Once again the greatest representative democracy the world has ever known finds itself in a maelstrom of confusion and insanity. Thanks to the shamefully stupid Tea Buggers and their lethal demagoguery, the whole entire US government is shut down, brought to its knees, spinning its wheels while nearly a million federal workers are idle, national parks and recreation areas are closed, and numerous programs that provide real help to real people are shut down. Welcome to the end of an experiment.
Our system of government has always been a social experiment on the grandest of scales. Imagine a form of government born of the ideas of freedom, liberty and equality for all. Something quite like that had never really been seen on this planet prior to the 18th century. Thousands of years ago when primitive humans were first starting to gather together and form settlements, one of the first governments to evolve was a monarchy, a "king" to rule the others. This ran through a couple of permutations, such as an oligarchy (rule by a small, chosen group of people) or plutocracy (rule by the wealthy) or theocracy (rule by religious leaders) but by and far it proved a fairly workable way to keep a bunch of farmers and shepherds kind of toeing some sort of line.
For a long time monarchies worked well, and still do in a number of countries in the present day, but as large number of people became more educated through technological advances such as the printing press, they soon outgrew the confines of royalty and royal lineage. As the world expanded, wealth (and resultant power) became more distributed, government likewise expanded and adapted. People were demanding more of a say in how their lives were run, and various forms of representation were created. General assemblies, or bodies of citizens representing other citizens, began to take root in Europe, one of the earliest being Iceland's Althing, created in the year 976. Eventually hybrid systems of government were created, merging kings with prime ministers and parliaments and a new form of representational government took hold.
The US government was born at the confluence of a number of serendipitous forces. Initially formed by those fleeing religious persecution, it was a brand new world, full beyond measure of immense natural riches, free from the limited land mass and resources of Europe and the stifling weight of history and their stodgy traditions. America was a clean slate, a chance to start anew, to get it right, to create the most perfect form of government that humans could possibly dream up. And dream they did.
The Constitution that came out of the late 1700s has become the gold standard of good government. Not perfect, but better than anything else that has been around. Even though it has been amended 27 times (with a 28th amendment proposed - one that would make all laws applicable to everyone), these adjustments have allowed the government to change in response to a rapidly changing world. Some of them have been foolhardy (No. 18 - Prohibition) but others have been true to the finest expressions of the best of humanity (No. 13 - Abolition of Slavery and No. 19 - Women's Suffrage). The great social experiment that is the United States of America was in full bloom, and doing very well indeed.
Scientists will tell you that the best experiments are those which are conducted in a closed system; that is, an environment where everything is carefully controlled and random outside forces kept to a minimum. Even under the best of circumstances, a running experiment will start to degrade as entropy creeps in and wear and tear causes deterioration. Our government has been beset with destabilizing forces from inside and out, from those which occur in nature to those created by our own shadow natures.
It seems the worst forces that befall our nation and disrupt our constitutional government are those created by ourselves. In the past century, two devastating world wars, a number of smaller but still very significant skirmishes (Korea, Vietnam, Iraq) have caused great stress. The threat of nuclear annihilation or environmental catastrophe has been shaping policy through most of this century. But most insidious, it seems, are the forces of greed and religion. They form a double-headed serpent, and it is at the nexus of those two where the most damage is done.
The past two decades have seen the ascendency of greed and religion in our government at a level that can scarcely be comprehended. Like some kind of virulent zombie virus, it has taken over vast segments of the population and most of Congress, turning them into blathering idiots, and malignant ne'er-do-wells. Complicated by a Supreme Court that has some of the most backward-thinking, regressive conservatives around, the complete corruption of our government by money has been aided and abetted by heinous, abominable rulings such as Citizens' United, which virtually assured the democratic system will be irretrievably choked and debased by an enormous influx of special-interest monies and corporate meddling.
Religion, and in particular Christian fundamentalism, has also insinuated itself into our legislative system at all levels. Like a many-headed Hydra, it manifests itself in an appallingly large number of ways, from advocating to pharmacists to refuse to dispense birth control because it violates their "freedom of religious expression", to taking over school boards and forcing changes to their curricula to include bogus, intellectually untenable pseudo-sciences such as "intelligent design", to doing everything they can to prevent certain segments of the population from exercising their right to vote. Using their religious beliefs like a shield, they cowardly pass preposterous laws designed solely to prevent women from exerting control over their reproductive destinies by forcing them to undergo unnecessary medical procedures such as ultrasounds, and enacting biased, draconian regulations that make it nearly impossible for planned-parenting agencies to legitimately and lawfully provide needed and wanted services.
We have seen the wealth of this nation being concentrated into the top 1% of the population, while everyone else considers themselves lucky if they just tread economic water. This has caused this wealthy segment to tighten and consolidate their control over the Republican party, which is essentially working for the Koch brothers and the Dick Cheneys of the world. Wars are started under the flimsiest of pretenses, bolstered by blatant lying and disinformation, and private corporations rake in the profits.
Sure, there are many evil people in this country who will gladly take this nation down a pathway to complete destruction if it meant getting their political agenda in place. All this is ultimately made possible by an uneducated, disinterested electorate, for whom critical thinking and skepticism are unknown concepts. Too many people are more than willing to let Fox News or Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh or dozens of other conservative blowhards tell them exactly what to think and do. They find it much easier to hate people who are different from them, and they make these "other people" convenient, easy scapegoats for the awful things their legislators - who they themselves had voted into office - do to the quality of their life and the complete ruination of the future of their children. They just don't give a crap, and are too stupid to care.
The drama going on in this country now - the government being held hostage by a gang of 30 or 40 zealots, blinded by their own radical ideology to the damage they're doing - and the upcoming threat of a debt ceiling crises - which nearly all knowledgeable economists in this country agree would be a complete and unmitigated disaster on a global scale - is unprecedented, certainly in my lifetime. I have never seen the country so thoroughly polarized, even back in the worst days of the Vietnam war, when our society was nearly ripped apart by a costly, tragic war which we eventually lost. These Tea Baggers don't care how much damage and hardship they inflict on millions of people, or the millions and millions of dollars that will be shamefully squandered by a completely unnecessary government shutdown. The only thing they care about is getting their own way, and they don't care how many lives are wrecked in the process.
Sadly, I'm beginning to think the great social experiment in representative democracy that is the United States of America is starting to wind down, to sag and break apart under the weight of its own misdoings and corruption. Our system of government is being poisoned by right-wing ideologues and religious zealots, who are pulling everyone down into their toxic cesspool of psychotic paranoia and dissolution. I don't see a way out for America to save itself. We may come out the other end of this somewhat intact, but we will be so changed that we will no longer be the America we once were.
Showing posts with label debt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label debt. Show all posts
Friday, October 11, 2013
Friday, August 5, 2011
An Intelligence Deficit
The past week or two we have been reluctant, unhappy witnesses to one of the worst displays of just how dysfunctional Congress is that I can ever remember. The whole garish, shameful scenario of extending the debt ceiling, something which happens fairly often and with hardly a whimper in the media, until now, was truly an extremely destructive and ultimately unnecessary abomination.
It's all the more galling because it was an artificial, completely manufactured crisis, instead of an actual crisis. And by "actual crisis" I mean things like the economic collapse of 2008, the bombing of Libya, or an earthquake or hurricane laying waste to a wide area. This "debt ceiling" is an man-made abstraction, a conceit of the pointy-headed economists of the nation and is about three degrees of separation away from anything most people can even understand, or care to understand.
As usual, the Republicans are at the bottom of this heinous, hell-spawned mess, and in particular this was the fault of the god-forsaken Tea Partiers in Congress. The gang of 85 representatives which presumably were elected through a wave of Tea Party support in the 2010 midterms, decided to take the entire country hostage and link the debt ceiling with lowering the deficit, something which has NEVER been done before and something which is completely invalid.
First of all, the debt ceiling represents money that has ALREADY been spent and debt which has ALREADY been incurred, not future debt. That's like saying, I'm not going to pay this month's electricity bill until I'm sure that next month's electricity bill will be lower. WTF is that supposed to mean? Sounds like idiotic crap, and it is. You're responsible for paying this month's electric bill NOW, for electricity you have already used, and it does NOT depend on what you do next month. But somehow, the pretzel logic of the Tea Baggers linked those two concepts and both political parties were powerless to change it. How on earth can it happen that a small minority of deadheaded legislators can pervert and twist around an economic concept like that?
As the clocked ticked down last week toward a credit default, which is what would have happened if the debt ceiling had not been raised and the U.S. had no available funds to repay its debts, the political theater and bickering was immense in its scale. The House of Representatives insisted on passing its own Tea Party-driven deficit reduction measure, which consisted mostly of shielding their wealthy sponsors from any kind of financial contribution to repaying this country's debt in the form of moderately increased taxes or tax loophole-closing, even though everybody and their uncle knew that such a measure would be dead-on-arrival at the Senate, but they had to waste time anyhow making a big "show" of it.
At the last minute a "compromise" bill was cobbled together which, according to orange-skinned Speaker of the House John Boner, I mean, Boehner, gave him "98% of everything" he wanted. Some f**king "compromise." Most people thought a "compromise" is when each side in an argument gives some concession to the other side in hopes of coming up with a mutually-agreeable solution. The only thing the Democrats and the Obama administration gave up is their integrity, and the confidence of their base supporters that they would stand their ground against the Republican onslaught. The Republicans railroaded and overran the Democrats, I have to give them credit for that, and the wealthy puppet-masters of the Republicans must be very proud of the investment they made in that party.
Once AGAIN, Obama caved to the demands of the other side. To try to deflect attention from him being Senate minority leader Mitch O'Connell's bottom bitch, Obama is now saying that since the debt ceiling problem is over, he's going to focus exclusively on jobs and putting America back to work. The problem with that is that the only way the government can put people back to work is by spending a bunch of money on badly-needed public works and infrastructure repair projects, but the Republicans have stated clearly that they would not support any such expenditures. So how is the administration supposed to create these new jobs which will bring sorely-needed tax revenues into the Treasury, without any money for these projects? Obama hasn't figured that out yet, but I'm sure he's thinking really hard about it. That, and $3, will buy you a grande house coffee at Starbucks, if you can afford it.
What's much more disturbing and dangerous is that the Republicans have learned that their hostage-taking style of negotiating works pretty well. They were ready to let the country go into default and risk a credit downgrade, which would have been catastrophic to the extreme to the national and the global economy, and they didn't give a crap how badly it hurt the country. This is what we're going to see from now on, this scorched-earth practice from the right wing, in which they will risk heaping much more pain and misery on the people of this country without any concern for the consequences. The ultra-wealthy are insulated and protected from such things, and that is all the Republicans care about. And that will surely have very dire results in both the short- and long-term.
Yesterday the stock market took a header into the shitter, dropping over 500 points in a single day. All the stock market gains for the year have been erased. Seven months and nothing to show for it. The market has dropped over 10% in the past two weeks. Many billions of dollars have been obliterated, and it will be difficult getting them back. And all for what? A manufactured crisis that didn't have to happen. After all, conservative idol Ronald Reagan raised the debt ceiling 18 times in his presidency, with nary a whisper of dissent from anyone. All of a sudden, now that we have a black man for President, raising the debt ceiling is a big deal. The Republicans in general and the Tea Party in particular have made it very clear that they will do anything and everything to destroy Obama's presidency. And apparently, if they destroy the economy of the country and the well-being of all its citizens in the process, well that is too damned bad.
It's all the more galling because it was an artificial, completely manufactured crisis, instead of an actual crisis. And by "actual crisis" I mean things like the economic collapse of 2008, the bombing of Libya, or an earthquake or hurricane laying waste to a wide area. This "debt ceiling" is an man-made abstraction, a conceit of the pointy-headed economists of the nation and is about three degrees of separation away from anything most people can even understand, or care to understand.
As usual, the Republicans are at the bottom of this heinous, hell-spawned mess, and in particular this was the fault of the god-forsaken Tea Partiers in Congress. The gang of 85 representatives which presumably were elected through a wave of Tea Party support in the 2010 midterms, decided to take the entire country hostage and link the debt ceiling with lowering the deficit, something which has NEVER been done before and something which is completely invalid.
First of all, the debt ceiling represents money that has ALREADY been spent and debt which has ALREADY been incurred, not future debt. That's like saying, I'm not going to pay this month's electricity bill until I'm sure that next month's electricity bill will be lower. WTF is that supposed to mean? Sounds like idiotic crap, and it is. You're responsible for paying this month's electric bill NOW, for electricity you have already used, and it does NOT depend on what you do next month. But somehow, the pretzel logic of the Tea Baggers linked those two concepts and both political parties were powerless to change it. How on earth can it happen that a small minority of deadheaded legislators can pervert and twist around an economic concept like that?
As the clocked ticked down last week toward a credit default, which is what would have happened if the debt ceiling had not been raised and the U.S. had no available funds to repay its debts, the political theater and bickering was immense in its scale. The House of Representatives insisted on passing its own Tea Party-driven deficit reduction measure, which consisted mostly of shielding their wealthy sponsors from any kind of financial contribution to repaying this country's debt in the form of moderately increased taxes or tax loophole-closing, even though everybody and their uncle knew that such a measure would be dead-on-arrival at the Senate, but they had to waste time anyhow making a big "show" of it.
At the last minute a "compromise" bill was cobbled together which, according to orange-skinned Speaker of the House John Boner, I mean, Boehner, gave him "98% of everything" he wanted. Some f**king "compromise." Most people thought a "compromise" is when each side in an argument gives some concession to the other side in hopes of coming up with a mutually-agreeable solution. The only thing the Democrats and the Obama administration gave up is their integrity, and the confidence of their base supporters that they would stand their ground against the Republican onslaught. The Republicans railroaded and overran the Democrats, I have to give them credit for that, and the wealthy puppet-masters of the Republicans must be very proud of the investment they made in that party.
Once AGAIN, Obama caved to the demands of the other side. To try to deflect attention from him being Senate minority leader Mitch O'Connell's bottom bitch, Obama is now saying that since the debt ceiling problem is over, he's going to focus exclusively on jobs and putting America back to work. The problem with that is that the only way the government can put people back to work is by spending a bunch of money on badly-needed public works and infrastructure repair projects, but the Republicans have stated clearly that they would not support any such expenditures. So how is the administration supposed to create these new jobs which will bring sorely-needed tax revenues into the Treasury, without any money for these projects? Obama hasn't figured that out yet, but I'm sure he's thinking really hard about it. That, and $3, will buy you a grande house coffee at Starbucks, if you can afford it.
What's much more disturbing and dangerous is that the Republicans have learned that their hostage-taking style of negotiating works pretty well. They were ready to let the country go into default and risk a credit downgrade, which would have been catastrophic to the extreme to the national and the global economy, and they didn't give a crap how badly it hurt the country. This is what we're going to see from now on, this scorched-earth practice from the right wing, in which they will risk heaping much more pain and misery on the people of this country without any concern for the consequences. The ultra-wealthy are insulated and protected from such things, and that is all the Republicans care about. And that will surely have very dire results in both the short- and long-term.
Yesterday the stock market took a header into the shitter, dropping over 500 points in a single day. All the stock market gains for the year have been erased. Seven months and nothing to show for it. The market has dropped over 10% in the past two weeks. Many billions of dollars have been obliterated, and it will be difficult getting them back. And all for what? A manufactured crisis that didn't have to happen. After all, conservative idol Ronald Reagan raised the debt ceiling 18 times in his presidency, with nary a whisper of dissent from anyone. All of a sudden, now that we have a black man for President, raising the debt ceiling is a big deal. The Republicans in general and the Tea Party in particular have made it very clear that they will do anything and everything to destroy Obama's presidency. And apparently, if they destroy the economy of the country and the well-being of all its citizens in the process, well that is too damned bad.
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Christmas 2010
Here I am in the wee hours of Christmas morning, 2010. The house is quiet, all the bunnies are fed and getting ready for their bedtime. The doves are quiet after a late-night chorus of cooing that had almost all of them going off at the same time. I haven't the slightest idea what motivates them to start singing their songs so late at night, but I'm sure they have a good reason. All the outside lights are turned off and all is quiet and still. It's been over two weeks since I last wrote anything in this blog. I had an art project to finish and just found myself to be extremely busy. Whoever said that retirement would be boring did not know what they were talking about.
Time is running out on 2010, and I for one will be glad to see it go. Not a lot of real good things happened this year. Or maybe I should say, some good things did happen this year but they were outweighed and outnumbered by the not-so-good. This past week has seen a terrible spate of bunnies passing away - one was Sage (featured in a previous post in this blog), a very sweet mini-lop who had suffered through tremendous trials and tribulations but never once lost his beautiful personality nor his graceful serenity. Fuzzy was another bunny who had struggled with numerous health issues for quite a long time and was seemingly doing very well when he crashed on us and had to leave for the Bridge. I lost an injured cottontail that came to me with drooling from the mouth and a mysterious injury so bad that the poor bunny just faded away despite my best efforts. My dear friend Julia lost three of her beloved bunnies this year, two of whom (Duncan and Alyce-Michele) were born into my home on a chilly, damp, dark Tuesday in February 2004. I held them in the palm of my hand when they were mere hours old. In a way, losing them was like a parent outliving a child. There is a sense of great loss, disorientation and disorder, a sense that something happened out of sequence that should not have happened, in a perfect world.
But alas, I'm finding out over and over that this world is far from perfect. Politically, it was a pretty gruesome year, with the midterm elections putting more Republicans in high office than I can remember. In state government it was even worse, as most if not all high state offices went to the Republican candidates. The newly-elected president of the state senate is a crusty old troglodyte named Russell Pearce, who has unashamedly associated himself with Nazi and white supremacist groups in the recent past and does not even bother to conceal his rabid, vitriolic hatred for Hispanics. It's incomprehensible how someone could even consider voting for a vicious old creep like that. Expertly riding a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment, the desiccated, ancient remains of the eternally loathsome Jan Brewer got elected to a full term as governor of this wretched, godforsaken state. Looking like the dried-up husk of a gigantic praying mantis, we are going to be afflicted with her idiocy, stupidity and appalling appearance for the next four years, and that is a damned shame. The voters in this state have to be the stupidest, most hateful and bigoted people on this planet.
It really seems as if stupidity is on the ascendancy in this country. There is such a current of anti-intellectualism nationwide, as if it's a bad thing to have an education and speak and act intelligently. Instead we get the supremely annoying bleating of the incredibly obnoxious Sarah Palin, who insists on shooting off her big mouth every chance she gets and in the process says very little. She is single-handedly dumbing down America every time she opens her yap. Luckily we have heard very little from Sharron Angle, a hot mess of a Senate candidate from Nevada who must be living in another century, or from Christine O'Donnell of Delaware, another loser in a Senate race whose most memorable lines were in a television ad she ran claiming "I am not a witch," and "I'm just like you." God forbid anyone would be just like her. Between Palin, Angle and O'Donnell, women have absolutely nothing to be proud of with these public figures.
I know this country has suffered through periods of massive stupidity before, and we seemed to have gotten through it and survived. Certainly the Reagan administration in the 80s was an eight-year stretch of some of the most mendacious dumbness this country has ever had to slog through. Having a senile, fourth-rate hack actor for a president wasn't the worst of it, because fascist creeps like Alexander Haig, James Watt, Edwin Meese, and James Baker almost made Reagan look moderate. That's because there has always been a resiliency in the American spirit which has allowed it to get through periods of difficulty and somehow its innate better nature came through. There was a little bump of stupidity with the first George Bush presidency, but that was more creepy and weird than stupid. But with the enormous idiocy of George W. Bush, somehow stupidity has become a permanent feature of America and even after Bush we are showing no signs of coming out of it. Like a foreign weed, stupidity has taken root in this country and is spreading with every Republican that comes to office.
As the clock ticks down to 2011 there is a palpable sense, at least to me, that America's better days are behind her. Obama has been crowing mightily about this hot-shit compromise he made with Senate Republicans that back-loaded an additional $800 billion of debt onto this country. Although Obama promised in his 2008 campaign that his administration would be transparent and he would not be involved in backroom deals and bargaining sessions, that is exactly what it was - a quid-pro-quo that clearly ended up in the Republicans' favor by ensuring that the wealthiest one-percent of wage earners in this country would continue to live their opulent lifestyles thanks to the extension of the Bush tax cuts, while the middle-class continues to drown in debt and have their homes foreclosed. We have become a huge debtor nation to the Chinese, who will be sucking this country dry of all its money for many decades to come. In a very real way, young people just starting out in their careers today will be working for the Chinese for most of their lives.
Wealth and resources continue to drain out of this country at an alarming rate, and Congress and the President are content to look the other way and repeatedly postpone any meaningful (i.e., painful) remedies to the situation. We all know what has to be done, but no one has the political courage to do it. So we just pass the burden on to the next generation. What a horrible thing we are doing to children yet unborn, mortgaging their future and condemning them to live in a third-rate country, which is what the U.S. will be in a very short time.
So, I'm finding very little to be cheerful about this particular Christmas season. I'll be glad when it's over, I'm already violently sick and tired of all the awful commercials they show on television over and over again. The automobile commercials have been particularly galling. Who the hell gives new automobiles as Christmas gifts? Seriously, I've never met anyone who did that. Maybe I hang out with a different set of people, but that is just so out of my experience I can't imagine what it must be like. Crass commercialism and greed has been rampant this year, as always, but I've opted myself out of all the craziness and that has been a very good choice.
I can only hope 2011 will be a better year for everyone. I will absolutely not say that it couldn't get any worse, because I'm sure it can, but I sincerely hope we can get back to some good news and good things happening after the past two horrific years. But I have to say I have very little reason to be optimistic.
Time is running out on 2010, and I for one will be glad to see it go. Not a lot of real good things happened this year. Or maybe I should say, some good things did happen this year but they were outweighed and outnumbered by the not-so-good. This past week has seen a terrible spate of bunnies passing away - one was Sage (featured in a previous post in this blog), a very sweet mini-lop who had suffered through tremendous trials and tribulations but never once lost his beautiful personality nor his graceful serenity. Fuzzy was another bunny who had struggled with numerous health issues for quite a long time and was seemingly doing very well when he crashed on us and had to leave for the Bridge. I lost an injured cottontail that came to me with drooling from the mouth and a mysterious injury so bad that the poor bunny just faded away despite my best efforts. My dear friend Julia lost three of her beloved bunnies this year, two of whom (Duncan and Alyce-Michele) were born into my home on a chilly, damp, dark Tuesday in February 2004. I held them in the palm of my hand when they were mere hours old. In a way, losing them was like a parent outliving a child. There is a sense of great loss, disorientation and disorder, a sense that something happened out of sequence that should not have happened, in a perfect world.
But alas, I'm finding out over and over that this world is far from perfect. Politically, it was a pretty gruesome year, with the midterm elections putting more Republicans in high office than I can remember. In state government it was even worse, as most if not all high state offices went to the Republican candidates. The newly-elected president of the state senate is a crusty old troglodyte named Russell Pearce, who has unashamedly associated himself with Nazi and white supremacist groups in the recent past and does not even bother to conceal his rabid, vitriolic hatred for Hispanics. It's incomprehensible how someone could even consider voting for a vicious old creep like that. Expertly riding a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment, the desiccated, ancient remains of the eternally loathsome Jan Brewer got elected to a full term as governor of this wretched, godforsaken state. Looking like the dried-up husk of a gigantic praying mantis, we are going to be afflicted with her idiocy, stupidity and appalling appearance for the next four years, and that is a damned shame. The voters in this state have to be the stupidest, most hateful and bigoted people on this planet.
It really seems as if stupidity is on the ascendancy in this country. There is such a current of anti-intellectualism nationwide, as if it's a bad thing to have an education and speak and act intelligently. Instead we get the supremely annoying bleating of the incredibly obnoxious Sarah Palin, who insists on shooting off her big mouth every chance she gets and in the process says very little. She is single-handedly dumbing down America every time she opens her yap. Luckily we have heard very little from Sharron Angle, a hot mess of a Senate candidate from Nevada who must be living in another century, or from Christine O'Donnell of Delaware, another loser in a Senate race whose most memorable lines were in a television ad she ran claiming "I am not a witch," and "I'm just like you." God forbid anyone would be just like her. Between Palin, Angle and O'Donnell, women have absolutely nothing to be proud of with these public figures.
I know this country has suffered through periods of massive stupidity before, and we seemed to have gotten through it and survived. Certainly the Reagan administration in the 80s was an eight-year stretch of some of the most mendacious dumbness this country has ever had to slog through. Having a senile, fourth-rate hack actor for a president wasn't the worst of it, because fascist creeps like Alexander Haig, James Watt, Edwin Meese, and James Baker almost made Reagan look moderate. That's because there has always been a resiliency in the American spirit which has allowed it to get through periods of difficulty and somehow its innate better nature came through. There was a little bump of stupidity with the first George Bush presidency, but that was more creepy and weird than stupid. But with the enormous idiocy of George W. Bush, somehow stupidity has become a permanent feature of America and even after Bush we are showing no signs of coming out of it. Like a foreign weed, stupidity has taken root in this country and is spreading with every Republican that comes to office.
As the clock ticks down to 2011 there is a palpable sense, at least to me, that America's better days are behind her. Obama has been crowing mightily about this hot-shit compromise he made with Senate Republicans that back-loaded an additional $800 billion of debt onto this country. Although Obama promised in his 2008 campaign that his administration would be transparent and he would not be involved in backroom deals and bargaining sessions, that is exactly what it was - a quid-pro-quo that clearly ended up in the Republicans' favor by ensuring that the wealthiest one-percent of wage earners in this country would continue to live their opulent lifestyles thanks to the extension of the Bush tax cuts, while the middle-class continues to drown in debt and have their homes foreclosed. We have become a huge debtor nation to the Chinese, who will be sucking this country dry of all its money for many decades to come. In a very real way, young people just starting out in their careers today will be working for the Chinese for most of their lives.
Wealth and resources continue to drain out of this country at an alarming rate, and Congress and the President are content to look the other way and repeatedly postpone any meaningful (i.e., painful) remedies to the situation. We all know what has to be done, but no one has the political courage to do it. So we just pass the burden on to the next generation. What a horrible thing we are doing to children yet unborn, mortgaging their future and condemning them to live in a third-rate country, which is what the U.S. will be in a very short time.
So, I'm finding very little to be cheerful about this particular Christmas season. I'll be glad when it's over, I'm already violently sick and tired of all the awful commercials they show on television over and over again. The automobile commercials have been particularly galling. Who the hell gives new automobiles as Christmas gifts? Seriously, I've never met anyone who did that. Maybe I hang out with a different set of people, but that is just so out of my experience I can't imagine what it must be like. Crass commercialism and greed has been rampant this year, as always, but I've opted myself out of all the craziness and that has been a very good choice.
I can only hope 2011 will be a better year for everyone. I will absolutely not say that it couldn't get any worse, because I'm sure it can, but I sincerely hope we can get back to some good news and good things happening after the past two horrific years. But I have to say I have very little reason to be optimistic.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
The More Things Change....
My 50th blog post! WOOHOO!
Everyone's heard the old phrase, "the more things change the more they stay the same." That seems to be the case with the financial disaster out of which this country is still trying to find its way.
Last week "Bill Moyer's Journal" on PBS had an eye-opening discussion on this topic. Bill's guests were Representative Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) and Simon Johnston, former Chief Economist with the IMF and currently at MIT Sloan School. They gave a very reasoned, intelligent assessment on the state of this country's economy. There was no screaming or jumping up and down, and no one tried to shout the other down. They didn't carry around misspelled, incomprehensible or outrageously stupid signs. It was just two thoughtful, articulate people stating some obvious and not-so-obvious facts about the economy, and what they had to say was chilling. Some of the salient points:
>> There is a massive revolving door between Washington and Wall Street that allows financial executives to rise to the highest levels of government and enjoy unprecedented access to the centers of power. Henry Paulson, formerly of Goldman Sachs and Timothy Geither, former head of the NY Federal Reserve, are the former and current Treasury Secretaries.
>> Lack of meaningful regulation left Wall Street with virtual free reign when it came to concocting exotic, high-risk financial instruments. The lure of extreme profits enticed them to take extreme risks. When the mortgage crisis brought many of them tumbling down, the taxpayers had to step in and bail them out. This resulted in the privatization of profits and the socialization of loss; that is, Wall Street kept the immense profits but unloaded the immense debt on us.
>> Bankruptcies and consolidations have reduced the number of huge powerful banks from 12 down to 4 super-banks, all of whom are lined up against any kind of financial reform.
>> Both of the guests on "Journal" agreed that the window of opportunity for meaningful financial reform in this country has passed. Nothing will be done at this point to change how Wall Street does business. In fact, they have become more entrenched in their ways. So what is going to prevent another financial melt-down from occurring in the future? Absolutely nothing.
>> The financial crisis for big banks is over. Their profits are huge again, and growing bigger all the time. They are getting ready to dole out their usual outrageous array of bonuses. It's the taxpayers, the people that gave the banks a way to save themselves and get out of near-total ruin, who are suffering in a bleak, tepid and jobless recovery, and will continue to do so for a very long time.
>> Banks have no respect for the President, and their lackeys in Congress preoccupy themselves with trivial, arcane and meaningless matters, instead of tackling the real problems behind the financial crisis. Congress should be holding hearings on the new architecture of the financial system, prudent lending, increasing savings and limited debt. They are not, nor will they anytime soon.
>> The same bankers who precipitated this financial mess on everyone, amazingly are the ones in charge of fixing it! That's like if you own a building and you hire someone to be fire marshall, and through their stupidity they burn the building down. So what do you do? You hire the same person to be fire marshall in your new building and give them a huge raise! How much sense does that make? None? Well that is exactly what is going on right now.
>> You can bet your next mortgage payment that the people who caused the mess and are now charged with cleaning it up, are covering up their own tracks and making sure they are not held responsible for anything. The FBI has only a very small number of agents investigating financial fraud and are for the most part disinterested in bringing anyone to justice.
>> There was a much smaller, but very similar situation in the savings and loan debacle of the 1980s. We, that taxpayers, are STILL making payments on the debt we assumed in that mess, and will continue to do so until the year 2013. How long are we going to be paying for this recent, much larger catastrophe? I'm guessing long after all of us are gone.
This episode of "Bill Moyer's Journal" was one of the most sobering and disheartening half-hours of television reporting I've seen in a long time. I think everyone in this country should have to watch it. The American people need to wake up to what is going on in their own country. Otherwise, their ruination will be assured.
Everyone's heard the old phrase, "the more things change the more they stay the same." That seems to be the case with the financial disaster out of which this country is still trying to find its way.
Last week "Bill Moyer's Journal" on PBS had an eye-opening discussion on this topic. Bill's guests were Representative Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) and Simon Johnston, former Chief Economist with the IMF and currently at MIT Sloan School. They gave a very reasoned, intelligent assessment on the state of this country's economy. There was no screaming or jumping up and down, and no one tried to shout the other down. They didn't carry around misspelled, incomprehensible or outrageously stupid signs. It was just two thoughtful, articulate people stating some obvious and not-so-obvious facts about the economy, and what they had to say was chilling. Some of the salient points:
>> There is a massive revolving door between Washington and Wall Street that allows financial executives to rise to the highest levels of government and enjoy unprecedented access to the centers of power. Henry Paulson, formerly of Goldman Sachs and Timothy Geither, former head of the NY Federal Reserve, are the former and current Treasury Secretaries.
>> Lack of meaningful regulation left Wall Street with virtual free reign when it came to concocting exotic, high-risk financial instruments. The lure of extreme profits enticed them to take extreme risks. When the mortgage crisis brought many of them tumbling down, the taxpayers had to step in and bail them out. This resulted in the privatization of profits and the socialization of loss; that is, Wall Street kept the immense profits but unloaded the immense debt on us.
>> Bankruptcies and consolidations have reduced the number of huge powerful banks from 12 down to 4 super-banks, all of whom are lined up against any kind of financial reform.
>> Both of the guests on "Journal" agreed that the window of opportunity for meaningful financial reform in this country has passed. Nothing will be done at this point to change how Wall Street does business. In fact, they have become more entrenched in their ways. So what is going to prevent another financial melt-down from occurring in the future? Absolutely nothing.
>> The financial crisis for big banks is over. Their profits are huge again, and growing bigger all the time. They are getting ready to dole out their usual outrageous array of bonuses. It's the taxpayers, the people that gave the banks a way to save themselves and get out of near-total ruin, who are suffering in a bleak, tepid and jobless recovery, and will continue to do so for a very long time.
>> Banks have no respect for the President, and their lackeys in Congress preoccupy themselves with trivial, arcane and meaningless matters, instead of tackling the real problems behind the financial crisis. Congress should be holding hearings on the new architecture of the financial system, prudent lending, increasing savings and limited debt. They are not, nor will they anytime soon.
>> The same bankers who precipitated this financial mess on everyone, amazingly are the ones in charge of fixing it! That's like if you own a building and you hire someone to be fire marshall, and through their stupidity they burn the building down. So what do you do? You hire the same person to be fire marshall in your new building and give them a huge raise! How much sense does that make? None? Well that is exactly what is going on right now.
>> You can bet your next mortgage payment that the people who caused the mess and are now charged with cleaning it up, are covering up their own tracks and making sure they are not held responsible for anything. The FBI has only a very small number of agents investigating financial fraud and are for the most part disinterested in bringing anyone to justice.
>> There was a much smaller, but very similar situation in the savings and loan debacle of the 1980s. We, that taxpayers, are STILL making payments on the debt we assumed in that mess, and will continue to do so until the year 2013. How long are we going to be paying for this recent, much larger catastrophe? I'm guessing long after all of us are gone.
This episode of "Bill Moyer's Journal" was one of the most sobering and disheartening half-hours of television reporting I've seen in a long time. I think everyone in this country should have to watch it. The American people need to wake up to what is going on in their own country. Otherwise, their ruination will be assured.
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