The Real Battles Are Between Elections

I find it amazing how much the media, and as a result, the general public, focuses on the Presidential elections to the detriment of other events, and how much issues are defined between elections, as well as by the outcomes of so-called off year elections to the Congress, and in state elections.

We have just had a Presidential election and speculation has already started as to who the candidates for President might be four years hence.

Yet what was noteworthy in the just-concluded Presidential election was the extent to which issues were defined before the campaign started. I don’t want to attempt here to catalogue the issues that were, or were not discussed, but to illustrate the point by mentioning some.

We had three debates between the major candidates, yet neither Global Warming (possibly better called Climate Change) nor the carnage of our youth in our inner cities ever came up.

Climate Change did come to the fore toward the end of the campaign because of the devastation of storm Sandy, and guns came to the public’s consciousness and entered the political lexicon after the election as a result of the wanton killing of 20 children (and seven adults) in a suburban town in Connecticut, but even now the atmosphere that has been created by the very profitable and free-spending gun manufacturers, makes it incumbent for our President and others to proclaim their adherence to, and support of, the second Amendment, and for our President to show how he too loves guns by publishing a photo showing him with a gun.

But what of the second amendment? As recently as 1939 the Supreme Court in a unanimous decision held that restrictions on the possession of certain types of shotguns did not violate the Constitution because it has no “reasonable relationship to any preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia”.

So how did we get from there to here? It was not as a result of any election, or the debate or discussion during any election. It was through large expenditures in propaganda by the gun manufacturers, who after taking over the NRA, which used to be a non-political sporting association, used it as a front to propagandize the issue and eventually to intimidate law makers by huge expenditures in opposition to those who did not adhere to their agenda. But this was done over many years, in between elections, and in by-elections, until a bare majority of the Supreme Court  (the usual 5 to 4) in the Heller case accepted the position of the gun manufacturers.

At the same time, the media, as is their wont, misrepresented the views of the public by giving the impression that most Americans were rushing out to buy guns, when, in fact, a small minority were buying many guns, or as Reuters reported: 

“Even as gun purchases rise, the share of U.S. households with a gun has been falling for decades, from 54 percent in 1977 to 32 percent in 2010, according to the University of Chicago's General Social Survey.”

But what else has been going on between elections? One of the things I noticed between elections was that whenever a discussion of increasing inheritance taxes came up, the radio station to which I frequently listened, had a huge up-tick in ads offering counseling for estate planning, which most listeners would not have needed since few had enough assets to be effected by such increases, but which gave the impression that most were likely to be effected. The ads intended to seem non-political, in fact seemed clearly to have that purpose.

And what about the slogans that are so carefully crafted and repeated over and over between elections?

We don’t tax too little; We spend too much.

We want the economy, not the government to grow.

Generational Theft (What greater generational theft can there be then to leave future generations a world of hurricanes, typhoons, rising water levels, forest fires, and tsunamis, or a lack in education, or in infrastructure?)

We are Pro-Life! (Who wouldn’t be) and how does that match up against being “Pro Choice”.

Support the troops!

Cut and run!

Tax and Spend!

These aren’t just slogans during an election. They are repeated over and over again between elections, and they determine how issues are defined and discussed during elections.

In the Presidential “debates” there is an effort to avoid any real discussion. Here is how the Commission on Presidential Debates said the 2012 Presidential debates would be moderated:

“The first debate will focus on domestic policy…The moderator will ask a question, and each candidate will have 2 minutes to respond.”

 “The second presidential debate will be a town-hall style meeting. Voters will be allowed to ask questions directly of each candidate…Each candidate will have 2 minutes to respond.”

 “The format for the third presidential debate will be identical to that of the first presidential debate.”

It should be noted that the candidates cannot even decide on the topics they want to address, and does anybody really think that an enlightening answer can be given in two minutes. Is it any wonder that we have the focus on who scowled, who invaded the others space, or who looked at his watch.

And then the media lauds the small state caucuses that are so important in deciding who gets nominated. Not only does this mean that a small percentage of a small population, has an outsize voice, but these people, according to the media, don’t decide whom to vote for until they have shook their hands. Boy, that really tells us what the candidate stands for!!! Or as the website for New Hampshire lauds its state: “Shake hands with as many Presidential Candidates as possible.”

And then there is the argument that the best government is the one closest to the people. That is supposed to mean that the state government is better than the Federal, the town or village government is better than the state, etc. But what it really means is that the smaller the jurisdiction the fewer people vote, the less information on the candidates and the issues is available, and very few even know who represents them. But that according to these avatars of the Right that is what is best for us. Government closest to the people indeed!!

But the fact is that while we are celebrating the re-election of Obama we have already forgotten the shellacking Democrats took only two years ago. To be sure gerrymandering played a role in the fact that even though Democrats won one million more votes than Republicans in the total votes for House seats, an even greater factor was the turnout was far, far smaller in the “off year election” than in the Presidential one, and there is the rub. Unless we can get people to turn out in the off year elections and in the State governors elections and in the state legislative elections, getting the turnout in the Presidential election will never, never be enough.

Finally, we need run off elections. No country in Europe, or in most of the world, would let a candidates win by less than a majority. It is doubtful that Senator Marco Rubio, who is being touted as the Republican savior, (God only knows why) would have won his seat if there had been a run-off. He won with 49% of the vote, with former Gov. Charlie Crist garnering 30% and Democratic candidate Kendrick Meek polling 20%. It is highly likely that if there had been a runoff that Meek’s vote would have gone to Crist, and Rubio, who was rated by the Koch Brothers-financed group Americans For Prosperity as the “only perfect senator,” would have lost.

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.

The Inscrutable Center Keeps Moving Rightward

Let us suppose we were watching a sporting event and the referees, or the umpires, depending on the sport, called far more fouls on one team then on the other. Very likely we would conclude that the team that had the most fouls called on it was violating the rules more frequently. Now let us suppose that the team that kept violating the rules started complaining that the referees were unfair and that they ought to call an equal number of fouls on both teams, and the referees complied. Would anybody think that was a good thing? Now let us suppose that the team that that had been committing the most fouls wasn’t satisfied with the evenness of foul calls regardless of actual behavior, then called for the abolition of all rules, and people wanting to seek a middle ground started saying, well lets get rid of half of them, would that be a good thing? But that is exactly what is happening.

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.