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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.

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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.

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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.

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The Contradiction of Paul Ryan

June 19, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Help for ordinary Americans? Ryan Shrugged.

Republican Congressman Paul Ryan worships Ayn Rand and makes any new staff member read “Atlas Shrugged.” His campaign to abolish safety net programs has little to do with a desire to balance the budget and everything to do with his political philosophy based on Rand’s hatred of the state. How his plan to privatize Medicare will go over in the election remains to be seen. He also wants to abolish Social Security in gradual steps.

 

Yet Ryan, who comes from a wealthy family, received his college education at Miami University in Ohio, a state research institution. He benefitted from the low tuition that a state-run university was able to provide him. Would he abolish Miami University? Someone should put that question to him. In this respect he is not unlike the Tea Partiers who demand that the government keep its hands off their Medicare.

 

In a larger context, the underlying issue is what does “smaller government” mean? Does it mean creating a much more efficient government that makes better use of taxpayers’ money or does it mean abolishing the safety net. Libertarian hero Noble Prize-winning economist F.A.Hayek supported Social Security. What he opposed was a centrally planned economy, which is quite different from abolishing Medicare and Social Security. There are ways to increase funding for these programs without gutting them, such as extending upward the income level at which Social Security taxes are collected making those who make their money from buying and selling securities pay Social Security taxes and raising the Medicare taxes on those who can afford to pay more.

 

Ryan’s position is untenable. He would cut back or abolish essential programs while keeping the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. The

Supply side plans via Paul Ryan.

argument for his position is the old Republican “supply side” economics that was tried and failed. This is all Ryan has to offer and it will not work. Under Reagan and Bush this approach created huge deficits and this will be the result once again. Obama’s deficits have been designed to prevent a depression and he is amenable to cuts to the budget to bring it under control. Instead of working with him, Ryan advocates policies that will harm average Americans. That, of course, doesn’t mean they won’t vote for it. As Churchill once remarked, “the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”

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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.

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A Culture Of Death

September 20, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Vote Perry!

During the first debate among the Republican candidates for president, the moderator began a question to Rick Perry, the governor of Texas with this: “During your eleven years as governor of Texas, you have overseen 234 executions.”  Before he could go any further, thunderous applause filled the Reagan library, lasting several minutes. At the next debate, co-sponsored by the Tea Party Express and CNN, the moderator posed this question to the panel of candidates: “Suppose a young man without health insurance is hit by a car requiring six months hospitalization. How could his expenses by paid for or should we just allow him to die?” Shouts of “Let him die!” filled the auditorium.

Those responses, one suspects, were not a reflection of a small minority of Americans. Paul Ryan’s plan to privatize Medicare and Rick Perry’s attacks on Social Security have actually not affected public opinion as liberals have hoped. To the contrary, polls show a growing advantage for Republicans in a generic election for both houses of Congress. And the attacks on Perry from the other candidates have caused no slippage for him in the polls. If anything, they seem to have increased his lead.

What is one to make of this new culture of death that is sweeping America? It demonstrates a total lack of empathy, which means that individuals are concerned only when something affects them directly. I knew a Republican politician who opposed government involvement in health care until a close relative required round-the- clock dialysis. He then sponsored a bill in the state legislature to provide financial support for dialysis, making it virtually free in the state.

There is, one suspects, an element of racism in all of this. White people across the country increasingly resent paying for services provided to indigent blacks because they believe they are shiftless and responsible for their own situation. This goes largely unsaid, except by Hillary Clinton during the desperate hours of her losing candidacy when she went around the country shouting about “hard working white people.” It was a shameless appeal to race that almost pulled it out for her, and yet she remains an American liberal icon.

When Roosevelt was pushing for his New Deal legislation, one of his most important allies was the powerful racist senator from Mississippi, Theodore G. Bilbo, who would go on to argue for the deportation of all blacks in America to Africa. That proved too much even for a Senate that continually held up civil rights legislation and he was forced to leave the Senate. Still, Roosevelt found in him a useful ally because the alliance indicated to the white population that these programs were designed to help white people. Roosevelt never made any move towards civil rights and even his wife, the progressive Eleanor Roosevelt, kept saying that it was too soon to do anything about that. It is only when those programs start to benefit racial minorities that resistance arises.

The one policy of Rick Perry’s that is commendable and which could cost him support is his backing of the rights of children of undocumented immigrants to attend public schools and their further right to attend state universities at in-state tuition. When attacked for this, Perry countered by saying that these were “human beings who deserve to be treated as human beings.” But before one ascribes this to Perry’s munificence, it should be noted that Texas has a burgeoning Mexican population and that his policies are wildly popular with them. He also knows that for a Republican to win the presidency, he must be able to appeal to Hispanics, who are increasingly turned off by the Democratic Party. There is an element of race involved in this as well since many Hispanics resent the power of blacks in the Democratic Party, and choose to identify with the whites.

Adolph Hitler declared himself to be a socialist but he had an interesting spin on this term. He insisted that

Hurry up and die, would you? USA! USA!

socialism was fundamentally about race. If a country is made up of a “volk,” a homogeneous population in which everyone identifies with everyone else like a family, then socialist policies can succeed because the people will want to care for each other. His socialist policies of job creation, through public works, housing, free universities and medical care were highly popular because the German racial state was taking care of its own. In “Being and Time,” Martin Heidegger suggested that humans are different from other species because they have a sense of time, leading them to understand that their time on earth is limited. Because of this, he concluded, they care for each other. Heidegger also concluded that the best person in a nation was the soldier, because he was willing to sacrifice everything, including his life, for his people. When Heidegger bought into National Socialism and became a disciple of Hitler, it was because he shared the notion that caring is linked with race. If you got rid of all the people of color in America, the programs the Tea Party now is attacking would once again become popular. Racialism is at the heart of the Republican Party, notwithstanding several conservative blacks in the party who are treated like pets, tokens to show that Republicans are not racists. These are blacks that identify with the oppressor, much as Jewish Majority Leader Eric Cantor identifies with a party that is largely anti-Semitic. If this is the direction the nation is heading, the future will see much more of this as it becomes commonplace to abolish federal programs that were designed to provide a safety net for Americans. The Bismarckean compromise of Social Democracy to defeat Socialism, which Bismarck hated, is not appreciated in America, which lacks a Social Democratic tradition, so it should come as no surprise that there is support for abolishing the safety net. But it should be remembered that Bismarck invented Social Democracy for a racially pure Germany, a far cry from multi-racial America.

There are forty million people in America classified as poor, with over fifteen percent of the population living below the poverty line. Alas, America has no Jonathan Swift to write America’s version of “A Modest Proposal.” This country can’t even come up with brilliant satire.

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The Curse Of West Texas

September 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment

West Texas Cowboy, just like "W", but without the brains.

When some people lament the possibility of yet another Texan as president, they need to consider another aspect of this provenance. The problem is not Texas. Ron Paul is a member of the House of Representatives from Texas. The great Barbara Jordon was from Texas. No, the problem is West Texas. Lyndon Johnson was from West Texas and George W. Bush invented himself as a West Texan. And Rick Perry is from West Texas.

West Texas is notorious for producing recalcitrant and bellicose men. They have that swagger that Bush so exemplified, the cowboy walk that makes them look as through they are headed for a shootout. They are uncompromising and stubborn and brook no criticism. When their minds are made up, they are made up. Around the rest of Texas, they are both loathed and admired because of their combination of strength and recalcitrance.

Lyndon Johnson, whose strength enabled him to get the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, Medicare and Medicaid through Congress, also got America deep into the Vietnam War. He dressed down military officers who came to see him in the White House if he didn’t like what they had to say, making them stand throughout the meeting and then summarily dismissing them. For all his greatness, he could be mean, vindictive and petty. He liked to be seen riding his horse, high in the saddle. The result of this West Texas mentality was that there was no criticizing him for what he was doing in Vietnam. The CIA so feared him that they doctored the body count so he wouldn’t come down on them. In a once famous incident, when Johnson was touring Vietnam, an officer said to him, “Mr. President, this is your helicopter,” indicating the one Johnson was to board. Johnson’s reply was, “Son, they are all my helicopters.” And Johnson, much as Bush won the presidency by a few votes because of what was fundamentally a hoax, won election to the Senate from Texas by a handful of votes in what most regard as a fixed election, leading Texans to call him “Landslide Lyndon.” Johnson’s lawyer in that episode was Abe Fortas, whom Johnson later appointed to the Supreme Court and was his choice for Chief Justice until Fortas had to resign because of ethics problems

Pete Seegers’s famous song performed at Woodstock, “The Big Muddy” summed up Johnson’s incredible stubbornness, even when reality was staring him in the face. He kept leading the country in a disastrous war that could not be won unless he nuked North Vietnam. All his bombing raids in the north came to nothing.

Next, there was George W. Bush, who was so determined to be seen as a West Texan that he began speaking

I say, I say, I say, vote fer me!!!

like one and wearing cowboy boots to erase his Andover, Yale and Harvard Business School patina as the scion of a wealthy and powerful New England family. George H. W. Bush, who settled in Texas, was forever the New England patrician and Bush wanted none of it. He managed to become president after a fraudulent election that he “won” by some three hundred-and-something votes in Florida, giving him a victory in the Electoral College while he lost the popular vote. When his “win” was confirmed by a weird Supreme Court decision that went entirely along party line affiliation (except for Stevens who went with the Democrats because he thought Gore would win and name him Chief Justice) Bush morphed into Johnson and got America into the war in Iraq, dismissing General Shinseki for telling him he was going in with too few troops. Like Johnson, there was no talking to “mission accomplished” Bush. George Tenet, the Director of CIA, was so terrified of him that he made his famous “slam dunk” response when Bush asked him whether or not Saddam Hussein had WMDs. And Bush was every bit as arrogant as Johnson, ordering Carl Rove to hang up his jacket at cabinet meetings. The argument that Cheney was really the boss was untrue. Bush was like Henry V, determined to invade France, a project that while successful in the short run, proved to be a disaster in the long run. He ordered the disbanding of the Iraqi army, guaranteeing armed resistance, arranged for Iraq to be governed like a colony, with Americans holding key government positions and George Bremer functioning as a Viceroy. Only when the Iraqis themselves demanded elections did he make democracy the objective of the invasion, after it was clear there really were no WMDs after all.

Which brings us to Rick Perry, the West Texan par excellence. Even in a well-tailored suit, he still wears

Nuke Iran, Yeee Haaawww!!!!

cowboy boots and a gigantic cowboy belt buckle. You have to know exactly where this dude is coming from. And this one has a chip on his shoulder every bit as big as Johnson’s or Bush’s. Johnson’s chip was that the eastern elite looked down on his as a yokel. He knew full well that Jacqueline Kennedy referred to him as “Colonel Cornpone” behind his back. He went to South West Texas State Teachers College and he believed all the Ivy League liberals looked down on him no matter what he achieved. The anger in him was palpable and it exacerbated his aggressiveness.

W has an anger that cannot be assuaged. He knows full well that his parents’ hopes rested with older brother Jeb, but only when Jeb failed to win election to the United States Senate from Texas, did W emerge as the second choice. After he became president, he never consulted with his father and remained distant from him. That rage, like Johnson’s, led him to adopt a bellicose foreign policy in which he offended most of the world and launched a war because of made-up reasons, much as Johnson made up the Tonkin attack on American vessels that led to the resolution justifying military force in Vietnam.

Rick Perry is a true West Texas Aggie, a product of Texas A& M, a university that bears the brunt of “Aggie’ jokes based on the presumed stupidity of its undergraduates, many from, you guessed it, West Texas. When Perry said that if the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, were to come to Texas, “We would treat him real ugly,” that was Perry in a nutshell. It must be remembered that when Johnson was Majority Leader of the Senate, he proclaimed in a speech that “American boys should not fight Asian boys’ wars.” But as president, he filed that away somewhere in the limbo of a desk drawer and sent five hundred thousand American troops to Vietnam. Perry will behave in like manner. And much like Johnson, he will appoint his cronies and contributors to high positions.  Perry knows the elites in Texas look down on him because he grew up dirt poor and is an Aggie. The Yalie Bushes have nothing but contempt for him and he knows it.

Rick Perry says America should never intervene militarily unless it is “absolutely in America’s national interest.” Already, the old Bush neo-cons are attaching themselves to him, plotting a war with Iran. Perry will really get off on that. He will use the threat of Iran’s nukes as a justification. Bill Keller and Thomas Friedman, the elites of the New York Times, supported the war in Iraq, calling for the invasion from their roosts at the top of the elitist tower. Now, they say how sorry they are that they ever did that. Keller uses his reluctance to look like a Latte drinking liberal defeatist as his justification. But once the reasons for the war include not only those Iranian nukes, but also the existential threat to Israel, they will be egging Perry on. And he will lap it up, his six shooters in each hand blazing away. If America elects another West Texan, it will get what  it deserves.

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YOUTH OF ISRAEL-FULL OF LIFE

August 2, 2011 By Leave a Comment

You get everything, we get nothing? That doesn't work for us.

The youth of Israel are full of life, putting young Americans to shame.  They are protesting the great disparity of wealth under the Netanyahu regime, which has seen stocks of the biggest Israeli companies increase in value by three hundred percent . While incomes of the great majority of Israelis have stagnated and prices from housing to cottage cheese have soared, Israeli youth have created a tent city in the middle of Tel Aviv and are making their voices heard.  One hundred and fifty thousand young Israelis recently demonstrated in Jerusalem, the largest protest in Israel’s history.

Denouncing “vulgar capitalism,” they point to the privatization of major companies, which has put them into the hands of a few wealthy Israelis, as typical of the state of affairs in Israel now.  There are six thousand millionaires and billionaires and, much like America, everyone else is struggling.  Ridiculed by the Israeli Establishment as a bunch of college kids reenacting Woodstock, the protesters are now supported by eighty percent of the population.  In a panic, Netanyahu canceled a scheduled trip to Poland to lobby against the recognition of a Palestinian state, promising change.  Opposition leader, Tzipi Livni, who once called for the privatization of “anything that moved,” has now repented.

On the surface, Netanyahu’s neo-liberal reforms have been successful.  Official unemployment is at five and a half percent, a remarkable figure.  Israel now has a favorable balance of payments, exporting more than it imports, when in the past it relied on foreign contributions to make up for its chronic deficits.  But on the negative side, twenty-four percent of Israelis live below the poverty line, with many living in squalor.  The growing ultra orthodox Jewish population is exacerbating the problem.  The men don’t work and the women, with little education, take low-paying, menial jobs.  They have gigantic families with ill-educated children who attend orthodox schools that have a medieval curriculum.  They also don’t serve in the military.

Because of their growing numbers, the reactionary ultra orthodox have a powerful political presence. They are determined to undermine the Israeli secular society that has created a modern state and oppose negotiations with the Palestinians, alleging a biblical mandate over all of the West Bank.  With Likud pandering to them and the center Kadima reluctant to take them on, the future of Israel is seriously in doubt.  This makes the tent city in Tel Aviv and the demonstrations all the more significant because the young people participating in them are predominantly secular.  They are fed up with what Israel has become.  While few of them wish to return to the socialism of the past, they are disgusted by the disparity of wealth and the arrogance of the rich.  Israel is no longer a family that takes care of its own, as it was intended to be.  Instead, it has become a mirror image of contemporary America, in which a handful of people control ninety percent of the wealth.

At a time when “liberal” is a dirty word in America, young Israelis are calling for an Israeli New Deal to create a more just society.  One can only hope they succeed because only a just Israel is an Israel that can survive and flourish.  It is also the only Israel that can come to terms with the Palestinians instead of living with the illusion of  “Greater Israel.”

But while young Israelis are demonstrating that they have the power to be heard, young Americans remain largely phlegmatic

American protest? Can't you see I'm busy!

and apathetic, even as their options become increasingly limited.  Burdened by college debt, they put their dreams on hold to take any job they can find and keep quiet.  Many of them don’t have health insurance, whereas in Israel everyone is still covered for free, something the reactionaries have not dared to alter.  Young Americans without college degrees can’t find jobs at all and because college tuitions are rising, more are electing not to go. Young blacks are dropping out of high school in large numbers, assuring the creation of a permanent underclass. Latinos are the group suffering most in the American economy as they lose jobs and can’t find others.

What is missing in America is a sense of solidarity.  The phony ideology of the right, promoted largely by cynical, wealthy Americans like the Koch brothers, is hypocritical.  These self-proclaimed conservatives think they can pay down the debt and balance the budget while increasing the defense budget and supporting the wars that have cost thousands of lives and have drained the wealth of the country, contributing mightily to the great budget deficit . The only person on the right who makes sense is Ron Paul, who has called for an end to the wars and the cutting of the defense budget.   A staunch libertarian, he has also called for gradual reforms of entitlements, unlike Paul Ryan, who has called for the privatization of Medicare.

Young Americans need to emulate the youth of Israel.  Youth of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your stupid governments.

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JIMMY CARTER, MICHELE BACHMANN AND THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT

July 15, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Praise Jesus! And pick me!

When liberals complain about religion entering the political sphere, they forget where it all started. Democrat Jimmy Carter, a “born again” Christian, courted the evangelicals relentlessly.  He would march on stage as a band played a Baptist hymn, as though he were Jesus incarnate.  As he was doing this, he got his friend, Burt Lance, to get his bank to lend his campaign millions of dollars, giving him a leg up on the competition.  The authorities forced Lance out of banking for life, but Carter became president.

Not to be outdone, Ronald Reagan, never particularly religious, was seen praying on the campaign trail, his eyes closed tight, surrounded by a pack of dumb goyim who thought he meant it.  But it was Ralph Reed who became the master of this strategy.  A protégé of Pat Robertson, he turned Christian politics into a lucrative business. Years later, it was Karl Rove who organized the Christians into a potent religious force and had Bush blabbing about his conversion.  It worked and Bush snuck in.

Now the liberals are in a furor over Michele Bachmann, who manages to wear the mantle of the Christian right, which is in its usual snit over gay marriage, while joining the neo-McCarthyist right in denouncing Obama as an anti-American socialist. She has called for an investigation of those in Congress who are, in her words, “un-American.” Her response to the passage of the gay marriage bill in New York State was to announce that she would support a constitutional amendment banning it.  She is also the new darling of the Tea Party, calling for drastic cuts in the budget while keeping the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy.

What is fascinating about Bachmann is that both she and her husband, a “Christian therapist,” were ardent supporters of Jimmy Carter and worked to get him elected.  Carter was first in redefining the role of government, declaring the old days of “big government” over well before Reagan.  With his ostentatious conservative Christianity, he created the very ideology now prominent on the right.  But when he lost to Reagan, the Bachmanns got the message.  Total opportunists, they became right-wing Christian Republicans.  Not about to spend her life as a tax lawyer for the IRS, she set her sights on much higher goals.  She made her name first in her battles with her local school board, taking extreme right-wing positions.

With her suburban good looks and brilliant white teeth, she has caught the imagination of the Tea Partiers, who see her as a stronger candidate for president that Sarah Palin.  Her poll numbers keep climbing, surpassing those of Tim Pawlenty and catching up to those of Mitt Romney.  Her supporters don’t care about her gaffs saying that the battles of Lexington and Concord took place in New Hampshire, for example, or that Waterloo, Iowa ,was the birthplace of John Wayne. Just one problem: the only famous John Wayne who ever lived in Waterloo was serial killer John Wayne Gacy. It matters not at all to her devoted followers who are increasing in number every day.

Her big advantage is that she is in the trenches, fighting in Congress for the values of the Tea Party and the Christian right, while remaining on

Me, the next President? Thank you, God!

very good terms with the regular GOP leadership.  This makes her unique among the announced Republican candidates.  Because of this, there is a push by powerful Republicans for Rick Perry, the photogenic governor or Texas, to enter the race.  They see in him the new Reagan, with his craggy, movie star good looks and his genial manner.  Never mind that he has run up a gigantic deficit in Texas, a state with the most people without medical insurance. His claim to fame is all the jobs that Texas has created during his three terms as governor, many of which are low paying service industry jobs with no benefits.  It won’t matter.  If he chooses to run, it will be like the second coming.

Unlike Bachmann, Perry can sweet talk America to go further to the right than ever.  But should he win the nomination, his likely choice for vice president will be Michele Bachmann.  There’s a winning ticket for you.  Everyone at the Nation Magazine will pack up and head for Canada.  People on the Upper West Side in New York will be tearing their hair out. You can just imagine the scene in Hollywood. By then, America will be beyond reform.  But it’s great news if you are a revolutionary.  As Lenin said, “the worse it gets, the better it is.”

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Huntsman In The Wings

April 30, 2011 By Leave a Comment

USA, mother f*ckers!

With “The Donald” getting all the coverage over his rambunctious pursuit of the GOP nomination and with the Republican field widening, as I have argued elsewhere, the most realistic scenario is one where Michelle Bachmann serves as a stalking horse for Mitt Romney.  Even if Mike Huckabee runs Bachmann will likely still win Iowa with Romney punting there.  Romney is a favorite son in New Hampshire so he will pour tons of money there and get results. Donald Trump will close in on him but fail to overtake him.

On to South Carolina.  Bachmann will pull out and will endorse Romney, who takes the state over Huckabee and Trump. The Establishment will plead for Mitch Daniels to get into it but he won’t.  Did I mention Tim Pawlenty?  Who is that? Even I don’t know. This will clinch the nomination for Romney with Bachmann on the ticket for vice president.  But can they win?

Pick me! Pick me!

Lurking on the sidelines is Sarah Palin who knows full well that if she slumps back to Alaska the big paydays will be over–no more gigantic lecture fees, no more big book advances, no more television gigs, except for some modest work on Fox News.  With a burning hatred for Bachmann, for whom Palin campaigned in the last Congressional elections, Palin will see Bachmann’s actions as a betrayal since she assumed Bachmann would back her for president.  Thus begins the fight to the death of the vipers.  Realizing that the Republican Establishment has done everything in its power to marginalize her she will, with a combined rage against both party and Bachmann, run as a Third Party Candidate. She will denounce the Establishment Republicans as sell-outs and call Bachmann a turncoat and an opportunist. Pretty rich, that.  She will blast Romney for his Romney Care and spend more time and energy attacking the party that spurned her after she lifted McCain’s sagging poll numbers than on attacking Obama.  If she can get Trump to run with her it could all get quite entertaining. But the likelihood of Trump taking a second spot is highly doubtful.  Maybe she could run with Glenn Beck. The real losers would be the writing staff of Saturday Night Live because any actual debate between these candidates will be funnier than anything those talented scribes could concoct.

Paul Ryan’s budget will give the Democrats fresh ammunition–the Republican intention to abolish Medicare whilst calling for tax cuts to the rich. This after attacking Obama in the last election for cutting five billion dollars from Medicare.  Although Ryan has said Social Security is off the table, why should anyone believe that after the Republicans’ about-face on Medicare?

This will give Obama an unintended push over the top with the Democrats making substantial gains in the House and Senate.

The Manchurian Candidate is my favorite movie!

Instead of taking back the country entirely the Republicans could easily find themselves on the verge of extinction.  Their only hope will be to return to the center, led by Jon Huntsman.  He is the 800-pound gorilla in the room for the 2012 Republican nomination.  By far the most telegenic of all their candidates, he is also the best qualified by far by virtue of being the only one with international experience, having served as ambassador to China and being fluent in Mandarin.  As a two-term governor of Utah, he proved his mettle on domestic issues, even if he did raise taxes. Moderate on social issues, he could still steamroll over the opposition.  He is also loaded with a great family fortune.  Besides, he hates Romney for taking over the Olympics in Utah when Huntsman expected to get that position.  He would love nothing better than to shatter Romney’s chances, one Mormon against another.  Huntsman is a Kennedy-esque Republican whose charm and charisma–something all the other candidates lack–make him a winner whatever his positions on the issues. And when young voters learn he dropped out of high school to join a rock band before returning and going on tto he University of Pennsylvania, they will follow him anywhere.  He is the one candidate Obama fears.  One way or another, his time will come.

But then again, there is Gary Johnson.  Tune in next time for more on that dude.

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