You are here: Home / Archives for Ronald Reagan

Romney’s Choice

August 13, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Snake oil, anyone?

The Rasmussen poll indicated that only 37 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of Paul Ryan, so one might think that this was a suicidal choice. The Democrats are licking their chops. But all of this could well be premature. Ryan will energize the campaign and if he makes a terrific speech at the convention, which I am certain he will, Romnney’s poll numbers will go up the way John McCain’s did after Sarah Palin’s speech. But whereas Palin proved to be a liability, Ryan should be able to handle himself quite well. This could sustain the momentum.

 

Ryan’s job is to keep attacking spending, something designed to appeal to independent voters who could start to like him more. And no question, spending will be a big issue as the Republicans will assert that it’s the spending and the deficit that are causing the sluggish economy and the eight percent unemployment. Ryan will also keep up the mantra that there should be no tax increases because tax increases hurt the economy. By cutting taxes, he will argue, the economy will grow and there will be more revenue to balance the budget and pay down the debt.

 

Americans have short memories so the Democrats are going to have to remind the voters that this is

Something D-O-O economics? Voo-Doo economics?

what George H.W. Bush called “voodoo economics.” Reagan’s budget director David Stockman now blames the Republicans from the time of Reagan until today for the economic mess the country is in.

There is no question that many will buy into Ryan’s argument since very few even remember the Laffer Curve, which predicted that a cut in taxes would bring in more revenue. It was false then and it is false now. As for an austerity budget, you have only to look at Britain to see that this doesn’t work. British growth has actually decreased and they are heading towards another recession. If you’re going to cut spending, you have to do it, as Terry Sanford used to say, “under the supervision of a physician.” What he meant by that was that drastic cuts were like a crash diet–you will end up putting all the weight back on. Drastic cuts will hurt growth and lead to a bigger deficit.

 

But more than this, Ryan is not sincere in saying that Romney and the Republicans will be able to tackle the deficit. He actually favors a dramatic increase in defense spending, which shows him to be nothing but a typical congressman who plays the same old Washington game–give Lockhheed Martin whatever it wants and cozy up to its hordes of lobbyists and the generals who are capable of undermining their own Secretary of Defense. They and the hacks in the Defense Department will go through the revolving door and end up working for Lockheed even as Lockheed executives will end up with important positions in the Defense Department. The lobbyists will assure the flow of campaign contributions to congressmen who, like Ryan, do their bidding. Ryan is not a breath of fresh air. He gives off the same old stench of the Iron Triangle that runs Washington.

 

Ryan is often praised for his courage in taking on entitlements. But that is also untrue. His plan to privatize Medicare (a terrible idea in any event) will, he admits, not kick in for another ten years. Where is the savings in that? And cutting back on benefits from Social Security and extending the retirement age will for certain be met with considerable hostility. Ryan has given every indication that he is backing away from that position.

 

Paul Ryan is a phony and if the voters buy his snake oil, they will get what they deserve. The only question is who is the bigger phony, Ryan or Romney? There is a wonderful line from Preston Sturgess’s “Hail the Conquering Hero.” ”The phony aways wins until a bigger phony comes along and then he wins.” But I don’t believe Obama is a phony.  He has made mistakes and has his faults. He is a politician, with all that entails but he has done his best to represent all of the people, not special interests. The American people better wise up or they will end up in a worse condition than they are in now.

Filed Under: Politics Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Ryan & Rand

July 13, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Dude, did you listen to a single word I said?

Returning to the theme of Paul Ryan’s infatuation with Ayn Rand and his supposed adherence to her ideology there are in actuality considerable gaps between them. Even as Ryan calls for drastic cuts to balance the budget and the privatization of Medicare he supports increased military spending. Rand opposed the Vietnam War vociferously and like Ron Paul considered aggressive war incompatible with capitalism. She never would have supported increased military spending and would no doubt have denounced Ryan for his position.

 

Rand supported Civil Rights and Women’s Rights and said her favorite president was Gerald Ford because of his policy of deregulation. And whilst she said that her basic philosophy could be found in “Atlas Shrugged,” she insisted that she never expected it to be adopted as a practical matter. The most important philosophers she argued were Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. Is it possible that Ryan has read them? Not likely.

 

It was Aristotle who maintained that what he called distributive justice was essential to

Share the wealth and the burden or the shit will hit the fan.

the stability of the state. He defined it as the ”equitable distribution of the benefits and burdens of society.” Without this he insisted there would be social unrest that would threaten the well-being of the well-off. Don’t expect to find anything like this in Paul Ryan’s thinking.

 

Rand was foremost a notorious atheist who ridiculed religion unlike the Ryanites who use religion as a cover for their ideology as though they had never read the Gospels or the Acts of the Apostles which call for the sharing of the wealth. When Rand met William Buckley she told him that he “was too intelligent to believe in God.” Instead of parrying by saying that she was too intelligent not to he cut her off, became permanently hostile to her and drove her from the conservative ranks.

 

Ryan will never balance the budget by increasing military spending and keeping the tax cuts for the wealthy. His and the Republican position is essentially a hoax. It is worth remembering that Ronald Reagan campaigned on “cutting the Gordian Knot” by balancing the budget. He drastically increased military spending and produced a gigantic deficit whilst increasing the size of the government substantially. Under Bush Clinton’s surplus quickly vanished and here was a new gigantic deficit owing in good part to the war in Iraq and his tax cuts. Under Clinton and Gore the government was at its smallest since Eisenhower. Under Bush the government grew substantially with the Republicans going along with it. Where was Paul Ryan then? Ryan is peddling snake oil and is not to be trusted. Ayn Rand would have been flattered that he makes his staff read “Atlas Shrugged” but would otherwise have considered him a bad joke.

Filed Under: Politics Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Scalia, Immigration and Slavery

June 29, 2012 By Leave a Comment

I cast the Mexican wetback out!

In his dissenting opinion in the Arizona immigration case, Justice Scalia wrote: ”Notwithstanding ‘[t]he myth of an era of unrestricted immigration’, in the first 100 years of the Republic the States enacted numerous laws restricting the immigration of certain classes of aliens including convicted crimi­nals, indigents, persons with contagious diseases, and (in Southern States) freed blacks. State laws not only provided for the removal of unwanted immigrants but also imposed penalties on unlawfully present aliens and those who aided their immigration.”

 

This is extraordinary. To rely on those ancient and hateful laws of the slave South as precedent ups the ante for Scalia’s reasoning. Those laws were adopted before the Federal government made it clear that immigration was a Federal matter. It is as if he has never heard of the doctrine of preemption. Will he next rely on the Roman law of slavery to justify the reinstitution of that institution? But there may be something to his position.

Immigrants from across the Mexican border are often treated as slaves and are paid off the books at a pitiful rate for hard physical labor. Illegal or not, once they are gone, Arizona will be faced with a serious labor shortage. Farmers are already complaining that they are unable to harvest all of their crops. And before long, those anti-immigrant whites who populate the wealthy suburbs of Arizona will have no one to take care of their lawns watered with what is left of the water supply. The cooks at their dinner parties will disappear and so will the numerous other Latino flunkies who make their life easy in Scottsdale at low cost.

Romney is already changing his tune and talking about paths to legalization, no doubt the result of the

Don't sweat it, hombre, The Mittbott pays in cash.

vast expansion of his luxury home in San Diego. Who is doing all that work and who will will service it once the construction is complete? Who will take care of the pool and maintain the tennis court? We know full well. One anti-immigration pundit I know confessed to me that he uses illegals at his home in the Hamptons and that he could not do without them. It was Reagan who granted the biggest amnesty in American history, his motive being to provide corporate American with cheap labor and to break the unions. Do the conservatives really want to give all of this up?

They will rant and rave to whip up the racism of the Dumb Goyim that make up their base and then pull a fast one as they did in Arizona by drafting a law they knew the Court would strike down. The last part of the law the Court upheld will fall once it is applied and things will go back to the way they were, have no fear, amigo. Do they really care about the jobs of the lower class whites? LOL. They didn’t care in the Old South and they don’t now.

Filed Under: Politics Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Eye Of Newt

December 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Why NOT me? These other guys are nuts.

It seems like a century ago when Newt Gingrich led the charge to overthrow decades of Democratic rule in the House of Representatives using his Contract for America as the blueprint for an agenda that included balancing the budget and term limits. At the time, the Democrats were stale and liberalism an obsolete political philosophy that had hardened into political correctness. What Gingrich did was nothing less than to revolutionize American politics, turning Tim O’Neil’s maxim that all politics was local on its head. Thanks to Gingrich, all politics was now national and he ran the Congressional campaign as if it were a British parliamentary election. The Republicans won and America has never been the same.

But no sooner had he been sworn in as Speaker, he opted to accept a book deal from Rupert Murdock for millions of dollars, violating the rules of the House. Term limits vanished from the agenda. Dick Morris, Bill Clinton’s close advisor, told Clinton to adopt the Republican agenda by balancing the budget and changing the welfare system to end permanent dependence. It worked and Clinton won reelection.

Then Gingrich blew it by closing down the government. The Republicans lost numerous seats in Congress and he resigned. His legacy was his censure by Congress for ethics violations and his party’s defeat. Most wrote him off as finished in politics and it appeared as if he wrote himself off as well. His extramarital conduct became the stuff of legend and he vanished from the political scene, starting a consulting business and authoring countless books, including works of fiction. He married his last mistress and became a Catholic.

When he announced his candidacy for president, most dismissed him off as a has-been with absolutely no chance of winning. As if to confirm this, he took his wife on a cruise in the Greek Islands and most of his staff quit. He announced his intention of staying in the race but this was counted as bravado. He had no money and no organization, yet he had sufficient numbers in the polls to get into the debates, during which he actually sounded sane and he began to attract attention. The radical right, in its quest to stop Mitt Romney, first went with Michele Bachmann, whose over-the-top comments made her seem loony. Then they supported Rick Perry, who turned out to be an idiot. There was the flirtation with Herman Cain, whose campaign imploded in the wake of allegations by women of sexual misconduct. Because Ron Paul opposed aid to Israel, he was anathema to the Evangelicals so his poll numbers have remained in the low teens. Finally there was Newt, who espoused conservative values with sufficient clarity during the debates that he began to pick up support. No one was more surprised by this than Newt himself, who was running in order to keep charging thousands for speaking engagements, receive lucrative book contracts and increase the clientele of his consulting business. It came out that he has made millions as a consultant to the health-care industry and to Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac, but none of this halted his sudden rise.

This was a “new” Newt, observers said, more mature and stable, whose new-found religious faith made his past personal transgressions fade into insignificance; he had gone to confession and been forgiven.

So far, his poll numbers have not been affected by the negative ads attacking him in Iowa since most people are concerned about the economy and think Romney is a Wall Street insider, a representative of the old GOP Establishment, which the Tea Party despises. In their search for a candidate of their own, they settled on Newt, with his unadulterated support for capitalism.

But is this really a new Newt? Remember Richard Nixon’s comeback, when commentators described him as the “new Nixon”?

No, that's the old Newt. I'm the new Newt.

He was more self-assured and less strident and looked comfortable in his skin. He bested both Nelson Rockefeller and Ronald Reagan for the Republican nomination and won a close election against Hubert Humphrey. In the wake of the disastrous McGovern campaign, he won his long-sought landslide and seemed to have more power than any president in the past, including Lyndon Johnson, who had self-destructed.

But this was no new Nixon at all. It was the same old Nixon, devious, dishonest and vicious. Under pressure, he cracked and became the first president in American history to resign. Gingrich is made of the same stuff and the Republicans will nominate him at their peril. But what he’s got is an ability to throw the base raw meat the way no other candidate can. His remarks on the Palestinians show he knows how to appeal to key constituencies of the GOP in a powerful way. It would be a mistake to count him out because, like Nixon, he has a subterranean connection to the worst impulses of many Americans and is unafraid to exploit that connection. Democrats, gleeful at the idea that Newt could be the Republican nominee, should remember that they could get what they wish for and come to regret it.

Filed Under: Politics Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Hypocrisy of Scott Walker

February 22, 2011 By Leave a Comment

See what happens when you tax-and-spend?


College dropout and governor of Wisconsin Scott Walker has exempted police and firefighters from his proposed legislation to strip government workers of their right to collectively bargain.  These are the more highly paid public sector workers and they have considerable political clout with Republicans whom they generally support and to whose campaigns they contribute. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the largest outside political contributor in the 2010 elections, outspent both the Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO and backed the Democrats in a last-ditch failed effort to stave off a Republican victory.  The police and firefighters negotiate separately and do not fall under the penumbra of the Democratic Party organization.

What Walker is doing is punishing the Democratic union members and rewarding the conservative, Republican-leaning cops and firemen. This is a political shot across the bow, a warning to the AFSCME not to do the same thing in 2012.  Republican governors across the country are following him.  This reminds me of a conversation I had with an important Republican operative about budget-cutting in bankrupt Nassau County on Long Island.  I said they had to get rid of a lot of county jobs, many of them patronage positions.  His eyes popped open as he replied, “Not Republican jobs!” And not for nothing have the Republicans refused to cut the sponsorship of NASCAR since the fans and the drivers are all on the right. It would be one thing if these Republican governors meant it but they don’t.  They are doing what they always do–playing hardball and rewarding their supporters.

Sure, it's a little dangerous, but it's a good jobs program.

As someone who has followed the Republicans for some time, having at one point served as Special Counsel to the late Perry Duryea, who served as both speaker and minority leader of the New York State Assembly and was an unsuccessful Republican candidate for governor, I learned how utterly congenial they were when amongst their own.  If you met any of them at a social gathering you would be charmed by their informality and good-natured banter.  But when it comes to the interests of the Grand Old Party, watch out.  Only in Chicago do the Democrats play a similar brand of hardball.  Next to the Republicans, Democrats are patsies, which is why they were trashed in 2010 and why Nixon and Reagan beat them soundly and why George W. Bush managed to sneak in thanks to the Republicans on the Supreme Court and the machinations of Karl Rove.  George H.W. Bush had Lee Atwater who ran the Willie Horton revolving-door ad against Michael Dukakis that enabled Bush to overcome a sizeable deficit in the polls.  In case you don’t remember, Willie Horton was a black convict who was released early in Massachusetts and then committed a murder.

The only time in my memory when the Democrats pulled out all the stops was when Lyndon Johnson’s campaign ran an ad against Goldwater with a little girl plucking the petals of a flower as a nuke was going off.  The add suggested that you certainly wouldn’t want Goldwater’s finger on the button because he had once suffered a nervous breakdown. More recently Bill Clinton played hardball in that way with his negative ads against Bob Dole which were classics in their way. The Kennedys played hardball but they didn’t run ads like that.

"We must either love each other, or we must die."

The Obama campaign has said it expects to raise and spend a billion dollars in his reelection campaign. It will be run out of Chicago, which should tell you something. Obama’s new chief of staff, Bill Daley, a son of the late Richard Daley who ruled Chicago with an iron fist, is likely to add a new dimension to the Democratic stance nationally. He was a high executive at J.P. Morgan Chase and has close ties to the Chamber of Commerce.  His bother Richard Daley, Jr. is retiring as mayor of Chicago where he governed much as his father had.  Rahm Emmanuel is likely to succeed him and will be in a position to take his own brand of hardball to the mayor’s office in Chicago.

All of this means that 2012 will see much blood spilled as the Democrats try to play catch-up with the Republicans in the hardball election politics department.  Karl Rove will be back at it after helping the Republicans take back the house with attacks that were left mysteriously unanswered by the Democrats.  They were unprepared for the virulence of the onslaught that drove them from power, which suggests that they didn’t deserve to be there in the first place.

While spending and the budget will be big issues, Americans are going to want to see the benefits of belt-tightening in the form of jobs.  If the situation does not get better, voters will be hard-pressed to determine who should take blame, when the answer will quite obviously be all of them.

Filed Under: Politics Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Union and The Tea Party

February 21, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Last stand for the Cheese Heads? or for Unions everywhere?

The Republican-dominated Wisconsin legislature along with the Republican governor, Scott Walker, are on the verge of adopting legislation requiring public sector workers to contribute to their own health care and retirement.  The legislation would also strip public sector workers of their right of collective bargaining.  In response to this, at least 30,000 pubic sector workers have staged an angry rally in front of the state house.  The Tea Party, in response to this, is staging its own rally, which could give rise to a dangerous confrontation.

But if both sides were willing to listen to reason, an unlikely possibility, they would realize how this should play out.  With many non-government workers out of jobs and with union workers with jobs paying taxes to support the public sector, there is reason to believe that there is not going to be solidarity on this issue.  Taxpayers in general don’t see why public sector workers in a time of fiscal crisis should not be obliged to pay something towards their health care the way everyone else does.  The same is true of retirement.  The opposition to this is misguided.  The sense of entitlement of public sector workers is unjustified in these conditions.  And whilst many pubic sector workers are not all that well paid, there are some whose salaries are unconscionable.  School administration is one of the biggest offenders, with some on Long Island pulling down $250,000 a year.  Suffolk County, Long Island, police earn six-figure salaries with considerable benefits.  This has all contributed to the gigantic deficits state and local governments are running, the biggest one actually now in Texas, a state with no income tax.

I am Ayn Rand and even I support Unions, you dope.

By the same token, the Tea Party activists have no business opposing collective bargaining.  Ayn Rand argued from a libertarian perspective that free association was a fundamental right and that the state has no business prohibiting unions. She also supported the right to strike. She was right.  If the basic position of the Tea Party is to get the government off our backs, they cannot justify this totalitarian interference by the state with the fundamental rights of individuals to band together voluntarily.  There is a basic contradiction in this that they are unwilling to recognize.

But what if state workers go on strike to force unreasonable demands on the taxpayers who support them?  Ronald

If you expect me to pay for it, there must be more of it.

Reagan fired the air controllers in such a situation. Anyone who supports unions without reservations should have witnessed a leading teachers’ union official creating a major disturbance at the fanciest restaurant in Albany when he refused to pay his bill because he insisted the portion was too small.  Those sitting at the table with him, including some teachers, supported him. This guy is grossly overweight, a living caricature of a union boss.

The Democratic Party is dominated by the pubic sector unions and as such, is supporting the demonstrators in Wisconsin.  Similar demonstrations are planned throughout the country.  There is justification for this because the right in America has been determined to smash the unions and get rid of the National Labor Relations Act and the Fair Employment Practices Act.  Not for nothing did Reagan grant amnesty to two and a half million illegal aliens.  He did not do this out of the generosity of his heart. These were workers who were prepared to accept much lower wages than organized labor demanded.  The twelve million aliens in America are here to do the same thing.

The AFL-CIO is now a shadow of what it was when George Meany wielded power like a potentate and Lane Kirkland ran the Democratic Party for him.  The United Auto Workers, one of the most powerful unions in the country, was forced to give up benefits and take lower salaries when the industry collapsed. Because the AFL-CIO supported the Vietnam War, many young Americans saw it as the enemy.  When they nominated McGovern and defeated Hubert Humphrey, the hawkish tool of the AFL-CIO, the power of the unions in national politics was emasculated.

There is an important aspect of American labor history that most uncritical supporters of the unions are unaware of. A COVERT LIFE, the journalist Ted Morgan’s biography of Jay Lovestone, ne Jacob Liebstein, should be required reading although it received scant attention when it came out.  Lovestone was a founder of the American Communist Party but was personally expelled by Joseph Stalin at a Comintern convention in Moscow because of Stalin’s distrust of him. He escaped from Russia, fearing for his life.  Lovestone then organized a group that called themselves the “Lovestonites,” a sort of independent Communist Party of their own.  What happened after they disbanded changed the course of labor history.  While Lovestone was serving as the head of the AFL-CIO international division, CIA recruited him.  James Jesus Angleton, the head of CIA counter-intelligence became his case officer and close friend.  The union allowed itself to be used for various CIA operations around the world.  In Africa, it supported the Pan African Congress in order to undermine the African National Congress.  It was the PAC that organized the demonstrations at Sharpeville that led to the infamous massacre by white police and troops.  The demonstrations were supposed to show up the ANC, which had refused to participate.

The strong support of the AFL-CIO for the Vietnam War was an outgrowth of Lovestone’s power as a CIA operative.  Many of the anti-war activists ultimately became libertarian entrepreneurs with no use for the unions and with considerable distrust of the state.  The libertarian movement in America is pro-capitalist and decidedly anti-war.  They have left the unions in the dust.  The recent public sector union demonstrations could, like the mineworkers strike in Britain, be their last hurrah.

Filed Under: Politics Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Three Hundred Billion Barrels Short

February 10, 2011 By Leave a Comment

What's 300 billion barrels between friends?


Whilst all eyes have been on Egypt, with the reactionary regimes in the region pressing Obama to maintain the status quo there lest the revolution spread to them, WikiLeaks has revealed what is probably the biggest story of the moment–that Saudi Arabia has been overestimating its oil reserves by three hundred billion barrels.  Not only has Saudi Arabia reached peak production but production will actually decline in the coming years.

Energy and oil analysts have called this dramatic revelation a wake up call. They have denounced American politicians for behaving as though America’s oil- based economy could go on indefinitely and for not coming up with a comprehensive energy policy.  Perhaps they have not noticed but this is precisely what Obama has been attempting to do. The Republicans? They have had their heads in the sand and their hands outstretched to the oil companies for contributions. These monies are kicked back to the oil companies in the form of federal subsidies.  Dick Cheney notoriously refused to promote an energy policy that was not run by the oil companies themselves, having himself been the CEO of oil giant Halliburton.  The Republicans have made it clear they will thwart any effort by Obama to implement an energy policy not dictated by oil interests.

China is racing ahead of America in developing alternative sources of energy, engaging in lucrative contracts with German wind turbine technology companies and developing its wind energy sector while America lags behind in the energy dark ages.  The powers that be in America are more concerned with prosecuting Julian Assange than paying attention to the disturbing information WikiLeaks has posted with regard to Saudi Arabia’s oil supply.  Until recently, when any member of OPEC was short in its required production, Saudi Arabia would increase its production to make up the difference thus stabilizing world oil prices.  In the near future the Saudis will be unable to continue this practice which means that the price of oil is bound to increase.  To mitigate this, conservation will become a vitally important part of any comprehensive energy policy along with the development of wind and solar technology.

Made in China

While some insist that nuclear energy must be part of such a policy, the cost of nuclear power plants is beyond the scope of private enterprise. Because the Tea Party-dominated Republican Party is opposed to further government expenditures, it is difficult to see how America will be capable of expanding its nuclear energy resources.

Were it not for WikiLeaks the Saudis would have been able to perpetrate the myth of their vast oil reserves, something almost certainly known by American oil companies and CIA, most probably in collusion with them to protect the importance of the powerful American oil companies.  When the last CEO of EXXON-MOBILE retired, he left with a golden parachute of $250 million dollars, which may explain why the oil interests do not have any sense of emergency with regard to alternative energy sources.  Chevron and EXXON keep running ads about how they understand the problem but they have given no clear statement about how much they actually spend on research and development in transforming themselves into comprehensive energy companies.

Not long after Jimmy Carter was elected president, he presciently ordered the Department of Energy to begin developing clean energy sources. This was in the wake of the oil embargo that drove oil prices up dramatically thereby inconveniencing American consumers who were obliged to wait on long lines to get fuel for their cars. I am a man of a certain age; I remember this. Let me assure you, it was not fun.  But Ronald Reagan ridiculed Carter for wearing a cardigan under his jacket while addressing the nation from the White House, famously quipping, “We are not going to freeze in the dark.”  We were Americans he told us, and this was not something we were obliged to accept.

Instead, Reagan promoted breeder reactor technology at the Department of Energy, a project that never got off the ground because of the cost and serious safety hazards.  Instead, he turned back to oil, pronouncing that America would “always protect the House of Saud.”  And protect them America did, even though young Saudis increasingly resented the Saudi royal family, staging a serious protest supported by religious leaders who called from the minarets for a demonstration that took place out of sight of the Americans. One of the chief opponents of the Saudi Arabian royal family proved to be Osama Bin Laden, the founder of Al Qaeda, the perpetrator of the 9/11 attacks.  Bin Laden’s Saudi handler was Prince Turki, who served as chief of Saudi intelligence and then as the Saudi ambassador to the United States. Wealthy Saudis have contributed to Al Qaeda with money made by American purchases of Saudi oil.

Don't gimme that hippy-dippy, cars-running-on-fryer-grease bullshit!

This could all be a blessing in disguise if Obama strongly makes the case that America cannot rely on Saudi oil or oil from other Middle Eastern countries. This is not only because of the political instability but because the oil is starting to run out.  The American people need desperately to understand that unless America adopts a comprehensive energy policy, the future will become increasingly perilous.

Filed Under: Politics Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Recession & Unemployment

January 11, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Hire workers? Nah, I'd rather light my stoagie with it!

With American corporations awash in cash, why are they not hiring?

The answer has several components.  First, companies have engaged in cost-cutting measures, including the layoff of workers,  that have increased profit margins.  The problem with this is that the layoffs perpetuate the unemployment because those who are out of work are no longer consumers, reducing demand.  Second, the corporations are playing chicken with the America workers.  They won’t start hiring until the workers accept lower wages and fewer, if any, benefits.  The corporations are in the driver’s seat because of surplus labor engendered by the recession.

It wasn’t always so.  After the Second World War America emerged as the world’s only economic super power.  Fueled by the defense industry that went into high gear after the war because of the Cold War the economy boomed with workers finding good paying jobs.  Those making decent money at the defense plants had the cash to buy cars, creating more jobs in Detroit among the unchallenged Big Three automakers.  The powerful unions, such as the UAW, negotiated new contracts with ever-increasing pay and benefits and if they didn’t get what they wanted, they went on strike.  This was no longer a radical union movement.  Samuel Gompers and his successors ousted the radicals and developed what Gompers described as the objective or organized labor “more.”  And more was what they got.   Steel workers, autoworkers, miners and others moved into the middle class, enjoying new homes, appliances and automobiles.  There was no outside competition and life was good.   America, not the Soviet Union, became a workers’ paradise, with the wealthiest Americans paying taxes at a ninety percent rate, which created a more egalitarian society.

But when the European nations and Japan recovered from the war and  began to assert their economic muscle, American business found itself less able to compete  because of the high pay and lavish benefits of the American workers.  Foreign cars  that were cheaper than their American counterparts flooded the market. As market share shrank, the American car makers could not make adjustments because of the contracts that bound them to an ever higher pay scale and benefits like health care, which became ever more expensive.

Featuring the hit, "How to Compete in the Global Economy!"

With The Great Recession and the collapse of the American auto industries and other manufacturers, a new day dawned.  Foreign car companies opened non-union plants in America, paying lower wages than the Big Three with no benefits.  The workers were responsible for their own health insurance.   The use of TARP money to rescue the auto industry led to major compromises by the unions, with reduced wages and with health care covered by a union fund.

But other businesses that were never in bad shape saw the opportunity to become leaner and meaner to be better able to compete in the global market. When they weren’t shipping jobs overseas, they were cutting back on jobs in America. Their argument was that they were obligated to do so because of their responsibility to their shareholders to produce profits.  Their position was strengthened by the influx of immigrants prepared to work for less.  Not for nothing did Reagan grant amnesty to twelve million illegal aliens.  Corporate America was on its way to do what Eisenhower said was impossible.  They were breaking the backs of the unions.

Today, allied with the radical right, the Republican Party is engaged in a process to turn back the clock to pre-New Deal America when there was no Fair Employment Practices Act or National Labor Relations Act.  Their unified goal is a union-free America with capitalism triumphant.  With Communism defeated, the class war was over and the capitalists had won.   Capitalism had almost sunk itself in the financial meltdown but because of its political power, it not only survived but also prospered thanks to the bailouts paid for by the taxpayers who have not benefited at all.

America is now radical-free.  The liberals are in dire straits and the move to the right is gaining, not losing momentum by virtue of a brilliant propaganda machine that has scared the American public into believing they are on the road to the serfdom of socialism.  The fear generated by the campaign against health care reform was unprecedented in American history, with the American Establishment covertly behind the Tea Party movement.  For example, C.  Boyden Gray III, George H.W.Bush’s counsel and a scion of a blueblood family, became a founder of Freedom Works, the Republican-run organization that has funded the Tea Party in America.  Gray is also part of the Western Imperium foreign policy Establishment, also no accident.   America’s Western European allies, including Britain, are in the process of dismantling the Welfare State that had been used as a way to defeat Communism.  The wealthiest in these societies, including America, are in great shape, getting tax cuts here while Congress cuts benefits to those less well off.  With a defeated and disheartened populace, there is no danger of social unrest.  This is the new normal.  Perhaps it is only all those out-of-work law school graduates who might conspire to upend this new normal as a way to get rid of their enormous debt.   Lawyers are often the revolutionaries–John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Lenin, Castro.  Somewhere, they are plotting the next revolution.

Filed Under: Politics Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Unfair to Bismarck

January 5, 2011 By Leave a Comment

"I hate to tell you I told you so, but..."

Largely because of F.A. Hayek’s THE ROAD TO SURFDOM, the legacy of Bismarck is in ill-repute. His “cradle to the grave” policies of providing a safety net to all Germans is somehow considered the origin of the destruction of human liberty.  But there is another interpretation of Bismarck that contradicts this and America would do well to heed its lessons.

Bismarck orchestrated the unification of the German Empire and became Chancellor under Wilhelm I. He detested Socialism so much that he drove Socialists from their homes.  His anti-Socialist Laws outlawed the Social Democratic Party.  He then concluded that the only effective way to defeat Socialism was through a limited form of self-government that provided sufficiently for its citizens in a capitalist society so they would never be tempted to adopt collectivism as a solution to their problems.  He had the good fortune to have an ally in the Kaiser, who was relatively enlightened and who trusted Bismarck.  When the Kaiser died, Frederick III, a representative of the great, now largely forgotten German liberal tradition succeeded him.  He had no desire to engage in aggressive war and renounced any intention by Germany to build a large and powerful navy, something Great Britain feared.  Germany was becoming a brilliant success, a leader in industry and commerce with the world’s greatest universities.  Tragically, Frederick died of cancer after ninety days and Willy, the one with the withered arm and a temper, succeeded him as Kaiser Wilhelm II.  One of his first acts was to fire Bismarck, who had warned him against starting another war in Europe.  He memorably remarked, “If another war starts in Europe, it will be because of some silly thing in the Balkans.”

The road to serfdom was not Bismarck’s fault.  Willy was responsible, bungling Germany into the Great War, leading to defeat and the ultimate rise of Hitler and Nazi Germany.  Unlike Bismarck, Hitler imposed a command model economy.  Had Frederick lived, none of this would have happened.

For a while it looked as if Germany was going to win.  The Germans humiliated Russia and the

Thanks, Willy!

Russians blamed the Czar who became hugely unpopular, ultimately enabling Lenin to stage the Bolshevik revolution.  Creating the world’s first Communist state, he set about nationalizing private property and creating a global threat to Capitalism.

It was in this environment that the Russian Communists seized Ayn Rand’s father’s pharmacy.  She never forgot that.  More than Hayek, Rand’s condemnation of any kind of state action, including social welfare, shaped the minds of countless Americans. For Rand, the solution to the problems of the human condition was laissez-faire capitalism.  Her influence can be felt very much today amongst the Tea Party activists who condemn every program offered by Obama as Socialist.  He is denounced as a Marxist, determined to lead America on the road to serfdom.  It was Glenn Beck’s calling attention to Hayek’s THE ROAD TO SERFDOM that drove it to number one on Amazon.com, which surely would have delighted the old-school Austrian gentleman. But they are wrong and Bismarck was right.

Capitalism can only succeed if there is a safety net for the citizens of a country in which a free market economy prevails.  Unemployment insurance and Social Security both help in a time of economic contraction and recession by enabling great numbers of people to keep spending.  Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s most conservative prime minister, supported the National Health as well, recognizing that in the end it is cheaper than having vast numbers of people unable to work because of illness. Ronald Reagan, America’s most conservative president and a close friend of Margaret Thatcher, endorsed the safety net.  He worked closely with the Democrats in Congress, particularly Patrick Moynihan, in rescuing Social Security.

In this context it should be remembered that Hayek supported Social Security as well, even going so far as to say “probably nothing has done so much harm to the liberal cause as the wooden insistence of some liberals on certain rules of thumb, above all the principle of laissez-faire capitalism.” (Here he is referring to the 19th-century free market liberalism). Hayek writes that the government has a role to play in the economy through the monetary system (a view that he later withdrew), work-hours regulation, social welfare, and institutions for the flow of proper information. Hayek even dedicated THE ROAD TO SERFDOM to “my fellow socialists.” So, to a certain extent, Hayek argues against the very basic premises of his own book.   In any event, it would appear that Beck and his ilk have never read it. Which is terribly unfair to Bismark… and to America.

Okay, I didn't read the damn thing! It's really long and confusing!

Filed Under: Politics Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Progressives, Go On Strike!

December 21, 2010 By Leave a Comment

It is getting extremely tiresome opposing the Right. They seem to have a total grip on the American consciousness with Americans

Progressives Shrugged

believing their allegations that the health care reform is a government takeover of medicine, that Obama was not born in the United States or is a racist who hates white people, or is a socialist.  They also believe the myth that cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans will end up balancing the budget, notwithstanding that this was tried by Reagan and George W. Bush and failed.  Einstein said that insanity was doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, but Americans don’t seem to grasp that.

Consequently, there is but one solution and that is for progressives to go on strike. Don’t say another word.  Don’t support another candidate.  Don’t contribute any more money.  Refuse to participate. The result will be that the Republicans and their Tea Party allies will control the country without opposition.  Who will Rush Limbaugh be able to rail against?  Or, for that matter, Glenn Beck, Hannity, Ann Coulter. Bill O’Reilly, Laura Ingraham and the rest of the rat pack of the Right.  Let the Republicans redistrict so they have no opposition in Congress.

The result will be that the Republicans will not only run Washington but most of the state governments as well.  Watch and see what will happen.  They will run everything into the ground, the deficit will explode, unemployment will get worse and all sorts of benefits like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security will vanish.  People will be yelling and screaming. Where is the opposition?  Why are they being allowed to get away with this?  But don’t respond. They will get what they deserve and will have no one to be angry with but themselves.

At some point this anger will turn into blind rage.  They will look everywhere for some hope but will find none.   They will start begging progressive Democrats to run for office but there will be no response.  But because these Americans are also couch potatoes, they won’t get off their butts to do anything themselves.  They will stuff their mouths with fast food and get fatter while the super-rich, the hedge fund managers, the bankers, the top one percent, will own ninety nine percent of the wealth. They will have nothing more to spend it on.  They will all have fleets of private jets, seven homes, all the clothes they can possibly wear, all the best wines they can store in their cellars and all the art they can possibly put anywhere, including in storage.   They will be paying zero taxes. What then?  They will have nothing to fear. There will be no one threatening them.  There will be no new way to be greedy and selfish and no new way to show off.  They will die of boredom and their spoiled rotten children will all become drug addicts at the most expensive schools.  And there will be no need to fork up fortunes to back phony candidates to beat back the reformers, and no need to pay lobbyists.

And there will also be no environmental movement, so everything will go to hell entirely.  Carbon emissions will increase.  Water will become more polluted. Farmland will disappear. The Koch brothers will have nothing more to spend their money on as there will be no more environmental measures to defeat. They and their ilk will start to develop more environmentally related diseases.  Their fortunes notwithstanding, their quality of life will deteriorate.  At this point, Michael Bloomberg’s net wealth will be forty five billion dollars and he will personally own eight private golf courses around the world.

Had enough?

Because there will be no more government assistance for college, millions of unemployed young people will be milling about, smoking weed.  They will start selling more drugs to support themselves and the country will be like China after Britain imposed all that opium on them.  People will be so drugged up that very few will be able to work.  Crime will be rampant, with gangs taking over cities and imposing their will because, without taxes, there will be no police.

The economy will grind to a complete halt but Mitch McConnell and John Boehner will rule unopposed.  McConnell, destroying Ronald Reagan’s legacy, will kill START and enrage Russia, starting a new arms race. The Sarah Palin-Newt Gingrich administration will hold gigantic public prayer meetings that will be mandatory.  People will be praying in the streets in their tattered clothes and with only garbage to eat. But that will be readily available as without budgets, cities will be unable to pay sanitation workers and the refuse will pile up.

With the entire country flat on its back, the progressives can then come out of the woodwork and tell everyone that they are prepared to save them.  On condition that Fox goes off the air as well as Rush Limbaugh, that the leaders of the banks and the Republican Party are arrested and sent to prison and the key is thrown away by an enlightened progressive president. It’s that or it’s no deal.  The troops will be finally pulled out of Afghanistan and Iraq and the new Congress will slash the military budget in half.  There will be a public option for health care and gays will serve in the military with honor. Minorities will be able to go to better schools and colleges. That will all be great until everything is fine again.  No more deficits, the debt paid down and unemployment down to four percent. But at that point, the Right will resurface and attack the progressives for creating socialism. And the American people?  Why they will believe them, of course, and it will all start again.

Filed Under: Politics Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,
« Older Posts