In the year 2040 a early November headline will read:
Louise Salazar Wins the Presidency!
with the sub headline reading:
Iowa Caucuses Tonight to Begin the 2044 Primary Season
Everybody’s Scratching Somebody’s Back
Some of the message coming from various Republicans lately is that the public employee unions give the Democratic Party an edge since the Democrats are supposedly happy to give the unions whatever they want and then the unions provide the dollars and the votes to elect the Democrats. A fine circle of back scratching.
In the first place, if this was such an effective dynamic, how did a Republican get elected to the Wisconsin governorship? Why are there any Republican office holders anywhere? And, why is it that
(Yes, I just used that a couple of posts previously…)
I suppose it is all hunky dory that big business and the wealthy give loads of cash to Republicans who vote to give them tax deductions and tax cuts, and to ease the regulatory burden. It is so much easier to make money when one is free to pollute the environment, treat employees as expendable assets, and customers as people to swindle.
GOP Misdirection
Claiming to be concerned about the deficit, the GOP proposes 61 billion in cuts in this year’s spending. These cuts will likely lead to the loss of one million jobs and slow the growth of the economy by 1.5 to 2 percentage points in the second and third quarters of 2011.
There are two things that are absolutely necessary for there to be any hope of a balanced budget. One of those is a strong economy. In the overall scheme of the US budget deficit, saving $61 billion this year is nothing. Risking a strong economic recovery is a lot.
The Republicans either do not really care about the deficit, or they simply do not understand the situation. The question is, is the GOP misdirecting us or themselves?
The Class War
What? America is a classless society? Ideally, yes. In reality, no.
Sure, in America anyone is able to climb the social class ladder through hard work, initiative, etc., etc. But this is not as true as some would have you believe.
Generally, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The latest recession is telling. Lots of bailouts for the wealthy who are today again receiving their customary fat bonus checks. How are you doing?
The Republicans take the House of Representatives and, under the guise of balancing the budget, attempt to slash spending that benefits the lower and middle income population. Spending stimulus bills are now verboten (though tax cuts, especially for the wealthy, are always welcome), so the states cannot receive any extra support to balance their budgets from the feds.
The Republicans in the states use the (supposed) state budget crises to destroy public employee unions. Despite the fact that
I do not have the numbers, but I would bet that the private sector employees have not exactly done all that great over the past fifteen years. Based on the Winners Take All graphs (scroll down just a bit) at Mother Jones, it doesn’t look too good.
James Taranto opines at The Wall Street Journal:
I would love to see the polling on that.
I actually qualify as someone who holds shares in corporations through a retirement account. Oddly, I do find myself put upon by corporate power. My experience is that big business will screw me over every chance it gets.
But I digress. Membership in unions has dropped a lot over the past few decades. In 1977 26.9% of non-agricultural workers were covered by a collective bargaining agreement. In 2009, this number is 13.7%.
And over the past few decades, inequality has increased. Note that the share of income after taxes has declined for the bottom 80%.
Yes, the rich have done very well for themselves over the past few decades. But it is not enough it would seem. Class war has been declared by the 20% against the 80%. It is a sad fact that many of the 80% are supporting the 20% in the war.
Apocalypse
Looks like seventeen days until the end of life as we know it.
March 4 is the day the US federal government shuts down if the politicians can not find a middle ground.
March 4 is also the day the current NFL collective bargaining agreement expires. Players and owners need to find a middle ground.
I’m not holding my breath on either situation. I am more concerned about the former than the latter…politicians must play their games.
The Pendulum Gets Shoved
Back in June of 2009, I posted about the “death” of the Republican Party and who would save it. Today, as predicted, the Republican Party is resurgent and I read stories of how the republicans are going to threaten democratic control of the senate and the presidency. Who will save the Democrats??
The Republicans!!! With the last election results being driven mostly by the economy, unemployment specifically, the republican controlled House of Representatives has not yet done a thing to address that issue.
With the national debt standing as one of the important issues of our time, the Republicans are content with addressing it by slashing domestic non-security discretionary spending, i.e., spending they do not like. In other words, they do not care about the deficit (there is not enough money in domestic non-security discretionary spending to do much for the deficit), they are just happy to use the crisis as an opportunity to cut spending they do not like. (Remember how unhappy they were when Obama talked about crises presenting opportunity?)
Of course, Americans like the spending and are still unhappy with the unemployment situation. If this keeps up, I expect the Democrats to win big.
“You People”
When I was a senior at Indiana University (read: when I had my head up my hard ass), I worked part time as a supervisor in the MRC dorm cafeteria. There was a time when I was having a difficulty with three students. I have no idea what the dispute was but at one point one of them said something that I found particularly exasperating and I said “You people!”
My choice of words was unfortunate, the three individuals involved were African-Americans. They immediately took exception (and I can hardly blame them). There were two threads of conversation that took place simultaneously from that point.
One was:
“You people, what do you mean, you people?!”
“Students” I believe this was paired with a “duh” but not the kind of “duh” that was once hip and now passe. Just an involuntary syllable.
The second was:
“What are you doing, bringing race into this?”
“I didn’t bring race up. You are the one’s who brought race up!”
Although I had my head up my hard ass, I was hardly capable of deceit and they promptly perceived that I was completely sincere when I said I meant students. The event ended uneventfully.
The newly elected governor of Ohio, John Kasich, recently had a similar experience. It seems Kasich is the first Ohio governor in fifty years to put together a cabinet comprised entirely of white people. When the Ohio Legislative Black Caucus offered Kasich assistance in
finding qualified minority applicants, Kasich told Turner, “I don’t need your people.”
The governor’s spokesperson:
What he meant was, “Your people are Democrats, we don’t need them on our cabinet”
Part of me says I have to give Kasich the benefit of the doubt given my own experience. Part of me says “Yeah, riiiiight!”
You are welcome to draw your own conclusions.
127 Hours
A ad for the movie 127 Hours just ran on the television. I was aware that a movie had been made of the subject but I was unaware of the title. I have heard of the title on a few occasions and, based on the title alone, I was not all that interested. Listening to that ad just now, I think I figured out why.
127 Hours sounds like a long, long movie in a way that 48 Hours, 28 Days and Nine Months do not. Maybe because when I hear 48 hours I immediately translate that into two days.
No major release movie is going to be of a length measured in days or months. But movies measured in hours are routine. 127 hours is too many.
The Certainty of Uncertainty
Uncertainty seems to be one of the favorite words for republicans to pull out when they are trying to explain why a particular situation is bad. Last month they were very concerned about the uncertainty business had to deal with over the up in the air status of the Bush tax cuts.
The one certainty of this uncertainty is that it is a load of crap.
In the first place, when was there ever certainty?
Further, the extension of the tax cuts for two years apparently did away with the uncertainty. Any business person can tell you how he or she only considers the next two years when contemplating investing tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, or millions of dollars. Even if the two years was enough certainty, that “two years of certainty” only existed for a few days. Then the two years started and now it is less.
And if extending the tax cuts for two years did away with uncertainty, would not have allowing the tax cuts to lapse have also done away with uncertainty? I did not hear any republican mentioning that.
Another example is the health care reform. It passed. It is law. That is as certain as it is going to get (again, not all that certain, but…). Republicans have gone on and on about how they are going to undo the law with few specifics about how they would change it. Who is introducing uncertainty?
There have been rumblings from Republicans to not vote to raise the debt ceiling. What might happen if the debt ceiling is not raised? Seems like there is plenty of uncertainty there.
There has been enough rhetoric on both sides to suggest that it is not beyond the pale that the government could well be shut down sometime in the next two years if agreement on budgets can not be reached. A government shutdown presents all kinds of uncertainty.
Finally, sooner or later, the federal debt, if allowed to continue growing at present rates (or even Bush rates!), will cause significant problems for the US economy. Most agree we are still several trillion dollars away (a few years) before such problems become plausible, but no one really knows. The debt is practically the definition of uncertainty. But Republicans continue to pretend that the deficit can be solved with discretionary spending cuts and tweaking of entitlements. It cannot be solved this way. Until the deficit is seriously addressed, there is no end of uncertainty.
Credit Where Credit is Taken?
You may have heard that the economic recovery has continued to strengthen. Of course, Republicans are quick to take credit. Reality presents a different picture:
This chart* is the change in GDP by quarter. The red represents the end of the Bush administration, the blue the beginning of the Obama administration.
It would appear that the failed stimulus and bailouts really fouled things up!
In any event, the economy was clearly in growth mode before the Republicans had any chance to influence it (especially given that the Republicans have yet to do anything that would have an effect!!!).
But what does evidence mean to a party that largely denies human caused climate change (when they are not denying climate change itself) and mostly does not accept evolution as a valid theory of how life works on earth?
*Chart from The Washington Monthly.