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 a Sleeping Giant Slowly Awakening?

Before we had this thing called democracy, citizens traditionally made their displeasure known with their local autocracy in the old-fashioned ways - rebellions, insurrections and revolutions. And these ‘popular movements’ usually started with an unauthorized assembly of the lower classes whose members usually had a valid set of complaints - generally something to do with not getting enough to eat. And the target of these complaints was always the same –the well-fed, arrogant and privileged bastards who were running things both ineptly and primarily for their own benefit.

Fall 2011 something similar has sprung up - the Occupy Wall Street / 99er movement, and its target is again the well-fed, arrogant and privileged bastards who were running things both ineptly and primarily for their own benefit by somehow having high-jacked our democracy. Also interestingly its primary complaint overlaps with one of the chief complaints of the other recent (some say manipulated) pack of outraged citizens, the Tea Partiers. Members of both disgruntled groups, while being from opposite ends of the political spectrum, have at least one grievance in common, they both are greatly displeased with the financial establishment and the government’s response to its economy crashing, greed-driven actions, specifically the government bank bailouts and how the bailouts seemed to helped the bankers and no one else.

But the genius of this new Occupy Wall Street / 99er movement is its amorphous and autonomous nature. Even as it is mainly focused on a single fat target: greed, it leaves ample room for other related targets, which are in abundance to say the least. Whereas the Tea Partiers wanted to blame everything on our first non-white president, this new movement leaves this target rich environment wide open – bankers, the ultra rich, the moronic GOP, the pathetically ineffective Democrats - essentially the Establishment in general. Like an old time carnival shooting gallery, all kinds of outrages present themselves as delightful sitting ducks and colorful bulls eyes continually rotating by.

Here are some of some ‘sitting duck’ facts: *

• 46.2 million people Americans living below the poverty line, the highest number in 52 years of record keeping
• Corporations booked profits at a record $1.5 trillion a year, increasingly possessed by the super rich, while real unemployment stood at 16%
• Average income for the top 10% of Americans is $164,600 and $31,200 for the bottom 90% of Americans
• 10% of Americans control 2/3 of all wealth.
• We're 6.6 million jobs short of our pre-recession levels, and new workers enter the work force every day,
• Median full-time male workers make $48,000 a year, the same as 1969,inflation-adjusted.
• 98% of 27 million net new jobs created in America between 1990 and 2008 were in service sectors not easily outsourced, such as health care.
• 27 percent of African-Americans and 26 percent of Hispanics, more than 1 in4, live in poverty.
• Home prices have dropped to 2003 levels.
• The stock market is at 1998 levels and increasingly the domain of Wall Street insiders and computer trading.
• Wages declined more than 6% since 2007 while corporate and CEO income skyrocketed.

Here are some more that bear repeating: **

• The top 1% of the population receives nearly 25% of the all income and holds and astonishing 40% of the all US wealth.

• We are still engaged in two expensive official wars and at least four and maybe more unofficial ones.

• The military budget is at or above Cold War levels. Increasingly Obama, the Commander in Chief, is becoming interchangeable with Bush, in an open-ended, perpetual “War on Terror.”\

• As the planet warms and the weather gets ever weirder, the Denialsphere gets ever more traction as the Obama Administration turns its back on climate science.

• Many economists think we could well be headed for the dreaded ‘double dip’ as the ill-advised Super Committee confronts the politically contrived crisis of the Debt Ceiling and intends to lower government spending at the dead wrong time.
  

• Rising Medical costs reflected as health insurance premium rate hikes continue to reduce personal disposable income.

• Tea Party inspired GOPers in States houses and in Congress continues to overplay their phony mandate and pass every more draconian and reactionary legislation.

• Hoping to capitalize on widespread public discord and distress in the 2012 election, the GOP works day and night to drive the economy into the ground.

It’s not what the Occupy Wall Street people are asking for, its what everybody realizes - something is very wrong. We are in one hell of a jam and real action is called for. Our whole way of life appears to be coming apart at the seams and yet evermore fiddling takes place as the fires rage ever wider.

* From John McBride/Seattle comments to JoeNocera’s 10/14/11 NY Times column.:

** Courtesy of yours truly

-

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.

A Fine Mess

Stan Laural on occasion would proclaim “Well, here's another fine mess you've gotten me into, Ollie.” Well we are on a whole new level of ‘fine messes.’ It involves a confluence of two globalized processes that are maliciously feeding off of each other bringing ever day closer to the point of no return. Capitalism, our preferred mode of production and distribution is seriously malfunctioning. And at the same time we face the looming catastrophe of global climate change with unknown consequences. These two interlocking crisis’s besiege and confuse us and lead many into a deadly combination of denial and toward embracing reactionary political and cultural ideologies. Simplistic dogmas in both religion and economics are becoming increasingly appealing to masses of the poorly educated and semi-literate. Both in the US and in the Muslim world, our quasi-adversary, religio-political demagogues allied with opportunistic political parties offer easy, simple and very dangerously wrong solutions from 10th Century holy war to 19th Century lassiez faire capitalism. Despite an abundance of well-researched books, periodicals and Internet blogs, serious objective thinkers seem powerless to permeate this horrendous confluence of ignorance and rigid dogma.


Respected scientists worldwide plaintively warn us that we are irreversibly damaging our biosphere with runaway industrialism, yet nothing substantive is done with the US being the leading recalcitrant. In fact in the US an entire political party has based its platform on almost total denial. Industrialism that seemed to have given us so much has now reached a point of seriously diminishing returns. But a ruling class of billionaires and multi-millionaires, who continue to financially benefit handsomely from this state of affairs and control powerful interlocking corporate interests, conspire in a multitude of ways to keep things rolling right along (or more recently just sputtering along as a nasty global recession lingers.) And so we slither toward the dreaded point of no return in which self-perpetuating feedback loops become unstoppable. This while most of world’s population blithely contends with business as usual. This ‘business as usual’ ranges from simply survival all the way up the food chain where the comfortable and well fed but existentially dissatisfied are absorbed in varying degrees of banal but expensive forms of avaricious competition and conspicuous consumption.


To make matters worse an ill-fitting frame of reference, is constantly reinforced through a hegemonic, seamless 24/7 corporate owned media. Its dependence on advertising profits degrades the news with endless spectacle and allows for precious little real information. Providing understanding and clarification of complex issues is left to an underground of alternative sources. Yet on some visceral level everyone feels things are coming apart at the seams. A sense of hopelessness, resignation and cynicism reigns. With our beloved capitalist mode of production bogged down with overcapacity and under investment and unemployment at record levels, resorting to the usual materialistic consumerist solutions becomes ever more out of most people’s reach. ‘Shopping to the point of dropping’ is now as out of fashion as the leisure suit.


And a hapless president watches as his party now devoid of credibility despite significant achievements fall prey to a pack of fools without answers or even common sense, and they move ever closer toward retaking the levers of legislative power. The ensuing political dialogue is led by the some of the most intellectually dishonest, disingenuous and opportunistic individuals ever to suck air. Analysis using the best science, statistics and objectivity is ghettoized and pilloried as propaganda while the real propagandists commandeer a vast interlocking array of electronic and print media.


Suggestions of rationale approaches or even comprehension of these two interconnected world-historical emergencies - economic and environmental, rarely see the light day. Too many wars and too many individual acts of violent desperation cloud our collective mind and consume our national budget. And many are direct results, “blowback”, from previous geopolitical blunders. This again as hordes of the illiterate, semi-illiterate and minimally educated embrace the most retrograde versions of pre-medieval monotheistic religio-cultural traditions. Ironically as we move deeper into this new millennium the appeal of superstition and atavistic urges becomes evermore compelling. And most unconscionably here in the US a large portion of the population, presumably educated at least through the high school level, have joined into this retreat into the past with their leaders railing against science as ‘humanist’ ideology.


With the election only weeks away both parties are now engaging in the most demeaning forms of political advertising to try to appeal to the lowest common denominator of the electorate. Complex issues are watered down to a thin gruel or else abandoned altogether. It is no wonder than many turn away from politics altogether to avoid being collaterally soiled. It is indeed an ugly spectacle. We are indeed in a Fine Mess.

Obama and the Democrats: A Fatal Under Reach?

Barack Obama (and Harry Reid leading the Demos in the Senate) seem to have frittered away a rare opportunity for real change. With their reluctant, diffident, non-confrontational, filibuster-shy approach they have achieved the worst of both worlds – virulent ire from the right and crushing of all hope on the left. On issue after issue this administration has come on too weakly and compromised too soon against a ruthless adversary that takes no prisoners: health care reform, not prosecuting the torturers in our midst, postponing real confrontation with the doomsday scenario of impending climate change, ignoring the environmentalists on the risk of offshore drilling, not reversing the Bushian Justice Dept’s draconian overreach, letting the banks call the shots on a bailout of a mess that they made, and most of all failing to robustly address the Great Recession.

Of course the rescue of the economy is still a work in progress, but it’s not going well. In early 2009 we needed a seriously large stimulus that was well designed, without gimmicks (like tax breaks) and implementing visibly useful public works projects, infrastructure overhaul and a wholesale green re-engineering of the economy. If implemented in concert with a massive “bully pulpit” campaign informing the public as to the impending global disaster of climate change, Obama could have produced the public support necessary to hold off the opposition. But no, we got a typical half-measure (even though the numbers seemed large) that satisfied no one.

That said, please don’t vote for a Republican as a protest of the Obama administration’s disappointing performance thus far. As bad as the Democrats are we must support them. A return of the Repubs by their attaining a majority in either house of Congress will be an unmitigated disaster. They have no answers!

The Bushian dead-enders, the racists, the hardcore right, libertarian ideologues and the Repubs in Congress will hate and oppose Obama whatever he does. And an organized Fox Channel/hate AM radio supported, loud, ugly, ‘tea party’ type backlash was inevitable. Whatever was proposed by the Democrats, be it tepid ‘boiler plate’ moderate Republican programs (as it appears to be), or a mildly reformist agenda (as it could have been) or a true break with the past (which was possible), the right would have been livid with rage.

But ask yourself where would we be if the McCain/Palin “team” had gotten in? John McCain had no plan at all for an economy that had just plunged off a cliff (in fact even he admits he dislikes economics.) Look at him now as he skidaddles to the extreme right shamelessly abandoning all previous reasonable positions (climate legislation, immigration, campaign finance) to save his butt. We might have had more budget busting wars, though. And Sarah Palin (one heartbeat from the Presidency) is a certified airhead who resonates only with others of her ilk. To everyone else she is either a dangerous demagogue or a broad (excuse the pun) target for derision.

Recall that by January 20, 2008, Inauguration Day, the US economy was in full free fall. Remember the entire banking sector had seized up and we all were relying on the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (a ‘liberal Democrat’ FDR Depression Era reform) to keep our bank’s doors open. Unemployment was in vertical ascent, the auto industry was a basket case and most of us our houses had lost 1/3 of their value.

Now less than two years later things still suck but they suck a little less. Or maybe it’s worse in the sense that we now all of us are thoroughly disabused of any ‘audacity of hope’ campaign bullshit. Obama’s corporate alignments and abandonment of his base has won him enemies on all sides and few allies as Yeatsian centrifugal force sets in.

The fight in Congress now should be over another major stimulus package as we seem to be falling back into the dreaded ‘double dip.’ But it’s not. That battle is already lost due to the widely held perception is that the first $830 billion was a big fat flopperoo. Why throw good money (we don’t even have) after bad? The Repubs, of course, fuel this belief. But what was avoided will never be known. And how bad it might have been is simply unknowable. It’s impossible to prove a negative. But it certainly didn’t fix things entirely. As most economists predicted it was too small. The typical Obamaian reluctance to swing for the fences is now biting him and his party in the ass.

The Republican Party’s plan is simple. They want things to get even worse. They offer no credible plan for the economy other than to further sabotage of the Democrat’s agenda through recalcitrance. They can only drag out their tired old warhorses: “more tax cuts” and “cutbacks in entitlements.” But it’s even uglier than that - they want to retain the budget busting tax cuts put in by Bush for millionaires and billionaires, tax cuts that didn’t do jack shit for the economy. It only fed cybermoney into a feeding frenzy of disastrous financial speculation that almost brought down the whole global banking structure. The big buck buckaroos won’t invest their money in new factories and jobs in the US. Forget it! Their money earns greater returns in firms that offshore manufacturing by availing themselves of cheap labor and environmental law free zones.

In the last great economic downturn the FDR administration reluctantly adopted the theories of John Maynard Keynes. Once that happened the Great Depression became significantly less onerous. Keynesian fiscal policy is the idea that government should makes up for inadequate aggregate demand during downturns in the “business cycle” by deficit spending. And then repay the deficit by taxing it back during the upswings. The old ‘priming of the pump.’ This policy was dominate and not even questioned by either party up until the 1980’s. Then something called ‘supply side’ economics came on the scene. It is the disreputable cousin of them more academically respectable Monetary Theory. Monetary theory is the ideological adversary of Keynesian theory favored by conservatives. All of this is tied into the rise of something called neoliberalism, which actually negates ‘liberalism’ as understood by most people.

For a number of reasons Keynesian theory fell out favor by the late 1970s, one reason being that it seemed to be failing. Something called ‘stagflation’ had set in. During the heyday of Keynesian theory it was normally accepted that inflation was a tradeoff for growth. As the government spends money, the demand for goods and services would sometimes outstrip supply and force prices up - hence inflation. But at least unemployment was tolerably low even as prices crept upwards. But in the late 1970’s, the hapless Jimmy Carter years, we experienced both flattening growth along with inflation. Energy costs (mainly oil) went through the roof and was probably the main culprit but the anti-government spending ‘monetarists’ and their allies on the right, the flakier ‘supply siders’ (AKA “voodoo economics”) advocates stepped into the breach. The ‘supply siders’ purport to believe in a notion long since discredited, “Says Law”, that supply creates its own demand. Following from this they (pretend) to believe in the ever appealing but manifestly erroneous idea that if you lower taxes the amount of economic activity generated, the supply side, will create enough demand and thus enough economic growth will occur to compensate for the lost tax revenues. But unfortunately it doesn’t work!

The Republican, Ronald Reagan (and later his imitator, Bush II) lovingly embraced this bogus concept and as president(s) implemented it – result massive, bone crushing deficits. The irony is that (old style moderate) Republicans always hammered the Democrats over modest Keysensian deficits, but as born again ‘supply siders” they ran the deficit through the roof. The real reason obviously is to tie the hands of successive Democratic administrations from implementing popular social spending programs – schools, health, welfare, infrastructure. And it has worked. It worked with Clinton and now it is working with Obama only on a more profoundly disastrous level. The deficit is now $13 trillion and growing. How do you public support for more spending to counter the worse recession since the 1930s with that backdrop?

The Monetarists, led by Milton Friedman, believed business cycles can be better managed by varying the money supply through the Federal Reserve – fiscal policy. They basically want the government out of the way especially regarding regulation of business. From this flows neoliberalism embraced in recent years embraced by both political parties. Also in practice both Keynesian and Monetarist principles are used, fiscal and monetary policy, to (try to) manage business cycles as both have their virtues. For one thing the Fed can pump money into the economy without going through Congress. And of course the government is always inextricably entangled in the economy through military-related spending - AKA “Military Keynesianism.” What the right is opposed to is Keynesian social spending, the very thing that mitigated the Great Depression. The Great Depression had a ‘double dip’, too (what many are afraid of now) as the FDR adminstration pulled back in government spending in 1938 due to pressure from the GOP. But the (military) Keynesianism eventually saved the day due to massive deficit spending to fight WWII.

We need another Keynesian social spending injection now but we won’t get it. The right is too influential and the most of the public have never taken Economics 101. We need another blast of deficit spending to overhaul our infrastructure and to implement climate saving ‘green technology’ on a large scale. But instead what we have forming is a political tug of war between the still employed (the majority) who have been encouraged to worry about “Obama’s deficit” (that he inherited most of it from Reagan and Bush II) and the un and underemployed who are increasingly desperate. As we cut back on spending it will get worse but it will be blamed on the Democrats. We are following the same path the Japanese took in the 1990s.

Americans seemed to be ‘ahistorical’ even regarding recent events and only respond to the siren call of the moment. Hence during crisis periods those with the least intellectual integrity and the most visceral appeal can step into the breach and rule the day. It’s sad but true from Richard Nixon to Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush we have had to endure fools in times of crisis. Where do we go from here? Which well-coifed, golden tongued, empty-suit charlatan will step forward to lead us down the primrose path?

Obama Dilemma

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

from The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats


Barack Obama is now enduring a veritable blitzkrieg of criticism from all directions. The public is sore as hell whether or not they identify with any ‘left’ or ‘right’. And everyone is predicting the Democrats are going to eat it in November. By being politically a ‘centrist’ Obama has gotten himself in one king’s hell of a bind. To the average American he is a certified ‘liberal.’ But Obama is liberal only in a relative sense. He is only liberal in this crazed post-Reagan era in which the entire political spectrum has shifted mightily rightward. It’s a world in which a Ralph Nader, once known as a respected and effective moderate reformer and consumer advocate, now sounds seems like a Bolshevik. And the health care reform plan once proposed by Richard Nixon, so hated by the anyone left of Ginghas Khan, was far better than the one Obama so exhaustively achieved. Also remember it was the Republican Nixon administration that established the now reviled by the right Environmental Protection Agency. It is a time when reasonable social policies once supported by bipartisan majorities are now considered anathema. Even unemployment insurance extension, with national unemployment hovering over 9% and way over that in some states, is now being held hostage by Repubs. It is a time when many want to revoke the entirety of FDR’s legacy.

The Obama administration by being centrist has no friends. The left wing of the Democratic party or “progressives” (and which seems to includes most Demos I encounter) have either lost faith entirely or are profoundly disappointed in Obama. Many believe that Obama, with a Democratic Party majority in both houses of Congress and a resounding mandate from the people for change, has blown his opportunity. Time after time when he should have come on strong and rallied his supporters behind a definitive game-changing program, he has backed off and equivocated so as to avoid being accused of not being sufficiently ‘bi-partisan.’ Instead he kissed up to said Repubs (who righteously ignored all such untoward overtures.) The net result is that every initiative has been a watered-down disappointment - from rescueing a totally broken banking system, to stabilizing an economy in absolute freefall, to engineering reform of our greed-bound health care system. Each and ever effort has been weaker and less effective than it could have been. Is it Obama's reluctance or was it the complex, institutional nature of each crisis? We will have to let history judge. And of course what Obama has done that has worked (the economy is no longer in freefall and the health care system isn’t quite heartless) is quickly ignored in a blizzard of “what have you done for me lately’s”

The Republicans party, knowing in their hearts that Obama’s modest and tepid initiatives were necessary if the Great Recession was not to become the Second Great Depression (which may still happen), nevertheless, are attacking him full force. And refusing to participate in the legislation process pretending he is some left-wing ogre from hell. Their plan is no plan. They openly admit they only want only one thing: his political demise. And it is to be achieved through perpetual obstuctionism. Their intention is to undermine the administration’s credibility with the beleaguered and demoralized public at every turn. And they have been very effective. Their simple objective is to regain power at any cost. But as criminally irresponsible and corrupt as the Republicans are even more so than the Democrats, they are fully owned paid reps of their corporate overlords. Yet they seem sane and reasonable compared to the raging ill-informed tea-bagger stooges, ditto-heads, and useful fools of the new ‘far right.’

In any case Obama can’t catch a break. To make matters worse the centrists in the electorate, the so-called ‘independents’, don’t align politically with Obama’s actual centrist position. These so-called independents, who swing elections and whose vote the Democrats periodically pander to each election for are really not politically center at all, they are mostly proto-right wingers. And as such they are fleeing Obama like rats off the proverbial sinking ship. Many or most of these so-called independent voters are fickle, apolitical shallow thinkers who are often swayed more by personality and style than actual proposed policies. By not committing to being ‘left’ or ‘right, liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican, they are political AC/DC’s and totally unreliable. Often they are easily bamboozled by well-crafted propaganda (‘Swiftboated’) and Internet blogger bullshit. In fact it’s these so-called “independent voters" that requires ever more grotesquely expensive advertising media campaigns (read political propaganda) by candidates.

The real centrists appear mainly as the chattering classes - the windbag pundits (such as NY Times’ David Brooks) and the professional journalists and media talking heads. They are often accused of being part of some shadowing Liberal Media Establishment conspiracy but basically they are simply well paid media personalities, celebrities basically. They simply are out to further their own careers - ideally by provocation and sensation. But paradoxically the net effect is to actually anchor things at or near the center even as they often disdain from defending Centrist Obama. And this is fine with their corporate overlords as a strong center or center-right maintains the status quo. Essentially Barack Obama has few friends in the media.

In most democracies it’s always two against one. When the left is in (not in the US so much since we have no left or even center-left political parties), the center and the right gang up on the left. They do this by carping at and discrediting the left's policies and by exaggerating and missteps or mistakes and downplaying or ignoring any successes, always waiting for the next election. And when the right is in, the center and left must work to oppose the right’s usually upper class-biased, often reactionary and demagogic programs.

And so it follows when the center is in, like the for instance the Obama administration, the right and left, attack from both flanks. Being outflanked Obama has nowhere to turn. I watched key Obama adviser, David Axelrod, field hostile questions from CNN’s Candy Kurlick (she looks like she eats too much candy.) She alternately attacked him from both directions – pro ‘progressive’ and pro ‘teabagger’. Of course Obama, as most Democrats do at election time, pretended to be more of a left/progressive than he would (or could be) in office. And the right, always ‘working the refs’ exaggerate their disdain and alarm at his so-called ‘socialist policies.’ Barack Obama might be a lot of things but he is certainly no way a socialist. If anything he is the polar opposite. He did his undergraduate work at University of Chicago, the citadel of neo lazzie faire capitalist theory, the home of Milton Friedman, the godfather of neoliberalism. In fact his economic brain trust and key appointments are either Bush holdovers – Republican Ben Bernake as head of the Federal Reserve or Wall Street friendly, such as Tim Geithner as Sec. of Treasury who is a protégé of Goldman Sachs alumni and arch neoliberal Robert Rubin, and Laurence Summers as Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, who performed the same service for the Reagan administration, where this all started.


The underlying problem is that with this current global economic crash we are in uncharted territory. Which is the true boogieman? Is it Weimar Republic/Zimbabwe level of hyper- inflation? Or is it a full-on 1930’s type Second Great Depression with paralyzing levels of deflation. Even Obama’s conservative economic advisers are worried more about a deflationary double dip in a possibly economic recovery than runaway inflation. A faction no doubt is arguing for a second stimulus package as politically difficult as that may be. But conventional wisdom and intuitive inclination especially outside of the administration and economic academia is more concerned about the ever-growing monstrous US budget deficit - $13.2 trillion and counting. How can we borrow so much without triggering runaway inflation? Where is that money coming from? Who will pay it back? When will the cost of borrowing suddenly go through the roof? Already the interest alone is billions a day. And any stimulus package will kick it up even more. Yet without another stimulus to jolt the faltering recovery we may sink into a dreaded double dip. People that are still working are worried about a sudden loss in value of their money; people that are out of work are worried having suddenly having no money as their unemployment insurance runs out. And yet projections show even a greater rate of growth in the deficit as more people retire and go on Social Security and Medicare. All of this is being milked by the suddenly ‘fiscally responsible’ right. They want more than anything for Obama to fail even if many suffer in the process.

Keynesians, economists who adhere to John Maynard Keynes’ theories, which were credited with saving capitalism from the last great depression, argue that only by getting the economy growing again will the upturn be created. As economic activity increases there will be less payout of entitlements and more tax revenues. Furthermore, Keynesians worry about serious deflation setting in, something has not happened since the Great Depression. Deflation on the face of it sounds good - a lowering of prices, things get cheaper. But it is actually devastating in an aggregate sense since it re-enforces the downturn turn in business activity, since as prices falls consumption is postponed and weakened.. Some economists (see Paul Krugman in NY Times 7/12/10) believe we are already on the cusp of such a phenomenon.) But spending more when you are broke or deep in debt is counter intuitive to the public. So Republicans (and some Democrats), who were quite understanding when Ronald Reagan and GW Bush were pumping the red ink, are now suddenly ‘very concerned’ and are rallying the public against the ‘exploding deficit.’

If all goes as predicted, there will be a wholesale flushing out of Democrats come November and Obama’s program(s) such that it is(are) will come to a screeching halt. All the non-ideas and failed ideas of the Republicans will the get another chance for consideration – such as further deregulation (more oil spills, salmonella outbreaks and mine cave-ins,) lower taxes for the rich (more irresponsible speculation) wholesale cuts in entitlements (retirement at 70?), further denial of climate change (unequivocally passing the point of no return), revocation of the New Deal (privatization of of Social Security) and so on.

Maybe things have to get really bad before they can get better. Or maybe we will just have to endure and console ourselves that we had a nice a run while it lasted….

Let them eat oil

Let’s see if we can list all the stuff that is happening, most of it awful, and maybe see how it is all connected:

• The Gulf of Mexico is being turned into a giant oils sump due to BPs breathtaking irresponsibility and the Minerals Management Service’s ineptitude and corruption.

• The European Union (EU) is in economic disarray as the PIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain) sink further into the muck - especially Greece.

• Unemployment in the US is back up again.
  

• The US Senate has passed some kind of financial reform – hope it has teeth.

• A new bear market is reflecting pessimism and fear.

• Thailand is near revolution (or would like to be.)

• North and South Korea are near war with a recent sinking by N. Korea of a S. Korean warship.

• The climate bill in Congress according to most environmental organizations is a dud of the first magnitude (and maybe DOA, anyway.)

Does anyone now doubt this fully industrialized phase of late monopoly capitalism is not lethal to the planet and its inhabitants? As I write this thick black crude oil is gushing into the Gulf of Mexico at a rate equivalent to an Exxon Valez oil spill every three days. They have no fucking idea how to stop it other than drill into it the reservoir from some other location – which will take weeks more! It is a horror show of the first order as the oils seeps into the biggest remaining wetland in the US, the Mississippi Delta, and gets into to a current that will take it to the Keys and on around encircling the entire state of Florida.


Moving right along. The European Union is in trouble. Its poorer members like Greece rode high while the whole global economy was living off of an inflated US housing marker, are now is hitting the skids. The bubble popped and trillions of euros, dollars, rubles, shekels, yens whatever vanished into cyberspace (just like your long winded email note does when your email word-processor acts up.) After all it was really never was any more than bits and bites in bank leased 'server farms.' No doubt the banks that financed Greece and the other major debtor states during the gravy years also invested in heavily in lots of BP common and preferred stock. After all BP was/is making billions in profit in 2009. The irresponsible financing of runaway expansion in the PIGS is all a part of the financial complex’s lust for easy money led by what we fondly call “Wall Street.” The banks European and worldwide are understandably in cahoots with the carbon extraction energy giants (like BP and Exxon-Mobil, Massey Coal) because they are so profitable. It is very profitable to kill a planet. When the oil corporations lobby Congress for regulatory leniency and (appallingly) subsidies they are only fronting for their real owners, the banks and investment houses.


No one really knows what the US banks are now worth. Since all of the high tech financial instruments, derivatives and various collateralized packages containing 'underwater 'mortgages are still owned by the banks and are still part of their reserves, their value is what the banks claim their value is. The big bailout that everyone resents so much merely put the US government in as co-signer on all this bad debt. Once confidence was restored between the banks, they could again return to making business as usual. With credit restored they can borrow from the Federal Reserve at nearly zero interest and buy US bonds essentially loaning money back to the government at interest. Kind of a good deal, huh? Obviously the EU is left out of this subterfuge to some extent and must support their poor sisters, like Greece, all by themselves. The EU, which mainly means Germany, is the most prosperous of the EU members but is hardly happy about the prospect. Economists say the EU crisis calls into question the whole concept of a unified Europe economy with one currency for rich and poor countries alike. Exacerbating the situation are currency speculators who make big money by ‘shorting’ (betting on the euros decline) thus making a bad situation worse by creating inflation forcing up interest rates.

The instability in Europe has had deleterious effects on the US stock market with the Dow Jones falling over a thousands points since late April – remember all the financial giants are hooked together is various ways. Also adding to the pessimism of the investor class is the fact that the Republicans have been unable to beat back the Democrat-led financial reforms since even the GOP’s own Tea Party base also wants the Wall Streets boys’ heads on poles. Also unemployment numbers went back up after months of improvement possibly indicating the 2009 stimulus may be petering out. A southward bound stock market leads to a consumer reluctance to spend, this fear of layoffs in turn actually creates said layoffs, which loops back as increased unemployment and feeds additional sell offs in the stock market. Paradoxically they in aggregate could create the dreaded ‘double dip’ they so fear. Such a self-perpetuating recessionary loop can only to be arrested by another deficit-increasing stimulus which is becoming ever more unlikely as comparisons of the US to Greece abound by both Republican and Democratic party 'deficit hawks' (see Paul Krugman and his commentators in the 5/21/10 NY Times.)

How does poor Thailand fit into all of this? Thailand is part of the global economy so times are hard there, too. Apparently the ‘Red Shirts” causing all of the turmoil are angry to the point of insurrection as a reaction to a 2006 military coup. In 2006 a putsch ousted then-premier Thaksin Shinawatra, a folk hero among the urban poor, a new-money business class and millions of Thais in northeastern farming country. They’re angry and want an election. - not unreasonable. It’s a typical class struggle situation.

And then there is North and South Korea and their lingering cold war. It was temporarily alleviated by a liberal government in the South making overtures to the North. But now that the conservatives are back in power in the South, the hostility is again making a comeback. The conservatives probably got back in because of dissatisfaction with their economy's performance. North Korea, a pariah state that is the best argument against police state socialism that ever existed, is by all accounts a basket case in every respect. Whatever could be done with them as far as integration into the world order never is done and they stay outside looking in. No doubt N Korea would love to emulate “Red China’s” economic takeoff. They hate being ignored and neglected so they cause some ugly incident every so often. My guess is that it is tacit and unstated in US foreign policy circles, Demo and Repub alike, to keep them permanently out in the cold and unhappy so we will have an on-going ‘serious threat’ as an additional justification for our massive military machine which props up to some our much or our economy.


Finally, climate legislation seems to be on everybody’s back burner. But this mother of all problems is not going away because 40% Americans don’t think it’s a problem; or that the carbon based energy complex (BP et al) has more money than God to buy off Congress; or that the Senate’s Kerry Lieberman bill sucks (”Kerry Lieberman”! doesn’t that say it all?); or that the Markey Waxman bill passed by the House strips the EPA of the authority to regulate greenhouse gases. The beltway boys are predicting the Gulf spill will undermine passage of Climate legislation. Maybe that’s good since doing a half-assed job (like they did with the Health Care bill) might cause more harm than good. At least with health care the problem can’t be ignored and if it fails to perform it can be fixed. With climate legislation our program is as much a signal to the world as it is an effective policy. If we set up something that looks inadequate, it will take on a life of its own for better or worse.

Let’s hope this unfolding world historical disaster in the Gulf of Mexico will be the catalyst for bold, robust, effective, visionary climate and energy legislation. The energy behemoths like BP now appear to the public as do the financial behemoths of Wall Street like Goldman Sachs as big, evil and greedy. Will Obama and the Demo controlled Congress respond or will they disappoint us again?

A new ragdoll to gnaw on

We need a new ragdoll to gnaw on now that health care reform legislation finally passed, although it sure is far less than it could have been. As far as I can tell it contains no real means to keep health insurance rates down. Then there was tactical surrender on the Hyde amendment so that health insurance offered on the exchanges cannot include abortion coverage. And of course meds bought through Medicare will continue to be the full non-negotiated retail price. Also it turns out the insurances companies’ punishment for dropping people when they get really sick apparently is a mere wrist slapping. But at least many more people will have some level of care so they won’t suddenly show up at the ERs around the country desperately sick and uninsured. Everyone will be able to get see a doctor early on before it’s too late. And importantly the mad dogs in the Republican Party cannot claim victory thus beginning a bloody feeding frenzy on the remains of Obama’s reform agenda.

The new ragdoll for the media’s talking heads to growl over and chew on and pull apart is now ‘financial reform.’ The big boyz on Wall Street and their hotshot lobbyists and their $1000 dollar an hour lawyers must be gobbling down piles of Adderall hoping to conjure up some fine new ideological justification for keeping their no-holds -barred Greed Arena (AKA Wall Street) up and running. (One argument might be if you are smart enough to understand some of the more esoteric financial derivatives, then you deserve to be rich.) No one regardless of their politics likes the idea of these guys emerging from the partially reconstructed ruins of a crashed world economy even richer, an economy that they brought down, especially since the taxpayers (some now unemployed and/or ex- homeowners) and their children and their children’s unborn children had to ‘front’ the banks an astronomical sum to bail them out (and to presumably 'unfreeze credit' worldwide.)

Otherwise what? Full scale global Economic Armageddon or merely a winnowing out of the losers. We will never know – until the next time. Naturally the Repubs, even as most of them voted for the bail out, are now conveniently taking a full-on lassez faire libertarian view that the banks should have been allowed to fail even if all hell broke loose as it did in the 1930s – ‘creative destruction’ and all that.

The Wall Streeters emerging from all of this richer than Crocus is like the captain of the Titanic being awarded a shiny gold medal for hitting an iceberg (or GW Bush’s handing out Freedom metals to the architects of the Iraq debacle.) It turns out the ‘masters of the universe’ combined income for 2008 is twice the size of the debt of the a now bankrupt entire country, Greece, which apparently gorged itself with now worthless bonds at the urging of its investment bankers Goldman and Sachs (see Matt Taibbi's article in Rolling Stone.) Since teabaggers and lefties alike are pissed, for once the Demos and GOP are forced to come together on something – but what? That remains to be seen.

The pols are arguing over issues that manner greatly - such as whether to reinstate Glass Stegall, an effective Great Depression era law that imposes a firewall between old fashioned commercial and freewheeling investment banks, controlling derivatives by making them more transparent and subject to monitoring, breaking up the monster banks that can bring down the entire global world capitalist order if they fail and giving financial consumers some kind of regulatory protection. Other ideas include, taxing speculation to reign in the hot money that fuels volatility in critical commodities (like oil) as well as currencies (that can bankrupt whole countries.) Another problem is the inherent corruption of paid-for bond rating services such as Standard & Poors and Moodys. Triple AAA rated bonds turned out to be actually to be triple AAA rated dogshit because the bonds’ ratings were paid for by the very outfits floating the bonds. Nice huh?

To further muddy things up the financial big boys gave lots of money to Obama’s campaign. And Obama has seen fit to staff his economic team with Goldman Sach friendly Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s whose key aide is from Goldman Sachs. And of course Obama signed on to the big bank bail-out called TARP devised by ex-Goldman Sach CEO and GW Bush’s Sec of the Treasury, Henry Paulson. But now with Demos are on the move in a regulatory mood with the wind at their back, Wall Streeters have slid their bets over to the GOP side.

So with the GOP setting themselves up to carry the water for the Wall Streeters it should be interesting to see how they manage things. The populace politically right, left and center really do want the bankers reigned in (and maybe punished a little to boot, like hung from the nearest lamp post.) So far it looks like we are going to see a rerun of their health care bill strategy, that is the GOP by dicking around and stalling and undermining things in general will make sure what does emerge is a big fat toothless dogturd.

Will it work again? Will the home of the endless filibuster threat continue live on in perpetuity, the land where a democratic majority equals 41%? The American people are so seriously bifurcated that whatever intellectually dishonest, disingenuously brilliant points the Repubs make combined with whatever valid concerns they raise will be lost in windstorm of left and right oriented cable ‘news’ - hype, rabid overstatement, pundit grandstanding and spinmiester bullshit.

In any case, no one has any real answer as to how to deal with a US economy that now runs on essentially fictitious capital, where profits are made from instruments that generate monetary value but no actual utility. Increasingly the economy has become dependent on casino-like speculation driven by so called ‘markets’ (often manipulated as we see with Goldman Sachs shorting its own product.) Fifteen years ago, the assets of the six largest banks in this country totaled 17 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The assets of the six largest banks in the United States today total 63 percent of GDP. And that’s just the largest ones, what about adding in the rest? Now it’s all about finance, insurance and real estate (FIRE.) We don’t actually manufacture that much anymore. No wonder we have nearly 10% unemployment. There are few factories left. They all went east young man, Far East. From these figures, 63% of the GDP, it seems to mean the banks are ‘producing’ 2/3’s of everything. But what comprises this 63%? Aren’t these assets valued at what the banks says they are valued at and include all kinds of toxic CDOs and whatever, assets that contain ‘tranched’ that is embedded mortgages that are now ‘underwater’ but haven’t been defaulted on yet? Remember the banks weaseled out of ‘mark to market’ valuation of their assets awhile back. As far as I can see it will take a revolution to reign in these bastards, but I hope it’s not the kind the teabaggers have in mind…

Cutting off noses to spite faces

The always fickle, emotional and often ill-informed (read: easily fooled) ‘swing voters’ of Massachusetts have sliced off their noses to spite their faces. Unhappy with things in general (aren’t we all) double digit unemployment, rich pig bankers getting richer after crashing the economy, an ever growing trillion dollar federal deficit, two wars - no waiting, spineless soft ball playing Democrats, etc., etc) decided to show their displeasure by voting in a Republican as their new senator. They must have been aware by voting for pretty boy Brown it would ruin the (so-called) filibuster proof majority in the Senate and throw a large nasty monkey wrench into the protracted and convoluted negotiations for much needed national heath care reform. Massachusettians already have a state universal health care, in fact one very much like the one that was emerging from Congress. So their message to the rest of the country – screw you, we got ours!

If there were general dissatisfaction with the state program, it would have made sense. But that wasn’t the case. Polls show that Massachusettians are more or less satisfied with it despite all of its shortcomings. They were just pissed in general (as we all are.) The fake populist, pseudo libertarian “teabagger” Repub party staged spectacles must have resonated with these airheads. Presumably the same crew that voted in Obama last fall must have turned on him and his hapless party in Congress and voted for the polar opposite. Very stupid! If Obama’s overly optimistic campaign promises made sense to them in November of 2008, that is his intention to clean up, or try to, the pile of elephant shit left behind by Bush and the Repub’s eight long miserable years of misrule, why show dissatisfaction by voting in a member of the same gang that fucked things up in the first place? It just shows that the voters don’t know what they want, except they want things to change. Apparently they think some handsome male model type in shining armor will ride in on a white horse and rescue them from “the dragon” (the dragon being: the Socialist Obama?, the Democrats?, the economy?, what?) As usual it’s all about glib style and well-crafted bullshit.

Of course, there is more to this than just ill informed, vindictive ‘swing voters’ turning on their latest savior. The performance of the Obama administration has been a big letdown for us all. With everything going for him: majorities in both houses of Congress, enthusiastic support, a discredited opposition and a clear mandate for change, he got bogged down and outflanked by a rat pack of naysayers on the right. No one expected him to be a closet radical that would suddenly tear off his rubber mask and be Che Guevera or even just a real reformer like either of the two Roosevelt’s. But geeze no one expected him climb into bed with the bankers, or invite big pharma and the health insurance industry to help fix something that was already working very well for them, thank you.

No one liked the big piece of dog doodoo that was poised to be passed. What’s not to like? - mandated health insurance with no controls on the for-profit health insurance companies from continuing raising premiums. Any “public option’ controls gone – too “socialistic.” And to pay for helping people who can’t afford this mandated insurance, the people (mostly upper middle income and union members) who have so-called “Cadillac” plans, they will see an ugly increase in premiums due to a new excise tax. Plus lots of sleazy backroom deals to buy votes from Democrat turncoats (AKA “Bluedogs) who should instead have been simply threatened with being cut off from party support come next election not fucking pandered to (Harry Reid is such a wimp.) But some needed reforms did survive to sugarcoat this bitter pill – no dumping people when they need insurance the most or precluding people who have preexisting conditions. Plus health care reform simply needs to be done. As we know the uninsured when very sick or seriously injured now just show up at ERs, and the hospitals fold this major cost into their overall fee structure thus driving up the costs in general including Medicare. Plus hundreds of thousands suffer and die from preventable conditions. Is the US or some banana republic?

Obama’s defensive, overly cautious, naively bipartisan approach was dead wrong. He needed to come out swinging. The old ‘best defense is a strong offense’ was called for. Sure he was a ‘centerist’ even as people like me wanted to believe he was on our side, the mostly ’left of center’ of Democrats (most Demos are.) The people who worked their asses off to get him elected, the college kids who naively thought he was the Second Coming, the union members, the old ‘new left’ from the Sixties, in short his base was always far to left of him on most issues. But his intelligence, rhetorical gifts and calm demeanor under fire was a welcome relief from his inept and reactionary predecessor. And the sheer magnitude and interlocking complexity of the problems he faces as President arw awesome to say the least. But he keeps disappointing us, and apparently the liberal leaning electorate of Mass.

There is a single payer health care system in ever other industrialized county in the world and we have to settle for this Rube Goldberg clunker. Clipped and chipped away it was plan only a loyalist Democrat Party hack of the first order and a health insurance company executive could love. So no doubt many regular Democratic voters in Mass sat this one out. And an impending tax on so-called “Cadillac plans, the generous health plans that unions had negotiated in good faith in lieu of cost of living wage increases no doubt kept many union members home.

Something is very wrong. Maybe this is how it feels to be living in an empire as it begins its slow decent into a second tier status. The voters swing wildly back and forth between two presumably ideological opposing parties. To borrow from Keats “the center cannot hold.” Our two parties are in reality simply equally ineffective gangs of opportunists shilling for the corporate rich, each capitalizing on the other’s failures as they take turns in the drivers seat. This while everything for most people gets slowly, inexorably worse. And running in background out of view like a multitasking operating system, the real rulers, the ultra rich, the corporate ruling class quietly calls the shots which are always aimed at retention of their power, their wealth and their privilege, this regardless of the cost to rest of us - socially, economically, environmentally.

Let’s hope this Massachusetts thing will give Obama and his inner circle a jarring shock. Let's hope they start listening to the people instead of continuing to take their marching orders from the millionaires and billionaires. Remember he's got three more years!

Halfbaked

As some people like their eggs 'sunny side up' with the attendant risk of slimy mucus-like egg white to contend with, so too some people like their politics ‘right side up’ with undercooked, half baked slime to contend with. They are called Republicans. The lower the standards the better they like it. As pigs enjoy wallowing in the muck so do Republicans revel at the opportunity to get ‘down and dirty.’ Truth, respect, civility, intellectual honesty, peer reviewed science - all of are little concern. It is all about effective propaganda.

As we all know the GOP (Grand Old Party), as the Republicans like to call themselves, was once the party of Lincoln. But I doubt if Abraham Lincoln were he alive today would touch the Republicans with a ten-foot pole. The party has mutated into something ugly and evil. It has become chock full of proudly ignorant and the easily manipulated ditto heads - essentially demagogue fodder. Add to this a solid component of wild-eyed Libertarian “pure capitalism” absolutists, a very generous helping of Second Amendment obsessed ‘happiness-is-warm-gun’ nuts and finally a noisy hoard of self-righteous fundamentalist Christians whose primary concern over all other issues is the absolute right of all fetuses intended or unintended to be born upon the earth (once you’re born, however, you’re on your own, Kiddo! ) Yet most of these folks, good intentioned as they may be, are from the very social classes in which Republican economic policies hurt the most.

Behind the curtain of this Republican ‘down home populism’ is a sort of Wizard of Oz, a tight network of smart, amoral corporatists with an extensive and effective lobbying apparatus, ideologically linked is a shadowy network of tax-loathing, secretive independent billionaires. This ‘lose confederation of millionaires and billionaires’ (to borrow from a Paul Simon song) quietly serves as a brain trust, as puppet masters and paymasters for the Grand Old Party. They work, often hand in hand with many like-minded Democrats, to keep in place (and upgrade when possible) a fervently pro-corporate, globalized (read outsourcing of jobs), staunchly anti-union, under-regulated, social sector-minimalized, full strength-warfare state (as opposed to welfare state) rolling ever forward.

In recent times and especially since the Southerners departed (thanks to LBJ’s signing of the Voting Rights Act in 1965), the two parties have successfully staked out different territories with respect to pro-capitalism economic ideology specifically regarding the role of the government. While the Democrats appeal to their base, which includes underprivileged minorities, by supporting programs that might help them, the Republicans traditionally oppose any such programs and consider such support anathematic to the character of said recipients. Also Republicans steadfastly oppose any restriction on business (even if it’s to make their beloved capitalism work better – i.e. antitrust legislation.) They also have in recent years become rabidly anti-environmental to the core.

Republicans like to call themselves “conservatives”, although it’s never clear exactly what they want to conserve. But the word resonates well with the poorly educated lower and middle class whites who feel like they are ‘doing OK, thank you’ and don’t need any help from Big Brother - that is until it all falls apart. Republicans always equate any government program other that military, prisons or police as being a slippery slope toward “socialism.” Socialism to them involves some admixture of European social democratic welfare state style socialism and the old hammer and sickle, police state, Soviet Union socialism/communism. The two are illogically but conveniently merged for emotive effect. In fact many a Republican’s political careers has been launched by accusing an opponent of a being “a Red” or a “Pinko”.

A weakened Democratic Party coming out of the Viet Nam war era (which they were rightly blamed for) relied mainly on the misdeeds and downfall Republican Richard Nixon (who we now realize was actually a moderate in terms of economic policy, anyway) rather than formulating a bold new program. The result was good-hearted conservative Southern Democrat Jimmy Carter’s inept and unlucky presidency. In the 1970s the Democrats floundered under a Cold War foreign policy fiasco (as former puppet state Iran became revolutionary Iran broke and away from the US orbit in an ugly hostage crisis) and a faltering economy as joblessness increased while inflation and interest rates ran rampant, and oil supplies choked up. This paved the way for the right wing of a formerly “center right” party to redefine the entire political landscape as the Republicans found their own FDR in reverse – Ronald Reagan. Reagan was the consummate politician – actor by trade and a sly charming demagogue by nature. He singled handedly wrenched the entire US political spectrum as far to the right as it has ever been - and things have never the same since. And Reagan unveiled something new under the sun ’supply side economics’, to whit: simply lower taxes (on mainly the wealthy) and the extra income will be re-invested and create sufficient economic growth to recoup the lost revenues. It was a cruel hoax. Reagan left office with a monumental national debt (remember balancing the budget was an article of faith in pre-Reagan Republican circles.) Of course Reagan’s real enemy was the dreaded welfare state, which would now could be deemed politically impossible (for subsequent Democratic administrations) to maintain because of the horrendous overhead just to pay the interest on the now gargantuan national debt.

But the Republican heir to the throne, George H.W. Bush (AKA Bush the Elder,) could not keep industrial-strength, contradiction embedded Reaganism going on forever and suffered a humiliating one-term presidency being defeated in 1992 election by one William (Bill) Clinton of Arkansas.

Again the Democrats had offered up a Southern Democrat (one of the few that their were left by the 1990s.) Clinton found traction once he began behaving like a true moderate Republican (also an endangered species by then.) The Republicans hated Clinton not because of his program, it was straight out of their traditional party-line pre-Reagan rulebook, but because he did it so well. In the end with the Religious Right and moralistic Republican hypocrisy at full high tide, Clinton was nearly impeached for lying about something as personal as his extramarital sex life!

But somehow Clinton’s successful “Republican Presidency” (welfare reform and a balanced annual budget) was not enough to keep the Democrats in power. Enter one George W. Bush, who eventually materialized as a self-styled ersatz Ronald Reagan sans Reagan’s charisma, luck or intellectual curiosity. As we know the Bush presidency was handed its defining moment and opportunity in a basket when the blowback from US geopolitical maneuvers in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Israel/Palestine resulted a crazed jihadist attack of the World Trade Center. Eight years later suffice to say whatever good will and nostalgia for Reagan still lingered with the masses of apolitical types, Georgie Boy blew it all away big time with two wars, a dogged adherence to Reagan’s discredited ‘supply side’ nonsense (tax cutting coupled with major spending in which Reagan’s astronomical annual deficits were actually dwarfed,) a blithely mismanaged major natural disaster and finally on the eve of departure, the mother of all recessions.


But the GOP survived Richard Nixon being driven from office for indictable criminality and it has survived a presidency of breathtaking incompetence (and also possible indictable) Yet what a cranky, creaking piece of work the Grand Old Party has morphed into! With an idealistic, cautious to a fault, centrist, intellectual Democrat in as President who is stuck with a Pandora’s box of inherited problems, the Republicans have mutated into a well-oiled machine of a denial, dishonesty and rabid demagoguery. Their sole purpose has become a unified mission to undermine, discredit and mock the sitting president’s every action and every attribute. And add to their hate mongering the Democratic president just so happens to be of mixed-race lineage (he’s black!) This provides a target rich environment for their full arsenal of veiled racist innuendos and flanking maneuver racism.

Republicans are now counting on the Bushian-generated quagmire of misery to prove to be inescapable, and the electorate will turn away from Obama and the Democrats and turn back in disappointment to their only other choice – them! To make matters worse a new media landscape has emerged as daily newspapers fall like bowling pins replaced by shallow, banal, context-free cable news ‘infotainment’ (one outlet even becoming simply megaphone for the Republican Party and its even crazier right wing.) Couple that with a nationwide network of intellectually dishonest, demagogic radio and TV jabberwockies and a loose confederation of fanatic right wing Internet bloggers dedicated to assiduously resisting any idea left of Genghis Khan and you have the present media landscape.

The fight over the final version of this unfolding omnibus bill to confront the raging, resource hemorrhaging mess our health care system is in will be telling. But it is mere prelude to the even more critical world-historical struggle before us – global climate change. Because whether or not the US can reign in its runaway health care costs, as important as it is, it is only incidental compared to our leadership in reigning in global warming in which the US is a major contributor and important hegemonic role model. The same dark forces of denial, dishonest argumentation, ignorance and pigheadedness will be at play - but more of them and even more in earnest.