The problem of "silos"

When pressing issues that demand cooperative engagement are kept separate even as they are hopelessly intertwined we call that putting things in “silos.” A good example of that was a lead story last week in the NY Times on a the recent UN report on climate change.. This NY Times report like so many others before it tried to impart the gravity of the global warming crisis in their usual measured language. Interestingly in the same paper was another article entitled Was Marx Right? It was one of their panel discussions. The subject this time was on the wobbly state of the global economy and whether Karl Marx maybe got it right after all - that global capitalism will eventually self destruct.

The new UN report from the IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) had the usual grim litany of impending disasters. There will be a disastrous sea rise that will flood coastal zones leading to mass population migrations (and lost expensive beach homes.) Unstoppable feed back loops will be set in motion especially involving methane gas. Frozen arctic tundra along along with massive chunks of frozen methane on the ocean floor will melt releasing large bursts of methane creating even more rapid warming as methane is many times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. As warming becomes ever more pronounced whole sheets of ice will slide off off Greenland warming and redirecting Atlantic ocean currents that have kept Europe out of another ice age. Doomsday stuff (we've even seen the movie.)

Already we have dying coral reefs, increasing ocean acidification and ever more erratic weather. Soon there will be mass extinctions, global food shortages and ever more political upheaval. It's all bad. Those already being affected are the long suffering “wretched of the earth.” people living on $2 a day or less, who never dreamed of buying any Ford F-250 or a Lincoln Navigator or flying to Cancun for spring break.

Then in the very same edition we have the Times reconsidering Karl Marx and his prognostication regarding the fate of capitalism. The Times invited a cross-spectrum mix (left,center, right) to proffer their views on the subject (however no eminent Marxists were included.) The discussion yielded a typical college history of economic theory course's acknowledgment of Marx's contributions to classic economic thought with the usual caveats – the shortcomings in his labor theory value, failures of working 'class consciousness' to properly evolve as their living standard rose and its composition evolved, and so forth. But always like a dark shadow looming, assumed but not explicitly mentioned, is the perceived failures of fully non-capitalist economies to date. Yet none of the participants could deny the Marxist view of the inherent instability of capitalism - its boom and bust nature and the social havoc that its so-called “creative destruction” produces.

But most importantly not one these worthy thinkers mentioned the relationship between the required need of capitalism for ever expansion and the impact that ceaseless growth has on a finite planet. In other words they all ignored the dynamic relationship between the natural world we rely on and the eed for the entire capitalist edifice to ever expand ("good") or shrink ("bad".) So no one on the panel mentioned the impending catastrophe of global warming. Therefore no one brought up the obvious observation that it was industrialization driven by capitalism that has both caused global warming and is preventing any effective mitigation. Their focus was myopic. Historically the 'free market' has allowed manufacturers to avoid the full cost of production. Manufacturers traditionally have been allowed from the onset of the industrial revolution to lower their costs and thus the commodity's selling price by off loading the useless byproducts of the production process, the waste, on to the land, into the lakes, rivers, the ocean and of course the atmosphere. Only in the last half century was that “externality”even recognized and somewhat addressed (and of course resisted.) But the final irony is the artificially high profits derived from fossil fuel extraction and energy sectors partially due to offloading the full cost of pollution now gives these industries the political and financial wherewith to fund a robust effort to resist addressing this grave problem in any comprehensive way. The world is wedded to a mode of production that not only is exploiting the planet's workers, it is killing the planet's very life support system.

What many have yet to recognize is that Marx had already been there. In the 1850s he was already concerned about what he called “the metabolic rift,” the drive of capitalism to sacrifice natural ecological relationships to the demands of industrialized production. (See Marx's Ecology by John Bellamy Foster, Monthly Review Press.) Of course massive amounts of CO2 had not yet accumulated to dangerous levels in the atmosphere. But other mismatches between natural ecological relations and for profit mass production were already evident. For instance he observed that the natural fertilizers were so depleted in the agricultural sector that guano had to be imported from the tropics to artificially compensate. While at the same time sewage disposal was a serious problems in the growing cities where the former farming population had migrated and were now living in urban squalor. 

 

These two pieces may or may not have been intentionally run same day. But it was left to the citizens in the Comments section to each article to make the connection - not the experts. A basic problem with so many issues is that professionals feel locked into their area of specialization and are reluctant to make connections 'outside their silo.' Of course ordinary schmucks have no such reservations. So a good number brought up the direct relationship between climate change and capitalism's need to ever expand. It's too bad the economists, left, right and center, didn't. It is true of so many things. We zero in on one concern at a time in isolation whereas everything is interconnected. And time is running out.

60 Minutes misses the point

Every winter when it gets especially cold the same pack of inane yappers sitting around on couches on Fox start yucking it up over what an obvious hoax Global Warming is because, damn it, it's cold outside. It would be so cool if they were right (no pun intended.) In fact I deeply hope that they are right, that this whole “global warming thing” is a huge hoax, just a hobby horse for “green” liberals and lefties and a rich source of government grants for bunch of pencil neck academics. Yet even if these Greenie Cassandras are just a bunch of “the sky is falling Chicken Littles," all this effort for renewable energy will not be for naught. It will still give us some more energy options, some of them even may be cheaper. What's wrong with that? Also what's wrong with not having oil tankers periodically split in half in the open ocean or deep sea oil rigs suddenly explode and kill millions of fish, birds and mollusks along with some hapless workers?  Plus name one country that depends on oil as its major source of revenue that is a functioning stable democracy? Also what's wrong with not having our water tables polluted with secret patented chemicals or triggering seismic actions by wholesale fracking of each and every geological formation that may contain oil or gas?

Yet, sadly, one would have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to be aware of the mounting evidence from just a degree or two of warming that has already occurred – and we haven't seen anything yet. Ocean acidification, rising sea levels and methane release feedback loops have yet to really kick in. So it pained me to see a recent segment of 60 Minutes regretfully inform us that non-renewable energy is not making it in the market place. Hey, we don't mind spending $600B annually on military gadgets and weapons that are never subjected to any market based calculations, and often don't work. It's not about whether non-renewables are the next big investment opportunity (even if the Chinese have the patience to wait to see if it is.) Fracked natural gas and oil are certainly making a big splash on Wall Street. Put your money there.

But the tragedy is on a far deeper level than some CBS television show. Our so-called” leaders” (read: politicians with self-serving agendas) of all nations are letting us down. They can't resist the usual geo political distractions – keeping the rickety capitalist edifice running, petty turf battles (read: jockeying for imperialistic influence) and now bloody religious wars (Sunnites vs Shites vs Judaic extremists.) But we are running out of time.

Obama could have turned the tide. Instead of trying to reform our badly dysfunctional health care system first (which did need attention), he should have engaged in a full court press to confront this emerging global world historical catastrophe. Why not use the compelling need to phase out fossil fuels as a creative way to massively stimulate the economy which was acutely in trouble at the time – two birds with one stone. But instead of a FDR we got a Herbert Hoover. The Great Depression was not really ended until there was a massive, no-holds-barred deficit spending program to arm for WWII. 

 

Properly framed the American public could have been brought on board and given a crash course on the science behind this world war level crisis. Obama should have made such an effort. He could have confronted the troglodytes in the GOP head on. He had the credibility then. He had the wind at his back. He could have presented an ambitious, appealing (would provide many jobs), path breaking. paradigm-busting revitalization of the entire economy based on building a spanking new 21^st Century "green" infrastructure. FDR changed the conversation with the New Deal. Obama could have done it with a Green New Deal. With a really robust stimulus (urged by many economists at the time) it would have reversed the Great Recession (which we still have lingering effects of) and presented the United States as a global model for moving against this rift in the metabolism of entire planet's life support system. Instead he let the opportunity slip away.

So fast forward to now. With a meaningful confrontation of the global warming crisis seemingly in perpetual hiatus, why does 60 Minutes have to pile on and bring up the the whole sordid Solyndra affair again?   Moreover, other sources are saying that 60 Minutes got it wrong – there is actually a 97% success with these loans. Anyway enuf said. The producers of 60 Minutes seem to have decided to provide more typical mainstream media corporate "newspeak" fodder. Just like I did CNN I may have to check them off my list.

No surprise really

As Obama takes heavy flack from all sides for the malfunctioning website healthcare.gov I can't help but be reminded of my years (and tears) at Centers of Medicare/Medicaid Service (CMS) trying to implement all the bug-ridden, oversold/under designed apps that came our way. They were provided courtesy of a pack of  opportunistic, parasitic, inept software application development companies that proliferate around the Maryland and DC area, also known as "beltway bandits."

Over the years we had to watch as all Federal government agencies in in every possible way, under both the Dems and the Repubs, assiduously contracted out as much of our work as possible. This was especially true of information technology (IT). Somehow it became an article of faith under both Democratic and Republican administrations that the "private sector" could do everything better. This notion, of course, can  be traced back to of one Ronald Reagan.  By the time I left we as the regional office level IT support staff did not even have the authority to work on our own staff's PCs let alone manage the larger operation. Our IT contractor at the time, the Lockheed Martin Corp, was tasked to handle virtually everything. We were left to simply passively preside over the process.

Privatizing all IT operations at CMS in time would become a recipe for disaster as people with little or no real world technical  experience (but identifiable "management skills") eventually migrated into key  executive level positions. So it is no surprise to see CMS management deeply implicated in the Obamacare website roll-out debacle - see today's NY Times article.  It is also no surprise that an outfit like CGI-Federal weaseled its way into being the lead contractor on the most important technical project of Barack Obama's presidency, and then did such an abysmally poor job. Obviously the Obamanista's in concert with DHHS/CMS upper echelon supergrades let themselves be bamboozled into signing off on a grand plan, and then as things started to head southward were rendered helpless when the circular blame game set in among the multitude of contractors.

Yet the two most populous states, NY and Calif which set up their own "health care exchanges", were able to set up functioning websites for the Affordable Care Act (ACA.)  Of course the Federal level website was many times more complex because it had many more private insurance companies to link to (35 vs 11 in Calif.)   Interestingly it turns out that the State of Maryland, a Demo-run state with their own health care exchange is also  having problems with their website.  Maryland  probably got lured into using the same 'beltway bandits' that CMS got stuck with. Inexplicably a "go your own way ethos" seems to be part of the problem.  Why did the designers of the big Federal one-size-fits-all website for multiple states not compare their initial design with ones already further along at the State level - like California's?  It seems like a scaled up version of a working site might have been easier that building a whopper from scratch.   Also why not look to Massachusetts which had years of experience with their RomniCare?  From the accounts in the news it sounds as if they went their own way.

Part of the problem is the basic concept of ACA. It is quite a rickety Rube Goldberg contraption.  It will probably be problem ridden for a long time because it is inherently an unwieldy concept. Apparently Obama felt like he could not take on the powerful health insurance industry and their deadly effective lobbying and propaganda apparatus. Recall they successfully deep-sixed Clinton's health care plan back in the 1990s. Of course private health insurance plans are  useless "middlemen" in terms of delivering health care. Their primary objective is not providing  health care but selling insurance - and for a profit.  In fact the primary concept of insurance as a business is betting that the insured will not need it, and then if they do the hoping lawyer-concocted small print will allow the insurer to escape paying.   Wasn't it these packs of heartless bastards that caused all the grief in the first place: denying claims for (suddenly uncovered) per-existing conditions, capping claims therefore driving millions into bankruptcy as they are struggling with ungodly expensive treatment for life threatening conditions, and having administrative costs that far exceeded those of government-run Medicare/Medicaid?  Including the insurance companies in any "reform" of the US health care system has the Republican Party ideology (courtesy of Heritage Institute) stamped all over. It still  baffles many why Obama would not take a more straight forward approach - like simply expanding Medicare. At least he could have started there as an initial bargaining position.

Nevertheless, for better or worse Obamacare/ACA is the law of the land and was found Constitutional even by our right-leaning Supreme Court.   Obamacare would have had hit heavy headwinds once it hit the streets even if its website had worked like a well oiled clock.  It inherently has  a soft underbelly very vulnerable to the long knives of the GOP and their right wing media.  It is a major social program and the GOP have opposed 'em all from FDR's New Deal to LBJ's Medicare. They hate social change in general (unless it harkens backwards to some glorified imaginary past.)   But what a monumental blunder to unveil a signature program through a kludgy, bug-ridden joke of a website.

The real irony is that the one thing everybody still agrees on is that the US is still at the forefront of information technology. With all the talent at their beck and call and all of Obama's donor friends in Silicon Valley, it really is a wonder how they let this happen. The answer is that years of privatization of IT operations and the atrophy of in-house IT expertise at the highest levels of CMS  have led to an agency inadequately prepared for projects of this magnitude.  Add to this to a bureaucratic culture that is  too inflexibly tethered to a Pentagon-like contracting process to consider reaching out beyond the Beltway for help. 

That said, since the administration is so deeply fused and identified with it's Affordable Care Act and its basically just nuts and bolts technical issues that need to be resolved (and despite Republican gloating and a campaign of sabotage), in time I believe it will work. And as crappy as ACA is, it will be a definite improvement over what we presently have.

Red Shift - liberals redefined as the extreme left

The entire political spectrum is shifting before our very eyes. The old "extreme left" is gone, chopped off and replaced by some imaginary false entity. Barack Obama's cautious center-right reformist position has now become the new “extreme left" - at least in the fevered imagination of the new Republican Party.  In the past the Communist Party, the old CP, was the extreme left and the boogie man. When the Soviet Union imploded in 1989, the Red Menace and home grown"Commies" as scary subversives ceased to exist. The world historical task of supplanting  capitalism with "something better" was put on a back burner.  Furthermore, as time passed Communist China morphed into instead of a "workers paradise"something akin to a "capitalist's paradise."

On the other pole is the "extreme right." The ultra right abhors the idea  that capitalism is anything but a godsend. Their ideal is a  pure unfettered market economy conveniently ignoring all historical experience to the contrary - depressions/recessions, worker exploitation, environmental destruction, extreme concentration of wealth, monopolies/oligopolies, etc.  The "extreme right" in the past was associated with fascism. Under fascism a nationalistic and dictatorial leadership allows privately owned corporations and the government to become absolutely fused. And then through propaganda and brutality a grudging  acquiescence from the population is created. We know where that led - Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany. Now it has a more benign name: "corporatocracy" and a different allure - a tax free state with little or no pesky government interference with corporate operations - "the market" (and law suits) determine everything.  This is called libertarianism.  Fascism's support in the past was gained by exploiting patriotic sentiments  and economic discontent mixed with all sorts of malicious human inclinations including ethnicism, rabid nationalism, antisemitism, racism - and greed; the libertarian's allure is simply greed.

After the world experienced the horrors of a second world war and and horrendous incidents of genocide (committed by both the "extreme right" and the "extreme left"), the countries not run by the "extreme left" decided to accept capitalism but to work out some accommodations - known (pejoratively) as the "Welfare State."  The "extreme left" calling themselves "Communists"  continued to run the Soviet Union, which had been a temporary ally with the capitalist West during the war against the "extreme right", fascism.  In the decade after the war the Soviet Union under Nikita Khrushchev tried to mend its totalitarian ways after their brutal leader, Joesph Stalin, died. But it was too late. The center right and McCarthyist extreme right in the US made sure that any alternative to capitalism was blocked at ever step of the way - hence we had a muted or Cold War for 40 years.  Internally in the Europe and the US  the center-right as “conservatives” and center-left as “liberals” (terms used in the US) each created there own political parties and coalesced around an acceptance of capitalism.  This accord for the most part has worked at least in the industrialized West. The rest of the world is another story.

In this arrangement there is an agreed upon understanding of  "loyal opposition" on both sides. One side advocates an extensive governmental social support apparatus and the restraint of capitalism worst tendencies through regulation. The other side works to resist and tone down that position believing  the less government interference with the 'magic of the market' the better.  All successful industrialized democracies are characterized by this accommodation, and are essentially run by centrist parties. Each side take turns running things.  Communists parties on the left and quasi-fascist parties on the right are tolerated (at least in Europe) but never seem to really acquire real power for very long.

However here in the US of A this is accord is unraveling.  We seem to be entering a disturbing new era in which this consensus on “loyal opposition” has broken down. The abiding toleration for a government that provides for the citizenry and a dulls the sharper edges of capitalism through regulation is now being called into question. That position is now dishonestly defined as the "extreme left." The tried and proven programs (Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, FDA, EPA, etc.) have become anathema to the formerly center-right party.. No longer does the political right wing of the establishment, the Republican Party, want to play by rules of ordinary majority rule.   Every gimmick, every loophole, every irrational idiosyncratic rule is exploited to the max – negative dishonest ads, voter suppression, gerrymandering, filibustering; and now the routine use of political extortion. The new extreme right is building on (and going far beyond) former President Reagan's ground breaking success at undermining public support for governmental social programs and regulatory authority.  And to make matters worse  a  pack of ideologues going even beyond the already extreme right wing Republican Party leadership threatens to take us over the brink and possibly crash the entire economy by refusing to allow the government to pay it's bills and fulfill it's obligations. Even former GOP henchmen like Karl Rove are alarmed by their ruthlessness.  This is not democracy this is an attempted at a coup d'état by non-military means.

Middle East - a color coded graphic badly needed

This is a strange situation. The US is now rushing off to 'punish' an evil dictator for something another evil dictator 'walked" on. As we know Saddam Hussein blatantly gassed several hundred Kurds before he became  an 'official enemy' - and nobody did jackshit. Yet ironically we want to 'punish' but not remove from power this chin-less wonder, Bashir Assad. It's only harassment and "degradation of his military capability" but not defeat because if he were actually defeated, it might mean our currently 'official enemy', the (ever multiplying) "El Qaeda 'affiliates," might take over.

It is alarming (to me) that when the leadership of the Republican and Democratic parties finally agree on something, it's something bad - that it's a good idea to again stick our arm into a hornet's nest.  Recall that most of the recent bad decisions by Congress (Iraq War, NDAA, Patriot Act) came with this kind of coalescence of Demo and GOP 'opponents. '

One almost needs a color-coded interactive graphic to begin to make sense out this complex geo-political mosaic mess. The Muslim religion is engaged in a internecine four-way war with moderates Muslims vs. reactionary Muslims vs. reactionary Shia vs reactionary jihadist Sunnis, and both vs. the "infidels in the West." And the Mid East states (along with Pakistan and Afghanistan) is the main battlefield.

 First you have the Syria involved in a bloody civil war with a brutal regime that may or may not have used nerve gas as a weapon. Then you have Iran, one of our current 'official enemies' which is actively pro Assad, Next you have Iraq (now almost a failed state courtesy of a US invasion a decade ago) with its besieged Shia government presumably pro-Assad while its bellicose terrorism-prone Sunni opposition actively anti-Assad (and sending fighters to Syria.) ,  Lebanon is the home of the Shia Hezbollah and the bane of the Israelis and who successfully forced the Israel Defense Force out of Lebanon.  Hezbollah, is now actively and effectively helping Assad militarily. Then there is the oil-rich Gulf States including Saudia Arabia all Sunni and actively supporting the anti-Assad forces including the Al Qaeda factions. Ah yes, and then there is the big bear, Russia, a long time ally of Syria going back to the Cold War days, who is also actively supporting the Assad regime with modern weapons (and along with China blocking any UN sanctions against Syria.) Turkey, now run by Sunni Islamists, is actively supporting anti-Assad forces and is constantly cajoling the US to become more involved. On the sidelines is the post Arab Spring Egypt, that volitile "ex-democracy” now army-run, presumably  on the side of secular anti-Assad forces but their now persecuted democratically elected opposition, the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood one would assume would also be supportive of Sunni anti-Assad forces.  Into this caldron of doom the US under Barack Obama now wants to jump in feet first and prior to any proper independent UN investigation of the facts.  And, of course, Israel, perennial enemy of Syria and now Iran (and everybody else in the neighborhood), quietly cheering on the US as it wades into another dismal swamp without a compass. 

As horrible a precedent as using sarin gas is (if that's what really happened) as a new way to 'drain the swamp' of insurgent supporters, its use should still is not be used as an excuse for the US to get involved in yet another regional war – or worse. It could become an assassination of Archduke Ferdinand kind of moment. There are too may power players, too may hot headed Jihadists, too many unknowns. Even the US military advised against getting involved (until ordered to cooperate by their Commander and Chief) who hemmed himself in with loose talk about crossing red lines.

Moreover the US assuming the role as global enforcer of 'proper' warfare standards seems a bit hypocritical to say the least what with our use of drones, cluster bombs, land mines, depleted uranium shells, white phosphorus, napalm, Agent Orange and nuclear weapons. Just because a given horrific weapon has not been formally designated 'illegal' does not mean its use is not cruelly effective and as grimly horrible as other 'legal' ones. 

I wish Obama would could wriggle out of this but he's committed now.

Discontent goes to Rio (and everywhere else)

For me the incoming daily news is mostly an unpleasant mix of confusion and disappointment. Yet one thing seems to be increasingly apparent, a new generation of discontents is coming on the scene. They are out in the streets everywhere most recently in Turkey, Brazil and now again in Egypt. Moreover there seems to be, simmering beneath surface, discontent everywhere. In Europe the attempts of the Eurozoners to placate the bankers further immiserates the hapless citizens - especially those of the southern European countries like Greece, Portugal and Spain. In China thousands of small protests occur every year but are ignored by those outside the country.

Here in Obamaland as his second term settles in, the discontent is mounting. His weak centrist program of trying to placate the right has only served to emboldened it. If he really had wanted to take on the post Reagan energized hard right with his so-called “Audacity of Hope” and confront its reactionary agenda, he would not have continued it by filling his cabinet with establishment neoliberal Wall Street hacks like Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner. Yet the worse was mitigated. A relatively successful (but unacknowledged by many) Keynesian fiscal stimulus did arrest the plummeting GDP and prevent a rerun of the 1930s. Beyond that it's difficult to discern what might have been possible. Suffice to say so far the legislative accomplishments have been minimal – zero real progress on confronting global warming (the real crisis of our time) and a complex, controversial health care reform package that addresses some of the problems. But the jury is still on its actual success. The Repubs of course want it to fail and are trying their damnedest to make that happen, and only because he's not one of them. The template for Obamacare came straight from a conservative think tank. And of course the "war on terror" continues, having morphed into an amorphous, pointless war no longer on Al Queda but mainly on the Pakistan/Afghan Taliban and their warlord allies.

The new pisser is this perchance for a seamless airtight security states sanctioned by Obama & Co as well as Congressional leadership in both parties. So now, surprise surprise, we find that the post 9/11 4^th Amendment negating "national security state" embodied int the so called Patriot Act engineered by Bush/Cheney was not only kept in place by Obama & Co but further fortified. The military-industrial complex  now has for-profit contractors joining with the already existing 14 government intelligence agencies, most notably the shadowy National Security Agency (NSA), into a huge Orwellian surveillance state. The idea apparently is to use all available technology to lock the place down. Since the technology now allows it, let's do it! Let's save every banal, routine, personal piece of verbal bullshit that anyone types or utters and save in a massive, ever growing petabyte scale database out on some giant server farm in the Utah desert. The US government apparently intends to collect and save every blurt, blab or giggle, every dumb joke, every careless stupid comment, every racist or politically incorrect aside, every personal confidential disclosure, every insurrectionist fantasy. every fucking thing that goes into any phone or over any Internet connection over much of the planet is save in perpetuity just in case it might be needed later in a some future "terrorism investigation." 

 

But, alas, one person out of the one million or so of loyal acolytes with top secret clearance went rogue and blew the whistle on this whole monstrosity (not that many didn't expect it existed.)  Now all hell has broken lose. Even the Germans, control freaks as they are, are up in arms. The seamless link between the two US political parties has finally been exposed. They may disagree on how much they should tweak and fuss with a capitalist economy that is running on less than eight cylinders, or what should be done for those left out for whatever reason, the old “widows, orphans and poor” question, but they are absolutely in synch when comes to keeping track of miscreants who can now conveniently be called “terrorists” or “would be terrorists.” This while always making sure the definition of terrorist is conveniently open-ended. Edward Snowden like others before him, most recently Bradley Manning and most notably Daniel Ellsberg, is an America hero. The truth will make you free..

Is NY Times' columnist David Brooks a stealth Obamanista?

I started this as a comment to a recent a David Brooks column in the NY Times. But it was too late and the Comments were closed. So I expanded it 'a little.'

David Brooks' NY Times column of 3/19/13 with his reasonable style, amiable manner and beguiling title (The Progressive Shift)  hid a devious purpose. By castigating the Democratic party's Congressional Progressive Caucus's budget (a plan that if ever presented to the American public by Democratic Party officially would go over quite well), is by default giving credibility to the Paul Ryan and Republican Party's brutal, reactionary and economically unsound budget proposal. The Republicans as usual would like nothing better than the weak recovery to falter and collapse. What they offer is counter to sound economic policy. They(as usual) want to attack, undermine and if possible eliminate all social spending programs while pretending to be concerned about the Deficit (which is now going down) and at the same make sure the recession kicks back in - right in time for the midterms. It's all so transparent.

What most people don't realize is that Keynesian ('pump priming' by the government spending to initiate consumer spending and hence more investment, jobs, etc.) has been used effectively by both parties since the FDR days. But we use a variation of its original version, 'Military Keynesianism', but for better or worse it works. While Europeans were able to use it properly, mainly on social spending (as John Maynard Keynes intended), here in the US we have to add our Keynesian social spending on top of our military (over) spending. And it is a medicine abused by both parties. It is intended as a counter cyclical response by a government to a business cycle downturn – restoring demand for goods and services. But it has become like an antibiotic ever less effective due to overuse. Yet it still works somewhat. What do you think got us out of the plummeting GDP numbers in 2009?

Republicans in their heart of hearts know it works it, too. That's why when they get in the Deficit is suddenly not a problem, and they spend like there is no tomorrow. Obama inherited the worse economic downturn in 80 years (and debts from Bush's II's  criminal irresponsibility) and suddenly the Deficit mattered again. Of course it always mattered but it supposed to be paid down in good times. Clinton in the 1990s at least moved in that direction. The very worse thing to do now is go into an austerity mode – exactly what we seem to be headed for what with the sequestration idiocy and Obama's move towards 'splitting the difference' with Repubs. Always keep in mind the Repubs love  hard times with a Demo is in the White House. The Progressive Caucus's budget has zero chance of passage but it should have been used to be define Obama's starting point in the bargaining process. Yet only 84 Democrats in the House voted for it. Instead Obama is talking bout 'chained CPI' and other initial concessions – typical of Obama.  David Brooks appears to be a is a closet Obama supporter. His column blasting the Progressive Caucus's budget proposal effectively is a roundabout way of supporting Obama's caving into the premises that feed Republicans' position on the economy.

But on a deeper level, that is globally, we are in more serious trouble than most people realize. While Keynesian counter-cyclical spending worked to pull us of the nosedive of our recent Great Recession and is still indicated with lingering high unemployment, globally there are troubling currents at play. Deficit spending can forestall a single developed capitalist economy from its main internal contradictions – over overcapacity. But what if we are approaching global overcapacity? How can you have Keynesian deficit spending globally? There will never be an inadequate demand for the necessities (food, water, housing,medical care) not with a large portion of the world's population living in abject poverty. But how much discretionary income driven consumption can there be on (planned perpetually obsolescent) electronic devices, consumer durables like cars and washer/dryers, etc. or the real biggie, housing, if the global oligopolies continue to keep driving down wages battering the only socio-economic class that both wishes to and can afford to buy beyond there absolute need? Besides possible overcapacity in China, globally we are still reeling from the banker/middle class real estate speculation that pumped up the huge housing bubble in southern Europe and the US. But now we discover the Peoples Republic of China, the poster child state-capitalism, cheap labor and skyrocketing growth rates in fact has been pumping up a huge real estate bubble themselves. It appears to be all a house of cards!

Could it be that very rich have given up on capitalism, too? And their dysfunctional policy nostrums (government austerity in midst of recessions, insistence on tax cuts that further drain the already depleted government coffers leading to further infrastructure decay, destruction of the middle class through anti union and labor outsourcing) are only a means accumulate enough wealth to survive some coming apocalypse. This as the oligarch sponsored US Republican Party stands firmly in the way of dealing with catastrophic fossil fuel related climate change. Could be that they only pretend to believe their naive libertarian laissie faire nonsense that they incessantly spout, and they really are just trying to amass enough wealth to build fortresses to survive the coming global environmental, social and economiccollapse they see (and are helping bring about) coming?