The Election

It has not been so long since I said "Adieu." The response was gratifying as can be seen from my post "Adieu (Comments)" but it did not solve either the problem of the small size of my audience, nor its consumption of an amount of my time that forced neglect of many of my personal duties and interests.

Nevertheless, I am back because I can no longer endure the apathy that seems to be greeting this campaign, and I cringe when I hear of people saying, “Well, I will vote for Obama, but will make no further effort. He has disappointed me.” So allow me to say, nay shout from the rooftops, this election is not about Obama. This election is not about you; this election is not about me.

This election is about the heart and soul of America!!! It is about the survival of the USA as a great power. It is about the future of our children, and our children’s children. It is about the survival of our middle class, which has been the source of the nation’s success, and the envy of the world.

Since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 there has been an inexorable decline of the Middle Class in America. There has been a steady redistribution of wealth upward. Slowly but steadily. First we found that families had to have two breadwinners to earn enough to stay in the middle class. We thought that this meant progress because we associated it with the Women’s Movement that allowed women their place in the workplace, and it was a good thing that women could now, for the first time make careers as lawyers, as doctors, and even to a limited extent as CEOs. What we didn’t see was that this had not become a freedom, a choice; it had become a necessity. Without two wage-earners it was no longer possible to stay in the middle class.

It used to be that every generation could look forward to the next generation doing better than the previous one. This is no longer true, except for people like Trump, like the Bushes, like Romney, who begin life with all the advantages of coming from the wealthy aristocracy. It used to be the landed aristocracy – now wealth is held differently, but it is no different.

Our tax code used to be graduated. During the last year of the Republican Administration of Dwight Eisenhower in 1960, there were 24 tax brackets ranging from 20% to 91% on all incomes over $400,000. To be sure $400,000 in today’s dollars is the equivalent of over three million dollars. But it used to be 65% on all incomes over $64,000, the equivalent of half a million in today’s dollars and as I have said 91% on incomes over three million dollars. No wonder the Federal government now cannot pay its bills without huge deficits or by decimating government services. But they tell us that high taxes on the rich (they have renamed them “job creators” - clever) keep the economy from thriving. Really? Was the Eisenhower economy bad? Was the Bush economy good? What about the Clinton economy? Even Reagan had high taxes and after lowering them too much, increased them by the largest amount in history according to the right-wing website The Free Market.

Our tax code now has Romney, with his hundreds of millions, paying a tax rate by his own account of 13%. I, like most middle class families, pay more than that, and if Romney wins we will pay more, he and those similarly situated, will pay substantially less. Where will the money to meet our needs come from?

Are we going to end up with a tax system similar to the one that existed under the French monarchy before the revolution, where nobility (read today - the wealthy) held the highest positions and were exempt from taxes?

This election is not about the deficit.  It is not about the size of government.  It isn’t even about jobs.

This election is not about the deficit.

These are phony issues cooked up by the Republican Tea Party, and promoted by our craven media echo chamber. According to the Tea Party's website the Ryan-proposed budget would balance the budget in 2040 or eighteen years from now. Does that sound like a plan that has real concern with balancing the budget, particularly when it is considered that at the beginning of the last Republican Administration the United States had a projected federal budget surpluses for the indefinite future and with Ryan’s support, put through policies that wiped out the surpluses and substituted deficits as far as the eye can see. Furthermore even the 2040 projection seems phony because to achieve them would require the elimination of tax expenditures, which have not been specified, and which appear to be nothing but pie in the sky, or worse, would further impact the middle class and the poor.

Is it about the size of government?

It is about the role of government The proposals are for increasing the military, doing away with Roe vs. Wade and increasing government intrusion into the bedroom of every married or unmarried couple, and even blocking access to contraception services. It is not likely to reduce abortion, since unwanted pregnancies would increase as contraceptive services decrease, but rather move abortion for desperate women from the offices of reputable physicians to the back alleys of yore.

It would increase surveillance of our citizenry while reducing their constitutional rights in the name of the war on terrorists and would continue the war on drugs, while taking us into what may well be perpetual war, in an effort to protect the profits of our defense industries and by creating a gun culture that feeds the profits of gun makers.

It is not about the size of government. It is about the role of government. It is whether government’s role is to protect us from the avarice and the dishonesty of the unscrupulous who inhabit too much of our banking and business sector, or whether government should become the protectors of these so called job creators, who have no interest in creating jobs, but whose object by definition is to maximize profits. It is whether government is to be the ally of the Gordon Gekkos of the world, or the protectors of their victims. The media has accepted without question that Staples was a job creator. But were they? For every job they created how many small stationery stores, the real small businesses of the USA, went bust. How many of the owners of these businesses were forced into bankruptcy and how many of their employees lost their jobs. How good are Staples' jobs? $8.92, $8.47, $9.35 an hour. See here.

  

It isn’t even about jobs.

It is about jobs in the minds of the public. But there is nothing in the Republican program that on the basis of experience is likely to improve the jobs picture. Just as The Democratic Clinton Administration handed the Republican party a positive economy and a good jobs picture which in eight years they decimated, so it is more than likely that a return to the policies that destroyed jobs and brought us to the edge of depression, would only exacerbate the jobs picture. High unemployment is not exactly something that makes employers unhappy. It puts downward pressure on wages, and cheap labor is something that our rich, re-named job creators, relish.

Their supply-side economics may sound good in textbooks of the Chicago school, but they have proven time and time again as fallacious in the real world. Jobs, as experience has proven, time and time again, are created when demand for goods and services exist. No employer will hire to create goods or services for which there is no demand. No matter how much money is on hand, no matter how low taxes, no employer hires, unless he/she needs those employees. All is circular. When demand falls because of unemployment, or low wages, or because consumers have over extended themselves, employers will reduce employees because they don’t need them. This loss of jobs decreases the ability to make purchases, further decreasing demand, which lead to further layoffs, etc. The reverse is equally true! When money is placed into the hands of consumers, by the only entity that can do so in a declining economy, the government, it increases demand, requiring the production of more goods, which requires the hiring of staff, which increases demand, etc. The only time this fails is when demand outstrips supply, which leads to inflation, not something that is a threat in the foreseeable future.

What is this election about?

This election is truly a class struggle. Republicans tell us by calling it that we are in some way preaching a communist doctrine. But calling something what it is, is never any doctrine. As I have indicated, we have had over thirty years of an inexorable decline of the middle class, which was exacerbated during 8 years of the last Republican Administration. The last time we had a chance to reverse this trend was at the end of the Clinton Administration. Clinton was hampered not only by Republican obstructionism, but by the deficit he inherited from the Reagan/Bush years, (and when we look at the record we find that despite the propaganda, the party of deficits is the Republican party) which made desperately needed expenditures undesirable. With our fiscal situation in order and improving further, the election of Al Gore could have ushered in a period of American constructive growth. At the same time with Republican Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor retiring, Gore could have swung the Supreme Court in a more liberal direction. Maybe that is why for the first time in American history the Supreme Court stepped in and decreed George W. Bush the winner.

Bush cemented the Republican majority on the court, which now decreed in the “United case” that money is speech, and that the right to use money to buy elections; to intimidate opponents; and to dominate the political landscape has constitutional protection.

And we had the Bush tax cuts, the war in Iraq, which has removed a counter-weight to Iran and created a Shiite state with a natural affinity to Iran, which together turned the Clinton surpluses into huge deficits and further undermined the middle class.

If Republicans win this election they will secure a majority on the Court that will be unchallengeable for decades, and will embolden the court further.

They will push through further tax cuts that will further empower the rich, who will push through further cuts. The circle works here too. Money leads to power – power to money – money to more power, to more money, etc.

Before the next four years are over, they very likely will have succeeded in making their vision irreversible. Medicare gone, not for us, but certainly for our children and grandchildren. Social Security gone –not for us, but certainly for our children and grandchildren. Continuing rising Health care costs, but the burden moved from society to the individual, and with that good health care only for the rich. Ever greater impoverishment of the poor and near poor as the minimum wage is, at the least, allowed to be decimated over the years by inflation, and quite possibly abolished, and the ladder out of poverty, and upward mobility, already shredded, disappears.

The despoilment of our air and water as the EPA is at least undermined, and very likely abolished.

I could go on and on and some will say I exaggerate. I don’t !!!! Most of what I warn will happen is in the Republican platform. They have said they will do it. Why would one doubt it?

Can Democrats stop all this with the filibuster? Not likely. Once the Tea Party people have control of all branches of government, they will end the filibuster, which they will no longer need and reign supreme.

What will happen to our schools? What made the US great was that we were the first to institute a class free educational system with high school free. In the 21^st century we need state colleges to be tuition free. Instead we already see a trend where private college tuition is skyrocketing and public institutions are not far behind. We need to reverse this. But a Republican victory will exacerbate it. Less and less money for public schools, larger classes and increasingly obsolescent buildings and plants, a trend already under way.

And our public schools will teach Creationism instead of Evolution, the Denial of Global Warming, and all about Adam and Eve. Maybe not in all states, but in quite a few!

All this does not even cover the many other areas that are threatened. Our prisons turned over to private industry so that prisoners can be used as profit centers, something akin to slavery. Increasing attempts to disenfranchise minorities, the poor, and the aged.

What about federal lands that have been owned by the nation since they were acquired. Romney has already proposed they be turned over to the states. And what will many states do? Sell them off so they can cut taxes!

I don’t agree with much of what Ryan says, but I do agree with him on this quote: “We're not just picking the next president for a few years. We are picking the pathway for America for a generation.”

Some will say I am playing Cassandra. I am afraid that I am, because like Cassandra who warned the Trojans of “the destruction of Troy (… about the Trojan Horse the death of Agamemnon, and her own demise), (but) she was unable to do anything to forestall these tragedies since no one believed her.” 

What can we do to stop this tragedy? We can start by taking the threat seriously. We can stop talking about our disappointments with the President, and we can start taking the election as the most important thing in our lives.

That means contributing money till it hurts. It means joining phone banks. It means doing all that is within our power to forestall the tragedy that looms for our country and posterity. And it means distributing this warning to all your friends, acquaintances, and anyone else who will listen.

Yes, it is that serious.

The Inscrutable Center Keeps Moving Rightward (Continued III)

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.

In my last post entitled "The Inscrutable Center Keeps Moving Rightward (Continued II)" as well as in the posts preceding that, namely "The Inscrutable Center Keeps Moving Rightward (Continued)" and "The Inscrutable Center Keeps Moving Rightward," I discussed at length how the Republican Party has drifted further and further Right, with that movement having now accelerated beyond anything that preceded it with the advent of the Tea Party basically taking over the G.O.P.

Most would assume that this rightward trek started with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, but it actually began long before. In 1964 while Lyndon Johnson was basking in his Congressional successes and was getting ready to run for re-election in his own right, after succeeding the martyred John F. Kennedy, a battle for the soul of the Republican Party was taking place. Barry Goldwater, representing the extreme Right of the Republican Party, ran for the party’s nomination against Nelson Rockefeller, who even though now identified with the infamous Rockefeller Drug Laws, was considered the liberal wing of the Republican Party. Goldwater won the nomination and even though he went on to a landslide defeat at the hands of Lyndon Johnson, the Right-wing control of the G.O.P. was never seriously in doubt thereafter.

Today, we are shocked as we see moderate and even conservative Republicans lose primary contests to the extreme Right wing of that party, but most have undoubtedly forgotten just how long this has been going on.

Yet it was as early as 1978 (two years before the election of Ronald Reagan) that Republican Senator Clifford P. Case, a liberal Republican from New Jersey, was defeated in the Republican primary, presaging the Rightward march that has since been identified with Ronald Reagan.

The Republican Party has now marched so far Right that Ronald Reagan would undoubtedly be considered a RINO (Republican In Name Only) by today’s standards. After all it was he who was enough of a pragmatist, despite his rhetoric, that when he was 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 so we now have a Republican party that is so far Right that the Cato Institute, The Libertarian Think Tank speaking through its spokesperson, Daniel Mitchell, on the Newshour, referred to Nixon and Bush as: “big-government interventionists.” What might he have said of President Eisenhower who warned that “we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.” And added.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. 

It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. 

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. 

It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. 

It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. 

We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. 

We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. 

This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road. the world has been taking. 

This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

But the party has gone so far Right that its official Ryan “budget” endorsed by its Presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, was denounced by the Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) in these words:

I reiterate our strong opposition to an unfair proposal that would alter the Child Tax Credit to exclude children of hard-working, immigrant families,” wrote Bishop Stephen Blaire of Stockton, chairman of the USCCB’s Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development. “Denying the credit to children of working poor immigrant families--the large majority of whom are American citizens--would hurt vulnerable kids, increase poverty, and would not advance the common good.   

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as food stamps), provides vital food security to families during tough economic times,” Bishop Blaire added. “It is estimated that cuts proposed in this bill would deny assistance to two million families, and cut the benefit for everyone else. No poor family that receives food assistance would be unaffected, constituting a direct threat to their human dignity.   

The Social Services Block Grant is an important source of funding for programs throughout the country that serve vulnerable members of our communities--the homeless, the elderly, people with disabilities, children living in poverty, and abuse victims,” he continued. “We should prioritize programs that serve “the least of these,” not eliminate them.   

The Catholic bishops of the United States recognize the serious deficits our country faces, and we acknowledge that Congress must make difficult decisions about how to allocate burdens and sacrifices and balance resources and needs,” Bishop Blaire added. “However, deficit reduction and fiscal responsibility efforts must protect and not undermine the needs of poor and vulnerable people. The proposed cuts to programs in the budget reconciliation fail this basic moral test.

And Bishop Stephen Blaire, the chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice, Peace and Human Development, added:

Just solutions, however, must require shared sacrifice by all, including raising adequate revenues, eliminating unnecessary military and other spending, and fairly addressing the long-term costs of health insurance and retirement programs. The House-passed budget resolution fails to meet these moral criteria.

And on their web site the US Conference of Catholic Bishops set forth these criteria for evaluating a budget.

1.Every budget decision should be assessed by whether it protects or threatens human life and dignity.  

2. A central moral measure of any budget proposal is how it affects “the least of these” (Matthew 25). The needs of those who are hungry and homeless, without work or in poverty should come first. 

3. Government and other institutions have a shared responsibility to promote the common good of all, especially ordinary workers and families who struggle to live in dignity in difficult economic times…  

Just solutions, however, must require shared sacrifice by all, including raising adequate revenues, eliminating unnecessary military and other spending, and fairly addressing the long-term costs of health insurance and retirement programs.

In April 16 and April 17 letters to the House Agriculture Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee addressing cuts required by the budget resolution, Bishop Blaire said:

The House-passed budget resolution fails to meet these moral criteria.

Bishop Blaire also wrote that cuts to nutrition programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP- food stamps) and the Child Tax Credit (CTC) will hurt hungry children, poor families, low-income workers and other vulnerable people. Additionally, he wrote that if cuts to the federal budget need to be made, savings should first be found in programs that target more affluent and powerful interests.

Altogether three letters were written by the Bishops. The can be found here, here and here.

Other religious leaders' statements can be found here.

But our so-called middle and even many on the so-called Left do not find it in their hearts to express outrage and our media -- – Well, They see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil.

They are busy analyzing events only from the perspective of a horse race.

But I have gone far afield from where I intended to go. In my last post I concluded with: “But before I close this subject I must examine one more column by [David] Brooks. It is dated April 16, 2012 and is entitled “The White House Argument.” I suggest the reader examine it before my next post. It is one of Brooks’ best jobs yet at sophism. But like all his others, it does far better at obfuscation than at clarification.

Well, I guess that will have to wait till next time.

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