The media, which I have criticized again and again, ought to
be fearless, but they are craven. They are always seeking to call an equal
number of fouls on the two political parties regardless of actual behavior.
Everything in the media has become one side says and the
other says. What about facts? The media has abandoned its role as the ultimate
fact finder. Thus evolution has been an established fact for many decades, but
because one of our major parties has denied it, the media reports it as though
it were a partisan issue.
Man-made global warming is an established scientific fact, with
more than 90% of climatologists agreeing with this finding, but out of fear
from the Republican deniers, the word “global warming” is rarely mentioned in
our media and a so-called scientific TV channel, The Discovery Channel, runs a
series on Climate Change, without ever mentioning its established causes.
If one of our parties decided that the earth was flat, or
that the sun moves around the earth, these established facts, would, in the
treatment by our media, become, “Republicans say…and Democrats say…” That makes
our media no better than my hypothetical referees. John Huntsman, may be a good
Republican in so far as he support its regressive approach to taxes and the
safety net, but he says: “I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global
warming” and warns against his party becoming the “anti-science party”.
But the question is how has the Republican Party’s Rightward
drift moved the Middle so far Right.
If we start with Reagan we find that while his rhetoric laid
the groundwork for the present rightward drift, his actual policies were
moderate by comparison. Thus while present Republican orthodoxy is no increase in taxes or revenue to close the huge budget deficit, Reagan, when faced with a growing deficit introduced TEFRA, which is described
by the Right Wing blog The Free Market as “the largest tax increase in American history” and his supply-side economic
plan was described by his Vice President, George H.W. Bush as “Voodoo
Economics." It was not until the Presidency of George W. Bush that the groundwork was laid
for actually destroying all that had been accomplished by both Republican and
Democratic Administrations since FDR, and under the guidance of V-P Cheney the
plan was set in motion.
Bush tried to abolish Social Security and substitute for it
“individual investment accounts," but that was met with so much opposition across the political spectrum that it
was soon abandoned. But it is not opposed by the Tea Party, which is now
synonymous with the Republican Party.
Instead a plan was put into action that called for creating
a large deficit, taking the country from the surplus that was inherited from
the Democratic Clinton Administration of
$236 billion and a projected 10-year surplus of $5.6 trillion, and
turned it into a $1.3 trillion deficit and a projected 10-year shortfall of $8
trillion, while at the same time leaving the country in the worst economic downturn
since the great depression of 1929.
(I believe that turning a huge surplus into a huge deficit
was part of the plan. The recession was not, and Bush should not be tasked with
the deficit from the TARP, because given the threat of a meltdown of the financial
system, this step was essential, as was the rescue of the auto industry, and
the stimulus, which had the almost immediate effect of ending the economic
recession.)
In the last year of Republican dominance (2008) the US lost 2.6 million jobs. Almost an equal number were lost in the first year of the Obama Administration,
but the difference can be seen from this graph:
I urge the reader to access and examine in enlarged size. During 2008, the last year
of Republican control, the trend was constantly downward, going from minute job
creation in the first two month, to a constant decline, with only two month
bucking the trend slightly. After President Obama took office, and before he
could take any action on job creation, the job losses remained stagnant at over
800 thousand a month. At the beginning of February 2009, the President signed
the Recovery Act, (also known as the stimulus, which has been denounced as
ineffective, causing the public to believe this to be true) and for the next
two month job creation continued to tank, while the stimulus worked itself into
the economy. But the following month the decline went from 800,000 jobs lost to
300,000 jobs lost. The following month there is a set back causing the job
losses to increase by just under 100,000, and then there is a steady decline in
jobs lost, until beginning in 2010 there is job creation in every single month
through 2011 and continuing into 2012, but according to US News & World Report, the total job creation would be
much greater, but for the constant decline of public sector jobs, e.g. in June
of 2011 a disappointing 18,000
total jobs were added. But actually 57,000 private sector jobs were
created, offset by the loss of 39,000 public sector jobs. 464,000 public
services employees have found themselves jobless since local government
employment peaked in September 2008 under the Republican Bush Administration.
Republicans would argue that what happens in the public
sector is irrelevant, since in their view the more public sector jobs are
eliminated the better. But I would suggest that the people who need jobs, care
little whether it is a public or a private sector job, and as for the economy,
every job in whatever sector adds to consumer purchasing power, the engine that
ultimately drives the economy, or at least 70% of it. Certainly, wasteful jobs
in the public sector (or for that matter in the private sector) are never desirable, but all statistics show that the jobs
lost are not patronage jobs, but rather teachers, firemen, policemen, and other
public servants providing vital services to their communities. Why are they
being laid off in such large numbers? The answer is mostly the necessity of
falling off revenues due to the recession, but partly due to political
fanaticism, which seems to believe government and all its employees are ipso
fact bad.
Nothing can be done about the political fanaticism, but as
for budgetary constraints this could have been avoided if the price for support
of the stimulus by Republican Senators Snowe (ME), Collins (ME) and Specter
(PA) were not the elimination from the bill of roughly $40 billion in aid to states.
But for that price, which had to be paid, total job creation would now be much
greater, resulting in more purchasing power, and a more robust recovery. But
even moderate Republicans, and not many are left, are, after all, Republicans,
and if they are to cooperate, they must have their pound of flesh. See here.
But I digress!!!
As I have said many times before in my posts, it is not
about the deficit. That is a phony stalking horse. Republican budgets,
including the latest Ryan budget, do not lead to a balanced budget. The purpose
of having created, (and I am convinced it was deliberate), a large budget
deficit, was because they were hoping to use it as a cudgel to achieve what
they always wanted to achieve, the abolition
not only of the entitlements, but of
all federal programs other than defense. This would include ending
financial support to women’s health programs, abolishing the Environmental
Protection Agency, formed in the Republican Nixon Administration to protect our
health from the contaminants in the air that we breathe and water that we drink, to keep our
food and our children’s toys safe, to make sure our drugs are efficacious and
safe, and that we not return to the days when snake oil was the order of the
day, etc. The list is far too long to enumerate here.
They claim that they only want to push these functions to
the states, but anyone who follows state politics knows that the industrial
interests that want carte blanch to run rough shot over consumers, find it much
easier to do so at the state level, where far fewer people vote, where media
coverage is much less intensive, and where as a result, their lobbying efforts
are even more effective than they are at the federal level.
Even as I write this the Republican Party continues to drift
further rightward, as Senator Lugar, who was rated by the very Right Wing Club
for Growth in 2006 as having voted according to their dictates 52% of the time, and under pressure
moved rightward so that in 2007 it was 57%, in 2009 it was 76% and 2011 it was 80%, goes down to defeat in
the Republican primary.
No wonder Susan Collins went from an approval voting record
in 2008 of 30% to one in 2009 of 60% though she has since gotten some backbone, voting 51% and 44% in 2010 and 2011 respectively, still much more Right-wing than in 2009, and her colleague from Maine Olympia Snowe, after having
gone from an approval rating from the Club for Growth of 12% in 2008 went to an approval rating of 55% in 2011, before being unwilling to give up even more of her independence, retired.
Next time I will focus on the so-called Ryan budget, which
isn’t really a budget, and discuss how the so called Middle, in the face of
this Rightward drift, or is it a Rightward dash, makes excuses and drifts
further and further right in an effort to stay in the new Middle.
Comments, questions, or corrections, are welcome
and will be responded to and distributed with attribution, unless the writer
requests that he/she not be identified.
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