Remember most of us don't vote

As we move toward the big test, Obama vs whatever clown the Repubs finally decide to present, we must bear in mind that over one half (54%) of the eligible voters did not vote in the last presidential election. This is according to International IDEA, an organization that supports and measures voting rates worldwide. They also report that only 42% of eligible voters voted in the last Congressional election. That is lower than Afghanistan, which is in the midst of a civil war and a stuck with a corrupt (US inserted) quisling for President, had a 46% turnout in their last election. And even a miserable hellhole like Chad (find it on your world atlas) with one of the lowest annual per capita incomes in the world, $870*, vote in higher proportion than the spoiled f**ks in the US of A with a per capita income of $46,860*. Compare that to Denmark, which had at 86% turnout and Sweden at 84%. Is there a relationship between perceived well-being and participation in the democratic process?

Are times really that bad? Are many of us so demoralized about our flat-lined incomes and plunging home values that we again won’t even bother to vote? If so many people don’t vote because they believe elections are just placebo, a rigged event controlled by elite insiders, then that would be one thing. Then we might be on the cusp of something big. It would mean people were waking up to the need for real change. Then we would expect to see hundreds of thousands (as compared to merely hundreds) out in streets and maybe even a general strike or two. But, alas, people don’t vote for far more pedestrian reasons. They are either too distracted or too busy (read: too self-centered), or just too out of it to connect the dots.

But our elections do matter. This time especially. This time it is essentially the inept caretakers vs the certified crazies. The Republican Party has gone bonkers. They are more out of touch with textbook economic reality than any time in their history. In trying to match the needs of their handlers, the richest .01%, and the motley collection of indignant poorly educated, fanatically liberal hating and covertly racist base, they are intent on inadvertently damaging the prospects of their beloved mode production – capitalism. Myopic attention to “the Deficit” in times of inadequate aggregate demand is a recipe for disaster considering the present shaky state of the world economy. In their ideological blindness, they are significantly more dangerous than the wishy washy, caretaker, centrist Democrats. Neither party is the real answer. But one must vote for the Democrats simply to lessen the steepness of the downward trajectory. The Democrats may be fools and many of them may also be corrupt tools of the ‘corporacracy’ but they are not stark raving mad. They are not anti-science, ideological ostriches who want to return us to some idealized vision of the 19^th Century, and who want to crystallize into permanency our new Gilded Age with the 1 per centers locked away in their gated estates as the seas rise and food prices skyrocket, as we choke on our own fumes and cook the planet.

Elections are not decided by the votes from the loyalist bases of each party but by a bloc of poorly informed, distracted, malleable undecided voters – the proverbial ‘swing voters.’ This is where the corporate owned mainstream media most distinctly fails our democracy. These undecided voters sorely need honest, objective information and analysis not frantic ‘political sports reporting’ and cheap scandal mongering. The candidates’ personalities and verbal screw-ups might be entertaining and provocative in a sugar-rush sort of way, but it leaves the voters as empty vessels to be filled with well-designed political propaganda. As this next election shakes out into a final run, each side will spend hundreds millions of dollars on an obscenely expensive last ditch blast of dumbed-down, emotive political advertising most of it negative. The same ad agencies that nightly pump out an endless flow of putrid corporate propaganda to buy, buy, buy will turn to scaring and indoctrinating us to vote, vote, vote against candidate X because he or she is evil incarnate. The intellectual process of considering the implications of each candidate’s rosy cornucopia of polished, focus group-driven positions is totally left behind as people are encouraged to vote based on their raw emotions. And now with the Supreme Court’s landmark Citizens United decision lifting all restraints on corporate money flowing into elections, elections are set to become a billion dollar plus feeding frenzy of dueling agitprop pieces.

The Repubs are inveterate snake oil salesman. They are shills for the rich and very rich but have cajoled and tricked a pack of ignorant, liberal hating shmucks onto identifying themselves as loyal Republicans even as their interests are being eviscerated. But Obama has disappointed the educated and organized working classes. Like all politicians hustling for votes, he oversold what was possible with lots of touchy-feely, good vibes BS. It is not likely he can repeat that act. But the wise voters must realize will they have to hold their noses and again vote for the lesser evil; while the hoards of government fearing, anti-science, free marketeer dupes will vote for whoever emerges as the new front man for the right. But what will the ‘swing voters do? Will these passive TV-addicted couch potatoes, who have determined all recent presidential elections, again decide it’s time to ’throw out the bum’ and give the ‘others guys’, the GOP with their track record of proven abject failure, another shot? Unless there is some identifiable, tangible improvement in the economy, it will be a tight race indeed, a race between an Mr. Empty Suit (probably Mitt Romney), and Mr. Unfulfilled Promises, Barack Obama.

*IMF 2010 estimates

Is there any consequence to always being wrong?

There is seems to be no consequence to being dead wrong if you’re a Republican. The Bush II years were an unmitigated disaster any way you look at it: two brutally expensive still unpaid for and still both ongoing wars; failing to ‘apprehend’ Osama Bin Laden); running the federal debt through roof (in which the Debt Ceiling was routinely raised with no comment); the rerun of an already discredited idea -“supply side” economics (lowering tax rates does not lead to more aggregate tax revenues from increased investment); a deregulatory landscape free-for-all especially in the financial sector resulting in a world wide financial credit paralysis which in turn triggered a deep recession nearly as bad as the Great Depression of the 1930s (which we are still wallowing in.)

Yet somehow through a mix of right wing radio and Fox media blitzes, a gullible and easily distracted public, and a fat passel of lies and world class dissembling by seasoned Repub pols, all this has allowed the Republican Party to somehow miraculously survive to fight another day.

Blown out big time in the 2008 election at all levels, the Repubs regrouped especially in the Senate, and cornered they bared their long knives. They misused and abused the old boy Senate rules especially the veritable old filibuster rule to paralyze legislation and political appointments. Result: legislation that did survive was so watered down and gutless that many Obama supporters lost faith. One important example was the critical stimulus package intended to pump some air back into the deflated economy which was nearly a flat tire by early 2009. Tried and proven Keynesian counter-cyclical policy had worked for decades. Consequently most mainstream economists urged a robust and targeted stimulus package but all we got was a diffuse and poorly aimed one badly undermined by Republicanesque tax cuts.

Obama is no FDR. At that pivotal point he did not sense the need to rally the nation. Instead he tried to deal with the devil, the devil being the Repubs collectively. The stimulus package of 2009 after lots of fanfare did not have the bite nor the scale it needed (and it did escape notice that far more was done to save the broken banks which through their own greed and irresponsibility had reluctantly and humiliatingly required a bailout.) In any case we are now all paying for that the inadequate first stimulus package. We still have nearly 9% official unemployment a year and half later, and the American people are totally demoralized. The aftermath of the real estate bubble, which drove the entire economy for most of 2000s, is a ravaged landscape of foreclosure-riddled ghost towns, lost dreams and personal bankruptcies. Yet in DC all attention is now suddenly turned from the continuing effects of the biggest downturn since the 1930s to the perennial problem of the national deficit.

But what is forgotten in all the posturing over the ‘unsustainability of the entitlements’ and the 'over extension of the welfare state' is that the recession itself causes the deficit it to increase ever faster. Out of work people pay less taxes, buy less and thus feed negative energy into the recessionary cycle. Repubs lied about the effectiveness of the first stimulus insisting it was flop. It was a flop in terms of theater but not in terms of actually producing a reversal in the downturn and mild positive numbers in the economic indicators. But most Americans saw little tangible evidence in their daily lives as the economy only very slowly came back to life.

And into that breach wades the hypocritical, intellectually dishonest, demagogic (while using the word on the Demos), opportunistic bastards known as the GOP especially their young guns such as House member Paul Ryan. Now with hotheads and airheads of the so-called Tea Party faction behind them, the GOP is threatening to blow up the entire global economy by refusing to legally raise the debt ceiling on money already legally allocated if they don't get their way. These fuckers are incredible! These teabagging assholes think that the worse case is simply some Ayn Randian/Grover Norquest wet dream: a shrinking and then drowning of what’s left of the US's rather limited "welfare state" in the proverbial bathtub.

The problems is, like the gangsters that they are, the Repubs have discovered extortion works! Having gotten away with it twice before, they believe the third time's in the bag. First, in late 2008 they refused to vote for retaining the middle class tax rate (which if eliminated would have kicked the already weak recovery into reverse) unless they kept their Bush II engineered budget busting lowered tax rate for the very rich (which Obama eventually caved in on.) Then they held up the badly overdue 2011 budget until lots of painful (and recession exacerbating) cuts in the 12% slice of discretionary spending was reduced (which did zilch to fix the overall deficit problem.) Now they want to use that same perverse leverage on the routine (and unpleasant) raising of the debt ceiling.

Everyone including the dimmest Repub House backbencher knows that all hell will break loose if the US defaults (or seems like might default) on its long running debt. For starters the interest on Federal Treasury bonds will rise and counter productively increase the national debt itself, not to mention the dislocation and chaos if checks to pensioners, contractors and government workers stopped flowing. And of course the stock and bond market could weird out big time as well as the already unstable commodity markets. And if the US sneezes the hold world economy catches a cold or worse. Of course it’s a game of chicken and no one (except the Pee Party nuts) wants to actually drive the car off the cliff or be blamed for said car landing on said rocks.

Remember the one thing about the Repubs that always appeals to the average overextended American is the Repubs (irresponsible and demagogic) anti-tax policy. It is their ace-in-the-hole, their tactic for all seasons, their ever-popular standby carrot ‘n stick. But will this continue to work forever? The old bait 'n switch - offer to lower everyone's taxes but then mainly reduce taxes on the already shamelessly financially porcine.

But they unlike the Demos the Repubs also do service their base, a base that consists of hodgepodge of disparate subcultures. You have the anti-abortion zealots, the 2^nd Amendment gun rights fanatics and now the stronger than ever Ayn Ryan worshiping teabagger/Libertarian ideologues. Plus there is their real base: the Fortune 500 corporations with their army of lobbyists and of course those of the very rich, the sociopathic crime families who are completely free of any debilitating social or environmental conscience.

But the Repub base is not enough to carry them over the line electorally in many important areas of the country. They must appeal to the called “independents” - the perpetually undecided, the distracted, the apolitical, the apathetic (who often hide behind a facade of cool cynicism.) The tired old refrain “taxes are too high” and “the Democratic Party led government wastes your money and will raise taxes”, "tax and spend liberals' are the real problem, etc, These have become tried and proven means to get these sometime voters and right leaning 'independents' off their asses and voting for Repubs. But will it work forever?

The Democrats must hold the line in this latest effort of budgetary extortion. Reasonable plans do exist, “centrist” in any reasonable political spectrum. But again Obama seems to be conceding too much in his opening position. He should be starting from as far “left” as possible in terms of our crazy right-shifted spectrum and work toward a moderate, real centrist position. And such a position already exists in the (unfortunately named) Peoples Budget proposed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus. It contains reasonable adjustment of tax policy so as to reinstate what worked in the past along with a healthy trimming of the bloated budget military, and it would balance the budget by 2021. And it accomplice all this without butchering the 1930s New Deal and the 1960s Medicare/Medicaid programs.

The only antidote for Republican poison is a robust counter proposal that solves real problems and takes on the crushing corporatist state institutions that are bleeding us dry and dragging us into the Third World, ‘banana republic’ status. Here's hoping we will see a new more combative Obama. The American people, that is those who are not already lost to tin-hatted delusion, would respond to forceful leadership at this crucial junction in US history.

Strange Days

It is strange time we live in. In what is supposed to be a democracy, a coalition of rich greedy cold-hearted bastards (i.e. the Koch brothers) aligned with an interlocking network of bureaucratic money machines known as corporations have now commandeered the legislative and executive branches of many States and a 1/2 of the Federal legislative branch. And, of course, have significant influence on the judicial branch at both the State and Federal levels.

In short Americans through a mix of ignorance, fear, cynicism and apathy have allowed a batch of charlatans and fools to be elected all across the country, most recently to the US House of Representatives. These are craven pols who have not a clue as to how to get the engine of US capitalism fired back up again - if it is indeed possible. These are people who believe only what is convenient to believe. This is well beyond mere intellectual chicanery, which implies one knows the truth but is using one’s wits to refashion it, such as the legal machinations of a mob lawyer or the verbal maneuvers of a clever college rhetorician. This not just a convenient tweaking of the truth being injected into an argument, but whole new realities being conjured up and fervently believed in. For instance now the GOP appears to believe the modest under whelming but necessary health care reforms enacted by the Democrats last year will actually increase unemployment.

Remember this mauling of reality has been going on for awhile now, having been pioneered and refined during the George W. Bush presidency. In the Bush years claims that were overwhelming proved to be false, and somehow retained legitimacy in the minds of the ultra-right. These ‘zombie facts’ supported the horribly unnecessary, budget-busting invasion of Iraq. Some of these include:

• Sadam Hussien had weapons of mass destruction but were just never found.
• Sadam Hussien was directly involved in the 9/11 terrorist act against the US.
• The US invasion of Iraq actually benefited the people of Iraq.
• Waterboarding is not torture.

This is the realm of what once called the Big Lie and was once associated with totalitarian governments likes those of the Nazis and the Stalinists. Repeat something that is false, a big fat lie, with enough volume and frequency (read: right wing radio and Fox “news”) and it becomes believable at least to some (and unfortunately enough to swing elections.)

Difference of opinion is usually based on difference of interpretation of the same data. But what if each side uses it's own data? What if the established arbiter of the legitimacy of the data is accused of being in league with one of the sides? Then you have no touchstone of fact-based objective reality. That is what we have come to. The party now taking control of one half of one the three branches of government has arbitrarily decided to eliminate the referee, the independent bi-partisan body, the Congressional Budget Office, from involvement in projecting results of proposed budgetary bills. Apparently they make up their own numbers and any CBOs analysis will be castigated as simply biased in support of their opponents. This is very wrong and will create another fictitious reality, another boldfaced pack of lies in the guise of objective truth. It’s sick. It’s duplicity. It’s the GOP in action!

The American Middle Class are Chumps

How does the Republican Party so effectively bamboozle the middle class? As a political party they are not their friend. The Republicans do everything possible to reduce the numbers of their own supporters. But the chumps keep coming back for more. Republicans hate unions which bring middle class wages to blue-collar workers. They despise safety nets such as unemployment insurance or especially European-type income floors that keeps people falling into the abyss of full homelessness. They are fully supportive of off-shoring jobs ( as well as corporate profits to avoid taxes.) First it was manufacturing and now we see technical/clerical jobs going to low wage countries. Yet millions every election buy the same bogus line of bullshit hook line and sinker - to whit everything that is wrong with the US is somehow the fault of “The Liberals” and “Big Government.” In fact some of the more militant members of the hard core Republican loyalist middle class recently went on the war path bringing their guns and wearing silly colonial outfit to town hall meetings, some even threatening invocation of “Second Amendment rights”, armed insurrection, when a the Democrats were merely trying to repair a badly broken, budget busting health care system. What in the hell is going on? Is it in the water?

We are at a strange juncture. The so-call “free market” economy, that many of us especially the Republicans hold so dear, is not delivering. Instead we are entangled in a king’s hell of a perpetual recession. Even though technically “it is over” (small GDP growth is occurring), millions are still out of work. The initial crash was so severe it verged on becoming another 1930s scale Great Depression. And it happened under again a Republican administration. Yet again the hapless Democrats inherited it and are now being blamed for it. So it now behooves the Republicans to keep it going as long as it takes to retake Congress and the White House. The fall guy Democrats were voted back in en mass in a wave of messiah-desiring fervor. The knee-deep-in-shit situation that the new administration stepped into almost guaranteed disappointment from the left and malicious second-guessing from the right, then the growing realization by the right that is was to their advantage to make things worse.

The Demos under Obama inherited quite a mess - not one but two ongoing wars, a financial system in paralysis, housings prices in free fall leading to a wave of foreclosures not seen since the 1930s, and unemployment nearing 10%. And to make matters supremely worse due to the abject failure of Republican driven “supply side” econ theory, government debt was already before the recession at astronomical levels. Recall the notion behind Reaganian ‘SS Economics’ is that if we lower taxes, there will be adequate new investment and thus new tax revenues generated that it will actually compensate for the lost revenue from the lowered taxes. This especially presumably applied if the taxes are lowered for the investor class: the upper income tiers, millionaires and billionaires. The cake and eat, too plan didn’t fucking work! Ask David Stockman, Reagan’s head of OMB. The deficit skyrocketed in the Reagan years. The other net result was a massive retribution of wealth upwards.

So as we know the Democrats under Bill Clinton, ever embattled by fake scandals like Whitewater and Troopergate and finally nearly impeached, managed like a good 1950s’ moderate Republican get the budget in order, and we had few good years relative to the national debt. After particularly close election and with the help of the Republican majority on the Supreme Court, enter one George W. Bush. This is the same person whose own father, George H.W. Bush, as a presidential candidate and one time moderate Republican accurately coined the term “Voodoo Economics” for this bogus and dangerous idea of cutting taxes to the wealthy to create jobs. Well “W” being his own man returned again to voodoo economics full force engaging and not one two wars (both off-budget,) a poorly designed increase in Medicare benefits and another very generous irresponsible but popular time limited tax cut for all but especially for the so called job creating upper income tiers. Supply Side was back! Result: another huge spike in the Deficit. All this is widely known.

Now here are in 2010 and Bush tax cuts are due to expire automatically. But we are still in the toilet relative to a real recovery. So expiration of the Bush tax cuts would amount to a sudden tax increase. But suddenly also again The Deficit now at is front and center, with a august presidential commissions and pundits right and left agonizing over “under funded entitlements” and other future shortfalls. Draconian changes are being proposed like cuts in middle class tax deductions, Social Security and Medicare eligibility. All aimed at the middle class. And this unbelievably still with 9.8% of the population are officially unemployed (with more not counted or working only part time.) Astonishingly the right wing of the Democratic Party and the Republicans in mass are suddenly simultaneously concerned with the dreaded Deficit but are also all or retaining a budget busting, deficit exploding, irresponsible retention of a "temporarily " lowered income taxe for all including inexplicably the very wealthy who have shown they don't fucking invest it US jobs. How do they get away with it?

In this context we have another sad spectacle of the Obama caving in on another core principle. He promised to let the budget busting counter-cyclical dysfunctional upper income tax cuts expire. But the Repubs naturally want it to all stay intact so they and their rich friends will continue to wallow in money. And they will filibuster any proposed change to the end. If the thing expires as designed everybody’s taxes go up come the come Jan 1. In the middle of a recession it would be another kick in the balls to the economy. But only for middle classes who will spend most of it, the wealthy really don’t need the money and will only speculate with it. If they were going to use it fruitfully in as trickle down supply side investment way, they would have already done it. This is class war - blatant, redistribution of income upwards. They were already rich when the tax cut hit under Bush. They had managed to accrue great wealth under the old tax code. Bush just made his friends richer! These people are motherfuckers of the first magnitude. They have driven the country into penury and then have the audacity to call Obama a “socialist” when he tries to enact minor but necessary minor rational reforms.

Obama could hold out and let the damn thing expire and take it to the people exposing on prime time the supreme hypocrisy of the Repubs. But, alas, also the federal extension on unemployment is also due to run out. And the Repubs will filibuster this one too. Both would have to be ought in the trenches with Obama using his bully pulpit to rally the masses. He would need to be a fighter not a conciliator. Even the Repubs would respect him. On both of these issues he has the majority on his side. It would be a two front war and real political gamble to let two both of these hits occur in the same time frame. But it would it could turn things around like a game-changing pass that was caught but not a “Hail Mary.” He would have reenergized the same masses that came out in 2008 and voted him in and other Demos in a near landslide. But that is not the Obama we have. We have a different guy.