Monday, February 21, 2011

maybe it's just me


            For as long as I can remember, people have regarded me as at least reasonably bright.  I have a couple of graduate degrees, not that alphabet soup after your name means you can pour pee out of a boot, but still, I have managed some academic achievement.

            Most folks who know me also think I’m a little better rounded than just book smart.  Most think I’m fairly clear-eyed and common-sensical and have at least a modicum of ability to analyze situations in a cogent way.

            I get the political philosophy that says government these days is too big, that it has its hands, so to speak, in too many apple pies.  To an extent, I even agree with that philosophy.

            I get that political conservatism is  dictionary-defined as a movement that elevates the importance of “traditional values” and is systemically resistant to change.  My personal take is that traditional values are too often those that grew out of and function bestl in societal conditions that no longer exist and that intelligent conservatism should, like the rest of us, be looking for values based on and consonant with “traditional values” that are fine tuned for the modern world.  As for change, my take agrees with the bromide that change is the only constant and resistance to it is both counterproductive and ultimately futile.

            I’m willing to debate my decidedly liberal take with any conservative who wishes to disagree with me and I’m willing to concede that there would almost certainly be areas in that debate where I would lose.  But that is assuming the debate was a rational one, a debate that required every hypothesis to be supported by fact, that took nothing on faith, and that operated on the assumption that the only conclusions worth reaching are those supported by facts and logic—a debate, in other words that does not proceed from a made-up-mind that facts will only confuse.

            And perhaps it is the dimness of mind that comes with age, but since about last September it has become harder and harder for me to find even a modest degree of logic, common sense, or anything that would remotely pass for actionable evidence in much of  this country’s politics. Specifically, I cannot for the life of me figure out what Tea Bag politicians are thinking with the policy suggestions they come up with.  More than that, I can’t figure out what the hell people who vote for them are thinking.

            Exhibit A: we are presently trying (with only moderate success) to wind down a war we foolishly started in Iraq, a war that has cost us innumerable lives and several trillion dollars.  At the same time, we are waging a war in Afghanistan for reasons that are at least a good subject for honest debate that has also cost us many, many lives and trillions of dollars.

            Exhibit B: we currently are a nation with over 9% of its working age population not working.  Economists and demographers tell us that number may be too low by as much as half because we don’t have a way to accurately count the people who aren’t counted as unemployed because they’ve stopped looking for work.  Whatever the actual figure is, a good number of the unemployed have been that way for more than 6 months.

            Exhibit C: since 1983, an unbelievable 43% of the new financial wealth created in this country accrued to the wealthiest 1% of its citizens and a whopping 94% of that wealth landed in the bank accounts of the wealthiest 20%.  Put another way, just 6% of the new financial wealth created in this country since the Reagan years has found its way to 80% of the population.  But that’s in raw dollars, what about real income (i.e. disposable income)?  The bottom 80% do fare a little better there—almost 13% of real income growth has gone their way.  Whoopee.  (No nation, by the way, has ever survived with income inequality numbers like ours.  We are currently in the same category as third world unstable nations like Uruguay or Cameroon.)

            Exhibit D: the American Society of Civil Engineers in 2009 conducted a comprehensive survery of America’s infrastructure (defined as Aviation, Dams, Drinking and Waste Water, Energy, Hazardous and Solid Waste, Inland Waterways, Levees, Public Parks and Recreation, Rail, Roads and Bridges, Schools and Transit) an gave it a grade of D.  Moreover, it concluded that measuring projected spending over the next five years on infrastructure against actual cost of bringing it to a grade of C resulted in a spending shortfall of 1.17 trillion dollars.

            Exhibit E: the most expensive health care system in the world lives right here in the U.S. of A.  The U.S. spends more than twice as much (almost three times as much) per capita on health care than Switzerland—and the Swiss are our closest competitors. As a percentage of Gross Domestic Product, health care in this country weighs in at over 15%.  Most of the rest of the first world countries hold the cost under 10%.  As a final kick in the face, we lead the developed world in infant mortality rates—by a huge margin, and struggle in no better than 5th in life expectancy.

            And I haven’t even touch Education, Social Security, Green Energy, Defense or similar major problems that need addressing.  What’s my point?  If you listen to the yowls coming from the House of Representatives and virtually all of the conservative media outlets, the only two problems we have right now is a federal budget deficit and taxes that are too high.  Slash the budget deficit, and—wrap your mind around this one, mine can’t get there—slash that deficit while cutting taxes at the same time, and all will be well.

            But OK, assume for a moment that every conservative and every Tea Bagger has overdosed on Milton Friedman and genuinely believes trickle down economics and voodoo economics aren’t the same thing.  Explain to me please how cutting programs that employ people (Americorp, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, education funding, programs like that) won’t increase unemployment and thereby lower tax revenues and thereby make even more cuts necessary if we are going to reduce that devilish budget deficit.

            Explain to me how simply bludgeoning 61 billion dollars out of the remainder of this fiscal year’s budget without touching Medicare or Medicaid and giving only a glancing blow to Defense—taking away school lunches, denying medical care to the underprivileged, eliminating Pell Grants, doing away with the National Endowment for the Arts, virtually eliminating funding for community action programs, and so on and so on—how does that help the country?  It doesn’t put people back to work.  Quite the opposite.  What the Tea Bag Republican party in the House just passed was a budget recommendation that, just in the public sector, would eliminate 650,000 jobs.  Add in the private sector jobs that would be eliminated by the loss of public sector jobs and the figure reaches a million.  “So be it,” says John Boehner.  Worse,  it doesn’t do a thing to deal with Exhibits A through E.  All it does, so far as my limited lights can discern, is slash the funding for 12% of the federal budget by about 40%.

            I hope the answer is no, but I have to ask the question.  Is fulfilling the promise they pulled out of their ass during the election season—cutting 1 billion dollars immediately from the federal budget—is that really better for the country than working with moderate Republicans (I’m convinced they still exist) and Democrats to fine tune (not repeal) health care reform, reduce income inequality, fix infrastructure, pay for and end two wars, and create programs that will put people back to work?

            I’m not inclined to say that the entire Republican freshman House class is stupid, nor I suppose am I saying the people who voted for them are stupid,  but so far both groups are making it easy to argue that case.  Either that, or as I’ve suggested before, the politicians are simply callous and cynical and the voters are so caught up in ideology they can't see past their nose.  Cutting every program that protects or in some way serves the little guy is easy when you’re not one of the little guys and either have no brain or no sense of human decency.  If this were just a Dickensian thing, perhaps it wouldn’t matter that much.  But by focusing entirely on eliminating programs that help the middle and lower classes, and ignoring entirely anything that might actually make the country better, conservatives and Tea Baggers are inviting a future that no American wants to see, or thought they ever would.

           

             

Friday, February 18, 2011

republican cynicism redux


            I am beginning to wonder if there is such a thing as a sane Republican, let alone an intelligent one.  Worse, I’m beginning to wonder if there is such a thing as a patriotic Republican, meaning by that one who puts the best interests of the country ahead of the perceived best interests of the party.

            What is becoming increasingly apparent is that the determination the GOP has shown for reducing the federal budget deficit is in reality a fixation on getting rid of programs the party has hated since FDR.  Here’s a lengthy, though incomplete, list.

            Because of the budget deficit, the GOP would have us repeal health care reform, privatize social security, severely reduce if not eliminate both Medicare and Medicaid—or privatize both of them. We also must  eliminate the Departments of Education and Commerce, cancel the S-Chip program, put Americorp to rest, avoid any meaningful investment in infrastructure, get rid of Pell Grants, do away with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Endowment for the Arts, close up the Environmental Protection Agency (or simply stop funding it), defund as well the Securities and Exchange Commission . . .

            The list is far more extensive than that, but you get the point.  Now the Republican governor of Wisconsin, abetted by Republican majorities in both legislative houses, wants to essentially get rid of public employees unions in the state.  Why?  The state’s budget deficit of course.  I talked in my last blog about what I see as the pervading cynicism of the Republican party.  This is one more example of it.

            If you aren’t familiar with Wisconsin’s situation, its budget is looking at a 137 million dollar shortfall for the coming fiscal year.  As governors around the country, from both parties, have been doing, Scott Walker wants to cut back on state employee benefits.  And to be fair, public employee benefits in Wisconsin are among the more generous in the nation.  Most Wisconsin public employees, for example, pay only 6 % of their health care premium costs, and most contribute almost nothing to their pensions.  Walker wants to double health insurance contributions for employees, and initiate a 5.8% contribution to the pension fund, which is actually a little less than the average for government workers around the nation.

            So where’s the cynicism?  Both of those reductions Walker wants to make are to benefits that were collectively bargained by the state’s public employees union and the state.  Getting the reductions should therefore simply involve sitting down with the union, showing it the figures, and reaching a new agreement.  Not so with Governor Walker. Toeing the Republican line that public employee unions are malevolent institutions, Walker wants to effectively eliminate them in Wisconsin. Specifically, he wants to bar the union from negotiating for anything beyond wages (no work rules, health benefits, pension, etc.), and he wants to tie any wage increase they can bargain for to the consumer price index.  In other words, the union could bargain for an increase in minimum wage levels, but only if the consumer price index had gone up that year, and then only for the percentage by which it had risen.  That plan would emasculate the union, but Walker isn’t done.  He even wants to make it impossible for union dues to be deducted from paychecks.  As President Obama succinctly phrased it, “that seems like an assault on unions.”

            Not surprisingly, the halls of Wisconsin’s capital building in Madison are currently jammed with protesters, and the state’s Democratic legislators have left the state to prevent a quorum from being reached and the governor’s bill from being voted on.  That is, to be sure, a childish response, but it may be the only appropriate response to a bill that is so blatantly ideological.

            No question Wisconsin’s budget shortfall needs to be addressed, and no question the pay and benefits of state employees should be one of the things looked at to accomplish that.  But how exactly does “breaking” the union do anything to lessen the budget shortfall?  Short answer is, it doesn’t.  What it does do is satisfy a long held attitude in the Republican party that any entity that functions to protect workers is endemically evil and needs to be destroyed.

            But here’s the kicker.  Last month, Walker and the Republican legislature gave away 117 million dollar in tax breaks to businesses that expand and for private health savings accounts.  The latter of course is the alternative to Medicare and Medicaid, generally only available to wealthier individuals,  that the GOP has been pushing for years.  In other words, 85% of the shortfall the Wisconsin budget faces next year is the result of give-aways the Republican governor and legislature chose to make to business interests.  The state’s Legislative Fiscal Bureau recently issued a brief which flatly stated that, absent the tax give-aways, the state would be looking forward to a budget surplus.

            So, what we have here is a situation where the Republican controlled legislature, in league with a Republican governor, creates a budget shortfall by handing out tax breaks to businesses, then maneuvers to use that shortfall as an excuse to, at a minimum, diminish the take home pay of all state workers, and, if all goes according to plan, break their union as well.

            If this were an isolated example it might be ignored.  But if you look carefully at what the Republican party has been talking about since last November, it becomes increasingly clear that the budget deficit is not, for them, a problem but a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do away with as many programs aimed at helping the lower and middle classes as possible, while making sure that everything possible is done to help the upper class become more upper.  Go back to the top of this blog and review the list of programs the GOP wants to cut or severely underfund and you will not find one that would even inconvenience  the wealthy.

            It’s not hard to figure out what the Republican vision for this country is—a country where wealthy individuals, multi-national corporations and the Republican party are protected and preserved.  What isn’t clear, to me at least, is how they can be so short-sighted as not to recognize that the founders they claim to revere may not have envisioned a social democracy, but they certainly didn’t envision a plutocracy. 

            And it is toward the latter Republicans seem to be leading us.

Thursday, February 17, 2011

republican cynicism and your future

            I’ve written, in a couple of previous blogs, about what strikes me as the deeply ingrained cynicism of the Republican party.  In part that manifests itself in Republican party policy positions that fly in the face of fact (global warming isn’t happening, for example, or my favorite, tax cuts increase federal revenues), or pointedly ignore the best interests of the majority of America’s citizens in order to pass a litmus test required by the party’s most extreme elements.

            In equal parts, it manifests itself in reflexive rejection of anything proposed by President Obama or the Democratic party, even things Republicans supported when they were in power (GOP opposition to the war in Aghanistan that its leaders started comes to mind).  Who after all can forget Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s pronouncement that the party’s “primary objective” was to insure that Obama became a “one term president.”

            With their newly won majority in the House of Representatives, and their increased power in various state governments, that cynicism and preference for party over country is sliding out from beneath the rocks that were hiding it during the first two years of Obama’s presidency.

            The examples are legion, but let me toss out just a couple.  John Boehner, the perennially dapper, if somewhat orange, newly minted Speaker of the House held a press conference in Washington Tuesday. This exchange between reporter Leigh Ann Caldwell and the Speaker was part of it.  Caldwell’s questions were in reference to the 100 billion dollars the Republican House leadership was about to propose be cut from the budget Obama had originally submitted (which was never passed), 61 billion of which would be cuts taken from agency budgets already in place—a near 40% reduction.

            Caldwell: Do you have any sort of estimate on how many jobs will be lost through this?

            Boehner: Since President Obama has taken office the federal government has added 200,000 new federal jobs, and if some of those jobs are lost in this, so be it.

            Caldwell: Do you have any estimate of how many will?  And won’t that negatively impact the economy?

            Boehner: I do not.

At which point, he moved on to the next questioner.

            Think about that for a second.  Over 9% of Americans are currently out of work and at least half of that number have been without work for 6 months or more.  If you’re among that 9%, you know the pain it causes—economically to be sure, but socially, psychologically and emotionally just as much.  If you’re fortunate enough not to be in that number, and you have any shred of human feeling in you, you can certainly imagine the pain.  Boehner’s attitude? “So be it.”

            Equally telling in that exchange is Boehner’s curt, “I do not.”  He and his party are about to propose draconian cuts that could potentially impact jobs in a horribly negative manner, and Boehner does not consider finding out how many jobs might be lost something he ought to at least have checked on?  What possible explanation could there be for that other than “Ideology must be served (cutting budgets is close to Godliness), please don’t trouble me with facts.”

            And the thing is, you don’t have to dig very deep to find the facts.  Just using standard multipliers, the Center for American Progress calculated last week that just the cuts the Republicans are proposing for the remainder of this fiscal year—the 61 billion—would result in the loss of  at least 650,000 government jobs (state, federal, municipal—a substantial number of whom are doing insiginificant  jobs like regulating BP, teaching your children, policing your streets and protecting your home from fire).  In addition, the Center calculated another 350,000 jobs would disappear as the result of the 650,000 who lost their jobs and could no longer afford to buy things, travel, etc.  Put those two together and Boehner was saying “So be it” to a million people losing their livelihood so his party could satisfy its Tea Party fringe.  Perhaps that’s why Boehner preferred to say “I do not.”

            Lest you get the idea that Republican cynicism only exists inside the beltway, consider the great state of Texas, controlled for the past 8 years by a Republican governor and Republican legislature.  Texas currently ranks 47th in the nation in literacy, 49th in verbal SAT scores and 46th in math scores.  Not surprising perhaps in a state whose education powers-that-be recently mandated history texts that devoted more pages to Ronald Reagan than to Thomas Jefferson, but pretty dismal even Texans would have to admit.

            Despite that, Governor Rick Perry—that famous secessionist—took 3.2 billion dollars from the original stimulus package that was earmarked for education and spent it to plug other holes in his budget.  Education saw barely a dime of that money.  He’s also currently refusing  Washington’s latest offer of 830 million in education aid because he’s miffed that Texas’ senators in Congress put language in the offer requiring that this time the money could only be used for education.  The governor of Texas is turning down money to support education in a state that clearly needs all the help it can get, because--now follow me on this--those nasty people in Washington tied the money up so he couldn't accept it for education, then use it for, I don't know, offsetting a tax break he gave an oil company that supported his campaign.  Who suffers? Nobody important in the Republican scheme of things--just a few hundred thousand school kids whose teachers got laid off for lack of funding.

            Keep in mind that Texas has the highest birth rate in the country, which, if it continues at its current level, means that in a decade or so, 10% of American children attending school will be attending a Texas school.  Put in scarier terms, if both birth rate and commitment to education remain as they are under current Republican rule, 10% of American youth will be 47th in literacy, 49th in verbal SAT scores and 46th in math scores.

            Ah, you say, but one way of minimizing that problem would simply be to lower Texas birth rates.  Good point, except for one thing.  Catering to Republican ideology, Texas is religiously (I use that word deliberately) devoted to abstinence-only sex education.  How devoted?  Well, one of the little known features of the recent health reform bill was that it contained money to help states fund sex education programs.  It did that on the theory that better sex education would result in fewer teen-age pregnancies and concomitantly lower medical costs for mother and child.  Senator Orin Hatch, frightened mightily by the defeat his fellow Republican congressman from Utah suffered at the hands of the Tea Party, earmarked 250 million dollars of that money for abstinence –only programs.  Governor Perry gobbled Texas’ share of that money up, but refused an even larger amount that would have had to be used for “evidence-based” programs—i.e. , programs that have been demonstrated to actually work.

            That led to this exchange between Perry and Evan Smith, a reporter for the Texas Tribune, in a television interview.

            Perry: Abstinence works.

            Smith: But we have the third highest teen pregnancy rate among all states in the country.

            Perry: It works.

            Smith: Can you give me a statistic suggesting it works?

            Perry: I’m just going to tell you from my own personal life.  Abstinence works.

Well, that certainly settles that.  Since it’s possible not every teen has Perry’s indomitable will, it might be useful to look at the evaluated results of  studies done by the same group (Advocates for Youth) in 6 states.  In California, Maryland and Missouri the conclusion was that abstinence-only programs had no impact on sexual behavior.  Two of the six, Florida and Iowa, showed actual increases in sexual activity where abstinence-only was the single sex education process employed.  Pennsylvania had what were termed “mixed results,” meaning that more teens expressed agreement with the idea that sex should be postponed, but more teens also engaged in sexual activity.

            Another study of 13 abstinence-only programs by the Cochrane Collaboration could not find one that showed an “enduring effect” on teen sexual activity.  A study by the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health looked specifically at 934 high school students (randomly selected) who had gone the full monty with abstinence-only programs and taken the “virginity pledge.”  What it found was that sexual activity among pledgers was just as high as among non-pledgers, and, more disturbing, pledgers were less likely to use protection and thus were more prone to pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease than those who had participated in “evidence-based” programs.

            For Rick Perry and the Texas legislature, those facts are not only inconvenient, they are insignificant.  Why?  “Abstinence works.”  And it is a matter of urgent moment for the Christian right and the Tea Party Republicans, which is of much greater importance than what might be best for Texas teens.

            I’ll finish this by excerpting a fairly lengthy section from Paul Krugman’s Feb. 13th column in the New York Times.  Now I realize that, for most Republicans, anything Krugman says is anathema because, God forbid, he has a PhD from MIT, is currently a full professor at that elitist bastion, Princeton University, and had the abject audacity to win a Pulitzer Prize in 2008.  Still, he occasionally says something smart.

            Krugman: “How can voters be so ill informed? In their defense, bear in mind that they have jobs, children to raise, parents to take care of. They don’t have the time or the incentive to study the federal budget, let alone state budgets (which are by and large incomprehensible). So they rely on what they hear from seemingly authoritative figures.
And what they’ve been hearing ever since Ronald Reagan is that their hard-earned dollars are going to waste, paying for vast armies of useless bureaucrats (payroll is only 5 percent of federal spending) and welfare queens driving Cadillacs. How can we expect voters to appreciate fiscal reality when politicians consistently misrepresent that reality?
Which brings me back to the Republican dilemma. The new House majority promised to deliver $100 billion in spending cuts — and its members face the prospect of Tea Party primary challenges if they fail to deliver big cuts. Yet the public opposes cuts in programs it likes — and it likes almost everything. What’s a politician to do?
The answer, once you think about it, is obvious: sacrifice the future. Focus the cuts on programs whose benefits aren’t immediate; basically, eat America’s seed corn. There will be a huge price to pay, eventually — but for now, you can keep the base happy.
If you didn’t understand that logic, you might be puzzled by many items in the House G.O.P. proposal. Why cut a billion dollars from a highly successful program that provides supplemental nutrition to pregnant mothers, infants, and young children? Why cut $648 million from nuclear nonproliferation activities? (One terrorist nuke, assembled from stray ex-Soviet fissile material, can ruin your whole day.) Why cut $578 million from the I.R.S. enforcement budget? (Letting tax cheats run wild doesn’t exactly serve the cause of deficit reduction.)
Once you understand the imperatives Republicans face, however, it all makes sense. By slashing future-
oriented programs, they can deliver the instant spending cuts Tea Partiers demand, without imposing too much immediate pain on voters. And as for the future costs — a population damaged by childhood malnutrition, an increased chance of terrorist attacks, a revenue system undermined by widespread tax evasion — well, tomorrow is another day.”

            The question is, under Republican guidance, will it be worth seeing?

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

tea party budget madness


            If it were possible to gather the world’s top 100 economists together in a room and ask them which makes more sense at this point in America’s history—making draconian reductions in the budget deficit or creating more jobs and developing new businesses, 90 of them (at least) would vote unequivocally for the latter.  And those that voted for the former would mostly have close ties to the Cato Institute or the Heritage Foundation.

            If you went further and asked those same economists what drastically reducing the budget deficit would mean to our recovery from the Great Recession, that same 90% would be divided between those who would say it would throw us back into recession, perhaps even a deeper one, and those who would say it would elongate the recovery process but not necessarily derail it.

            What even the 10% of economists for conservative hire would say is that reducing the federal budget deficit should be a decade or even multi-decade long process with cuts carefully calibrated to rein in spending gradually in order to minimize short-term harm to the economy.

            What nearly every one with a triple digit IQ will tell you is that budget reduction can’t be done just by cutting spending, that at some point taxes of nearly every flavor will have to be increased.  The triple digit folks might also remind those who fall a bit short of that mark about the economy that existed during President Clinton’s time in office—a period when unemployment was about 5%, the federal budget actually contained a surplus, and individual income taxes were higher pretty much across the board.  Economists would then step in and remind us all that simply restoring the marginal tax rate on the richest 5% of Americans to Clinton-era levels would reduce the budget deficit by something on the order of 900 billion dollars over the next decade, and by exponentially more than that in the decades to follow.

            Determinedly flying in the face of economist advice and intelligent common sense, the House Republican party recently introduced a budget bill that maintained nearly every tax break already in place, added a couple of new ones and sliced 32 billion dollars from every agency not named Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security or Defense.  That amount would come from budgets already in place for four months and would be fully deducted by the end of this fiscal year.  Annualized, the cuts the Republicans proposed would total about 74 billion.  Draconian as that seemed, it wasn’t nearly draconian enough for freshmen Tea Party Republicans who immediately demanded that Congressman Harold Rogers (Chair of the Appropriations Committee) go back to work and find 26 billion more in order to meet the 100 billion dollar benchmark included in the election year Promise to America.  Rogers humbly submitted to their demands and is working on the problem as I write.

            Other than the obvious recovery-killing, job-killing, social safety-net killing, quality-of-life killing effect cutting the roughly 25% of the federal budget that isn’t going to one of the above mentioned four programs by nearly 40% in what is actually less than one year, the question this whole mess begs is—what’s so damn magic about 100 billion dollars?  What economic analysis did John Boehner and Paul Ryan employ last Fall when they created the Promise to America that indicated 100 billion dollars was a healthy amount to cut from the federal budget in one year?  If there was such an analysis, they’ve never made it public, which leads one to believe that 100 billion was chosen because it provided a catchy sound bite.

            Not surprisingly, virtually all the cuts proposed are on labor programs, education programs, health programs, regulatory programs and social programs.  Not one cut is directed at Wall Street, agribusiness, the energy industry, or—surprise, surprise—the wealthiest individuals in the country.  In a new documentary film on Ronald Reagan, his son Ron opines that  his father  “may have been vulnerable to the idea that poor people were somehow poor because it was their fault.” 

            What the Republican Tea Party in the House is proposing smacks awfully of that attitude as well.  It is perhaps the clearest example we have yet seen of ideology trumping thoughtful consideration of what would be best for the country.  The budget proposed by the Republicans will absolutely reduce the budget deficit, and will do so in a remarkably short period of time.  It will do it however at the expense of the poor and the middle class, who will become poorer, lower on the middle class spectrum, and in greater numbers out of work.  It will do at the expense of educating our young people, thus making them—and this country—less competitive going into the next decade.  It will do it at the expense of our infrastructure, making it less efficient and the country less economically viable going into the next decade.  It will do so at the expense of investment in green energy, insuring that we drop further and further behind in an area that offers the greatest hope for future employment growth and industrial leadership.

            What the Republicans party—pushed along by a radical fringe it seems unwilling or perhaps unable to control—proposes is essentially that the country should bite off its nose to spite its face.  “We should never have gotten this far in debt,” scream the Tea Baggers, “so let’s punish our wanton behavior by whipping the economy and its profligate masses so hard we force them permanently to their knees.”

            Lost in the vortex of Republican ideological idiocy is the budget President Obama proposed.  It recognizes the need to make inroads on the budget deficit, but it also recognizes the need—enunciated by that 90% of economists--to continue stimulating the economy by investing in education, infrastructure and new industry.  It also recognizes that the government has certain duties only it can perform and the health of the country depends on it doing them well.  The Republican proposal, for example, would take 450,000 police off the streets.  Probably not smart.  Obama’s budget maintains that funding.  The Republicans would cut Pell Grants by 15% this year and by nearly 50% the following year.  That could potentially remove over a million students from college this year and nearly 4.5 million the year after.  Obama’s budget eliminates Pell Grants for summer school, but otherwise maintains its funding at present levels.

            Obama’s budget proposes investment (what the Republicans call spending increases) in infrastructure projects, transportation, and especially in new green energy projects.  It partially pays for those by removing 46 billion dollars in tax breaks for oil, gas and coal companies over the next ten years and capping the amount of itemized deductions the wealthies may claim.  It also reduces defense spending by 78 billion dollars over 5 years.  In that area, Obama’s budget proposal actually cuts less than Defense Secretary Gates and the Joint Chiefs recommended.

            What Obama’s budget proposal doesn’t do is address Medicare in any significant way.  I’ll be taking a look at that problem in a future blog.  For now, what Obama has outlined is a budget that should at least serve as a strong starting point for considered discussion.  There are areas certainly where cuts could be deeper.  There are places certainly where perhaps new investment now is not the wisest thing.  There may even, God forbid, be other ways revenue could be enhanced.  But his budget is at least one that recognizes the best wisdom of the best economists in the world, and one that represents an effort to do what might best serve the short and long term interests of the country. 

            The Republican alternative serves nothing but an electioneering ideology.

Sunday, February 13, 2011

a 78 year old insurrectionist

      I wonder how many of you are aware of the “Cloward-Piven” strategy.  Anyone?  No shame if you’re not; that simply means you don’t spend much time listening to or watching Glenn Beck. 

            Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven published an essay in The Nation magazine back in 1966 in which they argued, essentially, that the unemployed and the working poor should organize themselves and take to the streets to remind politicians that they are there and that their needs are as deserving of attention as any other socio-economic group in this country.

            Those of you (like me) who are old enough to remember 1966 will also remember that demonstrations and street protests were not exactly a novel idea.  Anti-war groups were doing it, women’s groups were doing it, African-American groups were doing it.  With a few exceptions (notable because they were exceptions), these demonstrations were non-violent, aimed only at forcing politicians to address what the groups saw as legitimate grievances.  That’s precisely what Cloward and Piven advocated in this article.

            Glenn Beck, who finds dire left wing conspiracies under virtually every rock, discovered the Cloward-Piven article about a year ago.   What apparently caught his attention was a statement in it that read, “poor people [should] claim their lawful benefits from the welfare system.”  To Beck, that was clearly a call to redistribute wealth in a socialist manner. 

            At first he restricted his railing to diatribes against that article and the “socialist” agenda it clearly supported.  Eventually, as is common with Beck when his initial rants don’t create much traction, he upped the ante by connecting Piven with eight other individuals whom he dubbed part of an “intelligent minority” who were leading a surreptitious attack on the American economy and whose ultimate goal was bringing down the American government.  Not surprisingly, if you know Beck, as Jeffrey Goldberg pointed out in The Atlantic, eight of the nine (including Piven) are Jewish.

            Beck became completely unglued when, in January, Piven published another essay in The Nation suggesting that the jobless are not likely to have much help from Washington, or from the states, unless they mobilize.  Here is the paragraph in Piven’s article that sent Beck into apoplexy.

            “So where are the angry crowds, the demonstrations, sit-ins and unruly mobs?  After all, the injustice is apparent.  Working people are losing their homes and their pensions while robber-baron CEO’s report renewed profits and windfall bonuses.  Shouldn’t the unemployed be on the march? Why aren’t they demanding enhanced safety net protections and big initiatives to generate jobs?”

            Sedition is perhaps in the eyes of the beholder, but to these eyes that paragraph doesn’t ask for anything particularly scary.  Demonstrating  to protest grievances is a tradition nearly as old as this country.  It’s certainly not as scary as Tea Bag Party meetings that resound with angry calls  to “Take back out country.”

            It so frightened Beck however that he took to the air on his TV show and argued in the plaintive tones only he can project that Piven and Cloward (her late husband) are the “people who you would say are fundmentally responsible for the unsustainability and possible collapse of our economic system.”  The top headline for his on-line news site, The Blaze, read “Frances Fox Piven Rings in the New Year by Calling for Violent Revolution.”  On his Feb. 7 TV show, he labeled her an “Enemy of the Constitution.”

            This would all be laughable were it not for the fact that there are a lot of Beck-ites in radio and TV land who listen to this idiot, and not only listen to him but take his ravings seriously.  Here is a small sample of the comments posted on Beck’s web site.

            “Maybe they should burst through the fron [sic] dor of this arrogant elitist and slit the hateful cow’s throat.”

            “We should blow up Piven’s office and home.”

            “Big lots is having a rope sale I hear, you buy the rope and I will hang the wench.  I will spin her as she hangs.”

            “Somebody tell Frances I have 5000 roundas [sic] ready and I’ll give my Life to take Our freedom back.”

            “ONE SHOT . . . ONE KILL.”

            “The only redistribution I am interested in is a precious metal . . . LEAD.”

 Piven also received e-mails that said things like, “Die you cunt.”  Another implored her to “go back to Canada you bitch,” while another left her with the kind wish, “may cancer find you soon.”

            Beck and the rest of the Fox Noise gasbags tripped all over themselves after the Giffords shooting to assure the world that her attacker was a lone-wolf madman and that what they said on their TV and radio shows had no influence on people like him.  The kind of comments Beck’s rants against Piven have prompted make one think perhaps the opposite may be true.

            What’s worse is that they know—or surely should know—that it is.  Scott Roeder, the man who killed Dr. George Tiller, made several statements indicating he was influenced by Bill O’Reilly’s incessant labeling of the doctor as “Tiller the baby killer.”    And Beck can’t possibly pretend he hasn’t heard of Byron Williams.

            In case some of you haven’t heard that name before, just this past July Williams, a convicted bank robber, donned body armor and got in a car with 9 mm Glock (pattern here?), a shotgun and a .308 rifle loaded with armor piercing bullets.  He set off with that small arsenal for San Francisco where he intended to shoot and kill as many people as possible at the Tides Foundation, a liberal activist group that Beck had targeted on his show at least 29 times.  As fate would have it, his driving was erratic enough to attract police attention.  He was pulled over and after a gunfight, was subdued and arrested. Some of the things he said to the police are frightening.

            His goal, he said, was to kill “people of importance at the Tides Foundation and the ACLU [another frequent Beck target],” in order to “start a revolution.”  But here’s the salient point.  He told the police, “I would have never started watching Fox News if it wasn’t for the fact that Beck was on there.  And it was the things that he did, it was the things he exposed that blew my mind.”

            I’ve written on this subject before, but while the First Amendment does guarantee free speech, implicit in that guarantee is the word “responsible.”  We don’t have a First Amendment right to knowingly lie, nor a right, figuratively, to yell fire in a crowded theatre.  Cable TV, especially Fox, and the internet have so distended the intention of the First Amendment that it has become almost unrecognizable. 

            What can be done?

            Well, a few things perhaps.  We have laws on the books now designating certain kinds of crimes as “hate crimes.” Could we not craft laws that make felonies of “hate speech” as well?  When published speech openly threatens someone’s life (see “slit the hateful cow’s throat” above), should that not be prosecutable?  But what about speech that doesn’t openly threaten someone, but does say things about them that are not true?  When Beck takes the innocuous words quoted above from Piven’s article and uses them to call her an “enemy of the constitution,” why is that not criminal?

            As I noted in one of my previous blogs, to my mind at least, the easiest and surest way to tone down the vitriol in today’s public discourse is to make everyone contributing to that discourse responsible for having his/her facts correct.  When Beck accuses a 78 year old woman of “calling for violent revolution,” should we not expect him to produce more as evidence than her musing that the poor might get more attention if they organized?  Piven is not advocating insurrection any more than Martin Luther King, Jr. was, and any fool with one eye and half sense should be expected to see that.

            As for the internet, I suspect one very small change would do a lot of good.  Let’s stop letting people post on the internet using monikers like Patriot1952 (he’s the one only interested in the redistribution of lead).  My guess is that people would be more circumspect about what they post if they had to give their name and address to the world.  And if they posted things like “ONE SHOT . . . ONE KILL” anyway, it would be easier to find them and arrest them for hate speech.

            It’s easy for even semi-intelligent people to laugh at the absurd ramblings of Beck, Hannity, Malkin, O’Reilly and the rest of the Fox stable.  They are frequently so over-the-top and so removed from anything resembling truth or reality that the only thing we can do is choose whether to laugh or cry.  Unfortunately, there are a lot of people out there who don’t necessarily rise to the level even of semi-intelligence, and they take the drivel of the Becks of the world seriously.  And that leads only to tears.
   

Saturday, February 12, 2011

libs vs. cons



            The Oxford English Dictionary defines a liberal as a person “open to new behavior or opinions and willing to discard traditional values.”  The same dictionary defines a conservative as a person “who is averse to change and holds to traditional values and attitudes, typically in  relation to politics.”

            Implicit in those two definitions is this: liberals tend to look forward from the present and embrace the reality of change; conservatives tend to look backward from the present and resist the reality of change.  The simple definitions of liberal and conservative however leave out what—in today’s world at least—is perhaps the most fundamental distinction between the two: by and large, liberals have a conscience.  By and large, conservatives do not.

            That’s a strong statement I know.  Why make it?  Well, let’s trot out a definition of conscience first.  Its dictionary meaning is “an inner feeling or voice viewed as acting as a guide to the right or wrongness of one’s behavior.”  Through that prism, my statement means that liberals tend on the whole to listen to that voice and respond to what it says is right.  Conservatives don’t necessarily hear the voice and respond to what it says is wrong, they seem rather to simply not hear the voice.  Put another way, liberal behavior tends to be driven by pursuit of what is right; conservative behavior tends to be driven by pursuit of anything not demonstrably wrong.

            It doesn’t take even a triple digit IQ to know that this country is deeply divided between liberals—generally associated with the Democratic party—and conservatives—generally associated with the Republican party.

            When those very different individual attitudes are plopped down on a political stage, at least at this point in this country’s history, they result in a liberal agenda aimed at providing the most right for the most people, and a conservative agenda aimed at providing the most right for those perceived as the most deserving.

            Let’s look at a few examples drawn from recent headlines.  Conservatives have targeted for elimination a program called S-CHIP, which stands for State-Children’s Health Insurance Plan.  It is a program designed to provide minimal health care for disadvantaged children.  Its total cost is less than the cost of the tax cut conservatives insisted be maintained for the super-rich.  How do you think about those two facts and sleep at night.  Simple, if you have no conscience.

            Or we could look at conservative support for the mining industry practice of dynamiting the tops off mountains and letting the debris tumble into valley streams, wells and ground water.  Why?  Well, the coal is obviously easier to get to if you’ve blown away everything that’s covering it up.  Regardless of bottom line, when environmental groups provide you with solid science about the devastation that practice is visiting on ecosystems and people, how do you sleep at night?  Again, easy if you have no conscience.

            Conservatives are adamant about denying global warming, even though every scientist not employed by the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, or serving directly in the employ of the Koch brothers agree that the climate is indeed changing world-wide, that it is changing in the direction of higher median temperatures and that the result of that change is more severe weather that is more dangerous than ever, droughts, floods and rising sea levels.  Why? Because the short term interests of the fossil fuel industry and all its dependents are better served by not taking the steps necessary to slow global warming.  How do you stare hard science in the face and walk away from it to protect industry bottom lines?  Easy if you have no conscience.

           Conservatives have vowed to repeal the Affordable Care Act and have thus far given no indication they would actually replace it with anything.  Their reasons?  Well, it's a job-killer they tell us, even though every economist not employed by the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute or in the direct employ of the Koch brothers has called that nonsense.  It's also a budget buster they tell us, even though the Congressional Budget Office's non-partisan review of the bill says it will reduce the budget deficit over the next 20 years by about a tenth of what the tax cuts for the rich conservatives insisted on maintaining will add to the deficit.  And if you blow off both those arguments, they tell you it's socialism.   Actually, Michelle Bachmann and her tea party wing nuts say that; more responsible conservatives hedge their bets by calling it "creeping socialism" and even more responsible conservatives who know it has nothing to do with socialism say it puts us on the infamous "slippery slope."  In fact, the biggest beneficiaries of the Affordable Care Act are, ironically, private insurers to whom the individual mandate will drive some 40 million new customers.  Oh, and yeah, there is no public option.

           So how do you reconcile a drive to repeal the Affordable Care Act with the fact that it will do what its title states--make health care available to everyone, not just those who can easily afford it--and won't do any of the things you offer as reasons to repeal it?  And then go to sleep at night?  Easy if you have no conscience.

            I would be the last to argue that every liberal program is both necessary and effective.  There are any number that are neither.  Nor would I argue that there are not liberal programs that were put in place more to enrich the people who put them there than to aid the people they allegedly serve.  What I would argue, however, is that, on the whole, liberals are far more likely to ask their conscience what the right thing to do is—not just for themselves but for society at large—and then act accordingly.  Conservatives, at least on the evidence of the years since Reagan, are quite content to do what's best for themselves and simply ignore that little voice that's trying to be heard.

            

some leadership, please


            Like everyone, I have watched with fascination the unfolding events in Egypt.  The diligence, persistence and downright smarts of the residents of Cairo have been remarkable to behold.  So has the leadership of the rebellion, a relative handful of young professionals with enough internet savvy to organize a huge insurrection under the noses of one of the world’s most brutal and efficient police states.  It seems a little thing, perhaps, but almost from the first hours of the massing in Tahrir Square, the square was equipped with things like porta-poddies, refreshment stands, computer stations and even, believe it or not, separate refuse bins for recyclable and non-recyclable items.

            Each of the first three major gatherings in Tahrir were preceded by disinformation released to the police and Mubarak’s thuggish security forces as to where the insurgents were heading, meaning in each case they were able to reach Tahrir without incident or violence.

            As elated as I have been over what is happening in Egypt, I have been equally disheartened by what has been happening here.  My disheartenment began with Hillary Clinton’s early announcement that Mubarak’s government was “stable” and needed to be allowed to sort things out.  The “stability” of the Mubarak’s government has always been its severe and constant repression of its people, and historically, it has sorted things out by imprisoning, torturing and murdering those who opposed it.  Clinton quite apparently putting the U.S. on Mubarak’s side was depressing.

            Clinton’s awkward positioning was echoed by Vice-President Joe Biden’s pronouncement that Mubarak was an ally and “not a dictator.”  Granted he has been an ally—and at times a very useful one—but how in God’s name does Biden define the word dictator if not by a description of Mubarak’s regime?

            Worse than both however was President Barack Obama’s stumbling, status quo driven responses.  The first statement to emanate from the White House essentially laid down a laundry list of the thing’s Mubarak’s government “must do” in response to the protesters.  The list itself was reasonable enough (curtail internet restrictions, stop unlawful detentions, etc.), but was more significant for what it did not contain than what it did.  What it didn’t contain was a single word that could have been construed as supportive of the people in Tahrir.  What it didn’t contain was even a hint that the U.S. government agreed with the protesters that Mubarak must step down and a totally new government be formed.

            Without doubt, a case could be made that unequivocal American support of deposing a sovereign government would have brought loud howls of protest about American meddling from Mubarak (indeed, he tried that anyway, to no avail) and possible from other governments as well.  Leadership on important issues always creates antagonism somewhere.

            An even stronger case can be made that Obama’s reticence bespoke volumes about America’s actual commitment to democracy, democratic ideals and human rights.  Given the choice, this case would argue, between standing firm for those advocating a retrieval of their dignity and basic freedoms, and standing firm for an autocratic regime that for thirty years has denied  its people those things, American opted for the latter.

            Until of course it became apparent that the former had, against all odds, triumphed.   Then, and only then, did the plight of Egypt’s people seem to move to the front of administration concerns.  Trumpeting the victory America had no part in assisting, Obama said “The people of Egypt have spoken, their voices have been heard, and Egypt will never be the same.”

            In point of fact, the people of Egypt had been speaking for several days, forming, apparently, an inconvenient cacophony over which Obama and his team were trying to orchestrate the establishment of some variation on the status quo.  Their voices were heard, finally, by the man representing that status quo—Mubarak—but without, apparently, any real attempts at amplification from this country.  That Egypt “will never be the same” is true.  That whatever form that change involves was in no way aided or supported by the United States is also true.  And that, to me, is sad.

            It also points to something about Barack Obama that those of us who enthusiastically supported him in 2008 have become increasingly aware of but largely reluctant to actually say.  The time has come I think to say it.  We thought we were electing a leader in 2008.  It turns out what we elected was a manager.

            If you look back over the past two years, what Obama has consistently done instead of seizing opportunities to run in front of the curve and lead, is to lag just behind the curve and manage some partial and largely unsatisfying (to both sides) solution to each of them.

            The financial crisis brought on by rapacious Wall Street firms screamed for a leader to step forward and say “Enough!”  It is not a birthright of bankers and hedge fund managers and investment brokers to be billionaires.  It is not Wall Street’s right to create financial instruments and engage in financial practices guaranteed to enrich itself in the short term while putting  a guy counting on his 401(k) to see him through his senior years in obvious jeopardy.  It screamed in other words for someone who would stand up and say commercial banks and investment banks must again be separated, the most heavily financed and fully staffed agency in Washington should be the Securities and Exchange Commision (or ideally, something better to replace it), and every Wall Street trader who knowingly engaged in fraudulent or unduly risky transactions should be faced with significant jail time.  And that would be just a start.

            Instead, Obama announced from the start that his Justice Department would seek not indictments and supported his Treasury Secretary (a Wall Streeter himself) in premising everything on the  notion that banks should not be broken up and only token improvements in regulation were necessary.  Obama then proceeded to rather overtly ignore the recommendations made by the task force he himself had created.  The result was a financial reform bill that threw a few bones to consumers, most of them having to do with obnoxious credit card practices—important, and good to get rid of, but hardly at anything near the center of the problem-- but left almost everything about the financial system that was instrumental in bringing about the crisis essentially intact.  Give Obama an A for managing the crisis, an F for leadership.

            Health care reform is another area that screamed for leadership.  We have the highest health care costs in the world, but fall quite securely into the middle of the pack in terms of health care results.  There are in fact third world countries whose health care systems are more efficient than ours. 

            A leader would have looked at health care and said there are three basic areas that must be fixed.  First, the system need to be changed from one that emphasizes treating symptoms to one that emphasizes preventing disease.  Second, the obscene overpricing of prescription drugs must be ended.  And finally, how medical treatment is paid for must be completely overhauled.

            What we got instead was delegation to Congress of the responsibility for crafting what was clearly going to be complicated and controversial legislation.  Obama called that an exercise in “bi-partisanship,” but did so in the face of Mitch McConnell’s almost first day announcement that Republican priority number one would be insuring that Obama was a one-term president.

            Leaving aside the notion that bi-partisanship—while certainly a good management tool if it happens—would ever actually occur, asking as fractured an institution as the American congress to craft complicated legislation is roughly akin to asking a committee to create a horse.  What one should expect is a camel.  

            What we got in the Affordable Care Act was essentially the same thing we got in the financial reform bill—a few swipes at low lying fruit, but absolutely nothing addressing the roots of the health care system problem.  And what we didn't get from Obama was anything resembling aggressive leadership until the very end, by which point most everything systemically important had been dropped from the bill.  Again, an A for management—we did get something—an F for leadership—it wasn’t nearly enough.

            The list could go on—repealing tax cuts for the rich, Afghanistan, the environment, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (yes, it passed, but Nancy Pelosi had much more to do with that than Obama), unemployment, infrastructure—you get the point.

            I, and I suspect most progressives, hope that the more somewhat more engaged and forceful President we saw during the lame duck session of Congress was the beginning of his evolution from manager to leader.  His performance during the Egyptian crisis, however, was not a step in that direction. 

            What the progressives and independents who joyously elected Obama in 2008 would like to see is not the moves he has been making to become more “business friendly.”  Business is doing quite well right now, thank you very much.  Corporate profits are at all time highs, cash reserves are at nearly obscene levels, productivity is up, every tax loophole put in place for the last 30 years is still there, the stock market is booming.  At the same time, over 9% of Americans are out of work, nearly half of those have been out of work for more than 6 months, our infrastructure is crumbling, Wall Street is doing exactly what it was doing prior to the crash, the cost of medical care is still climbing steadily, median incomes have remained stagnant or declined for a decade, the world continues to warm and we’re still fighting two wars the strategic value of which is hard to see.

            Leadership—real leadership—on any one or two of those issues over the next two years would  make it much easier for me to justify another Obama vote.