"The Empire of Corruption is striking back"

B.S.Raghavan has a simply not to be missed opinion piece in the Hindu Business Online-

There is a sudden streak of hawkish hot-headedness evident in the Government's postures and pronouncements.


In particular, one notices the Human Resources Development and Information Technology Minister, Mr Kapil Sibal, and the Home Minister, Mr P.Chidambaram, adopting a conspicuously imperial tone and tenor, which is clearly hostile to ‘We, the People', to whom they are beholden for their transient positions of power and authority in the first place. Mr Sibal has the bravado to hold up as “a lesson for all” the sneaky and dastardly Ramlila maidan rampage by the police against sleeping, innocent men, women and children who had come from far-off places just to join the movement against corruption and black money.

Mr Chidambaram has the braggadocio to denounce a sovereign people's inherent basic right to protest as “destabilising the Government” and attack the media's brilliant performance in highlighting the people's anger and revulsion against the Government's black deeds as “competitive populist coverage of these movements” and an attempt at “undermining Parliamentary democracy”.

do you hear the music of fascism? -

With all the “behave or else!” hauteur that he is capable of, he imputes motives to the media's discharge of its mandatory duty to keep the people informed, basing his insinuations on “reasons which I can't spell out”.

No doubt, he is ominously hinting at some concocted intelligence and cooked-up cases the Ministries of Home Affairs and Finance are planning to foist to subjugate the media and silence the critics.

Have the new rulers of 'free' India turned out be worse than the British-

Our rulers should know, as from an authentic witness to the glorious age of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru whom I had seen from close quarters, that they are behaving contrary to the values of colossuses who won for us our precious freedom and taking the country back to the era of slavery and savage repression by even doing one better than the British colonial masters.

Actually, the British, with the background of a thousand years of democracy in their own country, were more tolerant and responsive. They dealt with freedom fighters fairly and justly after their own fashion, and never sought to crush them with the ruthlessness that is fast becoming the established mode in the so-called democratic India.

Why do we keep on electing monsters -

Parties and groups playing politics with the evil of corruption and black money eating into the vitals of the nation should also understand that it has become in the people's eyes the repulsive face of politicians of all parties without exception, no matter that some of them for the nonce are jumping on to the bandwagon in the manner of one set of thieves joining the chase given by the people to catch another set of thieves.

Both fire-eating apologists for the Government's callousness, and political opportunists in the Opposition who had not lifted their little finger while they were in power, now sitting in dust-proof, noise-proof, climate proof cavernous offices, with all the creature comfort at their beck and call and spending hundreds of crores of rupees on security and healthcare must cultivate some understanding of the excruciating torture hourly inflicted on the aam aadmi in villages, towns and cities by every public servant from the traffic policeman upwards to the Cabinet Minister.

The fact that they are not able to do so shows either that they are totally devoid of humanity, blinded by their cushy existence or that they have a vested interest in perpetuating the system.

Did I say "don't miss" the article?

Congress 'logic' akin to colonial and Soviet-style authoritarianiasm

Congress party's logo - This hand was made for looting and smacking

From an editorial in Hindu Business Online-

The main takeaway for the people is that this Government will go to any lengths to protect the corrupt. The mistakes have been well-chronicled, but it is the ingenuous arguments that now stand out. One is that groups of well-meaning citizens cannot be allowed to hijack the legislative agenda; the other is that the RSS is behind the anti-corruption movement. Taking the second argument first, one must ask: even if it is true that the RSS is behind the movement, does that somehow make it illegitimate? Why is the Government trying to shift attention from corruption to the RSS? If RSS volunteers helped out in an earthquake or a flood, would that help be rejected by the Government? So the point is not who is doing it but what it is sought to be done. And this clearly makes the Government nervous to the extent that it is even using phrases from the Emergency days, such as “an attempt to de-stabilise the Government.”

The first argument — that citizens should not drive the legislative agenda — is intellectually identical to what colonial and Soviet-style authoritarian governments tended to use: we know what's good for you. According to this view, people don't matter, only the rulers. That this is sheer effrontery in the 21st century has not occurred to the Congress party apparatchiks. But that is not all: it is the Congress party that created the National Advisory Council (NAC), chaired by its President. If it is fine for the NAC to recommend legislation, why is it not all right for Anna Hazare and Ramdev to do likewise? As Shakespeare said, it is surely a tangled web they weave when they seek to deceive. If the people now conclude that the Congress party is trying to protect some of its high-ups, it will have only itself to blame. And this impression will only be strengthened after the ham-handed attempt by the party to distance itself from the Government's action against Ramdev. The effort, clearly, is to minimise the negative fallout against the party. It is not likely to succeed. It is also remarkable that the party has learnt nothing from the Bofors years. Then also, faced with allegations of corruption, the party had tried to brazen and bulldoze its way out.

Well said.
Read the whole thing, as they say.

Whose money and face is the blackest -Congress or Ramdev?

Congressi big mouth Digvijay Singh-

Senior Congress leader, Digvijay Singh on Monday said yoga guru Baba Ramdev should prove that money used to make his ashram is not black money and tax has been paid on it.

Ironical in the extreme. And that itself is an understatement. Which gangs organizations need huge mountains of black money to function at all -political parties! And the Congress party has been the premier party since forever. It is doubtful if any individual or corporate could have consumed as much black money as the Congress has over its history.

Not only that -the black money used by the political parties is of the worst kind. It is unearned, quid pro quo and of course criminal but not just because there is a law against it. It is the blackest money.


Yes, there is black money, there is blacker money and then there is the blackest money.
This needs some explaining as there is a lot of confusion regarding black money.

Black money at root is simply wealth that has escaped paying the cut demanded by the government. Which by itself does not make it immoral. Unlawful, yes, immoral, no.

Types of black money on the scale of immorality

 Let us take the main examples of black money and we shall be able to perceive the differences in 'immorality' -

1) Black Money - You expend sweat and tears to earn a living for your family, to keep them off poverty. Say your tax liability is 15,000/- but you pay 13,000/- and decide that that 2000/- you unlawfully keep is better spent on your mother's medical bills than on the foreign junket of a creep minister or become infinitesimal part of a giant scam. And there are many such scams. You have no faith that the government will spend wisely your hard earned money and not, like thieves, divide it among corrupt politicians and their boot-licking bureaucrats and politically favored contractors.

You are a criminal now and you have black money. And there are millions of 'criminals' like you.
But you earned your money. You produced wealth.
Who can call you immoral? Not me.


2 )  Blacker Money - this is simply loot. Money stolen, extorted by thugs and criminals doing criminal things like burglary, bank dacoity, things that mafiosi do etc. Nothing complicated about it. Obviously, very high on the immorality scale.


3) Blackest Money -  this is the loot of the worst kind because it is looted by those who are the custodians of the law. From the lowest corrupt sarkari peon to the bribe taking traffic inspector to the corrupt Commissioner of police to the dishonest joint secretary to the minister in spotless white clothes but with a lot of filth inside to the 'decent' prime minister who knows all but does nothing.The amount of wealth looted in corruption is huge. It is ENORMOUS.

Add to that the HUGE amount of illegal funds collected, extorted by the political  parties from corporates etc, often as exchange for later favors.  The very functioning these parties depends on such criminality. And yet they lecture us, harangue us, rule us, control us, loot us - while dressed in impeccable, well creased and starched whites.

They did not 'earn' all this loot. They created no wealth. They consumed what others produced. Like parasites that they are.

This is the Blackest Money and the politicians and the bureaucrats have it in truckfuls.

There is no reason not to consider political parties as criminal gangs since their very existence as viable power seekers depends upon large scale criminality.
 
On my scale of immorality, this ranks the highest.





Thus, we implore Diggie Singh to dig a little and tell us-

Who has the most black money - Baba Ramdev(even if he has any) or the Congress Party - and whose is the blackest?

Kiska mounh jada kaala hai?*

*The colorful Indian language translator-

      Kiska mounh jada kaala hai?  - Who has the blackest face (i.e. is the most disgraced) ?

Difference between private and public-sector unions

James Taranto provides the much needed clarity on the difference between the public and private unions and why the protesting public employees in Wisconsin are neither fighting for the rights of the workers nor for the taxpayers.

There is a fundamental difference between private- and public-sector workers. A private-sector labor dispute is a clear clash of competing interests, with management representing shareholders and unions representing workers. In the public sector, as George Will notes, taxpayers--whose position is analogous to that of shareholders--are usually denied a seat at the table:

Such unions are government organized as an interest group to lobby itself to do what it always wants to do anyway - grow. These unions use dues extracted from members to elect their members' employers. And governments, not disciplined by the need to make a profit, extract government employees' salaries from taxpayers. Government sits on both sides of the table in cozy "negotiations" with unions.

Collective bargaining in the public sector thus is less a negotiation than a conspiracy to steal money from taxpayers. The notion that this is "in the economic interests of the middle class" for government employees in Wisconsin and elsewhere to get above-market wages and extremely lavish benefits is just laughable. Sure, government employees are "middle class," but so are the vast majority of taxpayers who don't enjoy the special privileges that come from owning the means of coercion.

(emphasis mine)


And neither is Governor Walker Hosni Mubarak or Hitler.
Nor is Bush still the president.

But, hey, these are government teachers.