Category Archives: Politics

Medieval

Posted on by davald

A friend, and fellow ex-Catholic, linked me to the video on this site, Catholics Called to Witness. It is indeed slick, in a production sort of way, and appeals not to one’s reason but to our limbic system. That is, it’s all about imagery and music. Therefore, it will surely be effective in calling Catholics to November’s voting booths to cast ballots that reflect the Church’s “values,” which are “marriage,” “life,” and “freedom.”

The video, which is positively medieval in tone and visual expression, with a blacksmith pounding out letters that are eventually assembled to spell out the “values,” emphasizes that marriage must be “reinforced” rather than “redefined.” Abortion, of course, must be prohibited in all circumstances. Compelling the Church’s institutions to provide health care insurance that covers contraception is anathema.

Conspicuously absent from this call to arms is any mention of the Church’s social gospel, the teachings found in the Sermon on the Mount, for example. Thus, we hear or see nothing about the plight of the poor and near-poor, roughly half our population, or that 40 million Americans lack health insurance, or the plutocracy that makes paupers of the Rest of Us, or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the thousands on death rows awaiting lethal injection. Nothing. Nada. Nichts.

The conspicuous absence is all in the name of our Lord. Damn the Church.

It really is the Republicans

Posted on by davald

So say Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein in answering the question, Who’s to blame for our political and economic mess? They write:

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

Obama’s big mistake was that he failed to understand his enemy, choosing to negotiate and compromise with them. The Republicans, we should tell the president, eliminated those verbs from their dictionaries.

A kinder, gentler nation

Posted on by davald

That phrase of George H.W. Bush, surprisingly, describes my aspiration for this country. We’ve got a long way to go.

A friend occasionally scolds me for being “progressive,” which he equates with utopianism. The world is what it is, and there’s really nothing anyone can do about it. That may very well be true, but I choose to believe that things could be—and should be—different.

Suppose you join me for a bit as I describe that aspiration. I’ll just lay out a list.

  • free health care for everyone, regardless of circumstances
  • free education, from pre-school through graduate school
  • a squeezing from both the top and the bottom, so that the rich aren’t so rich and the poor aren’t so poor
  • generous, even lavish support for the arts, in schools and in communities
  • clean water
  • clean air
  • immaculate and well-maintained sidewalks and streets
  • human-scale architecture that both calms and uplifts
  • no death penalty
  • rare and always safe abortions
  • great, not just adequate, schools, with beautiful, clean, and efficient buildings, well-paid and well-trained teachers, ample supplies, state-of-the-art technology
  • a national pension fund that provides a secure and adequate retirement for every worker
  • livable-wage jobs for anyone who needs work
  • truly livable, walkable cities and towns
  • state-of-the-art public transportation systems readily available to all, with an emphasis on convenience, comfort, and aesthetics
  • no guns or bullets
  • safe and high-quality food at affordable prices
  • attractive and eminently usable “third places” (home and work being the other two places), where people congregate to eat and socialize
  • beautiful, proximate, and citizen-friendly public buildings
  • no Fox News
  • no coal plants
  • no Tea Party
  • no Rush Limbaugh
  • a military with the sole objective of only defending our borders against foreign enemies, and no more
  • no Grover Norquist
  • no Harley Davidsons in downtowns
  • a completely different government based on and fueled by ideas; no politics of dirt (i.e., real estate); a unicameral parliament; no judicial review

I should think that in such a country, people would be less anxious, less worried, less greedy, and less angry. They would me more tolerant, more relaxed, more educated, more social, more civil, and more reasonable. In short, we would become a kinder, gentler nation.

What’s wrong with that?

In what universe…

Posted on by davald

Mr. Boehner receives multiple blows from the editors at the New York Times. He deserves all the disapprobation the paper dispenses.

It clearly does not bother Speaker John Boehner that he pushed the United States to the brink of default last year. It does not matter that the deep spending cuts in the resolution he demanded to end that crisis will hurt economic growth. It does not even matter that the House he leads is determined now to break that agreement with even deeper cuts in vital programs.

No, the only thing that matters to Boehner and his ilk is to frustrate Obama’s re-election chances and to shit on the Rest of Us. So, I ask in what universe does Boehner garner support? Oh, that’s right. This is the United States of America, otherwise known as Darwin’s social society, where the superior reign over and steal from those unworthy of decent lives, which, it appears, are us 99-percenters—minus the damnable Tea Party.

Debt, again

Posted on by davald

We know why debt skyrocketed during the early to mid 40s. The U.S. was at war, big time. But think about this for a moment in terms of America’s collective psyche.

Europe was already engaged in a massive conflagration when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Congress immediately declared war on Japan, and since Japan was part of the German axis, we were forced to fight on two fronts. No problem, evidently. We Americans committed any and all resources to prevail, even, as it turned out, if our debt-to-GDP ratio soared past 100. The cause justified the fiscal imbalance.

Besides winning the war, the U.S. economy also grew.

To be sure, GDP was growing before the war, which Berkeley economist Christine Romer attributes to monetary expansion. In 1941 the U.S. was already jumpstarting industries to provide materiel to England in its battle with Berlin. That year saw real GDP soar by 17 percent. The next two years the annual GDP growth was 18 percent. Then GDP fell to 8 percent and even hit a negative 11 percent from 1945 to 1946. From then on, however, the economy grew steadily in real dollars, with only a few negative blips.

Meanwhile, as we see in the first chart, the debt-to-GDP ratio fell. Interesting. The country not only reduced its debt levels but also saw the economy expand.

Suppose the present economic conditions represent, in Krugman’s vernacular, the Lesser Depression. Suppose further that the biggest factor in ending the Great Depression was the massive fiscal stimulus required of the war effort, which also drove debt sky high, more than 120 percent of GDP. Would it not make sense, then, for the federal government to spend massive amounts of money now, even if debt levels rise?

The answer to that question depends on whether or not the U.S. is in similar circumstances as it was during the Great Depression, when so many people were out of work, banks and businesses shuttered, and the economy essentially stagnant. Again, Krugman believes the parallels are there, which is why he, among others, is calling for a massive fiscal stimulus, knowing full well that current politics makes it impossible.

One other thing is equally certain: business as usual isn’t working, and probably cannot work. Austerity under present circumstances almost guarantees economic contraction. That’s what states have been forced to practice—and how are their economies doing? (California’s Governor Jerry Brown, to name one example, just called for more draconian cuts in the state’s budget, with predictable consequences.)

I should add one other certainty. Should Mitt Romney defeat Obama and Republicans gain numerical control of both houses, the country is doomed, since the GOP is all about cuts—in both spending and taxes. Then watch the debt explode and unemployment soar. History tells us so.

The center is already in office

Posted on by davald

I got a kick out of Krugman’s take on Americans Elect, a group (or political party?) that sought to appeal to those somewhere between the Right and the Left. The whole thing flopped. Krugman:

What went wrong? Well, there actually is a large constituency in America for a political leader who is willing to take responsible positions — to call for more investment in the nation’s education and infrastructure, to propose bringing down the long-run deficit through a combination of spending cuts and tax increases. And there is in fact a political leader ready and willing (maybe too willing) to play that role; his name is Barack Obama.

What has always disturbed me about Americans in general is their complete ignorance of just what kind of country they live in. Worse, most on the Right hold the view that anyone to their left—including the entire Democratic Party—is a socialist.

America, ladies and gentlemen, is a rather unique place on the planet whose citizens prefer loony conservatives to even moderate liberals. There is really no room for the political views on display in Europe. The French—oh my god!—just elected a real socialist. And the socialists on the other side of the pond are making inroads even in Germany, run now by a staunch conservative, albeit not of the American variety. If the GOP existed in Europe, it would be in league with France’s Front National Party or a dozen other extremely conservative parties occupying the fringe of Europe’s political spectrum.

Krugman:

So why Americans Elect? Because there exists in America a small class of professional centrists, whose stock in trade is denouncing the extremists in both parties and calling for a middle ground. And this class cannot, as a professional matter, admit that there already is a centrist party in America, the Democrats — that the extremism they decry is all coming from one side of the political fence. Because if they admitted that, they’d just be moderate Democrats, with no holier-than-thou pedestal to stand on.

Hedges and “the gap”

Posted on by davald

Writing for Truthdig, Chris Hedges sets the tone:

We have been, like nations on the periphery of empire, colonized. We are controlled by tiny corporate entities that have no loyalty to the nation and indeed in the language of traditional patriotism are traitors. They strip us of our resources, keep us politically passive and enrich themselves at our expense.

Hedges, citing Robert Gamer’s book The Developing Nations, explains that the Rest of Us are to the One-percenters as colonies are to imperials. Hedges:

In it Gamer notes that although the oppressed often do revolt, the object of their hostility is misplaced. They vent their fury on a political puppet, someone who masks colonial power, a despised racial or ethnic group or an apostate within their own political class. The useless battles serve as an effective mask for what Gamer calls the “patron-client” networks that are responsible for the continuity of colonial oppression. The squabbles among the oppressed, the political campaigns between candidates who each are servants of colonial power, Gamer writes, absolve the actual centers of power from addressing the conditions that cause the frustrations of the people. Inequities, political disenfranchisement and injustices are never seriously addressed. “The government merely does the minimum necessary to prevent those few who are prone toward political action from organizing into politically effective groups,” he writes.

So, what about the Occupy movement? Does it worry the One-percenters? Hedges thinks so.

The real danger to the elite comes from déclassé intellectuals, those educated middle-class men and women who are barred by a calcified system from advancement. Artists without studios or theaters, teachers without classrooms, lawyers without clients, doctors without patients and journalists without newspapers descend economically. They become, as they mingle with the underclass, a bridge between the worlds of the elite and the oppressed. And they are the dynamite that triggers revolt.

This is why the Occupy movement frightens the corporate elite. What fosters revolution is not misery, but the gap between what people expect from their lives and what is offered. This is especially acute among the educated and the talented. They feel, with much justification, that they have been denied what they deserve. They set out to rectify this injustice. And the longer the injustice festers, the more radical they become.

Or, maybe not. We’ll see.

When I ponder the American Revolution and its causes, varied to be sure, I appreciate Hedges’s focus on the expectation gap. The American colonists, or at least their putative leaders, weren’t miserable. They did, however, sense opportunity. Why allow ourselves to be governed from afar? Why should we have to pay this or that tax yet be denied political representation? Why do we obey a king? Besides, there are fortunes to be made, none of which should be siphoned off by the Crown.

The recent uprisings in the Middle East suggest the same. People’s expectations, no doubt fueled by the West and its manifestations, changed from passive resignation to we shall overcome. Dictatorship rubs against newfound sensibilities. Therefore, remove the dictator. We’ll figure out the rest as we go along.

Despite his insight, I’m more pessimistic than Hedges. Most of us aren’t miserable, though we may be anxious. Moreover, we’re disinclined to organize ourselves politically. We’re too busy “friending” and “texting” and otherwise chatting about and sharing our decidedly mundane experiences, whether it be an infant’s laughter, a cat’s playful encounter with an iPad, or the most recent sightings of the ubiquitous Kardashians.

Hedges is certainly mindful of popular culture. Indeed, that’s a major point, expressed previously by Walter Lippman and Noam Chomsky—our consent has been and is forever being manufactured. I submit that the implicit consent serves as an obstacle to political action, whether or not organized or coordinated.

We can impose on this phenomenon the conclusions of the research done by Daniel Kahneman and others about the human psyche. We humans are inherently lazy. We’d prefer not to use our “Type 2″ mental processes, because that involves work. But the business of organizing and coordinating requires such Type 2 thinking, what Kahneman also calls “slow.” We’d rather live in the world of “fast,” where instincts rule.

Returning to the American Revolution, that was led by a relative handful of learned men passionate about the possibilities of severing “political bands.” I recall reading a short textbook in college wherein the author estimated that support for revolution among the general population was in the single digits, inadequate numbers to expect a spontaneous irruption. Urgent disdain for England needed manufacturing.

I often wonder about the Canadians, our neighbors to the north. Immersed in profound ignorance of that country’s history, I ask myself why they didn’t similarly revolt. Canada patiently waited until 1982, when it obtained legal independence from the UK, though it remains within the Commonwealth of Nations. To my eye, Canadians are doing quite nicely without the perceived need to revolt.

So, I just don’t see revolution in the cards. My realistic hope is that we reverse the thousand cuts and chip away at the system that no longer works for us—if it ever did. Discretion trumps valor.

A concise summary

Posted on by davald

By way of her “co-author,” Paul Krugman links to this post, wherein Robin Wells (okay, Krugman’s wife) writes:

The fact is that Greece never was a suitable member of the eurozone. That the Greek economy was extremely inefficient, that corruption was rife, that the government budgets were perpetually out of control, and that the official statistics were not to be believed were widely known. But, as in many marriages, Greece’s entry into the euro was a triumph of sentimentality and wilful blindness over realism.

The better writer of the couple?

A new manifesto, sort of

Posted on by davald

On the cover of the May 2012 issue of the Monthly Review we are treated to these sobering words, ending with a call to arms:

The world is being subjected to a process of monopolistic capital accumulation so extreme and distorted that not only has it produced the Great Inequality and the conditions of stagnation and financial instability, but also the entire planet as a place of human habitation is being put in peril in order to sustain this very system. Hence, the future of humanity—if there is to be one at all—now lies with the 99%.

Takin’ it to the streets? Not likely.

But it’s clear, or it is to me at least, that those who have dominated our economic, political, and social worlds cannot be expected to alter the rules in our favor. They’re at the top, enjoying themselves, and to hell with the Rest of Us. Moreover, because their wealth and power are so extreme, they have established major, multiple impediments to those who dare challenge the system by which they benefit.

John Bellamy Foster and Robert W. McChesney, who seem to write the lion’s share of the publication’s cover articles, offer graphic illustration of a key theme: that the immediate post-war era was likely an anomaly not likely to be revisited.

As you readily note, there’s a decided downward trend in economic production from the 60s. Extending the trend suggests negative growth in the not-too-distant future.

Why are the relative halcyon days of the 50s and 60s an anomaly? McChesney and Foster suggest six unique conditions that obtained during that two-decade period. I quote:

In the mid–1970s the U.S. economy slowed down drastically, ending a period of rapid expansion that had been fueled by: (1) the build up of consumer liquidity during the war; (2) the second great wave of automobilization in the United States (including the construction of the Interstate highway system); (3) a period of cheap energy based on the massive exploitation of oil; (4) the rebuilding of the war-torn European and Japanese economies; (5) two regional wars in Asia, and Cold War military spending in general; and (6) a period of unrivaled U.S. hegemony.

Today, we still have the wars, always the wars. The Rest of Us lack “liquidity,” since a large chunk of us are out of work, and our wages have stagnated. Add to this the sharp decline in housing equity, relied on for so many years to pay off accumulating credit card debt and to finance major purchases, and we can appreciate that we’re ill-positioned to buy a lot of things, and consumer demand has always driven the economy. We know about Detroit’s problems, although it is in the midst now of a modest resurgence. The U.S. is still exploiting oil, though there’s not as much in the ground as there most certainly was during the relative halcyon days. We’re no longer the principal hegemon, as Europe and more recently China challenge us on the economic front. The Marshall Plan is history, as are the rebuilding of new markets. Globalization has taught us that the ebb and flow of countries’ GDPs track together. The U.S. is depressed; and so are Europe, Japan, and perhaps even China, whose recent growth rates nosedived.

Before concluding I’d like to draw your attention to another disturbing trend, one that I’ve mentioned several times. That is, our economy and the economies of Europe have been gradually taken over by the financial sector, known by the acronym FIRE, for finance, insurance, and real estate. Consider this chart, taken from the linked Monthly Review article:

Dollars siphoned off by the financial sector typically remain there; they do not circulate amongst the Rest of Us. Few, if any, of us are stockbrokers, bank CEOs, hedge-fund managers, or insurance moguls. The Rest of Us, if we’re lucky, build and repair things, maintain the assets of the One-percenters, teach children, populate spreadsheets, clean toilets, harvest fruits and vegetables, turn burgers, or blog. We spend most of what we make, and our precious dollars circulate for a bit in the consumer economy before making their inevitable way into the (mostly offshore) accounts of the very rich.

The economy and the political apparatus have not been designed or molded into systems that serve the interests of the Rest of Us. The fact that the Rest of Us greatly outnumber the One-percenters, and that we have incipient Lockean momentum, has so far escaped our recognition. Unless and until we awaken to the obvious, we consign ourselves to continuing anxiety over present and future circumstances.

We are the 99-percenters. Pass it on. Or not.