Tag Archive for Republicans

Water, Energy, Money, Blood

April 23, 2012 Economics, Energy, Politics, Values, Wealth No comments

Bless me my conscience; it has been seven months since my last post. In that time, we have witnessed the Republican presidential primary process deliver Mitt Romney—as clear an example of the top 1% as you can get.

We need to think about his success and the success of the 1% in general in a different way than Romney would like, or can even get his mind around. In the conservative worldview, which most of us accept without question, Romney is a winner. He played the game of wealth creation well, and is exactly what we all want to be like: rich (not stiff and awkward). Who doesn’t want to be rich?

In this prevailing worldview the accumulation of vast wealth is what all individuals seek. Along the way jobs will be created, investments will be made, and society will benefit. And this is true to a degree. But jobs are only a once-in-while by-product of wealth accumulation; many times the loss of jobs creates wealth for owners.

The unbounded creation of wealth for the top 1% is also sequestering resources that the rest of us need to be healthy. Imagine if one rich farmer had hundreds or thousands of times more water than the other farmers and there was a drought. This farmer sold the water, but if you couldn’t pay, oh well. I hope you don’t starve.

One person controlling all the precious water is a big problem. What would happen? Would the other farmers attack the rich farmer? Would they be justified in doing so? Would the government back the majority of desperate people and send troops to free the water, or be bought off by the rich farmer and send troops to keep the thirsty, starving mob at bay?

In this metaphor, water equals money. But both actually equal energy. No water, no energy for the growth of a crop. No money, no energy for the growth of the economy. By playing the game of individual wealth creation, which we all do, the winner’s jackpot is now detrimental to everyone else. The irrigation system of the economy is dry, not because there isn’t enough money, but because the flow is being restricted and tightly controlled. Money is flowing not to dehydrated everyday people but into the endless reservoirs of the 1%.

Never mind that people are dying or becoming homeless because they can’t pay their medical bills. In the system we’ve bought into Romney wins and we all lose. It’s perfectly fair that he get as much as he can. Concern for the losers is not part of the equation. But since money is the energy needed for growth, look for higher costs in blood when that energy is not forthcoming.

The Government is Not a Business

June 27, 2011 Economics, Media, Politics, Republicans, Values, Wealth No comments

Have we forgotten whose policies caused the plunge?

In the graphic above, lifted from ABC’s “This Week” with Christiane Amanpour, the yellow line shows how much deeper the current recession is than all previous recessions, at least since 1980. So because the economy is not healing fast enough, we should turn its management back to the people whose policies caused the crash in the first place? Look doctor, my loved one isn’t getting better as fast as I would like. So I think I’m going to go back to the doctor who administered the poison. You know, because whatever you’re trying to do isn’t working. Maybe that other doctor will be good this time.

This reasoning seems to be treated as perfectly logical in the lame stream media. That’s right, I’m using Sarah Palin’s phrase, but for the complete opposite reason. The lame stream media seems to accept the Republican spin that reducing the deficit is the most important step we can take to create jobs. Why? It’s clearly bullshit. Yes we need to cut the deficit, but to even pretend that this will somehow revive the economy is ludicrous. Cutting is cutting. You can’t cut programs without cutting jobs.

What does a CEO do when he needs to get the company back on solid footing? He cuts jobs. He lays people off. He reduces spending to improve the bottom line and get profits back up. Fine. This restoration of the company’s fiscal health doesn’t create jobs, it costs jobs.

The policies the Republicans are trying to put through are not about jobs. They are about deficit reduction, which is essentially restoring the country to a fiscal balance. They seem to view government as a big corporation that is not in good fiscal health and themselves as CEOs who will cut spending and restore the company to the black. They clearly care more about fiscal responsibility, i.e. profits, than they do about the well-being people. This is about the ideology, or rather mythology, of personal freedom. When people are free from government regulations and programs that take money from the worthy workers and wealthy job-creators and give it to the undeserving lazy poor then everything will be in balance and a growing economy will be magically restored.

Not only is this ideology totally wrong, with no possible way of creating growth, it will exacerbate the destabilizing disparity of more money going to fewer and fewer super rich overlords. This is fascism and it’s where Republican policies have been and will continue taking us.

At this moment in time, as the Republicans petulantly refuse to consider any discussion of closing loopholes on their large corporate puppet masters, it seems as if many of these zealots truly believe in the righteousness of their cause and are willing to crash the global economy in the name of fiscal balance. This is shear madness. And yet the “free press” pretends that it’s a legitimate approach. How can one not be pessimistic when clear stupidity passes for a valid economic option and when people are so deluded and mislead that they will seriously consider returning the patient to the care of the poisoner?

Anger vs. Rationality

September 20, 2010 Economics, Politics, Values No comments

The conventional wisdom is that 2010 will be a “wave election” in which Republicans are propelled into office because of an angry electorate who thinks that the country is going in the wrong direction. Well I understand the anger and the wrong direction feeling. What I don’t understand is why any sane person would think the Republicans have a solution. Being against improvements in healthcare, unemployment benefits, and re-regulation of Wall Street isn’t a plan. Stopping government action is not a jobs plan. Even the laudable goal of balancing the budget will not create more jobs. It will create more lay-offs.

The fact is that “throw the bums out” is not a strategy. The government is not in the way of the free market. The government, particularly the Republican leadership, is owned by the wealthy, who are simply looking out for their own interests. If unfettered capitalism is so good, why did we have a crash? And why do most Americans seem to think that returning control of the government to those who screwed it up is such a good idea?

Let’s say that the economy is a child who was injured by its caretaker—injured so badly that recovery will take a lot of rehabilitation and time. So now, because the healing isn’t fast enough, we want to return the child to the caretaker that inured it? If the polls are to be believed, apparently so.

Anger and fear-mongering about “socialism” are not a plan. I’m angry and fearful too. I’m angry that the corporate chieftains and Wall Street types who control the economy are perpetuating the myth that somehow government is to blame and that if we do nothing things will fix themselves. People seem to think that the rich have more because they deserve more and that we should not tax them because that will mean they won’t do as much for us. This is bull.

The rich, like all of us, are motivated by self-interest. This is fine up to a point. But when the rich control both parties and rig things so they can suck up as much wealth as they can, a little balance needs to be restored. Those who think that the government is the enemy are being duped into a self-fulfilling prophesy of voting for people who either have a misguided ideology that no government equals some miraculous cure or for people who are deliberately misleading them in order to keep the government from interfering with the continued sucking of the public’s neck by their wealthy vampire overlords.

I say be angry; but let’s have a rational plan of action that moves us toward a fairer government. The rich will survive just fine; even there is a little mandatory moderation in how much financial blood they can suck. Don’t be a willing victim and vote Republican against your own self-interest.

Obama at One

January 11, 2010 Politics No comments

President Obama, or just Obama, has been the most powerful man on the planet for about a year now and it seems like he’s not really as powerful or as visionary as I might have hoped. I am disappointed by just how pragmatic and centrist he seems to be. But I am truly appalled by the both the Republicans and the media that allows them to get away with saying whatever bullshit they want.

Cheney, who I think should be in jail as a war profiteer, continues to spout off with statements about Obama that are simply untrue. The non-fact based world of Republicans has gotten even more non-fact based, more divorced from reality, meaner, stupider, and uglier.

Don’t people remember how systematically they ran this country into the ground and how incompetently and corruptly they governed? Apparently not. Apparently most people think the fact that Obama could not snap his fingers and make it all better within a year makes it OK to vote for Republicans who will go back to the aggressively stupid policies that caused the debacle in the first place.

Look, I like a thoughtful, intellectual president. I recognize that there are some sincere Republicans and that some conservative values do promote the greater good. But good lord, isn’t there anybody but Rachel Maddow and Keith Obermann who can muster the proper sense of anger and disbelief at the Republican strategy of simply vilifying virtual anything Obama says that isn’t about more military spending? Sheesh.