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.

Liberals Charged As Condescending!

In an article that appeared in the Washington Post entitled: “Why Are Liberals So Condescending?” Gerard Alexander sets forth a long list of images that he claims Liberals have of the Right. The article can be found here and I urge readers to read it, because not only do I plead guilty to having those views, but I assert that they are all true and much more besides. I think it is a perfect description of the Right (Republicans). I couldn't have described them better. It is not condescension. It is fact!

On economics they have only one prescription for everything--cut taxes.

Under Bush they turned the biggest surplus in history into the biggest deficit in history and gave us what could have been a depression to rival that of 1929, and while we have avoided the worst, we are still suffering from its after effects.

In well-researched writing on my blog entitled Lying Pays Off!!!!! Smears Succeed!!!! Obstructionism Is Rewarded!!!! I document the behavior of Republicans in the Congress and out.

In the face of this Mr. Alexander says:

"A few conservative voices may say that all liberals are always wrong, but these tend to be relatively marginal figures or media gadflies such as Glenn Beck." Well, I don't remember it being phrased as "liberals are always wrong" that would be far too mild for the minions of the Right. No they accuse liberals of far worse things and it clearly is not limited to "marginal figures or media gadflies such as Glenn Beck."

Thus we see such reputed moderate Republicans as Susan Collins engaging in fear mongering and lying when she says:

“The Obama administration appears to have a blind spot when it comes to the War on Terrorism. . . . There’s no other way to explain the irresponsible, indeed dangerous, decision on Abdulmutallab’s interrogation. There’s no other way to explain the inconceivable treatment of him as if he were a common criminal. This charade must stop. Foreign terrorists are enemy combatants and they must be treated as such. The safety of the American people depends on it.”

 

The new "moderate" Senator from Massachusetts said similar things. It  is a charade indeed, but the charade goes the other way.

The New Yorker sums it up succinctly saying:

"According to Kate Martin, the director of the Center for National Security Studies, in Washington, the military can’t simply grab suspects inside the U.S. and hold them without charge or a hearing. 'It violates the Constitution, which extends to everyone inside the U.S.,' she said. 'You can’t be seized without probable cause. You have the right to due process, and to a trial by a jury of your peers—which a military commission is not.' Confusion on this point may derive from the Bush Administration’s controversial handling of two suspected terrorists, José Padilla and Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri. Both men were arrested in the U.S. by law-enforcement officials, and indicted on criminal charges. But Bush declared Padilla and Marri to be 'enemy combatants,' which, he argued, meant that they could be transferred to military custody, for interrogation and detention without trial. (Neither suspect provided useful intelligence.) The cases provoked legal challenges, and in both instances appeals courts ruled that Bush had overstepped his power. The Administration, not willing to risk a Supreme Court defeat, returned the suspects to the civilian system."

John Brennan who is  a career CIA officer and has served in numerous Administrations in ever higher positions and was the  Acting Director of the National Counterterrorism Center under President Bush said on Meet the Press that he is "tiring of politicians using national security issues as a political football" 

But this kind of libel is not new to the Republican Party. Richard Nixon accused his Democratic rival Helen Gahaghan Douglas of "being soft on Communism". Senator Joseph McCarthy accused the Truman Administration of "twenty years of treason" which Ann Coulter decided to top this with “Liberals are up to their old tricks again. Twenty years of treason hasn’t slowed them down.” Indeed, “in my next book, [I’m] going through 50 years of treason by Democrats.”

When Clinton aide Vincent Foster committed suicide Rush Limbaugh "claim(ed) that Vince Foster was murdered in an apartment owned by Hillary Clinton."

Alexander writes with derision of the "vast right-wing conspiracy," charged by Hillary Clinton during the Clinton Administration as showing essentially a paranoid view. But was it? "Mr. Scaife, reclusive heir to the Mellon banking fortune, spent more than $2 million investigating and publicizing accusations about the supposed involvement of Mrs. Clinton and former President Bill Clinton in corrupt land deals, sexual affairs, drug running and murder" and he certainly didn't work alone. They took a land deal the Clintons were involved in, that they had in fact lost money in, known as Whitewater, and made it look like the biggest fraud of a century. They pushed it until Clinton felt compelled to ask for a Special Prosecutor to investigate the affair. Now in all previous cases the court which was to choose the prosecutor under the then existing law, had always chosen one of the party of the person being investigated, so as to make sure that there would be no hint of partisanship. But here that tradition was violated when a partisan Republican panel appointed Kenneth Starr, who already had a reputation for a high level of partisanship. They then financed a suit by one, Paula Jones, thereby keeping the Clinton Administration off balance and unable to fully function. They eventually succeeded in catching the President in a lie in the Lewinsky affair, leading to Clinton's impeachment on a straight party line vote. It was obvious from day one that they, and it wasn't just Scaife, were determined to get Clinton by fair means or foul.

Let us move forward to the Health Care debate and the falsehoods told there. They have never engaged on the merits. they have used lie after lie, the claim of Death Panels being the most outrageous, but not alone. See: Health Insurance Reform - Lies and Damned Lies.

Well Mr. Alexander might say that was just Sarah Palin, but aside from the fact that Palin is a leading Republican light, not a single Republican disavowed these lies. But see also: Health Insurance Reform.

How can one have a serious policy discussion with a group that relies on so many falsehoods.

Whether it is the fault of the media, or the fault of the Administration, the lack of knowledge on the part of the public is appalling. According to the Pew Research Center's News just 32% know that the Senate passed its version of the Health Care legislation without a single Republican vote. And, in what proved to be the most difficult question on the quiz, only about a quarter (26%) knows that it takes 60 votes to break a filibuster in the Senate and force a vote on a bill. 

If we look back on the build up to the Iraq war and beyond we find again the total lack of accurate information that the American Public has. In 2005 a Washington Post-ABC News poll showed that 56 percent of Americans still thought that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the start of the war, while six in 10 said they believe Iraq provided direct support to the al-Qaida terrorist network — notions that had long since been thoroughly debunked by everyone from the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee to both of Bush's handpicked weapons inspectors, Charles Duelfer and David Kay. 

Alexander talks about "The Republican War on Science" as though it were some kind of fiction. But the record of Bush Administration agencies ignoring the evidence of their own scientific staff, has been documented too often to require further discussion. Their refusal to acknowledge global warming in the face of an almost unanimous scientific consensus, speaks for itself.

He argues that evidence of the costs of cap-and-trade carbon rationing is waved away as corporate propaganda. That is simply not true. Of course there are costs to cap and trade. Nobody denies that. This is an example of their favorite tactic of setting up of a straw man. The point is not that there would be no costs, but that the cost of doing nothing is far greater. Not only does CO2 present a mortal threat from global warming, but it is causing untold health problems which are a burden on the economy and the Health Care system. But Alexander here illustrates exactly why it is so hard to have a real discussion. That straw man is a favorite tactic substituting for honest discussion.

Alexander says: "But, if conservative leaders are crass manipulators, then the rank-and-file Americans who support them must be manipulated at best, or stupid at worst. I wouldn't say stupid, but as I have illustrated, the public is so ill informed and so consistently lied to, that the ability of Democracy to function becomes a sham. Voting does not Democracy make. An informed public is necessary to the process, and when we have a whole party that consistently misrepresents, fear-mongers, and appeals to prejudice, we as a society and as a democracy are in trouble.

Let us remember that the Nazis came to power by the vote of the people.

Says Alexander that "It is now an article of faith among many liberals that Republicans win elections because they tap into white prejudice against blacks and immigrants." But that is absolutely true. What else is behind the birther movement against Obama. Why is his birth more in doubt than say McCain's (who in fact was not born in any of the 50 states) or any previous President.

It was not so long ago that then Republican majority leader Trent Lott said in praise of Strom Thurmond  that the country would have been better off if segregationist Strom Thurmond had been elected president in 1948.

In addition, while it is not widely known, since the Johnson civil rights legislation era, no Democrat for President ever achieved a majority of the white vote in the US. Obama got 43 percent of the white electorate which was more than any previous Democratic candidate got, but it hardly shows that the race issue is dead. 

As for anti-immigrant,  a few weeks ago I received an e-mail being widely circulated of a 1929 song that went something like, "If you don't like things here, go home, go home". Unfortunately the link is no longer active and so I can't reproduce it.

According to the Washington Post of February 11, 2010 "Former House member Tom Tancredo, famed for his attacks on illegal immigration, gave backers of the racial explanation all the ammunition they needed."

"In an astonishingly offensive speech, cheered by the Tea Party crowd, Tancredo declared that 'people who could not even spell the word 'vote' or say it in English put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House. His name is Barack Hussein Obama....Even worse, if that's possible, Tancredo harkened back to the Jim Crow South that denied the right to vote to African Americans on the basis of  'literacy tests' that called for potential black registrants to answer questions that would have stumped PhDs. in political science...The reason we elected "Barack Hussein Obama," according to Tancredo, is "mostly because I think that we do not have a civics literacy test before people can vote in this country."

As for Daniel Patrick Moynihan, he was no neo-conservative. He was a liberal, and a Democrat, if ever there was one. Yes, it is not to the credit of other liberals that they discounted his concerns, but what does that prove? That liberals are not always right. Conceded gladly!!!

As for the Supreme Court Decision of Free Speech for corporations I addressed that at length here.

Mr Alexander suggests that we need to listen to the Tea partiers, but their message is incomprehensible. "Don't touch my Medicare - I am against government programs." and it tells us something about them as they cheer Tancredo and Palin and their hate-mongering.

All I can say is that Alexander indicts the movement by describing its character. The liberal impression is not one to apologize for, for it is accurate in describing the Republican Party. It was a vicious party during McCarthy and Nixon, it did great damage under Reagan, but nothing that went before, compares to what it has now become.

Liberals aren't always right, and I have severely criticized them on my blog, under the heading: Doesn't Anybody Really Care? where I also further documented the viciousness of the Republican party, but to read the Right even among its so called intellectuals like Krauthammer or Wills is not particularly elucidating.

I sincerely believe that what the Republicans and the Right in general seeks is a country of aristocrats, giving out of the goodness of their hearts and with condescension, a handout here or a job there. The old Russian model of serfdom seems to appeal to them. They have said that they believe that the only function of government is defense against external and internal foes. That means no public school system, no SS, no Medicare, etc., etc. Can no one hear them.