We Are the Change

Are Republicans Trying to Sabatoge the Stimulus Bill

Recently some Republican partisans in the media like Limbaugh and Hannity have said they want Obama to fail. They are actually calling for their Republican colleagues to sabotage the stimulus bill; effectively harming the country in order to benefit their narrow political agenda. Wow! And then they call Obama a radical!
Hopefully these characters represent a minority view in the Republican Party but I’m not so sure. Keeping in mind that there can be legitimate policy differences, the Republican strategy playing out in congress appears to be to water down the effectiveness of the bill as much as possible, push for as many non-stimulus inducing tax cuts as possible at the expense of spending on infrastructure, and then vote against the final bill so they can say “I told you so” when it proves less effective than hoped. Is it really too much to ask for them to put their country first?
In an effort to be bipartisan, Obama is allowing Republicans to have a significant say in modifying the stimulus plan. It now includes about 300 billion of tax cuts which will have very little stimulatory effect. Sure I’d like to get a check for a few thousand from the government, but if I do I’m going to put it in savings not go out and spend it and I’d bet a lot of others will do the same. It might help my bottom line but it doesn’t help the economy.
The infrastructure spending in Obama’s 825 billion dollar plan has now been whittled down to about 100 billion which according to most economists is too small. With infrastructure spending we get more “bang for the buck”; in addition to the stimulatory effect we get the double benefit of useful assets plus it is money that will have to be spent eventually we are just spending it sooner rather than later. Recently the American Society of Civil Engineers handed out grades for our infrastructure: aviation, dams, hazardous waste, schools and public transit all got D; drinking water, inland waterways, roads, sewage systems and the nation’s 100,000 miles of levees got D-; bridges, parks, solid waste and rails got C-. Altogether they estimate there is 2.2 trillion needed over 5 years to repair the nation’s infrastructure.
So we know what needs to be fixed and we know that repairing the nation’s decaying infrastructure will very likely pull the economy out of a deep recession because it has been done before many times with great success (One of many examples: Eisenhower pulled the nation out of the recession of 1957 by starting construction of the massive 42,000 mile Interstate Highway system). In his effort to be bipartisan, I’m afraid that Obama is allowing Republicans to have way too much input on the stimulus bill and some of these people may not have the best interests of the nation at heart. I’m afraid that Rush is not the only one who wants the stimulus bill to fail.

Econ 101

There is a relationship formula familiar to all economists and it goes like this:
Entire demand for goods and services in the economy = C(consumers) + I(investment) + E(exports) + G(government).
When C, I and E are going up, it is a time for fiscal conservatism since G can be cut back without damaging the economy.
When C, I and E are crashing as they are now, G must be increased to compensate for the declines elsewhere and pull the economy out of a nosedive.
A little history is in order.  After the crash of 1929, Hoover responded by cutting government spending which was exactly the opposite of what should have been done. This policy made the Great Depression much deeper and longer than   it should have been. It wasn’t until over three years later when FDR came to power in 1933, after the damage had already been done, that G was increased and the economy started a long slow recovery. FDR underestimated the amount of government spending needed to pull the economy out of the depression since it wasn’t until WWII, when G spending was increased much, much more, that the Great Depression finally ended.
We are again standing on the edge of a great depression as C, I and E are plunging; Obama’s massive government spending on infrastructure is the correct response (provided that it is massive enough) to pull the economy out of a tailspin. Thankfully for our country McCain didn’t win, because his response was just like Hoover’s; he campaigned to cut government spending and balance the budget which would have assured us of a Great Depression Two. I bring this up because the Republicans in the Senate and House (priming themselves to oppose Obama) have just discovered that they are fiscal conservatives after years of profligate government spending. For most of the last eight years, when C and I  were going up, the Republicans increased government spending like there was no tomorrow. Now that C, I and E are going down, the Republicans respond by deciding that now is the time for fiscal conservatism. Again, just as in the early 1930’s, they have this completely backwards.

You Can’t Change the Mind of a Conservative

This post is intended for liberals only; conservatives should not read this. A new study out of Yale and Duke Universities confirms what many of us of the liberal persuasion have long suspected. When conservatives are presented with solid, verifiably factual data that undermines one of their assumptions, they react by more firmly holding the faulty assumption. Whereas when liberals are presented with solid, verifiably factual data that undermines one of their assumptions, they are more likely to adjust their assumption to fit the facts. The researchers called this conservative reaction the "backfire effect". No one knows for sure why this happens; but after all, the word “conservative” means “resistant to change” so I guess it should come as no surprise that conservatives are in fact resistant to change. The researchers theorize that conservatives might be especially prone to the backfire effect because they may have more rigid views than liberals: Upon hearing a refutation, conservatives might "argue back" against the refutation in their minds, thereby strengthening their belief in the faulty assumption.
I think this goes a long way toward explaining why McCain is polling about 50% despite his support of policies that have done so much damage to our country. If the election was based on readily apparent factual observations such as how well their policies have worked for the last 8 years, then McCain would be hard pressed to be polling 5%. Instead when faced with the obvious truth that the conservative policies of Bush have almost destroyed our country, almost everyone who voted for Bush is still going to stubbornly vote to continue those same failed policies under McCain. In other words, as the Yale study suggests, when faced with the undeniable truth that their policies don’t work, conservatives hold onto those policies even more strongly.
Maybe the 19th century British philosopher John Stuart Mill saw the essence of the difference between conservatives and liberals when he observed, “Not all conservatives are stupid people, but almost all stupid people are conservatives.”

Sarah Palin

I’m struck by how enthusiastically Sarah Palin was lauded for her “decision” (notice how they never use the word “choice”) to carry her downs syndrome child to term. The irony is that if she had her way, no one else would be allowed to make that choice. She would have the government enter the personal life of every pregnant woman and force them to carry their pregnancy to term. Which brings to mind a few questions: Did she know her child had downs? And if so, why get the genetic testing (it carries a small amount of risk) if there would be no consideration of abortion? Oops, you’re not supposed to ask Sarah Palin questions because it is mean and sexist.
All the other candidates in this race, the 3 remaining and all those that fell by the wayside including Hillary, have withstood hundreds if not thousands of hours of harsh and sometimes hostile questioning on a host of issues from personal challenges to foreign policy. It is part of the process to weed out those that are not knowledgeable or that don’t have the temperament or that will wilt under pressure. It helps us see what they are made of and how they handle tough situations.
Sarah Palin is different; her handlers will keep her from facing tough questions while they school her on the issues and what to say and how to say it. Her handlers are afraid that if she was exposed to the fire that every other candidate faces, she would have a high probability of self destructing. She will read speeches written for her and will sound knowledgeable; she will take a few questions from “friendly” reporters and appear competent. What it boils down to is this: Do we want someone in the White House with their finger on the button that we only know from the PR that her handlers allow us to see, that has never withstood the fire of hostile questioning and that we really don’t know?

Something for Nothing

All politicians know that the lure of something-for-nothing is a powerful vote getter but Republicans have raised something-for-nothing to an art form. Every election they promise to cut taxes and assure us that cutting taxes will magically increase revenue and balance the budget. Then when the deficits inevitably balloon out of control they tell us “deficits don’t matter.” Deficits do matter. Their policies of huge tax cuts to the rich, huge increases in military spending and the resulting huge runaway deficits are destroying the dollar. In the last 8 years our national debt has doubled to 10 trillion dollars and growing. The interest we pay on this debt (much of it to China) is approaching $500 billion per year. The total cost for the Iraq war is going to add another 2-3 trillion. We are shipping another $700 billion per year off to foreign countries for oil. To paraphrase T. Boone Pickens, “Our country is being bled dry by the largest transfer of wealth in the history of the world.”
Getting rid of regulation created the housing mess; instead of meeting sensible requirements to qualify for a home loan, anyone with a pulse could get a million dollar NINJA (No Income No Job or Assets) loan. Bankers could then game the system by bundling these nearly worthless loans into bogus financial instruments without oversight. Surprise! The whole Ponzi scheme collapses and brings our economy down with it. In order to keep the system from completely cratering, the government is likely to incur obligations from Fannie and Freddie which will add another 5 trillion dollars to the national debt. We are now in danger of following the Soviet Union into financial collapse. In light of the traitorous words of Republican strategist Grover Norquist who, in a rare moment of honesty, admitted their real goal is to weaken the government of the United States to the point “where we can drown it in the bathtub”, I say mission accomplished. They have essentially done for our country what they did for New Orleans.
Just imagine how much better off we would be if we had been following a progressive agenda for the last 8 years. The deficit would be much less because the rich would be paying their fair share. We would be importing less foreign oil because would have made strides toward energy independence since it would have been a national priority and our new cars would be getting higher mileage to comply with stricter standards. The tax base would be broadened by millions of new middle class jobs designing, manufacturing, installing and servicing the new energy economy. The housing debacle would not have occurred because we would have had sensible regulation requiring minimum standards when applying for loans. The moral authority of our country wouldn’t be in tatters because we would not have thrown away our principles just to seek vengeance and torture a few suspected terrorists. And we wouldn’t have wasted so much precious blood and drained our treasury in senseless and unnecessary war.
The next President is going to inherit a real mess and the worst is probably yet to come; the people in charge for the last eight years have through a combination of needless war, incompetence, deregulation, privatization, and massive tax cuts for the wealthy looted the treasury and turned the machinery of our economy into smoking wreckage. Unfortunately, we can’t change the past but we can change our future. Putting all the negative political ads aside, the choice in this election couldn’t be clearer; we can continue the same neocon policies that have done so much damage to our country or we can choose a new direction of enlightened progressive change.

A Stain on Our Great Country

John McCain claimed the recent 5-4 Supreme Court decision on detainee's habeas corpus rights (protection against unlawful imprisonment) was perhaps the worst in history because they are "enemy combatants."  McCain doesn't understand that most of the people held at Guantanamo are not "enemy combatants" but "accused enemy combatants".  Most of these detainees were rounded up by militias in Afghanistan and sold for the $25000 bounty to US forces. According to Amnesty International many of these people are completely innocent, they just happened to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time or perhaps someone in a militia didn’t like them. These people have been held without charges and without rights for 6 years; they have been tortured and their torture induced confessions are about to be used in mock trails before they are put to death; and this is being done in the name of the United States of America.

Referring to the people who are being held at Guantanamo and showing his complete lack of understanding of human rights, McCain said, “These are people who are not citizens. They do not and never have been given the rights that citizens in this country have”.

So John McCain believes our rights are given to us by the government! Back to Constitution 101; the US government has not given us any rights. Our rights are not even granted to us by the Constitution; our rights are pre-existing (all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights). The Constitution puts limitations on the government’s ability to infringe our rights. It is intended to protect our inalienable (meaning not-granted nor conditional) rights from government abuse. Read the Bill of Rights and you will notice that they are stated in the negative. “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech.” Notice that it does not say “The people shall have the right to free speech.” The Constitution does not grant us rights, it limits the government’s power to take rights away. It is appalling that someone running for president does not grasp the distinction. But maybe that is to be expected, after all, like Bush, McCain was a legacy student; he got a pass through the Naval Academy (graduated 895th out of 899) because his father and grandfather were both Navy Admirals.

We Can Grab This Opportunity or Let it Slip Away

The stars are all aligned for a Democratic victory in November; the country is sick of George Bush, there is an endless war started for no good reason, our system seems broken and the economy is in the tank; yet the Democrats seem to be setting themselves up to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Geraldine Ferraro going all “old south” on Obama because he doesn’t know his place is a sure way to get another Republican in the White House. This is unbelievably crazy stupid!
To suggest that Barrack Obama is where he is because he is black is simply ridiculous. He is where he is DESPITE being black and his difficulties are compounded by having a last name that sounds like the first name of the al Qaida terrorist and a middle name the same as Saddam’s last name. Sometimes we hear people say that race doesn’t matter in this country anymore; but it does and the facts bear it out. There have only been four black governors (counting the new governor replacing Spitzer) in the history of this nation and not one was ever elected to office. Counting Obama, there have been 5 black senators in history and 2 of those were forced on Mississippi during reconstruction. To pretend that being black and running for office in this country is some kind of special advantage is a total disconnect from reality and history.
For every black (only 13% of the population) that might vote for Barrack because of identity with race and their common struggles, I’ll bet there are 2 or more white guys who won’t vote for Barrack Obama because he is black. If you disagree, I challenge you to go into any bar in this country located in a poor white area and talk politics and I guarantee you will hear over and over and over, something to the effect “I wouldn’t vote for that damn N*****!” I know this to be true because that is what many in my family back in Texas say.
Barrack Hussein Obama Jr. is where he is now because he is brilliant (graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School), incredibly articulate and uniquely gifted with a borderline supernatural ability to connect with people of differing views and bring out their best. Someone like Barrack Obama comes along only once or twice a century in this world if we are lucky. As a country, we will be fools not take advantage of this unique opportunity just because we are afraid of the fact he is black and has a name that reflects his Kenyan heritage. We are blessed with a unique opportunity; Barrack Obama is exactly the right person at exactly the right time to bring this nation together (black & white, conservative & liberal, men & women) to fix our broken system.

Economic Nightmare

The United States is on the verge of an economic nightmare. We are experiencing a spiraling deflation caused by a severe contraction of credit while simultaneously we have rising prices of oil and commodities caused not by inflation but by the double effects of the falling value of the dollar in world markets and the bidding up of scarce resources in those world markets.
The problem is mostly caused by living way beyond our means; borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars for needless wars and a bloated military while giving out hundreds of billions in welfare for the rich, cutting funding on infrastructure while shipping millions of middle class jobs overseas all combine to create a sure recipe for disaster. New estimates of the long term cost of the Iraq War are in the order of three trillion dollars. According to the GAO, every American man, woman and child is now on the hook for $170,000 of government debt not counting any personal debt.
The solution; when you find yourself in a deep hole, stop digging! Handing out $600 of borrowed money for everyone to spend is not a solution; it is just digging the hole a little deeper. We need to divorce ourselves from the notion we can get something for nothing. The voodoo economics of Reagan/Bush assures us that we can cut taxes and increase spending with no consequences. This promise of something for nothing has proven successful at convincing a gullible public for a while but now the jig is up and we are going to have to start paying for those excesses.
As a nation we need to abuse ourselves of the macho militaristic notion that when some country doesn’t do as we demand, we are justified in using our giant military club on them. This “schoolyard bully” mentality has not served this nation well. Beyond all the sound and fury about regime change or WMD or whether the surge is working are not, the whole rationale for invading Iraq boils down to reducing the number of young Muslim men who want to kill Americans. Instead, by the account of every expert in the field, the hundreds of billions of dollars wasted on this war have bought us a huge INCREASE in the number of young Muslim men who want to kill Americans. Our country, which is only 5% of the world’s population, spends over 50% of the entire world’s military budget. Every American pays about twenty times what everyone else in the world pays for military expenditures. This enormous economic burden is entirely unnecessary and is crushing our economy under a mountain of debt. Are the armies of Mexico and Canada poised to sweep across the border? If we spent only one tenth what we currently spend, would there be any threat of some other country attacking us? Is the Iranian army going to get in speedboats and traverse 10,000 miles of ocean to land in Florida? Could you imagine the slaughter; there are more weapons in Florida than the whole country of Iran. A huge military, as we have seen, does not protect us from terrorism; in fact our large military and its intervention in other countries is the reason we were attacked on 9/11.
The real solution:
1.    Cut military spending by 90%. Get out of Iraq and pull our forces out of other countries. Why pay to keep troops in Germany? Germany can take care of itself and pay for its own defense. How would we feel if Germany had troops stationed here in America? Reducing our military interference in other countries has the added benefit of reducing the fear, resentment and hatred so many countries have toward us.
2.    With the money saved from the above we can instantly balance the budget and have enough to start making payments on our debt and still have a lot left over. This will stop the collapse of the dollar and make some credit again available since government debt will not be gobbling up all available credit.
3.    Raise taxes on the rich so they pay at least the same rate if not more as the middle class. Billionaire Warren Buffett recently noted how wrong it was that he was taxed at 17 per cent while his secretary, who only made 60K, was taxed at 30 per cent.
4.    Use the surplus money from above to encourage the emerging new green energy economy. Over the last eight years we have fallen way behind the rest of the developed world; we can to catch up and pass them if we put our mind and effort to it. We can create millions of new jobs engineering, manufacturing, exporting, installing and servicing a new green energy economy that has the added benefit of freeing us from dependence on buying oil from countries that hate us.
5.    Use a little more of the surplus to start repairing our neglected infrastructure. We could put more unemployed and underemployed Americans to work fixing our bridges, roads, levees, power delivery and water and waste treatment systems. Now that would be an economic stimulus.
6.    Change the tax code to punish companies that export jobs overseas. Give tax breaks to companies that create or keep good paying jobs here.

We can rebuild this nation but the problems we face will not be solved by the kind of thinking that created the problems in the first place. We need to change our militaristic thinking; we simply can’t afford to be the world’s bully any longer. We need to stop thinking we can get something for nothing. We need to get to work creating real jobs, real wealth and real solutions. Unfortunately, like in the depression of the 1930s, the change will not come until a vast majority of the people demand it and they will probably not demand it until they are left impoverished, hopeless and angry.

Differences Between Republicans and Democrats

Is there much difference between mainline Republicans and Democrats? I don’t think so, here is why.
1.    All national candidates depend on corporate money to get elected. Without this corporate support they would have no chance at winning an election. Do you think these hundreds of millions of dollars come with no strings attached? To hedge their bets, corporate money flows to both parties more or less equally.
2.    Just look at the leading candidate from each party, Giuliani and Clinton: Both support the Iraq war; both support force against Iran; both support continuing the privatization of the commons; both support exporting American jobs overseas and both support some form of corporate for-profit healthcare. The only differences are of degree and detail.
3.    Hillary Clinton is more pro-corporate, pro-war, and pro-police state than Ronald Reagan. If she is elected, she will, in my opinion, be the second most right wing president in history; if Giuliani is elected he will be the most right wing president in history. Not much of a choice if you ask me.
For further proof of just how similar the two parties are and how both support the erosion of our liberties, look at the recent passage in the U.S. House of the Thought Crime Prevention Bill HR 1955 (officially known as Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act). There is little doubt that this bill is targeting the growing patriot community that is demanding the restoration of the Constitution. This bill makes it illegal for Americans to hold or express views that the government considers “extreme” (the definition of extreme is left solely to the determination of the President) and it allows the government to consider civil disobedience as an act of homegrown terrorism therefore subject to the harshest penalties in the law enforcement arsenal. Out of 435 House members, only 3 Democrats and 3 Republicans voted against this bill, among them Presidential candidates Ron Paul R-TX and Dennis Kucinich D-OH. Note the coincidence that neither candidate accepts corporate money and both are portrayed as whacko in the corporate media and of course neither candidate has a chance of getting elected in our “free (meaning paid) marketplace of ideas”.

Demonizing Ahmadinejad

In a manner reminiscent of the hate-filled demonizing of Saddam Hussein that set the stage for our invasion of Iraq, there has been a persistent effort at demonizing Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by the warmongers in the Bush administration and again the media culture plays along uncritically. The administration gave us a translation of a speech claiming Ahmadinejad said he wanted to “wipe Israel off the map”. Then the media uncritically accepts this translation and repeats it thousands of times so people naturally assume it must be true. A number of Farsi experts have disagreed with the administration’s interpretation; they claim a more accurate translation would be something like “the regime in Jerusalem will fade from the pages of history” noting how Ahmadinejad alluded to the same historical process that eliminated South African apartheid. Notice how the administration’s interpretation is emotionally charged with an active war threat while the others refer to a much more benign historical process. Notice also how the media culture plays along and reinforces the propaganda with commentators using plays on Ahmadinejad’s name like “I’m a hand job” or “I’m a nut job”.
The propaganda effort at demonizing Iran has been so effective in this country that in order to be politically correct, even a liberal college president (someone who is supposed to be a paragon of freedom of expression) feels required to hurl invectives at the Iranian president. And even then, Columbia University was threatened with a cut off of funds for even allowing Ahmadinejad to speak at a forum where he was attacked and insulted. What does the reaction to his visit say about the state of free speech in America?
All this is not to say that Iran and Ahmadinejad are virtuous players on the world stage; Ahmadinejad said Iran doesn’t have homosexuals like in the U.S. and you could say he is technically correct since they execute homosexuals in Iran and they have a    n intolerant right wing theocracy that denies evolution and other science that disagrees with their theology. Wouldn’t we be better served to have a frank, honest and open discussion where factual information is used to confront prejudice and ignorance? Instead, the recent visit by the Iranian president was turned into a shameful display of our own prejudice and ignorance.