Carrot or Stick?

It may be a bit of an overstatement to say that Obama owes his presidency to the financial sector, or Wall Street if you prefer. But what had seemed like a tossup two months earlier became a near certainty by election day. This was the direct consequence of the cumulative hell the Barons of Bucks had wrought during the administrations of Reagan, Papa Bush, yes Clinton and by all means W. Without their help Barack Obama might now be the Junior Senator from Illinois.

Wall Street money was fairly evenly distributed during the campaign. As president, Obama has treated the financial community with considerable deference. He began by choosing Timothy Geithner, one of “them” as Treasury Secretary. His Justice Department has yet to seek its first indictment of any of the miscreants who caused our financial disaster. Nevertheless the financial community is now hell bent on using its resources, or money in plain English, to prevent his reelection.

Evidently just letting the lords of finance keep their swag wasn’t enough. No substance abuse* equals the addiction to money, particularly in the harm done to others. any casual mention of regulations is blasphemy in their world. What Obama saw as a carrot these folks regard as a stick. It should be clear by now to someone as smart as he, that the time has come for no more Mister Nice Guy and to come out foursquare for the people they have been swindling, namely everyone else.

We hear constant reference to “energizing the base.” The right wing base is self energized for a variety of reasons, not least of which is plain old fashioned racism. Very few of them will stay at home even if it means holding their noses to vote for Romney. Many of us on the left are disappointed with Obama because he hasn’t even tried to deliver much of what we were led to expect, granted an impossible task considering our system of governance. Not much can be done in three months. But by calling out the culprits with some degree of specificity he might at come closer to earning an A for effort from those who voted for him with such passion four years ago.

*A more accurate term is self abuse. I know of no case of a substance experiencing discomfort.

Who's Sorry Now

“Nearly 3000 people were killed on 9/11 by Muslims with a professed hate for this country. For the next seven years American Muslims were treated for the most part with respect. We elect a president whose father, who he never knew, was born in a nation where Islam is the dominant religion, but which he never embraced. Overnight a throng of Islamophobes comes out of the woodwork. Is this a coincidence?”

This is the text of a letter I sent to the New Haven Register which didn’t print it. I could have added that the president is not Caucasian and that since the Republican establishment is quite willing to benefit from Tea Party incited Islamophobia, it is also willing to write off yet another minority. In view of demographic predictions the GOP doesn’t seem to be thinking long term. Well, just look at their concern for the environment.   

But here I’d like to treat the flip side of something I wrote a few months ago to the effect that the Republican establishment might rue the day when it enlisted the help of “this band of ruffians.” The time may come when what’s left of the Tea Party, and they aren’t spring chickens today, has second thoughts about this pseudo Faustian arrangement. What are they getting for figuratively selling their energy and votes? The two groups have very little in common other than a predilection to “pull the same lever” in the voting booth.

The Tea Partiers have a lot of interests, most of which consist of things they are against. They are against government, but aren’t all that concerned over its regulating Wall Street. They’re against immigration and the establishment is going with them for the time being, even though cheap domestic labor warms the cockles of many business man’s hearts. They don’t like paying taxes, but don’t seem to care much one way or the other about high income tax cuts or other benefits like the multitude of loopholes that benefit the very rich. They dislike people of color on general principle, but the big guys just consider their votes as a long lost cause. Both groups dislike poorer people receiving financial help, but one out of personal animus and the other out of a wish to pad its own pockets. Most of them don’t care about outsourcing jobs because their number is currently top heavy with pensioners  

If the Republican agenda succeeds, what will the Tea Party folks have to show for their help? Their descendants will then be in the same boat as the welfare people they so loath and without the benefit of unions to represent those with jobs as they did their predecessors. Of course the big bucks will keep flowing to the people who already have more than they know what to do with. It’s not out of the question to see means testing as a qualification for voting.

The day may come when many people will regret the votes that their parents and grandparents cast in the name of a movement that came into full bloom on the first April 15^th after you know who became president.

Beautiful For Spacious Skies

“Throughout our history…our power has brought justice where there was tyranny, peace where there was conflict, and hope where there was affliction and despair…Our country is the greatest force for good the world has ever known.”   

These words were spoken recently by Mitt Romney. Barack Obama said something of the same nature the previous day, less hyperbolic and less illustrative of the point I’d like to make which is; if you include only the italicized words you have an accurate description of what could rightly have been said on August 14, l945, VJ Day, about the good that American power had brought in the preceding five years

But five years does not a history make. There are more than two hundred others for which we are accountable. Of the three benefits of “our power” that Romney cited, let’s take a pass on “hope where there was affliction and despair.” This is too hard to measure and depends greatly on who’s answering the questions. But we can get a much better handle on “justice where there was tyranny” and “peace where there was conflict.”

Did we replace conflict with peace in Vietnam? I guess you could say we did just that, but not exactly as intended. We did it by getting out. Whatever one thinks of Saddam Hussein it’s hard to argue that there’s less conflict and more peace in Iraq today than before we replaced a dictatorship with “democracy.” I doubt that the people of Chile, the Philippines or Iran, as well as most historians, consider our active support of Pinochet, Ferdinand Marcos and the Shah as replacing tyranny with justice.

Showman that he is Romney saved the piece de resistance of his ode for the last sentence. “Our country is the greatest force for good the world has ever known.” Wow! That man sure can cover a lot of territory.

Boardwalk and Park Place

In current polls the one area in which Mitt Romney leads Barack Obama, and it’s a big one, is his perceived ability to manage the economy. It is this point to which I take issue. It’s been mentioned by many, including me, that no president in our history has taken office with more impressive credentials in finance than Herbert Hoover, or few less impressive than Harry Truman, a failed haberdasher.* This could be coincidental.

So can the disparity in wealth preceding the current Great Recession being greater than at any time since 1929, an inequity that is still growing. Regulations on the financial complex in 2007 were more lax than at any time since 1929. Perhaps this is also coincidental. But if the flip of a coin comes out heads too many times in a row you might think about taking a look at it if you’ve been calling tails.

It should be common knowledge that corporations are expected to show a profit while the United States Government is not. I’m amazed at the number of people of all political persuasions who have forgotten that the purported reason for the controversial Bush tax cuts was that a surplus was a threat to the economy. This pearl of wisdom was spoken by Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, theAlan Greenspan, at the time an oracle to the right. In retrospect it’s not hard to see him as a housebroken Ayn Rand.

While there is no precise equivalent to our current dilemma, the Great Depression comes closest. FDR was reelected for his second term by a greater margin than his first**and Obama’s reelection is in danger. In FDR’s case the house had come tumbling down three years before his first term so the Depression was clearly Hoover’s. On one hand Barack Obama’s election was helped considerably by the news that had come into full bloom just two months earlier. On the other, compared to FDR it’s a matter of months to years.  Relative to the obstacles they inherited I see what Obama has accomplished as president on a par with what FDR did in his first term. The timing of the circumstances was quite different for both, and by the way, so are their pedigrees. 

*Truman’s business was successful until a depression hit the farm belt ten years before it hit the nation.

**Maine had been a bell weather state since the Civil War when both the state and nation tended to vote Republican, leading to the saying “as Maine goes so goes the nation.” The laugh line after Alf Landon carried only two states in 1936 was “as Maine goes so goes Vermont.”

Midnight Riders

A few days ago I received a note from a fellow traveler who wanted to know how to “counter” a right wing blog received from a right wing friend, written by a man named Lou Pritchett, a former Procter and Gamble vice president. Mr. Pritchett is “scared” by Barack Obama, very scared. He says so twenty one times  giving twenty one reasons why the president scares him. The blog reads like a biblical treatment of God in reverse. He uses the familiar litany of anti-Obama clichés including one I hadn’t heard. “You scare me because I do not know how you paid for your expensive Ivy League education and your upscale life style and housing with no visible signs of support,” aka “know your place boy.” Evidently Mr. Pritchett isn’t aware of scholarships.

Right wingers differ from us in that that they scan the blogosphere to pick up items like this to send to the faithful. I’ve received a few blogs from fellow lefties for me to simply read, none of this “pass it on” business common to most right wing messages. These people must think of themselves as Twenty First Century Paul Reveres.  

And understandably so! Annoying facts flying around are an impediment to right wing talking points that they contradict, which I think of conjecture or prejudice, take your pick. In this effort they have help from the media, not limited to Fox, where a strenuous effort is underway to present the infamous “both sides.” But even allowing for this “impartiality,” in my opinion if the game is played solely on what the public as a whole comes to consider as fact, the right would eventually lose. The truth often comes out slowly, but it does come out, hence all this missionary zeal.

Compared to the looming threat over admission to voting booths this misinformation is small potatoes. The shared political persuasion of the senders and recipients gives the whole exercise an inbred aura. Presidential campaigns generally last long enough to weed out much of what I once heard a local New Jersey politician refer to as his opponent’s “false facts.” To appear just a little bit objective I’ll refrain from mention his political party. Pretty sneaky eh?

Letter to the Editor-New York Times

While I wholeheartedly approve of severe action against the Penn State athletic program, erasing all Joe Paterno’s victories is an exercise in absurdity. Will this also cancel the opposing teams’ losses? An admitted blown call by an umpire cost a pitcher a perfect game last season. But the mistake became irredeemable with the first pitch to the next batter. This NCAA ruling is reminiscent of college football’s retroactive stripping of Paul Robeson’s honors as an end for Rutgers in 1917 and 1918. The all American college team for those years consequent;y consisted of ten men. 

Both Sides

Perusing the articles listed on the internet I came across one with the heading “Study says Obama tax proposal could cost 700,000 jobs.” This was pretty strong stuff for someone who figured the result would be the opposite so I clicked on the text of the article. The first paragraph read ““Republican House Speaker John Boehner* hammered President Barack Obama on Tuesday after accounting firm Ernst and Young released a study funded by pro industry groups hostile to the Democrat’s agenda. (Italics mine) The firm’s results showed that Obama’s proposed tax hikes on the wealthy could cost the already sputtering economy more than 700,000 jobs.”   Anyone reading the heading and not the article could easily conclude that facts have caught up with Obama. Reading the text is essential to understanding that this “study” was paid for by Republicans to an accounting firm that was expected to come to this kind of conclusion.** There should have been no problem with a proper layout on the internet. Something like “House Speaker says Obama tax plan to cost 700,000 jobs” would have sufficed as a heading followed by the text which would then explain among other things who was financing the project.   Whatever the medium, this sort of misleading presentation of news is common and supplies what many, if not most voters consider information. In presenting “both sides” of an issue talking points are given the same respect as evidence. Could this policy be the editor’s intention to help Republicans as compensation for all those facts the “liberal media” have been spreading?   To repeat an old saw, if one party decided the earth was flat there would be headlines reading “parties differ on shape of earth.” There’s no question in my mind as to where the flat earthers would hang their hats.      

*My spell check accepted “Boehner” as it should. After all he is Speaker of the House of Representatives. Two entries it continues to reject are “Barack” and “Obama.” Is there a message here?  

**When Nixon’s Attorney General John Mitchell was asked on the Dick Cavett show about the dangers of marijuana, he said that a test was underway to be completed in two years that “will prove conclusively “ the dangers involved.