Tag Archives: democrats

Crying thief.

My guess is that Marco Rubio is speaking now as I write these lines, serving up a fitting introduction for the nominee – or Rominee – of last resort for the Republican party. A speech filled with platitudes about freedom from, I don’t know, the tyranny of a pension or reliable health insurance in your old age, spoken by the son of escapees from communist Cuba. As Ryan put it on Wednesday night, the present-day G.O.P. sees everything to the left of Ayn Rand as sclerotic socialism, including legislative initiatives – like the individual mandate and cap and trade – that they themselves invented only a handful of years ago. (Ryan himself couldn’t even stick to his Randian creed for three minutes, decrying a nanny state where “everything is free except you” then paying tribute to the Medicare his mother purportedly depends on.)

I don’t know about these guys, but that “everything free” part probably sounds pretty attractive to a lot of Americans right now. While they equate Obama with Castro, Barry is much, much closer to them than he is to the bearded one in Havana. Would that he had put his shoulder behind expanding Medicare instead of this republican inspired, Heritage Foundation formulated health insurance scheme they call “Obamacare”. Would that he had committed himself to full employment along the lines of what Robert Pollin is recommending, among others. Those are positions worth defending. The problem Obama has right now is not the Republicans … it is his own flaccid liberalism, hopelessly compromised from the first stage of negotiation.

In truth, the Republicans, led by millionaire Romney, should be easy as hell to beat. They have zero credibility on the economy, no track record to speak of. Obama at least had the Clinton years – what does Romney have? The Republicans crashed the economy; now they want the driver’s seat back. They nearly destroyed the empire it took decades of rapacious interventionism to build. They have an ex-president, a mere four years out of office, that played no role in their convention. Did anyone mention him even once? They appear to think that by disowning the historically incompetent Bush/Cheney and pretending not to remember their tenure that they can induce amnesia amongst the rest of the body politic. They believe that by pointing elsewhere and crying “thief”, they can rob again.

Now that the balloons have fallen on Romney/Ryan (and we have been treated to the spectacle of evident dementia-sufferer Clint Eastwood rambling aimlessly on national television), it’s fair to respond to that question they always ask four years into an opponent’s presidency – namely, are you better off than you were four years ago. Four years ago, we were in free fall, the credit system of the world’s largest economy was shutting down, and hundreds of thousands were being thrown out of work. Four years ago, Bush’s war of choice in Iraq was still killing young soldiers by the dozen. Unless you’re as demented as Clint Eastwood, you probably remember all that.

Yes, we’re better off than we were in 2008. Still not good, but it takes a lot of work to get out of a hole as deep as the one Romney’s party dug us into.

luv u,

jp

Eyes wide open.

I suppose if I’m going to rant about anything this week, it’s going to be the election. Election years are always nerve-wracking, like a slow-motion train wreck. They make me feel, more than ever, that we as a nation are sleep-walking into history. The notion that we can be on the knife-edge of electing someone like Mitt Romney president – that working people of any persuasion (to say nothing of retirees) would ever consider voting for that overpaid fichus tree in a suit – is simply flabbergasting.

To be certain, Obama has not acted boldly enough on the economy, on basic issues of human rights, and so on. That’s a given. But let us not forget how we got into this hole in the first place. We had eight years of Dubya Bush, during which time he and his fellow cartoon pirates started two wars, established torture as an open instrument of foreign policy, blew an enormous hole in the federal budget with two rounds of wartime tax cuts, let New Orleans be destroyed, crashed the economy into what has turned out to be a milder version of the Great Depression, and quite a bit more. They did so with the full cooperation of a Republican led congress for six full years, and effective Republican control for the remaining two. (The Dems’ razor-thin majority 2007-2009 didn’t buy them much.)

I find it hard to blame anyone for falling into cynicism with regard to the two-party duopoly we call American democracy. In too many ways, there isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between the two major parties. But there are enough differences to make it worth the time and effort (and in some states, it will take both time and effort – I’m looking at you, Ohio!) to cast a decisive vote against Romney and the G.O.P. congress. Not that this is all one has to do to move the country in the right direction – far from it. But the consequences of doing nothing on election day are … well, we’ve seen them. (See paragraph #2.) The Republicans get worse every cycle they hold power. If they take it again this time, they will gut the remaining social safety net (frayed as it is), throw millions out of work through forced austerity, drive us into recession, start another war, build a transcontinental pipeline to carry toxic sludge to the gulf where it can be turned into diesel fuel and sold to China, and… well, you’ve heard the rest.

I’m not asking you to ignore Obama’s failings. Resist, of course. But don’t think replacing him with a clueless millionaire won’t drive us into a deeper hole. We can’t afford to take that trip again. Vote with your eyes open … but for @$%# sake, vote.

luv u,

jp

Money wins.

So Scott Walker held on to his job in Wisconsin. Not a huge surprise. The polling has been in his favor for weeks. Plus the recall effort has kind of had the stench of failure about it as we approached the actual vote; people hedging and putting on the brave face. Sorry to see so many working people disappointed in that way. I’ve never been a big fan of the recall concept, personally, but I understand how they came to that point. If nothing else, the effort did give them motivation to do what actually needs to be done in Wisconsin and elsewhere – organize. It’s not just about voting. It’s more about standing up for your rights and fighting back against the torrent of corporate money swamping our politics.

John Dewey had it about right when he said that politics is the shadow cast on society by big business. I suppose in his day it wasn’t very different – the wealthy have always pressed their advantage. Perhaps the period from World War II through the 1970s will be seen as unique in American history in the sense that workers had some influence on the economic life of the nation. There was a social contract between the rich and the not-rich that provided the latter with a modest share of the wealth they themselves were creating through their labor. That model has been under attack for decades now, and it is crumbling.

Now we are in a small-d depression, limping along in a globalized economy in which the American worker/consumer is no longer the primary focus of business. (India’s middle class is now larger than the entire population of the U.S.) The rampant financial speculation spawned by deregulatory legislation over the past two decades (most notably Graham-Leech-Bliley in 1999, which overturned Glass-Steagall) drove us into the 2008 financial crisis, prompting a massive bailout of the enormous financial institutions that were themselves the product of deregulation. So naturally, now, when it comes time to pay the bills, it’s workers who are being told to eat it, to sacrifice their pensions, to do without health benefits, etc. Similar deal in Europe. The people who benefited massively from wild derivative trading and mortgage-backed securities are not the same people being asked to sacrifice.

Money may have won in Wisconsin this week. But that’s no reason to stop fighting. Elections aren’t the only means of effecting change. Passive resistance is another – let’s exercise it.

luv u,

jp

To the bottom.

Through the course of the average day during this politically charged season (and, as you know, we are in the midst of a permanent campaign, no end in sight), you are likely to hear all kinds of wild economic claims and predictions. Among the most impressive, in my humble opinion, is Gingrich’s $2.50-a-gallon gas promise. We expect no less from the once and future King of the Moon People. A big idea man. The thing about big ideas is that they can also be bad ideas. In the case of the $2.50 gas, though, we’re talking more about excessive blowhardism and the usual type of empty pandering you see from seasoned politicians like Gingrich. Last presidential election, it was drill, baby, drill! This time, it’s pappy cheap-gas. Also, pappy tax cut, as always – that one never gets old.

This is where the faulty economic theory part comes in. Take pretty much any one of the Republican candidates’ tax plans, to the extent that they’ve been articulated thus far. Romney, for instance, is touting a 20% across-the-board tax cut. What he’s actually talking about is raising taxes on the bottom third of wage earners, which the G.O.P. field has for several months been describing as woefully undertaxed. Meanwhile, at the top end, the richest of the rich (i.e. the parents of kids too rich to want to hang around with Richy Rich), folks will be seeing an extra $400K or so in their yearly income. All well and good, right? These are the “job creators”, right? The folks who fired your ass so they could afford a second Bentley. They were the ones paying too much, as George W. Bush lamented back in 2000 (which he later fixed with his massive tax cuts).

All right, except that at the same time they argue for a balanced budget, fiscal discipline, etc. – a trope that has grown more insistent by half since the White House changed hands in 2009. Bush’s tax cuts blew a hole in the federal budget you could drive the Nimitz through; in fact, they planned for it to expire after a decade and put a lot of the cost in the out years so as to bring down the impact. But they – meaning Bush, Cheney, budget director Mitch Daniels, and others – certainly knew that the sunset provision would be meaningless, simply because of the politics of “raising” taxes (e.g. letting cuts expire). Romney’s plan would add to that deficit in spades, prompting massive cuts in social services, infrastructure spending, aid to states, you name it. That would put us in a Greece-like downward spiral – cuts that lead to economic contraction, which negatively affects tax revenues, opening a wider budget gap, which brings on more cuts, etc. Rinse and repeat.

The best they can offer is a race to the bottom. That’s why we have to push back. If they gain control of the budget process again, Greece is the word, my friends.

luv u,

jp

The elect.

All that run up, and such an unsatisfying result. What a pity the election process never takes a break here in the U.S. of A. We’ve been in a near-constant cycle of electing people since 2008, with whole cable networks devoting resources to consideration of the various candidates ad infinitum. Still, here we are with two primary G.O.P. challengers who appear to disagree on very little … and who mutually argue that we should go straight back to the same policies that landed us in the hole and the end of the Bush administration. It’s a wealth-protection strategy, to be sure – wealth as concentrated in the hands of the extremely well-to-do. There really isn’t anything else on offer by either Romney or Santorum, except an early commitment to war against Iran. (That should be good for the economy.)

We have reached a point where the Republican party is inhabiting an entirely separate reality from the rest of us. In their world, there is no global warming, no inequality, no corporate dominance, no limits to American military might. They mark the beginning of the recession in the Obama administration, not the Bush administration. They see the national debt as the cause of unemployment. On their planet, the only problem with our electoral system is fraudulent voting – i.e. people (perhaps “illegal” immigrants) breaking federal law to usurp a franchise very few Americans are inclined to exercise legitimately. All domestically produced fossil fuel, in their tiny minds, is somehow reserved for use by Americans alone, not simply dumped into the global market and snapped up by whoever pays for it (i.e. how it actually works).

This being the case, their standard bearer could be pretty much anybody. No specialized knowledge required – sorry, Jon Huntsman – just a willingness to carry water for the richest people in America and a corporate culture that is not only making more profits than it has since the great recession hit but is also paying less in taxes than it was in 2008. Mitt fits the bill; so does Rick “man-on-dog” Santorum. Both potentially good stewards of our national top-down economy. In fact, any one of them, all the way down to cousin Rick Perry, would be acceptable to the moneyed overlords, though I think it’s clear that the preference of the institutional elite is Mitt Romney.

Still, with such flaccid support, they must wonder if the right-wing rabble might be getting out of hand. Mitt’s pathetic victory demonstrates that winning this year is what losing was four years ago.

luv u,

jp

Getting warmer.

I’m hip-deep in audio editing right now, so again… forgive me for shooting from the hip.

I didn’t want to let too many weeks go by without commenting on the Durban Conference on climate change. I have to say, the Obama administration has gotten really good at acting as though they’re doing something progressive when, in fact, they are doing next to nothing at all. What Durban demonstrated was that, more than any other nation, the United States is an obstruction to any action to alleviate the effects of climate change. Others are following our example, emboldened by our refusal to take this crisis seriously. Canada – currently headed by George W. Bush/David Cameron hybrid Stephen Harper – is pulling out of Kyoto while pulling strings to avoid (unsuccessfully, it appears) having its tar-sands oil appropriately labeled as dirty by the EU. Russia is balking at emissions reductions as well. The fact that we lead the denialist camp gives them lots of cover.

There was a time, about four years ago, when it seemed possible that we might address this problem in a semi-serious fashion. That time is long past, its sentiments plowed under by the financial crisis and the “drill, baby, drill” mentality of mainstream and tea party Republicans. Because of the Democratic party’s failure to find its spine on this issue, the Republicans have managed to position it in a similar way as they have with the gun control issue. It seems like the very mention of global warming or climate change brings a chill to Democrats on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. Only Republicans ever seem to use the terms, and only then as a means of attacking their cowardly opponents. They have been given the upper hand, once again, by default, just as Democrats have deserted the barricades on the gun issue, on the death penalty, on “missile defense”, etc.

I’m afraid, with respect to global warming, this is more about us as a people than our politicians. The fact that we cannot avoid some of the impacts of this crisis has somehow led people to believe that it’s just as well to do nothing. (I am referring here to people who actually believe global warming is real, not those who buy the crackpot hoax argument that fossil fuel shills like Sen. James Inhofe peddles.) We have this unfortunate tendency focus on the present to the exclusion of the future. It just cuts against the grain to act as though we should treat the world as something that should last beyond our own lifetimes – something that can support life for countless generations to come. This will have to change and change quickly. We had a start back in 2007. We need to get back to that moment again.

Last chance, humanity. Get smart. Merry Christmas.

luv u,

jp

Weeks away.

Just a few hurried comments on the events of the day. (The events of the day are keeping me from the events of the day. Shall I say that a second time?)

Cain Mutiny. Presidential candidate Herman Cain has some more difficulties maintaining his myth of marital bliss, and this may be a game stopper for him. Naturally the death knell may come about over something that doesn’t matter a damn. Aside from his family, who the hell cares who he sleeps with, so long as it’s consensual and doesn’t involve minors, animals, etc.? Somehow this seems to bother people (and the mass media) more than the fact that the man has given zero thought to anything having to do with public affairs. He must be the first presidential candidate I’ve ever seen fail to give an opinion when someone asks him about something like the Libya intervention. He had to ask the interviewer what side Obama (i.e. the United States) was on. What the … ? Has the man been living in a pizza box? He is running for the G.O.P. nomination and apparently has no concept of what the pro-life and pro-choice positions actually mean.

Why the hell does this man want to be president? He smells to me like a cut-out for the Koch brothers, but what he says is that God encouraged him to run. Personally, I think God may have just been trying to order a pizza.

Deficit of Imagination. They’re sparring over the payroll tax cut – otherwise known as The Only Tax Cut That Needs To Be Paid For. With the Occupy movement receiving eviction notices from coast to coast, Congress is managing to turn the conversation back to debt with a good bit of help from the major news organizations. I heard Joe Scarborough sparring with Sherrod Brown about Medicare costs and showing “courage” by acknowledging that those costs were tantamount to a cancer on the body politic. His solution? Cut, cut, cut. Which is basically shift the burden onto the elderly, the ill, etc.

I didn’t hear Brown say this (he may have), but the courageous position to my mind would be to advocate expanding Medicare to cover everybody. The reason we have deficit Medicare spending projected for the next few decades is simple – we are subsidizing the profitability of private health insurers, who get to cover the least costly consumers while the government covers the most costly ones (i.e. the ones private insurers don’t want). The courageous thing to do would be to say, we can’t afford this model any longer.

I’m waiting to hear that from someone. Anyone?

luv u,

jp

Thinking small.

President Obama is on vacation this week, sort of. Him and about a thousand other people, bringing him information, taking his orders, blah, blah. I don’t know why he bothers, but… he does. With that job, you may as well assume that you’re going to be working straight for four to eight years. Even so, every American president since Carter has been determined not to seem like he’s barricaded in to the White House, manning his vigil in vain. So Obama, like his predecessors, takes a ceremonial vacation, and his detractors take aim. Of course, they would anyway. He has locked himself into Washington! He’s out of touch with (white) America! they would cry if he were to cancel his outing. May as well go, Barry.

Frankly, if he were to come back from the Vineyard with a Jobs / Recovery Act proposal that involves bold efforts to fund infrastructure projects, incentivize hiring, raise taxes on the rich, and so on, I would be the first to say that the man has earned his rest. But that is an extremely unlikely scenario. Obama, smart as he is, does not want to have to walk back every statement he has made about the debt since last year. That’s my best take on that. My worst is that he really believes that cutting spending, basic social safety net programs, and government investment in the short term will, as his Republican opponents believe, create jobs. If he doesn’t know they’re smoking crack on that one, we could be in for Japan in the 1990s.

Speaking of smoking crack, Texas Governor Rick Perry has launched himself headlong into the race to defeat Obama, entering amid a flurry of wild claims and random threats against the Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Here’s a guy who has publicly referred to Social Security and Medicare as “ponzi schemes.” Seriously? This should not be hard to beat. Honestly, if Obama had just done what he needed to do, none of these freaks would stand a chance of winning. That it’s a race at all speaks to the weakness of his policies, not the strength of theirs…. because clearly, they’ve got nothing except tax cuts, tax cuts, and more tax cuts. And that’s nothing.

Will the president suggest a solution that is on the same grand scale as the problem, or is it small-bore policy all the way from here on out? We shall see.

luv u,

jp

Six of one, half-dozen of the other.

Consider this an open letter to the Congressional “Super Committee,” or gang of twelve – whatever you may wish to call them. (Keep it clean out there!) While you are considering how best to shaft poor, elderly, and working people (employed and unemployed) to bring greater benefits to our nation’s rich, I ask – nay, demand – that you consider these items:

How we got here. I’ve heard a lot of people in Congress, as well as various talking heads, putting their spin on the orgy of ignorance that led us to the creation of your Committee, as well as the series of missteps that led us to Standard and Poor’s decision to downgrade the nation’s debt rating. The factual answer to those questions is simple – the Republican party, a wholly owned subsidiary of corporate America, was driven by its most radical faction (the so-called “tea party”) to manipulate the once mundane process of raising the debt ceiling for political gain. S&P’s judgment that our government can no longer make rational decisions about its debt is based on their recognition that, from now on, raising the debt ceiling will involve a similar political standoff.

The decision to politicize the debt ceiling legislation – really just an authorization to accommodate borrowing already mandated by Congress through the budget process –  has done perhaps irreparable damage to the faith and credit of the U.S. But even more importantly, it has backed us into a political process that is practically guaranteed to deliver to the G.O.P. precisely what they want: the gutting of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

Who owes what. I’m not happy with president Obama, but the notion that he and the Democrats are responsible for exploding deficit spending is ludicrous. As the New York Times reported recently, based on figures from the CBO and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, $1.44 trillion of the national debt can be laid at Obama’s door; more than $5 trillion is attributable to his predecessor, including the FY 2009 deficit of $1.44 trillion, set before Obama took office.  The Bush tax cuts have contributed $1.8 trillion; unfunded wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have pitched in more than $1.4 trillion. How is this an issue of “entitlements” … unless that term can be used to describe tax cuts for wealthy people?

Seriously… (and apologies to Barney Frank) … are we going to ask 90-year-old ladies living on less than $20k to do without cost of living raises while allowing those who clear more than $250,000 a year to keep an extra $30 per thousand? I think not.

luv u,

jp

Cash poor.

Americans are hurting. Well… not all of us. Some of us – those who can claim the mantle of corporate “personhood” by virtue of a bizarrely generous judicial interpretation of the 14th Amendment –  are doing quite well, thank you very much. Profits are up, executive pay is up, personal wealth among the top 1% is up – in fact, virtually all of the gains realized through economic growth over the past ten years have been enjoyed by the very wealthy. This while the economic position of people in the lower strata of society – particularly communities of color – have seen what wealth they may have held (principally in their homes) wiped out. Blacks and Latinos have seen the gains of the past 30 years wiped away in less than 3.

With millions of people out of work, you would think Congress’s top priority would be job creation. That was what they ran on in 2010, not so much on debt reduction. The best the G.O.P. can manage is to twist the issue around to becoming a tortured argument for doing what the party always does – cut taxes on rich people. They want to allow rich folk to keep more of their money so that they will, in turn, hire some of the legions of unemployed. They cling to this belief, rhetorically at least, even when it’s clear that a) businesses already have multiple trillions in savings they are sitting on right now, and b) they have no intention of spending any of it on new hires so long as they can press their current employees to do the work of three, four, perhaps more. Ask anybody who’s got a job, and they’ll tell you – increased productivity is just the modern term of art for speeding up the assembly line.

Meanwhile, our national infrastructure is falling apart. Bridges in my upstate community are aged and crumbling, the water system is falling apart, roads are pitted and broken. With all this, the word that we get from Albany and Washington is austerity. It’s as if we have as a society decided that roads and bridges no longer need maintenance and repair, and that our highest calling is to keep taxes on companies and well-off people at historic lows. The vaunted debt ceiling compromise takes this tack – we don’t need to invest in ourselves, we’re told; we need to divest ourselves of all the trappings of modern society, from freedom of choice and to the freedom of driving downtown without having the highway crumble beneath you. That’s the essential philosophy of the tea party loomers in Congress.

This is what happens when 16% of American voters bother to go to the polls, as happened last Fall. Next time, folks, don’t sit on your hands.

luv u,

jp