Looks like we all drive with Boehner. And perhaps swim with Aqua Buddha.
Okay, so… here’s the irony of this mid-term election. Admittedly Obama isn’t the most “outside of the box” thinker imaginable, but when he came into office two years ago, he had a relatively ambitious agenda that included a major stimulus package. The original version included infrastructure spending that would have put some fuel into this sluggish recovery. The Republicans had decided, of course, to vote no on everything, including cloture for all Senate bills, making the bar for passage of anything more than sixty votes. The stimulus got watered down with tax cuts – 30% or so was tax cuts – to bring along people like Arlen Specter, who was a Republican then.
Of course, that spending package worked by all measures… but only so well, as tax cuts have always been a pretty poor method for stimulating the economy. The G.O.P. then tag the dems with the “failed stimulus”, even though its lack of broader effectiveness was largely due to their stonewalling. Now the voters, in their understandable anger at this failure, have put the Dems out and, by extension, House Republicans back in charge, so any correction of this is extremely unlikely. So… it looks like we’re headed for Japan in the 1990s – a zombie economy, staggering along for the next decade, suffering from our unwillingness to take bold action. The deficit hawks have gained the upper hand for the nonce, and that is not good news for the rest of us.
Not that the G.O.P. House will seriously move to cut the deficit. As of yet, they have been unable to name even a few billion dollars worth of cuts they would be willing to make. Not to mention the fact that they seem determined to continue boring the hole through the treasury that Bush started with his tax cuts for the rich and famous. If they do that and succeed in repealing the health care legislation, we’re effectively talking about another $1.7 trillion in debt added on to what they claim is a staggering total already. Does that sound serious to you? Perhaps they’ll try to resurrect Dubya’s Social Security privatization plan to underwrite such largesse to the wealthy. (Since their successful House campaigns were floated by post-Citizens United corporate cash, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.)
Here’s my suggestion, Mr. President. Take that $700 billion tax cut they want to give to the wealthy and propose adding it to the cuts for the bottom 97%. Let them vote against that one.
luv u,
jp
It would be no surprise to anyone who reads this blog that I have voted for (and even volunteered for) Michael Arcuri (D-NY) in the past. That is not because of any deep or enduring loyalty towards the candidate; again, I vote strategically. His election means one less vote for Boehner and the crew. (Remember: When you stay home, you ride with Boehner). But I have to say, his ads are as childish as those of his opponent. In fact, some of them seem calculated to alienate the most hard-core of Democratic party constituencies – those traditional left anti-war folks who hold their noses every two years to vote for the lesser of two evils. Arcuri’s got an ad out accusing his opponent of supporting a group that will “cut defense spending in half”. Like that would be a bad thing.
Point two: Corporate cash. It likely has not escaped your attention that corporate interests – spearheaded by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce – are pouring money into this election like never before. Newly empowered by the Supreme Court’s execrable Citizens United decision, non-party groups are performing as cutouts for the financial industry, the energy sector, manufacturing, you name it. Karl Rove’s groups alone have raised more than $50 million and are now shooting for $65 million; the Chamber something like $75 million. They see an opportunity to bag this election, and they’re willing to spend the coin to make it happen.
Imperial Prerogatives. There has been a lot of reporting on Pakistan the last couple of weeks. Their military closed a crossing to U.S. convoys on the Af-Pak border in response to a range of disagreements, not least of which are disputes over U.S. and NATO (essentially U.S.) incursions into Pakistani national territory. There is a kind of impatience to the reporting, communicating the administration’s and the military’s frustration with Pakistan’s failure to adequately support their seemingly endless war in Afghanistan. It’s reminiscent of the official line during the Vietnam war, when American officials would complain about “sanctuaries” in Cambodia and Laos, while they confidently flew devastating bombing runs out of their own “sanctuaries” in Thailand and elsewhere.
plan to create. How do you look in an orange vest?) Rather than talking about what’s in the document, let’s look at what they didn’t put in there… but which they advocate none the less:
What is the tea party movement, after all, but the hard core of the Republican party conservative base? Chris (Lambchop) Hayes made this point on Rachel Maddow’s show the other night. Think about it for a minute – even at his nadir of popularity, George W. Bush could count on the unquestioning love of 25-30% of the country. This country is home to more than 300 million people, so that 25% adds up to 75 million people. Based on their rallies and their primary returns, the tea party appears to be a subset of that block – more like Glenn Beck’s 10% vanguard. These are people who loved Bush/Cheney, supported both wars they started, ate up the tax cuts, blamed Katrina on the victims, and called Obama a terrorist during the McCain campaign. “He’s a… an Arab,” said the crazy lady at one of McCain’s rallies, searching for the right epithet. From the moment of Obama’s election victory, these people have been screaming to “get their country back.” My question is, “back” from whom? The people who voted in the last national election? Screw that.
What you will hear exactly none of them say is that a) it is NOT a mosque; it is a community center with a prayer space in the upper floors, and b) it is NOT at ground zero or in the World Trade Center complex; it is two blocks away in the empty former Burlington Coat Factory building. And while Newt Gingrich (Remember him? He was what was fucked up about the nineties.) likens this to opening an office of the Nazi party next to the Holocaust Museum, it is really more like… someone opening a community center in an abandoned building. Perennial New York State also-ran Rick Lazio was on cable yesterday substituting his sorry judgment for that of the City of New York, complaining that this was not a residential district but a business district. Well, hell – so this is a zoning issue, is it, Rick? Sounds like what they used to use to keep black people out of certain neighborhoods.
post-racial America that they respond in knee-jerk fashion to any claim of reverse racism, no matter how unfounded. Combine that with their tendency to throw left-leaning staffers, like Van Jones, overboard at the first sign of trouble (unlike the Geithners and Salazars of the world), and you’ve got a White House that allows Roger Ailes to make their personnel decisions for them. Now there’s a real formula for success.
Hey, Harry Reid – time to take the gloves off. If the Republicans threaten a filibuster over benefits for the long-term unemployed, hold them to it. Make them stand there, hour after hour, day after day, through the bloody holiday weekend, defending their obstructionism and showing the entire country how little they care about those on the losing side of our economy. What a great opportunity for you to demonstrate that your pro-working stiff rhetoric isn’t just a lot of hot air. (Unless, of course, it is.) There would be those who call you partisan, divisive, etc. Let them! They say that anyway. Slug it out on behalf of workers, both poor and middle class, and you’ll end up with something a lot more valuable than a weekend barbecue.
What, objectively, can our government do? Well, a lot more, it seems. Our regulatory mechanisms are mere appendages of the industries they are charged with overseeing. In many cases – such as with the Minerals Management Service- that was the intention. We’ve also just come off of a long period – eight years – of having former oil industry executives in charge of the government. That greatly enhanced the culture and practice of “hands off” regulation specific to that industry – an approach that was generalized to the rest of the economy. So the first thing that needs to be said about this crisis is that it is in large part another parting gift from George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Just add that to the pile, right next to the financial crisis, the Citizen’s United Supreme Court decision, the continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and so on. What’s next?