Usual Rubbish

Dispatch from the string recycling center

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2000 Years to Christmas

Hey … this one doesn’t have so much twang in it. No, not Tang! Twang! You know – the sound that doesn’t occur when you pluck this dead-ass string you gave me. That’s the stuff.

Yeah, hiya, folks. It’s your old pal Joe from Big Green. No, don’t get up – just relax and have another glass of lemonade. We believe in hospitality here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our longtime squat house. You’re more than welcome to stop by, take a seat, and watch us attempt to record pop music using stone knives and bear skins.

Friends of the band will know that I’ve been framming on the guitar just lately, as seen in my recent nano-concert on YouTube. I’m not a virtuoso, to put it mildly. In fact, I beat that mother like Betty Crocker, even when I’m practicing. That’s why I found myself in need of replacement strings.

The principle of scarcity

Now, with MOST bands, when someone breaks a string, someone else runs up with a fully stringed and pre-tuned spare guitar. The musician need not trouble him/herself with menial maintenance duties and can concentrate on the performance. The music deserves their FULL attention, and that is exactly what it gets.

Well, that’s not the way things work around the hammer mill. When i snap a string, I start looking for some old set I left lying around five years ago, then pirate it for a spare. We simply don’t have a running inventory of replacement strings – that would demand too much in the way of resources. And for all you macroeconomics students out there, that means strings are scarce, real scarce.

Doc takes a detour

Sure, I know what you’re thinking: we have a mad scientist at our disposal. Why not utilize his talents towards keeping our instruments in good working order? Well, aside from the fact that Mitch Macaphee never thinks of himself as part of our entourage, the fact is that he’s skipped town.

Where did he go? Way on down to Texas. He thought he’d slip into the Q-Anon subgroup rally in Dallas to see if JFK junior might be interested in underwriting some of his projects. (Yeah, I know …. I told him.) In the end, though, those Q-folks can spot a fed when they see one. Though I think what probably gave Mitch away was his decision to bring Marvin (my personal robot assistant) with him. Even in a crowd of crazy, that makes you kind of stand out.

Hey, is JFK Jr. behind that robot?

The Macaphee bail fund

From what I understand about Texas law, it may be illegal to have an unregistered automaton. If that’s the case, Mitch might wind up in the crowbar hotel. We may have to resort to GoFundMe or the like. Might not be a bad idea. Maybe we can use part of the proceeds to buy some freaking guitar strings.

Political Rants

We have met the enemy, and s/he is you know who

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We live in an age of miracles, my friend. Well … minor miracles, anyway. Just this week a neighbor’s cat who disappeared ten days ago turned up. That almost never happens. Then, of course, there are the elections. As always, it was a night of many disappointments and few surprises. Elections always give me heartburn, frankly.

The thing is, there are only a few institutions in modern society that are even nominally responsive to the public will. The most important of these is government. And while government has become increasingly unresponsive to the concerns of the people over the past few decades, that fact is partly a reflection of our lack of interest or participation.

Through a mirror darkly

The last thing I want to do is sound like the morning-after prognosticators on MSNBC. But I will say that complaining about Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema is something like displacement. Yes, they are tremendous assholes doing valuable service to capital. Yes, in the most proximate sense, it is their fault that we can’t have good things.

But, again, the Senate is a reflection of the voters, albeit in its very undemocratic way. If people are frustrated with the lack of progress in Congress, they need to work harder at getting progressives elected to the Senate. As a nation, we delivered a 50:50 split in that body, and you can see the result – we’ve basically empowered every senator to be a potential deal-breaker. The fact is, we need more votes … and we won’t get them until we organize more voters.

I wish I weren’t in Dixie

Of course, we’re dealing with some real challenges. We have a center-left party that is dysfunctional and shot through with corporate cash. In the other corner, we have a proto-autocratic party fueled by racism, misogyny, and other bad impulses. The clash between those two organizations was on full display this past Tuesday, particularly in Virginia.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that race-baiting still works in the heart of the old Confederacy. And as someone who knows the history of the PR industry, I also shouldn’t be surprised that propaganda is so effective. The thing they call “Critical Race Theory” is so vaguely defined that it could literally include anything. It’s just the most recent label the Republicans have slapped onto the perennial project of scaring white voters with stories about black people. So, not a departure.

Running the numbers

I haven’t seen the exit polling or any official results from the 2021 elections, but I have heard some comments from people who have. (I will try to dig into this data at some point soon.) From what I have heard, in Virginia, the Republican candidate for governor garnered about 80% of the votes that Trump received last year, while McAuliffe only received about 60% of the votes Biden got.

Since Youngkin only won by about 2%, this underlines the notion that the Virginia race was a turnout election. Republicans motivated their voters, while Democrats failed to do so sufficiently. The blame lies with the flat-footed candidate, but it is the citizens of Virginia who will pay the price for this failure, particularly the most vulnerable. That is what voters on the left need to bear in mind.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Uncategorized

There’s another way of saying this

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2000 Years to Christmas

I could have sworn I left it right here. Sometimes I think I’m losing my nut. And sometimes I think I’m losing my soup. So I’ve got it covered, soup to nuts. What was I saying again?

Hoo, man. Those squatters upstairs must be smoking the devil’s weed once again. I’ve got second-hand smoke brain. Of course, after having spent a third of my life with first-hand smoke brain, this almost rises to the level of clarity. No, there are many possible reasons why I’m thick as a brick today. Here’s one …

Sleep is our friend

Let’s face it. When you don’t sleep enough, you start getting stupid. Ask anyone who’s been up for five days. Rest assured, they will tell you that they cannot rest assured. And if you ask anyone who’s been up for a hundred days, they won’t answer because they’re busy being dead. In short, sleep is obligatory.

Now, many of you know I’m a part time geezer. In fact, pretty much everyone in Big Green is exactly that. My illustrious brother Matt, for instance, seems to expend endless amounts of energy looking after all of nature’s creatures. Does he sleep any more than I do? Probably not. But – and this is important! – he makes more sense than I do. Good thing, too. Anyhow … they say that you need less sleep when you get older. The truth is, you just GET less sleep. How they mix those two things up is beyond me.

This isn't helping.

Go to the window

Some people lose sleep because they walk in their sleep. The name for this syndrome is somnambulism, or “whooping cough.” (Okay, maybe not, but never mind.) To be clear, this illness not only makes you tired, it can beat the hell out of you. I don’t think that’s my problem, though to be sure I roped Marvin (my personal robot assistant) into testing my slumbering ass.

Here’s how the test worked. Marvin would wait until I was sleeping, then start playing the recording of Leo McKern in the movie Help saying “Go to the window”. The theory was that, if I were a sleepwalker, the power of suggestion would be enough for me to defenestrate myself. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case. (It wasn’t for want of trying, however. Marvin ran that thing on a loop for about five hours.)

The power of Z

Leave us face it: the only cure for not getting enough sleep is getting enough sleep. Trouble is, when I try to sleep, I think about trying, then I think about thinking, then I think about thinking about thinking …. oh, damn it. It’s the brain, man! How do you stop a brain? (No one can restore a brain!)

Fortunately, I can put myself to sleep simply by playing my favorite songs. Three or four bars in, and the big Z sneaks up and takes hold. It’s a real crowd pleaser, people.

Political Rants

Time to do that thing we’ve got to do

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Has it been a year already? Mother of pearl. Election day is almost upon us, and the pundits are out in force, telling us what to expect, handicapping races, reminding us of historical trends, etc. We are defenseless against their onslaught of conventional wisdom! How can we stop the madness?

Well, as you can see, I’ve been watching (or at least listening to) way too much cable television. Every election is unique, as much as the talking heads want us to think otherwise. And while I know many of my friends on the left don’t like to focus on voting, I still feel strongly that we need to take the time to do it if only to stop the reactionaries from running everything into the ground.

Anyway, for those who are interested, here are my thoughts on this year’s elections.

Ballot measures in New York

Like most years, I wasn’t aware of any of the ballot measures in New York State this year until a handful of days ago. My sense is that three of them are no-brainers. Ballot measure #2 is a constitutional amendment that gives New Yorkers the right to clean air and clean water. Can’t argue with that. Measures #3 and #4 are about election law, the first eliminating the waiting period on registration (allowing for same-day registration) and #4 loosening the restrictions on absentee voting. Again, all good.

Measure #1 is kind of a mixed bag, but I think on balance it’s worth supporting. It would allow the legislature to pass a redistricting plan with a simple majority rather than 2/3. In a state run by Democrats, I think that’s a good idea, given that Congressional Democrats will be losing seats in red states like Texas. (Fixing gerrymandering has to happen on a national level; until then, no unilateral disarmament, please.)

Measure #5 is about access to lower courts in New York City in civil cases. I don’t have a strong grasp on the implications of this one, so I can’t really recommend one way or the other, but I am likely to support this as well.

Yes, Virginia, there is an election

One of the things pundits love telling us is that Virginia always chooses a governor from the party that did not win the White House in the previous year’s election. This year, Republicans are hitting hard on what they now call “critical race theory” in public schools, depicting red-faced parents scared of having their children read Toni Morrison. Democrats, on the other hand, are running Terry McAuliffe, who is …. Terry McAuliffe.

Okay, I know it’s hard to get enthusiastic about an old Clinton money-man like McAuliffe. The thing is, we don’t have the luxury of relying on enthusiasm every time an election comes up. I know you’re probably sick of hearing me say it, but we neglect voting at our own peril. We’re living with the results of having sat out multiple elections in sufficient numbers to ensure the victory of reactionaries. Trump was a manifestation of that failure, and the Republican party is the party of Trump – not because he took it over, but because it created him as a national figure.

Don’t say uncle

There’s no question but that the Biden budget agenda is not sufficient. And yet, it’s better than what it would have been had we not pushed Bernie to the front of the pack. And there’s no question but that the leadership of the Democratic party is fucking things up across a range of issues. But that’s because we haven’t elected enough progressives.

The fact is, we’ve got more progressives in Washington now than we’ve ever had previously, and it shows. And instead of getting frustrated over how difficult it is to pass meaningful legislation, we should redouble our efforts to expand those numbers in the next election cycle, and the one after that, and the one after that.

Yes, we need to do a lot, lot more than just vote. But we need to vote every freaking time, particularly now that we are seriously under the climate change gun. There’s simply no choice.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Usual Rubbish

This is not the sort of thing I meant

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2000 Years to Christmas

Okay, back it up a little further. That’s it. Little more. Little more. That’s great, stop there. I said stop. STOP, DAMN IT! Bloody hell!

Yeah, hey, everybody. Just attempting to wave a shipment of widgets into the loading dock here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. I have to say, it’s not working out very well. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) volunteered to drive the truck. Need I say more? (We’ll be needing to put a tarp over the loading dock, now that he’s punched a truck-shaped hole in the garage door.)

What kind of widgets are we receiving? Not sure. This wasn’t my gig. Actually, Anti-Lincoln had the bright idea of getting an assembly line going here in the old mill. He is from the mid 19th century, and so a hammer mill from the 1890s looks quite modern to his eyes, particularly when he’s had some of his beloved absinthe.

Unintended consequences

So, I’m pretty sure I’m partly to blame for Anti-Lincoln’s new project. I told him to do something constructive with his time. It was just an effort at mild criticism. Frankly, the guy sits around the mill sulking most of the time, wishing he were made of positrons instead of pure anti-neutrons (absolutely pure!). I got sick of his whining. And his wining. (He likes wine as much as Kavanaugh likes beer. Do YOU like beer?)

Anyway, next thing I knew, Anti-Lincoln was rebuilding the works in the assembly room. I thought little of that until the shipments started coming. Ball bearings arrived first, then aluminum brackets. Next came long spools of rattan string. God only knows how he’s paying for this stuff! But aside from that, what the hell is he building in there? WHAT HAVE I DONE?

Newton without the figs

Okay, so I have a theory. I don’t know if you remember this, but there was a popular gadget back in the 1970s called the Newtonian Demonstrator. My notion is that Anti-Lincoln is planning to corner the market on these things. It’s just a hunch, but in a way it makes sense. Brackets, ball bearings, string … what the hell else is he going to do with it?

Then, of course, there’s the question of who the customers might be. Are Newtonian Demonstrators a hot item these days? I didn’t think so, but again …. I have to consider Anti-Lincoln’s 19th Century perspective on this. Newtonian physics was really coming into its own when he was reaching adulthood in anti-matter Kentucky. It’s possible he doesn’t know that these gadgets went out with the Whole Earth Catalog.

THIS is the get rich quick scheme?

Stopping the line

Now, as you know, Anti-Lincoln has done a lot of crazy shit in his time. And it’s likely that he’ll do a lot of crazy shit in the future. But when he set up an actual assembly line and press ganged Marvin and the man-sized tuber into pulling double shifts, he clearly went too far.

Now, I’m a pretty reasonable guy. I put up with a lot of nonsense. But when you start exploiting the living crap out of my entourage, you’re crossing a line. I pulled the plug on the assembly line and encouraged Marvin and tubey to start a job action. We shut that sucker down and started picketing our own hammer mill. That’s how serious we are, friends. STRIKE! STRIKE! STRIKE! Send pizzas! Anti-Lincoln is a corporate snake!

Political Rants

Albright: He always told the truth

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Former General Colin Powell died this week of complications from COVID-19. I’m sure you’ve heard this about a million times by now. You’ve probably also heard that he was a hero, a man of great stature, an inspiration, etc. I can tell you that a lot of hagiographic remembrances came floating up from the television on Monday and Tuesday.

I don’t think it will surprise any readers of this blog that I was not a fan of the former Secretary of State. Yes, like many on the left, I never forgave him for his Feb 5, 2003 performance at U.N. headquarters in New York – a key moment in the rush to the Iraq invasion. (Some may recall that they draped Picasso’s Guernica during Powell’s presentation, which was just a little too on-the-nose.) But his career had a lot of bloody patches.

Spinning from the beginning

Powell was a Vietnam veteran. He did, actually, play a small role in concealing the My Lai massacre, suggesting that the story was unrealistic because Americans and Vietnamese had such a great rapport. What? (For more on that love fest, I suggest Nick Turse’s Kill Everything That Moves.) This has been kind of a consistent pattern in Powell’s career – deflection from the facts and subservience to power.

He served in various capacities during the Reagan administration, working closely with Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger. When Weiberger was under scrutiny by the Iran-Contra special prosecutor, Powell helped the Secretary conceal his knowledge of that operation by initially supporting Weinberger’s contention that he didn’t keep a diary. (Powell later admitted that he observed Weinberger writing in a book or tablet that he kept on his desk.)

Worthy adversaries

One of the Powell sound bites the corporate media never tires of playing is the General’s comments at the start of the Gulf War: “First we’re going to cut it off. Then we’re going to kill it.” The “it” he’s talking about was a third-world army principally comprised of conscripts. The U.S. military did just what Powell said, killing thousands of Iraqi soldiers in full retreat along Route 80 from Kuwait – the “Highway of Death”.

Of course, his most notorious failing was in laying out the case for the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Most of the media describes this case as having fallen apart in the years that followed. Actually, the cobbled-together garbage that Powell handed out that day was debunked almost immediately, and the truth was available to anyone willing to see/hear it. That was immaterial to Powell – like many senators, he was thinking of his political future, not the human cost of what was being contemplated.

Mythmaking in America

The Trump phenomenon has brought many political dynamics into stark relief. But one of the most troubling effects of his presidency is the tendency to frame any conservative alternative to him as virtuous. This is what’s been done with regard to Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, etc. Powell was ahead of all of them, frankly. It largely involves reputation laundering on the part of media figures. We saw a lot of that this week.

When Madeleine Albright appeared on Morning Joe a few days back, her closing comment was that Powell “always told the truth.” It’s a little hard to know what to do with that. It made me think back to that moment I saw at the start of the Iraq war, when Powell mischaracterized the testimony of an Iraqi defector, Hussein Kemal. I had just read the transcript, and I have to think he had seen it in some form. The man just freaking lied about what it said, straight up.

If you can make Colin Powell into a man of peerless virtue, what value does truth have?

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.

Usual Rubbish

Getting by with a little help from some fiends

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2000 Years to Christmas

Okay, here’s the thing. I’m too big in the frame. It goes against the theme of the series, dude. If there’s one thing Big Green doesn’t like, it’s inconsistency. Those are our principles. And if you don’t like them … we have other principles.

Oops! Didn’t know anyone was reading this. You just caught me having a little disagreement with Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who is serving as my video producer this month. Nothing serious – just an obscure conceptual question that has vexed us since the beginning of this blog post: how nano is nano? What means this? Allow me to explain.

A question of scale

We’re doing a little side project called the Nano Concert. Perhaps you’ve heard us nattering about it in previous posts and on our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN. You haven’t? DAMN IT! Marvin, did you forget to publish the blog posts again? Why have I been wasting my breath? What’s that? You DID publish them? Uh, okay. Never mind. What was I saying?

Ah, yes. The Nano Concert is really just a virtual mini solo concert by yours truly (Joe of Big Green), playing some old favorites from the beloved Big Green song book. We recorded six songs, played them on the podcast, and are in the process of posting them to our YouTube Channel. Can we truly describe this as a nano concert? Is it more than merely small? Well …. six songs doesn’t even make a set. And I’m too lazy ass to do more than that in one go. So in my book, it’s nano.

I can't play this freaking thing ...

Strings v. keys – the reckoning

The funny thing is, on five of the six songs, I’m playing six-string guitar. Now, those who know me well (and those few fiends who enjoy our music) know that I don’t play any instrument particularly well, but that if you were to rank my ability to play them in order of best to worst, it would go: (1) piano, (2) bass, (7) guitar.

That’s not a typo. I only play three instruments, and guitar is still my seventh best axe. So, why, you may ask, am I playing an instrument I can barely identify from three steps away? It’s the challenge, my friends. What fun is there in playing it safe, right? Any true musician craves a challenge. And though I’m not a TRUE musician, I do crave challenges …. as well as various foodstuffs. (You can’t eat a challenge, friend – just remember that.)

Give it a listen, damn it!

Okay, so … do you want to hear me pounding out some old Big Green tunes on a 23-year-old six-string acoustic guitar? Dive on in, my friends! I just posted the last number on Thursday. This is the first in a series of nano concerts, I like to think, though I may have to actually hire a producer rather than having Marvin twirl the knobs.

Whoops. Sorry, Marvin – didn’t know you were listening. You realize that lever you’re pulling will erase everything we did this morning , right? Step away from the console! Arrgh … never mind.

Anywho, here’s the playlist. Let me know what you think, fiends!

Political Rants

Towards yet another new cold war

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I’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating. As a society, we appear to be stuck in a holding pattern, circling our somewhat fractured collective memory of the Cold War. It seems we long for the illusion of a simple, good guys v. bad guys conflict, and we will stop at nothing to conjure one up again.

The echoes of the previous Cold War still reverberate, sometimes in odd and almost laughable ways. For instance, this week my Congressional Rep. Claudia Tenney called Pope Francis a communist. She is, of course, an unreconstructed Trumpist just visible under a faded coat of John Birch Society lacquer. But putting aside retrograde small-fry politicians mired in the failed policies of previous decades, we face a much larger problem.

Paging Howard Phillips!

Back in the days before the Internet, crazy people could only make their voices heard on radio and direct access cable television. One of those crazy people was the late Howard Phillips, co-founder of the American Constitution party or Taxpayers’ Party. Phillips had a regular show on direct access in the 1980s and 90s where he would rail against China, show scary videos, and look kind of grisly on his best days.

The reason I raise this is that even back then, this mentality was dated. We used to laugh about Phillips’s big map of “Red China” behind his desk, straight from the 1950s. Now he’s gone, but the anti-China rhetoric is still with us. Don’t get me wrong – there’s plenty to criticize about China. But people in glass houses …. etc. The folks that angst over China’s policy towards Taiwan probably don’t give Puerto Rico’s status a moment’s thought.

Barry’s pivot, redux

True to form, Biden is resuscitating some of the worst parts of Obama’s foreign policy while preserving some of the worst elements of Trump’s. Both of his predecessors took aim at China, most notably Obama, whose “pivot to Asia” filled me with both dread and anger at the time. (What’s with the “pivot” language? Clearly meant to conjure up images of howitzers, or some gun fighter turning on his heel.)

This is obviously a priority for Biden, as indicated by the fact that he was willing to put the French government’s nose out of joint in service to their planned confrontation with China. They have continued training exercises, started under Trump, with the Taiwanese military, and extended arms sales. What’s more, their pullout from Afghanistan has freed up additional forces that they can devote to confronting China.

Slow-motion train wreck

Look, folks – this is not good. We are heading for a conflict with a nation of over a billion people The policies we are putting in place will eventually lead to military clashes between our two countries, whether intentional or accidental. That would have catastrophic consequences.

We need to stop this madness before it starts. Make clear to your congressional representatives that you do not want this coming war. Tell your friends and neighbors, even the Trump-ites. My guess is that no one wants this to happen, so the sooner we make our voices heard, the better.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Usual Rubbish

Putting bread (or perhaps toast) upon the water.

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2000 Years to Christmas

Well, blown me down. I appear to be talking like a pirate today. Why? Damned if I know. Maybe it’s the weather. Or maybe it’s that scurvy crew who’s planning to make off with my booty. (That’s treasure, by the way, not some part of my anatomy).

Well, as you know, Big Green has never been the best pirate ship on the high seas. We have scuttled very few corsairs over our time, whatever the hell THAT means. I guess what I’m saying is that, well, we are somewhat remuneratively challenged. In other words …. we are a freaking financial flop, full stop. (Take that, full stop twitter bot!)

A balance lower than whale shit

There was a time in our early years when we sought some advice on how to manage our finances. We were putting the cart before the horse, in a sense, as we didn’t HAVE any finances at the time. But like most bands, we expected riches to fall from the sky. Our fear was that, if such riches came in the form of gold or silver pieces, we might be crushed by these great falling projectiles. That would never do!

So we went to the local financial advisor and asked him (and yes, it was a him) what we should do if we ever came into some cash. He asked to see our bank account, and when we showed him the passbook that we had kept from grammar school, his face went white (I should say whiter, actually). That was when we were ushered out. No, really – an usher showed us out, and he was kind of large.

Giving it all away

So what do you do with an asset that has no value? Well, friends, it’s simple – you give it away. That’s what we started to do with our music, and damn it, it caught on. Now bands all around the world give their music away for nothing. True, almost none of them are famous bands. And also true, we’ve had zero influence over them on this. But we’re all on the same page – that’s what counts.

A few weeks ago I talked about the interstellar lengths we’ve gone chasing a few stray quatloos. And I realize that this creates a false impression that we’re merely affecting to be non-commercial. Well, nothing could be farther from the truth. Just because we’re chasing money, doesn’t mean we’ve sold out. After all … to sell out, you need something to sell. I rest my case.

Seems a little large, doesn't it, Abe?

Raise the big blue flag

Of course you’ve all heard of Perry’s flag, right? Don’t give up the ship! Well, like any good pirate, we would never give her up, not to some low-down scum of a tugboat operator. And while that flag which bears our name also seems to stand opposed to our principle of giving things away, that doesn’t bother us too much. Anything written on a flag couldn’t be all wrong.

So we will continue pushing out content for no compensation. That’s just how we roll around here. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) does everything HE does for free. Mansized tuber never asks for compensation of any kind. It wouldn’t be right for us to ignore their good example, wouldn’t you agree?

So, look out, opposite shore – here comes some soggy bread!

Political Rants

There’s nothing new under the gun

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There’s a real sense of frustration in center-left circles in the United States. It’s understandable why. The president has proposed a massive bill that will fund a host of badly needed programs. These are priorities the progressive wing of the party has long championed, so in that respect alone, the very fact of this reconciliation bill is a kind of victory.

Now passage of this landmark legislation depends on approval by a 50-50 Senate, which means somehow convincing the likes of Joe Manchin and Kirsten Synema to vote for it. It is aggravating to watch two self-aggrandizing senators block a bill that has the support of a vast majority of Americans. But that aggravation is nothing new. And I think, despite the drawbacks, we have come a long way over the decades.

The majority that wasn’t

It’s best to remember that we’ve been in worse places before. Back in January 2009, when the financial crisis was in full swing, the Democrats had just sworn-in huge majorities in both houses of Congress. They had a filibuster-proof 60 Senators (for a brief time) and 255 members of the House. So, the sky was the limit, right?

Wrong. Somehow they managed to negotiate the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act down to a ridiculously small size, even though they needed not a single Republican vote to pass it. The final bill was nearly 1/3 tax cuts and far smaller than was needed to put the economy back on track. In other words, they negotiated themselves out of an effective stimulus and reconstruction package.

Barry and the half-nelson

Then there was the Affordable Care Act marathon. That was thousands of hours of committee work, whittling down the legislation to meet an arbitrary cost standard set by the GOP. So the best we could do on health care was whatever policy we could squeeze through the little tin horn that was Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson, the Joe Manchin of his day.

Now, you may ask yourself, with 60 or near-60 votes in the Senate, why did they need to observe these restrictions? I think the answer is pretty simple: the Democratic Party was a lot farther to the right in those days, on balance. They and their president were happy to settle for glorified RomneyCare. They were happy to contemplate a “Grand Bargain” that would have gutted Social Security.

The new way to be

Honestly, the overwhelmingly Democratic 111th Congress would never have even contemplated some of the provisions in the current Reconciliation bill. Opposition to the Child Tax Credit, paid family leave, etc., would have been larger than two senators. That’s because progressives have, in essence, won many of these arguments, thanks to the determined efforts of Senator Sanders and others on the inside, and movements like Occupy Wall Street, BLM, and others on the outside.

Think about it: we are really just a whisker away from some of the most progressive policy changes since the start of the neoliberal era. The whole thing could still go up in smoke, but this is closer than we’ve ever been, and it’s not only tremendously popular but backed by 96% of the Democratic caucus AND the president.

So, we’re making progress. Slower than we like, but progress none the less.

lu u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.

Official site of the band Big Green