Is the “Narrative” of Economic Hopelessness Self-Fulfilling—and Fueling Even More Crippling Fear?

“So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.“

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, March 4, 1933

The economy is a steaming hot mess, God knows, and maybe the cause of our joblessness crisis is some mix of Bush administration policies, GOP obstructionism to sabotage Barack Obama and the Obama administration’s own miscalculations and reticence. Or three decades of trickle-down economics, or automation, or outsourcing or corporate greed and corruption, or all of that and more, but…

One can argue ad nauseum about what got us here and what’s keeping us here. But there is another factor at work—no doubt secondary to concrete policies, legislation, economic theory and business practice. And yet a factor nonetheless:

Psychology.

No, I’m not saying it’s all in our heads. But some measure of the economy does seem to depend on psychological and emotional issues. Optimism, pessimism, hope and fear help drive consumer and business confidence, hiring and firing, the stock market, et. al. The news right now is bleak—indeed if you watch cable, or read print and blog editorials on all sides of the political spectrum, the prevailing view is not only that our recovery is stalled—or, in Paul Krugman’s view, that it never really began—but that the future is all but hopeless.

The jobs aren’t coming back . Government is broken. The debt deal screwed us royally.  Obama still hasn’t “pivoted” and even if he does, he’s helpless against gridlock and an opposition determined to prevent him from achieving victories of any kind. This inertia will continue if Obama wins reelection, and if he doesn’t, the Teabag-dipped GOP actually will drive us off the cliff, or ensure continued prosperity for the wealthy on the backs of a vast underclass—while wiping out the middle class entirely.

We have descended from Woody Allen’s “miserable” into the “horrible.” Our economy should be in a hospice.

All of this may be true. Or perhaps only part of it—these are predictions, after all, and we’ve certainly seen how off-the-mark those can be. But meanwhile, we have sunk into utter despair.

My question is, how much of this psychology of gloom and futility is self-reinforcing and self-fulfilling—however slightly? How much is the “narrative”—to use a pet pundit phrase—of hopelessness and despair helping to engender even more hopelessness and despair?

I’m no Polyanna—my wife can tell you that—and I am inclined to anxiety and pessimism. We know how bad the economy is. (Personally, I’ve lost one job to downsizing—even though my employer was raking in huge profits—and was lucky to find another.) We see businesses closing around us and we’re plenty scared. Our fears are not “nameless, unreasoning and unjustified.” But to hear our punditocracy, we might as well take a black capsule.

Of course, journalists should—at least outside Fox News—report the truth. The latest employment figures indicate 117,000 jobs added and that the jobless rate ticked down a point to 9.1. As we’re told, it’s still lousy, but not as godawful as last month and not as cataclysmic as feared.

But I wonder what would have happened if, say, the Labor Dept. had lied its ass off and cooked the numbers—some say it does already, but I mean, think really big.  What if we’d been told the economy added 317,000 jobs and that unemployment dipped to 8.7—and a similar lie next month and the next?

Would people start feeling better—I mean, the people who do have relatively safe jobs and some income to spend? Would pundits start harrumphing about a recovery revival—and help inspire just a bit more confidence among consumers and businesses? We’ve seen how some of our flat-earth friends on the far Right, talk radio and Fox invent their own facts, rewrite history to serve their ideological narrative.

What if we rewrote the present? The Big Lie used not for hate-and-fear-mongering—but as the long-awaited Second Stimulus?

Before Bellevue sends an ambulance for me, know that I’m kidding.

Okay, maybe half-kidding.

Read Full Post »

Town Halls: Ask Your GOP Rep.: If you could cut jobless rate to 4 % would you—if it meant Obama’s reelection?

Now comes the summer recess for Congress, which means it’s Town Hall time. And, my friends, I have a request. If you have a GOP representative, I want you to stand up, look him or her straight in the eye and ask:

“If you were told you could blink your eyes and cut the jobless rate to 4 percent would you do so—if you were also told it would ensure the reelection of President Obama?

 

The punditocracy, with few exceptions, refuses to state the obvious—one assumes out of a desire to remain “fair and balanced:” The LAST thing the GOP wants to do is create jobs. The Republicans’ number one goal, voiced by Mitch McConnell himself,  is to make Barack Obama a one-term president. Presidents own the economy—can you name Hoover or FDR’s House Speaker or Senate leader? And that means that lowering the jobless rate—regardless of whose philosophy gets us there—means a second term Obama

End of story.

And yet, it can’t be repeated too often. For all their “Where are the jobs?” bullshit, the GOP strategy is to tank the economy, and keep unemployment high. The debt ceiling hostage drama, and the job-killing, economy-draining agreement that ended it, is only the latest in a long line of stunts and maneuvers. Yes, there are many who have an ideological agenda, starving the government and turning us into the United States of AynRandia. But the immediate political goal is 1)to block anything and everything Obama and the Democrats propose, then blame them for not passing it; 2) for the GOP propose no job initiatives of its own, preferring to focus on eviscerating women’s rights, suppress voting, kill unions, and defund Planned Parenthood and NPR.

The Democratic bills stalled thus far include breaks for small businesses and spending on infrastructure, among others. Meanwhile, the GOP has passed legislation that would eliminate millions of jobs.

Read the following, from Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s blog, The Gavel. It was posted on July 23, the 200^th day of the Boehner-Teabagger Era. Note that this was before the debt ceiling deal/debacle.

200: Number of days GOP has been in charge (Saturday, July 23, 2011)

 

2 Million: Jobs potentially destroyed by GOP legislation that’s passed the House

 

0: GOP jobs bills

 

10: GOP votes against Democratic jobs bills

 

House Republicans have passed bills that destroy nearly 2 million jobs and create economic uncertainty:

HR 1 – The House-passed GOP ‘So Be It’ spending bill destroys 700,000 jobs, stalls our economic recovery, and protects subsidies for Big Oil.

 

HR 2 – The GOP Patients’ Rights Repeal bill puts insurance companies back in charge and repeals the Affordable Care Act, thereby destroying more than 300,000 jobs.

 

Republican Budget (H.Con.Res. 34) – On top of ending Medicare as we know it to pay for tax breaks for Big Oil, millionaires and corporations shipping jobs overseas, the Republican-passed budget cuts key investment to our economic future like education, college aid, life-saving medical research, infrastructure, and clean energy.  This will cost Americans 1.7 million jobs by 2014, with 900,000 jobs lost next year, according to Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. 

 

Second Vote on GOP Budget — House Republicans doubled down on ending Medicare by passing a Rule on the Homeland Security Appropriations bill which “deems” that the Republican budget, with its cuts in Medicare and investment in our economic future is passed. House Democrats unanimously opposed the Rule.

 

Third Vote on GOP Budget/Cut, Cap, and End Medicare (H.R. 2560) — Just this week, the House passed a measure that incorporates the House GOP Budget Plan that ends Medicare and destroys jobs, and then calls for deeper cuts with a constitutional amendment.   Republicans even rejected a Democratic effort to prohibit any provision in the bill from going into effect if it would result in the loss of jobs or slow economic growth, but Republicans voted NO.

 

HR 658 — The House Republican FAA Reauthorization and Reform Act will destroy 70,000 jobs, undermine our nation’s infrastructure, and jeopardize runway safety and improvements.

 

In addition, Republicans have also unveiled a proposal to slash critical investments in rebuilding our roads, transit, and bridges in this county that will cost us more than 600,000 jobs.

 

Meanwhile, House Democrats have been working on our Make It in America Agenda to revitalize manufacturing in America, create new good-paying jobs, and make our nation more secure. Republicans have rejected Democratic efforts to create jobs, voting 10 times against Democratic proposals or efforts to consider proposals–several of which are bipartisan–to create jobs:

 

An American jobs effort to end government contracts rewarding corporations that ship American jobs overseas.  [Vote 19]

 

Build America Bonds to Create Jobs Now Act – leveraging public dollars to strengthen the private sector, growing our economy by rebuilding America’s schools, hospitals, and transit projects, supported by American businesses, the construction industry, mayors and governors. [Vote 38, Vote 30, Vote 189] 

 

American Jobs Matter Act – to give preference in federal contracts to U.S. manufacturers that create jobs here at home. [Vote 257]

 

National Manufacturing Strategy Act, which calls on the President to lay out a plan to help ensure American manufacturers can compete, grow, and thrive. [Vote 279]

 

Advanced Vehicle Manufacturing Technology Act to help ensure the cars of the future are built here in the U.S., by investing in a broad range of near-term and long-term vehicle technologies to improve fuel efficiency, support domestic research and manufacturing, and lead to greater consumer choice of vehicle technologies and fuels. [Vote 310]

 

Currency Reform for Fair Trade Act to provide our government with effective tools to address unfair currency manipulation by countries like China, which could help create 1 million American manufacturing jobs by leveling the international playing field for American workers and businesses. [Vote 9, Vote 199]   Recently, Democrats launched a process to force the Republican leadership to bring this bipartisan bill to the floor for an up or down vote.

 

A measure to promote jobs and innovation at home, by prioritizing patent applications from entities that pledge to develop or manufacture their products and technologies in the United States. [Vote 490]

 

Leader Pelosi on 200 days:

“Tomorrow is the 200th day of the Republican majority, and the American people are asking: where is the Republican jobs plan? Since taking over the House, Republicans have voted against Democratic jobs legislation ten times and for measures that would potentially destroy 2 million jobs.

Republicans have spent 200 days ignoring jobs and pushing an ideological agenda to end Medicare and protect tax breaks for special interests, Big Oil, and corporations that ship American jobs overseas.

It’s time for Republicans to join Democrats to focus on Americans’ top priority – jobs – while responsibly reducing the deficit, strengthening the middle class, protecting our seniors and growing our economy.”

 

Read Full Post »

Liberals: Vent at Obama, But Take Him Down in 2012 and It’ll Be Worse Than You Ever Dreamed

Like many, if not most, liberals, and probably more than a few moderates, I am sickened, or at least saddened, by the so-called “debt deal” on the verge of passage. It was pure political/economic terrorism. And one can argue ad infinitum about President Obama’s negotiating skills, lack thereof, whether he’s a true progressive, a centrist, a closet Republican or simply so fixated on “swing” voters that he risks alienating his entire base in the belief that, come Election Day, it’ll fall in line. Or how this manufactured “crisis” played out entirely on Republican turf—how the Beltway media, and our politicians obsessed over long-term deficits at a time of high unemployment and lame economic growth.

Indeed, worst of all is what the deficit mania, and this deal, may do to the economy, specifically to the middle class, the poor, the unemployed and the soon-to-be-unemployed. Obsessing over deficits at this economic moment is like cutting back on cement while the dam is bursting. You might save some extra cement for those “children and grandchildren” in the pols’ talking points—but nobody will be around to care.

And yet, disappointed as I am, I am also realistic enough to know that if a Republican were in the White House—especially the GOP Version 2011—the outlook would be exponentially worse. Of course, one could reasonably argue that under a GOP president, the Republicans in Congress would simply have raised the debt ceiling, just as they have myriad times in the past. But we have a Democrat at 1600 Pennsy—and everything the GOP does, especially ensuring that the unemployment rate remains elevated, is in the service of destroying Barack Obama’s presidency. The owlish legislative master Mitch McConnell told us as much, in a rare moment of absolute candor.

Aside from destroying Obama, the far Right—backed by the likes of the Koch boys—hopes to dismantle our safety nets, expand the growing chasm between rich and poor, and whites and minorities, and take us back to the Gilded Age, when workers had no rights, Big Business ruled unchallenged, and Black folks were lucky to get jobs as maids and sleeping car porters. My father-in-law worked his ass off for 50 years as a salesman; he lives on a piddling pension and Social Security. Without that safety net, and especially without Medicare, he and his wife would either be dead or on the street today. And that’s where I’ll be when I’m his age, if the Teabagger fringe has anything to say about it.

Look at what the Republicans are doing on the state level, in Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan and elsewhere. Assaulting union and women’s rights, and suppressing voter turnout in minority areas, among other outrages. They are out to remake America in their image—or, “take their country back” as they like to say.

But the Progressive backlash against the Walkers, Kasiches, Scotts and Snyders, should be inspiring. And instructive. Now is the time to vent. If you’re pissed off at Obama, go write a blog post. Tweet your ass off. Get it out of your system. Then mobilize in productive ways and fight for progressive change.

Criticize and push and prod the President, sure. But whatever you do, don’t attack him so hard, so viciously and for so long, that you help take him down. He still boasts more progressive achievements than any President since LBJ. And if there is one lesson to be learned from the debt debacle, and the attempted Right Wing takeover in the states, is that elections have consequences. To the extent that liberal and moderate Democrats’ apathy, or exasperation with Obama, led to the 2010 “shellacking,” perhaps the most disastrous election of my lifetime— not for liberals, but for the nation as a whole—those who stayed home, or registered “protest” votes bear some responsibility.

Next time will be even worse. Don’t fool yourself, throw up your hands and say “Meh, Obama, Schmobama, might as well let Romney win.” I remember how ticked off a lot of liberals were at Bill Clinton, how he was viewed as a Republican in Democratic clothing, how he triangulated and dissembled and moved rightward. If there’d been a blogosphere then, God only knows the level of vitriol he might have absorbed from his left. Then, thanks in part to the Ralph Nader candidacy (as well as outright thievery and the stacked Supreme Court), we got Bush-Cheney. And in the depths of that catastrophic administration, I would bet most liberals would have begged to have ol’ Bubba back, warts, stained dress, and all.

And so it will be if we help the Teabaggers take down Barack Obama. But far, far more frightening.

Read Full Post »

Mr. President: Wanna Give the Tea Party Crazies the Kiss of Death? Endorse Them!

Dear Mr. President,

I apologize for having been out of touch lately. Life has intruded and I’ve taken a break from my blog. But recent events, and the looming 2012 election have roused me from my slumber.

I needn’t tell you, or any reasonable person, that the sane wing of the Republican Party (and there is one) is being held hostage by its ignorant, fanatical, lunatic fringe—the Mo Brookses, Allen Wests, Joe Walshes, Paul Brouns, Louie Gohmerts and, of course, Michele Bachmanns—known loosely as the Tea Party. And, since the GOP controls the House, thanks in part to catastrophic Democratic and moderate-independent apathy in 2010, these inbred nutbags—and I say that with tough love— have a gun to the entire nation’s left temple.

It is considered vile to casually invoke 9/11; I’ve criticized plenty of people for comparing you and other Democrats to terrorists, merely, for example, because you believe every person’s life is equally precious—regardless of investment portfolio—and that, therefore, we are all equally entitled to the best health care. But the analogy here, amid the trumped up “debt ceiling fight,” is inescapable. Just as the al- Qaeda fanatics flew planes into the World Trade Center, symbol of American corporate and commercial power, the Tea Partyists are on a suicide mission to take down the entire U.S. economy, either in the service of their hysterical Ayn Randian ideology, a belief that the world is only 6,000 years old and that the moon landing was staged, or simply because they figure that you will go down in the wreckage and that we’ll have a white president in heaven. (Harold Camping, if possible.)

These people must be stopped. And after wracking my brain, I’ve realized that the answer has been staring me in the face since November 2008. And it finally struck me this week: When you more or less endorsed the Gang of Six deficit reduction strategy, a GOP aide immediately proclaimed that you’d doomed the plan just by praising it. We’ve long known that if you discovered a cure for cancer, the GOP would attack you for endangering the medical, pharmaceutical and funereal industries. If Obama is for it, we’re against it.

So how best to undo the Tea Party? Embrace it. Sing the praises of Loopy Louie and Batshit Bachmann. Just as you may have given Mitt Romney the kiss of death by praising his health care program, wrap your arms around the Teasters and give them a big , sloppy smooch. Borrow one of those Lady Liberty hats from Mrs. Clarence Thomas and slip on an “I Heart Grover Norquist” T-shirt. Let Jane Hamsher and Glenn Greenwald  and Adam Green and Ed Schultz go medieval on you. That will only help (especially if they’re in on the plot, then they can lay it on extra thick).

I you say “Up,” they say “Down.” If you say, “For the love of God, don’t let us default,” they’ll say “Default, shmefault—what, us worry?” So, if you want to drive them even more nuts than they already are, and consign their dangerously psychotic ideology to the dustbin of history, agree with them. Give them some love.

And question your own birth certificate while you’re at it.

Read Full Post »

The Hate-Mongering Cancer That Is Donald Trump

Now that—remarkably, and yet perhaps inevitably—The Donald has inserted himself into the GOP debate reality series, I thought it might be a good time to reissue this post, from the spring. Little has changed re-Trump—he’s still a crass, racist, birther who isn’t fit to shine Barack Obama’s shoes (although he and Newt Gingrich might assign an 8-year-old orphan to that task). He’s a grasping, self-promoting D-list Barnum. But the Republican presidential field, it seems, has stooped to his level and kissed his….whatever. Now, to the post:

I imagine that if one were brave enough to lift up the strange, unidentifiable creature playing the role of Donald Trump’s hair, one would find a teeming mass of worms and maggots. Or at least that’s how I imagine it, a ghoulish manifestation of all the vile, rotten, hideousness swirling about in the void of the reality TV star’s skull.

Strong words, perhaps. But they only begin to express the disgust and contempt Trump should provoke in any reasonable person. He was always a cartoonish lout, vulgarity personified, capitalism at its crassest. But in recent weeks, as he has waged a relentless smear campaign against President Barack Obama—a war of demagoguery, lies, hate and racism—this arrogantly ignorant buffoon has outdone himself. He may even have outdone Sarah Palin, an achievement more towering than any of the skyscrapers bearing his name—or, for that matter, his own deluded ego.

Trump has denigrated President Obama’s intellect, which is something like a bad karaoke singer trashing Sinatra. He has suggested that Obama only made it to Harvard and Columbia via affirmative action; he has maintained that Obama’s memoirs were ghostwritten—by Bill “Palling Around With Terrorists” Ayers, no less. And of course, Trump has jumped to the driver’s seat of the “birther” bandwagon, the wild, foil-hat conspiracy theory positing that the President of the United States is an illegal alien, and therefore illegitimate.

In short, Trump has played to the Republican base—a word that in this instance carries at least two meanings. For the hard-right core of the GOP—the Obama-era GOP—is base in the extreme, caked in philosophical fecal matter, rife with fear, paranoia, hate and, to be sure, racism.

Anyone who tells you that racism is not the driving force of birtherism—and at least an ingredient of some strains of the Tea Party movement—is lying, either to you, or to themselves. Millions of us sat in amazement when this country elected its first African-American president—until the West coast map turned blue, vaulting then-Sen. Obama over 270 electoral votes, I didn’t believe it possible, not in my lifetime. Even many of those who voted against him, I suspect, felt the nation growing up before our eyes.

But for all that “post-racialism” happy talk in late 2008, Obama’s ascendancy to the White House has unleashed a volcano of simmering race-hate, from the Confederacy and beyond. Elements of White America feel threatened, not just by African-Americans, but by Hispanic and Asian immigrants who are fast consigning Caucasians to the minority.

But the greatest affront to these angry white folks is Barack Obama. No president has received so many death threats; and those who would not kill him attack his birth. Surely the entire “birther” fiction would never have been invented were Obama white, and his “foreign” father Swiss. Nor, of course, would we have witnessed the revival of secessionism and talk of nullification.

I don’t know what Donald Trump’s racial views are. His statement to the effect that he’s always had a great relationship with “the blacks” may provide a hint. I suspect his vendetta against President Obama is motivated by some mix of greed and a lust for attention and notoriety. But regardless of his personal attitudes, Trump is causing enormous damage to this country; with his lies and rhetoric he has inflamed the worst elements of our society; through the vehicle of his celebrity he is causing the cancer of race hate to metastasize. A fringe fiction has entered public discourse, repeated and repeated, lent a whiff of legitimacy simply because—in our low-information, reality TV culture— the host of Celebrity Apprentice stamps it with his imprimatur. “Birther bills” are being fast-tracked through state legislatures. 75 percent of Iowa Republicans either believe President Obama was foreign-born—or aren’t sure.

Yes, Donald Trump is a charlatan, a clownish figure. But do not underestimate his impact. The world has dismissed ostensibly absurd demagogues before—and paid dearly for it.

Read Full Post »

Barack Obama for President: A Letter to Liberals

An open letter to liberals—and liberals who call themselves progressives.

When the West Coast map lit up brilliantly, beautifully blue on Nov. 4, 2008, pushing Barack Obama over 270 electoral votes, millions of us experienced a wave of political euphoria the likes of which we never imagined we’d live to feel.

Especially giddy were those of us old enough to remember another, bleaker November night in 1980, when a Hollywood second-stringer named Ronald Reagan swept into the White House, ushering in decades of right-wing policies that carried us into wars; greased the wealthy at the expense of the middle class and working poor; empowered a Christian fundamentalist, social conservative revival that threatened to turn the entire country into Dayton, Tenn., circa 1925; and validated a Lee Atwater-Karl Rove politics of the Big Lie and personal destruction that transformed “liberal” into a synonym for weak and unpatriotic—even, paradoxically, to many who tightly embraced liberal programs like Medicare and Social Security.

Oh, we got  jazzed about Bill Clinton and Al Gore in ’92. But Clinton’s centrism—many feel he governed as a Republican—his genuine personal failings and the relentlessly witch-hunting Right would drain much of the promise from his presidency and leave many liberals disappointed.  With the Supreme Court’s election of George W. Bush in 2000, and the 9/11 attacks, liberal Democrats became more cowed than ever.

But with the Obama ascendancy—after eight endless, disastrous years of Bush-Cheney and three decades of Reaganism—it was our turn. A revival. The dawn of a new liberal/progressive era.

Or was it? Many liberals are driven to distraction by President Obama’s almost obsessive desire to rise above the fray, to be the adult in the room, to reach consensus. We’re pissed because he’s too cozy with Wall Street; we’re pissed about the Bush Tax Cut extension; we’re pissed about the lack of a public option in the Health care bill; we’re pissed about Afghanistan, and we’re pissed about Gitmo and Bradley Manning. We’re pissed that he didn’t do more to plug up the BP leak. We’re pissed that he hasn’t done more to back unions in the Midwest. And in the Mideast, we’re either pissed that Obama didn’t intervene quickly enough to help the Libyan opposition—or we’re pissed that he intervened at all.

Now we’re preparing to be pissed—with good reason, perhaps—that our “middle way” POTUS won’t stand up to the Right and its resolve to destroy Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and all other remnants of the New Deal—and transform the USA into Kochistan.

Personally I agree with some, though not all, of the above. I remain a strong supporter of the President; perhaps my innate realism/pessimism kept me from expecting—and fantasizing—too much. Maybe President Obama hasn’t been a liberal messiah. But he has been an enlightened leader who has accomplished more legislatively than any President since Lyndon Johnson. This while dealing with a dysfunctional Senate, a rightist-rigged Supreme Court and a conservative propaganda juggernaut that has a frightening percentage of the electorate convinced that he’s un-American—or not American, and therefore not legitimate, at all.

(For more on POTUS’ accomplishments , check out http://whatthefuckhasobamadonesofar.com.)

How many of us would trade Obama for the deepest, darkest days of Bush-Cheney. Or a return to Reagan? Or, even more terrifying, any of the rightist ideologues now driving the Republican Party, zealots against whom Reagan himself might well lose a GOP Primary.

Why are we saddled with these Koch-and-corporate backed Teabagging extremists? Why are wingnuts like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann given any legitimacy? Why do we see a GOP House trying to eviscerate women’s reproductive rights; why do we see right-wing governors like Scott Walker, Rick Scott, Rick Snyder Paul LePage and John Kasich wage war on workers, teachers, firefighters and the middle class, while big business and the wealthy get fatter and fatter? Why do we hear about rolling back child labor laws? Why the talk bout “shared sacrifice”—that is for all but the richest Americans, the ones who can afford it? Why are we threatened with the destruction of social safety nets we foolishly took for granted—and for which many of us have paid for many years?

Well, one huge reason was the “enthusiasm gap” in the 2010 midterms. When millions of Democrats and other moderates-to-liberals said “Meh”  and stayed home, while fired up Teabaggers and righty extremists turned out in droves—along with independents who fell for the bullshit they heard on Fox News, and the lies in Koch-Chamber of Commerce-Rove-funded attack ads.

Whatever the level of one’s disappointment with Obama, the experience of 2010 should be traumatizing enough for millions of stay-at-homes not to make the same mistake again. Especially while the GOP is using the “voter fraud” myth to disenfranchise as many young and minority voters—Democratic leaning voters—as possible.

I still believe that in a second term, with a restored Congressional majority, Barack Obama can accomplish even more than he has in the past 26 months. And even if you remain disillusioned, even it depresses you to vote “against” the GOP instead of “for” Obama, as you did in ’08—get over it.

Think of the havoc a Pawlenty, Romney, a Rubio or whoever else can wreak. On social programs and women’s rights. On the middle class and workers. On the already corrupt Supreme Court. On international affairs.

If you think 2010 was bad….

Read Full Post »

Party Like It’s 1893: Child Labor Makes a Comeback—as Moderate Maine Goes Wingnut

Liberals, moderates, sensible conservatives and all working Americans should be appalled by the recent actions of Maine’s new Tea Party Gov. Paul (“ I got 38 percent of the vote!”) LePage. First, he removed from the state’s Dept. of Labor a mural honoring—scandal!—Maine’s Labor history; and now, with his GOP legislature, LePage is rolling back child labor laws.

Let’s party like it’s 1893.

Remember when Maine represented solid, moderate, common sense and decency? Remember when the state voted for Barack Obama by 17 points over John McCain? Remember Ed Muskie? Lest we forget Maine’s two Republican senators, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe; they may drive liberals crazy at times. But they are bona fide moderates—perhaps the only GOP moderates in the Senate—though we can be sure Scott Brown will move to the center as he runs for reelection in deep Blue Massachusetts.

Sen. Margaret Chase Smith (1897-1995)

No one better personified Maine’s moderate tradition than its great, four-term (1949-73) GOP senator, Margaret Chase Smith—the inspiration for Lacey Davenport in Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury. Her husband, Rep. Clyde Smith, was a Republican supporter of the New Deal. And less than two years into her quarter-century tenure in the Senate, Margaret Chase Smith was one of few legislators with the courage to stand up to the Red-baiting Sen. Joseph McCarthy. In June 1950—at the height of McCarthy’s power—she delivered, on the floor of the Senate, her “Declaration of Conscience.” While arguing that the “ineffective” Democratic administration of President Harry Truman needed to be defeated, Sen. Smith added:

“Yet to displace it with a Republican regime embracing a philosophy that lacks political integrity or intellectual honesty would prove equally disastrous to this nation. The nation sorely needs a Republican victory. But I don’t want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny — Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry and Smear.

 

I doubt if the Republican Party could — simply because I don’t believe the American people will uphold any political party that puts political exploitation above national interest.”

 

The Four Horsemen of Calumny. Wow. They don’t make ‘em like Maggie anymore—or “Moscow Maggie,” as the McCarthyites branded her after her brave stand. One can only imagine what Sen. Smith would think of  Sarah Palin. And Michele Bachmann. And Newt Gingrich. And Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Ann Coulter. And Fox News….

And….

… Paul LePage.  His removal of the 36-foot mural—which he claims was biased toward organized labor and at odds with his pro-business philosophy—was an insult, to be sure. But the child labor legislation is disastrous. The law would allow children under 16 to work up to 24 hours a week—in addition to school, homework and, if humanly possible, any extracurricular activities. Leaving aside the potential for exploitation—the whole reason for child labor laws in the first place—these young Mainers would be allowed to work for $5.25/hour, $2.25 under the minimum wage.

Maine’s 7 percent jobless rate is slightly below the national 8.8 mark. But it’s still too high. Now, with an infusion of young “talent,” any adults applying for low-end employment will have to compete with underpaid kids—an entire new pool of cheap labor.

After all, who needs illegal immigrants when you have “legal” 8^th-graders?

There is an old expression, “as Maine goes, so goes the nation.” It refers to Presidential elections. Let’s pray it doesn’t apply to labor laws.

The results could be catastrophic, for children and adults alike.

Read Full Post »

(Updated) Too Late, Conservatives—You’re Stuck With Sarah

One of the most entertaining shows in American politics at the moment is the spectacle of conservative intellectuals like George Will and Charles Krauthammer, among others, desperately trying to lock Sarah Palin in the attic like the mad wife in Jane Eyre. When Republican and independent voters hit the pillow at night, these small-government sages want them fantasizing about the vast, sweeping forehead—and the considerable brain underneath—of Mitch Daniels, not SarahPac’s sophomoric smirk.

You could have called it. With the 2012 Presidential race looming, lamestream Republicans are trying with all their might to push Palin under the bus. With her approval ratings at an all-time low, they’re ganging up to finish her off. Even Roger Ailes has criticized her for that grotesquely narcissistic display of victimhood in the wake of the Tucson tragedy. You can just see them all huddling with Karl Rove, planning their lines of attack.

The reasoning is obvious: Palin is utterly unelectable. To thoughtful advocates of conservative political philosophy, she is beyond an embarrassment. And to everyone outside her aggrieved, white, fundamentalist, know-nothing base—in other words the current base of the Republican Party—she is at best a figure of fun, at worst a vicious, hate-mongering moron.  Indeed, from the moment a desperate John McCain chose Palin for the 2008 ticket, some grownups on the Right cringed. Remember when a live mike during an MSNBC commercial break caught Peggy Noonan and Mike Murphy essentially saying the Palin pick had doomed the GOP?

And that was before they knew the monster McCain had loosed upon the world. Before they knew that Sarah Palin would suck the air out of all American politics to the right of Bill Clinton, and become the GOP rock star. The face of the party. And that she would become a media-enabled juggernaut, stopping at nothing to fuel her own celebrity and wealth.

Now they want desperately to put her back into the bottle.

Too late, guys. And you should know by now that the one thing NOT to do to Palin is attack her—otherwise you’ll wind up being called “impotent” and “limp” and you’ll have her in your face for a few more news cycles.

The real problem is that Palin does strike a chord with the hardcore right wing base. Today’s ABC-Washington Post poll tells the story: Nationally, Palin’s approval ratings are in a bus station toilet; among Republicans generally, she’s lost a great deal of ground; but among conservative zealots, the kind who vote in primaries, she’s stronger than ever:

“Palin has a 58 percent net favorable rating among Republicans, and a 37 percent net unfavorable rating. While that rating is still positive, it’s the worst she’s had with Republicans since she emerged on the national stage; her previous low was 63-31 percent…”

But don’t get too cocky, Mitt, Newt and T-Paw:

“Among strong Tea Party supporters, strongly favorable views of Huckabee and Palin are highest, at 45 and 42 percent, respectively; strongly favorable views of Gingrich and Romney drop off in this group to 35 and 31 percent, respectively…..” And among “Republicans who say they are “very” conservative. Palin and Huckabee (at 45 and 44 percent) again attract much higher strongly favorable ratings among strong conservatives than do Gingrich and Romney (30 and 28 percent).”

Another revealing trend in the poll is Mike Huckabee‘s continued high rating: It explains his recent descent into wingnut birtherism—obviously Huck saw a recent survey showing that 51 percent of Republicans think President Obama is foreign-born. That underscores the can’t-live-with-’em-can’t-live-without-’em dilemma that drives the conservative intelligentsia nuts: They can expound on Adam Smith and Edmund Burke and Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman all they want—Republicans need their Yahoos, their Ignoramiat. You can’t win primaries without them. Since they’re your base, you can’t compete in general elections without them, either. And yet ultimately, elections are won in the center—which recoils at extremist wingnuttery.

Of course, the whole GOP has moved sharply to the right and arguably dragged the political center with it.  There are the radical plutocrats like the Koch Brothers, who bankroll stooges like Scott Walker, John Kasich and Rick Snyder; the Teabaggers and the Christian Theocrats, groups that overlap with the Yahoo-Ignoramiat Palinistas—those aggrieved white know-nothings who revel in their reactionary ignorance while wrapping themselves in Jesus, Old Glory and the Constitution—well, at least the Second Amendment.

And don’t underestimate the racial element. Ever since the GOP pursued its “Southern Strategy” Republicans have captured the white vote, usually by healthy margins.

	% Votes White	Republican	Democrat	Other
1976	89	52	48
1980	88	56	36	8
1984	86	66	34
1988	85	60	40
1992	87	41	39	21
1996	83	46	44	9
2000	81	55	42	3
2004	77	58	41	1
2008	74	55	43

These stats are heavily skewed by the South, of course. Consider that Barack Obama won just 9 percent of the White male vote in Mississippi against 91 percent for John McCain (of course the black vote was similarly imbalanced). But John Kerry didn’t exactly tear it up, losing 18-81 against George W. Bush in Ol’ Miss.

The problem that by pandering to whites, painting the Democrats as the party that takes hard-earned money out of your pocket and gives it to drug addled “welfare queens,” suggesting President Obama is an un-American “other,” Republicans made their own bed. Those aggrieved, poor and middle –class whites were ripe for a demagogue, and Palin has more than filled the bill. They love her. Attack her, you attack them.

And then you set up one of the central themes of her victimhood politics: The Washington elites—conservative ones in this case—versus the 5-college Real American ignoramus. Them versus Us. And now Rush Limbaugh has come to Palin’s defense, which makes it worse—attack her, you attack Rush. And that’s something you just don’t do.

Palin may well not run for president in 2012.  For one thing, it would certainly entail a huge pay cut. But she’s not going anywhere.  Even if she doesn’t enter the race, she’ll continue to be a huge, air-sucking distraction, with her inane, snarky Tweets and comments, her feuds, her breathtaking ignorance.  And she will overshadow everyone in a blandly uninspiring GOP field.

So conservatives: Own Sarah Palin. She’s all yours.

Read Full Post »

Rep. Paul Broun, Champion of Confederate Treason—& the Right Wing’s Violent, Anti-American Rhetoric

I know it was a one-day story—two, at most— and we should move on, get back to Charlie Sheen and Snooki and ignoring the battle to preserve workers’ rights.

But this “Who’s going to shoot Obama?” query at Georgia Rep. Paul Broun’s town hall meeting this week—and Broun’s cavalier response to it—well, sorry, but I just can’t let it go. Especially just a few weeks after Tucson massacre, with Broun’s gallant colleague, Gabby Giffords, still fighting to get her life back. And six still-fresh graves in Arizona.

When some liberals prematurely blamed Jared Loughner’s mad killing spree on Tea Party/Palin/Beck/Limbaugh vitriol, it became politically incorrect to excoriate the inflammatory rhetoric emanating from the Right. “Oh, both sides do it,” harrumph, harrumph, thank you, David Gergen. And it’s true that historically the American Left is far from blameless when it comes to demagoguery—the Sixties alone offer ample evidence.

But this is 2011 and liberals, by and large, don’t eroticize firearms and speak of  “Second Amendment remedies.” To be sure, it should surprise no one that the election of Barack Obama has unleashed some of America’s darkest, most virulent impulses. Democratic presidents often bring out the wingnuttery of the Right—conspiracy theories about government control, anti-religious tyranny, “redistribution of wealth,” and, god help us, “taking our guns away.” But the election of an African-American president—and, in this post 9/11 era, one named Barack Hussein Obama—well, the 67 million of us who voted for him were asking for it.

Actually, despite the pre-election polling, I was amazed that Obama was elected, and so decisively. I didn’t think we, as a nation, had it in us. On the other hand, I never bought into all that post-racial, post-partisan nonsense. All you had to do was watch footage of a Sarah Palin campaign rally—the cries of “Kill him!” the signs, the emphasis on Obama’s middle name, the deliberate use of the word “terrorist.”

But even I have been somewhat amazed by the overt venom, often racially tinged, aimed at this president. The open, unbashed disrespect—imagine a Democrat shouting “You lie!” at George. W. Bush. Sure, plenty of Dems were thinking it, but how many would, like Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) blurt it out during a State of the Union address? It’s not accidental, of course. Ever since POTUS’ election,  the GOP strategy has been to diminish him, challenge—through birtherism and other means—his legitimacy.

No one better personifies this extreme reactionary impulse than Rep. Broun. The clips above are a kind of highlight reel of crazy. I’ve included:

a YouTube video covering Broun’s supremely paranoid ravings at an April 2010 “Second Amendment rally” in D.C;

a small gem from the Health Care debate wherein he romanticizes—and endorses—treason, calling the Civil War the “great war of Yankee aggression;

and a clip of Broun comparing POTUS to Marxist, fascist dictators.

Indeed, not two weeks after Obama’s election, the good congressman was catching flack for comparing this moderately liberal Democrat to Adolf Hitler, warning his constituents that Obama:

”

…“ has the three things that are necessary to establish an authoritarian government”—meaning a national police force, gun control and control over the press—so we need to be ever-vigilant, because freedom is precious.”

The “national police force” Broun conjured up referred to Obama’s call for civilian national service).

“That’s exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it’s exactly what the Soviet Union did,” Broun warned. “When he’s proposing to have a national security force that’s answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he’s showing me signs of being Marxist.” Later, Broun added, “We can’t be lulled into complacency. You have to remember that Adolf Hitler was elected in a democratic Germany. I’m not comparing him to Adolf Hitler. What I’m saying is there is the potential of going down that road.”^[

The Georgian also accused Obama and the Democrats of “developing a shadow government that (does not) answer to the American people,”calling POTUS, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid a “socialistic elite” and agreed with a constituent who said they might use a flu pandemic to declare martial law.

“They’re trying to develop an environment where they can take over,” Broun said. “We’ve seen that historically.”

In September 2010, Rep. Broun, a physician, also railed at that well-known fascist outfit, the Centers for Disease Control, for declaring that Americans don’t eat enough fruits and veggies.

“They want all the power of the federal government to force you to eat more fruits and vegetables… they (sic) going to be calling people and finding out how many fruits and vegetables you eat (sic) today. This is socialism of the highest order!”

It’s easy to mock cartoonish extremists like Rep. Broun—and Sarah Palin and Sharron Angle and Steve King and Michele Bachmann. But as Gabby Gifofrds said of Sarah Palin’s infamous “crosshairs” map, their actions and words have “consequences.”

When Bachmann speaks of being “armed and dangerous.”

When Sharron Angle raises the specter of “Second Amendment Remedies.”

When Glenn Beck advocates shooting opponents in the head.

Or when Paul Broun—an apologist for Confederate treason, and by extension, the incalculable evil of slavery— compares Barack Obama to the great villains of history.

Read Full Post »

First Wisconsin, Now Indiana: Democrats Wake Up—and Fight Like Hell To Survive

Madison

 

 

Not to put too fine a point on it, but much of the time, many of us Americans—and I don’t exempt myself for a minute—essentially have our heads up our butts. You can’t entirely blame us. We’re trying to get through the day, consumed with the moment-to moment events of our own circumscribed lives, with our loved ones, with our homes, with our jobs (if we have one), with having sex, not having sex, losing the weight, changing our hair, avoiding our colonoscopies. (Which actually brings this paragraph full circle).

Lately, we’re obsessing over whatever iGizmo it is we’ll never surrender till someone pries from our cold, dead hands. If we focus on the outer world, it’s pure escapism—sports & Snooki.

But when it comes to history and politics, that’s when we Americans really rear our buttheaditude. Two illustrative stories come to mind:

1) A recent Gallup Poll of 1,015 adults asked to name the nation’s greatest president.

2) The Battle of Wisconsin.

WTF?

As for the presidents: For most historians, naming the top three is a gimme—Lincoln, Washington, and FDR. Only the order is in dispute.

Not so for Gallup’s sampling of regular folks in Feb. 2011:

Ronald Reagan — 19%

Abraham Lincoln — 14%

Bill Clinton — 13%

John F. Kennedy — 11%

George Washington — 10%

Franklin Roosevelt — 8%

Barack Obama — 5%

Theodore Roosevelt — 3%

Harry Truman — 3%

George W. Bush — 2%

Thomas Jefferson — 2%

Reagan? Seriously?

Well, no. Liberals of course, argue that he set the country back 50 years, empowering repressive social conservatism and promoting the trickle-down economics that helped create the ever vaster economic chasm between the rich and the rest of us.  But leaving aside ideology I don’t even think Nancy Reagan would give Ronald Reagan the gold. Nor, to be fair, would any sane person rank Clinton third or the 34-month term of JFK fourth, or Obama in seventh, above TR and Truman. And when was the last time W and Jefferson were mentioned in the same sentence?

The point is that these surveys always skew wildly toward contemporary presidents. This is the year of Reagan’s centennial, he’s in the news again, Teabaggers are summoning his memory (though, as many point out, he’d probably not survive a primary today). At the same time, if you asked these same 1,015 folks to name the worst POTUS, I suspect W, Bubba, Ronnie and Barack would poll very high—certainly better than Harding (Warren, not Tonya) or Buchanan (James, not Pat).

Now, to current events: How many Americans are really aware of the Battle of Wisconsin—specifically the fight over collective bargaining—and if they are, do they know the stakes?

How many Democrats, moderates and ordinary working stiffs realize that Scott Walker’s anti-union purge is part of a nationwide effort by the GOP—backed by powerful right-wing forces like the Koch Brothers and U.S. Chamber of Commerce—to use “fiscal responsibility” as a weapon to crush the Democratic Party? To make Karl Rove’s wet dream of a permanent GOP majority reality? And in the process, wage nuclear class warfare, obliterating workers’ rights and recourse, suppressing wages and benefits and maximizing profits for a very few?

For insight into the GOP strategy, look at the Citizens United decision delivered by our tea-stained Supreme Court, which allows corporations and labor unions to flow unrestricted cash into the political campaigns.

Corporations tilt heavily toward Republicans; unions tilt Democratic. Shutting down unions is like cutting off the Dems blood supply. And it’s not just money; unions are crucial to getting out the vote, and registering new voters—who historically trend Democratic. Squelching unions is key to GOP voter suppression plans—the same reason they waged a vendetta against ACORN, why they’re pushing voter ID legislation, and trying to end same-day voter registration. The more new voters, the higher the turnout, the better for Democrats—at least most of the time.

But as Andrew Levine, Senior Scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, writes in CounterPunch:

“Even this is not the main reason why Madison matters. It isn’t just Democratic-leaning unions that Walker and his Tea Party colleagues want to undo – it’s public sector unions. This matters for reasons that are much more obscure than the others but that are plainly related to many of our contemporary afflictions — the financialization of contemporary capitalism, the globalization of manufacturing and trade, and, more generally, the world-wide assault on social and economic advances won at great cost over the past century and a half. The problem, in short, is that to survive, capitalism must expand – and, with so few areas left for expansion, the public sphere is a target too tempting to resist.”

That’s a hell of a lot harder to digest than, “I gotta cut the budget which means those overpaid public workers have to suck it up and STFU.”

All we know is what’s in our own, narrow frame of reference. And, when it comes to contemporary politics, what’s quick and easy to digest. What’s in front of our face—and we take most of that at face value. Bumper sticker stuff. That’s why Fox News is so effective—it spews out falsehood, opinion and wild speculation as fact. And as Mark Twain said, more or less, a lie can circle the globe before the truth can put its shoes on.

Indianapolis

And yet, truth may be gaining ground. The thousands of peaceful anti-Walker protesters in Madison seem to be getting their message across. According to polls, a significant majority of Wisconsin voters oppose Walker’s attempt to crush collective bargaining. Now, faced with a similar revolt in Indiana, Gov. Mitch Daniels—perhaps keeping in mind his presidential ambitions—has backed off union-busting “Right-to Work” legislation in his state.

Whatever one thinks of the Koch-Tea Party, it has dominated endless news cycles and shifted the national conversation  with its anti-government, anti-labor, Obamaphobic demagoguery.

Maybe the progressives, union members and Democrats making their stand in Madison can change the subject

Read Full Post »