of the strategy’s failure; but seemingly the RNC’s endless ability to alienate nearly every other political group/stratification in society, other than the white male, plays an equally large role.

As an older generation of Americans fades, the RNC and future Republican candidates are going to have to broaden their horizons, if this party is to remain viable for executive office.  Pundits assertions that the GOP is an insurgency party, and really doesn’t govern well, are not without merit (see Mr. Bush – W).

There are many characteristic by which we can measure the rise and fall of political parties… but in my opinion, one particular measure is key.  That measure, call it the hypocrisy factor, is the number of revolutions a presidential candidate must turn to distance himself from his base, once he’s received the nomination, in order to be accepted by the mainstream (that is, to become electable).

Compare both presidential candidates – this season – on the basis of the hypocrisy factor, and judge for yourself.  If you are honest with yourself, Mr. Obama – although far from perfect – had to do very little to become acceptable to the mainstream, since his party’s nomination; while Mr. Romney has all but turned himself inside out, repeatedly, on nearly every issue, since obtaining his party’s prize.

What this tells us is not that Mr. Romney is a bad man, but rather, the thoughts and beliefs of the Republican core are a much greater distance from today’s mainstream then the thoughts and values of the Democratic base.  Factor in the very shrinking of that GOP base as time takes its toll, add in demographic trends, and you have a party that is facing marginalization if not extinction.

That is to say, that while the GOP has swung hard right, the values – particularly the social mores of the nation – have moderated or become left of center, vis a vis the GOP base.

The bottom line:  Mr. Nixon’s Southern strategy, no matter what one feels about it, has been highly successful for over forty years.  If this election represents a turning point in the efficacy of Mr. Nixon’s Southern strategy, then J.M.H. would argue that the GOP may have to risk jettisoning some extremist groups within their own party in order to remain viable and ultimately, electable to the presidency.

My guess is the GOP will fare much better without these elements.

 Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2013

THE EMPEROR WEARS NO CLOTHES: “The last thing we want to do is be defensive or apologetic about the state of our field. But at the same time, we’re not satisfied with it either."

May 6, 2013/NYTIMES

Psychiatry’s Guide Is Out of Touch With Science, Experts Say

By PAM BELLUCK and BENEDICT CAREY

Just weeks before the long-awaited publication of a new edition of the so-called bible of mental disorders, the federal government’s most prominent psychiatric expert has said the book suffers from a scientific “lack of validity.”

The expert, Dr. Thomas R. Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, said in an interview Monday that his goal was to reshape the direction of psychiatric research to focus on biology, genetics and neuroscience so that scientists can define disorders by their causes, rather than their symptoms.

While the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or D.S.M., is the best tool now available for clinicians treating patients and should not be tossed out, he said, it does not reflect the complexity of many disorders, and its way of categorizing mental illnesses should not guide research.

“As long as the research community takes the D.S.M. to be a bible, we’ll never make progress,” Dr. Insel said, adding, “People think that everything has to match D.S.M. criteria, but you know what? Biology never read that book.”

The revision, known as the D.S.M.-5, is the first major reissue since 1994. It has stirred unprecedented questioning from the public, patient groups and, most fundamentally, senior figures in psychiatry who have challenged not only decisions about specific diagnoses but the scientific basis of the entire enterprise. Basic research into the biology of mental disorders and treatment has stalled, they say, confounded by the labyrinth of the brain.

Decades of spending on neuroscience have taught scientists mostly what they do not know, undermining some of their most elemental assumptions. Genetic glitches that appear to increase the risk of schizophrenia in one person may predispose others to autism-like symptoms, or bipolar disorder. The mechanisms of the field’s most commonly used drugs — antidepressants like Prozac, and antipsychosis medications like Zyprexa — have revealed nothing about the causes of those disorders. And major drugmakers have scaled back psychiatric drug development, having virtually no new biological “targets” to shoot for.

Dr. Insel is one of a growing number of scientists who think that the field needs an entirely new paradigm for understanding mental disorders, though neither he nor anyone else knows exactly what it will look like.

Even the chairman of the task force making revisions to the D.S.M., Dr. David J. Kupfer, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, said the new manual was faced with doing the best it could with the scientific evidence available.

“The problem that we’ve had in dealing with the data that we’ve had over the five to 10 years since we began the revision process of D.S.M.-5 is a failure of our neuroscience and biology to give us the level of diagnostic criteria, a level of sensitivity and specificity that we would be able to introduce into the diagnostic manual,” Dr. Kupfer said.

About two years ago, to spur a move in that direction, Dr. Insel started a federal project called Research Domain Criteria, or RDoC, which he highlighted in a blog post last week. Dr. Insel said in the blog that the National Institute of Mental Health would be “reorienting its research away from D.S.M. categories” because “patients with mental disorders deserve better.” His commentary has created ripples throughout the mental health community.

For at least a decade, Dr. First and others said, patients will continue to be diagnosed with D.S.M. categories as a guide, and insurance companies will reimburse with such diagnoses in mind.

Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman, the chairman of the psychiatry department at Columbia and president-elect of the American Psychiatric Association, which publishes the D.S.M., said that the new edition’s refinements were “based on research in the last 20 years that will improve the utility of this guide for practitioners, and improve, however incrementally, the care patients receive.”

He added: “The last thing we want to do is be defensive or apologetic about the state of our field. But at the same time, we’re not satisfied with it either. There’s nothing we’d like better than to have more scientific progress.” 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/07/health/psychiatrys-new-guide-falls-short-experts-say.html?adxnnl=1&pagewanted=print&adxnnlx=1368374570-SKnddyVJ3UgvH8/hGAFg4w

Roll Tide

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The Political Tide Breaks?  Roll Tide!

"David Souter and John Paul Stevens (both Republicans) were so repulsed by the party of George W. Bush that they gave the most precious gift any Justice can proffer to his successor, Barack Obama  - their seats on the Court."  -

The New Yorker, Justice O'Connor Regrets (5-7-13)

By J.M. Hamilton (5-11-13)

There were many recent articles that caught my eye, concerning Mrs. Thatcher's passing.  One line in particular really struck home.  Perhaps the story was in the Times of London.  At the end of her political career, PM Thatcher lamented Labor's rightward shift, and seeing Tory policies co-opted by what was formerly the political left, Labor.... which today, is right of center.  Witness the prime example, what the British press referred to as Bush's (W) poodle, PM Tony Blair.  Mr. Blair was more Toff than Laborite, and after years of government service, and no experience in the private sector, inexplicably, he parachuted out of office fabulously wealthy.  I never dreamed government paid so well?  Mr. Blair's foreign policy was closely associated with the neo-cons running Washington during the last decade, and the disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan.  To look at the PM and his policies, you never knew the U.K. was being run by the Labor Party.

With PM Blair, Labor's assimilation into Tory establishment, policies and practices was complete.

Labor and in this country, Democrats, were both closely associated with the financial crisis that dropped lady liberty to her knees, also brought down old smoke, and nearly tore the London financial district in two.

 J.M.H. has pointed out the rightward shift in this country on many occasions. From acknowledging President Obama as the uber 2012 Republican candidate to writing of the most fiscally conservative President in the last 35  years, Mr. Bill Clinton.  In this country Mr. Reagan set off the political plate tectonics with his rhetoric, and Mr. Clinton jumped the Rubicon when he hired campaign advisor Mr. Dick Morris ( Arch - Right Wing Conservative, Senator Jesse Helm's advisor) to help him land his second term.  Mr. Morris' advice to the "liberal" Clinton?

Turn hard right.

He did, and some of the worst banking deregulation in last thirty-five years, much of it initiated by Senate Republican Phil Gramm, was passed under Mr. Clinton's watch.

As this blog has asserted previously, in watching the Dems and GOP fall all over themselves to support the plutocracy (with tax breaks, welfare, friendly political appointees, SCOTUS nominees, and government giveaways), at the expense of the remnants of the middle-class, the poor and downtrodden... it's as if we live in a one party state.

That's why I find it so interesting and surreal when I hear the extremist refer to President Obama as Satan.   A very good friend of mine, very smart and very conservative, believes that to be the case.

"President Obama is not Satan," I soberly explained.  "Why, Mr. Obama would have to stand in line behind Mephistopheles to reclaim his throne from my Ex-wife."  But my friend was having none of it.  As if to emphasize the evils of government over the relatively benign private sector, he asked the following question.

"What would you rather have, J.M.?

A)  A despotic commander and chief?  Or
B)  A chief executive officer gone rogue?

Which is worse?"

I rejoined, what's worse is the rogue CEO (not that all CEOs are rogue).  You see, I replied, we can still vote the President out of office, or let the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution run its course (as aside, it's a damn shame the 22nd doesn't apply to all judgeships and state and federal officeholders).  Given the state of shareholder rights today, it is nearly impossible remove an entrenched board or management team from running a company, look at J.P. Morgan and Mr. Dimon's dual role.  What's more, some of these corporations have the financial, economic and political power of nation states; and indeed, have balance sheets and incomes statements that exceed the GDP of many small to mid-sized nations.  Couple economic and political power with regulatory capture, tax and labor arbitrage, a Citizens United decision, and a toadying Supreme Court, add in zero social responsibility - and well yes, some cartels, monopolies, and corporations have the power to take down the global economy, kingdoms, elected officials and political parties (witness the Wall Street and London banking cartels, circa 2008).

It's monopolistic power that we have to fear, I explained to my friend; our elected politicians are merely servants to this higher private sector power.  In fact, I said, Mr. Obama, with no disrespect meant, is a caretaker President, and a very good one at that.  He serves corporate interests like any Republican would.  Observe the manufactured stock market results, the Wall Street bailouts, his private sector appointees - from Government Sachs and the Wall Street Cartel - to high government regulatory positions, and his friend at the Fed - with the printing press set on over-drive, deficit spending like a Republican on a bender (a la Reagan and both Bush presidencies), irresponsible MIC budgets, and what has become his own war without end, Afghanistan.  President Obama, like Mr. Clinton before him, has effectively co-opted GOP domestic and foreign policy in many areas, with the sop of Obama -care, previously Romney-care, thrown to those in need.  Not only that, he's emasculated the GOP, while ripping off many of the previous administration's policies.

Don't you see it, Obama - like Mr. Clinton before him - is a Republican?  But my friend wasn't buying.   My friend is certainly no racist, but I suspect that for too many conservatives, they just can't get past the President's skin color to recognize the President as one of their own.  Besides, demonizing the President sells very well, and caters to the extreme right.  Hence, the current division within the GOP over immigration reform.  Legalize a flood of immigrants and the GOP and the DNC will change forever, as will the balance of power in this country.  It's what many caucasians and the elite fear most:  Democracy.

My guess is the nation's political establishment has moved so far right, while the general population has moved increasingly towards moderation and tolerance  - particularly the youth on social policy, that an articulate and well intentioned left of center candidate might kick some serious A in the next presidential election.  (It's an absolute shame that the American public doesn't recognize M&A activity, cartels, private equity, and monopolies for what they are.... job killing, economy draining, opportunity threatening, and private sector taxing succubi.  When they do, that's when real political change will occur in this country.)  A candidate to the right of Nixon but to left of the ultra-conservative President Obama or even the more right leaning, Hillary, could sweep this nation.  That's right, I said it... President Obama, and Hillary, are much further right than President Nixon ever was, while in the White House.  It was under Mr. Nixon's watch that the EPA and OSHA were created, wage and price controls set, the dollar was taken off the gold standard, and more great society programs were expanded than Messrs. Kennedy and Johnson ever dreamed of... and of course, it was Nixon, who quite correctly, embraced the Chinese Reds!   Mr. Nixon, by today's standards, might appear more  like a late 60's acid freak, than a GOP stalwart; but, smartly, he was just catering to the middle-class, the demands of the time, and maintaining his own power.

President Nixon was the last liberal we had in the White House, when we observe his administration's polices, not his rhetoric.  And like most moderate establishment Republicans of yesteryear, he appreciated and supported business, but not at the expense, primacy, or efficacy of the government's power, and in particular, his own power.

By comparison than, President Obama appears positively right-wing.

My how the times have changed.  Democrats are not only giving the GOP a run for their money, but in fact have run over the GOP in catering to the plutocracy's needs, or at least can be counted on to turn a convenient blind eye to real reform.

And as for the "rogue CEOs" and intransigent board of directors?  Well, since many cartel's are dependent upon the state and the taxpayer (e.g. Wall Street) for their very existence, shouldn't the public enjoy at least a 25% share of the board of directors seats?  "Revolving door insiders" need not apply.  Mr. Buckley once said he rather the nation be ruled by an indiscriminate selection of folks within the Boston phone directory, than the Harvard faculty.  Now, there's an idea.  Maybe a national lottery to see which members of the public fill those corporate board seats, within the nation's/public's government sponsored cartels and monopolies?

My guess is that if such a proposal were to become law (along with higher reserve requirements, and a substantive interest rate increase at the federal funds window), the nation's banking cartel couldn't get small fast enough.  Ms. Thatcher and Mr. Reagan kick-started a right-wing revolution that is with us to this very day, but the tide -she's finally beginning to recede.  The Ghost of Ms. Thatcher might rejoice that the Tories and Republicans may have a little less  competition in the future, as opposed to support from the Tory-lite and Republican-lite political parties, Labor and the Dems.

PS: 

This piece is dedicated to Mr. Alan Abelson, a great writer, journalist, and one of many inspirations for this blog.  His wit, insight, and sardonic humor will be missed greatly.

And finally, Thanks Mom!

 Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2013

Sham Democracy

April 12, 2013 NYTIMES

When Shareholder Democracy Is Sham Democracy

By JAMES B. STEWART

Two weeks ago, I argued that it was hard to imagine a more compelling case for ousting directors than the one posed by Hewlett-Packard.

It turns out there are many stronger cases — 41.

That’s the number of publicly traded companies where directors actually lost their elections last year, meaning that more than 50 percent of the shareholders withheld their votes of approval. Yet despite these resounding votes of no confidence, they remained in their posts.

At least at H.P., all the directors got a majority of the votes cast, and even then, two resigned and a third gave up his post as chairman. But at Cablevision Systems, the New York cable and media company controlled by the Dolan family, three directors lost shareholder elections twice in the last three years — in 2010 and 2012 — and received only tepid support in 2011. Nonetheless, the three remain on the board.

“As fiduciaries, we can’t sit by and let the board make a mockery of our fundamental right to elect directors,” said New York City’s comptroller, John Liu, who oversees the city’s pension funds, which own more than 532,000 Cablevision shares. “Share owners need accountable directors who will ensure the company isn’t being run for the benefit of insiders at our expense.”

Mr. Liu sent the company a letter earlier this month urging it not to nominate the three again and threatening a proxy fight. “The fact that all three directors remain on the board suggests that one of the few rights” afforded shareholders is “illusory,” he wrote. Mr. Liu warned that he’d oppose their election and that “my office will also encourage other shareholders to join us.”

Mr. Liu didn’t get a response, but a Cablevision spokesman told me this week, without being specific, that Mr. Liu’s letter was “woefully misinformed, inaccurate and political.” In proxy materials released by Cablevision this week, all three directors — Thomas V. Reifenheiser, John R. Ryan and Vincent S. Tese — were renominated for new terms.

Even directors who resign after losing votes don’t necessarily leave. Two directors of Chesapeake Energy in Oklahoma, V. Burns Hargis, president of Oklahoma State University, and Richard K. Davidson, the former chief executive of Union Pacific, were opposed by more than 70 percent of the shareholders in 2012. Chesapeake requires directors receiving less than majority support to tender their resignations, which they did. The company said it would “review the resignations in due course.”

It later said that the board declined to accept Mr. Hargis’s resignation, a decision made with the 

“input” of the activist shareholder Carl Icahn and another large shareholder who had voted against Mr. Hargis. (Mr. Davidson left a month after the vote, but Mr. Hargis left only last month.)

At Iris International, a medical diagnostics company based in Chatsworth, Calif., shareholders rejected all nine directors in May 2011. In keeping with the company’s policy, they submitted their resignations. And then they voted not to accept them. The nine stayed on the board. (The company was acquired in late 2012 by the Danaher Corporation.)

A list of companies retaining directors who were rejected by shareholders in 2012 — so-called zombie directors — was compiled by the Council of Institutional Investors, which represents pension funds, endowments and other large investors. The list includes not just smaller, family-controlled companies, where disdain for shareholder views may be more ingrained, but also Loral Space and Communications, Mentor Graphics, Boston Beer Company and Vornado Realty Trust.

“It’s appalling,” Nell Minow, a co-founder of GMI Ratings, which rates companies based on risk to shareholders, including corporate governance issues, told me this week. “It’s the No. 1 issue in corporate governance.” She noted that the reason such a thing was possible was that many companies operate under a “plurality” voting system, in which directors run unopposed and just one vote is enough to be elected. And even companies that require a majority vote may decline to accept a director’s resignation.

That an electoral system unworthy of Soviet-era sham democracies is flourishing today in corporate America is largely thanks to the management- and director-friendly policies of Delaware, where more than half of United States companies are incorporated and where the corporate franchise tax contributes disproportionately to the state’s revenue. State law controls board governance, and Delaware has long tolerated plurality voting. The Delaware Supreme Court has also affirmed the power of boards to reject the resignations of directors who fail to gain a majority of votes.

“We’ve had lengthy correspondence suggesting they change this,” Amy Borrus, deputy director of the Council of Institutional Investors, told me. ”We’ve even provided the wording to make it easier. Nothing happens.”

Ms. Minow agreed. “Delaware is a race to the bottom,” she said. “There’s no benefit to doing anything friendly to shareholders.“ The only state, she said, that bars plurality voting is North Dakota — and it’s no coincidence that no major company is incorporated there.

A spokesman for the Delaware secretary of state’s office, which oversees the division of corporations, didn’t have any comment.

Defenders of plurality voting have typically argued that majority voting or elections that would be binding might be destabilizing or disrupt continuity. But “that’s simply to say that democracy is destabilizing,” Ms. Minow said. “Continuity is exactly what shareholders voting against directors do not want. That’s why they’re withholding their votes.”

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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/13/business/sham-shareholder-democracy.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0