Mac's Back Porch

Mr. One Percent

2012-01-18T11:27:00.000-08:00

The empty suit that is Mitt Romney is currently being filled by the poster boy for the one percent and that poster boy is also Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney is a venture capitalist. Venture capitalists have one goal that is first, foremost and always. They strive to make as much money as possible. If they can reap huge profits by building successful, productive companies they will do that. If they can maximize their profits by destroying businesses, laying off all of the employees, and leaving gullible shareholder with an empty shell they will do that. It is a bit like a scene from the Godfather where one gangster turns to another and says: “Sorry, but I’m going to kill you. There’s nothing personal about it. It’s just business!” Well, it is certainly personal to the man who is being killed, and it is certainly personal to the people who are losing the means to provide for their families. But that is just the way it is. It is just business. Only the strong survive. Unfortunately, this business ethic carries over into Mr. Romney’s politics. He will say anything and do anything to gain power, and he will use that power to maximize the wealth of the wealthy.

Mitt Romney is not just tone deaf he is clueless. He lacks the empathy to understand the struggles of the majority of the people of this nation. As a venture capitalist he only pays around fifteen percent of his income in taxes, and he wants to reduce that amount. He tries to justify that by saying venture capitalists provide jobs, and he does this knowing full well that those businessmen will continue to maximize their profits in any way they can regardless of what the tax rate might be. To him ten thousand dollars is mere chump change. He cannot understand why people might think that challenging Rick Perry to a ten thousand dollar bet is a shameless flaunting of his wealth. He cannot understand why people think that a man who says that nearly four hundred thousand dollars is a small amount can and should share a greater percentage of the tax burden.

It is easy to see why Mitt Romney wants to shift a greater share of the burden of paying for our government off onto the middle class and the poor. He honestly thinks the federal deficit is more of a problem than high unemployment. Yes, I know he is saying that Mr. Obama has failed to create jobs, and that he, Mr. Romney, would create jobs, but that is just a lie. It is another case of Mr. Romney saying what he thinks he must say to get elected. The truth is that President Obama’s policies have created jobs, and more jobs would be created if Republicans such as Mr. Romney would pass the American Jobs Act. Instead of supporting reasonable attempts to correct the real problem, however, Mr. Romney wants to make the failed policies of George W. Bush even worse. In spite of the great disparity in the distribution of the wealth of this nation, he wants to lower the tax rate on the rich and cut all of the safety nets the government provides. He was reluctant to embrace the Ryan plan because the destruction of Medicare and the steep cuts in taxes on corporations and the wealthy are too obvious. He knew the Ryan plan could hurt his chances in a general election. Yet he did endorse the Ryan plan to win the Republican Primaries. Furthermore, his own proposals are just as bad as the Ryan Plan. In order to accomplish the drastic cuts in government spending he is proposing he would have to drastically reduce the benefits of the earned benefits programs such as social security and Medicare as well as greatly reducing other government services.

Slashing government spending rather than making the rich pay their fair share of the taxes makes perfect sense in Mitt Romney’s world, even though it is painfully obvious that the trickle down theory has never and will never work. For people such as Mr. Romney it is not about jobs or people or even the production of goods. Mr. Romney is a businessman, and it is all about profits. There is nothing personal about it. The rich get richer and everyone else gets poorer. That is just the way it is. If the death of the middle class destroys the U.S. market so be it. Other markets will emerge in other nations. That might be the way to run a business but it is no way to run a country!

You Can’t Make This UP!

2011-12-13T12:31:00.000-08:00

Not all of the Republican clowns are running for President. Karl Rove, AKA Turd Blossom, has collected millions of dollars from Wall Street to help Scott Brown defeat Elizabeth Warren in the Senate Race in Massachusetts. Rove is using some of that money to run advertisements accusing Ms. Warren of being a tool of Wall Street. Yes, the accused is that Elizabeth Warren, the feisty advocate for the middle class, the Elizabeth Warren who was so instrumental in establishing the Consumer Protection Bureau, the same Elizabeth Warren who is stridently calling for the reform of Wall Street. Someone should tell Turd Blossom that it is one thing to try to sell the stubborn, independent, Yankees of Massachusetts a bag of bullshit and quite another thing to throw great, steaming heaps of bullshit at those voters. The good people of Massachusetts have a history of reacting very strongly to someone who is insulting their intelligence in such a blatant manner. If I were Scott Brown I would disavow those advertisements and back as far away from them as possible.

Meanwhile, in the Presidential primary ring, the clown show continued. Mitt Romney showed just how out of touch he is during the last debate by challenging Rick Perry to a ten thousand dollar bet. The average family of this nation has an annual income of about sixty thousand dollars. This bet says it all. It explains why Mr. Romney would think that the thousand dollars the average family would save next year by the passage of the payroll tax cut is a mere drop in the bucket. During this same debate Newt Gingrich demonstrated what a shameless demagogue he is by calling the Palestinians a made up people. One would think that a supposed historian would know just how incendiary such a statement is! Such statements might earn Gingrich the dumb ass votes, but it is highly detrimental to our diplomatic efforts at a time when diplomatic success is so vital to our national interests.

Can The Democrats Be This Lucky?

2011-12-06T10:34:00.000-08:00

Newt Gingrich? Really, Newt Gingrich is the leading Republican candidate! Yes that Newt Gingrich, the disgraced former speaker of the house who was forced out of congress in a bipartisan effort because of his violation of the rules of ethics. This is the Newt Gingrich who cost the Republicans an election because he was irresponsible enough to shut down the government at a time when the people of this country had this strange notion that a government should actually govern. This is the hypocrite who called for the impeachment of Bill Clinton over a sexual affair when Gingrich was also having such an affair. This is the shameless demagogue who panders to the baseless fear of the uneducated by advocating a constitutional amendment to prevent sharia law from replacing the constitutional amendments and other laws that already prevent sharia law in this country. This is the same Newt Gingrich who was paid millions of dollars by Freddie Mack, a pharmaceutical company and a health care organization and disingenuously insists he is not a lobbyist. I can understand why the Republicans are not eager to embrace the empty suit that is Mitt Romney, but Newt Gingrich has changed his positions on the issues almost as often as Mr. Romney has. The bottom line is that neither man stands for anything but his own self-promotion!

But wait! It gets even better! The Republican clown show has taken a bizarre twist in what has become a political bizarre where even amateurs, such as Herman Cain and Donald Trump, have come to sell their personalities and their wares. As Mr. Cain fades into the shadowy world of the also ran, the Trumpster is making a return appearance. There is a proposed debate in which this consummate huckster and self-promoter known as Donald Trump will serve as the moderator. Can you imagine electing the new apprentice to be the next President of the United States? Hang on to your seats, folks! You ain’t seen nothing yet!

Carousel Of Clowns

2011-11-18T11:04:00.000-08:00

“Oh, the horses go up and down. The merry goes round and round…”

The music plays as Republican clowns riding papier-mâché horses made from special interest checks slide up and down the polls. Herman Cain is showing a rather remarkable dexterity. It is not easy to give voice to your ignorance while tripping over your own dick. The joke is not funny to the women he has landed on. Rick Perry is the better clown. Mr. Perry’s pratfalls on his cerebral frost are actually funny. The joke with Newt Gingrich is that the hawking of his snake oil is being disrupted by the ride. Unfortunately for him his calls of “look at me” are actually causing people to look at him rather than the snake oil he is trying to sell. Denying that he ever worked as a lobbyist simply reminds us of the violations of ethics that cost him his seat in the House of Representatives. Loosely attached to one of the horses is an empty suit with the brand name of Mitt Romney. That horse does not rise and fall as much as the other horses, but the empty suit still draws our attention by waving in any direction the political wind is blowing. Most of the pundits are predicting that the empty suit be at the top when the Republican carrousel stops.

The real joke is that there are actually people who are taking those clowns seriously. All of those clowns have one thing in common; they all advocate the same failed economic policies that ran us into the ditch and caused such a great disparity in the distribution of the wealth of this nation! Clowns are often called fools and those fools are so intellectually bankrupt that they do not even heed the words of Henry Ford, who is often called our greatest industrialist. It was Henry Ford who told us that everyone prospers when the people who make the products can afford to buy the products! It will not matter which clown is on top when the Republican carrousel stops. If you vote for any of them, the joke is on you!

The Protests Are Real

2011-11-02T09:22:00.000-07:00

The Occupy Wall Street demonstrators who say they represent ninety-nine percent of the population are mainly young, middle class, and white. Many of them are deeply in debt because of the student loans they took out in order to get the education they needed to start their chosen careers. Now they cannot find jobs that will pay them much more than the minimum wage. They feel betrayed and rightly so. The great disparity in wealth between the top one percent and the rest of us is not lost on those young people. The only thing the people the Republicans called “job producers” seem to be producing is a great increase in their personal wealth. No ideological group or political party had to tell the demonstrators to object to the greed that is enriching the rich at the expense of the rest of us. The facts are self evident, and the demonstrators are reacting to those facts. They are not being transported to the locations of the demonstrations in buses provided by the Koch brothers; nor are they carrying signs with slogans provided to them by some political stink tank. The demonstrations are a genuine expression of the pain the majority of the people of this nation are feeling. Racial and ethnic minorities are suffering the most from the outrageous inequities in wealth. I fully expect those minorities to join the demonstrations soon. What we are seeing here is the beginning of a social and political movement.

The Washington Times has printed a list of demands from the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators. Actually it is two lists. There was the original post and then an update that added to those demands. The additional demands are reasonable, and I agree with most of them. I was amused by a comment from one reader that called the first demands a fine example of communistic proposals. I agree that some of the demands are not practical, but this does not mean that we can or should dismiss the entire list. For instance, I do not think we can do away with free trade, but we do have to modify the all or nothing globalization or we will be left with nothing. Caterpillar and Whirlpool are just the latest examples of companies who have exported factories and jobs. I also agree that we need a single payer health care system. I do not think we can get a stimulus package that is as large as the one the demonstrators are proposing, but I do not think the American Jobs Act will be final solution either. I might add here that even the demands that appear to be too radical might be desirable if modified or scaled back a bit. The main thing is that all of the demands are addressing real problems that need to be addressed.

What we must bear in mind is that all real grass roots movements will over-reach at times. The opponents of those movements will always use what could be called the radical demands of the demonstrators to try to discredit the entire movement. There is a real danger in doing this because it escalates the attacks coming from both sides. The greater the opposition to needed reforms and the longer it takes to implement those reforms the greater the suffering will be. This has a strong tendency to radicalize the movement. The sooner we bring about meaningful reforms the better. There is absolutely no doubt that we cannot keep going the way we are going now! The key here is to prioritize and get the reforms started. If there is not an escalating improvement in our current situation there will be an escalating reaction to the injustices we perceive. That is not a threat it is merely an observation based on historical facts.

Please see my previous posts “In the Streets” and “Political ADD.”

Political ADD

2011-11-01T10:46:00.000-07:00

For decades now a very large percentage of our citizens have been suffering from a mental disorder. The disorder I am referring to is PADD, Political Attention Deficit Disorder. Sadly, the people who are afflicted with PADD are the very ones who can least afford to deal with the consequences of this disorder. For twenty years now at least eighty per cent of our citizens have seen their incomes remain flat while the price of energy, food and housing rose. During that same time the top ten percent have seen their incomes grow and the top one percent have seen their incomes soar to unprecedented heights. This degeneration of the wealth of the middle class did not happen all at once. It took place over a period of time. The people noticed it as they struggled to make ends meet, but they did not think beyond their personal finances. This is understandable. Unless there is a national crises to draw their attention people will ignore the larger picture and concentrate on what they can do to provide for their families.

The crash of 2007 was such a crises, and the reaction to it was predictable. Even a majority of the people suffering from PADD voted for change by electing President Obama and the other Democrats running for office. Unfortunately, this vote for change was not an informed decision; rather it was an instinctive, emotional reaction. During the mid-term elections of 2010 the voters reacted emotionally again. The economy had improved by then, but unemployment was still at an unacceptable level. Furthermore, far too many people were still losing their homes, and the wages of the people who were fortunate enough to be employed were not increasing. So the voters blindly punished all incumbents, a very large percentage of which were Democrats. This incredibly stupid act on the part of the voters actually rewarded the Republican Party for its failed economic policies and its unconscionable obstruction of all reasonable attempts to relieve the suffering and get us out of the recession. So what accounts for such stupidity?

It has been said that they who do not know history are condemned to repeating it. What the people of this nation have forgotten is the very struggle that created the middle class in the first place. At the start of the twentieth century it was becoming obvious that unregulated capitalism was degenerating into the sort Social Darwinism that makes a few people unbelievably wealthy while everyone else is left with very little or nothing. Furthermore, Frederick Jackson Turner’s safety valve, the frontier, no longer existed. President Theodore Roosevelt reacted to the emerging oligopoly that was concentrating our resources, our means of production, and our wealth into fewer and fewer hands by breaking up the trusts in order to bring about the sort of competition that stimulates innovation and opportunity. As beneficial as the trust busting was it did not go far enough. The people soon realized that the greed of the few was insatiable. It was that greed that brought about the labor movement and the unions. By the time of the great depression the people of this nation had accepted the fact that they needed unions to collectively bargain with their employers. The depression also made them realize how much they needed a proactive government that would pass and enforce the regulations needed to keep the unscrupulous few from putting our entire economy at risk by taking unfair advantage of the many. The oligopoly and the Republican Party fought the reforms of President Theodore Roosevelt, even though he was a Republican. They also fought the labor unions, and they fought Franklin Roosevelt during the depression. They accused the labor unions and both Roosevelts of class warfare and of creating a big, oppressive government. If those charges sound familiar it is because the new oligopoly and the Republican Party are falsely using those same accusations against the Democrats today.

The difference between then and now is that the generation that suffered through the depression and the generation that fought in World War II were paying attention to what was really happening. They realized how hypocritical those accusations were. They knew which political party and which politicians where representing the people and which ones were selling out to the special interests. They had labor unions and other groups that helped to keep them informed and active. What changed this was an adjustment made by the Republican Party. With the election of Dwight Eisenhower the Republicans finally acknowledged that the political center had moved. Most people identified themselves as moderates, but even moderates were embracing the changes brought about by Franklin Roosevelt and by the labor unions that fought for fair wages and safer work places. What Eisenhower taught the Republican Party was that it had no choice. If it was to remain a viable political party it had to accept the regulation of Wall Street and the banks, it had to accept the anti-trust laws that prevented monopolies, and it had to accept Social Security, Unemployment Insurance and the other safety nets. With both parties now trying to occupy the middle ground a nap was sounding pretty good to the voters. Neither party seemed inclined to do anything too damn radical, and the voters felt free to concentrate on their daily lives without worrying too much about what their government might be doing.

The Republicans, however, had accepted the changes of the New Deal grudgingly. In the early nineteen sixties they decided to test the political waters by nominating Barry Goldwater as their Presidential candidate. This hard turn to the right was a wake up call, and the voters handed the Republicans a stinging rebuke. The Republicans reacted to this by returning to the center. Viet Nam and the civil rights movement then provided a jolt no one could sleep through. The combination was devastating in many ways. It was an era in which much needed changes took place, but the war and the effort it took to accomplish those needed changes left the people of this nation totally exhausted. As Harding said before the great depression, the people wanted “a return to normalcy.” The general attitude was “enough with the social movements and the politics. Let me get on with my life.” The people then stopped paying attention. They accepted as a fact the notion that each generation would be better off than the preceding generation. They saw no need to pay that much attention to the larger picture. They believed that if they worked hard and made the right decisions everything else would take care of itself. This is how we got Political Attention Deficit Disorder, another Harding in the form of George W. Bush, and another economic crises.

Because of PADD we became too lethargic to see how the need to raise enough money to cover the increasing costs of political campaigns was perverted our political system. Now that our politicians are so dependant on the support of the special interests, the strategy of those interests has become quite simple: “Keep the public in the dark and the political wheels well greased.” The Republicans are more than happy to serve their wealthy masters by keeping us in the dark. They do this by eagerly quoting Ronald Regan: “Government is not the solution it is the problem,” they say. The Republicans want us to believe that it is the power of the government to govern rather than the power of money that corrupts our politicians. The reasoning, if you can call it that, is that a government that does not govern, tax, or regulate cannot be corrupt because it has nothing to sell. If you do not breath you will not get lung cancer either. The result of accepting this nihilistic crap is already apparent. Not since the gilded age following the Civil War has there been a time when so many politicians have done so much for so few at the expense of so many.

The generations before us knew better. They knew that the solution must be political because it is only by exerting our collective strength in the form of our government that we can curb the greed of the few and maintain a system that provides opportunities for all. The first step in doing this is to deal with the corrupting influence of money. In talking about political corruption and graft the old political boss, Plunkett of Tamanny Hall, once said, “it is the pigs that do not know when to back away from the trough who get caught.” Invariably those pigs will use the excuse that everyone does it, thereby demonstrating the need to prevent anyone from doing it. The first step in preventing anyone from doing it is to make an example of the pigs that are greedy enough to draw attention to it by getting caught. In this case the pigs are the Republicans and the blue dog Democrats. It is the Republicans and the blue dogs that oppose the regulations needed to keep Wall Street and the banks from crashing our economy again. It is the Republicans and the blue dogs that oppose making the corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share of the taxes. It is the Republicans and the blue dogs that are blocking all reasonable efforts to create jobs, and it is the Republicans and the blue dogs that are fighting our efforts decrease the influence money has on our politicians by opposing our efforts to reform the way we finance political campaigns. The first step then is to vote the Republicans and the blue dogs out of office.

In order to do this we must jar the hell out of the people suffering from Political Attention Deficit Disorder. This will require a movement they cannot ignore. The first phase of any movement is the expression of dissatisfaction. But the anger must be well directed and the goal must be positive reform. In that regard the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations are useful. As unfocused as the demonstrators are they are drawing attention to what is happening to us. We must let them know they are not alone. We are all feeling the pain that makes them demonstrate. The next phase is to take some positive political action. Holding accountable the worst politicians who are so shameless in the way they serve Wall Street and the other special interests to the detriment of the rest of us will be the first sign that the movement is taking the action it needs to take in order to gain the necessary political power to fight those interests. This should be done as an in your face demonstration of political power that cannot be ignored. The Demonstrators should get behind the American Jobs Act as well. This will show the low information voters and the Democratic Party that the movement has positive goals and is not simply looking for scapegoats. This is the way to gain credibility and momentum. The power to help pass legislation and the willingness to punish opponents will make a major political party pay attention to us. Just look at what the tea party has done to the Republican Party. The difference between the tea party and us, however, is that the tea party has a negative agenda whereas we must have a positive agenda. I will submit to you that returning the control of our government back to the people and rebuilding an equitable economy is a positive agenda.

I believe that the goals of the Occupy Wall Street Demonstrators are our goals. Those goals will not be easy to accomplish. Rebuilding our economy and restoring an equitable distribution of the wealth will require sweeping reforms that will not take place until we greatly decrease the influence money has on our political system. As I said in my previous post, we need a constitutional amendment to change the way campaigns are financed. Passing such an amendment will take time, a tremendous effort, and a strong belief that we, the people, have the power to make it happen. We have to start building the political momentum now. To the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators I say keep demonstrating, but do not lose sight of the larger goals. Realize that the political power we must gain to accomplish those goals will require us to achieve a pattern of success. Taking this country back will depend on our ability to win more than one battle. Few wars are won or lost in a single battle, and this is a class war in the same sense that the labor movement was a class war! Among the things labor unions won for us are the eight hour work day, safer work places, and reasonable wages. In order for labor unions to accomplish those goals they had to break the hold the business tycoons had on our politicians. It was a very difficult, sometimes violent, struggle, but the middle class the labor movement created gave us the most prosperous market economy in the world. That is what we must now fight to restore!

In The Streets

2011-10-11T16:35:00.001-07:00

For several years I have been asking: Where are the demonstrators? Where are the outraged feminists who should be fighting the Republican Party’s attacks on abortion, birth control, and health care? Where are the workers who should be fighting the Republican Party’s attacks on labor unions, the minimum wage, and unemployment insurance? Where are the senior citizens who should be defending Social Security and Medicare from the Republican Party’s attacks on those earned benefits programs? Where are the disenfranchised voters who should be demonstrating against the restrictive voter registration laws the Republicans passed in states that were foolish enough to elect Republicans? Where is the outcry of consumers who are being dispossessed by the shell game of toxic loans? Where are the knowledgeable consumers who should be fighting back against the commodity traders who are over selling futures on gasoline and food thereby creating artificial shortages that are driving up the cost of those commodities? Where are the expressions of outrage from people who know that doing away with regulations is what permitted the reckless behavior that caused the crash in 2007 and allowed some companies to become too big to fail?

At last a significant number of people are taking fight for social and economic justice into the streets. People in states where the Republicans are passing laws against collective bargaining are demonstrating and fighting back. There are also people on Wall Street demonstrating against the reckless and unfair practices taking place there, and those demonstrations are spreading to other cities as well. The movement has finally begun. The people are saying enough. Such demonstrations are what it is going to take to get this country moving in the right direction again. In order to save the middle class informed people are going to have to raise such a ruckus that it will pull the low information voters out of the fog of Republican flatulence to reveal the greed and arrogance of the powerful few who are destroying the opportunities and the equitable distribution of wealth that has made this country so great. The anger of the demonstrators is not pretty but neither is the rule of money that has made our government, and particularly the Republican Party, so unresponsive to the suffering of the people and the best interests of this country. Is this class warfare? You bet your ass it is! The middle class of this country is tired of being ground into the dirt by the special interests and the political minions of those interests.

Even no drama Obama has finally come to the realization that he cannot deal with a Republican Party whose benefactors will not be satisfied until they have it all and no one else has anything. President Obama is finally embracing the label of warrior for the middle class. He is finally taking his battle for jobs and equitable taxes to the people. That he should have to bypass the Republican controlled House of Representative and the Republicans who will filibuster any reasonable jobs bill in the Senate just shows the nature of the class war being waged against the middle class by the wealthiest people in this country and by the Republican Party. This is a war the middle class must win if America is going to remain the land of opportunity. The pundits who are arguing about whether President Obama should try to capture the middle ground or run to the left in the next election are missing the point. In their opposition to making the rich pay their fair share of taxes the Republicans are pointing out that half of the adults in this nation pay no income tax. What the Republicans are not saying is that this means half of the adults in this nation have seen their incomes slip so low that they cannot afford to pay income tax. The high unemployment is not just hurting the unemployed. The decreasing employment opportunities are hurting everyone. The vast majority of our citizens are being squeezed by high prices and stagnant wages.

Our economic and political system is broken. We no longer have a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. We now have a government of the money, by the money, and for the money. Both parties are culpable but they are not equally culpable. The Republicans are now opposing measures they supported in the past when they were responsible enough to acknowledge that those measures work. By saying that the stimulus bill did not create any jobs and that the American Jobs Act will not work the Republicans are dipping so deeply into the Bandini fertilizer bag that they are wearing it as a hood. President Obama’s first goal in taking this issue directly to the people is to put enough pressure on the Republicans to get them to the pass the jobs bill. It is increasingly obvious, however, that this will not work. The Republicans have been defying the will of the people since the very day that Mr. Obama was elected President. The Republicans won the mid-term elections in spite of doing this, and they are arrogant enough to think they will win the elections in 2012 as well. The billions of dollars the special interests have provided for campaign advertising have given the Republicans a false sense of security. They honestly believe they can use that money to buy enough perfume to mask the odor of the crap they trying to sell us.

The demonstrations now taking place are unsettling to the Republicans because they can see where this movement might go. They know they have to try to put an end to the demonstrations before the demonstrators find a political focal point. What the demonstrators are expressing now is simply their anger over the disparity in wealth that has grown to such an intolerable level that it is causing a great deal of pain to the majority of our citizens. This expression of pain and anger is a small start, but it is not insignificant. By expressing their anger and their pain the demonstrators are pointing out the need for reform. The next step is to take the political action needed to bring about meaningful reform. If the Democrats are smart they will embrace the demonstrations and draw a clear line between what they are willing to do for the middle class and what the Republicans are willing to do for the wealthy. If the Democrats are smart they will point out that we must start from where we are at, and that the first step must be to relieve some of the suffering by creating jobs and stimulating the economy; they will point out that in order to do this they will need the voters to crush the Republican Party and give the Democrats a large enough majority in Congress to ram the jobs bill through. The Democrats also need to express their willingness to sacrifice something they have not been willing to give up thus far; they need to express their intention to get rid of the filibuster rules the Republican Senators have been using to prevent the passage of any legislation designed to get this nation headed in the right direction again.

An overwhelming Democratic victory and the passage of the American Jobs Act, however, are only the first steps we must take. We must greatly decrease the role money plays in our political system. Reforming our campaign financing laws will not be easy. Unless we remove from our Supreme Court the unethical corporate lackeys that form the majority of the justices there or we are fortunate enough to have a few of them suffer fatal heart attacks, it will require a constitutional amendment. Passing such a constitutional amendment will require a ground swell so great that our politicians will be powerless to oppose it. It is time for the people of this nation to wise up and rise up. It is time for them to oppose the insatiable greed of the few and take control of a political system that is supposed give us a government that works for us! There is no question about whether we are in a class war; the only question is whether we will become the impoverished and whimpering victims of the attacks on us or whether we will defend ourselves. Doing this does not mean destroying capitalism. What it does mean is the restoration of a regulated system that prevented capitalism from turning into social Darwinism and gave us the most stable and prosperous economy the world has ever known.

It is doubtful that we will ever be as economically dominate is we were following World War II, but that does not mean we should not remain a major economic power. Nor does it mean that we should give up on the American dream! We are at a critical time in our history. If instead of defending ourselves we surrender and give up on the American dream, we will have no one but ourselves to blame.

Surviving Gopageddon

2011-09-28T12:06:00.000-07:00

We are well into the era of Gopageddon. Money rules and anyone who is not filthy rich has no voice. The corporate toadies on the U.S. Supreme Court made sure of that with their decision in Citizens United. The GOP, the Grand Old Party is a sham; it is the party bought and paid for by the grand old plutocrats. “Government is not the answer,” they tell us. They want us to believe that it is useless to vote because government is evil. They are helping us decide not to vote by severely restricting voter registration in an effort to disenfranchise people who are most inclined to vote for Democrats. The Republicans are also proving their point about the government not being the answer by making sure the government is dysfunctional. They are starving the government of revenue by refusing to make the rich and the corporations pay their fair share of taxes. They are fighting to cut all programs that benefit the middle class, programs such as Medicare, Social Security and Unemployment Insurance. And the Republicans are blocking all efforts to get America back to work. They are opposing the jobs bill, which will repair crumpling bridges and roads and will create jobs. The Republicans even tried to deprive FEMA of the funds it needs to help repair the damage caused by hurricane Irene.

The Republicans actually want our government to fail and our economy to tank. They want the low information voters, who are not bright enough to pay attention to what is happening, to blame the majority party for everything. The Republicans are the anti-government party. They want uninformed voters to blindly lash out at the government or to stay home on election day. Wake up America! The middle class is under attack. More people have slipped into poverty than at any time since the great depression, and the Republicans are blocking all efforts to reverse that trend. Your enemy is the Republican Party. The only way you can survive Gopageddon is to end it! The middle class is in a war against the insatiable greed of the powerful few and the nihilism of the Republican Party. You cannot afford to lose that war. What is at stake here are all of the things that have made this country so great, including our democracy. You must not give in to a feeling of futility or blindly lash out at the scapegoats the Republicans want you to blame. President Obama is finally taking the fight to the streets by appealing to the voters for help. Let your representatives in congress and your senators know that you want to get this economy moving again. Let them know that they will pay a high political price for opposing the jobs bill. Let the Republicans in your state know that the right to vote is essential in a democracy and that they will pay a high political price for trying to disenfranchise people by making in so difficult to register to vote.

This is your country. Take it back. Get involved. Register to vote no matter how hard the Republicans make it to register, and sign petitions that oppose unreasonable restrictions on voter registration. Donate whatever time and money you can spare to Democrats running for the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives. Support democrats running for state offices as well. End this vicious attack on our government and our democracy! The Republicans have the money. We have the majority of the people. The only way we can win is to counter the money with our numbers and our willingness to fight the good fight. Your vote matters and your influence increase when you get active!

Policies and Talking Points

2011-09-22T09:04:00.000-07:00

The Republicans are too predictable. Special interests write much of the legislation for them and right wing organizations write the arguments the Republicans use to promote the passage of that legislation or to block legislation the special interests oppose. Thus we have the Republican parrots mindlessly repeating talking points loaded with their favorite buzz words; words such as “Class Warfare,” “Producers,” “freeloaders,” and “entitlement programs.” The talking point du jour is that fifty percent of the adults in this country pay no income tax. In other words, fifty percent of the adults in this country are freeloaders! The Republicans say that not making those freeloaders pay income taxes while insisting that the “producers” pay more is class warfare.

Here are the facts:

We have a progressive income tax for a good reason. Under that tax structure people who are defined as being at the poverty level do not pay income taxes, but they do pay the payroll taxes that support things such as Social Security and Medicare. One of the definitions of poverty is a family of four with an annual income of no more than 20,000 dollars per year. Anyone that has tried to balance a household budget will tell you that with an income that small even a few dollars is the difference between skipping a meal or eating. The real problem, therefore, is not that fifty percent of adults in this country pay no income tax; the real problem it is that the earnings of fifty percent of the adults in this country have now sunk so low that they cannot afford to pay income taxes. The fact is that more people have sunk to the poverty level than at any time since the great depression. The Republicans, however, want to blame everything on “entitlement programs” such as Social Security and Medicare. “Those programs are too expensive,” they say. Simply do away with Medicare and Social Security and those freeloaders can afford to pay income taxes. What this argument ignores is that those “entitlement programs” are actually earned benefits programs. They are programs people have paid into and depend on in their old age, and the earned benefits from those programs make the difference between starving and eating for millions of people. But in the Ayan Rand world of the Republicans freedom means the freedom to starve. People who cannot afford to provide for their uncertain future or who do not have the knowledge to make wise investments and avoid the Bernie Madoffs of this world do not matter to the Republican Party: Make the freeloaders pay and let them eat cake.

The Republicans actually have the gall to tell us that doing away with Medicare and Social Security and/or taxing people who cannot afford to pay income taxes is not class warfare. According to Republicans it is only class warfare when you advocate raising the taxes paid by the producers. They define producers as large corporations and our country’s wealthiest individuals. By taking advantage of the tax loopholes the taxes paid by major corporations have dropped drastically and the wealthiest individuals in our nation are paying lower taxes than they have paid in over 20 years. Furthermore between 1980 and 2005, 80% of the total increase in income went to the top 1%, and our major corporations are now reporting their highest earnings ever. Yet here we have an unemployment rate of over 9%. So what the hell do the producers produce? Where are the jobs? On June 28, 2011 Ezra Klein posted on the Washington Post’s blog a chart that shows both the rate of taxation and the increase of jobs created. What this chart reveals is that the growth rate of employment was actually greater during the times that taxation was the greatest. This really destroys the argument that high taxes cause high unemployment. It shows beyond a doubt that enriching the rich does not work. To this the Republicans scream about “Regulations!” They tell us it is regulations that are killing jobs. Studies reveal that this is not true either. Doing away with regulations during the last twenty years did not increase employment. What doing away with regulations or not enforcing regulations brought about was the irresponsible behavior that resulted in the crash of 2007.

The disparity in wealth between the super rich and everyone else indicates that this is not a normal recession that has a negative impact on all of our citizens. When fifty percent of the adults in this nation have fallen into poverty something is seriously wrong with our economy. We are now caught in the Republican created catch 22. The Republicans claim we cannot afford to invest in bridges and roads even though this will create jobs and improve our transportation system. They claim our current deficit will not permit it. They claim we cannot deal with the deficit by taxing the job producers regardless of the fact that those “jobs producers” are not creating any jobs. The Republicans are ignoring the fact that our economy is demand driven, that demand stimulates the production that creates the jobs, and that it is the buying power of the middle class that creates the demand. Requiring the rich and the corporations, who can easily afford to pay higher taxes, to pay their fair share is not class warfare. Doing away with earned benefits programs or raising the taxes of those who can least afford to pay is class warfare. What we really need are jobs, and the Republicans are stifling the Democratic Party’s reasonable efforts to create jobs!

Getting this country moving in the right direction again is not going to be easy. It ultimately requires us to revive our manufacturing and return to a time when the wealth of this nation was distributed in a more equitable manner, thanks in large part to labor unions and a thriving industrial base. Setting things right again will require a decrease in the role money plays in our political system, an imaginative approach that does not create a trade war, and patience. What President Obama and the Democratic Party are offering with the jobs bill are baby steps, but they are at least steps in the right direction. What the Republican Party and its candidates are offering is a bigger ditch than the one we are now in. They want us to keep digging in the wrong direction when we have already come close to digging our way to hell as it is. To put it simply, prosperity is not a prize you will find in the bag of elephant brand fertilizer!

A Dismal Field

2011-09-13T14:18:00.000-07:00

I have to admit that I did not watch the debate of Republican presidential candidates. This is unusual for me. I grew up in a household where we watched both political conventions and any debates that were televised. We also paid close attention to what the competing candidates said during the campaigns. That, however, was back in the days when most Republicans were honest conservatives who had this strange notion that getting elected meant that they had a responsibility to help govern this great nation even when their party was in the minority. Those days are long gone. The Republican Party of today puts their party first and their country second. Republican politicians of today totally embrace the idea that winning elections is all that matters, and they are more than willing to harm the economy of this nation in order to accomplish that goal. I know that is a harsh statement, but let us look at the evidence:

From the very first day that President Obama was elected the Republicans have set out to create congressional gridlock in order to prevent the Democrats from passing any legislation regardless of how badly the country needs that legislation. The Republican leader in the senate, Mitch McConnell, has actually stated that the first priority of the Republican Party is to make President Obama a one-term president. Mr. McConnell actually brags about the Republicans using the filibuster to keep the senate from accomplishing anything. “It now takes sixty votes to pass anything,” McConnell says. Because of the filibuster and the threat of the filibuster the senate could not even consider the bills the Democrats managed to pass through the House of Representatives to create jobs, and President Obama could not get his appointments to vital government agencies or cabinet posts confirmed. Since 2008 the Republicans have even opposed measures they have traditionally supported; measures such as the government investing in bridges and roads, tax incentives to help start up businesses, and incentives for small businesses to hire more people. The Republicans are even opposing tax cuts for the middle class. The reason why the Republicans favored those measures in the past is because those measures worked. The work done on our roads and bridges during the great depression and Republican President Dwight Eisenhower’s massive road building program in the nineteen-fifties greatly improved the safety and efficiency of transportation, and it gave thousands of people meaningful jobs. Yet here we have the Republican Party disingenuously calling such projects failed policy!

The Republicans have become even more irresponsible since gaining control of the House of Representatives. They recently demonstrated that they do not care about our transportation system by refusing to pass a budget for the Federal Aviation Administration unless the unions in that industry are busted. They have also demonstrated that they do not care about our economy by refusing to approve the federal budget unless the government greatly reduced its spending during a recession. They even went so far as to threaten the economy of this nation and the world by holding the debt-ceiling hostage to their outrageous demands, which included extending Bush’s tax cuts for the rich. The Republicans have and still are greatly exaggerating the dangers of the deficit, and they are lying about what it will take to reduce the deficit. The most important thing we must do to reduce the deficit is to increase the number of people who are employed and are thereby paying taxes.

If you ask the Republicans to name a single job producing bill they have passed or even proposed since taking control of the House they will tell you they have prevented the Democrats from raising taxes on the job producers, meaning corporations that are reporting record profits and are not hiring anyone and wealthy individuals who are paying a lower percentage of their income in taxes than their secretaries are paying. The Republicans will also insist that they have helped to save jobs by preventing the Democrats from enforcing “job killing” regulations, meaning the regulations that are designed to prevent the irresponsible behavior that caused the crash of 2007 and the regulations that protect our air, our food, and our water. If enriching the rich and deregulating everything creates jobs why did we actually lose jobs during the administration of George W. Bush? Where are those jobs?

All that the Republican Party and its presidential candidates are willing to offer us is the same old trickle theory of economics that has failed time and again. The policies the Republicans advocate are the same policies they followed before the crash in 1929, and they are the same policies George Bush followed before the crash of 2007. The Republicans think we are foolish enough to believe that all we have to do is give huge tax breaks to the rich and let the giant corporations, the Wall Street speculators, the banks and the insurance companies do anything they want regardless of how harmful or exploitive their actions might be. The Republicans want us to believe that if we deregulate everything and continue to enrich the rich the job fairy will sprinkle us with magical prosperity dust and bless us all!

As you may have gathered I am not buying that Republican fairy tale. The reason why I did not watch the debates is because none of the Republican candidates have the intellect and/or the courage to offer anything but the same old crap that got us into this mess in the first place. Just take a look at who is running for their nomination.

Rich Perry: I won’t say, “this dog don’t hunt.” What I will say is that all he brings back are skunks. He calls Social Security a fraudulent ponzi scheme. He is in favor of the Ryan plan that would turn Medicare into a private voucher program. He even said that the progressive income tax is unconstitutional. These and other extreme right wing opinions are stated in his book “Fed Up.” That book was published a year ago, and any attempt to back away from those positions now will not be truthful.

Mitt Romney: He wants to run on his experience as a businessman, but his business was that of a professional job killer. He bought up companies, laid-off many of its employees, and then sold those companies or the assets of those companies for a huge profit. He also claims he is not a professional politician. If by that he means he is not very good at getting elected I will agree with him. If he means that he has not spent years trying to get elected to public office he is not telling the truth. He failed in his effort to win Edward Kennedy’s senate seat, and he did not run for another term as governor of Massachusetts because it was obvious that he could not win the election. He also failed at his first attempt to win the nomination as the Republican candidate for President.

Perry and Romney are the front-runners but the speculation about other politicians entering the race makes it clear that many Republicans are not real happy with any of the people who have declared their candidacy.

Sarah Palin: There is always a lot of speculation about her running, and there are Republicans who are foolish enough to vote for her. The problem is that she has been spraying like a dog for four years now, and she still has not been able to claim enough territory to be a viable national candidate.

Chris Christy: The Republicans have been touting him for all they are worth, but the New Jersey bully is even losing his luster in New Jersey. His austerity program has really hurt the middle class and is not very popular. This is particularly true of his efforts to bust the public employee unions. Apparently the voters like cops, firemen, and teachers.

Jon Huntsman: He might be the one candidate who could appeal to a broader audience. He is an old fashioned conservative who tries to be reasonable. He is highly critical of the Republicans in congress for holding the debt-ceiling hostage. He even thinks that scientific facts are more important than the blind faith that makes religious fanatics reject those facts. It is no wonder that he cannot gain any traction in the Republican Party. His economic policies are seriously flawed, but he is at least someone I respect.

Other Candidates: They are not worth mentioning unless there is a drastic change in the polls. I only mentioned Huntsman because his low standing in the polls during a year when all the Republican candidates are dismal is a clear indication of just how intellectually bankrupt the Republican Party has become.

Since I started writing this post the Republicans have started objecting to President Obama’s job bill. As expected they are saying we cannot afford it. They are also saying that closing the tax loopholes corporations exploit and raising taxes on the rich is not acceptable. There is absolutely no doubt that they will kill the bill, and the employment situation will become worse. The Republicans are obviously counting on low information voters expressing their frustration by simply voting against all incumbents, including President Obama, in 2912. That strategy worked during the mid term elections, but will it work now? As frustrated as I am with the idiocy of low information voters, I am still optimistic enough to think that what the Republicans are doing will bite them this time around.

Too Much Of A Bad Thing

2011-08-18T13:18:00.000-07:00

When the voters threw their temper tantrum in 2010 they elected right wing ideologues as governors and state legislators in a half dozen states. Those extreme right wing fanatics quickly set about pursuing their radical agenda. Taxes on businesses were slashed and there was a move to reward favored businesses by privatizing many government services. The fanatics then used the revenue shortfalls caused by decreasing taxes on large corporations to justify severe spending cuts for services the middle class depends upon, such as public education, health care and unemployment insurance. The right wing fanatics also mounted an all out assault on labor unions by stripping away the collective bargaining rights of public workers unions. This union busting correctly became a symbol for the destructive assault on the middle class, and it provoked massive demonstrations against the bills to bust the unions representing teachers, nurses, firemen, and policemen, among others. What is happening in those states where right wing fanatics have gained control of state governments should serve as an example of what will happen if the Republicans gain control of the federal government or are allowed to continue obstructing reasonable efforts to deal with our current recession.

Among the states in which the right wing ideologues gained control of the state governments are Wisconsin, Ohio, and Florida. I have chosen to focus on those states because there are some very interesting things taking place there. The constitutions of Wisconsin and Ohio provide middle class voters with some tools they are using to fight back. In Wisconsin there is the recall that has been used to oust two Republican State Senators who supported Governor Scott Walker’s unconscionable agenda. Scott Walker becomes eligible for recall in January of 2012. The defeat of two of the six Republican state senators the unions were trying to recall and the failure of the Republicans to recall any of the four Democrats they were trying to recall does not bode well for Governor Walker, nor do the polls which indicate that he is in serious danger of being recalled as soon as he becomes eligible for that procedure.

Governor Kasich of Ohio has a slightly different problem. Like Governor Walker, Governor Kasich did not even bother to try to negotiate with the unions or the Democrats; instead he ignored the demonstrations and rammed his union busting bill through the state legislature. Ohio does not have the recall, but it does have a referendum that allows voters to repeal unpopular legislation. More than enough signatures have been gathered to put a referendum to repeal the anti-union bill on the ballet. All of the polls indicate that Kasich’s union busting bill will be repealed. Furthermore, the polls indicate that his approval rating with the voters has slipped drastically. Governor Kasich is now sweating bullets over the certainty of the repeal, his slip in popularity, and what is happening in Wisconsin. He is desperately trying to back peddle. Come, let us compromise he is saying. This is a far cry from his demand that the unions apologize to him and the people of Ohio for protesting the passage of his union busting bill. The unions and the Democrats are saying he should have been willing to compromise before now. It seems that the only choices left to Governor Kasich are to repeal the union busting bill on his own and start over or to let the referendum process play out. The time for him to act like an adult has already run out. It is very unlikely that he will be able to take back what he has done and to demonstrate the ability and the willingness to be reasonable. Such efforts are a bit like trying to unpick a fight you started when you punched someone in the nose.

The Governor of Florida, Rick Scott, does not have to worry about a recall or a referendum. In this regard he is like the governors of most of the states where right wing fanatics have taken over the state governments. What he and the other right wing governors and state legislators do have to worry about is what the voters are thinking and feeling. All of the polls have shown a large increase in the number of voters who disapprove of what those right wing governors and state legislators are doing. None of those right wing governors, however, have experienced as great of a disapproval rating as has Governor Scott in Florida. A mere seventeen percent of the voters approve of the job he is doing. He has become so desperate that he is now sending out robo-calls in the middle of his term as governor. The voters of Florida are letting him know what they think of those robo-calls and his performance as governor by flooding his office with reverse robo-calls. Bless the hacker who was able to allow them to do that! As one voter who identified himself as a life long Republican said: “I’m so angry at you that I will not vote for any Republican again.”

It has taken something truly horrible to rouse the voters from their slumber and make them realize what the agenda of the right wing fanatics is doing to the middle class of this country. Now the voters in those states where the right wing Republicans rule are directing their anger where it should have been directed over the last ten years. And the voters in those states are finally fighting back. A serious battle has finally begun, and it is a hopeful sign. This is not good news to those right wing governors or the Republican Party. I am finding the right wing’s consternation of over the events in those states rather amusing. They are spinning for all they are worth, but it will do them no good; they are now spinning on the extended middle finger of an electorate that is very angry about the destructive agenda of the Republican Party. If I were in a more charitable mood I would take up a collection to buy and send to those governors some drip-dry underwear. Perhaps I am being overly optimistic, but I think they and the Republican Party are going to need such underwear when the voters render their verdict in 2012.

Even Karl Rove is trying to warn the Republican Party of the perils of drifting too far to the right. The warning is too late, Karl! The Republican Party has nothing to offer but pettifoggery, and that will only carry them so far. The voters are finally beginning catch on. It is now up to President Obama and the Democratic Party to focus on jobs and reveal the intellectual bankruptcy of the obstructionists who put the interests of their party above the needs of the people of this country. President Obama and the Democratic Party must take the battle into the Senate, the House, and the Streets. They must urge the voters to follow the example of the good people in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Florida. They must urge the people to demand an end to the obstructionist tactics the Republicans are using to prevent the government form doing what it needs to do to create jobs!

Another Election Stolen?

2011-08-10T10:53:00.000-07:00

As a Southern Californian and an avid fan of PAC 10 football it is not often that I cheer for Wisconsin regardless of the fact that I have a tremendous respect for that state, its schools, and its football teams. Over the last year, however, I have been cheering mightily for the good people of Wisconsin. When the voters foolishly threw their temper tantrum in 2010 one of the results was the election in Wisconsin of a radical right wing governor and radical right wing legislators. Those right wing Republicans wasted no time in attacking labor unions, education and other things that are so important to the middle class while following the Republican agenda of enriching the rich. The good people of Wisconsin fought back. They held massive demonstrations and filed recall petitions against six entrenched Republican state senators. The results of the recall elections are now in. The Democrats won two of the six recall elections. They fell one election victory short of the total they needed to take over the state senate. The fight continues, and getting rid of the two right wing Republicans was still quite an accomplishment given the millions of dollars the right wing threw into those elections. What makes that accomplishment even more remarkable is that the election of one of those Republicans, Ms. Darling, is tainted.

Once more the results from Waukeshal were delayed and the Republican miraculously received the number of votes needed to win once those votes were counted. During the Supreme Court elections over fourteen thousand votes appeared two days after the election to give a supporter of Governor Walker the victory. The incompetence of the election clerk, Kathy Nicholaus, was noted at that time. The question then as now is whether it is a matter of incompetence or something far worse. There is nothing new about stealing elections. Bush quite obviously stole a presidential election in Florida. Furthermore the legislation passed in Wisconsin to severely restrict voter registration makes it clear that right wing Republicans will do anything to win elections and push their destructive agenda. While I cannot say that anyone tampered with the election results in Wisconsin, I can and do say that someone needs to investigate the possibility that there was tampering.

To the people of Wisconsin I say bless you. There is no doubt in my mind that you will continue to fight the good fight. You are an inspiration and an example we should all follow. The middle class needs to take this country back and return it to its place of being the land of opportunity.

It’s About Jobs, Stupid!

2011-08-02T10:11:00.000-07:00

President Obama has been sucked into the nihilistic vortex of right wing fanatics. I do not blame him for this. When economic terrorists are threatening to blow up the economy by not paying our existing debts the President has to do what he can to avert the disaster. The problem is that his opponents see his willingness to compromise as a weakness. He gave into the Republicans before by extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich when the Republicans threatened to block an extension of the tax cuts for the middle class and threatened to shut down the government. In all fairness, I must say that the President gained something from the compromise reached at that time, but the Republicans saw the concessions he made as a capitulation. The combination of the weakness they perceived in President Obama and their fear of the lunatics taking over their party prevented Republicans who know better from opposing the dangerous scheme of holding the debt ceiling as a hostage. What is all too apparent is that those tea party fanatics are so delusional they think that if they cause another depression the voters will blame it on President Obama, and they are so viscous that they are willing to create another depression regardless have how much that harms the people of this country. I am afraid that the horrible precedent set by the extortionists and by our efforts to appease them will harm the recovery we so desperately need and will pose another grave threat to our economy in the future.

It is time for President Obama to stand up to the Republicans. He cannot continue to let the destructive fanatics define the issues and set the agenda. He has to start acting like a Democrat. The real issue is about getting this country moving in the right direction again. IT IS ABOUT JOBS! That is what the voters will tell him, and that is what he must emphasize. The Republicans cynically manufactured the debt ceiling crises in an effort to accomplish what the defeated Ryan plan failed to do. It is painfully obvious that the Republicans think destroying Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security is more desirable than creating jobs and that their insistence on draconian cuts to federal spending is just another attempt to destroy those entitlement programs. While the budget deficit is a legitimate concern decreasing it will not create jobs. In fact drastic spending cuts are far more likely to increase unemployment. Greatly reducing government spending will dump laid off government workers onto the labor market and deprive private businesses of government contracts. In other words, sharp spending cuts will deepen the recession.

The Democrats have to educate the public. They need to define the programs that create jobs and the policies that kill jobs. They need to point out that it is the Democratic Party that is trying to create jobs and it is the Republican Party that is killing jobs. The Republicans have used the filibuster in the Senate a record number of times to keep the Democrats from passing legislation to encourage job growth, including a bill that would do away with tax incentives that actually reward companies for exporting American jobs. The Republicans have also opposed the stimulus bill, the loans that saved the automobile industry, and a tax break that encourages the growth of small businesses. There is not a single piece of legislation the Republicans have introduced to stimulate the economy or create jobs. Instead the Republicans stubbornly cling to the trickle down economics that failed during the great depression and failed again under George W. Bush. Enriching the rich does not create jobs, but that is all the Republicans are willing to offer – that and ill advised cuts to government spending that will only exacerbate the unemployment problem.

The Republicans have created the deficit smoke screen to mask their destructive agenda. The Democrats need to blow away that smoke screen to reveal the real economic conditions that are causing so much misery. Saying that we should take a balanced approach to balancing the budget is fine, but the Democrats cannot let the Republicans treat the deficit as a separate issue. The deficit is not a separate issue; it is simply a part of the overall economic situation. The way to avoid getting bogged down in a debate about the deficit is to put the Republicans on the defensive about the high unemployment. The Democrats need to introduce another stimulus bill or infrastructure bill in the Senate as quickly as possible. The Republicans will use the deficit as an excuse for blocking those bills, but this merely helps to draw the distinction between the party that is trying to create jobs and the party that is not trying to create jobs. Every time the Republicans scream “deficits” the Democrats should respond by screaming “Jobs!” If more people are working and paying taxes much of the deficit problem will be solved! Would you rather decrease the deficit by creating jobs or by destroying Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security? That is the real issue. There is little doubt in my mind that most of the voters will choose jobs. That is what all the polls indicate. It is also what our uncommon sense tells us. I say uncommon sense because the people who think all you need is common sense are demonstrating that they have no sense at all. They seem to think that balancing a household budget makes them economists. I suppose they think that their ability to use a knife and fork also makes them qualified to perform brain surgery.

Not Politics As Usual

2011-07-27T13:22:00.000-07:00

Speaker Boehner revealed that the Republicans picked this very irresponsible fight over the debt ceiling when he replied to President Obama’s prime time speech on the subject. In an effort to try to portray Mr. Obama as being inconsistent and unwilling to compromise Mr. Boehner said that Mr. Obama’s original position was that the debt ceiling must be raised clean, without any conditions. What Mr. Boehner did not say is that the debt ceiling was raised clean eighteen times under Ronald Regan and seven times under George W. Bush. The reason why the debt ceiling was routinely raised without any strings attached is that the debt ceiling is merely an authorization to pay the debts incurred when Congress authorized the expenditures. In other words, these are current debts that must be paid. The debt ceiling has absolutely nothing to do with any future debts that may be incurred as a result of congress authorizing future expenditures.

The Republicans disingenuously analogize the national debt with household debt. Mr. Boehner did this when he said we must live within our means. It was a false analogy because he was talking about decreasing our future spending rather than debts that have already been incurred. If you default on all your debts the banks will foreclose on your house and your car will be repossessed. If you default on debts other than your house and or your car your credit rating will be downgraded and the interest you pay on your mortgage, your car loan, your credit card debt and all other debts will increase. In which case your monthly payments on all of those loans will increase. That is the reality and that is the proper analogy.

Frankly I think Mr. Obama should have stuck to his original position and insisted on a bill raising the debt ceiling with no conditions. The time to argue about spending is when the spending is being authorized or denied rather than after the money has already been spent. Mr. Obama, however, gave in to the Republicans by dropping his original demand and by addressing the question of how to decrease the federal deficit. He offered four trillion dollars in spending cuts but insisted that there be an increase in revenue as well. The Republicans predictably rejected this proposal because closing the tax loopholes to increase revenue would mean that corporations reporting almost obscene profits, hedge fund managers who pay capital gains taxes rather than income taxes, and the wealthiest people in our nation would have to share some of the burden by paying their fair share of the taxes. But the Republican intransigence does not end there. They are even rejecting Harry Reid’s proposal to cut two trillion in spending with no increase in revenue.

So why did the republicans create this phony issue? Why are they so eager to run our economy off of a cliff? The answer has two components, the first of which is revealed in statements made by Carl Rove and other Republicans who have said that the Republican Party should make it impossible for any Democratic President to govern. That is one of the major reasons why the Republicans have used the filibuster a record number of times in the senate to block bills that would increase employment, and it is why they have picked this fight over the debt ceiling. The second reason why they have picked this fight is because they want to destroy all entitlement programs, including programs such as Medicare and Social Security which people have been paying into throughout most of their adult lives. The Republicans are obviously more than willing to cause another great depression in order to accomplish those goals! When a group of people, certainly a minority in this case, intentionally set out to harm our nation and overthrow a duly elected government it is called treason. Not in my worst nightmare have I imagined myself accusing a politician, let along a political party, of being traitors, but no party in modern history has had a significant number of its members threaten our country in this manner before. The only defense for what the Republicans are doing is insanity and that defense also makes them unfit to govern.

What they are doing on the state level is every bit as bad. The Republican Governors and legislators are preparing to steal the elections of 2012 by passing restrictive voter registration laws that disenfranchise citizens who are likely to vote for Democrats. In Wisconsin the Republicans are feeling a real urgency to disenfranchise such voters because of the recall elections. The Republicans in Wisconsin are requiring picture identification in order to register to vote, and they are making it almost impossible to get picture identification by severely restricting the source of such identification to the Department of Motor vehicles which has closed many its offices and has very limited hours in which its remaining offices are open. The effort to disenfranchise people who are likely to vote for Democrats, however, is not restricted to Wisconsin. There is a concerted effort on the part of Republicans to make it far more difficult to vote in a large number of states, including but not limited to Tennessee, Colorado, South Carolina, Kansas, and Florida. This is something we cannot allow. The requirement for picture identification and proof of citizenship will disenfranchise the elderly who do not drive as well as college students and the poor. The saying that when one person’s rights are trampled the rights of all people are in danger could not be truer in this instance.

In a democracy ballets replace bullets. If you take away the ballets all you are left with are the bullets. Before you get your panties in a wad over this statement let me say I am not advocating violence. What I am saying is that these unconscionable restrictions on voter registration are a direct threat to our democracy. We are better than this! We must not let the aspiring despots do this. We must remember that George W. Bush was able to steal a Presidential election by disenfranchising people likely to vote for Democrats in Florida. This is not politics as usual. This is an assault on our democratic form of government, and, believe me, I would be saying the same thing if the Democratic Party was using such tactics.

What we now have is not the Republican Party of our fathers. The Republicans are a party that has gone berserk. They are a party that is more than willing to undermine our democracy and destroy our economy for political gain. We must punish them for this. We must purge our political system and cast the offenders into political infamy until the Republican Party is convinced that it must reform itself and act responsibly again. As the battle over the ceiling and the cynical efforts to disenfranchise lawful citizens illustrate we cannot afford to suffer such irresponsible and destructive behavior!

Make no mistake about it the threat posed to this country by the Republican Party is real. The oligopoly the Republicans champion is concentrating the wealth of this nation into fewer and fewer hands while everyone else is getting poorer, and the assault on our right to vote is a grave threat to very concept of majority rule. This is your fight. You hold the ultimate power in your hands. You must make a stand before it is too late to undo the damage. Contact any Republicans you have elected and let them know you have had enough. Reject the Republican bullshit and force our government to focus on moving our economy in the right direction again. Vote for Democrats in 2012 and demand that they set the proper priorities. We need jobs, damn it! We need more people working and paying taxes. If we accomplish that the deficit will take care of itself.

Burn It down

2011-07-21T14:15:00.001-07:00

Bill Maher said it best. He said that people who voted for Republicans in the 2010 elections have no right to complain about the Casey Anthony verdict because those voters ignored all the evidence in regard to what the Republican Party was doing. Political analysts all look for some deeper meaning in the election results, and the victorious party always touts its stated agenda as the reason why the voters elected them. No one wants to believe how capricious voters can be. Bill Maher, however, hit the nail right on the head. The truth is that low information, independent voters expressed their frustration over the lagging recovery by throwing a temper tantrum. In doing that those voters gave economic terrorists control of the Republican Party and the House of Representatives. While it is true that the economic terrorists did not ascend to positions of leadership in the House it is their extreme anti-government philosophy that is mistakenly accepted as the reason why the Republican Party did so well in those elections. What passes for leaders in Republican Party now cower in fear of those extremists. So how did this happen?

In this blog I have been saying that the Republican Party is morally and intellectually bankrupt. For those who have not studied enough history to already know the fallacy of trickle down economics and deregulation the crash of 2007-2008 revealed those fallacies. The problem for the Republicans is that they accept those fallacious theories as a matter of faith, and they do not have an effective leader who is capable of adjusting to reality. With nothing constructive to offer, the Republicans concentrated their efforts on obstructing the implementation of measures we traditionally use to recover from recessions. Their goal in doing this was to stall the recovery and create a situation that would make the uninformed voters lash out at all incumbents, and it worked. The Democrats lost their majority in the House of Representatives as well as many governorships and state legislatures. The result was and still is chaos and legislative gridlock. Chaos is and always has been a condition favorable to demagogues and extremists, and it was the demagogues and extremists that were elected in 2010. Those extremists are now acting like economic terrorist by not raising the debt ceiling. Not even the warning issued by Ronald Reagan, who they claim to revere and have almost beatified, can dissuade those lunatics from causing this country to default on its debts. Make no mistake about it those economic terrorists actually want to cause another depression.

The reason why they want to send us into a depression is because they think they can tap into the anger this would create to advance their radical social and economic agenda. They really want to overturn Row v. Wade and to destroy Planned Parenthood, labor unions and all of the agencies responsible for protecting our air and the safety of our water and our food. Their economic agenda is to free all industry from any and all government regulation. They believe that a depression will allow them to defund the new Consumer Protection Agency, which is responsible for protecting us from the irresponsible actions of the banks and Wall Street among other things. But this is not all they want to destroy. The also want to destroy Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. They have already passed through the House of Representatives the Ryan Plan, which would turn Medicare into a private voucher program while providing still more huge tax breaks for the rich. George W. Bush tried and failed to privatize Social Security and Congressman Sessions has introduced yet another bill to privatize it. Furthermore the Republicans have attached to the bill to fund the FAA a rider that would destroy all of the labor unions in the aviation industry. The only thing preventing the Republicans from accomplishing those destructive goals at this time is the fact that the President is a Democrat and the Democrats still hold a majority in the Senate. That, however, could change if the Republicans are able to create a depression and the voters are foolish enough to blame the Democrats for causing it.

Do not be fooled by this claptrap about the deficit. If the Republicans were really serious about reducing it they would endorse a balanced plan that would provide increased revenue as well as spending cuts. The reason why they will not do that and are insisting on drastic cuts in expenditures is because they want to destroy all social programs and all of the agencies that would make our large corporations, Wall Street and the banks behave responsibly. They do not give a damn about high unemployment; they are more than willing to take down our entire economy and throw hundreds of thousands of people out of work in order to further their despicable agenda.

A One Term President

2011-07-07T10:12:00.000-07:00

This is a rant. In my previous post I stated what President Obama must do in regard to the Republicans holding the debt ceiling hostage and why he must stand firm. What has me so angry is that he is giving every indication that he is going appease them. He appears to be drifting with the tide like a jellyfish with no stingers. He appears to be someone who stands for nothing because he will not fight for anything. He has broken his sword by saying he will not use the 14th Amendment in this fight, and he is hinting that he might accept a deal in which some of the benefits of Social Security, Medicare and/or Medicate will be reduced. Such a deal must not stand! The Democratic Party has to fight for the people of this country. Democratic members of Congress must tell him they will reject any compromise that reduces the benefits of Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid in any way.

The surest way for President Obama to become a one term President is to make any cuts to the benefits of those programs. If he does this, the independent voters will not be able to tell the difference between him and the economic terrorists. He will also lose my vote and the votes of many of the people in his base. We would rather have an enemy we know than a friend we cannot trust! I am afraid it is up to Congress to save him from himself. If he faces a revolt from members of his own party he just might grow a backbone. It would be a real tragedy if such a talented man goes down in history as one of our most disappointing Presidents. The election of 2012 is his for the taking if he has the courage to stand firm and to tell his Wall Street buddies that it is the Republicans who are hosing them by trying to set a precedent we cannot and will not permit.

All Out War

2011-07-05T12:04:00.001-07:00

There is an all out war between the two major political parties. The Republicans are determined to make the President fail and to destroy the Democratic Party at all costs. The battle ground is both social and economic. There is an old saying that when the elephants fight it is the grass that suffers. In this case it is the country and its people who are suffering. The greatest threat right now is the Republican Party’s attack on our economy. In order to enrich the rich the Republicans want to destroy Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Furthermore, they are willing to cause a world wide depression in order to accomplish those goals. They are holding the debt ceiling hostage until their demands a met. This has never been done before because the consequences of this country defaulting on its debts are too destructive for anyone with a conscience to play such foolish games. Interest rates will soar and the value of the dollar will plummet if we allow the Republicans to cause us to default on our debts. Now is the time for extraordinary measures. We simply cannot allow the Republicans to destroy our economy.

Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner, has said that not honoring our debts would be unconstitutional. Article 4 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution states in relevant part, “[t]he validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law… shall not be questioned.” What this means is that we cannot default on our debts regardless of the debt ceiling! No president has used the 14th Amendment to bypass congress before, but no party has been irresponsible enough to hold payment of our debts hostage before. Forget the Republican crap about the deficit. As the deficit soared under George W. Bush the Republicans raised the debt ceiling seven times without so much as a whimper. I might add that if the Republicans were really concerned about our national debt they would raise revenues by letting Bush’s tax cuts for the rich expire and by getting rid of the loopholes that allow the most prosperous corporations on earth to avoid paying any taxes. Even Republicans raise revenue when they are serious about reducing the deficit. If the President acts in accordance with Article 4 of the 14th Amendment and provides for the continuing payment of the national debt without Congress first raising the debt ceiling, it will diminish the role of Congress somewhat. That is probably not a good thing, but the precedent the Republicans are setting by holding payment of the debt hostage to their destructive agenda is far more dangerous than the precedent that would be set by bypassing Congress in order to meet our obligations.

The Republicans obviously have no qualms about changing the rules or about setting bad precedents in an effort to win their war against the Democrats. They shut down the government when Newt Gingrich was Speaker of the House of Representatives, and they threatened to shut it down again if Bush’s outrageous tax breaks for the rich were not extended. The Democrats under Clinton’s leadership held firm. The Democrats under Obama’s leadership caved in, and the tax cuts for the rich were extended. When the Democrats tried to block Bush’s appointments of right wing Justices to the U.S. Supreme Court the Republicans threatened to do away with the filibuster in the Senate. The Democrats then caved in, and we now have the worst Supreme Court ever. Although the Republicans confirmed the one Supreme Court Justice appointed by Obama, they have used the threat of the filibuster to block over 200 hundred appointments to other positions. They have also used the filibuster a record number of times to block bills that would help us recover from this recession. The Democrats are cautious about changing rules and setting precedents, but like it or not, they are going to have to resort to Republican tactics in order to break through the gridlock the Republicans have created. Harry Reid must modify the filibuster rules in the Senate in order to get this country on the right track again, and President Obama must invoke Article 4 of the 14th Amendment if the Republicans refuse to raise the debt ceiling without the Democrats caving in to the outrageous demands of the Republicans.

There is little doubt in my mind that if the Democrats do what is right for this nation and thwart the Republican Party’s attacks on our economy and our middle class the Republican Party will have to start acting responsibly again or face extinction. This should be the lesson of the mid-term elections. The people did not see those elections as an ideological choice. Quite frankly, the voters never seem to be able to understand what those ideologies mean. What the voters know is what they are personally experiencing. They know the hardships caused by stagnating incomes as the costs of energy and food continue to increase. They know what will happen if Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are privatized. They know what will happen if the interest rates on their mortgages, credit cards, etc. go through the roof. They know they are getting the short end of the stick and are making all of the sacrifices while the wealth of this nation becomes more and more concentrated into fewer and fewer hands. The people of this country are frustrated by the high unemployment and deceasing opportunities. They want results they can see and feel. They want a political party that will fight to break up the gridlock and speed up the recovery. The Republican Party is unwilling to offer anything positive. It is up to the Democratic Party to demonstrate through its deeds and its words that it is the party carrying out to will of the people.

Clarence Thomas Must Go

2011-06-28T13:23:00.000-07:00

Last week I argued that the Declaration of Independence was a part of our laws. The point I was making was that the principles upon which our laws are based are the very essence of our laws. Indeed, appellate courts take those principles and legislative intent into consideration when interpreting our laws. This is why it is not just congress that may not abridge the right to freedom of speech, religion, etc. If the states could abridge those rights the constitutional protections of those rights would mean nothing. Similarly, the principles for the conduct of judges are set forth in the rules of ethics those judges must follow. If U.S. Supreme Court Justices can ignore those rules and refuse to recuse themselves from cases in which those justices might have a conflict of interest or a bias in favor of one party over another then the right to an impartial hearing and decisions based upon the merits of the case mean nothing. In which case, our entire judicial system is a sham.

Obviously the intent of exempting Supreme Court Justices from those rules of ethics was not to permit the justices to act unethically; rather it was to preserve the independence of the court by preventing anyone from using a minor or questionable breach of those rules as a reason for expelling from the court a justice who has made an unpopular decision. As I said last week, the real question is not whether Supreme Court Justices must follow the rules of ethics but rather who, if anyone, has the authority to enforce those rules in regard to U.S. Supreme Court Justices. To conclude otherwise would be inconsistent with the most fundamental principles of our judicial system. The good reputation of the Supreme Court and its justices is essential if the people of this country are going to have any faith in the integrity of our courts. This was the argument Chief Justice Earl Warren made to Justice Abe Fortas when Mr. Fortas faced the threat of impeachment over the Wolfson scandal, and it was at least in part why Justice Fortas resigned from the court.

What Abe Fortas did to cause the threat of impeachment was not as egregious as the violations committed by Clarence Thomas. Justice Fortas at least had the good sense to recuse himself from hearing the cases involving Mr. Wofson. Clarence Thomas, on the other hand, heard the Citizens United Case and voted in favor of Citizens United even though Citizens United had contributed $100,000 to help Justice Thomas get confirmed. After receiving valuable gifts from American Enterprise Institute (AEI) Justice Thomas heard three cases involving AEI, and he either sided with AEI or took positions more extreme than AEI in all three of those cases. This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Justice Thomas. He has demonstrated an unmistakable pattern of ethical violations that cannot be ignored. The evidence against him is mounting both in regard to the activities of his wife and in regard to his relationship with Harlan Crow, both of which should have caused Justice Thomas to recuse himself from cases he has helped to decide. Clarence Thomas is the perfect example of why judges must follow the rules of ethics and why Supreme Court Justices cannot be exempt from those rules.

As Abe Fortas faced the threat of impeachment so must Justice Thomas. The evidence against him must be presented to Congress and to the court of public opinion. Doing this is essential to the integrity of our entire judicial system. Impeachment and removal from the court are the only available remedies to protect us from the judicial misconduct of a U.S. Supreme Court Justice. Clarence Thomas has committed more than just minor or questionable violations of the rules of ethics; he has disgraced the highest court in land with behavior that is unethical or criminal or both. The rules he has violated are serious enough to conclude that he is guilty of judicial misconduct at the least. We must not allow him to create even the impression that U.S. Supreme Court decisions can be purchased!

An Unethical Court

2011-06-23T12:25:00.000-07:00

It is now being argued that Justices of the United States Supreme Court are not subject to the rules of ethics governing the behavior of judges. I liken that assertion to the argument that the Declaration of Independence is not a part of our body of law. The argument that this document, which sets forth the very principles on which our nation was founded, is not a part of our laws is absurd. Historians say that the first documented instance of someone quoting the Declaration as an authority was when Abraham Lincoln quoted it in his Gettysburg Address. In interpreting our laws, however, courts take into account the principles on which those laws are based, the intent of the law, and whether the law is equitable. There is little doubt that in framing the first ten amendments to our constitution our founding fathers had the principles stated in the Declaration of Independence firmly in mind. Unfortunately other parts of our constitution denied to many people the rights guaranteed by those amendments, and it took a civil war to cure that defect. Following that war several constitutional amendments and court cases extended citizenship to all people who are born in this country and established the primacy of federal law. Establishing the primacy of federal law meant that no state could deprive its citizens our groups of its citizens of the rights protected by our constitution. In doing this we made our written laws conform to the principles stated in our Declaration of Independence.

The assertion that Justices of the United States Supreme Court are not bound by the rules of ethics governing the behavior of all other judges defies all logic. The Supreme Court has enormous power. It can modify, change, and nullify laws. It therefore has the power to shape the fabric of the laws of this nation of laws. The guiding principal behind the rules of judicial ethics is to assure impartial hearings and fair and unbiased decisions. To say that the Justices of the highest court in the land are not bound by rules of ethics and can act unethically is ridiculous on its face. It violates the principle that no one is above the law, and it violates the intent of our entire body of laws. If those Justices are free to act unethically no one can be assured of a fair and impartial hearing, and no one can count on being afforded the protections guaranteed by our constitution!

The principles upon which our laws are based are the essence of our laws. Clearly it was not the intent of our founding fathers to establish a court that would undermine the integrity of our judiciary by acting unethically. The Supreme Court has tacitly acknowledged that its justices are not permitted to act unethically when it accepted the resignation of Justice Fortas who was pressured to resign because of his violation of the rules of ethics. The question, therefore, is not whether the Justices of the Supreme Court must follow the rules of ethics, but rather who has the authority to enforce those rules in regard to Supreme Court Justices. The only written law addressing the power to remove a Supreme Court Justice from the court is the power to impeach. A congressional committee or the Justice Department should therefore investigate Clarence Thomas to find the grounds for impeachment. The burden of proof to establish that he committed a high crime or misdemeanor is far more difficult than the burden of proof to establish that he behaved unethically, but the evidence of his corruption is mounting. There are also questions about whether a violation of judicial ethics constitutes judicial misconduct and whether judicial misconduct is a violation of criminal law. I will leave the answer to those questions to people who have the training and the time to research them, but I will say that Justices of the Supreme Court cannot be exempt from such laws. I am aware that many people will say that the precedent set by impeaching Thomas and removing him from the court could undermine the independence of the court. But the dangers of permitting Justice Thomas to remain on the court are far more dangerous than the precedent set by removing him. His refusal to recuse himself from hearing appeals when it is apparent that he has a conflict of interest is a judicial travesty. He must either resign or be removed. The integrity of our entire judicial system is on the line!

The Ladies of Wall Mart

2011-06-22T09:12:00.000-07:00

Justice denied! That is what the five injustices of our Supreme Court have done. They have denied justice not just to the women of Wall Mart but to everyone fighting corporations that are blatantly violating the law. We no longer have a Supreme Court. What we have is a corporate court. I now modify my previous statements and pronounce this the worst Supreme Court ever. In my previous post I pointed to Clarence Thomas’s obvious violations of judicial ethics. I think it is apparent that he is not the only injustice who is guilty of such violations. Where are the feminist militants of the nineteen seventies? While this decision is a horrible precedent for everyone regardless of gender, it is particularly egregious to women. Women should be outraged about what the Republicans and what this outrageously partisan court are doing to them.

It is time to start using some of the civil disobedience tactics. The fact that the ladies of Wall Mart have no union or formal organization is going to make this very difficult but not impossible. What would be beneficial is if a very large number of ladies working for Wall Mart started filing small claims suits. Can you imagine how difficult and expensive it would be for Wall Mart to defend thousands of these suits filed all over the nation or risk losing those suits by default?

The second thing to do is to enlist women’s groups, Moveon.org, Credo and other liberal groups in this cause. All of them should call for a boycott of Wall Mart. Hit the bastards in their pocket books.

The third thing and I think the most important thing for this country is the need to break up the corporate cabal formed by the five injustices. Clarence Thomas is by far the most blatant violator of judicial ethics. Petitions must be circulated for his impeachment. Those petitions should be sent to Congressman Boehner, Nancy Pelosi, President Obama, and all news organizations. As I stated in my previous post, Thomas will not be impeached while the Republicans control the house. This, however, does not mean that the petitions are futile. We must win in the court of public opinion. We must start putting pressure on the politicians and the justices of the Supreme Court. The pressure must be relentless and eventually overwhelming. Republicans in particular must be warned that we will hold them accountable for the actions of the injustices appointed by Republican Presidents.

We Must Judge

2011-06-21T13:16:00.000-07:00

If our present Supreme Court is not the worst in our history it is certainly the worst we have had in centuries. No court has been more politicized and no justice has behaved more unethically than Clarence Thomas. One has to be careful about accusing anyone of corruption. Such charges must be proven and the burden of proof is difficult. Ethical violations are another matter. Some behavior is so unethical on its face that it must not be tolerated. The evidence of unethical behavior is mounting in regard to Thomas. He ruled in favor of Citizens United even after receiving one hundred thousand dollars from Citizens United. He was the only dissenting voice in a decision rendered against a person who has given him valuable gifts and has done many favors for him. Justice Thomas has failed to report such gifts or to reveal his wife’s income, which is particularly egregious considering that she works for right wing groups that lobby for laws that are frequently placed before the Supreme Court. In no case has Thomas recused himself from hearing an appeal regardless of the apparent conflicts of interest that might have determined how he ruled.

Such behavior is the very antithesis of fair and impartial justice. It is a clear violation of the ethical rule that a judge must avoid any appearance of partiality or a conflict of interest. Justice Abe Fortas resigned over a scandal involving behavior that was no more unethical than Justice Thomas’s behavior. Unfortunately there is no higher court. Which is to say that there is no one who can enforce the ethics we have every right to expect members of the Supreme Court to follow. Justice Thomas’s action must not stand. Every other branch of government is subjected to a check and balance from another branch. Such must also be the case in regard to a Justice of the Supreme Court who violates the public trust. Impeachment has no teeth in this instance. The burden of proving a high crime or misdemeanor is too great under these circumstances. The politicization of the court makes it unlikely that the Republicans would ever oust a justice serving the very interests that support the Republican Party.

All we now have to redress this grievance is the court of public opinion. But what if that court never hears the case. What if there is no hue and cry that will make the public aware of these violations. Where is the President of the United States? Where is the Democratic Party? Where is the news media? Who will plead this case? It must be us and it must be now! The damage being done to our political and judicial system is far too great for us to remain silent. We must exert relentless and overwhelming pressure. We must make the Republicans set their interests aside and do what is best for this country. We must make the Republicans acknowledge that this is not a matter ideology because ethical standards have no ideology. Justice Thomas must resign or be forced out of office!

Where Is My Party?

2011-06-16T14:14:00.000-07:00

I looked to the left. I looked to the right. I looked at the center. The Democratic Party was flitting all about. When Clinton was elected President the Democratic Party was holding its traditional position slightly to the left of center. Then the Democrats suffered a painful mid-term election. Clinton responded to this by moving to the right. He was seeking the center ground. It was called triangulation, but it caused him to slip ever farther to the right. It did no Good. George W. Bush won the Presidential election after Clinton finished his second term. Bush then took the country so far to the right that he ran it off the road and into an economic ditch. With the election of Obama it looked like the Democrats were going to reclaim their traditional ground. The economy was so bad that it looked like the country was in desperate need of another Roosevelt.

Obama started off well. The TARP bill had already been passed, and he managed to add a stimulus bill as well as a bill that provided the loans the auto industry needed in order for it to get back on its feet. Over a million jobs were saved and thousands of jobs were added. Then came the health care bill, which required compromises that made it less effective than it should be. Furthermore, in spite of the jobs saved and added unemployment remained unacceptably high. The Democratic Party then suffered another painful mid-term election. The Republican Party was not content to stay in Bush’s ditch. Instead they made matters worse for this country by digging in ever farther to the right. Every attempt to compromise with the Republicans then nudged to Democrats farther to the right. The Bush tax cuts for the rich were extended and important social programs were cut. Then with control of the House of Representatives the Republicans did the unthinkable. They were actually stupid enough to pass the Ryan Plan that would enrich the rich while destroying Medicare by turning it into a voucher program. Congressman Sessions has even introduced a bill that would destroy Social Security by privatizing it.

If the Democrats think that the stupidity of the Republicans is enough to cause a landslide they had better think again. It is not enough for the Republicans to be out of touch with the voters if the Democrats try to work out compromises that make them appear to be out of touch with voters as well. The Democrats need to draw a sharp contrast between their party and the Republicans. The Democrats need to excite their base and get them campaigning for all they are worth. The failure to do this in the mid-term elections should tell them that. It is about Jobs! This is no time to be timid. We need to get to work on our infrastructure. We need to create jobs! We can pay for this by letting the Bush tax cuts for the rich expire, by eliminating or greatly reducing the subsidies paid to oil companies and farmers, by eliminating the loopholes that allow our most prosperous corporations to avoid paying taxes, and by eliminating the incentives to export our jobs. We can also reduce the cost of gasoline and food by cracking down on the greedy commodities traders. The Democrats really need to get behind labor and vigorously represent all of the people who are getting hosed by the interests the Republicans so ruthlessly represent.

I realize that very few of those things can be accomplished before the next elections, but the effort must be made. Obama and the other Democratic candidates must be able to run on those policies and against the Republican Congress and the filibusters that are preventing us from making this country prosperous again! If this is what the Democrats do there will be an overwhelming victory for the Democratic Party, and we will be able to get on the right track again! The people of this country need and want another Roosevelt. They want a President and a party that will inspire them and fight for them. Compromise is impossible when the Republicans are being so unreasonable. The Democrats have given up far more than they should have. Tax and spend is preferable to choke and starve. We must never indulge in appeasement or capitulation! This is the can do nation, and now is the time for resolute action.

Weiner’s Scandal:

2011-06-08T09:36:00.000-07:00

Congressman Weiner’s refusal to deny that the picture in question was of him was a cause for some reservations on my part, but I honestly believed that he did not post or send that picture to anyone. The reason I believed this is because the allegations were made on biggovernment.com, which is the blog of Andrew Breitbart. Andrew Breitbart is a proven liar who has posted videos that were deceptively edited to support totally false allegations. The veracity of anything and every thing posted on his blog must be questioned, and nothing he says can be believed unless some independent, credible source verifies it.

What Congressman Weiner did was most unbecoming, but what really irks me is his untrue denial. Thanks to this attempted cover up we were subjected to one of the most unethical men on earth demanding an apology. What Mr. Weiner did was so damaging because having to apologize and admit that the allegations were true creates the impression that Andrew Breitbart is credible when nothing could be farther from the truth. Even someone as unethical as Breitbart will tell the truth when doing so suits his purpose. Now even serious reporters will search the sewer scum in Breitbat’s blog for even the slightest grains of truth, while the gullible will swallow all the crap Breitbart dumps there.

The pundits are now arguing over whether Congressman Weiner’s political career will survive this scandal. The Republicans, forever the hypocrites, are now calling for his resignation, and the Democrats are trying to distance themselves from him. His scandal is sucking up the media attention right when the Democrats want to draw attention to the insanity of the Republican Party’s efforts to kill Medicare while further enriching the rich. As far as sex scandals go Mr. Weiner’s is fairly tame thus far. I have to say thus far because we do not know what else is out there. My brother characterizes Mr. Weiner’s actions as inter net flirting. I will not go quite that far, but as far as we can tell he has not done anything illegal. Furthermore, he has served his constituents and this country well. My sincerest hope is that he will be able to rehabilitate himself and will keep up the good work we have come to expect of him

Loony Tunes:

2011-06-01T12:15:00.000-07:00

Crank up the merry go round song. The destructive Republican clowns in Congress are still doing their thing, and the joke is on us. The Ryan plan makes their objective crystal clear. They want to continue enriching the rich at our expense; they want destroy all entitlement programs by privatizing Medicare and ultimately Social Security. They also want to destroy all labor unions and those pesky regulations that would prevent another economic meltdown or protect the environment. How intellectually and morally bankrupt is the Republican Party? Well, the Republican Majority Leader in the House of Representatives, Eric Canter, wants to deny aid to the victims of the tornado in Joplin Missouri unless more programs are cut to offset the cost of that aid! The Republicans are also holding hostage the raising of the debt ceiling, and the ransom they are demanding are drastic cuts in all entitlement programs. As I stated before, this is where the Democrats must stand firm. They must say: Raise the debt ceiling clean, without any conditions! If the Republicans refuse to do this their masters, Wall Street and the large corporations, will lose billions of dollars in a worldwide economic crash that will be the result of the gross negligence of the Republican Party. The ironic thing is that the Republicans will be doing this in an effort to keep the corporations and the wealthy individuals so heavily invested in those corporations from paying the taxes they should pay in order to reduce the deficit. I am not merely using hyperbole when I say this is insane.

The fact is that the Republican Party has lost touch with the vast majority of the people of this nation. We do not want to go back to nineteen ten. We do not want our safety nets destroyed. We like Social Security and Medicare; we do not want to enrich the insurance companies and Wall Street at our expense by privatizing those programs. We do not want to go back to a time before labor unions gave us a living wage, ended child labor, and gave us safer work places. We do not want to continue exporting our jobs, or to allow the sort of frauds that nearly caused another great depression. The Republican Party has been unmasked. The attacks on labor unions and Medicare have awakened a sleeping giant. It is time for the Democratic Party to take this fight into the streets and for the voters to take it into the voting booths. I am not going to pull any punches here. This is a battle for the heart and soul of this country and the cost of defending our heart and soul could be very high if the Republicans do not raise the debt ceiling. What is also evident is that the cost of caving on this issue is equally high. This is where the Democratic Party must draw the line. The voters know the ransom the Republicans are demanding, and if the Republicans carry out their threat to let America default on its debts it will very likely mean the death of the Republican Party.

The Republicans have been defying the polls for quite some time now, but they will not get away with it this time. The smart Republicans are the moderates who will not throw their hats into the Presidential ring in two thousand twelve. They are the ones who do not want to act like Mitt Romney by denying their positive accomplishments in order to win the primary elections. They are the ones who read and understand the polls. The Republican Party has set out on a very destructive course. Hopefully there are still enough reasonable Republicans to keep the lunatics from dashing America on the rocks by causing it to default on its loans. I do not envy their task. The careers of those Republican legislators in particular are on the line. Saving this country and their party is going to be very costly for them. Unfortunately we cannot rely on such uncommon valor. We must rise up and join the battle. Now more than ever it is time for an informed electorate to make their voices heard! It is time to let the Republican Party know that the fait of this country and their party is on the line! It is time to let them know that they must do right thing or call an end to their political careers and their party!

A Divine Comedy It Ain’t

2011-05-18T15:49:00.000-07:00

In another post I said that by pandering to the lunatic right the Republicans were dancing with the devil. Now the dance has turned into a predictable farce. Needless to say that the comedy is something a good deal less than divine. The Republicans who habitually demonstrate their intellectual bankruptcy by touting Newt Gingrich as their idea of an intellectual are now yelling at him. I guess he is demonstrating that he is not a very good dancer. He stepped in it so deep that he is now picking shit out of his nose. He defended the individual mandate in the affordable health care law then tried to retract his statement. Did I say that? I did certainly did not mean it. How could you have possibly thought I meant it? Because you said it, dumb ass. The Newtster also saw that Ryan’s plan to replace Medicare with a voucher program while giving outrageous tax breaks to the rich was wildly unpopular. Even the factually challenged independents are able to see that this scheme would hose them. Although I do not give Gingrich credit for being very bright, I must admit that he was able to see that a Presidential candidate has to back away from the Ryan plan. So Gingrich called the plan radical. He is now paying the price for doing so and is in full back pedal mode.

The right wing is obviously going to hang Ryan’s stinking albatross around the neck of whoever wins the Republican primary. We Democrats are trying not to laugh as we sing “Happy Days Are Here Again.” But we cannot get too giddy about this because the Republican Party’s dance with the devil puts the entire country in a very dangerous situation. In an earlier post, I pointed out that the Republicans had to raise the debt ceiling because their masters, Wall Street and the large corporations, will lose billions of dollars if they do not do this. For all his posturing about not raising the debt ceiling if taxes are raised on rich or deep cuts are not made to entitlement programs Mr. Boehner is realistic enough to know that the debt ceiling must be raised. Unfortunately for him, he made the mistake of publicly demonstrating his grasp of reality by saying the debt ceiling would have to be raised now and probably again next year. In doing this he, like Gingrich, stepped in it. The right wing is all over him.

When you dance with the devil he will not settle for a kiss good night. The only question is when the devil will exact his price and how many people will have to pay. If this country is lucky, Mr. Boehner will form a temporary coalition with Democrats to raise the debt ceiling. If this country is really lucky the Republicans will also pay the price for dancing with the devil in two thousand and twelve and again in the mid-term elections. That should be enough to make the Republican Party cut loose the right wing idiots and start acting responsibly again. Whether this will happen depends to a great extent on whether the independent voters will wake up enough to see who is hosing them and get angry enough to do something about it.

Even The Correct Course Is Not Easy

2011-05-04T12:22:00.000-07:00

There is a segment of our population that will deny any and all accomplishments President Obama can rightly claim. There is absolutely no proof that can be offered in regard to his place of birth that will not be denied by the idiots we call birthers. Most of those people are bigots who want to deny that Mr. Obama is a legitimate President. They are too ridiculous for me to waste any more time writing about them. The other people who dispute Mr. Obama’s accomplishments are either politically motivated or are just unreasonably skeptical about everything. What brings those skeptics to mind is the recent news that navy seals killed Osama Bin Laden in a very bold military operation. Removing this evil man from the earth was a great accomplishment. Retaining his body so that his identity could be confirmed by forensic evidence, which included DNA testing, was an essential part of that operation. Nothing would be more embarrassing than falsely taking credit for his death. Believe me, Al Qaeda would quickly find a way to disprove such a false claim.

Once Bin Laden’s identity had been confirmed, there was the question about what to do with his remains. Mr. Obama correctly decided to treat the remains in a manner that would be consistent with our view that we are not waging a war against Islam but are simply defending ourselves from evil men who are misusing Islam to justify heinous acts. Doing this, however, was not an easy task. On the one hand, Mr. Obama wanted to prevent the burial site from becoming a shrine for those demented terrorists who do not think that committing heinous acts in the name of God is a blasphemy. On the other hand, Mr. Obama wanted to bury the remains in the twenty-four hour period the Koran specifies. His solution was to bury the remains at sea. Now many followers of Islam are saying that burial at sea is not in accordance with the Koran, and skeptics here are asking why the body was not brought back to the U.S. as proof that Bin Laden is dead.

Fortunately, most people are applauding the resolute action that killed Bin Laden. It was a very risky operation both for the brave men who carried it out and for President Obama. If the operation had failed and a large number of our men had been killed Mr. Obama would have paid a very high emotional and political price. Yet of the options presented to him he chose the most difficult one. He did this because he did not want there to be any doubt that the mission accomplished its goal. Say what you want about President Obama, but he does not lack courage, resolve or competence. He was fully in charge and was ready to accept the responsibility for whatever happened.

President Obama must now demonstrate this same courage and resolve in regard to our economy. He must find a way to increase employment and rebuild our manufacturing capacity. He must do this for the sake of our citizens and for the world. The choices are clear. There are compassionate societies that build and provide opportunities, hope, and aid to their citizens. Then there are societies that offer nothing more than despair, alienation, and destruction. If we do not rebuild we will fall. The war on terror and the unrest in this world is far from over. We cannot provide what we do not have. We cannot tout a failing system. We must get our own house in order. We must rebuild our own economy or we will not have the ability to help those emerging democracies that are trying to replace the nihilism of the terrorists. Rebuilding our economy will not be easy, but here is a lot at stake both here at home and abroad.

We’re Not Going There!

2011-04-27T12:01:00.000-07:00

The Republican Party’s drift to the right, to a world without a social conscience where enemies real and imagined, foreign and domestic abound may have finally awakened a sleeping electorate. The Republicans have been getting away with the big lies for so long that they may have started believing those lies. My brother takes the lies personally. “They think I’m a fool,” he shouts. “I’m not a fool! The voters are not fools. They will wake up, and when they do there will be hell to pay!”

The Republicans promised to create jobs, but here is what they are really doing:

1. They held the budget and tax breaks for the middle class hostage so they could enrich the rich. Contrary to the lies they tell us this does not create jobs.

2. They have attacked the reproductive rights of women and tried to defund Planned Parenthood. This does not create jobs.

3. They have tried to defund the Environments Protection Agency. This does not create jobs.

4. The have tried to repeal the health care reform act, which they call Obama care. This actually costs jobs.

5. The have refused to extend unemployment benefits. This decreases demand for goods and services and costs jobs.

6. Now they want to turn Medicare into a voucher program to further enrich the insurance companies. What the hell does that have to do with jobs?

7. They have attacked unions and collective bargaining, much to the detriment of the men and women of this nation.

This is only a partial list of the things they are trying to do that actually makes our economic situation worse. Of the things on my list the two that have the voters up in arms are the Ryan plan to privatize Medicare and the attacks on collective bargaining. The voters are finally saying: “Hell no! We’re not going to let you take us there! We’re not going to let you privatize Social Security either!”

The Republicans have ignored the polls before and gotten away with it. Now they are threatening to cause us to default on our debts if their demands are not met; they are doing this by not raising the debt ceiling. In other words, they are willing to cause a world wide depression in order to dismantle Medicare so that the rich can get another huge tax cut. President Obama has already stated that he will veto the Ryan plan in the unlikely event that it actually gets through the Senate. Mr. Boehner talks about compromise but he also says that an increase of taxes on the rich and a bill that does not include drastic cuts in government services is a non-starter. There can be no compromise. Any bill that meets Mr. Boener’s demands is another case of the Democrats caving, and another step closer to a world without a social conscience. President Obama and Harry Reid must stand firm. They must stand eyeball to eyeball with the Republicans and call their bluff!

If the Republicans refuse to raise the debt ceiling it will cost their masters, Wall Street and the large corporations, billions of dollars. Furthermore, the voters will be furious about the Republicans causing a great depression in an attempt to dismantle very popular programs for the sake of the rich. This is the worse case scenario for the Republican Party. It could literally cause its political death! It should cause its political death!

Oops!

2011-04-20T11:58:00.000-07:00

As most of you probably know, I have a fiction blog as well as this blog. The goal of the fiction blog is simply to entertain. You also know from reading this blog that I have some very strong political views. Lately my frustration over what the Republican Party is doing has made me so angry that it was difficult to think of anything else. I simply cannot believe that the voters are not up in arms over the tactics and dark world the Republicans want to create. This anger and frustration has prompted me to write several political pieces that I posted on my fiction blog. The last of those was posted last week. It was inspired by the brilliant comic strip, Pogo, and as in the comic strip I was thinking of animal characters. In re-reading it I discovered that it was a bit brutal. Apparently others had the same opinion. I did not receive any comments about it, but all the links people had formed to my fiction blog suddenly disappeared. I must admit that posting that satire on my fiction blog was bad manners because it is not what people expect when they visit that Blog. I do not know if the people deleting links to that blog did so because they were offended by my bad manners or because they are afraid of the right wing. Regardless of their motives I am strongly considering deleting some of the political things from that blog. That is why I am now posting the satire inspired by Pogo on this blog. It is as follows:

Oligopolmy Swamp

I recently looked up the Pogo comic strip by Walt Kelly. It was comic strip I greatly enjoyed in years past. The characters and satires were wonderful. The following is my attempt to honor Mr. Kelly’s work by writing something similar, but without the art work and, I must admit, without the brilliance. Hey, we all have to give up something in this economy.

“Oligopolmy Swamp,” the name always brought a smile to the faces of the more prominent citizens there. The only store in the swamp was the Shop ‘n Buy Mart owned by Daddy Swampbucks. Daddy Swampbucks also owned the Crabapple Pie Company, which made the most popular pies sold at his store. The pies were reasonably priced because the little old ladies working at the Crabapple Apple Pie Company were paid in ready to fry opossum legs and the hair nets the ladies had to wear on the job.

It was a cold day by swamp standards. Thick black smoke, caused by burning Cockbros Swamp Moss in stoves made by Cockbros Energy, drifted throughout the swamp. Much of that smoke came from the stovepipe protruding through the tin roof of the Shop ‘n Buy Mart.

Warming him self next to the moss burning stove at the Shop ‘n Buy was Apol Grumpypaws. A blinding flash lit up the store and tossed Apol’s shadow across the room. Seeing his shadow thrown about in such an abrupt manner frightened him.

“Damn! What was Dat?” he asked.

“It’s just the Cockbros dryin’ the moss,” Daddy Swampbucks replied.

“Did one of dere dryin’ ovens blow up?”

“No, they decided the ovens take too long to dry the moss. They’re now dryin’ it by settin’ off the clouds of swamp gas.”

“But dem clouds shift with de wind. How do dey know where da flash of fire’s gonna go?”

“It don’t matter. There’s moss growin’ everywhere.”

“Dere’s also folks livin’ everywhere.”

“Wet as it is here they’ll just get singed a bit. Besides, swamp gas is really bad for you. The Cockbros think the government will even subsidize them for gettin’ rid of it.”

This is when Hog Holler entered the store.

“Say, I just seen ol’ Skunkbutt Doublespeak go inta dat odd, round buildin’.”

“That’s the Cockbros’ new stink tank,” Daddy Swampbucks said.

“Stink tank you say?”

“Yeah, the Cockbros want ‘ol Skunkbutt to convince folks that them tea dunkers are doin’ the right thing if they shut down the government in order to keep it from protectin’ lady parts and the environment.”

“Don’t sound too smart to me,” Apol said.

“You don’t have to be smart iffen you can buy smarts.”

“And rich folks can buy anything dey wants from de government now dat’ city-sons been un-knighted,” Hog Holler said.

Apol looked annoyed. “Dis conversation’s meanderin’ like moss smoke. How’er dem Cockbros gonna buy government subsidizin’ for clearin’ out de swamp gas if de government ain’t open for business?”

Apol’s question went unanswered because there was another blinding flash of fire. Hog Holler looked out the window. He then turned to Apol, who was checking to see if his shadow had returned to its proper place.

“Looks like de Cockbros just burnt de bark off de wall of your log cabin, Apol.”

“Damn it! Dat means I might have to paint de place.”

Daddy Swampbucks looked out the window. He clearly saw how he could profit from what the Cockbros were doing.

“Only the front wall, and I got some dandy paint I can sell you. Iffen you want to buy enough to paint the whole cabin I’ll even throw in a piece of Crabapple pie.”

What You Don’t Know Often Kicks Your Ass!

2011-04-12T15:35:00.000-07:00

Ignorance is not bliss it is dangerous! It is not the dumb asses who listen to the likes of Rush Limbaugh or watch the Fox disinformation factory that frustrate me. The percentage of people who are that stupid is small but constant. What I find so frustrating is a much larger percentage of ignorant people. The ignorance Jay Leno reveals when he Jay walks is not an aberration. MSNBC revealed a similar ignorance when they asked randomly selected people to name the Speaker of the House of Representatives. A very large percentage of the people asked could not answer that question. They had absolutely no idea who John Boehner is. The thing is that people get so caught up in their daily struggles that they fail to recognize many of the factors that are making those daily struggles more difficult. It took a great depression to make an earlier generation understand how much the government or lack of government impacts our daily lives. When this earlier generation finally figured it out, they re-elected Franklin Roosevelt three times.

The elections of 2008 made me think that people were finally paying attention. That was foolish on my part. The truth is that they did not have a clue. They gave the Democratic Party a resounding victory because they quite correctly blamed the party in power for the economic meltdown. Their reaction, however, was emotional rather than cerebral. When the economy did not turn around quickly enough the voters punished the Democratic Party without giving any thought to the fact that the Republican Party was using the filibuster to prevent the Democrats from doing any more to stimulate the economy. In doing so the voters gave the obstructionists still more power by giving them control of the House of Representative. As a result of this foolishness we now have the budget battles, the cutting of badly needed government services, and a continuation of the policy of enriching the rich at the expense of everyone else. If we have not already reached that point, we are quickly moving toward an oligopoly, meaning a society where all of the wealth and power is concentrated into a very few hands.

A budget deficit by definition is caused when revenue does not equal spending. The Republicans want you to believe that the deficit is caused by spending only. They want you to believe this because if you look at revenues you will want to do away with tax loopholes that allow major corporations to avoid paying any taxes, and you will insist on the rich paying a fair share of the taxes. You will also understand that it is the creation of the oligopoly that is the root cause of our economic problems. So how do we make independent voters understand this? How do we make them pay enough attention to look at the facts?

In their opposition to health care reform the tea party grabbed the attention of the independent voters by telling the big lies, disrupting meetings, and demonstrating. But you do not have to lie in order to be dramatic enough to draw attention. The people demonstrating against the reactionary Republican Governors who are attacking collective bargaining are doing a fine job of getting the attention of the independent voters in those states. The time to raise the debt ceiling in order to keep this country from defaulting on its debts and sending the world’s economy into a tailspin is fast approaching. The Republican Party already used the budget to try to dismantle Planned Parenthood and gut the Environmental Protection agency. The Republicans also used the budget to attack many vital government services. They will undoubtedly use raising the debt ceiling to renew those attacks. Their attacks are outrageous and potentially disastrous. Women’s groups and environmental groups should be demonstrating for all they are worth. They should be screaming, “Liars and Shame!” President Obama should also be screaming Shame! He should castigate the enrichment of the rich schemes in the strongest possible terms.

We must take this battle into the streets! We must shake the independent voters out of their slumber and show them what the Republican Party is doing to them! The Republican agenda will cost jobs, and it will place a disproportionate burden on the most vulnerable members of our society, the old, the ill, and the unemployed.

All Fools

2011-04-06T14:50:00.000-07:00

One of the ways we celebrate all fool’s day is to perpetrate what we hope will be humorous hoaxes. Politicians do this every day of the year, although the humor is usually inadvertent on their part. The majority leader of the House of Representatives, Eric Cantor, recently introduced an unconstitutional bill that gave the Senate a deadline for approving a House bill and stated that if the Senate failed to meet that deadline the House bill would become law. The Republican Party rather appropriately passed Mr. Cantor’s unconstitutional bill on April First. None of the network news anchors reported this as a humorous event. This is probably because the Republicans did not add “April fools” at the end of the bill. Frankly, I do not think the Republicans got the joke either. It is really funny when you consider that it is the Republicans who insist on a strict interpretation of the Constitution!

Even more amusing than the Republicans passing a bill that even a very young “C” student will tell you is unconstitutional are the excuses the Republicans give for doing this. “We are tired of the Democrats in the Senate refusing to pass our budget bill,” the House Republicans say. “We want to send them a message!” The Republicans then recite talking points from a right wing stink tank, and many of them threaten to shut down the government if the Democrats in the Senate do not cave. The Democrats have already agreed to cut the funding of important programs in order to trim thirty-two billion dollars of spending from the budget. The Democrats did this thinking they had a deal with House Speaker Boehner. Mr. Boehner, however, was not able to sell that deal to his caucus. Now the Republicans are insisting on all or nothing. The Republicans are doing this while saying that the Democrats are acting irresponsibly and are to blame if the government is shut down.

I think the unconstitutional bill the House Republicans passed speaks volumes about who is being irresponsible and who is not. Furthermore, one look at the budget bill will tell you why the Democrats cannot agree to it. Particularly egregious are the riders the Republicans have attached to the budget bill. Among those riders is an attack on the Environmental Protection Agency that if passed would eliminate much of President Obama’s green energy agenda and free up the oil industry and coal industry to do pretty much anything they want to do regardless of any adverse impact that might have on the environment. Other riders would defund Planned Parenthood and the National endowment of the Arts, and there is rider to cut funds for Amtrak. This is just the tip of the iceberg. There are many other riders, and they are nothing more than an extreme right wing wish list that has little to do with the budget. It is well documented that the Republican budget will eliminate seven hundred thousand jobs. Looking farther down the road we have another horrible prospect. Representative Paul Ryan, the Republican economic guru, is once again proposing a bill that would destroy Medicare and Medicaid by turning them into private voucher programs that would subject senior citizens and the working poor to the judgment of the insurance industry’s death panels, much to the benefit of private insurance companies.

In presenting this bill Mr. Ryan is resorting to a Republican tactic we have seen far too often. He is trying to mount a pre-emptive strike against the just criticism his bill will receive. He is saying that the Democrats will lie by calling his bill a privatization of Medicare and a voucher or coupon system. Well, it is nothing more than the same bill he himself called a voucher system and it does privatize both Medicare and Medicaid. It does not matter how Mr. Ryan tries to characterize his proposal it is what it is. Similarly, the current Republican budget bill is what it is. This budget bill is as notable for what it does not contain as it is for what it does contain. It does not eliminate subsidies for oil companies or farmers; it does not eliminate tax loopholes that provide refunds on taxes which companies like GE did not even pay. It does not even raise any revenue by making the rich assume any part of the burden.

The games the Republicans are playing in regard to their budget bill and the games they will play in regard to Mr. Ryan’s outrageous bill are illustrative of the fact that every time the Democrats try to compromise the Republicans demand still more concessions. One thing the reader must bear in mind is that this year’s budget battle is just the beginning. In 2012 we will have to raise the debt ceiling, and that is when Mr. Ryan’s bill will come into play. Then as now, the Republicans will shout that spending is causing the deficit rather than a lack of Revenue, and they will say that Mr. Ryan’s bill will cure that. They will do this in spite of the fact that Mr. Reagan’s tax cuts for the rich created the largest increase in the deficit we had ever seen and in spite of the fact that George W. Bush’s tax cuts for rich are largely responsible for the deficits we now have. How far will the Republicans go to enrich the billionaires and the multi-national corporations they really represent? DailyKos made a brilliant list that compares cuts to programs that benefit the middle class with tax cuts that benefit the wealthy. I invite all of you to use the link I have provided to that comparison.

Mr. Ryan and the Republican Party think we are all fools. In fact, they are counting on it. They are trying to wrap their economic shit in a pretty package to sell as chocolate. In doing this they are assuming we will not use our noses and brains. I say this because anyone who takes one whiff of the contents of their economic package will reject it in the strongest possible terms. Hopefully, the voters will take this whiff sooner rather than later. Please do not misinterpret what I am saying. Shutting down the government is a terribly irresponsible thing to do, particularly during a recession. I do not want the Republicans to do that, but it may be what it is going to take to wake up the somnambulistic voters who identify themselves as independents; it may be what it will take to make those voters take a whiff and reject the Republican shit! There is no doubt that this country will be much better off when that finally happens. As it now stands, the wealth of this nation is percolating up and the Republican filter is holding it far out of the reach of everyone who cannot contribute millions of dollars to political campaigns. The Republicans are in fact destroying the equitable economic system that has for decades made the American dream a reality.

Ineptitude and Greed

2011-03-31T11:48:00.000-07:00

Would you hire the leader of the majority party in the House of Representatives to teach a class on government? Forget it. Republican leader, Eric Cantor, does not even know how a bill becomes law. He actually proposed a bill that would give the Senate a deadline to agree to a House bill. Mr. Cantor’s proposed bill actually states that the House bill would automatically become law if the Senate does not meet that deadline. The remarkable thing is that the news media did not even bother to report this absurdity. I guess the corporate sponsors of television networks do not want the public to know what a bad joke Mr. Cantor is.

Would you make Michele Bachmann chairperson of a committee on civil rights? Forget it. She is really the reincarnation of Joseph McCarthy in drag. Ms. Bachmann has actually stated that she thinks members of congress should be investigated for un-American activities. Regardless of this fact, I would not put it past the Republicans to give Ms. Bachmann such an appointment, particularly in light of the other committee assignments they have made.

Similarly, electing Republicans to solve our economic problems is like hiring Newt Gingrich to be your marriage counselor. Republicans are great at trampling on collective bargaining rights and the reproductive rights of women, but they either know nothing about economics or they are being handsomely rewarded for acting as though they know nothing about economics. They say that our greatest economic problem is the deficit, but balancing the budget will do nothing to create employment. What they are proposing is counter productive at best. The largest part of the deficit is caused by unemployment that deprives the federal government of the taxes working people pay. Furthermore, what the Republicans are proposing to deal with the deficit is absurd on its face. Their draconian cuts, such as doing away with Planned Parenthood, depriving the long-term unemployed of benefits, cutting the food stamp program, etc., will cut a mere thirty billion from the budget, and it does this by foisting the burden off onto the people who can least afford to bear that burden. Hell, the Democrats can cut the deficit by a lot more than that if the Republicans will let them. How about eliminating the subsidies to major oil companies? How about eliminating the subsidies given to companies for exporting jobs? How about eliminating the tax loopholes that gave huge refunds to companies such as General Electric on taxes those companies did not even pay? How about doing away with the outrageous tax cuts George W. Bush gave to the wealthiest individuals in the nation?

The excuse the Republicans give for not eliminating the Bush tax cuts for the rich, the subsides to corporations reporting record profits, and the tax loopholes for corporations reporting record profits is that those individuals and corporations provide jobs. This is like saying that if you hand a plumber a thousand dollars, wish him a cheery good morning, and walk away he will fix your leaking pipes. You would be fool to count on him doing it. Tax deductions tied to hiring more people are likely to create jobs, whereas tax cuts for multi-national corporations merely increase the profits of companies that are already handing out millions of dollars in bonuses to their top executives. Our economy is demand driven. Increasing the profits of corporations so that they can increase the already bloated bonuses they are paying their top executives does nothing to increase demand. Increasing the number of jobs paying living wages, however, does increase the demand for goods and services. This increase in demand then increases the number of jobs, and the deficit problem is solved because of the increase in the number of people paying taxes. Investing in education, infrastructure, and the creation of new industries will create jobs, and the cost of doing those things can be offset by an equitable tax system and the elimination of subsidies to companies who do not need those subsidies.

The Democratic Party has to make the choice clear to the American public. The Republican budget proposal will cost seven hundred thousand jobs during a deep recession. Furthermore, it will barely make a dent in the deficit. Because of the riders the Republicans have attached to their budget proposal, it will also trample on the rights of workers, women, and the middle class. President Obama and Harry Reid must stand firm on those issues. They must let the public know that they have an alternative that will preserve those rights, create jobs, and eventually solve the problem of the deficits. This is not the time to be timid. The ineptitude and greed of the Republican Party must be revealed. If the Republicans want to shut down the government in order to serve their rich masters at the expense of everyone else, they should be forced to do so at the expense of their political careers and at the peril of their party.

Beating The Drum

2011-03-24T13:05:00.000-07:00

I watch MSNBC. I do this because they are the only legitimate news organization covering in depth the issues I care about. They are progressives or liberals if you prefer. They are very honest and up front about that. The one problem, of course, is that the situations they are reporting and the issues they are commenting on are not quickly resolved, which means that the coverage is often repetitive. I am afraid this blog is also repetitive for the same reason. That is regrettable. Even more regrettable are all the people who do not watch MSNBC, or read newspapers, or even blogs that present facts and cogent arguments rather than lies and ideological dogma. I do not know that I have much to add to the debate. I state my opinions. I try to base those opinions on whatever facts are available to me, but they are not facts I have gathered from independent research or investigation. I am really just an old man asking questions and trying to come up with answers.

Lawrence O’Donnell has finally asked a question I have been asking for quite some time. “Who the hell keeps electing Michelle Bachman?” He examined the demographics of her district. Oddly enough those demographics are pretty much the same as the demographics of other districts where people elect reasonably sane and competent politicians to Congress. The only thing I can conclude, and I must admit this involves more than a little conjecture on my part, is that her district is in a community that has been under Republican rule for so long that all the mental health clinics have been deprived of funding for decades.

Rachel Maddow is also asking some questions I have been asking for quite some time. “Why are the network news organizations not pointing out that eliminating budget deficits and attacking a woman’s reproductive rights does nothing to create jobs? If it is about jobs why are the Republicans not concentrating on creating jobs rather than enriching the rich at the expense of everyone else and depriving women of the rights guaranteed to them by Roe v. Wade? And why are the network news organizations not reporting that that is what the Republicans are doing?” My answer to those questions does not require any conjecture at all. The networks have to please corporate sponsors who would rather not have people looking at what the Republicans are actually doing or asking such questions about what the Republicans are doing.

This inability or unwillingness of the networks makes it vitally important for President Obama to use the bully pulpit to keep the public informed. What I have been saying for a long time is that he has to start acting like Franklin Roosevelt rather than Casper Milquetoast. He has to stop letting the Republicans define the issues and set the agenda. He has to point out that the right wing Governors recently elected are giving huge tax breaks to corporations who have not and will not create jobs in spite of the outrageous profits they a raking in, and that those governors are doing this at the expense of their budgets and while attacking collective bargaining, wages, benefits and the education of middle class workers and the working poor. President Obama has to point out that it is to a great extent the greed of Wall Street speculators that is driving up the price of gasoline and other commodities. He has to point out that it is unemployment that is creating the government deficits and so much misery, and that the Republicans are not and will not do what is needed to create more jobs.

The declaration of war I want to see him take before Congress is the one that acknowledges the class warfare the Republicans have started with their attacks on everyone in this country who is not a multi-millionaire. It is high time for the Democratic Party to fulfill its traditional role of defending the middle class from such attacks. Doing this will undoubtedly cost him some campaign funds, but it is the right thing to do. There is also a political upside to doing the right thing. The disapproval ratings of those right wing governors have soared, and so have the approval ratings of the Democrats who oppose those governors. What is happening in states such as Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania, etc. is not simply local politics. It is part of the national strategy of the Republican Party. It goes hand in hand with extending outrageous tax cuts for the super wealthy while attacking unemployment insurance and all other government programs that would help relieve some of the hardship caused by this Republican recession. It is not just the people in the states with right wing governors who think this strategy is outrageous. All President Obama has to do is fill in the dots and inform the public of what is happening. His approval ratings and those of Democratic Party will soar, just as Franklin Roosevelt’s approval ratings soared.

There is a hell of lot more of us than multi-millionaires. What we want is a champion who will defend our opportunities and the equitable economic structure our fathers and grandfathers fought so hard to obtain. What we want is a leader who will get us moving in the right direction again. In fact, we demand such a leader!

Natural Disasters

2011-03-17T15:15:00.000-07:00

There have been a lot of natural disasters recently. Haiti, Indonesia, and now Japan spring instantly to mind. Earthquakes, Tsunamis and volcanoes are terrible reminders of how vulnerable we are. We can prepare for them. We can try to minimize the damage through construction, detection and early warnings, but we cannot stop them. No country was better prepared than Japan. Believe me, far more people would have died if it were not for Japan’s preparation and planning. But the one thing we had better learn to expect is the unexpected. No one prepared for the enormous magnitude of the earthquake or the Tsunami that followed that quake. The horrible wild cards are the nuclear power plants that now pose a very serious threat to far more people. There are some idiots, mostly Republicans, who smugly say it cannot happen here. They want to decrease what we are spending on early warning devices, and they want to ignore the safety regulations that would decertify many of the older plants we have. They also want to build more of those plants before we absorb the lessons we must learn from what is happening in Japan. Greed is their motive, and they are willing to unnecessarily place your life in peril for the profits of the companies who own or build those power plants. Doing this is insane. The Japanese are very meticulous and intelligent. If this tragedy can happen there, it can happen anywhere. This is a wake up call!

My heart goes out to the people of Japan. Even great nations can use some help when the devastation and the threat is this enormous. What must provide whatever aid we are able to provide. We must let them know they do not stand along. We must let them know we care and want to help. We must also learn from them and from what has happened there!

A Step Too Far

2011-03-10T15:42:00.000-08:00

On Wisconsin! Go Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Florida! The battle has been joined. Demonstrators are in the streets and in front of the state houses of their capitals. You have to go back to a time that culminated in the great depression to find such a horrible economic situation and the egregious provocations that are causing the demonstrations. Deregulation nearly resulted the total collapse of our economy, and it caused the stubborn recession we are now in. Far from trickling down the wealth of this nation is being concentrated into fewer and fewer hands. The policies of the Republican Party are enriching the rich while everyone else is getting poorer. The prices of food, gasoline and every other commodity are spiraling out of control partly because of the greed of the speculators on Wall Street. Since the Presidency of Ronald Reagan the attack on the middle class has been relentless and unabated. The exportation of so much industry and so many jobs has made it almost impossible for the labor unions to retain enough power to check the greed of the financial titans.

The greed of the wealthy knows no bounds. The marching orders to the Republican Party by the Koch brothers and other powerful financial interests are to destroy the remaining labor unions by abolishing collective bargaining and passing right to work laws. Karl Rove and Jim Demint have admitted that this is an arrogant and cynical attempt to dry up the funding of the Democratic Party. If they succeed they will have served their greedy masters by removing the last impediment to total economic Darwinism. The Republican governors and legislators carrying out those orders are trying to justify their actions by proclaiming an economic emergency. They are using the deficits to justify lowering the wages of the middle class and destroying collective bargaining while giving still more tax breaks to the powerful corporations and the wealthiest individuals of their states. Almost all labor unions recognize the larger threat and they are joining the teachers, the nurses, the fire fighters, the police officers and other public employees who are mounting a defense against this outrageous attack on the two party system and the equitable economic structure that has made this country so great.

The battle in Wisconsin has become a symbol for the larger war the Republican Party is waging against the unions, and it is capturing the attention of the entire nation. Governor Walker has let the cat out of the bag. The members of the public employee’s union agreed to a reduction in their wages and their pension plans, but this was not enough for Governor Walker. He still insisted on greatly reducing their collective bargaining rights. There was no economic reason for him to do this given the concessions the union made. The Democratic senators responded to Governor Walker’s unwillingness to negotiate by leaving the state in order to deprive the Republicans of the quorum they needed to pass a budget bill that severely restricted the collective bargaining rights of state employees. This is when the impact of the demonstrations came into play. The public was soon siding with the union. In desperation, Governor Walker and the Republican members of the state senate resorted to stripping the collective bargaining restrictions out of the budget bill, claiming that collective bargaining was not a budgetary issue. The state senate then passed a separate bill restricting the right to collective bargaining. Governor Walker and the Republican Party cannot have it both ways. If collective bargaining is not a budgetary issue he cannot justify gutting the unions on budgetary grounds. This fact is not lost on his constituents.

The voters in Wisconsin, and hopefully the rest of the nation, realize how unfair the Republican Party’s attacks on the unions are. The disapproval rating of Governor Walker and his Republican henchmen have soared as the demonstrations and debates on this issue have drawn the attention of the public. Wisconsin has the recall and petitions to recall eight of the Republican senators are being circulated. There is little doubt that petitions to recall Governor Walker will be circulated in two thousand and twelve when he is eligible to be recalled. If there is any justice the efforts of those wonderful people who are demonstrating and gathering signatures on those recall petitions will further educate the public as to the injustices causing so much grief for the vast majority of this nation. It is time for the public to realize how unfair it is to absolve the corporations and the wealthiest individuals of this nation from the duty of sharing the sacrifices necessary to deal with deficits they caused while the middle class is required to sacrifice so much. It is time for the public to realize who is responsible for stealing their livelihoods and exporting them. It is time for the public to realize who is responsible for setting their houses on fire with toxic loans.

In typical fashion, the Republicans are trying to convince us that Governor Walker is a bright, rising star when it has become all too evident that the brightness they are pointing out is nothing more than the glare of a falling, flaming turd. But he is only a small part of the story. The Republicans have chosen to serve as the army of the wealthy and the greedy rather than serving as representatives of the people who voted for them. Even if the people and the unions who have done so much to create the middle class survive this battle the real war must continue. The middle class must stop this destruction of their jobs, their wages, their houses, and their dreams. They must recognize their enemies and fight them. It is not the hard working people of this great nation who started this class war, but it is they who must win it if this country is to survive as an economic power. You will know that the voters finally understand what is at stake if in two thousand and twelve they hand the Republican Party the greatest defeat any party has suffered in the history of our nation. You will know the voters finally get it if they insist that the Democratic Party use the power gained from those elections to pass and enforce the regulations needed to reign in the insatiable greed that his nearly brought this nation to ruin. You will know that the public understands the issues when they insist on the rich paying their fair share of the taxes and they give the Democratic Party a mandate to preserve and create jobs.

I know that some will say such an overwhelming mandate would also be detrimental to the two party system, but nothing could be more detrimental to that system or our country than what the Republican Party is and has been doing. When one of the major parties has acted so irresponsibly that it has suffered a political eclipse in the past it has changed its ways and regained respect or another party has replaced it. That is what must happen now. The middle class must recognize the enemy and win the war the Republican Party is waging against it.

Too Much News

2011-02-24T15:05:00.001-08:00

It is difficult to know where to start. The democratic movements in the mid-east have spread like a virus. The most dangerous situation is in Libya, which has rapidly moved from demonstrations to a full and violent revolt. This is far too likely to result in a radical regime. The thing is that nobody can blame the people in Libya or this region for their discontent or the movements that are taking place there. If the movements are like those that toppled the Soviet Union they could be beneficial. This could result in modernization and a better economic relationship for everyone. In this regard what is taking place in America is a very poor example for us to set.

The fact is that the rich in this country have greatly increased their wealth at the expense of everyone else. The income of the rich has increase a hundred fold while the income of the middle class has remained flat. If you are talking about real wages, meaning the amount of goods and services you can purchase with your income, the wages of the middle class have actually dropped considerably. In earlier posts I said that the Republican Party’s enrich the rich schemes that did so much to create the current deficit and helped to create our current recession should result in a political disaster for the Republican Party. As a result of voter apathy and pure stupidity, however, the Republican Party was actually rewarded for blocking the Democratic Party’s efforts to get us out of this Republican recession and for telling the big lies about death panels and just about everything else. Inexplicably, the voters actually gave the Republicans control of the House of Representatives and elected quite a few Republican governors.

Now drunk with power, the Republicans are mounting an all out assault on the social and economic progress this country has enjoyed for many decades. Instead of trying to deal with economic issues, the Republicans are attacking Roe v. Wade and virtually all reproductive health care for women by defunding Planned Parenthood and proposing legislation to prevent private insurance companies from funding abortions regardless of the reason for those abortions. It would be tempting to say that the Republicans are doing this in an effort to distract voters’ attention away from the Republican Party’s attack on the middle class. I think their motive is even more cynical. I think they are pandering to the right wing extremists and are firmly convinced that the majority of the voters are too inattentive or stupid to realize the threat this poses to a woman’s reproductive health.

The Republicans are every bit as arrogant when it comes to the economy. They say it is about jobs, jobs, jobs, but their focus is not on creating jobs. Instead they are trying to convince us that the deficit and the high unemployment are the caused by the same thing. And how do they want to solve the deficit problem? Their answer is to take the money out of the hides of the poor and the middle class by doing away with services and aid that help reduce the suffering caused this Republican recession, and they want do this while increasing the already outrageous incomes of the wealthy and the incomes multi-national corporations that are already raking in record profits. If President Obama is smart he will not let the Republicans define the issues. If they want to shut the government down unless their proposals to reduce the deficit are accepted, he should counter with his own proposals. He should propose eliminating subsidies for oil companies, redefining small businesses so that companies worth billions of dollars, such as the Koch brothers, are not receiving the same tax breaks and subsidies as actual small businesses. He should propose reducing farm subsidies, and cutting more of the waste out of defense spending. He should propose raising revenue by charging a royalty on the oil major oil companies are sucking out of gulf. Let the voters decide who is right and who is irresponsible based upon the alternatives offered.

Not being content to ream the middle class while enriching the rich, the Republican governors have mounted an all out attack in an effort to crush labor unions and eliminate a major source of funding for the Democratic Party. This is a coordinated effort supported by the Koch brothers and other large businesses. I am not comparing the Republicans to Hitler, but their strategy is similar to Hitler’s strategy when he said all he wanted was the Sudetenland. The Republicans are hoping that their attempts to destroy the public employee unions will be seen inconsequential by the voters. The Republicans are hoping that blue-collar workers will not realize this is only the beginning of what will be the destruction of collective bargaining, and what this will mean to those workers. If you do not think this is an effort to destroy all unions just ask yourself why the Koch brothers and other major businesses are behind it. Labor leaders know what is at stake here. It is a life and death struggle between the workers and the greedy plutocrats who want to take us back to a time when they exploited their employees with impunity. It is because of labor unions and collective bargaining that blue-collar workers were able to join the middle class. This is a very high stakes game the Republican Party is playing on behalf of its wealthy masters. If labor leaders are able to make white, male, blue-collar workers realize what is at stake, those workers will abandon the Republican Party in droves.

What the Republican Party is doing is what they are always accusing the Democratic Party of doing. The Republicans are engaging in a very brutal class war. If they want to accuse me of that here is my answer: When you steal my crops and export them then set my house on fire with predatory loans there is no question about whether I am at war. The only question is when will I fight back, and why did I wait until you stole my crops and set my house my house on fire!

Egypt: A time of danger and hope

2011-02-15T13:09:00.000-08:00

In terms of revolutions this one was almost bloodless. Yet there were the martyrs: the people killed, the people injured, and the people arrested. The powerful never give up their power easily. The demonstrators were well aware of the risks they were taking in openly opposing the Mubarak regime. The adrenaline flowed day and night as they stood up to the threats and uncertainties. The rejection of each of the government’s attempts to compromise increased the tension and the apprehension. The last straw for the generals of the army probably came when workers around the nation joined in the demonstrations. The implied threat of a general strike that would shut the nation down was too real and too dangerous. Mr. Mubarak had to resign. His resignation was a great victory that has empowered the people.

It is little wonder that the fall of a despot creates a feeling of euphoria and high sky-high expectations. The oppression is gone; the people are now free to chart their own course, and they are certain that this will instantly make everything better. Unfortunately, it is not that simple. The problem for the Egyptian people is much greater than establishing an orderly transition of rule. The thing we must bear in mind is that King Louis XVI of France and Tsar Nicholas II of Russia were not deposed because they were despots; the people rose up against them because of severe economic conditions that made the despotism intolerable. Such is also the case in Egypt. Since the economic problems are far too complex to yield to solutions that are as simple or as quick as changing governments many of the grievances of the people will linger after a new government is formed. This reality places any new government in peril because it is almost impossible to make suffering people understand why the government cannot meet their high expectations or all of their demands. The most likely result of this will be disillusionment and a demand for more drastic changes.

The disillusionment of the people is fertile ground for demagogues who advocate radical changes that rarely work. The worst case scenario is the emergence of ruthless demagogues who demonize other people and nations to create enemies they can blame for all of Egypt’s problems. This would put Egypt’s honest moderates at an extreme disadvantage. It is much easier to blame Israel, the United States, and all of the capitalists of the western world than it is to deal with the real problems. It does not take Al Qaeda or radical Muslims to realize that. Creating enemies is the favorite tactic of all aspiring tyrants. Radical leaders used it during the French revolution, Russian revolution, and the revolution in Iran. It is, therefore, understandable that Israel, Saudi Arabia and other nations are viewing the events in Egypt with trepidation.

Israel is afraid of becoming a scapegoat for all of Egypt’s problems and of having to fight a powerful Egyptian army. The rulers in Saudi Arabia and the other Arab emirates are afraid that the events in Egypt will inspire popular uprisings in their own countries. This is particularly likely if the new Egyptian leaders decide to appeal to the impoverished by redistributing the wealth. The fact that the Egyptian demonstrators do not appear to be that radical is not much comfort at this point. It can take months or even years to see where the ouster of the old regime will lead. Although the demands of Egypt’s demonstrators are being met, many of those people are still in the streets. Like combat veterans, a large number of the demonstrators are not ready to give up the excitement, the feeling of being a part of momentous events, and the feeling of being the heroes of a great cause. They will find it difficult to return to the routines of their normal lives. This is particularly true of the young, the unemployed, and the ones who do not have families they have to provide for.

That the demonstrators do not seem to belong to a particular group is not unusual. It is rarely a single group that can claim the credit for toppling the old regime. This means that sundry leaders and groups find it necessary to compromise and cooperate with each other. Since it is the moderates who broker the compromises the government that initially replaces the old regime tends to be fairly moderate. It is when the accomplishments of the moderates fail to meet the high expectations of the people that the most ruthless leaders take advantage of the restless souls who are finding it difficult to return to their normal lives. With this danger in mind, I still think there is room for optimism and hope.

First of all Mr. Mubarak resigned quickly enough to prevent the establishment of a life style of strife and violence. Then there is the army. For decades it has been the real power in Egypt. There is little doubt that the generals persuaded Mr. Mubarak to resign. It is difficult to imagine a leader the army opposes gaining power anytime soon. In this regard the democracy that emerges might be limited somewhat, but that could have a stabilizing influence. I do not think the generals want to risk a costly war with Israel. The restraint shown by the demonstrators is also encouraging. It might indicate a willingness to lower their expectations if they see meaningful changes and some relief for the people suffering from the poor economy. The thing we cannot doubt is the need for some quick economic relief at the street level to convince the people that the government is moving in the right direction, and that that perception is as important as the reality. It is also important to provide worthy projects and public works that will help give the people a feeling of accomplishment.

We and every other nation concerned about the stability of this important region have every reason to want the new government of Egypt to succeed. As I pointed out in an earlier posting, we can help indirectly by enforcing the regulations of the commodities market that were designed to help stabilize and lower the price of food. In regard to direct aid, we and other nations should render what help we can, but we must avoid any appearance that we are trying to buy Egypt’s government. Egyptians are proud and capable people. So we, like the Egyptian people, must give the new government the chance to make its own way rather than reacting to expectations that might be unrealistic. The risks are great but so are the potential rewards. An unstable or aggressive Egypt is a threat to everyone. A peaceful, prosperous Egypt is a shining light and an inspiration for everyone.

In a final note, I think Mr. Obama has handled this situation rather well so far. His limited support of the demonstrators was consistent with our core values. It was the right thing to do. It was also the practical thing to do. Mr. Obama has and will continue to use whatever positive influence we have, but he is smart enough to realize we cannot control what happens. Standing in the way of people who are trying to peacefully resolve real grievances will only result in an unnecessary and damaging collision.

Egypt:

2011-02-03T14:52:00.000-08:00

I hereby extend my sympathy and best wishes to all of the people of Egypt. The situation there is a very dangerous one that will have a great impact on the region as well as the people of Egypt. Egypt is a respected sovereign nation that, like all nations, must chart its own course. For many years now it has been a very stable nation, and a positive influence internationally. While I sincerely hope that it will be able to resolve its current problem and will continue to exert a positive influence on other nations, we must be careful about how we react to the events now taking place there. This requires a somewhat difficult balancing act on our part. It is a balancing act that requires us to help the people of that nation without infringing on Egypt’s rights as an independent, sovereign nation, or the rights of its citizens to choose their own leaders. Please bear that in mind as you read the following observations:

Mr. Mubarak has overplayed his hand. The attack of the pro-Mubarak thugs on the peaceful anti-Mubarak demonstrators has created the dangerous situation referred to above. If the violence continues or the anti-Mubarak demonstrations are suppressed the consequences will be dire. As someone who has spent a good deal of time studying mass movements and revolutions, I can tell you that the anger of a large number of anti-Mubatrak demonstrators will cause them to join the most radical and ruthless group now opposing Mubarak. In other words, the violence and/or repression will radicalize many of the heretofore, peaceful opponents of the Mubarak regime. The number of peaceful demonstrators who are radicalized will be a minority, but in a violent uprising it is invariably the most ruthless group that seizes power, and that group always represses the moderates. The best-case scenario would be for Mubarak to resign now and for an orderly transition of rule to be established. Hopefully, the Egyptian army will realize this and will act quickly bring it about.

Frankly, I am pleasantly surprised that the anti-Mubarak demonstrators have not directed more of their anger at us. If this remains the case, it offers us a much better opportunity to form good relations with the government that emerges from the crises. Doing so, however, will require us to recognize the role we have played in creating the situation that has resulted in the unrest. It is not just our support of Mubarak over the years that makes us culpable. The root cause of the unrest in Egypt is the same as the cause of unrest in many nations; it is the escalading price of food. One of the contributing factors in the spike of food prices is our failure to regulate the commodities market. Franklin Roosevelt realized that the commodities market would have a stabilizing influence on food prices, but that that market must be regulated. His solution was to forbid the selling of an amount of futures that exceeded the expected production of those commodities. When we failed to enforce that reasonable regulation and the amount of futures sold exceeded production it created an artificial shortage. This in turn put an upward pressure on the price of food.

I do not want to overstate my case here. As Dillon Ratigan has pointed out, there are other factors contributing to the price increase, but just as the repeal of the Glass Steagall Act and our government’s failure to adequately regulate Wall Street and the lenders contributed to the economic meltdown we recently experienced, the unregulated commodities market has contributed to the high cost of food. This is just one more example of why our government must enforce reasonable regulations to keep Wall Street and a few wealthy individuals from satiating their greed at the expense of everyone else. It is one more example of why the Republican Party’s enrich the rich, anti-regulation philosophy is detrimental to the global economy. The misery caused by the high cost of food helps to create a breeding ground for radicals and terrorists. It is therefore in our national interest to enforce the regulation of the commodities market and to take whatever reasonable steps we can take to keep food prices from getting out of hand. The rest of the world will note what we do in this regard. We must show the people of Egypt and the rest of the world that we have conscience and a sense of fair play.

An Attack On Roe V. Wade

2011-01-25T10:53:00.000-08:00

Being asked to write about Congressman Boehner’s support of an anti-abortion bill would be flattering if millions of other people had not received the same request. But this is not about me. This is about a woman’s reproductive rights. Mr. Boehner said that President Obama’s executive order forbidding the government from paying for abortions except in the case of rape, incest or when the pregnancy posed a serious health threat to the mother is not enough; nor, Mr. Boehner insists, is the Hyde bill, which is renewed annually. Mr. Boehner stated that the ban on the government’s funding of abortions must be made permanent. His statement is deceptive at best. Mr. Boehner is supporting the Chris Smith bill, which goes much farther than merely making the executive order or the Hyde bill permanent. The Smith bill would in fact eliminate subsidies to any insurance company that provides abortion coverage, and businesses that provide health insurance coverage that includes coverage for abortions could not claim deductions for providing health care coverage. Furthermore women could not claim deductions for the high cost of medical treatment if their insurer provides coverage for abortions. In this regard the Smith bill is similar to Mr. Stupak’s proposed amendment to the health care reform act. The intent of Mr. Stupak, Mr. Smith, and Mr. Boehner is quite clear; they want to prevent any private insurance company from providing coverage for abortions thereby denying many woman of access to the procedure by making the cost of it prohibitively expensive. Part of the Smith bill would also allow doctors and nurses to deny abortions even in the case of rape, incest or when the pregnancy poses a serious health threat to the woman.

I think one has to be careful about saying where this will lead, but there is absolutely no doubt that Mr. Boehner and the Republican Party are pandering to the extremists who like to call themselves pro-life. Need I remind you of the Republican candidates in the last election who said they apposed abortions even in the case of rape, incest or threats to a woman’s life. My point is that the anti-abortion crowd will settle for nothing less than overturning Roe v. Wade. Many of those extremists even want to overturn Griswald v. Connecticut, which ruled that states cannot prohibit the sale of contraceptives. I know that statement sounds like an exaggeration but consider that the anti-abortion crowd considers the morning after pill an abortion. Many even think that taking birth control pills is an abortion. But let us set aside for a moment the fact that feeding the fanatics will only encourage them to demand more restrictions. Although the threat of the Republican Party trying to meet those demands are very real, I can only conjecture as to how far the Republicans will go to do that.

There is no reason for conjecture in the case at hand. The bill Mr. Boehner supports is an assault on a woman’s reproductive rights in and of itself. Using the tax code and other financial threats will deny women of the reproductive rights guaranteed to them by Roe v. Wade. The fact that Mr. Boehner and other opponents of abortion are resorting to such a deceptive tactic is unconscionable. Mr. Boehner says that the majority of Americans favor such a bill. By saying a majority of Amercans, however, he means a majority of what he considers to be “real Americans,” meaning a majority of the right wing fanatics who are taking over his party. The real majority of Americans agree with the Roe v. Wade decision. It is now time for the real majority to make their voices heard.

Please join me in telling your congressperson to oppose this outrageous bill and all similar bills. I am putting it in terms Mr. Boehner uses and understands. I am asking my congressman to say “Hell No!” This will probably make Mr. Boehner cry, but everything does.

Another Senseless Tragedy:

2011-01-12T13:29:00.000-08:00

No one can really come up with a good reason for the murder of a congressperson and the other victims in Tucson. It was a senseless act, but that does mean we should throw up our hands in a gesture futility or that we should not take any measures to lessen the possibility of it being repeated. It was an act that demonstrates our failure to adequately deal with mental health issues. It was an act that calls into question the irresponsible villainization of elected public servants and our government. It was an act that should cause us to call into question the irresponsible acts of a lobby that opposes any reasonable attempt to make killing less efficient or to prevent potential mass murderers from obtaining instruments of such destruction.

Sarah Palin is correct when she says that such villainizations have always been a part of politics, but so has political violence. Both the irresponsible vitriol and the violence, however, are inconsistent with the stated principals of our founding fathers, and both are wrong regardless of the fact that some of our early leaders resorted to accusing their opponents of villainy after the founding of our great republic. A certain amount of vitriol is to be expected. There will always be people who greatly exaggerate the danger of our government turning tyrannical just as there will always be people who exaggerate the danger of special interests becoming exploitive and oppressive. It is a bit like used car salespersons puffing their products. Neither side is entirely right or wrong. What is wrong is the threat or advocacy of violence. People who pander to paranoia and the dark side of human nature and who advocate “second amendment remedies” undermine the principals of democracy itself and the whole concept of a peaceful succession to positions of power.

Do not misunderstand what I am saying here. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to show a nexus between the violent acts of someone who is suffering from mental illness and a person who advocates such violence. There is no denying, however, that people who seem to be advocating violence or who make light of it are creating a very unhealthy atmosphere that can help some unstable individual feel justified in committing acts of violence. Under the first amendment, Sarah Palin is free to spray like a junk yard dog. I would not change that, but I believe that we the people should brand such violent talk as being reprehensible. A person who advocates or makes light of violent acts should be ridiculed and rejected whether that person is a politician or a commentator. Furthermore, we must close the loopholes that are allowing unstable people or criminals to obtain such powerful firearms, and we must limit the size of clips that allow an individual to kill so many other people before having to reload.

I believe that one of the great scandals of our society is the neglect of people who are suffering from mental illness. I am well aware of the history of this issue. I certainly do not want to return to an era when people were wrongly institutionalized. On the other hand, I think we can and must do a far better job of identifying and helping individuals who are a danger to themselves and others. There are signs such individuals exhibit. There is the concept of probable cause. We have made great improvements in our ability to evaluate and diagnose mental illness. We have also made great strides in treating mental disorders. We must remove the stigma and realize that with treatment many of the victims of mental illness can lead productive lives! Like many illnesses the key is early detection and treatment. Such detection and treatment should be a part of our health care system. The screening must respect the rights of the individual and proceed cautiously in diagnosing any problems, but it must also intervene when intervention is clearly called for. I would propose a panel to help educate the public and to find ways in which we can better identify and help individuals who are at risk.

Don’t Damn All The Taxes!

2011-01-04T14:53:00.000-08:00

I was given a Kindle for Christmas. I downloaded Ben Franklin’s autobiography and have just finished reading it. What we tend to remember about Mr. Franklin’s writing are the proverbs or short phrases from Poor Richard’s Almanac, such as “a stitch in time saves nine” or “a penny saved is a penny earned.” What we tend to forget is how leisurely the writing of that era was, and how complex the sentences are. It seems that writers felt the need not merely to express a thought but also to explain that thought within a single sentence. They assumed that the reader had the time and patience to wade through such complex sentences and understand them. Today this style of writing seems quaint and rambling, like a pastoral scene stretching far off into the horizon. Such an image, however, ignores the issues addressed in many of those writings. Many of those issues are very similar to today’s issues. As the reader shall see in the following paragraphs, I am having some fun with the language and the issues.

In regard to the services it is deemed desirable and necessary for the government to perform for the greater good of its citizens and their communities, there is inevitably an argument as to who reaps the greater benefit there from, and who should, therefore, bear a larger proportion of the costs thereof. There are those who say that men of wealth and substance have obviously benefited the most from those services and are better able to assume the burden of paying the costs thereof; in saying this, however, the people subscribing to that notion are ignoring the investments such virtuous men have already made to our society and our common welfare; investments by which those men have secured the land on which so many have now settled and thereby made productive.

Requiring the proprietors of the colonies to contribute sums of money to pay for the common defense of our communities and the expenses incurred by enforcing the laws to insure the order necessary for the peaceful pursuit of commerce and the conduct of business enterprises from which we all benefit would violate the charters of the proprietorships and discourage further investments by those proprietors; this is true regardless of the fact that those proprietors have already profited greatly from the sale of the land which the settlers have purchased from them. Furthermore, the proprietors and other men of wealth and substance are now paying a disproportionate share of the expenses of governing in order secure legislation favorable to the conduct of their businesses; they are doing this by contributing money for the campaigns and general welfare of the gentlemen who represent us. It is incumbent upon us, therefore, to levy taxes only on the settlers and the owners of smaller businesses that do not contribute as much to our society, even though the burden of such taxes will consume a larger percentage of the incomes of those individuals than would be the case if the proprietors and other gentleman of wealth and substance were also paying such taxes.

Although the above paragraph is fictional, it is not far fetched. During the French and Indian War the proprietors of the colonies, such as the Penn family, were making a similar argument. In fact, the Pennsylvania Assembly sent Ben Franklin to England to argue that such proprietors should help pay for the war. You will undoubtedly notice that I have interjected into the fictional paragraph a comment about campaign contributions and lobbying. This is not far fetched either. Even in colonial times the commercial interests were well represented and there was a form of lobbying. In modern times, the argument advanced in regard to who should be taxed was best summarized by Leona Helmsley when she said “only the little people pay taxes.” Her statement was, of course, refuted much to her detriment. The question today is not who should pay taxes, but rather how much different groups or classes of people should pay. What I mean by that is that the same arguments I have stated above are being used to attack the concept of a graduated income tax.

The attack on the graduated income tax became effective when Ronald Regan greatly decreased the percentage of income the wealthy were paying in taxes. The attack was greatly accelerated by George W. Bush’s further reduction of taxes on the wealthy. Both tax cuts resulted in huge federal deficits and failed to produce the jobs used to justify the reduction in revenues. President Obama tried to reach a compromise to tax all citizens the same percentage on the first two hundred fifty thousand dollars of income and a higher percentage on amounts above two hundred fifty dollars thousand dollars. The Republicans rejected the compromise and are doing their best to eliminate the graduated income tax.

The graduated income tax is not only desirable because it is equitable but also because it is very sound economics. In our market driven economy allowing more people to retain a greater share of their income allows them to purchase more goods and services, thereby creating the demand that stimulates the economy and produces more jobs. Decreasing the tax burden on people who can already afford to purchase the goods and services they desire does not increase demand or stimulate the economy, which is why giving tax cuts to the wealthy does not create jobs. It is that simple.

This brings up the subject of taxes and government services in general. In his autobiography, Mr. Franklin discussed a road in a commercial district of Philadelphia. The portion of that road lined by stores and other businesses was paved. The problem was that the dirt form the unpaved part of the road blew onto the paved portion during the dry season, and horses, wagon wheals and the shoes of pedestrians tracked mud onto the paved portion of the road during the wet season; this made the benefits of the paved portion of the road seem somewhat dubious to the businesses located there. Ben Franklin addressed this issue by paying someone to sweep the paved portion of the road for several days. When the benefits of cleaning the paved road became apparent to the owners of the businesses there Mr. Franklin asked those owners to subscribe to that road cleaning service. The owners of those businesses readily agreed to pay a small fee for that purpose. People owning businesses on unpaved roads then petitioned the government to pave and clean those roads. The benefits of having the government perform those services were great enough to make the owners of the businesses agree to pay the taxes necessary for those services.

Ben Franklin also used his ability to solicit subscribers when he convinced wealthy individuals to pay for the building of a hospital and to help defray some of costs of the services provided by the care givers employed there. One of the arguments slave holders used to try to justify that horrible institution was that the slaves were well cared for because healthy, well fed workers were stronger and more productive. Nothing could justify slavery, and a large number of the slave holders were not that wise. The argument that healthy, well fed workers are more productive, however, is true. Providing affordable health care is not only morally right it is also sound economics.

Mr. Franklin’s foresight can also be seen in the establishment of a college that became the University of Pennsylvania. Once again he solicited subscribers to pay for the building of the school and to pay a portion of the cost of providing a higher education to deserving students. The benefits derived from providing that education become so apparent that many colleges both private and public were eventually established.

The point is this: the benefits of the services our taxes pay for often seem remote unless the government is not providing those services. Ben Franklin demonstrated the benefits of many of those services by finding a way to provide them through subscriptions. Far from being opposed to the government providing those services, he actually advocated it. Was he our first liberal? Conservatives would deny it because it does not conform to their philosophy of small government. They want us to believe that our founding fathers are sacrosanct, and that none of our founding fathers could possibly be tax and spend liberals! The conservatives are wrong. Freeing us from an empire that actually stifled our industry was only a small part of what they accomplished. They also established a form of government that was flexible enough to provide the infra structure, the regulations, and the other services needed to make this the most prosperous nation on earth. Their commitment to their nation and their communities also set the tone for the leaders who followed them.

At its best ours is a society that rewards public service and sacrifices made for the general good. At its worst it is a society that rewards exploitation, and the greed of the privileged few who have the where with all to exert an undue influence on our government. The health, education, and opportunity to improve our circumstances are vital not just to the individual citizens of this country but also to the welfare of our nation as a nation. Many are the hard battles we have fought in order to make the lofty ideals stated by our founding fathers a reality. Many are the battles we have fought and must continue to fight to provide opportunities for our workers who want to secure decent wages for producing goods here in this country. We must also fight for the small entrepreneurs who want the opportunity to compete with the mega corporations that are now exporting our jobs. If there is anything we should have learned from our history, it is that an equitable society that rewards initiative and hard work is a prosperous society; whereas a society that allows the wealthy to greatly increase their wealth at the expense of everyone else is a failing society!

Tell Santa To Give Mr. Obama A Backbone

2010-12-14T11:31:00.000-08:00

In 2008 then Presidential Candidate Obama promised a banquet of progressive legislation to deal with the horrible economic situation created by George W. Bush and the Republican Party. Since Mr. Obama’s election, however, he has demonstrated an unwillingness or inability to confront the bullies who are blocking his path to the groceries. As a result his failure to stand up to the Republicans he is serving us peanut butter on white bread. He is correct in saying that peanut butter sandwiches are better than nothing, but they are also less than what he promised, less than what we need, and less than what we want. He now has Bill Clinton trying to persuade us that caving in to the Republicans on budget busting tax cuts for the wealthy is a desirable compromise. The pundits are also weighing in on this subject. They are saying that Mr. Obama should follow Bill Clinton’s example by swinging to the right and seeking compromises. And how did the Republicans reward Bill Clinton for trying to work with them? They impeached him!

This is not the Republican Party of Dwight Eisenhower, Everett Dirkson, or even Ronald Reagan. There is nothing this Republican Party will not do to further its partisan interests. It has absolutely no conscience. It is more than willing to sacrifice the economic health of this country, its middle class and those who are unfortunate enough to be unemployed. The Republicans even think it is acceptable to get tax cuts for the rich by threatening to reject a treaty that will make the world a little safer and help us reduce our spending on defense. Two years from now the Republicans will blame Mr. Obama for the huge deficit created by those tax cuts for the rich. They will also use that deficit as an excuse for cutting Medicare, Social Security, and every other social program.

Independent voters may say they want the President to work with the opposition party, but they also want a President who has some principles and the courage to fight for what is in the best interests of this country. What we need from President Obama is more FDR and less Casper Milquetoast. He should stop attacking the members of his own party and start casting the blame where the blame belongs. One of the most difficult things George H. W. Bush faced when he ran for President was the perception that he was a wimp. Many of us are now beginning to think that Mr. Obama is a wimp. Sooner or later he must make a stand. If he does not make that stand this man who excited us with his vision will preside over an administration of broken promises and false hopes.

The middle class is the heart and soul of this nation. In 2008 most people voted to restore an equitable, productive society that required all people to pay their fair share. The voters were, in fact, rejecting the trend that concentrated the wealth into fewer and fewer hands. They wanted to make this country productive again and return it to the prosperous times when the people who made the products could afford to buy those products! Achieving this is no easy task. It is going to take a leader with vision and courage.

Now is the time to fight the good fight. We want no less than an all out effort, and we deserve no less than that! ENOUGH WITH THE DAMN PEANUT BUTTER!

Stand Up To The Bullies!

2010-12-08T13:32:00.000-08:00

When Ronald Regan cut the income tax on the rich by a third the income of the wealthiest individuals of the nation soared. The national debt also soared and the income of the remaining ninety percent of the nation remained flat. When George W. Bush further reduced the taxes on the rich the income of the wealthiest individuals increased again. The surplus Mr. Bush had inherited from Bill Clinton was then turned into a huge budgetary deficit, job growth fell to the lowest level it had been since World War II, and the income of those who were fortunate enough to still have jobs remained flat. Obviously, enriching the rich does not stimulate the economy or create jobs. Tax cuts for the rich increase size of our national debt without giving us anything in return. Yet here we have the Republicans threatening to block the SALT treaty, which would reduce nuclear arms, if the tax cuts for the rich are not extended. The Republicans also threaten to block an extension of unemployment benefits for those who have suffered the most from Bush’s recession, and to block an extension of tax cuts for the middle class if the tax cuts for the wealthy are not also extended.

This places President Obama in a difficult situation. The Republicans are holding the best interests of this nation hostage. They are demanding a ransom to be paid to the wealthiest individuals of the nation regardless of how much harm paying that ransom may cause. President Obama obviously feels that the harm that would result from the Republicans carrying out their threats is greater than the harm of foisting off a huge debt to our children. I can understand why he is making this decision, but I think he is wrong.

The rules of the senate allow the Republicans to act like bullies. Those rules allow them to extort money from the nation for the moneybags who contribute to the campaigns of Republican candidates. Caving in to bullies only makes them bolder. Sooner or later President Obama must stand up to them. Sooner is better than later. Now is the time to make the Republicans reveal just how morally and intellectually bankrupt they have become. This is not a matter of ideology it is a matter of greed versus patriotism and common decency!

Waiting to stand up to the Republicans will only make matters worse. The only way to make a bully listen to reason is to bloody his nose. Unfortunately the voters of this nation were foolish enough to reward the irresponsible behavior of the Republicans by giving them control of the House of Representatives. In other words, the bullies are becoming stronger. The voters must be shocked into reality. It is time to take the battle into the streets, to use the bully pulpit, and to show the voters what is at stake. Appeasement does not work. The extortionist tactics of the Republicans must be stopped now. Believe me the cost of trying to stop them later will be much higher!

A Time For Reason:

2010-11-18T10:17:00.000-08:00

When Rachel Maddow interviewed John Stewart he criticized her for being too partisan. I enjoy Mr. Stewart’s show, but I disagree with his criticism of Ms. Maddow and the other commentators on MSNBC. Although I was a child at the time I remember Joseph McCarthy’s witch hunts. I remember the Army-McCarthy hearings, which I watched with my parents, and I remember Edward R. Murrow putting his career on the line by taking a stand against Senator McCarthy. Edward R. Murrow was correct when he said we cannot promote freedom abroad by destroying it at home. The John Birch Society thought Joseph McCarthy was right even after he had been discredited. Their paranoid rants about traitors and conspiracies made them as dangerous as he was! No one should have remained non-partisan about Senator Joseph McCarthy or the Birchers.

Joseph McCarthy and the John Birch society were eventually defeated but the paranoia and irrational fears they exploited live on. The Republican Party has swung so far to the right that it is now pandering to the same sort of paranoia embraced by the Birchers and Joseph McCarthy. The Republicans are once more taking into their party people who are advancing wacky theories about traitors and government conspiracies. At least one Republican candidate for the Senate even advocated second amendment remedies, which means armed insurrection and/or assassinations. No one should be non-partisan about candidates who are making such threats!

The paragraphs above were inspired by Keith Olbermann’s commentary on Ted Koppel. In that brilliant commentary Mr. Olbermann also talked about Edward R. Murrow’s courageous stand against Senator McCarthy. What Mr. Olbermann addressed so well in that commentary are the issues of journalistic integrity and, perhaps more importantly, journalistic responsibility. He was saying that the fear mongering and demagoguery we are witnessing today are so wrong and so dangerous that they fall out of the realm of partisan politics and must not be tolerated. I agree with him, and I thank him for the stance he has taken. At the very least journalists have a duty to report the facts. They should point out the absurdity of Republicans alleging that the health care reform bill has a provision creating death panels. They should tell us what is actually in the health care bill that was passed. They should report that extending the Bush tax cuts for the Rich will add seven hundred billion dollars to our national debt and that it will not create as many jobs as other things on which that money could be spent. Omitting facts is not responsible reporting and including facts that reflect poorly on one of the parties is not a partisan act. The facts are never partisan; they are reality.

I can remember a time when there was a growing concern about the influence of television. There was a commitment to public service at that time. News broadcasters were expected to report the facts and educate the public about the issues. My sincerest hope is that Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, and the other good people at MSNBC will have enough influence to make the main stream media accept the responsibility they have to inform the public regardless of which political party might benefit from that. Now is the time for reason. Only an informed electorate can make wise decisions! Since most people rely on television for the news it is up to news broadcasters to keep the public informed. That is the duty of any news organization, and most news broadcasters have been shirking that duty.

Note to my visitors: Please see my previous post entitled “Who Shall Pay?” It is about the extension of the Bush tax cuts, and we need to make it clear to President Obama that only the cuts for middle class should be extended!

Who Shall Pay?

2010-11-16T11:47:00.000-08:00

I believe most people are misreading what we should learn from the midterm elections. President Obama and the Democratic Party did not do a good job of selling their accomplishments or their agenda. There was also a strong wimp factor. I know compromise is an essential part of the process, but the Democrats were the only ones giving ground on issues they let the Republicans define. As a result of this much of the legislation, although still significant, fell short of what we expected and wanted. The most pressing issue is now an extension of tax cuts for the middle class. We simply cannot afford to let those tax cuts expire; nor can we afford to blow a seven hundred billion dollar hole in the budget when we are running such a large deficit. Please join me in telling President Obama and your representative that we need those tax cuts and that we oppose the absurd tax cuts for the very people who are exporting our jobs. Below is an e-mail I have sent to President Obama and another e-mail I have sent to Speaker Pelosi. I know you might be too busy to write similar e-mails. If you are too busy to write, please use the link I am providing to Credo and sign their petition to Speaker Pelosi. If you have the time, please write to President Obama and to your congressperson as well.

Dear President Obama

I have been defending you from the criticism that you are weak. Not anymore! If you extend tax cuts for the rich for any length of time at all the Republicans will have no reason to compromise with you on anything because they will know you do not stand your ground. The people who have supported you will also know that. Get an extension of the middle class tax cuts through the House and into the Senate as quickly as possible. Then use the bully pulpit and crank up the PR machine. Say to the voters: “There is a bill in the Senate that will extend YOUR tax cuts. Republican Senators are threatening to filibuster that bill. If they succeed in holding up the passage of that bill until your tax cuts expire you will be paying much higher taxes. I know you need those tax cuts and you know you need those tax cuts. The Republicans either do not know that or they do not care about it. So tell them. Send your Senators e-mails or letters or telegrams demanding an extension of YOUR tax cuts.”

Do not let the Republicans draw you into a debate about the other Bush tax cuts. The tax cuts you are extending are for everyone. Whether people should get the tax cuts extended for amounts above two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year or businesses should get tax cuts extended is not the issue. As far as the voters are concerned the tax cuts you are extending are their tax cuts; they are not tax cuts for an abstract group such as the middle class or for special interests. This is the sort of simple approach Republicans use to define issues, and it works. If you define the tax cuts you are extending in the manner I am suggesting I will bet you a tax cut that enough Republicans will blink. No politician wants to go into the elections of 2012 having to explain to angry voters why he or she opposed tax cuts that would have prevented an increase in the taxes those voters pay. Yes, it is brinkmanship, but you must make your stand while you still have the majorities you need to do it.

Dear Speaker Pelosi:

Thank you for all you have done thus far. There is one more thing I am compelled to ask of you. Please make every effort to get a bill extending the middle class tax cuts through the House as quickly as possible. President Obama seems to be wavering on his stated opposition to extending tax cuts for the wealthy. Neither he nor we can afford to have him cave in on this issue. I have sent him an e-mail stating my position on this issue and suggesting how he can sell to the voters an extension of middle class tax cuts only. I have also posted that letter and this one on Macsbackporch.blogspot.com., and I am using that blog to encourage others to send similar e-mails.

An Alternate Universe

2010-11-09T13:22:00.000-08:00

I am an old man. I remember when the John Birch Society was influential. What I said about the John Birch Society and other right wing extremists then is true of the Tea Party and other right wing extremists today. They live in an alternate universe. It is a universe where beliefs are never questioned and all inconvenient facts are either ignored or denied. I will not say the right wing extremists are unfazed by the honest reporting of accurate news stories or other factual information, but they have a traditional tactic for combating facts. They simply circle the wagons and poison all the wells outside of the circle. “You can’t trust anything outside of the circle,” they say. “Scientists and the main stream news media have a liberal bias, don’t you know?”

In the universe of the circled wagons the dialogue is circular; any story that seems to confirm the beliefs and feed the paranoia is passed around and repeated until it is accepted as a fact. Thus we find unprincipled purveyors of ring wing bull, like Andrew Brietbart, dumping crap onto the inter net, and other right wing bloggers spreading that crap like a plague. Profiteers such as Rupert Murdoch are more than happy to serve this crap to gullible viewers who accept it as the truth because they hear it from their friends and see it presented on what is supposed to be a news program.

The latest example of this is the rumor that President Obama’s trip to India will cost two hundred million dollars a day. The rumor was allegedly started by an unknown person in India and was soon being repeated on right wing blogs. Republican nut cases, like Michelle Bachmann, then cited this unconfirmed rumor as proof that President Obama is squandering the government’s money. The most ludicrous lunatic at the Fox disinformation factory, Glen Beck, also presented the rumor as though it were a fact. The babbling heads at Fox, who try to pass themselves off as reporters, never questioned the story. Neither they nor Glen Beck raised any questions about the veracity of the original source, nor did they ask any questions about the supposed use of assets, such as navy ships, that would make the trip so expensive. Since their viewers were more than willing to believe this rumor the babbling heads at Fox News reported it ad nauseum, as if the repetition somehow added some legitimacy to the allegations.

The thing to remember is that the Fox News organization is part of the political right wing’s alternate universe. The rules and standards that apply to journalists outside of the circled wagons have no place in the alternate universe of Fox viewers. In that universe it is a perfectly acceptable for Fox to lift a story from a supermarket tabloid and tell its viewers that it has been reported that the Los Angeles Police Department is squandering millions of dollars on jet packs for its police officers. Fox also thinks it is acceptable to air altered videos and other things from the Blog of Andrew Brietbart even after the previous things from Breitbart’s blog, such as the altered videos that caused Acorn to lose its funding, were proven to be outrageous hoaxes. Fox has no conscience. It is not embarrassed by revelations that many of the stories it presents as news are false. Whether a story is true or false does not matter to Fox if its viewers accept the story as the red meat that sustains the paranoia of their dark world. Fox’s primary goal is to keep those viewers tuning in; they are money in the bank. Most of them will not look outside of the alternate universe to find out the truth anyhow. Even the few viewers who find out that a story is untrue will not criticize Fox for presenting it. Where else are those viewers going to get stories that seem to confirm their erroneous beliefs and fears? Certainly not from any legitimate news organization!

Sustaining whatever influence the right wing extremists have on the real world, however, is not an easy thing to do. When reality asserts itself people of sound mind always reject the alternate universe. The John Birch society was literally laughed into irrelevance. It and its members became such a laughing stock that it was too embarrassing for the Republican Party to continue pandering to them. The same thing will eventually happen to the Tea Party and the right wing extremists who are now enjoying another surge of influence. The problem is that marginalizing them is not the same thing as getting rid of them. They will draw their wagons into a tighter circle, and they will continue to suck gullible recruits into their dark and dangerous world. There will always be a Rush Limbaugh, a Glen Beck, and probably a Fox News making loads of money by feeding their fears and supporting their beliefs.

What The Hell?

2010-11-03T14:52:00.000-07:00

After the primaries I said that the nomination of so many extremists as Republican candidates had changed this election from being a political IQ test to being a mental health test. In the days leading up to the election Meg Whitman in California quoted Arnold Schwartzeneggar saying that insanity is doing the same things over and over and expecting different results. Voting for people who want to continue the failed policies of George W. Bush and who have used every means to try to prevent the government from getting us out of Bush’s recession is insane by definition. Extreme Republican candidates such as Rand Paul, Sharon Angle and Christine O’Donnell, to name just a few, want to go back much farther to the failed Republican policies that brought us the great depression. An informed electorate would have said “Hell No” by handing the Republican Party a devastating defeat; they would have given the Democrats a large enough majority to override filibusters in the senate and would have given the Democrats an even greater majority in the house. Instead the voters sent a mixed but angry message. They allowed the Democrats to keep a small majority in the senate but they also gave the Republicans control of the house.

Because of the number of elections for the house I am going to discuss the outcome generally rather than specifically. I am also going to confine my discussion to those senate races the pundits said the Republicans had to win in order to gain a majority in the senate.

Alaska: The results are not in but one thing is evident: the people of Alaska were sane enough to reject Sarah Palin’s stocking horse, Joe Miller. Ms. Palin responded by letting her populist veil slip. She blamed the defeat of Miller on media bias and called the reporters “corrupt bastards.” Sorry Ms. Palin, but those reporters were doing what reporters are supposed to do by presenting accurate stories. I guess when you work for or watch the disinformation factory known as Fox News it is difficult to imagine that real news organizations have some journalistic integrity.

Arkansas: It was not pivotal, but I cannot resist commenting on it. Thanks to Blanch Lincoln’s outrageous tactics during the primary the people of Arkansas had a very dismal choice to make. The result of telling Ms. Lincoln that there is only so much the voters will tolerate was appalling, but sending that message was the right thing to do.

California: This state waved a not for sale sign in the face of corporate candidates, Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, and this demonstrated a high political IQ.

Colorado: Michael Bennett is clearly preferable to the extremist, Ken Buck, and it looks like Bennett has won a very close race.

Florida: I would like very much to blame the election of Rubio on the fact that there were three candidates but Rubio received too many votes for me to do that. It was an absurd outcome compounded by the election of Daniel Webster over Alan Grayson. Congressman Grayson is a breath of fresh air. His courage and integrity will be sorely missed. I hope he runs for office again.

Illinois: It looks like Republican Mark Kirk has defeated Alexi Giannoulias. Illinois also voted heavily for Republicans in the house races. I guess the voters there are not bright enough to figure out who will represent them and who will represent the people exporting their jobs. Just follow the bouncing dollars, folks. If those dollars are from hidden sources it cannot be good.

Kentucky: mental health clinics are desperately needed there! Rand Paul is such an extremist that he might even filibuster a bill raising the national debt ceiling. Doing this would cause the U.S. to default on the interest payments of its loans and would cause a world wide economic panic. The only good thing about him doing this is that it would result in the abolition of the filibuster rules the Republicans have been misusing to thwart the legislation needed to further an economic recovery.

Nevada: It took the outrageous race baiting of one of the worst political candidates ever to allow Harry Reid to win this election. What this says about the mental health of Nevada is not good, but at least Nevada does not have to admit that they elected someone as extreme and unqualified as Sharon Angle.

Pennsylvania: The difference between Joe Sestak and Pat Toomey are like night and day, and the voters made the wrong choice by electing Toomey. One can only hope that this insanity is temporary.

Washington: Patty Murray holds a slight lead over Dino Rossi. Electing Rossi would be stupid. Hopefully, sanity will prevail.

West Virginia: Joe Manchin had to swing too far to the right to defeat Robert Byrd. This does not speak well for the mental health of West Virginians, but they made the right choice.

There is obviously an ignorance gap between informed voters and the majority of voters. Too many people apparently do not pay any attention what is going on in Washington. As a result of this lack of attention and/or the inability to comprehend the events taking place they are too easily swayed by deceptive political advertisements and simplistic slogans like “death panels.” Instead of thinking about the issues they react viscerally to their personal situations and often crap on their own interests as a result. That is what they have done in this election. Believe me, I understand the desperation of being unemployed for a long period of time. It is something I have experienced. That is why I pay enough attention to know who is representing my interests rather than representing the people who export jobs. It takes more than two years to rebuild an economy. This is particularly true when the opposition is determined to make you fail. The Republicans have fought and will continue to fight legislation that would discourage the exportation of jobs and all other efforts to get this economy moving again. This does not mean you have to be patient. Informed voters prod the people representing them for quicker results, and they remove the people who are standing in the way of those results.

In this instance the voters damaged their own cause by lashing out blindly and angrily. They punished the party that was trying to get this economy moving again and rewarded the party that was impeding progress. I would like to think the Republicans will act responsibly, but their behavior over the past two years makes me believe they will not. The most likely result of this election will be greater gridlock in Washington and a deepening recession. The special interests who kept their identities hidden from you and me while pouring millions of dollars into the campaign efforts of Republican candidates will demand a return on their investments, and those returns will be taken out of your hide in the form of outsourcing and deficit producing tax cuts for the wealthy individuals who own or run the companies that export your jobs! The next two years are going to be hell, and the special interest lackeys you elected to the House of Representatives will be stoking the fires. For your own sake, pay attention to what is really happening!

Vote!

2010-10-27T10:40:00.000-07:00

They say voters respond emotionally rather than rationally. This must be true when you consider the number of people who vote against their own interests or do not vote at all. Because of this it is as easy for politicians to become jaded as it is for voters to become jaded. If the voters will not pay enough attention to see who is looking out for them you might as well take the money and run. That is what the Republicans are now doing! They mask this by finding scapegoats they can blame for Bush’s recession. It is the immigrants, both legal and illegal, who are taking your jobs and driving down your wages, the Republicans say. The one thing the Republicans want to avoid is any revelation about the fact that they are representing the people who are exporting your jobs. That is why the Citizens United case was such a horrible decision. Because of that decision special interests are anonymously pouring millions of dollars into the election to support Republican candidates who will do nothing to prevent the exportation of jobs. We need to deal with illegal immigration, but the primary cause of the loss of jobs and decrease in wages is outsourcing, and the Democrats are the only ones addressing that issue. It is up to you to vote for your job! If you want to keep your job you will vote for a Democrat.

On a lighter note: California has the distinction of having candidates who have presented the silliest political advertisements and candidates who have presented the most brilliant advertisements. Conservatives are all too fond of waxing nostalgic. Meg Whitman did this to her detriment. She said that thirty years ago anything was possible in California, adding that that was why she and her husband moved here. She then said that she wanted to restore California to what it had been.

Her opponent, Jerry Brown, countered this advertisement by pointing out that he was the Governor thirty years ago, and Ms. Whitman was correct when she talked about how well the state was doing under his leadership.

Her ad was an oops and his ad was brilliant. I thank both of them for the comic relief.

Questionable Qualifications

2010-10-19T14:04:00.000-07:00

When extremists on either side of the political spectrum control the debate the discourse becomes anti-intellectual. Extremists like to talk about common sense because they do not want to deal with the complexities of the real world. They find it much easier and, from a political standpoint, more effective to take a simplistic approach they can convert into mind numbing slogans people will remember. In this regard common sense has become a misnomer. Common sense is what tells us not to place our hands on a hot electric heater. Ohms Law and the other things we need to know to design or make an electric heater are not common sense. My point is that most of our endeavors require a combination of knowledge and judgment as well as common sense, and governing is no exception to this rule. We should expect everyone running for public office to know the structure of our government and how it works. We should also expect everyone running for public office to have a grasp of the issues and an understanding of the problems confronting us. It is perfectly reasonable for us to expect our legislators to know what a proposed bill will do for or to the citizens of this country.

Asking a candidate running for Congress or the Vice Presidency of the United States to name a Supreme Court decision with which that candidate disagrees is not a trick question. It is the job of the Supreme Court to decide complex and often controversial legal issues. The fact that those issues are controversial means that everyone who has given the matter any thought at all can name at least one decision they consider to be wrong. Furthermore, some of the decisions have such a strong impact on us that the names of the cases in which those decisions were rendered have become a part of our vocabulary. Yet neither Sarah Palin nor Christine O’Donnell could name a single Supreme Court decision with which they disagreed. The question posed to Ms. Palin allowed her to choose any case decided during any time in the entire history of Supreme Court. She could have at least said Dread Scott. The question posed to Ms. O’Donnell was to name a recent case. Ms. O’Donnell, however, was free to define recent. She also knew that Ms. Palin had fumbled a similar question, and because of the recent controversy over the decision in the Citizens United case she should have been prepared for a question about Supreme Court decisions.

The Supreme Court decisions a candidate will consider objectionable or desirable tell us a lot about that candidate’s political philosophy and what legislation that person will support or oppose. Given the position Ms. Palin and Ms. O’Donnell have taken on abortion they could have honestly named Roe v. Wade as a decision they find objectionable. The problem with calling the Roe v. Wade decision wrong, however, is that it will draw the ire of all the people who favor a woman’s right to choose. As candidates both women might have wanted to avoid that issue, but what about the role religion should or should not play in our public schools? Both Ms. Palin and Ms. O’Donnell have objected to what they erroneously consider to be a ban on prayer in public schools, yet neither of them named Engle v. Vitale or Murray v. Curlett as objectionable decisions. All right, I will give them the benefit of the doubt and assume for the sake of argument that they were looking for a case that would not draw attention to their unpopular opinions. The perfect case to cite as objectionable if they wanted to appeal to their anti-government base without appearing too extreme would be Kelo v. City of New London, which allows local governments to use eminent domain to procure property for commercial development. Kelo was a recent decision and easy to remember because of the outrage it provoked.

Since my political philosophy is somewhat left of center I agree with the decisions in Roe v. Wade, Engle v. Vitale, and Murray v. Curlett. There is not enough time for me to name all of the decisions with which I disagree. The four fairly recent decisions that come readily come to mind are as follows:

1. Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. The decision rendered in this case ranks right down there with the most poorly reasoned decisions in history. Freedom of speech does not mean the freedom to buy elections or politicians and it certainly does not mean the freedom to do so anonymously.

2. Bush v. Gore. This is the decision that helped George W. Bush steal the 2000 Presidential election. It was outrageously partisan and dangerous.

3. Miller v. California. In this horrific decision the Supreme Court abrogated its responsibility to interpret the first amendment to the Constitution by allowing local communities to ban any material those communities deemed pornographic.

4. Plessey v. Ferguson. This decision said segregation was constitutional under the separate but equal doctrine.

I will concede that even an educated person might not be able to name all of the decisions that person finds objectionable. I think we have all walked away from a conversation thinking about what we should have said. Sarah Palin did not have the opportunity to confirm the names of any Supreme Court decisions during her interview with Katie Couric, but an educated person still should have been able to name at least one of them. I also think Ms. O’Donnell should have been prepared for a question regarding Supreme Court decisions. Even if Ms. Palin and Ms. O’Donnell could not recall the names of the cases, they should have been able to demonstrate some knowledge of case law. For example, they should have been able to say they objected to the Warren Court’s decisions regarding the role of religion in public schools or the Rehnquist Court’s decision regarding eminent domain. The inability of either of then to do that could be cured, but the ignorance it demonstrated is just one example of why neither of them is qualified to hold a federal office. The way they yammer about common sense and almost flaunt their ignorance tells me they have to appeal to low information extremists. The sad fact is that they both lack the requisite intellectual curiosity to learn what they need to know to make informed decisions. Unfortunately, Sharon Angle, Art Robinson and the other extremists running as Republican nominees share that deficiency.

Say What?

2010-10-14T09:24:00.001-07:00

There are polls that supposedly show blue color workers drifting to the Republican Party. All right, I know blue color workers are not intellectuals who spend any time studying the candidates or the political process, but I always thought they had some basic instinct for survival. I always thought that even people who are not paying attention can only be screwed a certain number of times before they realize they are being had. I always thought they would then respond appropriately to the politicians who are conning them. A blue color worker who votes for Republican candidates today is defying all reason and common sense. This worker is like a lamb walking up to a lion and asking the big cat if he is hungry. Even if those workers are cynical enough to think that all politicians are corrupt, it does not take an intellectual to realize that not all corruption is equal. Nor does it take an intellectual to understand that competing interests support different candidates. For instance, a large manufacturer will always support a candidate who is running against someone who is supported by labor unions. What this means is that even low information voters should be bright enough to realize how important it is to know who is buying whom.

The Citizens United Case greatly increases the influence of money on our elections, and it is making it far more difficult to see precisely who is buying whom. Large corporations now funnel their money into political groups with euphemistic names in an effort to conceal their influence. The names of those businesses are hidden from you and me, but the politicians who are receiving the funds indirectly know who is putting up the money. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is one of the organizations engaging in this deceptive practice. It is pouring millions of dollars into the campaigns of Republican candidates from a general fund that includes money from unrevealed U.S. sources and money from foreign countries such as India, China, Russia, and Bahrain. The Democrats are sounding the warning loud and clear. They think you have the right to know if foreign interests are influencing our elections and who else might be buying your politicians. The Democrats have introduced a bill to force all organizations that support political candidates to reveal who contributes funds to those organizations. The Republicans are preventing that bill from being passed.

The reason why the Republican Party does not want you to know who is supporting their candidates is all too obvious. Here is a hint for you: the Republicans are blocking a bill that would do away with the tax incentives given to companies who export your jobs; the Republicans are also threatening to repeal the recently enacted legislation that will protect consumers and the recently enacted legislation that will regulate the people who have gambled away the value of your 401K and other pension plans. In other words, the Republican Party does not want you to know they still represent the people who are exporting your jobs and the financial institutions that caused this recession!

Who the Republicans are now representing is not a historical departure for them. They have always received most of their financial support from large businesses, and the Democrats have always received much of their financial support from labor unions. It is not my intention here to be an advocate for labor unions, but it is an indisputable fact that labor unions have a strong incentive to keep and increase the number of jobs in this country because it is the people who work here that belong to those unions. The large businesses, on the other hand, have a strong incentive to drive down the cost of labor by exporting jobs. Given the high unemployment and low wages caused by George W. Bush’s recession what the Republican Party is now doing is unbelievably destructive. They are even opposing extensions of unemployment benefits and many of them want to lower or repeal the minimum wage while extending the budget busting Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest people in the country!

I am not naïve enough to think that blue color workers read this blog, but you do. If you know a blue color worker who is thinking of voting for a Republican candidate buy him a beer at a crowded bar where he has to stand up. And try to pull his head out of his ass!

An Attack On Sanity

2010-10-06T15:28:00.000-07:00

The Republican Party has two groups of people who are living in alternate universes. They have the religious right and the billionaires. I know it must seem strange for the religious right to share a party with billionaires considering what the bible says about a rich man’s chance of ever reaching the kingdom of heaven, but logic and reason are very low on the religious right’s priorities. The religious right does not think the government should provide any services or protections that they have to pay taxes to support because God will take care of everything. The billionaires are in complete agreement with that attitude because they think they are God. In other words, the religious right-wingers are like zebras that refuse to think about the fact that they are on the lion’s menu and defend the lion’s predatory behavior on the grounds that lions have to eat.

Most of the religious right-wingers vote for Republicans but deny they are Republicans. A Prior generation of them described themselves as Birchers; this generation of them describe themselves as tea partiers. They are in favor of the benefits and services the government provides to them, but they think the government also provides the same benefits and services to people who do not deserve them. Since the government does not distinguish between who is worthy of benefits and services and who is not worthy of receiving those things the government must be evil, and it should do absolutely nothing. If you try to point out that the religious right is working against its own interests people who belong to that group will tell you it does not matter. The world is, after all, a wicked place. God knows who is worthy and who is not, and He will provide.

If you point out the inconsistency of denying you are a Republican while habitually voting for Republicans the religious right will tell you they are taking their country back starting with the Republican Party. Unfortunately, taking over the Republican Party is no idle boast. Now that a significant number of corporate Republicans have lost primary elections to the tea partiers even well established, moderate Republicans are afraid to anger the people who would abolish social security, medi care, abortion even in the case of rape or incest, and every other government program and/or regulation you can think of. Thus you have Michael Steel refusing to discuss with Lawrence O’Donnell the wacky behavior and absurd positions taken by Republican candidates such as Rand Paul, Sharon Angle and Christine O'Donnell while still defending the political viability of those wing nuts. This interview with Michael Steel would have been comical if it were not for the danger posed by the possible election of those candidates and others who are now turning the November elections into a mental health test.

In California we have a different dynamic. The most notable Republican candidates, Meg Whitman for governor and Carly Fiorina for U.S. senate, are billionaires. Both live in an alternate universe of wealth and privilege, and are disconnected from the rest of us who object to being on lion’s menu. This disconnect is all too obvious. When Ms. Whitman was on the board of directors at eBay she approved laying off ten percent of the work force there while voting herself a huge golden parachute. She makes no apology for this or for the fact that she is trying to buy the election. When Gloria Allred filed a lawsuit against Meg Whitman for firing an undocumented house keeper Ms Whitman had employed for almost a decade, Ms. Whitman denied knowing the house keeper was undocumented. When Ms. Allred produced evidence to the contrary, Ms. Whitman still refused to admit she had made a mistake by continuing to employ the house keeper until just before Ms. Whitman filed to run for governor. What Ms. Whitman did instead was to accuse Ms. Allred of acting as a surrogate for gubernatorial candidate, Jerry Brown. She is so out of touch she thinks she can convince us that this is a phony issue rather than an indication of her flawed character and arrogance. High information voters are opposed to her because they know she is a billionaire who will represent billionaires rather then us. For less savvy voters, however, the hypocrisy revealed by the lawsuit will be a deciding factor.

Carly Fiorina’s political views are almost as hair brained as those held by the religious right. She has not made a show of those views as a candidate, but she is still disconnected from the majority of the voters. When she was CEO of Hewlett Packard she publicly bragged about shipping thousands of jobs overseas. Furthermore she is so clueless she allowed herself to be filmed as she made a snide remark about the hairdo worn by Senator Boxer. Ms. Fiorana is also running the lamest attack ad of the season. It is a clip of Senator Boxer asking a general to call her Senator rather than ma’am. The reaction of everyone I have talked to about this ad is “So?” Why Ms. Fiorana thinks it is so unreasonable for a senator to want people to call her Senator is a mystery to most voters.

This combination of the religious right and the billionaires would be laughable if it were not so dangerous. The anti-government stance of the religious right would give free reign to the very people who are exporting our jobs and whose irresponsible behavior almost took down our entire economy. Furthermore, the areas in which the religious right wants the government to interfere with our lives would take away many of the rights we take for granted. I am talking about a woman’s reproductive rights, a worker’s right to be protected from injury in the work place, and freedom of and from religion, etc.

Tune in, turn out, and vote! I am not making this stuff up. There is far more at stake than you might think!

I’m Angry

2010-09-30T14:34:00.000-07:00

Let my tell you who makes me angry. It is not so much the Republicans. I have already reconciled myself to the fact that they are scumbags who will take no responsibility for governing this country and will use any tactic to try to get a competitive advantage regardless of how much harm that does to this country. What really has me steaming is the wimpy response to those tactics. Yes, I know politics is the art of making friends even with people who disagree with you. I know it is the art of cutting deals and reaching compromises. That is all fine and dandy if the other side is doing the same thing, but the other side has absolutely no interest in doing that. The Democrats are still acting as though the Marques of Queensbury rules apply when the Republicans are trying to kick the Democrats in the groin. It is high time for the Democrats to punish those tactics.

The first step is to make the blue dogs act like Democrats on the most important issues. The House should bring the extension of tax cuts for the middle class to the floor for a vote. I doubt that many blue dogs would like to have to explain why they did not prevent an increase in the taxes paid by their constituents. Any politician worth his salt could easily answer accusations that he was actually voting to raise taxes by simply saying: No, I’m voting to keep your taxes low unless you’re a small business like the Koch brothers who are worth twenty-five billion dollars or you’re part of the Wall Street crowd who got us into this mess or you’re one of the companies exporting our jobs. Forget the excuse of being afraid of thirty secant ads sponsored by the special interests. The bottom line is that the blue dogs represent those interests and are afraid not too. But again, any politician worth his salt would say to those interests: “I didn’t have a choice. They forced vote me to vote and if I voted no I’d no longer be in Congress to represent you.”

The next step is to make the price to high for BP if the Republicans keep the committee investigating the oil spill from getting subpoena power. President Obama should call Harry Reid and say: “Now you can tell Mitch or I can tell Mitch, but here’s what’s going to happen. If that committee does not get subpoena power within four days the Justice Department is going to file lawsuits against BP, Halliburton, et al, because they’re going to testify under oath one way or another. And let me tell you that once those suits are filed they aren’t going away!”

The third and perhaps most important step is defeat the tactics of not even letting bills come up for debate. Harry Reid has to pull Senator McConnell aside and say: “Remember how you threatened to go nuclear and declare the filibuster unconstitutional when we were using it to oppose the appointment of extreme judges. Well, its payback time. If you keep those bills for coming up for debate we're going to get rid of the rules that allow you to do that. If you are going to filibuster those bills, you’re to have to do it the way it’s always been done. You’re going to have to stand up on the senate floor and show the world what asses you are!” Let’s face it folks, the senate rules are in drastic need of reform anyhow.

In spite of my anger I am still going to vote a Democratic ticket. Wimps or not, they are the only ones who will get us out of this mess.

Toxic Tea

2010-09-21T15:50:00.000-07:00

Not even the person who knows Christine O’Donnell best will touch her intimately. This is not because she is physically unattractive; it is because she passes noxious gas disguised as thought. All right, I am being snippy. Doing so is a bit immature, but I cannot help myself. She is the sort of religious right-winger who believes the earth is an evil place, and she is doing her best to make everyone else in the world miserable enough to believe her. How did she get the Republican Party to nominate her as a senatorial candidate? Was it witchcraft? She did dabble in witchcraft. She admitted that in an interview with Bill Maher. The right wing bloggers are now in full attack mode. They are accusing Bill Maher of being a black mailer, an extortionist, and even worse as far as they are concerned, a liberal! I do not have the stomach to read those idiots, but I am sure they pointed out that the interview from which the excerpts were taken occurred nine years ago and that she has repented for her walk to the dark side. Maybe, but Mr. Maher did the right thing by posting those excerpts because her “dabble” in witchcraft reveals something very disturbing about her personality. The extreme opinions she holds today also indicate that she still embraces the dark side. The only difference between what she was doing when she dabbled in witchcraft and what she is doing now is that she now uses Christianity justify her destructive view of the world.

If Ms. O’Donnell was the only Republican nominee espousing extreme and paranoid views we could dismiss her as an aberration. Unfortunately there are at least eight Republican nominees who are members of the crowd dumping toxic tea into the political waters. Furthermore, the nomination of those candidates is just the latest and scariest manifestation of the Republican Party’s hard shift to the right. Most Republican politicians are opposed to any government regulation of the companies exporting our jobs. Leaders of the Republican Party also say they would repeal the regulations designed to prevent another economic melt down and regulations designed to protect consumers from the predatory behavior of giant corporations. The Republicans are also threatening to hold tax cuts for the middle class hostage in an effort to extort an extension of the deficit creating tax cuts for the wealthiest people in the nation. Make no mistake about it, the Republican Party’s cynical efforts to obstruct all reasonable attempts to deal with this recession attracts and encourages the extremists. If the tea party candidates are elected in November they will join the other Republicans who want to forbid abortions even in the case of rape and incest. They will also join the Republicans who are already attacking all social programs including social security, medicare, and unemployment insurance. The religious right does not want the government to regulate anything except what you do in your bedroom. They are not following the examples of our founding fathers; instead they are following the examples of Joe McCarthy and the John Birch society.

The Republican Party wanted to tap into the energy of the extreme right wing. They succeeded but at a horrible price. Rational Republicans who once acted responsibly are now afraid to oppose the lunatics who are determined to take this country into a very dark and dangerous place. Positions that were once considered too extreme are now being accepted. As the moderate Republicans who were defeated in the primaries will tell you, any and all compromise is anathema to the extreme right wing. In the religious right wing’s warped view of the world there is only good and evil. They believe the world is evil, and they are opposed to anyone who tries to make it better. The Republicans think this sour view of the world fits their partisan agenda of making our current government fail. They will soon discover that this negative energy is not a tool easily discarded. The religious right has been empowered. They are the Republican attack dogs, and they are determined to assert their authority over rest of the pack.

If you think things are bad now just wait until the Republicans shut our government down. Believe me, they will do it. The only thing that can prevent it is your vote. We are at the crossroads. Rational people must make rational decisions and they must act on those decisions. We can take the path to recovery or we can turn the other direction and slide into the abyss of self-destruction. The choice is yours. If you do not turn out at the polls to reject the nihilistic tactics of the Republican Party you will have no one but yourself to blame for the consequences of letting the religious right set the agenda.

Your Fate Is In Your Vote

2010-09-16T12:09:00.000-07:00

You may have noticed that I stopped giving political IQ scores after the June primaries. The problem is that too few people voted in the primaries. The Republicans had a higher turn out than the Democrats, but even the percentage of Republicans who voted was low. This in itself indicates a very low political IQ. It means that a majority of the people left the decisions to others rather than taking some responsibility for selecting our leaders. This gave the people at the far end of the political spectrum a greater voice because it was the extremists who were passionate enough to get to the polls. This resulted in the Tea Party candidates scoring upset victories over their more moderate Republican opponents. The elections in November are no longer a political IQ test; instead they are a mental health test. Mad is a word that is defined as anger or insane rage. I keep hearing that the voters are mad at all politicians over the sorry state of our economy. The question that will be answered in November is whether the people of this country are insanely angry or whether their anger and frustration will make them pay enough attention to determine who is to blame and what needs to be done to get us back on track.

Shortly after the election of President Obama the Republicans cynically threw out the honored tradition of compromise in an effort to make his administration fail. To this day they continue to oppose things they once favored; things such as making loans available to small businesses, tax breaks for people making less than a quarter of million dollars per year, and an extension of unemployment benefits. They are doing this at the expense of the middle class, which is still suffering from the steady erosion of real wages and decreased employment opportunities brought about by the policies of George W. Bush. The fact the Democratic Party has still managed to make some meaningful changes can only be attributed to the fact that the voters gave them a large enough majority do it. The fact that the Democrats have not accomplished more is because even this majority is not sufficient to totally overcome the procedural obstructions the Republicans in the Senate are using to create gridlock.

Thanks to the rise of the Tea Party, the contrast between the Democrats and the Republicans has become even sharper. In an earlier post I said there is a real danger that the Republicans will shut down the government as they did when Newt Gingrich was speaker of the house and that they will use the Congressional Subpoena to trump up charges they can use to impeach the President as they did when Bill Clinton was President. The chances that the Republicans will do both of those things if they gain control of the Senate or the House of Representatives have greatly increased with the nomination of so many extremist candidates. If you think the government has failed to respond to the recession thus far just consider what will happen if the government is shut down and becomes completely dysfunctional. One look at Rand Paul, Susan Angle, and the other extreme Republican candidates will tell you I am not sounding a false alarm!

The premise behind this democracy or any democracy is that an informed electorate will make wise choices. This means that you must listen and you must vote! If you are foolish enough to let the lunatics elect extreme anti-government candidates who will run this country over a cliff do not blame the politicians; the responsibility is yours. You are either sane enough to accept the responsibility for selecting our leaders or you are not. You are either bright enough to realize that our government must take resolute action to deal with this economic crises or you are not. It is your decision to make. It is up to you to prevent the nightmare scenario I have presented!

God and Country

2010-08-31T14:29:00.000-07:00

Hold your bible in front of you and wrap yourself in the flag; as long as the booze and the money are out of sight you will be all right. This political advice is even older than the statement about patriotism being the last refuge of scoundrels.

Whose Jesus do those politicians claim to represent? Is it the Jesus of the Puritans who came to America to escape persecution by the Church of England? Is it the Jesus of all Protestants who split off from the Catholic Church? Is it the Jesus of Catholics who the Protestant majority in this country did not consider Christians for centuries? The demagogues are acting as though they want a theocracy rather than a secular democracy that protects the rights of those who hold divergent views. Obviously the freedom of religion guaranteed by the first amendment of our Constitution was difficult to make a reality even for fellow Christians. This fact is strong evidence supporting the adage that if anyone’s rights are trampled everyone’s rights are in peril. We either have freedom of religion or we do not.

Whose America do those politicians claim they are defending? Is it the America of Standard Oil of New Jersey, U.S. Steel and J.P. Morgan, or is it the America of the majority of the citizens who had the reasonable belief that in order for competition to produce quality goods at affordable prices we had to prevent the monopolies that crushed competition? Is it the America of Andrew Carnegie and other industrialists who exploited their worker, or is it the America of the workers who had to form unions and fight for a living wage? To put it in more modern terms is it the America of the corporations who are exporting our jobs and driving down our wages, or is it the America of people who depend on those jobs and are eager to produce the products that provide them with their livelihood?

The short answer is that it is the America of all of its citizens and all of the people going through the process of becoming citizens regardless of race, creed, ethnicity or gender. It is the nation of the majority who select our leaders and our policies. It is also the nation of the minorities and competing ideas. It is the nation of grand principles and wise laws that protect the free speech of the dissenters so that people holding a minority view can become the majority.

During the administration of George W. Bush I said that I considered myself to be a moderate, and that I only appeared to be a liberal because the country had swung so far to the right. The Republican Party has now swung so far to the right that here is no room for moderates. According to the demagogues anyone who embraces the pragmatic rationality and broad principles that have made our country so great are now liberals. The demagogues wrap themselves in the flag and scream about God as though America and virtue belonged only to them. From whom do they wish to take America back? Do they wish to take America away from all the ethnic, racial, and religious minorities who collectively form a powerful voting block? Do they wish to take America away from anyone who disagrees with them in any way?

The demagogues are divisive rather than inclusive. They appeal to emotions rather than reason, therein lies the problem. Living wages and opportunities to advance are good for everyone. If one group is paid lower wages than another for the same work, the people commanding the higher wages are at a disadvantage in finding gainful employment and the wages paid sink to the lower level. If one or two companies command the market place for a particular product those companies do not just set the price for the product they also set the price for the labor they hire unless there is a labor union to prevent that. Fair competition and living wages benefit everyone except the companies trying to gain an unfair advantage. So why do the Republicans oppose any regulations that would prevent unfair competition, and why do they oppose all labor unions? Loans that would let small businesses expand and hire more people are good for everyone except for the large corporations that might face more competition. So why are the Republicans opposing a bill that would provide those loans even though they once favored such a bill? Green industries would lesson our dependence on fossil fuels from other countries and would also produce jobs. Those green industries would be good for everyone except the oil companies and coal companies. So why are the Republicans opposing attempts to stimulate green industries? Unemployment insurance stabilizes the market place during times of high unemployment. Everyone benefits from that stabilization unless they consider the United States market expendable. So why did the Republicans oppose the extension of unemployment benefits? Affordable health care helps to provide healthy workers. Healthy workers benefit everyone except for the people who are profiting from the broken health care system and the people who see a world wide supply of labor that makes workers in this country expendable. So way did the Republicans oppose health care reform?

The scapegoating and demagoguery of the Republican Party is a cynical attempt to keep you from asking the questions I just posed. Do not let your misery in this economy make you join the people that can be fooled all of the time. Do not fall prey to the demagogues. You deserve to be represented by politicians who represent your interests. The Democratic Party may not be doing everything you want done, but it is the only party that is trying to get this economy moving again. The Republican Party is offering nothing but divisive demagoguery and the same incompetent policies that created this mess in the first place!

Newt Gingrich

2010-08-17T08:00:00.000-07:00

For the life of me I cannot understand why people describe Newt Gingrich as an intellectual or a historian. If he is an intellectual and/or a historian he is also a liar and the worst sort of demagogue. He says America should not allow Muslims to build mosques in this country as long as Saudi Arabia discriminates against Christians. Anyone who is educated and rational knows that the reason why we must allow the followers of Islam to build places of worship in this country is because the first amendment of our constitution guaranties the freedom of religion. What any other country does is irrelevant. We are a nation of laws, and our constitution is our constitution. No real American would ever violate our laws or renounce the principles on which those laws are based because of what some other nation does!

Not being content to spew forth this absurdity about violating the first amendment in order to protect our freedom, Mr. Gingrich wanders even farther into the insane world of right wing paranoia. He actually said he would pass a constitutional amendment making it illegal to replace our constitution with sharia law. It is difficult to imagine a statement more ignorant than that. Anyone who graduated from high school knows there is already a vast body of law to prevent the establishment of sharia law in this country. That body of law is called the Constitution, and among the laws that prevent the establishment of sharia law is the very same first amendment Mr. Gingrich wants us to violate. We cannot have a law guaranteeing the freedom of religion and not have a law guaranteeing the freedom of religion. We either have that freedom or we do not. Whipping up irrational fears about imaginary threats to our constitution actually threatens the body of law Mr. Gingrich so disingenuously claims he is trying to defend. In this case it threatens one of the most fundamental freedoms our constitution guarantees. What Mr. Gingrich is advocating is like burning down your cabin to protect it from a forest fire. To say that his logic is flawed would be an understatement.

The greatest threat to our constitution and the freedom it guarantees is not Islam; rather it is demagogues like Newt Gingrich who would have us violate the rights set forth in our constitution. The fact that he is considered a prominent member of the Republican Party is yet another example of how intellectually bankrupt that party has become. There is no depth to which he and other members of that party will not stoop in order to exploit the ignorance and irrational fears of what they consider to be the base of their party. This is a very dangerous thing for them to do. When beliefs and irrational fears cause us to ignore facts and reject rational thought all we are left with is rage. Need I remind you that beliefs, irrational fears, and rage are what drive the very terrorists we are trying to defeat?

The America I know and love is a tolerant nation that wants to know the facts and places a high value on reason. It is a nation of hard working people who embrace the lofty principles that are stated in our declaration of independence and are codified in our constitution. It is a beacon of freedom that became the most prosperous nation on earth. It is a shining example for all people who long to be free. We must renounce the demagogues who would make it anything less than that.

Sounding the Alarm

2010-08-11T10:58:00.000-07:00

Let me tell you what is at stake in this election. I ask you now to think back to the very recent past. I ask you to remember when then Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, literally shut down our government. I ask you to remember when the Republican Party impeached President Clinton and tried to throw him out of office. This is the toxic political atmosphere created by the Republican Party. It is an atmosphere that has become worse rather than better over time. What is at stake in the upcoming elections is the economic health of this nation and the real wages you work so hard to obtain. What is also at stake in the upcoming elections is the political process itself; it is accepting the will of the majority; it is the traditional ability to compromise. We place a trust in our leaders to work together for the good of this country. The Republican Party violated that trust when Newt Gingrich shut down the government. They violated that trust again when they impeached Bill Clinton. They are violating that trust now!

They are using the Senate rules to thwart the ability of our government to deal with this recession. They stubbornly oppose an extension of unemployment benefits as well as the bill that would make loans available to small businesses so that those businesses can expand and hire more people. They oppose any public works programs that would provide temporary employment, improve our infrastructure, and stimulate the economy. They cynically cite their concern over the federal deficit for opposing those things while opposing the lapse of the tax cuts for the wealthy that helped cause that deficit. They did everything they could to oppose the passage of regulations designed to prevent the irresponsible behavior that nearly caused another depression. They even oppose raising the liability limits on oil companies for the spills caused by those companies. They also sided with the insurance companies over health care reform and continue to tell outrageous lies about that legislation.

If you do not think the Republican Party will try to use the Congressional subpoena to trump up some charges they can use to impeach President Obama, you are sadly mistaken. The only thing preventing them from doing that now is the fact they do not have a majority in the house or the senate. The elections in November could change that. If you think I am overstating the danger of an attempt to impeach President Obama just think about the outrageous signs carried by the tea partiers, consider the fact that Republican politicians frequently call him a socialist who is trying to destroy this nation, consider the birther movement challenging Mr. Obama’s citizenship, consider what the Republicans did to Bill Clinton. The masters of the Republican Party, the wealthy and the powerful, will stop at nothing to increase their wealth and their power. The will of the majority and the finality of elections mean nothing to them. The only thing that can prevent them from further perverting our political system is your vote. If you do not vote this November you are turning the matter over to older, wealthy, white Americans who always vote for Republicans.

There has always come a time when the American people have said enough. There has always come a time when they have fought back. Now must be one of those times! A President elected by the majority must be allowed to remain in office and carry out the duties of his office. The people poisoning the politics of this nation in order to serve their greedy masters must be struck down. The weapon provided to you by our Constitution is your vote. Use that weapon and use it well. The economy of this nation and the survival its precious political traditions depend on your vote!

The New Robber Barons

2010-08-03T16:01:00.000-07:00

The more I listen to the leaders of the Republican Party, such as Congressperson Boehner and Senator McConnell, the more I realize that the Republicans are still trying to sell us what George W. Bush has already inflicted on us. Under George W. Bush we regressed to a time before Franklin Roosevelt’s reforms and regulations gave us the most stable stock market and prosperous economy any industrial nation has ever achieved. We have even regressed to a point before Theodore Roosevelt fought the trusts that had a strangle hold on our economy. What emerged from this regression are the new robber barons. The sub prime loan debacle, the creation of complex derivatives, and the “shitty deals” Goldman Sachs foisted off on unsuspecting investors were not unlike the watered down stock of worthless companies that the robber barons unloaded on unsuspecting investors. Furthermore, we are seeing the power and wealth of this nation becoming more and more concentrated into the hands of fewer and fewer companies and individuals.

This concentration of wealth and power is social Darwinism rather than capitalism. It does not matter whether you call Social Darwinism the trickle down theory or supply side economics the result is the same. The powerful and greedy few wind up with great fortunes while everyone else struggles just to survive. It is a recipe for disaster. It is what prompted Karl Marx to write Dos Capital. Even President Grant knew he could not let Gould and Fisk corner the gold market, and Teddy Roosevelt knew he could not let Standard Oil corner the oil market and the products made from petroleum. The whole concept behind the free enterprise system is that there will be competition rather than monopolies that hold our economy hostage while exploiting the consumer. What our economy and every economy must have are regulations that prevent monopolies and that prevent any company from becoming too important for us to allow that company to fail. Furthermore, we must have regulations that force companies and brokers to act ethically so that potential investors will not be afraid to buy securities.

So why did the Republicans oppose the modest regulations the Democrats just enacted? Why do they still oppose any regulations at all? It is not too difficult to figure out. They have been bought by the modern robber barons and by the companies that are trying to become monopolies. This is not to say that those same interests cannot also buy Democrats, but it is a more difficult task because of labor unions. The first reason the Republicans rail against labor unions is because labor unions force employers to share a greater share of the profits with their employees. The second and perhaps even more important reason the Republicans rail against labor unions is because labor unions support the candidates of the Democratic Party. Some have cynically but not inaccurately called the political clout of business interests and labor unions a balance of greed. This balance is a good thing because it keeps both of those interests in check. Unfortunately the number of labor unions that still have any political clout is rapidly dwindling.

The most frequent thing the Republican say about any government regulation or program is that it is socialistic. What they want us to forget is that every successful modern democracy, even ours, have an economy comprised of a combination of free enterprise and socialistic regulations and programs. Transportation was so important to our growing economy that the building of railroads was subsidized by land grants from the federal government. Our modern limited access highways were built completely with federal funds. Utilities were so important and expensive to start up that monopolies were allowed but the Public Utilities Commission was established to help control the rates those monopolies could charge. All of those things are socialistic, as are social security, medicare, unemployment insurance, public education and the postal service.

Not surprisingly the Republican Party has generally favored the brand of socialism that dumps money into private companies, which I suppose is why they placed the postal service into the hands of a private company that has to make a profit, thereby guaranteeing that the postal rates would rise faster than they would have if the government was still providing that service. Given their usual position in regard to private businesses, the Republican Party’s opposition to the bill that would make loans available to small businesses so that those businesses can expand and provide more jobs is a glaring inconsistency. This inconsistency only becomes understandable when we acknowledge the fact that those small businesses do not put enough money into the campaign coffers of the Republican Party. In other words, the Republicans consider those small companies and the jobs they could provide to be expendable. Their strategy is to sacrifice those businesses in order to say that the Democrats cannot get this country back to work. It is truly amazing that the Republicans are able to do this with a straight face, knowing full well that they are ones who are stifling the ability of businesses to provide jobs.

The Republican Party, like its powerful and wealthy masters, is motivated by greed and a quest for power. It is not the once proud party whose members placed a limit on what they would do to serve their wealthy and powerful masters or what they would do to regain power. The Republican Party is now the party of the modern robber barons and the bloated entities that nearly sent us into another great depression. It is also the party of Joe McCarthy, Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, and the Fox disinformation factory. It is a very bad and destructive joke. Hopefully the middle class will realize that joke is on them and will respond appropriately!

The Arrogance of Wealth

2010-07-28T10:45:00.000-07:00

The decision rendered in the Citizens United case was one of the most poorly reasoned decisions in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court. In this decision the court struck down limitations on campaign contributions and made it much easier to buy our politicians. The only way to lesson the impact of this horrible decision is to require full disclosure. We voters do not just have a right to know who is buying our politicians, we have a need to know. This is not a matter of free speech as the Republicans and the special interests would have you believe. The right of free speech is not synonymous with the right to remain anonymous. The premise of this democracy or any democracy is that an informed electorate will make the right decisions. The advertisements supporting candidates and supporting positions on issues are intentionally deceptive. Knowing who is behind those advertisements and who is supporting political candidates is essential if we voters are going to make informed decisions.

The most recent polls indicate that a large majority of the voters favor full disclosure. They want to know who is buying whom and who is supporting or opposing proposed legislation. Yet the Republicans are almost unanimous in their opposition to legislation that would require this transparency. The Republicans are ignoring the will of the people, and they are using procedural rules to defeat this legislation in the senate. They will not even let it come up for a vote. The reason they are doing this is all too obvious. They have been bought and paid for by Wall Street, the banks, the insurance companies, and the businesses that are exporting our jobs. The Republican Party is not motivated by ideology alone; they are motivated by greed! They are siding with the wealthy because the wealthy are funding the Republican Party.

The evidence supporting my contention is overwhelming. The Republicans sided with the insurance companies over the issue of health care reform. They sided with Wall Street over regulations to reform our financial institutions. They are now siding with the oil companies over liability for spills and compensation to the victims of those spills. They are siding with the wealthy over taxes while trying to deny the victims of this recession the benefits of unemployment insurance. How many ways can you say bought and paid for?

The greed of the special interests the Republican Party represent is detrimental to the economy this country. We are already seeing this in our current recession, in the destruction of the livelihoods of fisherman and others on the gulf coast, in the loss of manufacturing jobs, and in the shrinking market for the goods we still produce. We are seeing it in the concentration of wealth that deprives the middle class of the means to purchase goods and services. The bottom line is that the Republican Party represents the wealthy rather than middle class. They are not doing anything to help create jobs. Furthermore, in spite of their stated concern about the federal deficit, they are actually increasing that deficit by opposing the lapse of tax cuts for the rich. In doing this they are trying to shift the burden of paying for that deficit onto the middle class.

The whole idea behind a progressive income tax is that it shifts the burden of paying for our government onto the people who have the ability to pay those taxes. A progressive income tax involves a fundamental issue of fairness as well as a very sound economic policy. Our economy is demand driven. Henry Ford’s statement that everyone prospers when the people who make the cars can afford to buy the cars is correct. Cutting the taxes of the rich does nothing for the middle class; it does not create jobs. After the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy we saw a job growth rate of 0.28 per year. This is the lowest growth rate since the great depression, and it was accompanied by the largest federal deficit ever.

Make no mistake about it. What we are seeing is the arrogance of wealth. The special interests the Republicans represent think they can recoup the losses in demand for goods in this country with the increased demand for goods in foreign markets. The Republican Party thinks it can get away with representing those interests to our detriment because deceptive advertising paid for by anonymous interests will keep us from finding out the truth. We cannot afford to let them get away with this. We must insist on full disclosure, and we must send a clear message to the Republican Party by defeating their candidates in the elections this November.

Duped Again

2010-07-22T12:49:00.001-07:00

When Andrew Breitbart posted the highly edited and deceptive videos of Acorn employees allegedly helping a pimp commit crimes Fox News jumped at the opportunity to air them. Those videos were not just a sensational story they also fit the Fox disinformation factory’s agenda. How dare anyone help the poor! How dare anyone help progressive candidates get out the vote! The evidence against Acorn, if you can call it evidence, appeared to be damning. I was skeptical. Something did not add up. What was missing was motive. Why would Acorn employees help a pimp commit crimes?

The problem was that the mainstream media picked up the story and congress actually withdrew the funding for Acorn. I am afraid that I, like everyone else, placed too much faith in the news media and congress. I thought some real news organization would have checked the integrity of the videos and would have done a little investigating. I thought that congress would have looked into the matter before reacting to the videos. By the time someone finally did investigate it was too late save Acorn’s funding. I do not know everyone who behaved responsibly enough to unravel the real story. What I do know is that California’s Attorney General, Jerry Brown, subpoenaed the full videos. The unedited videos and the other evidence he gathered revealed that the videos shown on Fox were a vicious hoax perpetrated by an unethical punk with a right wing agenda.

Congress and the mainstream media had rushed to judgment. They had assumed that a real news organization would have checked its sources and would have some journalistic integrity. Breitbart and Fox denied all knowledge of the videos being altered. They denied all knowledge of the fact the Acorn’s employees actually notified the police of the illegal activities of the self-described pimp. They offered no apologies for their sorry role in this matter. Instead they acted like innocent victims. Worse yet, Fox has now helped to perpetrate another hoax to further its right wing agenda.

Breitbart posted another altered video, and Fox eagerly aired it with their so called news people adding their own right wing invective as editorial comments. Once more the main stream media picked up on the story and aired it without first checking the sources or investigating, and once more the government over-reacted to the story. As a result, Shirley Sherrod was forced to resign from her position with the Agriculture Department. Now, of course, the full version of her speech to the NAACP has come to light, and it reveals that another vicious right wing hoax has been perpetrated. Fox News offers no apologies for its role in this, nor is it retracting the story. Instead, it is blaming the Obama Administration for rushing to judgment!

While I agree that the Obama administration over-reacted, this in no way exonerates Fox News for its irresponsible behavior. Andrew Breitbart is not a newsman; he is a political operative with absolutely no regard for the facts. Fox News knew or should have known that Breitbart is not a credible source of information. Furthermore, these two instances are not the only times that Fox has presented blatant falsehoods as news stories. I will not go into all of those instances because I think Rachel Maddow and others have already done it better than I can. What I am saying is that Fox indulges in selective ignorance, and selective ignorance is a deception rather than an excuse. A news organization is supposed to perform a public service. It is supposed to keep the public informed. It has a duty to check the voracity of its sources and confirm the accuracy of the stories it presents. It has a duty to be as factual as it can be. It is called journalistic integrity. What is all too evident is that journalistic integrity is a concept that is foreign to Fox News. Fox is not a news organization; it is a disinformation factory with a political agenda. It is high time to hold Fox News accountable!

Please do not misunderstand what I am saying. I am a champion of the first amendment. I would never think of depriving anyone of the right to express an opinion. Fox has every right to broadcast Glen Beck throwing up all over his black board. Anyone with an IQ above ninety knows he is stating opinions. There is a real difference between that and characterizing falsehoods as news. Even real news reporters will occasionally make a mistake. When they realize they have made an error they will retract the inaccurate story and apologize to their audience or readers. The will do this because they know there is a public trust involved in reporting the news. People and organizations that continually violate this trust have no right to characterize their verbal garbage as news. We must insist that anyone who is reporting news has enough journalistic integrity to make the stories they present as factual as possible, and we must insist that opinions are clearly characterized as editorial comments. Slander and libel laws are supposed to protect people and organizations from specious stories purported to be true. Those laws should be enforced.

Even when we insist on accurate news reporting we are not insuring balanced reporting. People who have a bias will still be able to select the stories they choose to report. They will still have the ability to emphasize the stories that further their agenda. I do not have a problem with that if what they omit is not deceptive. In the case of Fox what was omitted were not stories but facts that were vital to the accuracy of those stories. Fox must not be allowed to hide behind selective ignorance. Fox has done that far too often. Fox must be forced to retract the story, and it must face some stiff penalties if it continues perpetrate outright falsehoods on a public that is depending on Fox News for information. The only other option is for the main stream media and our government to acknowledge the fact that Fox News is a disinformation factory and to stop acting as if Fox ever presents anything resembling factual reporting!

Here They Go Again

2010-07-13T09:32:00.000-07:00

I hate to sound like Ronald Reagan, but here they go again. The Republicans still want us to believe that enriching the rich produces jobs. They are still arguing that letting Bush’s outrageous tax cuts for the rich lapse will hurt “small” businesses. This argument is so obviously false that is an insult to our intelligence. Letting the tax cuts lapse would restore the higher tax rates for large personal incomes rather than increasing the taxes paid by businesses. Increasing the personal income tax of wealthy individuals will not create a disincentive to for them to invest in their businesses. In fact, it will have the opposite effect because the sums used to improve or increase the size of businesses are deductible business expenses rather than personal income. In this regard, it makes perfect sense to defer some personal income by using it to improve their businesses. This will lower the taxes they pay on personal income and increase the future personal incomes they will derive from those businesses.

It is interesting that the Republicans are trying to cast their argument in terms of small businesses rather than giant corporations. Could this be because most people are not very sympathetic to executives who are pulling down base salaries of several million dollars per year and do not have the same expenses other people have because of all the perks those executives also receive? Ah, but there is the stock market. The problem with the stock market argument is that it is based on the same trickle down theory that has failed time after time. Dumping more money into the stock market simply inflates the price of stock. It does nothing to increase demand, and demand for the goods the corporations produce is the only incentive for producing more goods. There is no reason to make more products if no one is going to buy them.

During the Bush administration we have seen an increasing concentration of wealth into the hands of fewer and fewer individuals. The result has been a decrease in real wages and a shrinking market. What has made this country so great and so prosperous is the middle class. It is the labor unions that allowed workers to earn more then they needed to buy the most basic necessities. It is the small entrepreneurs who could get the loans they needed to produce innovative products that allowed them to compete with the giants. The fallacy behind what the Republicans euphemistically call supply side economics is that it fails to recognize that wages and employment create the demand that drives our market based economy. In other words, they are still trying to till the garden with the wrong end of the hoe. They are still saying that the rich should not pay taxes they can well afford to pay even though reducing those taxes has only resulted in decreasing the revenue the government can collect and thereby increasing the deficit. The remarkable thing is that the Republicans are doing this while predicting dire consequences because of the deficit. If this hypocrisy does not tell you the Republican Party is still selling old bricks, I do not know what will.

Wall Street

2010-07-09T09:53:00.000-07:00

So Wall Street does not like the Democratic Party’s proposed reforms. Imagine my surprise. During the height of the great depression Wall Street fought President Roosevelt’s reforms with every resource at its disposal. Then as now the capitalists had to share a large measure of the blame for the economic collapse. Then as now their greed and questionable practices posed a danger to this nation. The New Deal legislation was passed in spite of the opposition of the financial institutions and the large corporations, and fifty years of unprecedented prosperity followed. We ran into trouble when much of that legislation was repealed or ignored. How quickly we forget.

It is not easy to pass much needed reforms when such powerful interests oppose them. Those opponents will use their considerable resources to publicize lies about those reforms and to defeat the Party that is trying to prevent the reckless practices that have caused so much trouble. In this regard, one of the most effective tactics is diversion. Which is to say that the special interests will attack the reformers on issues that have little or nothing to do with the reforms. The most successful attack on President Roosevelt was the government’s deficit spending. Indeed, the concern about the consequences of that deficit spending actually caused Mr. Roosevelt to prematurely scale back some of the programs he was using to stimulate the economy. The hue and cry over the deficit now is also a smoke screen. The real issues are production and employment. It is all about jobs! People who work pay taxes, and they will buy more goods. This in turn will provide the incentive to produce more goods and hire more people. The increased revenue resulting from a healthy economy will then allow the government to reduce the deficit.

Today the special interests are aided and abetted by a Party that is putting partisan politics ahead of the interests of this country. The Republican Party is opposing the badly needed reforms and the stimulus program. They opposed the health care reform that would have driven down the cost of health insurance and would have, therefore, given the people of this country more money to spend on the goods we produce. They are heartlessly opposing an extension of unemployment insurance payments, which means more home foreclosures and fewer people who can afford the goods and services we produce. They are even apologizing to British Petroleum for the fact that the Democrats are insisting that BP compensate the victims of BP’s reckless and negligent behavior. What is obvious to anyone who is paying attention is that the Republican Party is trying to keep our government from dealing with this recession and the causes of this recession.

The motive for the Republicans to obstruct any recovery from the recession is cynical self-interest. They are hoping to gain a political advantage by making this government fail. They do not care about the victims of the recession or the victims of the oil spill. They are more than willing to let the people of this country suffer for whatever political success that suffering will bring to their political party. The choice in November could not be clearer. The people of this nation must hold the Republicans accountable. They must reject the party that is putting its interests ahead of the interests of this country!

A hell of a mess!

2010-06-22T14:34:00.001-07:00

When Mr. Obama was running for President I told my brother we needed someone who was bright enough to deal with all of the problems and insane enough to want to do it. The economy was in a shambles. We were also engaged in two wars. One of the wars was unnecessary, and it was causing us to neglect the necessary war. The most damning thing we can accurately say about the administration of George W. Bush is that it was the administration of neglect. Regulations that would have helped to prevent the economic meltdown were done away with or ignored. The same thing holds true of regulations that would have helped to prevent the gulf oil spill. Whether we are talking about foreign or domestic issues, there was a total lack of direction and no sense of priorities.

Mr. Bush’s failure to pursue a rebuilding program in Afghanistan and vigorously conduct the war there has made the situation much more difficult than it should have been. Like everything else inherited from the Bush administration the situation was out of hand, and none of the options left to Mr. Obama were very appealing. The frustration General McCrystal expressed is understandable, but his public criticism of his superiors is wrong under any circumstances. The first thing all military officers are taught is to defend their men from criticism and to defend their superiors from criticism. A field commander can and should be critical of strategy and tactics, but his criticism must not travel beyond the hearing of his superiors. His role is to advise his superiors and to carry out their directives to the best of his ability. If he feels that those orders are too foolish, his only recourse is to resign and then make his case in public. Every general knows there are very good reasons for those rules and why they must be followed. General McCrystal's irresponsible statements have undermined the command structure. At a time when we must carefully weigh our options, he has made himself a distracting side issue. In doing this, he has added one more problem to the many crises situations our President must now handle.

Tea Parties and Whisky Rebels

2010-06-17T15:33:00.000-07:00

In an earlier post I took issue with Chris Mathews because he made the right wing lunatics sound like something new. Much to Mr. Mathew’s credit he showed a brief history of this right wing hysteria. He also showed a campaign advertisement by some tea party nimrod running for congress. In the advertisement this nimrod was having an imaginary conversation with George Washington. Nimrod was complaining about big government and taxes. His advertisement made it appear as though he had something in common with George Washington and the folks who participated in the original tea party. Like most right wingers, Nimrod demonstrated his ignorance of history. The members of the modern tea party have little or nothing in common with folks who participated in the Boston tea party, and George Washington would undoubtedly reject their cause.

Participants in the Boston Tea Party were rebelling against a tax levied at a time when they were being deprived of the hard currency they needed to pay for the most basic goods and services. The deprivation suffered by the colonists was so severe that they had to resort to the barter system. In fact Spanish currency derived from smuggling was actually as common if not more common than English currency, which is why we now have the dollar rather than the pound. Saying that the modern tea party is following the legacy of our founding fathers is a major brain fart. If our modern tax protesters resemble anyone of that era it is the people who participated in the Whisky Rebellion.

It quickly became apparent to George Washington and our other founding fathers that the government had to collect revenue if it was going to provide for the common defense and do the other things a government needs to do. They, therefore, levied a tax on whisky. When the whisky producers rebelled, President Washington vigorously quelled that rebellion. The tax on alcohol financed our government clear up until Prohibition. The income tax replaced the taxes on alcohol when alcohol was made illegal. The modern day right wing is not really against the income tax; it is against any and all taxes. Like the whisky rebels, they do not want any government they have to pay for regardless of how necessary or beneficial that government may be.

Those right wing idiots will undoubtedly object to my analogy if they ever figure it out. No one wants to be told they are supporting a cause that resembles one that was on the wrong side of history and failed. This, however, is what today’s right wing is doing. They have already had their man in office. Their man was George W. Bush, and the failure of his philosophy is apparent to anyone with more than a beer soaked peanut for a brain. Under his administration the wealthy became even wealthier, and everyone else became poorer. What is needed is not less government interference. What is needed is a government that tries to level the playing field and enforces regulations that keep the powerful from exploited the rest of us. It is not taxes that are hurting the middle class; rather it is high unemployment and the precipitous drop in real wages. It does not take a genius to realize that we are getting screwed by the insurance companies, the financial institutions, and the huge corporations that are chasing cheep labor overseas. A government that works to correct those things is a good government.

Primaries 2010

2010-06-09T12:05:00.000-07:00

The first small section of the political IQ test has been taken. It is the primaries, which means it groups voters by party. California not withstanding, this is as it should be in what is essentially a two party system. My assessments here are rather limited and superficial due to time constraints and my sources of information. Because of this I am concentrating mainly on California, which is my home state.

Arkansas: At first blush it appears that members of the Democratic Party in Arkansas demonstrated a low political IQ by nominating Blanch Lincoln who betrayed her party and her constituents by threatening to join the Republicans in a filibuster to thwart health care reform. She is often described as a Corporate Democrat, which means that she represents greedy business interests rather than the working men and women of her state and this nation. In all fairness to the Democrats in Arkansas, however, I should point out that there were some extenuating circumstances. A piece of unethical pig shit went to great lengths to stack the deck in Ms. Lincoln’s favor by eliminating polling places in the districts where her opponent, Mr. Halter, had the greatest support. The wait to vote at the polling places that remained open was as long as four hours. Hopefully, voters will remember this unconscionable tactic when they vote in the general election. A Republican will not be any better than Ms. Lincoln but could not be any worse. Voting Ms. Lincoln out of office will at least send a powerful message. The voters in Arkansas should also try to find a political shovel they can use to remove the pig shit!

California: Democrats in California showed a low political IQ by not turning out to vote. Granted that none of the prominent Democrats were in danger of losing the primary, but there were also important propositions on the ballet. By staying at home the Democrats let the Republicans decide measures put on the ballet by greedy insurance companies, Pacific Gas & Electric, and other special interests. This was an incredibly stupid thing to do.

Proposition 13 eliminates the tax penalty for retrofitting buildings. It passed and raises the voters’ political IQ score.

Poposition 14: In this blue state the Republicans favored Proposition 14, which all but eliminates Party primaries by allowing voters to vote for any candidate regardless of party affiliation. The candidates in the primary do not even have to declare a party. Thus Republicans and others can mask their party affiliation. Furthermore, since only the top two vote getters run off in the general election third parties will be excluded from the general election. In 1959 California did away with cross filing, which allowed a candidate to run in both the Democratic primary and the Republican primary at the same time. There were very good reasons why cross filing was abolished. It gave incumbents and candidates with name recognition too much of an advantage, and it increased the role money plays in our elections, which meant that special interests exerted a greater influence on our politicians. Proposition 14 should have been rejected for the same reasons. It gives politicians a greater ability to mask their agendas and increases the ability of special interests to influence the outcome of the primary elections as well as the general elections. Passing this measure lowers the IQ score of California voters.

Proposition 15: This proposition would have permitted public funding for candidates running for Secretary of State. The Secretary of State enforces many of the regulations governing the activities of lobbyists. It was a measure that should have been passed and its defeat lowers the voters’ political IQ score.

Proposition 16 would have required voter approval by a two-thirds majority before local governments could start or expand electric services. The voters correctly defeated it, and raised their political IQ score.

Proposition 17 would have allowed insurance companies to base their prices in part on a drivers’ history of insurance coverage. The voters correctly defeated it, and raised their political IQ score.

The California Republicans demonstrated a slightly higher political IQ than I expected by narrowly defeating Orly Taitz’ bid to become Secretary of State. This woman is insane even by tea party standards, and most pundits were saying she would have taken down the entire Republican ticket.

As for the nomination of Ms. Whitman and Ms. Fiorina, all I can say is that it is too difficult to predict trends from those nominations. The one thing I can say is that those two corporate Republicans were able to get nominated. Both are female but so are Senators Boxer and Feinstein. Whether the corporate backgrounds of Ms. Whitman and Ms. Fiorina will be an advantage or disadvantage in the general election remains to be seen. Both have political views that could be problematical in a blue state and both are packing some serious baggage.

California voters scored in the low part of the average range, which is a much like getting a C- on a social studies test. Hopefully, they will do better in the general election. I think they will if Democrats get off their lazy butts and vote.

Nevada: The Republicans demonstrated a low political IQ by nominating tea party favorite Sharron Angles for U.S. Senate. Her extreme right wing views give Senator Harry Reid a fighting chance in the general election. She is, in fact, the candidate Senator Reid wanted to run against.

Kentucky: The Republicans’ nomination of Rand Paul demonstrates a very low political IQ. Much of what can be said of Orly Taitz can be said of Rand Paul. If the overall political IQ in Kentucky is higher than ninety, he will be defeated easily in the general election.

How high of a political IQ will America demonstrate in the general election? Stay tuned in to find out. Voters who want to cure our economic malaise and wrest the control of our government from the special interests who are largely responsible for this recession must become active and involved. It takes a virtual ground swell of reformers to counter the influence of money in our political system. I am not naïve enough to think we will ever negate the influence of money, but I do think we can set some limits on it. We can and must support progressives who will give the people of this nation a more level playing field by passing effective reforms and regulations. While I do not begrudge a reasonable return on investments or a reasonable profit for innovation and hard work, I do begrudge the excessive greed that results in exploitation and poses a threat to our economy. Unions have been emasculated by globalization, and the government is our only option for controlling the excessive greed of those who put profits ahead of the welfare of our citizens and our country.

The Rise of the Right Wing?

2010-06-03T10:36:00.000-07:00

The news media has embraced the tea party movement. It is about the ratings; the tea party folks are outrageous enough to make good copy. In rational times the antics of the right wing are considered comical, but do not get me started on that. Let me just say that the news media is taking this bad joke far too seriously. Chris Mathews of MSNBC is even airing a series on the rise of the right wing. What strikes me is that everyone seems to be treating the right wing's paranoid, reactionary expressions of anger as though they were something we have not seen before. Could our collective memory really be that short?

The right wing has always been with us. We do not have to look very far back in our history to find examples of when the right wing set the political agenda. It was the right wing that supported and encouraged the witch hunts of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Those witch hunts were a national disgrace and were soon seen as such. When McCarthy was discredited, the right wing faded into the background. They were resurrected when Barry Goldwater ran for President against Lyndon Johnson. The John Birch Society and other paranoid right wingers did not merely campaign for Mr. Goldwater they crusaded for him. In fairness to Mr. Goldwater, I do not think he intentionally fed their paranoia. His problem was that he espoused the same laissez faire government policies that resulted in the great depression. He did so at a time when there were too many voters who had worked far too hard to build prosperity after World War II, and those voters quite correctly rejected his failed philosophy. Mr. Goldwater’s crushing defeat was strong evidence that the vast majority of the people viewed the Birchers and such as being ludicrous. They were a bad joke, and they were dangerous.

Lyndon Johnson’s administration took place at a time of unprecedented prosperity. With so many people earning so much money, poverty had become intolerable. This was particularly true of poverty caused by racial discrimination. They who had been trickled down on were now fighting back. Much to our nation’s credit the majority of the people saw the injustices and supported measures designed to build a more equitable society. The cost of the programs Mr. Johnson put forth to address this issue were well within the means of the middle class, which comprised the largest part of our tax base. Buying a Ford rather than a Cadillac as your second car was no great sacrifice. Unfortunately, nineteen sixty-eight was the high water mark of real wages. Real wages have been slipping ever since, and it was not long before the middle class was feeling the burden of paying for the social programs of the Johnson administration.

Ronald Reagan was a reaction to Mr. Johnson’s great society. Mr. Reagan proclaimed that government was the problem rather than the solution. If Mr. Reagan had simply scaled back those social programs, he might have been the great President the Republicans say he was. Unfortunately, he went much farther than that. One of the things our founding fathers frequently expressed was their fear of the passions of the masses. That seems quaint now, but they had a point. The pendulum frequently swings too far in either direction. Mr. Reagan was not merely a conservative; he was a reactionary. He gave a large tax break to the rich, and this resulted in the largest deficit we had ever had. Furthermore, his anti-government rhetoric emboldened and empowered the same sort of people who were Birchers when Mr. Goldwater ran for President.

What Mr. Reagan ushered in was a strong slide to the right rather than an avalanche. The avalanche would take place under George W. Bush. One would still have to be in diapers in order to deny the destructive power of this avalanche. It resulted in the economic malaise we are dealing with today! An earlier generation rejected the failed philosophy of the Republican Party's laissez faire government when it elected Franklin Roosevelt. The current generation rejected that philosophy again when it elected Barak Obama. I hope I am correct in my belief that what we are witnessing in regard to the tea party movement is simply the right wing throwing a fit about this rejection.

The caveat is that the right wing will always be with us. If the voters give in to their frustration over the slow progress of the economic recovery and they vote against incumbents simply because they are incumbents, the right wing will win. If the voters stay home on election day, the right wing will also win. As I have said before, the upcoming elections are a political IQ test. If the middle class of this nation is going to recover and survive, it must push the right wing to the sidelines again. The middle class must actively support the changes it voted for when it elected Barak Obama. It must get out and vote for progressive candidates who know that British Petroleum, Goldman Sachs, AIG, et al have to be regulated and that the government must take an active role in rebuilding our economy!

Ho-hum.

2010-05-26T13:08:00.000-07:00

Ho-hum. No exclamation mark there. I yawn. I stretch. I pry open the lids covering my political eyeballs in order to see the foibles of our politicians and the pressing issues of our times.

There is Rand Paul. He starts out by saying that we need to take our nation back from the special interests. And how does he propose to do that? His answer is to remove all regulations governing those interests. Huh? Such a non sequitur should get the old political juices flowing, but it does not.

There is Arizona threatening to boycott anyone who is boycotting it over its absurd immigration law. It should be amusing watching John McCain trying to do the breast stroke in the muck thus created, but the humor elicits the faintest smile.

Ah but I live in California. Here we have Steve Poizner and Meg Whitman. If you listen to an attack add, you might think the one being attacked actually has something to offer. The problem is that the rebuttal to the add makes you realize they are both pushing each other so far to the right that they are both running out of shoulder. This means that they are both in danger of going over the cliff. This is a blue state, you know. Normally, I would be amused by them, but I am not.

Then we have congressional candidate Vaughn Ward running against the Obama administration while plagiarizing one of Mr. Obama’s speeches. All right, that brought a smile.

Last but not least is the idiot right wing, clueless about the facts as usual. They are accusing Obama of being the only President not presenting the customary wreath at Arlington to honor our fallen heroes. I suppose he is the only one if you are not counting Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.

Normally, any one of those things would have required a spirited response from me. Have the absurdities of the right wing become so common that they no longer have any impact? Yes, they are that common. No, they still require a response. I cannot really explain my blasé attitude at this time. The California primary is next month. Regardless of whether I am still in a funk at that time, I will vote, and I expect to be in fighting form by the time we receive the results of those elections. I am part of the Democratic base that needs a bit of energizing right now, but the motivation will be there. If we want a government that will deal with the pressing problems facing this nation, we must elect people who will act on our behalf rather than acting on behalf of the special interests. I have had enough of spill baby spill, among other things.

The Census

2010-05-20T13:27:00.000-07:00

I do not know enough psychology to understand the paranoia of the extreme right wing, and I must say that what pushes their fear button frequently amazes me. Even more amazing is the fact that their illogical clamber seems to influence people who should know better. I recently heard someone who is usually rational complaining about the census as though it was part of some nefarious government conspiracy to take over our lives. Perhaps a bit of history will help me understand this fear.

The first census under our Constitution was taken in 1790. Of course we all know how autocratic our founding fathers were. President George Washington was even accused of wanting to be the king. That must be why he wanted a census taken. Planning you say? Roads and mail delivery you say? Nonsense! The right wing knows it was all about taxes and big government. Forget the first ten amendments. Yes, they did restrict the government and guarantee fundamental rights to the people of this country. But did you know that one of those amendments provided for the separation of church and state. Thomas Jefferson supported and campaigned for the first ten amendments, including the separation of church and state. He was also involved in establishing the census. What a terrible, Godless, man he must have been! So let’s all panic. This nefarious plot hatched by our founding fathers has been tolerated far too long, and we can all see how dangerous it has been to our freedom.

Who Runs The State

2010-05-11T13:53:00.000-07:00

Lobbyist Arthur Samish boasted to newspaper columnist Lester Velie that he, Arthur Samish, was more powerful than the governor. This prompted Governor Earl Warren to give an address about Arthur Samish at the San Francisco Press Club. On that occasion Will Aubrey sang the following ditty:

“Who runs the state? You’re going to get the answer.
Who runs the state? It’s plain as can be.
Who runs the state? Is it really Arthur Samish?”
No. It’s the Southern Pacific and the PG&E.”

There is an old saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I do not know that would go that far, but there are certainly times when our attempts to reform a corrupt political system have caused more harm than good. The initiative process in California was an attempt to neutralize the undue influence of the Southern Pacific, Pacific Gas and Electric, and other powerful corporations that had a strangle hold on the state’s economy. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Let the voters override or bypass the state legislature by proposing and passing amendments to the state constitution. The problem is that it takes a good deal of time and money to get such a measure on the ballet and to campaign for it. As a result this seemingly democratic process has become a gold mine for the special interests.

The interests to the left of center typically propose initiatives that mandate expenditures for progressive programs such as pre-school education. Their goals are usually lofty and are feasible in prosperous times. The problem is that those mandates negate the government’s ability cut expenses when austerity seems necessary. The interests to the right of center typically propose measures that give them an economic advantage at the expense of the consumers. I think the damage that causes speaks for itself. Since the initiatives are constitutional amendments it is very difficult to get rid of them after the voters have approved them. The only way to accomplish it is to pass another initiative, and that requires the concerted effort of someone has a lot of time and money to spend.

What brings this to mind is the upcoming primary election and the initiatives now on that ballet. Collectively, those initiatives comprise a very large pile of crap. It is unfortunate that primary elections take place during allergy season because this apparently causes the voters to display a remarkable inability to sniff out the crap buried beneath the perfume the special interests use to disguise the fact that what is being placed on the table is a pile of crap.

One of the current initiatives is proposed by the insurance industry and is designed to gouge consumers who have let their auto insurance lapse at sometime in the past. It sounds much like the old pre-exiting conditions scam used by health insurers. The worst of the bad lot of initiatives, however, is probably the one that is proposed by Pacific Gas and Electric. Yes, that is the same company whose bad behavior prompted the initiative process in the first place. The PG&E proposal requires a two thirds voter approval before a local government can provide electrical services to new customers or establish a community choice electricity program using public funds or bonds. To hell with PG&E! Why should we let them defy our municipalities. Let PG&E provide buckets full of campaign contributions like all the other special interests. Hopefully the voters will smell this fecal material before PG&E rubs their noses in it.

My advice to voters is to remember who has the time, the money and the incentive to place initiatives on the ballet. In other words, vote no whenever there is the slightest doubt about any given initiative. Frankly, I would like to reform the initiative process by making any measure passed a law rather than a constitutional amendment. This would allow the legislature to ameliorate the consequences of the really egregious measures that are passed. Most politicians are not foolish enough change a law the voters have approved unless those politicians are certain that they can demonstrate a compelling need to change that law. Unfortunately, it would take an initiative to accomplish the reform I propose, and I do not know of anyone who has to incentive and resources to do it. So I guess I will just have to continue holding my nose while voting no. Do you think we could get “hell no, not now, not ever” as an option on the ballet? I am afraid you will tell me it would require an initiative.

Regulation

2010-05-07T08:16:00.000-07:00

I do not have a lot to post today. BP’s catastrophic oil spill in the gulf speaks for itself. I am not someone who says there cannot be any drilling off shore, but I want a moratorium on it. If it is to be done at all, there most be very strict controls and an agency that actually provides oversight. What we are seeing now is the rule of money. It is pure greed with no conscience and little accountability. We are seeing this in virtually every industry. Not since the days of the robber barons have we seen such irresponsible and detrimental behavior. When Theodore Roosevelt started trust busting the great straw dog of socialism was used against him. When Franklin Roosevelt passed the regulations that helped to give us the most stable and prosperous economy the world has ever seen the great straw dog of socialism was used against him. The straw dog is exactly that. It is a contrivance used to create an unreasonable fear.

It is not about socialism; it is about social responsibility. We must have rules of the road. The government is the only entity that has the power to make those rules and enforce them. The anti-government, anti-regulation environment has created executives who walk away with hundreds of millions of dollars even as they drive their companies and our economy into the ground. The government must act as a good referee who does not allow the powerful to take unfair advantage of the people of this nation. Goldman Sachs should not be allowed to take advantage of unsuspecting investors by promoting securities it knows are worthless. Anthem Blue Cross should not be allowed to hike its rates through the roof while finding any excuse to withhold the coverage its policy holders have been paying for. Oil companies should not be allowed to make outrageous profits while failing to protect the environment and thus destroying the livelihood of people who depend on a healthy environment for their living. Politicians who choose to represent the special interests rather than you must not be tolerated. Important elections are now coming up. If you really want change you can believe in, you must work for it. Take your government back!

Oh, The Tangled Web

2010-04-28T12:04:00.000-07:00

I saw a blog in which the blogger said that liberals who hate Rush Limbaugh should try listening to him. That is a punishment that is easily defined as cruel if not unusual. I have had someone inflict Mr. Limbaugh’s program on me. It quickly became apparent that any resemblance between what he was saying any factual statement was rare and purely coincidental. That is why they call him an entertainer rather than an analyst or reporter. The problem is that he is not even entertaining. The writers of All In The Family were smart enough to realize that their bigoted character, Archie Bunker, needed a foil in order to be funny, and Archie Bunker displayed a lot more humanity than Mr. Limbaugh does. Mr. Limbaugh will not permit anyone to introduce a foil on his show. As a result, the mentally challenged actually take him seriously. The fact that there are people who do take him seriously is the only funny thing about him, and even that ranks right down there with very poor April fool’s jokes.

Glen Beck and Michele Bachmann have an excuse; they are both insane. Mr. Limbaugh, on the other hand, is either stupid or so cynically greedy that he is purposely exploiting the mentally challenged. Unfortunately, the Republican Party has copied a page of Rush Limbaugh’s playbook. We saw it in their opposition to health care reform, and we are seeing it in their opposition to the bill that will impose regulations on Wall Street and the banks. In both cases the Republican strategy is the same. You simply spew a stream of lies that are repeated so often that the lies define the issue. This tactic was somewhat successful in regard to health care reform. But, as I said before, those lies will eventually bite the Republicans. Even fools can only be duped in the same way a certain number of times before they realize they are being had. In the case of the regulation of our financial institutions the bite is likely to come sooner rather than later, and at a time that is most damaging to the Republican Party. The opposition party usually picks up seats in the Senate and the House during mid-term elections. This is particularly true if the voters are angry. The voters are angry, but the Republicans are ignoring one of the major causes of that anger.

A member of a Republican Party stink tank correctly pointed out that people are angry about the so called bailouts. Mitch McConnell immediately went into his bailout song and dance. “This bill will lead to bailouts, bailouts, bailouts!” he sang. This is a blatant lie. The fact that his contention is untrue makes it dangerous to allow a debate that would reveal the falsehood. Fortunately for the voters, he is doing this while hearings are being conducted about the unethical behavior of Goldman Sachs. So far the testimony in that hearing has been devastating. A representative from Goldman Sachs, Daniel Sparks, was absolutely grilled when Senator Levin read an email sent to Mr. Sparks by another employee of the firm. In the email this other employee called Timberwolf a “shitty deal” and asked how many shares of Timberwolf had been sold. The testimony that followed revealed that Goldman Sachs was aggressively selling this toxic waste to its unsuspecting clients while selling short. What this means is that Goldman Sachs was betting against the very stock it was recommending to people who were naïve enough to believe that Goldman Sachs had some ethics.

The combination of this unethical behavior and Republican Party’s refusal to debate a bill that would impose regulations on companies like Goldman Sachs is red meat the Democratic candidates in the upcoming elections can feed to the masses. “Why won’t the Republicans allow an open debate on this important issue? Are they afraid that open debates will reveal that they are representing the very companies who nearly caused an economic disaster? Are they afraid that honest, open debates will actually reveal that the regulations will prevent future bailouts? Ask my opponent if he’ll vote to allow those debates and if he’ll vote for the final bill resulting from those debates!”

As you can see, the Republicans have a tiger by the tail. The Democrats are forcing them to cast daily votes on whether to allow such a debate. Their obstruction will not play well with the voters if it continues into November when the elections take place. The alternative is also dangerous for the Republicans. If the Democrats have learned their lesson from the health issues, they will put forth a bill with tight but reasonable regulations, and they will not let the Republicans water it down. They will let the Republicans filibuster, and they will run against the filibuster. “The Republicans say they hate the bailouts yet here they are refusing to allow a vote on a bill that would force the people who received those bailouts to act responsibly enough to prevent another situation like the one that caused the bailouts!” It is not just the Republicans who can scream about bailouts. The Republicans will bring out their great bogyman, socialism, but I do not think this will help them. The Democrats can always point out that the regulations resulting from the great depression were far more restrictive than any contained in the bills being proposed, and for fifty years we had the most stable and prosperous economy the world has ever seen. It was only after those regulations were repealed that we ran into trouble!

The one thing I can guarantee is that the testimony in the Goldman Sachs hearings will make the need for regulations clear to anyone who is paying even the slightest attention. Furthermore, it is very likely that other banks and investment firms will also face such hearings. It should not take long for the lazy slugs in the mainstream media to jump on this sensational story with both feet. What our financial institutions did because of a lack of regulation was so outrageous that even the idiots running the Fox disinformation factory might feel compelled to report it. You might even think they will get some of the facts right, if you still believe in miracles.

Obama the Janitor

2010-04-22T16:13:00.001-07:00

I was standing in the teller line at the bank the other day. In front me was an elderly African-American. I front of him was a man wearing a McCain-Palin tee shirt. President Obama appeared on the screen of the television the bank had set up to give people something to watch while they waited for an available teller. The man in the tee shirt turned to the African-American.

“I’ll bet you think he’s great,” he said in a patronizing tone.

“I think he’s a great janitor.”

“Why did you say that?” I asked.

“Well, he’s cleaning up the mess created by a bunch of dumb ass white people, isn’t he?”

There was no way I could argue with that.

Could It Be?

2010-04-22T13:47:00.000-07:00

The elephant is becoming more ponderous. He is a beast of great girth, who is finding it increasingly difficult to waddle a straight line. A deceitful gnome in one of the Republican stink tanks laid out the talking points to use in opposing any reform or regulation of Wall Street and the big banks. The people hate the so called bailouts that were used to halt the crash. Call any proposed reform or regulation a bailout! Say it loud, say it clear, and say it often. Keep repeating it until it becomes the only thing people will remember. That is what the gnome advised. Senator McConnel and Congressman Boehner took the talking points to heart, and both of them started performing the bailout song and dance. Only this time the Democrats were not about to tolerate the out of tune performance of the talking heads.

President Obama pointed out that the proposed legislation would require the banks to provide a fund that could be used to liquidate any of the institutions that failed. Could that be what the talking heads were calling a bailout? When pressed to tell us why he was calling the proposed legislation a bailout Mr. McConnel confirmed that it was that fund. It was such a flimsy explanation that anyone with half a brain must have been embarrassed for him. Making matters worse is the fact that the source of this disingenuous objection was leaked to the press, making Boehner and McConnel look like the fools that they are.

If there is anything the public dislikes more than the bailouts, it is the people and companies that received them. Needless to say that the public is not very receptive to any objections raised in regard to regulations that would make those people and companies behave responsibly. This fact is not lost on some of the brighter Republicans. Some of them are even threatening to break ranks. Could it be that the lock step partisanship that has caused so much gridlock in the Senate is finally beginning break up. Could the Republican Party actually tolerate enough diversity of thought for some its members to try to help govern this nation? I am not holding my breath while waiting for that to happen, but I do think some badly needed reforms will get bipartisan support in this one instance.

Incidentally, whenever I hear someone quoting Rush Limbaugh or Glen Beck, I thank God for my big brain. Some people obviously did not get one.

A Return To Sanity?

2010-04-07T14:16:00.000-07:00

In an earlier post I entitled “Eating Your Own,” I pointed out that Senator Lindsey Graham criticized the birthers and the idiots like Glen Beck on Fox. Recently, David Frum, a former speech writer for George W. Bush, said Republicans thought Fox worked for them, but they are now discovering that they work for Fox. He also indicated that the Republican Party has to back away from lunatics like Glen Beck and this self proclaimed news organization that has absolutely no regard for the facts. Now we have Senator Tom Coburn saying that Nancy Pelosi is a nice lady, and people should recognize that even though they disagree with her. He also indicated that the Republicans have to back away from Fox. I could not believe my ears! This is the same Tom Coburn I blasted for going on Meet The Press and saying that the anger and vitriol of the tea party crowd was justified. Could it be that the violence and threats of violence stirred up by the outrageous lies and fear mongering of the Republican Party are finally making members of that party think twice about pandering to delusional fears?

I would like to think the Republican Party is now trying to separate itself from the lunatic fringe, but it is far too early to reach that conclusion. What Messrs. Graham, Frum, and Coburn have said is a good start, but there are still Republicans like Congressperson Cantor who actually blame the victims for the violence. Furthermore, even if the majority of the Republican Party joins those senators in trying to tone down the irresponsible rhetoric, doing so is only a start. It does not mean that members of that party will start taking some responsibility for governing this great nation. It does not mean they will negotiate in good faith and help pass badly needed legislation. Regardless of that, I applaud the efforts of Messrs. Graham, Frum, and Coburn. I sincerely hope this is the first step in restoring the concept of the loyal opposition.

As I have said before, I honestly believe that the survival of the Republican Party depends on the ability of its leadership to move it back to the center. I do not envy them. This is going to be a very difficult and risky task. They have danced with the devil, and he is not going to settle for a good night kiss. Their base has shrunk to the point that the extremists have become too influential. Just ask John McCain. He is trying to change the maverick image he cultivated during the presidential election, and he is now trying to convince the extremists that he is and always has been one of them. He is doing this out of desperation. He is in serious danger of losing the primary. Republicans who try to appeal to reason will find themselves in a similar situation. It is almost a damned if you do and damned if you don’t scenario. Reforming the Republican Party may seem hopeless, but I am reminded of something my father once told me. He said that “whenever you are in doubt as to what is in your best interest, set self interest aside. Simply do what you believe is right and hope someone notices.”

I have enough faith to believe that people will notice when you set aside your interests to do the right thing. Setting aside your interests, however, is a sacrifice, and it is likely to take some time to regain what you have given up. It will probably take years for responsible Republicans to get their party on track again, but it is well worth the effort. The fate of their party is in their hands, and their fate is ultimately tied to the fate of their party and their country. My advice to Republicans is to look at the larger picture. If you must go down fighting, go down fighting for the right things. The true patriot is not the person who does what is easy; the true patriot is the person who does what is best for his country. We need two strong parties that are capable of honestly competing with each other, but are still capable of reaching reasonable compromises to do what is clearly in the best interest of this nation.

The Blunderland Looking Glass

2010-04-01T16:18:00.000-07:00

There is a magical mirror in blunderland. It reflects the nihilistic, fearful image of the GOP. It is the Republican Party’s distorted view of the world. “That’s not us,” they cry. “What you’re seeing can’t be us. One look at us will tell you that. We look like the men on the money. We look like the men who set up this great democracy and marched boldly into the future. They created a living document called the Constitution. The fact that the document can be changed allowed those nasty liberals to extend the franchise to people who are not white male property owners. Since slavery was an important part of the financial structure of a powerful special interest it took a civil war to abolish it. We suppose that abolishing slavery was something we needed to do. After all, it was the Democrats defending that interest. But the struggle did not end there. Those damn liberals joined the Democratic Party, and they transformed it. They supported the civil rights movement, and the civil rights movement went much farther than we ever intended when we abolished slavery. Now we have a black President. That’s right, a black President! He wants to make more changes for the benefit of all citizens regardless of their race. Well, he won’t succeed. We will block him because the very image of him being our President tells us there has already been too much change.”

This strident and irresponsible obstruction is evident in the battle over health care reform. The Republicans caused a long delay by negotiating in bad faith, even to the point of opposing many of the things they had once advocated. They also used every procedural device they could think of to block the needed reform. They fought to preserve the insurance industry’s death panels, which consisted of actuaries and policy makers who denied medical coverage on the flimsiest of pretenses. And they hypocritically did this while falsely accusing the Democrats of trying to set up bureaucratic death panels. The Republicans felt comfortable doing this because they knew that very few people would actually read the proposed legislation and a large number of people would not know who to trust. Change always involves some risk. The insurance industry’s death panels are what we had and what we knew.

The Democratic Party has changed that. They managed to pass a health care reform bill over the unanimous opposition of the Republican Party. The bad news for the Republicans is that the bill prohibits the insurance industry’s death panels, and people like that prohibition. Many pundits are now predicting that the benefits of this reform will make it a prime example of the blunder the Republicans are committing by opposing virtually everything this President and the members of his party are trying to accomplish. Whether the pundits are proven right about that depends on how well the magical blunderland mirror distorts the image of the Republican Party’s unconscionable effort to make this President fail.

The Republicans are now insisting that they did not oppose the good things in the bill. “We were opposed to health care reform because of our concern about the federal deficit,” they say. They dismiss the fact that most of the deficit was created when they were in power. “A deficit is still a deficit, and it is bad.” All right, so the bill the Democrats passed actually reduces the deficit, but just look at how it does that. It repeals George W. Bush’s huge tax cuts for the wealthy. It does not matter that those tax cuts were largely responsible for turning a surplus into an outrageous deficit. “Taxes are taxes, and no one likes taxes,” the Republicans say. “We will repeal those evil taxes!” Of course doing that will require them to gain control of Congress and win another Presidential election, but a promise is a promise. It is not the fault of the Republican Party if the people do not give them that power anytime soon, or if the Democrats act like Republicans by filibustering such a repeal. It does not matter if reinstating those tax cuts increases the deficit either. “The damn Democrats should have thought about that when they passed that expensive health care reform,” the Republicans will say.

See how the magical mirror works. It is really powerful. Its distortions are capable of hiding a multitude of sins. After suffering devastating defeats in the last Presidential election, the Republicans decided to tap the negative energy of their right wing fanatics. They are doing this by fear mongering and making untruthful contentions about the Democrats and everything the Democrats are trying to do. Yet the Republicans deny that they are the ones who are inciting the violence or the threats of violence. Instead they are trying to convince us that spitting on lawmakers and shouting racial and homophobic epithets are just the actions of a few bad apples and a normal part of the political process. Using this logic means that calling for session from the union and for the violent overthrow of our government are also just the actions of a few bad apples and a normal part of the political process. It is just watering the tree of liberty, don’t you know? Silly me, I thought our Constitution provided a system in which we said it with ballets rather than bullets.

Do not misunderstand what I am saying. I am not accusing the Republican party of supporting attempts to succeed from the union or violently overthrow our government. What I am saying is that pandering to the fears of the lunatics empowers them. By doing this and by refusing to honestly address any of the real issues, the Republicans are ignoring their responsibilities as a major political party. Republican Congressman Cantor even blames the victims for the violence. When House Democrats reported vandalism of their offices, hate mail, abusive phone calls and other incidents after the health care vote, Congressman Cantor said: “It is reckless to use these incidents as media vehicles for political gain. To use such threats as political weapons is reprehensible. By ratcheting up the rhetoric, some will only inflame these situations to dangerous levels. Enough is enough. It has to stop.” I suppose this means that rape victims also incite the violence committed against them. Sadly, there are people who still believe that. I reject that flawed logic in regard to victims of rape and in regard to victims of political acts of violence. I find it outrageous that Congressman Cantor would stoop to such flawed reasoning, if you can call it reasoning.

In regard to the looking glass, all I can say is that Alice returned from her wonderland. Hopefully, what the independent voters of this nation will say with their ballets is that it is now time for the Republican Party to return from their blunderland. All democracies embrace the concept of the loyal opposition. If either party vilifies the other to an extent that it incites violence or makes reasonable compromises impossible, the democracy is threatened. We the people must insist that our politicians act responsibly, and we must vote them out of office when they refuse to act responsibly. That is how a democracy is supposed to work.

To Your Health

2010-03-23T17:05:00.000-07:00

On March 21, 2010 the American people were handed a victory. Many are disappointed because it is not all we hoped it would be. We still have a lot of hard work ahead of us to drive down the cost of medical care. But this health care reform bill is a very remarkable and desirable reform non-the-less. The most egregious abuses of the health insurance industry will now be curbed. This victory is all the more remarkable because of the obstacles the Democratic Party had to overcome in order pass this vital reform. The Republican Party chose to represent the insurance industry rather than the people of this nation. In doing so, the Republicans waged an unconscionable campaign of outrageous fear mongering and outright lies. In addition to the lies and all of the procedural obstacles the Republicans erected, the Democrats also had to contend with the anti-abortion members of the Democratic Party. Like the Republicans, the anti-abortion Democrats used misinformation to push their agenda. Representative Bart Stupak and others insisted that the proposed bill did not prevent government funds from being used for abortions when the bill clearly did forbid the use of government funds for that purpose. This use of misinformation was a blatant attempt to further restrict abortion by preventing private insurance from paying for them. I found it odd that people like Bart Stupak could proclaim the morality of their agenda while using misinformation and holding the health of their fellow citizens hostage to that agenda. As Keith Olbermann points out, health care reform is literally a matter of life and death. It is estimated that forty thousand people died last year because their insurance carriers denied them coverage or because those carriers priced them out of the insurance market.

What this health care reform vote demonstrated is the basic decency of the people who truly want to serve their country. Bart Stupak and most of the other anti-abortion Democrats abandoned their campaign of misinformation. They also rejected the ends justifies the means argument of the lunatics who shoot doctors and bomb reproductive health clinics. Those anti-abortion congresspersons chose life! They voted for health care reform even though the reform was not all they wanted it to be. This took a lot of courage. It is going to cause trouble for them in their conservative districts. In fact, many of them risked their political careers to do the right thing. I really want to commend them for that. I have always been reluctant to use the “Pro-life” label because it implies that people who favor a woman’s right to choose are anti-life, and this issue is far too complex for that to be true. In this instance, however, I think that Bart Stupak and the other representatives who made such a sacrifice to do the right thing have earned that label. They are indeed pro-life. I will continue to oppose their efforts to restrict a woman’s choice, but they have more than earned my respect and my gratitude.

The difference between what those courageous Democrats did and what the Republicans are still doing could not be greater. The lock step partisanship of the members of the Republican Party is a clear indication that none of those elected representatives are following their consciences. They are not representing the people of this nation; they are representing a very powerful and greedy special interest. The Republicans are choosing huge campaign contributions over the health of their constituents. I hope they are enjoying those contributions because that money will not help them four years from now. By then the benefits of the Senate bill will be apparent even if the Republicans manage to defeat the badly needed fixes passed by the house. As the voters begin to reap the benefits of the reform they will remember who represented them and who represented the insurance industry. They will also resent the fear mongering and the lies of the politicians who failed to represent them. There is little doubt in my mind that the vast majority of the electorate will vote accordingly.

One has to wonder how the Republicans fell into this nihilistic trap. It does not and must not continue to be this way. Franklin Roosevelt’s progressive programs, including social security, inspired as much vitriol as the right wing is using today. There were, however, enough courageous and responsible Republicans to provide bipartisan support for the legislation needed to deal with the crises. The current polarization is not caused by the Democratic Party, which is trying to effectively deal with the problems now confronting us; rather it is caused by the irresponsible behavior of the Republican Party. Even a minority party must assume some responsibility for governing this great nation rather than trying to destroy a President who was elected by a very large majority of the people. To put it in terms the Republicans might be able to understand, they must abandon their unholy and self-righteous war. The people want and deserve a government that functions. They want a government that will provide leadership and will work to overcome the challenges we face. If one of the major parties is making it impossible for the government to provide that leadership and meet those challenges, the consequences for that party will be severe.

The fait of our two party system is now in the hands of the Republicans. If there are any brains left in that party, those intelligent people must take control. They must take a page out of Bill Clinton’s playbook and move their party toward the center. They must provide bipartisan support for the things that need to be done. If they do this, they will be able to take some of the credit for what we accomplish. If they fail to do this, we will need a third party to emerge and replace them. There will and should be some honest disagreements. If those disagreements lead to give and takes based on the facts, we will have a good government again.

Who Does The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Represent?

2010-03-18T10:18:00.000-07:00

Tell the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to get stuffed! I know that is harsh, but they have it coming. Their campaign of lies against the health care reform bill is detrimental to your vital interests. One of the major factors putting our businesses at a disadvantage when competing with foreign companies is the price of health care insurance. All of our manufacturers complain about it. Yet here you have the U.S. Chamber of Commerce working against reforms that will help lower those costs. They are not promoting your interests; they are protecting the greedy practices of Anthem Blue Cross, et al. I picked Anthem Blue Cross as my example because they are trying to raise their rates in California by a whopping thirty-nine percent. If you look at the insurance carriers in your state, I am sure you will see equally egregious increases, and the insurance companies are raising their rates at the very time that they are reporting record profits. What more proof do you need that our health care system is in desperate need of reform?

The bottom line is that what is good for the economy is good for you. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce always rails against even the most reasonable regulation of any business, but who are we talking about regulating here? You are not the ones who engaged in the reckless behavior that almost threw us into another depression. You are not the ones who are denying health care to your fellow citizens and are jacking your rates up to the point that the cost of health care is draining our economy. The regulations we are talking about will not hinder your ability to make an honest profit. In fact, they will help you. The cost of health care is greatly decreasing the real income of your customers. The less they have to spend on goods and services the fewer products they can afford to purchase from people like you. It is not just the price you are paying for health care that is biting you; it is the price everyone is paying. It is in your interest to lower that price.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has always had this problem. They have always placed the interests of the giants ahead of the interests of everyone else. AIG, Anthem Blue Cross, and Goldman Sachs do not need their help. Those giants already employ highly paid lobbyists and are perfectly capable of telling their own lies. Health care reform is just the beginning of the battle to get our economy back on track. There are other very important reform measures coming up. We must have regulations that will prevent Wall Street and the banks from engaging in the dangerous practices that nearly caused another depression. Furthermore, we cannot allow banks to continue charging such high fees that checking accounts and credit cards have become more profitable for them than honest loans. Businesses need credit to grow. The untruthful advertisements the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is running against the health care reform bill is a clear indication that they will use the money you pay them to oppose all of those needed reforms. Doing so is not good for the economy or for you. You need to let the U.S. Chamber of Commerce know how you feel about them opposing your interests. The best way to do this is with your feet. Walk away from them, and give them the finger on your way out the door. Let them know that you will not pay them another dime as long as they oppose your interests!

The Mandate

2010-03-11T11:57:00.000-08:00

I hate to keep harping on the same subject, but I have to do it. The Democratic Party was given a mandate. With this mandate comes responsibility. The voters spoke loud and clear. They want and deserve significant changes that will solve the problems we face. The Democratic Party cannot afford to come up short. It cannot conduct business as usual. It must respond to that mandate by vigorously pressing its agenda. Attempts to include the Republican Party in coming up with solutions have been a dismal failure. Further attempts to compromise mean more delays and legislation that does not accomplish what needs to be done. I am not just speaking for the base of the party. Everyone who voted for President Obama knows that we are at a cross roads of our history. The challenges we face are grave. We must stand up and move forward. We must overcome the obstruction and irresponsible behavior of the Republican Party. We must draw a sharp contrast between what they represent and what we represent. We must be the party of the people rather than the party of the special interests.

The vast majority of people do not object to health care reform. What they object to is a bill that does not do what needs to be done. You cannot mandate insurance coverage for everyone without controlling the costs of that insurance. The surest way to control those costs is with a robust public insurance option. It is that simple. Similarly, we cannot have a lasting economic recovery and allow our financial institutions to indulge in the reckless practices that got us into this mess. We must have new regulations to prevent those irresponsible practices. Those regulations cannot be watered down tokens that look good but are easily circumvented. We cannot allow banks to charge such outrageous fees that checking accounts are more profitable than honest loans. Small businesses and prospective home buyers need those loans. It is also time to put an end to the predatory practices of the credit card companies and other big businesses. Our government must reclaim its legitimate role as the honest referee who keeps unethical and powerful interests from taking unfair advantage of the people of this nation.

I know that change is never easy. I can understand the trepidation of the blue dog Democrats, but being a good politician means more then merely getting elected. Politicians have a duty to govern well. They have a duty to represent the best interests of their constituents and this nation. Their constituents may not understand the proposed changes. They may be afraid of what they will get, but they certainly know what have been getting thus far. And what they have been getting is a major reaming! No responsible politician should ignore that! It is time to show some moral courage. It is time to get out there and sell your constituents on the changes that have to be made. Future historians will judge you by your efforts to do that. They who serve their country well do not do what is easy; they do what is right!

Where Has Public Service Gone?

2010-03-03T14:17:00.000-08:00

Believe it or not, I do not like railing against the Republican Party every week. Do not misunderstand what I am saying here. I am a registered Democrat, and I would still present arguments. I would still tell you why I think the Republicans are wrong about particular issues. Doing so is a vital part of our system. An honest debate is healthy. Even in an honest debate, however, both sides will exaggerate, embellish, and try to get you to ignore facts that do not support their arguments. That is to be expected. Part of the reason why debates are important is because both sides will point out when their opponent is exaggerating, embellishing or ignoring facts. There was a time when elected officials called themselves public servants. They had an appreciation of our history, and they were concerned about how future historians would view them. They were not overly combative for the mere sake of partisanship, and they tried to avoid telling outright lies because they knew those lies would be exposed. It was, after all, a time when a high value was placed on education, science and knowledge. It was a time when the news media was expected to provide a public service by imparting accurate information and by presenting the facts in a fair and impartial manner. Whatever happened to this concept of public service?

I am not just waxing nostalgic here. I realize our politicians were never perfect. The Republican Party has always had a problem with the lunatic right. We can see it in the witch hunts of Senator Joe McCArthy, and we can see it in some of the extremists who supported Barry Goldwater. The Democratic Party also had its extremists on the left. The difference between then and now is that honest reporters, like Edward R. Murrow, eventually stepped up to the plate to expose Senator McCarthy, and other reporters, like Walter Cronkite, exposed the lunacy of the extremists on both sides of the political spectrum. That seems to have gone by the wayside. Today the main stream media seems to be going beyond all reason to avoid offending people buying the products they advertise, and you have other media types serving up partisan slop without any regard for the facts. The bottom line is that politicians have become so contentious that public service and reason have been forgotten. Why should liberals like me and the good people of MSNBC be the only ones who are pointing out the obvious lies, blatant hypocrisy, outrageous vitriol, and the absurd conspiracy theories that are used to whip up the fears of people who will not check the facts. Where are the moderates who should be demanding public service from their representatives and Senators? And why are they not demanding more information and honest debates of the issues so vital to our country?

I should not have to give you examples, but I will. The Washington Post ran an article by Orin Hatch ranting about the Democratic Party’s use of the reconciliation process to pass health care reform. Mr. Hatch’s rant was obviously disingenuous and hypocritical. We know this because he supported the use of reconciliation to pass bills favored by the administration of George W. Bush. Yet this respected newspaper let the rant stand without even mentioning Mr. Hatch’s support of reconciliation in the past. Ideally, the Post should have run an editorial discussing the reconciliation process and the filibuster rule that is making both parties resort to reconciliation. At the very least, the Post should have pointed out Mr. Hatch’s inconsistency in regard to reconciliation. This example is a minor when compared with what the Washington Times did. The Washington Times ran an editorial by Kerry Picket. In this editorial Mr. Picket stated that the Missal Defense logo bears a striking resemblance to the Iranian Space Agency logo, the Obama Presidential Campaign logo and the Pepsi Cola logo. Mr. Picket opined that even if the resemblance between the Obama campaign logo and the Missal Defense logo was inadvertent, the Missal Defense logo should not be allowed to resemble the campaign logo. What Mr. Picket did not reveal is that the Missal Defense logo was designed and approved during the administration of George W. Bush. The omission of this vital piece of information creates the impression of one more absurd conspiracy theory. I am expecting Glen Beck to embrace that theory at any moment.

The examples I have given are only examples of what the print media is doing. Television is even worse. This contention that there is a liberal media bias is nothing more than poisoning the well. It is an attempt to disparage the source enough to make people ignore the information. If you are stupid enough to indulge in the mind rot of Fox, there is no hope for you. The vast majority of the people in this great nation want the facts so that they can make informed decisions. They should not have to go to liberal organizations like MSNBC in order to get those facts. The facts are what they are. They can be verified and confirmed. Responsible people will acknowledge them and argue over what they mean in regard to our policies and actions. The liberals are presently much better about doing that than the conservatives are. There are still some conservatives who are responsible enough to do it, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to find them. Most conservatives are too busy pandering to the Fox noise crowd. You deserve better than that. Regardless of whether you are a liberal, a conservative, or a moderate, you deserve more information and that information must be accurate.

We need to bring back the concepts of journalistic integrity and public service. The facts must be exposed for all to see, and we must base our decisions on what is real rather than on what we merely imagine or are inclined to believe because of some ideology.

Time To Get It Done

2010-02-24T10:54:00.000-08:00

President Obama seems to be backing away from the public insurance option. This is a huge mistake. A vast majority of the voters favor it, and the base of the Democratic Party insists on it. The last thing the Democratic Party can afford is to have the people forming its base shrug their collective shoulders and say “what’s the use” during the upcoming elections. Holding the conferences on health care is politically sound. Those televised conferences should allow President Obama to draw a sharp contrast between the absurdly partisan representatives of the special interests and the party that actually represents the working men and women of this nation. But when all is said and done, it will be time to pass a bill that includes the public insurance option. This must be done soon, and it must be done even if it takes drastic measures to accomplish it.

I know many people will say the filibuster has been useful in the past, but that argument is not valid anymore. When the Republicans threatened to do away with it the Democratic Party caved in. The result is that we now have the most reactionary, and arguably the worst Supreme Court in our nation’s history. Far from being useful, the filibuster rule has become detrimental.

I cannot believe how many people are misreading what happened in Massachusetts. Partisanship per se is not what caused the voter dissatisfaction. What caused that dissatisfaction was the inability of the Senate to get anything done because of the irresponsible actions of the Republican Party. It is time to call the Republicans on that. It is time to do what needs to be done to get the badly needed reforms and programs passed. If this means steam rolling the Republican Party, then we must steam roll them. The people of this nation want and deserve changes they can believe in. Passing the public insurance option will energize the base of the Democratic Party. Furthermore, it will demonstrate an ability to do what needs to done. Independents will forgive the partisan measures that are necessary to accomplish that. In fact, they will actually breath a sigh of relief over the fact that their government is functioning again.

As I have said before, no party has behaved as irresponsibly as the Republicans are behaving and survived. If the government must function in spite of them, they must change their ways or cease to exist as a competing party. They have already suffered some serious defections. It would not surprise me if other sensible conservatives also defect and form a viable third party. It would not be the first time in our history that this has happened, and the results are usually beneficial in the long run.

Damning The Uppity Prompter

2010-02-19T09:13:00.000-08:00

I must admit that I have been baffled by it. I have spent many hours trying to figure it out. Why would the Republicans object to President Obama’s use of a teleprompter? All news persons and politicians use a teleprompter. Last night I had an epiphany. It is not his use of this device that disturbs them. What they find so disturbing is the quality of the material he has placed in the teleprompter and his wonderful delivery of the text he reads. The problem is that his eloquence challenges the education of much of the Republican base. In private many Republicans call his eloquence uppity. In public they call it… What do they call it? Do you think Republican speakers would let me look at their teleprompters to refresh my recollection?

Read All About It!

2010-02-17T13:15:00.000-08:00

“Extra! Extra! Read all about it!” People who watch old movies are very familiar with that cry. It was the call of boys selling newspapers. The headline in this case is, “Republican Hypocrisy Revealed.” Stories of this hypocrisy have now been printed in such conservative publications as the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Times. The fact that those conservative newspapers are pointing out the hypocrisy of Republicans means the hypocrisy must exceed all bounds of reason, and it does. The Wall Street Journal actually published letters from Republican Congresspersons requesting Stimulus money for projects in their districts. Those letters were sent at the very time that those Congresspersons were voting against and/or railing against the Stimulus package. Both the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Times have also printed a list of the names of Republican Senators and Congresspersons who are taking credit for this stimulus money and for what those funds are doing for the people in their districts and states. Remarkably, the Republicans who are giving themselves credit for bringing this money to their districts and states are doing so while publicly criticizing the Democrats by saying that the Stimulus package is a failure that helps no one. Do they mean no one but the people in their districts and their states? If they do mean only the people in their districts and their states, their constituents would still want them to support the stimulus.

One would think that having your hypocrisy exposed in this manner by publications that usually support you would make you think twice about what you are doing, but this does not seem to be the case. Those hypocrites are simply ignoring the absurdity of their actions. They obviously think the voters will not notice or care. The sad thing is that they might be right. How many people actually read newspapers today? I am reminded of what Boss Tweed of Tammany Hall once said about Thomas Nast: “Stop them pictures. I don’t care what the papers write about me. My constituents can’t read. But, damn it, they can see the pictures.” The constituents of today’s politicians do not read, but they do watch television. I am not disappointed with Fox; unprincipled people will always try to make a profit by pandering to the fears of the delusional who actually accept the fear mongering as news. What bothers me is the mainstream media. They have traditionally felt a civic obligation to keep the public informed. Keeping the public informed means more than simply reporting statements that you know are lies; it means revealing the lies as lies and the hypocrisy as hypocrisy. It is high time to show the constituents of modern politicians them damn pictures!

Phillip Buster

2010-02-10T13:35:00.000-08:00

Phillip Buster is the new poster child for the Republican Party. His sole purpose is to make sure our government cannot function by preventing any legislation from being passed and refusing to let any Obama appointee be confirmed by the Senate. In the nihilistic world of the tea partiers the best government is the one that does nothing, and the Republicans are doing their best to make sure that this government does nothing. The surest way of getting any law or rule repealed is to abuse that rule by overusing it to the extent that it becomes detrimental. The Republicans are now abusing the filibuster to an extent that is detrimental to the good of our country and its vital interests.

There is no such thing as a reasonable give and take or debate at this time. The Republicans have turned politics into a street fight. There is no rule they will not abuse and no lie they will not tell. They are hoping that the voters are stupid enough to blame the Democrats for our dysfunctional government, even though it is the Republicans who are causing it to be dysfunctional. It is time to repeal the filibuster rule and take it out of their hands. Set this up by getting a bill on the floor of the Senate to regulate Wall Street or to stimulate the job market. Do this before the upcoming elections. Let the Republicans filibuster it, and let the Democratic candidates run against the filibuster. When the voters see the Republicans filibustering a popular bill they will understand why the filibuster rule must be changed. They will also be far more inclined to vote for Democrats.

Forget about even trying to compromise with the Republicans. They have become so irresponsibly obstructionist that it is time to govern without them. Once the threat of the filibuster has been removed, pass a single payer public health insurance option! In fact, pass all of the legislation needed. Ram it down their throats. No party in our history has behaved so irresponsibly and survived. Making the Republican Party irrelevant will drive the point home.

There is also a Republican Senator holding up the vote on the confirmation of Obama’s appointees. The reason many cite for this is that that Senator is trying to extort the expansion of a military base in his state. If this is true, the solution is simple. Have the pentagon conduct a study on the feasibility of moving all military basses out of his state. Let the son of bitch know that two can play that game. This is not the way our system is supposed to work, but the Republicans have set the rules. They have turned it into a street fight. The only way to end that fight is to kick them in the crotch until they finally figure out that street fights are painful and counter productive. At that point they might be willing to listen to reason, and conflicting viewpoints might be fairly represented again.

A Disturbing Poll

2010-02-02T14:54:00.000-08:00

People on MSNBC were talking about the newest Kos/Research Poll 2000 of self described Republicans, in which 2000 Republicans were polled over the telephone. Knowing that the left can exaggerate the absurdity of the right wing, I went on the Kos Media website to check out the poll for myself. My confidence was not exactly bolstered by the statement that the Kos poll was at least as accurate as the Rasmussen polls favored by the Fox propaganda cable. I thought the pollsters might have cherry picked the states, but this does not seem to be the case. I am not going to nit pick this poll. In fact, I am urging people to go to the Kos website to see it for themselves. The results make it appear as though my comments about the lunatic right taking over the Republican Party are correct, but bear with me on this because I think there is more than meets the eye. Let me start by giving a few results of the poll:

36% still think President Obama was not born in this country.
24% think Obama wants the terrorists to win.
21% think Acorn stole the election.
53% think Sarah Palin is more qualified to be President than Obama is.
31% think Obama is a racist who does not like white people.
23% think states should secede from the Union.
51% oppose sex education.
77% think Geneses should be used to teach creationism.
31% would outlaw contraception.
76% think abortion is murder.

This is only a sampling of the poll, but it is enough to make any reasonable person think the Republicans have definitely gone off the deep end. The question then is why such a high percentage of Republicans appear to be so extreme and delusional. Part of the problem may be that “self described Republicans” were the ones who were polled. One of the oddities of the electorate today is the fact that so many people who usually vote for a particular party still describe themselves as independents. Voters seem to be reluctant to identify themselves as being part of a major party. This fact excludes from the poll many of the more reasonable people who usually vote for Republican candidates. Having said this, however, I think the poll is still instructive. People who do describe themselves as a member of either party are the activists and form the base of that party. This means that the poll does reflect the views of the people who are deciding who is reactionary enough to be a Republican candidate. Yes, I said reactionary. The people who have the views stated above are not really conservative, and I refuse to abuse that word by calling them conservative. I supposed I could have called them neo-cons, but that is really a euphemism for reactionary. And I do not like euphemisms.

I know some people are going to look at the numbers above and say that people who share many of those extreme views are not in the majority. I will concede that, but they have more influence than their numbers indicate because they make so damn much noise. Furthermore, the percentages are large enough for them to turn elections, particularly primary elections. This is why it is so difficult for reasonable Republicans to distance themselves from those extreme views. The only way that the Republican Party can return to the political center is if that party suffers enough catastrophic defeats to convince even the lunatics that they must be willing compromise. In order for that to happen the Democrats must be energized. President Obama’s grass roots must take hold and those people must turn out. They must realize that this goes beyond fighting for change we can believe in. The elections of 2010 are a referendum on mental health. If the extremists gain ground, the entire country loses.

Politicians For Sale!

2010-01-27T11:40:00.000-08:00

I have said before that we have the best government money can buy. It is surprisingly simple to thwart the will of the majority. You do not have to buy a majority of the legislators to do it. With the filibuster rule in the senate, all you have to buy is a large enough minority to defeat a cloture vote that would end the filibuster. Obviously, the drug companies, insurance industry, Wall Street and other special interests have more than enough money to do that. Their lobbyists prowl the halls of Congress and throw money around like confetti. The drug companies and insurance companies threatened, cajoled, and bought the defeat of the public insurance option. Other special interests took note of that, and they are poised to defeat any meaningful reforms that would keep them from indulging in the risky behavior that nearly put us into another great depression.

Not being content with the power the special interests already have, the right wing injustices of the United States Supreme Court have given money even more power to rule. In what is arguably the worst decision since Dred Scott, those injustices have decided that there are no restrictions on how much the special interests can spend on candidates or issues. In other words, the court has placed our politicians on the auction block. There is nothing to keep the special interests from buying the election of politicians who will do their bidding, thereby defeating the responsible politicians who actually want to represent their constituents. Make no mistake about it. This is not a conflict of ideas or philosophies. This is a direct threat to the concept of majority rule, and that concept is the very essence of any democracy. The Republican Party is in favor of the rule of money because the special interests are already supporting members of that party. All that this ruling means to Republicans is that they can raise their price and reap even greater benefits from their masters!

The only thing ordinary people have to combat this travesty is the disclosure rule. Every CEO of a company paying for an advertisement supporting or attacking a candidate or proposed legislation must be forced to appear in those ads, state his position with the special interest, and say that he approves of the ad being run. Furthermore, those executives must not be allowed to hide behind some supposedly non-profit organization. Any advertisements run by such an organization must feature verbal disclosures of its major contributors who must also appear in the ad to approve of the statements being made therein. We must make such advertisements as expensive, burdensome and transparent as possible! We cannot allow the real rulers of this country to hide in the shadows while purchasing the government they want. The citizens of this country must have the right to know who is buying whom, even if many of those citizens are not bright enough to figure out how that impacts them.

Blatant Partisanship Rewarded In Massachusetts

2010-01-20T13:32:00.000-08:00

Massachusetts! I always thought the people of that state were politically savvy. But the results are in. It is final. A majority of the voters elected Massachusetts the most idiotic state of the month, if not the year. I know that is harsh, but I have the facts to back it up. It is not just that they elected a right wing Republican to take Ted Kennedy’s senate seat that is so stupid; it is also the reasons they stated for doing this. The most frequent reason given was dissatisfaction over the economy. Did the voters forget that it was George W. Bush and the Republican Party that got us into the mess? Did they forget that the Republican Party’s unprecedented use of the anachronistic filibuster rule in the senate has made it almost impossible to pass any legislation to deal with the crises or pass any regulations to prevent it from happening again?

Many voters also said they were concerned about the deficit. Did they forget that George W. Bush started with a surplus and turned it into a huge deficit? The Republican candidate, Scott Brown, also promised tax relief. Did the voters forget who always gets the tax cuts when the Republicans rule. Did they forget that Reagan’s tax cuts for the wealthy did nothing for the middle class and created a deficit? Did they forget that George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy did nothing for the middle class and turned a surplus into a deficit?

One nimrod even told an interviewer that he voted for the Republican because he was tired of the partisanship. That is an Alice in blunderland statement. I don’t know what that idiot has been watching or hearing but it certainly is not anything resembling the news. Every time the Democrats have tried to work out compromises the Republicans have bargained in bad faith and have slapped the Democrats with the threat of a filibuster. Furthermore, the Republicans hypocritically criticized Obama for trying terrorists in civilian courts after praising Bush for getting terrorists convicted in those same courts. The Republicans even carped at something as none partisan as trying to get the Olympics in this country and for something as none partisan as accepting the Nobel Peace Prize. How can anyone object to partisan behavior and then vote for the party that is so obviously putting partisan concerns above the interests of this country? Doing that is downright delusional.

Another thing the voters complained about was the health care bill. I will admit that it is not what it should be, but who is to blame. It is the republicans who are putting the special interest ahead to the well being of the nation. Their lock step partisanship made them unanimous in their opposition to any meaningful reform. Massachusetts already has a good health care system, but they would still benefit from a robust federal health insurance option because such a system would be good for the economy. Large businesses often say that the high cost of health insurance for their employees makes it more difficult for them to compete. By lowering those costs we would be helping our industries and we would be giving the working men and women of this country more money to spend on goods and services. It would, in fact, improve the economy, and a healthy national economy would help Massachusetts.

One of the good things about not being a politician or a news person is that I can call stupidity, stupidity. What the voters of Massachusetts did was incredibly stupid. One has to wonder if a large number of people simply voted for the pretty boy. The people of California did that when electing an Insurance Commissioner who was later tried and convicted for being in bed with the insurance industry. Electing that man was also stupid, and I said so at the time.

My advice to Democrats is to be more partisan. Call the Republicans on their hypocrisy and their pandering to the special interests. They have made it clear that they are unwilling to compromise on anything anyhow. Ram the legislation through any way you can. Insist on party discipline. Opposition to a bill is acceptable obstruction is not. Lieberman, Nelson, Lincoln, and Landrieu must be punished for threatening to join the filibuster against health care. We simply cannot allow the precedent they have set to stand. Above all, get out there and campaign!

No Credibility

2010-01-12T15:10:00.000-08:00

There are lies, damn lies, and the alternate universe of the extreme right wing. I have said before that the lunatics have taken over the Republican Party, and that that party is now pandering to the tea partiers’. I suppose there is a warm fuzzy feeling when you say what that crowd wants to hear and they cheer you. “Oh, ain’t I bitchen!” The problem is that in the dark world of the extreme right wing there are only beliefs, and facts do not matter. This means that you must feed their beliefs at the expense of your credibility. Most politicians are lawyers. As such they have been practicing a profession that is as unpopular as the profession of politician. The one thing you can say about attorneys, however, is that they are smart enough to know which lies to tell and which lies to avoid. In this regard their first rule is not to make any statement that is easy to disprove. Getting caught in one lie is damaging to your credibility, getting caught in many lies demolishes your credibility.

Telling lies by falsely claiming that the health care bills contained death panels and provisions to provide health insurance to illegal immigrants did not seem that bad to the Republicans. They knew that most people were not going to read those bills. They also knew that if they threw in the issue of abortion, a very large number of people would not look beyond that single issue. In other words, the Republicans thought their lies about health care reform would not hurt them even when responsible people revealed that those lies were lies. Joining the lunatics in accusing President Obama of not being a citizen of this country was a different matter. The lunatics loved it, but everyone else denounced it as crazy. The brighter Republicans down played the citizenship issue from the beginning and the other members of that party are now avoiding the issue. The problem is that the Republicans are now telling lies that are more ill advised than the ones about President Obama’s birthplace.

Here you have prominent Republicans saying that President Obama is not serious about the war against the terrorists because he does not use the word terror or call that war a war on terrorists. The remarkable thing about this is that some Republicans even said it on the same night that Obama talked about the attempt of the underpants bomber being a terrorist act and re-iterated his commitment to carry on the war against the terrorists. Furthermore, some prominent Republicans are insisting that there were no terrorist attacks against this country when George W. Bush was President. One of the Republicans who recently said that was Rudy Giuliani. One would expect such nonsense from Sarah Palin or Dick Cheney, but Rudy Giuliani? How could he possibly forget when the nine-eleven attack took place? Giuliani said it was a slip of the tongue and that he meant no attacks took place after nine-eleven. I guess he forgot about the shoe bomber, Richard Reid, and other attacks that the good people at MSNBC were all too happy to point out, all of which occurred during Bush’s tenure in office.

It is tempting to believe that Republicans are suffering from alzheimer’s disease or that they think we are. There is actually something far more cynical involved. Sarah Palin is fond of referring to voters as Joe six pack. The connotation is that voters are only interested in drinking beer and watching ball games. This being the case, it is highly unlikely that they will watch Obama’s speeches or even the news broadcasts that play excerpts from those speeches. Who cares about people who think facts matter and pay at least some attention to what is happening? Who cares if those people know that the Republican Party is so intellectually and morally bankrupt that it has no credibility? If Joe six pack is representative of the independent voters, all that matters is what he thinks and how he will vote. If ignorance is bliss, he is very happy and so are the Republicans.

This brings up questions about the news media and journalistic integrity. Forget about Fox News. Fox news is an oxymoron. The Fox organization is not a news organization; it is a propaganda machine, and it has absolutely no concept of journalistic integrity. In all fairness, I have to admit that there is a bias in most news organizations. It stems from the fact that news organizations are businesses. As such their profits depend on how large of an audience they can draw. Since most people like to hear things that confirm their opinions, news organizations keep an eye on the demographics. If the country swings to the right, so does the media. If the country swings to the left, the media follows in that direction. This, however, does not mean that the responsible ones throw away their journalistic integrity. I grew up watching the likes of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite. They had both worked as reporters gathering the news before they went into television, and they had a strong sense of journalistic integrity. Facts mattered to them. They were not content to simply report what someone said; they would also point out the obvious lies. In those days, the media tried to confine the bias to their editorials, but they tried to accurately express the facts even in their editorials. They felt a responsibility to inform the public. Today the main stream media still tries to accurately state the facts and what people say. What is missing is the sense of responsibility to inform the public by pointing out the obvious lies.

I watch MSNBC, which is really more about editorials than straight news. I also watch CNN and the news broadcasts of other networks. I am a liberal and proud of it. What I try to avoid is becoming an ideologue. I look at different news sources in order to consider different perspectives. I also try to do some fact checking. I enjoy discussing issues with people who do not share my opinion if those people do not misrepresent or ignore the facts. I have very little tolerance for the opinions of people who do misrepresent or ignore the facts. The reason why right wingers continue to insist that there is a liberal media bias is because the facts do not conform with their beliefs. Fortunately, there are some conservatives who do care about facts. It is a pity that we cannot hear them over the screams of the lunatics. I do not think I would agree with the opinions of those conservatives, but I do think we should listen to them.