Tag: republicans

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Trump Support May Not be as Firm as People Think

In a recent discussion with Republican voters in Iowa, I was surprised– and then, not surprised– at the level of skepticism expressed towards Donald Trump.  These are Republican voters.  Most of them supported him in 2016 and 2020.  They believed the innumerable stupid things he said, without proof, without objective verification.  And now, suddenly, some of them feel that he has become self-centered and self-pitying.  They even actually seem to suddenly feel that his divisiveness is a liability.

Four out of eight of these selected voters said they would not vote for Trump if he were convicted of the criminal charges he is facing.  Really?  That matters to some Republicans?  That is astounding.  We have been given the impression by the media that Trump supporters are rigid, inflexible, and devoted.  Yet, most of the eight people interviewed had serious misgivings.  They didn’t like the chaos.  They didn’t like the whining about being persecuted.  They are not going to vote for Biden, by any means, but some of them sounded like they might not vote at all.

I don’t think the media was wrong.  I think these voters have become more conscious of what people might think of them if they continue to parrot Donald Trump’s idiotic incoherent campaign tropes.

If this is an accurate reflection of the real Republican core, Trump has a problem.

They sounded like they don’t want people to think they are stupid.

At least one of them asked the very solid, germane question: what, exactly, will you (Republican candidate) do about the border?  We all agree there is a problem: what solution do you offer.  He observed that none of them gave any specifics.

One striking thing: they don’t flatter Ron DeSantis for not criticizing Trump.

One of them (John, 67, engineer) said this:

Mr. President, do you know how to serve us humbly? Strength and humility go together. Strength and bullying don’t. But I’d really like to have him address why he thinks that it has to be that way. It doesn’t.

Huh.  And I’ll bet he voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020.  And just now has come to the realization that admitting it might make him look stupid.

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John Kasich

[2019-03: I retain this post as a monument to my own over-confidence in my views of the 2016 election.  I will note that I had assumed Bill Clinton would campaign prominently for Hilary; he did not (he wasn’t wanted).  And no one, of course, knew what James Comey would do.]

Remember that Bill Clinton was really America’s first black president. And he will be campaigning for Hillary. And I doubt that even the Republicans would dare to make him a target after their last attempt clearly backfired. Bill Clinton currently sits at a 75% approval rating. That is really quite extraordinary.

Oh…. they probably will.

Oddly, one of the better possible Republican candidates is none of the above– not any of the most prominent, caustic initiates. It’s Ohio Governor John Kasich, former managing director of– get this– Lehman Brothers (until the collapse in in2008).

Kasich voted for the 1994 Assault Rifle Ban.

Kasich was chairman of the House Budget Committee in 1993 and helped the Clinton Administration create the first and only budget surplus in 50 years.

He’s a bit of Scott Walker: he tried to pass a restrictive collective bargaining law but Ohio voters resoundingly defeated the proposal.

In 2011, he produced a balanced budget, without chicanery.

He signed on to the expansion of Medicare benefits under Obamacare. He ordered rape crisis centers to lie to women about the option of abortion. Let’s not be politically correct about describing this: he ordered them to lie.

He is also a raging hypocrite on “pro-life” issues: he had eight people executed.

But here’s the thing: the Tea Party, which had initially supported him, repudiated him in 2014 and tried to run someone against him in the primaries. Why, for heaven’s sake? After all, God told Kasich to run. Well, he raised some taxes, including a sales tax, in order to balance the budget. I don’t know what the Tea Party is upset about: increasing the sales tax while cutting income taxes has the net result of shifting more of the tax burden onto the poor. Why, that’s the cornerstone of Republican economic policy.

No greater compliment hath any Republican than repudiation by the Tea Party.

I have no idea of how many people he wants to die in the Middle East so the U.S. can look like it has some authority in the region. Perhaps he doesn’t really have a sophisticated understanding of international issues– but he has more gravitas than Scott Walker or Marco Rubio.

Anyway, Kasich has virtually no chance: he raised taxes. Republicans get absolutely, idiotically, insanely hysterical about anyone ever raising taxes by even the slightest amount.

Addendum

When will voters get tired of the standard Republican Strategy?

  • Vow to cut taxes during the campaign.
  • Win the election.
  • Cut taxes on the rich without cutting spending on any programs (because that will make some tax-payers realize that worthwhile government programs actually cost money).
  • Run up the deficit (like Reagan and Bush Jr.).
  • Blame the deficit on Democratic spending policies and campaign against deficits.

And here’s where the magic comes in. The solution is not to cut programs (because some voters like Social Security, Education, and Medicare, for example) but– wait for it– to cut taxes even more. Because, in the fantasy world of Republican economic models, the tax cuts will generate a fabulous outbreak of economic growth, which will increase tax revenues and balance the budget.  Without any pain or sacrifice!

I’m pretty sure most Republicans don’t really believe this, but they are more than happy to have Bill Clinton or someone like him come along and balance the budget again eventually so they can run against taxes again, cut taxes for the rich again, and leave the deficits to the Democrats to clean up.

 

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Obama’s Failures

It is not easy to sort out the points at which Obama has failed and the points at which a ridiculously venal and disingenuous opposition has succeeded in thwarting all government, all policy and all strategy. The clearest point was the earliest: Obama had a majority in both houses for the first two years of his first term and failed to conclude a number of legislative initiatives, including budget and tax measures, that could have been the foundation for the rest of both terms.

In fairness, not even everyone in his own party would have supported it. The fact that he was only able to squeeze through Obamacare with a bare majority, in spite of the fact that it is essentially the Republican Plan from ten years ago, gives you an indication of just how dysfunctional U.S. national politics is.

Nobody will ever be able to prove, convincingly, that the Republicans had a better strategy for dealing with the 2008 financial crisis than Obama– and, any way, the strategy they did have was same: bail out the banks (and the big contributors to your election campaigns) and string the mortgage holders out to dry, and then cut taxes for the rich. It is easy for Republicans to claim that the economy would have performed better under a McCain or Romney Administration because it is impossible to show that it wouldn’t have. There is no laboratory of economics that can isolate budget policies from all the other factors that go into making up the economic performance of any given country. What evidence we do have suggests that cutting taxes and reducing over-all spending (Republican policies) has a negative effect and that, in fact, we would be worse off today if the Republicans had had their way. Check Wisconsin for comparison.

Obama pressed a little for more help for those hurt the most by the ruthless greed and amoral practices of the big banks, but he didn’t push very hard. Obama’s Justice Department did very, very little in the way of punishing the people responsible for inflicting more peacetime misery on more people all around the world than anyone else before or since. Almost no one was held to account.

Eric Holder was not up to the task. Timothy Geithner was always one of them, as was Ben Bernake.

The Obama administration came to the conclusion that it would be too difficult to prosecute them. That’s a typical “liberal” response to complexity. It was a moment I would have liked a hard-bitten tough-as-nails conservative like Teddy Roosevelt (there’s nobody in the current Republican Party who is anything like that) to come along and just do it. Just let people know that you are going to do it whether they like it or not. Liberals are always trying to get everyone on board and compromise. And usually, that’s a wise strategy. But not when dealing with these Republicans who always ever only had one goal, to prevent Obama from any legislative success whatsoever, no matter what the cost.

So Obama gets elected on the promise of change but the first thing everyone noticed was how many familiar faces there were in his administration, all holdovers from Bush and Clinton and Reagan, all establishment figures, and almost no real outsiders. He tried to get Elizabeth Warren appointed to the Consumer Protection Bureau but caved quickly to hysterical Republican attacks, which is about the highest compliment anyone has recently paid to anyone on either side.

What is it about Elizabeth Warren that they are so frightened of?

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Free Stuff

When I mentioned I am going to get rid of Obamacare they weren’t happy, I didn’t get the same response. That’s O.K, I want people to know what I stand for and if I don’t stand for what they want, go vote for someone else, that’s just fine… But I hope people understand this, your friends who like Obamacare, you remind them of this, if they want more stuff from government tell them to go vote for the other guy — more free stuff. Mitt Romney, July 14, 2012

As Rolling Stone Magazine pointed out, the day after giving his speech to the NAACP in which he was booed for declaring that he would rescind Obama’s health care legislation, Romney gave a speech to a more congenial crowd in Montana in which he made the comment about “free stuff”. Read it carefully.

Fox News rhapsodized about Romney’s “courage” in going to an audience known to be hostile to Republicans and laying it on the line.   Fox News can’t be serious– they don’t really like Romney.   He is way too moderate.  He practically invented Obamacare (check it out).

He allegedly gave them the same speech he gives to white audiences. That’s manly of him.

Except he did and he didn’t. That is, it would have been courageous if Romney had made a bold statement of his personal principles and then made a specific promise about things he was going to do as President which are necessary and right but which are politically unpopular, like increase taxes in order to pay down the deficit.

That is exactly what he did not do.

He basically told them that he would cut taxes to the richest people in the country, increase military spending to deal with the communist menace, and then magically make the deficit go away without having to cut any entitlements like Social Security and Medicare.

His speech was nothing more than the usual clichés and conservative stock phrases and platitudes. And he clearly didn’t care what they thought about it: the speech was not meant for them. It was meant for those folks up in Montana waiting for the line about “free stuff”. They got it.

He wasn’t booed because he advocated unpopular political positions but because he acted as if he was completely oblivious to where he was. It was as if your smelly old aunt with bad breath suddenly leaned in on you one day and urged you to get a haircut and go to church and get a job and find some girl and get married.

And you already have a job.

But here’s the most important thing: Republicans love giving away free stuff.  The earned income deduction.  The oil depletion allowance.  The military industrial complex.  Sports stadiums.  9/11 Victims Compensation (compare to Hurricane Katrina victims compensation), military bases in Congressional Districts that are no longer needed, tax incentives, and so on, and so on.

Yes, loads and loads of Free Stuff.

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Tea Party with the Mad Hatters of the Republican Party

I don’t think the Tea Party is really going to have a significant influence on this November’s elections in the U.S. They receive coverage that is vastly out of proportion to their actual influence because they are colorful, loud-mouthed, aggressive, and cruel. It’s lovely watching working class whites out there begging the government to take money out of their pockets and give it to Exxon and Dow and Citibank, and the various industries associated with the Koch Brothers. It is especially lovely when they proclaim how sick they are of being manipulated, deceived, and misled by intellectuals, reporters, and feminists.

They learn these things through Fox News and various conferences sponsored by the Koch Brothers.

Anyway, it would not be too much of a stretch to imagine that the Tea Party is entirely the creation of the Democrats. It’s a conspiracy to keep the Republicans from winning the White House and the Senate: those snarky Tea Party revelers get out there and act ridiculous and say ridiculous things– like “keep the government out of my Medicare”– and heap discredit on the entire conservative movement. I suspect that most Americans, especially in the swing states, don’t want to look stupid by voting for people who invariably look stupid.

PBS recently had a T-Party enthusiast, David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network (or, as I prefer, the Capitalist Broadcasting Network) on for an interview with Judy Woodruff. Brody came off pretty well exactly like the evangelical leader that President Bartlett kicked out of the White House in a memorable West Wing episode.

Why was he on? The only reason I can think of is that the Republicans have been known to go ballistic on the issue of Public Television and the perceived bias of this institution which used to receive substantial government funding.

PBS has lately moved beyond the fake controversy over global warming: they now act as if it is a proven fact, which it is, and examine the ramifications. It’s a courageous, intelligent move, and sure to enrage the Tea Party, if they noticed it, which they won’t because they only watch Fox News.

How Romney could win: easy!

  • endorse the Dream Act which gives some illegal immigrants a pathway towards citizenship
  • announce that you can compromise with Democrats on taxes and allow the Bush tax cuts to expire on those earning more than $250,000.00, and declare that it is more important to get things done in Washington than to score political points, as when the Republican House votes 33 times to repeal Obama’s Health care act.
  • sound statesmanlike as you soberly acknowledge that the nation must pay it’s bills and part of the plan to do that is to make a modest hike in taxes while cutting spending on programs. This would put Obama in a very uncomfortable position.   I’m not sure why he won’t don’t do it. Well, yes, I am sure: they are idiots who have fervently believed since Reagan that it is possible to cut taxes and claim to reduce the deficit at the same time and then blame the deficit on the Democrats when they are in office.
  • announce some policy that could actually be mistaken for something compassionate or kind. Your own party will HATE it, as will the Christian Broadcasting Network, James Dobson, Franklin Graham, et al, but who the hell else are they going to vote for?
  • The independents will flock to you.
  • announce that what a woman does with her own body is none of the state’s business. Your support among women voters will rise 2 – 3 %, I would guess.

Might be enough to tip the election.

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Social Security

This piece of common sense is so obvious that I’m pretty sure most people assume it is already the law. It isn’t: every government and corporation should be required to set aside in an independently managed fund all of the monies required to fully vest the pension commitments of the organization. There. Simple. Under no circumstances should the government or a corporation be allowed to ever, ever touch that money.

I am aware of the fact that at the beginning of Social Security, the government actually had to pay out to people who had never contributed money it had never collected for the program.

Your are astonished? You mean they don’t have to? You mean the government can simply collect the money required for these pensions and then spend as much of it as it wants on other things– like bizarre failed weapons systems or wars– while promising that future governments will make up the difference?

And thus we have Illinois. And Republicans claiming– it’s an outright lie– that Social Security is unsustainable. In fact, there is nothing more sustainable than Social Security, if the government would simply pay it back for all the money it stole out of the system so that Mitch McConnell could use it so he could claim to not raise taxes and still– miraculously– spend more money on Homeland Security and the military.

The Republicans act as if Social Security is funded by general revenue, so you are not really entitled to it. But Social Security was not instituted to fund general government programs. It was instituted specifically to collect your contribution to your future retirement needs. The U.S. government has been borrowing this money for years to fund other government expenditures– like the stealth bomber or the Mitch McConnell Freeway.

I suspect that a Republican government will try to find some way to keep the revenue stream without keeping the benefit. That is what they do. A tax on the working class with an upper ceiling is a Republican’s wet dream.

By the way, I’m not averse to the idea that the independence of pension funds should go two ways. The rate at which employers and employees contribute to the fund should be wisely and carefully crafted, and the benefits received should also be wisely and carefully crafted and the brains should carefully establish the correct rates and then it should all be locked in.

That means that if inflation eats away at the value of those pensions, the price of security is that they will not be adjusted beyond the rate fixed in the original agreement. That means it could be adjusted, but only if the possibility of it was factored into the original terms of the plan, including the potential costs.

That means, yes, some pensioners might be disadvantaged by high inflation at some point– but I don’t think that’s an unreasonable price to pay for real security. (I’m not going to go into it here, but people then also should be aware of the government using inflation as a tool to reduce the real cost of their obligations.)

Yeah, it’s complicated.

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The Three Days of the Tea Party

In the uncannily prescient 1975 movie “Three Days of the Condor”, Turner (Robert Redford) gradually unravels a rogue CIA plot to destabilize the Middle East in order to secure vast supplies of oil for the U.S. We are, wisely, not given too much detail– it’s more believable that way.

A hired killer named Joubert played suavely by Max Von Sydow, has been trying to murder Turner since he stumbled into the plot. He seems to have finally tracked him down just as Redford has uncovered the mastermind behind the oil plot, a middling CIA manager named Leonard Atwood. But instead of shooting Turner, Joubert suddenly turns and kills Atwood. Turner is shocked, and puzzled– why did you kill Atwood? Joubert doesn’t know, and doesn’t care. I suspect, he says, that he was about to become an embarrassment. Then he offers Turner a ride back into town. He sees that Turner is still afraid of him. Joubert smiles– my contract to kill you, he says, was with Atwood. As you can see…

It’s an elegant, profound moment. Joubert is one of the more intelligent creations of the genre– a professional, passionless, rational killer. There is baggage with the term “hired killer”, but how different, really, is he from a soldier? I liked him. He advises Turner to go into hiding. There is no future for you in New York (his home). Turner insists he wants to keep fighting the corruption he has uncovered. Doesn’t Joubert care? How do you not care?

Joubert tells him, life is easier if you don’t believe in either side.

Later, Turner meets with another CIA manager, Higgins. Higgins is probably not part of the corruption, but he must protect the agency from the threat Turner represents. He argues with Turner: Americans want us to make those difficult, morally ambiguous decisions, without telling them, so they can preserve the illusion that they live moral lives while enjoying their big cars and heated homes.

Cut to 1992 and “A Few Good Men”, far inferior film even if it was written by Aaron Sorkin. (After all, it was directed by Rob Reiner, not Sydney Pollack.) We all know the line spoken by Colonel Jessup (Jack Nicholson): “You want the truth? You can’t handle the truth!” In this case, a pair of marines have caused the death of a fellow marine who brought discredit upon their brand by complaining about his treatment. The viewer perhaps needs to be reminded that in most other dramatizations, the two marines would be the villains. Here they are the heroes: stalwart, proud, professional. Oops– we killed a fellow marine. Jessup is the villain because he ordered them to do it, and then strung them out to dry, dishonored.

Higgins might well have said to Turner: “You can’t handle the truth”. “It’s easier if you don’t believe in either side”. Jessup believes he is so right that he must make life and death decisions for us. He passionately argues that our society can’t stomach the kind of moral decisions he has to make all the time, but, by God, we want killers like Jessup out there on the walls protecting us from …. well, the truth is, from the other Jessups out there, on the other side. He and Atwood and Higgins are all of a piece: we make the unpleasant decisions so that you can enjoy your Hummers, your air conditioning, your jobs.

Cut to Norway, 2011. Anders Behring Breivik. Europe is being overwhelmed by Moslem immigrants who threaten the foundations of Western Culture and religion. And Norway’s political leaders do nothing, except welcome them with open arms, and allow them to build their mosques and cover their faces.

What’s an earnest little fascist to do? His lawyer says, “he hates all the Western ideas and the values of democracy.”

Cut to the Tea Party: at a recent debate, the Republican presidential candidates were asked if they would accept a deal with the Democrats that made $10 of cuts for every $1 of increased revenue, if it meant raising taxes. Not a single one was willing to compromise. That is the definition of fanaticism: they are so right they need to defy all common sense and reasonableness.

There is not much of a future in Washington for a reasonable man.

You can’t handle the truth.

Aaron Sorkin is a brilliant writer but, like the Editorialists at the New York Times and 60 Minutes, he has an odd, fetishistic reverence for the military, because he really believes in the myths of honor and integrity, and that there really are enemies out there trying to kill us.  He’s right about the enemies, but that doesn’t mitigate the creepy allure military men posses in Sorkin dramas, especially since Sorkin himself, of course, of course, never served in the military.

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Tea Party Down the Deficit

So if the real problem is jobs and the real solution is more government stimulus and all you really want to do is cut taxes for those who are already extremely well-off, what do you do? You scream about the deficit. A reasonable solution to the deficit problem probably includes a tax increase on the rich. But your real mission is to get the poor and middle-income people to pay for government services, while you grab a bigger and bigger share of the pie. How do you get that past the rational people?

In other circumstances, the voters could have had choice between the screaming, hysterical mad hatters of the tea party and the rational, measured Reid and Obama. If…. if Obama had immediately counter-attacked the Republican hysterics with a strong, determined insistence that, at a time of 9% unemployment and recession, the government needs to step up.

The minute Obama agreed to make the deficit a priority, Reason went out the window. I think it was a huge mistake. Republicans demanding tax cuts is nothing new. But by endorsing the basic principle, Obama seemed to validate the idea that the deficit is the big problem facing America right now. It’s not. It’s unemployment.

Even so, it’s surprising how many people out there kept their heads. And a little baffling in terms of Obama’s strategy: the majority of Americans still seemed to support the idea that unemployment was the number one issue and that the Republicans were acting like a bunch of spoiled children. And that the Bush tax cuts should be allowed to expire, at least as they apply to the rich. Why, oh why, did he cave?

The biggest irony of all this, of course, is that the Republicans don’t actually give a damn about the deficit. When Bush borrowed billions to finance his tax cuts, throwing the budget into a deficit a scant one year after Clinton (who left a surplus) left office, there was nary a whimper from the mad hatters. (Yes, since his tax cuts put the budget into a deficit, Bush took out a loan, made the taxpayers liable for repayment, and handed the money all over to his rich benefactors.

The Republicans only ever seem to care about decreasing taxes on the rich. That’s it. That’s all. The military, Wall Street, Copyright, Patent Law, Homeland Security— everything is to protect the wealthy from the claims of the poor and lower classes. Everything must maximize the burden on working families to pay for the minimal necessary government services so that the rich can send you to die in Afghanistan, Iraq, and he, how about Iran?

Iran is there waiting. It is waiting for the vacuum that develops when America is not at war with anyone else.

Obama’s only hope for the next election– and it is NOT a dismal one– is that the Tea Party will apply their effluent enthusiasms to the primaries next year and they will nominate a Gingrich or Bachmann or Palin or Perry to run against him.

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Elizabeth Warren

This is code. This article (linked in my left column) about Elizabeth Warren, the real deal, a government official who actually wants to help people and enforce fair regulations on industry, is designed to enlighten the Republican guard while sailing over the heads of the average tax-payer, mortgage-owner, working stiff. Boehner will get it. James Dobson will get it. Someone will explain it to Sarah Palin. George Bush will see it and say to himself, “one of these days we should really do something for the little guy. Well, maybe next time.” People in the Pentagon, Homeland Security, the FBI will get it. Obama is now a genuine threat.

What Elizabeth Warren is doing is standing in the way of this continual process of extracting maximum wealth from working people and transferring it to wealthy investors and executives with large corporations and banks. This process has been going very, very smoothly since 1975. It’s not a conspiracy really: just a lot of smart people who are quite astute about how their interests are served. They are not served by interfering with the bank’s abilities to extort as much money as possible from mortgage owners who have already been nearly bled dry the last round of bamboozlement.

So the banks have long known that credit cards, with their virtually unregulated systems of fees, charges, usurious interest rates, obfuscation and confusion, are a massive profit center, while sober, serious, thoughtful mortgages are merely profitable. What if you could apply the same kind of skullduggery used the suck consumers dry on credit cards to mortgages? Extraneous fees? Check. Hidden charges? Check. Bait and switch interest rates? Check.

It’s not a conspiracy in a formal sense. It’s really very simple: if you are a banker or investor or businessman (no no — I’m an entrepreneur!) , you just call your congressman, inform him that as a civic-minded individual you’d like to make a contribution to his re-election campaign, his PAC, or his “leadership foundation” or whatever it’s disguised as, and you’d like to have lunch some time to chat about some issues that “are important to Americans”, that are “related to prosperity and a healthy business environment”, that will “encourage investment”, and “strengthen our democracy”.

You talk about excessive government regulation, like, say, some crazy bill that makes it difficult for banks to offer low cost mortgages to people without the wherewithal to sustain a mortgage of outsized proportions. This bill will deprive tens of thousands of lower-income families of the thrill of owning a home– and indentured servanthood!

You might even suggest the language to put into the bill. Why not? You’re paying for it. Have lawyers come up with a few phrases.

But now you have Elizabeth Warren, who is on to you. And who asks, why are the large corporations and banks allowed to prey on unwitting consumers with impunity? The Republicans say, why not? Warren says, an average reasonable person should be able to understand a contract he or she is signing. You’ve tricked people. You’ve ruined lives.

The Republicans will not be shy or tentative about defending these exposed necks, these arteries. They understand fully that if you give even one millimeter, people might think there is something to the implication that they are being cheated. In fact, the Republican strategy has been to respond to challenges by demanding– screeching, really– even more, and wailing about the collapse of American democracy if they don’t get it.

They must look at the concessions made by the unions in Wisconsin– before they were even threatened with decertification– and chortle: that was the big mistake. You might as well have bitten off your own scrotum and offered it to them on a saucer– the Republicans will demand your kneecaps as well.

Is it working? Does it look like Obama is going to offer any bold initiatives anytime soon?

Other than Elizabeth Warren, not much. And she will be gone soon as well. The vampires are circling looking for the slightest weakens. Unfortunately, they will probably find what they need. She is doomed.

It will start with op-ed pieces like the one in the Wall Street Journal. Then there will be sniping from the Fox weasels. Then some “scandal” of sorts, maybe some unhappy underlings reporting that she is bigoted or irrational. She is thin-skinned. She has an agenda.

The most important step will be to delegitamize her by casting her as some kind of “fanatic” or “extremist”. You want to drive her a little crazy first with constant irrational attacks and then hope she loses it for a moment in public. Then you appear, calm, rational, measured, and declare that consumer protection is too important to be entrusted to unbalanced individuals.

No, you don’t want to shoot anybody. That’s not nearly as effective.

2011-09-13 How come I was right? Geez– sometimes I scare myself. The Obama administration has given up trying to give Warren the position she deserves and she is now running for the Senate instead.

With all due respect for Senators, this is a step down, a concession to the ruthless determination of the moneyed classes to have their way with the American consumer. Here she can safely propose as many new regulations and policies as she likes: they will all be killed in committee.

PBS on Elizabeth Warren (Frontline)

The last person to seriously take on the banking / mortgage industry?

Eliot Spitzer.

I predict that Elizabeth Warren will not last out the year.

This just in (March 19):

And thus the real purpose of the hearing: to allow the Republicans who now run the House to box Ms. Warren about the ears. The big banks loathe Ms. Warren, who has made a career out of pointing out all the ways they gouge financial consumers — and whose primary goal is to make such gouging more difficult. So, naturally, the Republicans loathe her too. That she might someday run this bureau terrifies the banks. So, naturally, it terrifies the Republicans.

NY Times, March 19, 2011

He who shrieks loudest:

How is it done?

Look at NPR’s Vivian Schiller. Why on earth did she resign over the alleged scandal of a fund-raiser who had already resigned expressing his own personal opinions (which he was clear about) about the Tea Party? Why do the Republican’s get hysterical about an NPR fund-raiser having strong opinions about the Republicans while they constantly demonize Democrats, compare Obama to Hitler, and question the legitimacy of his birth? And get away with it? Because they scream louder, more hysterically than anyone else?

Why on earth? What the hell kind of insane country is this?

The Wall Street Journal Talks Jihad

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The Republican’s Strategy

Okay. Does anyone need to have it explained to them again what the Republican strategy is?

When Bush took office ten years ago amid “controversy” over whether his tax plan would create a deficit (with the liberals foolishly believing that the Republicans were sincere about wanting a balanced budget), I argued that it was actually clearly the intent of the Republicans to create as big a deficit as possible because it serves their policy wishes.

  • firstly, it gloriously appears to justify cutting expenditures on programs that benefit the average American
  • secondly, it seems to prove that governments can’t be trusted to spend wisely (even though it’s usually the Republican government that can’t balance the budget)
  • thirdly, it creates the kind of noise Republicans need to try to generate mass hysteria about some kind of “crisis” that requires draconian measures to deal with.

They did it with Reagan (who raised the deficit from 45 billion to 450 billion) and they did it with Bush (who took a surplus and turned it into a deficit in only one year) and they will do it again next year with Palin or Gingrich or whomever.

Don’t believe me? How many Republicans made it a campaign issue when Bush ran up the deficit within less than a year of taking office after Clinton left a surplus?

But the whole strategy is rarely as naked as it is in Wisconsin where Governor Walker took a budget that was virtually balanced, handed out huge tax cuts to corporations, proclaimed a crisis when the cuts put the budget in deficit, and then, after refusing the offers of the public sector unions to rescind some of their own wages and benefits, attacked their right to collective bargaining.

It’s absolutely naked: there is a war, in the U.S., of the rich upon the poor. And you watch and you wonder, in amazement, that the poor, believing some insane illusion about justice and prosperity, refuse to fight back. Why the hell should the public sector employees have rescinded their own wages and benefits so that Wisconsin corporations could get a larger tax break?

Why is no one asking stockholders and profitable corporations to make some sacrifices because times are tough and the nation has to pull together and we are at war and so on?

Corporate share of federal taxes in the 1950’s: 30%

Corporate share of federal taxes in 2009: 6.6%

What the hell’s going on here: 30% of General Electric’s massive income comes from…. lending.

GE is a bank.

And here we are again– how rich America goes after the wealth of working America. They found out there was no way around paying people to work, so they evolved ways of reabsorbing that wealth through interest rates, hidden fees, tricked out mortgages, and shifting the tax burden.

The war on Iraq mattered because of the oil. It’s an achievement to not only persuade Americans to fight an entire war to sustain your investments, but also to pay a disproportionate cost of it by borrowing the money, running the federal budget into a deficit, and cutting taxes on the rich.

Now think about that– what sector of the economy gives you the warm fuzzies about productivity and employment and enduring prosperity: manufacturing.

What GE used to be known for.

What sector of the economy makes you think about scumbags, liars, and cheats: that’s right– banking.

GE is a bank.

 

I’ll bet you think I’m kidding when I tell you that the American tax system is so twisted that it actually transfers wealth from the working classes to the rich– here’s more detail on that. General Electric, one of the most profitable corporations in American history, pays no taxes at all. In fact, the U.S. government appears to “owe” GE about $4 billion.

This is the result of various strategies. When Republicans talk about reducing the tax burden for Americans, they deliberately identify the beneficiary as “Americans” when, in fact, I doubt they have proposed a single policy in the past 30 years that benefits average working Americans. It’s code, and the corporations and the rich know understand it. As when they propose to cut the budget, partly, by laying off tax collectors. The message is, we’ll make it less likely that you’ll get caught cheating on your taxes.

GE smartly hired people from the IRS to work for them, and to lobby the government on their behalf.

America– I’m sorry if you feel bad because I think you have the dumbest voters on the planet, but think about the fact that the people you elected are asking you to make serious sacrifices for the good of the nation, because times are tough, while simultaneously reducing the tax burden on those most able to pay is mind-blowing.

You are suckers.

Is GE embarrassed at all by this? Why, in America, should they be?