2011 was the end of the US Hyperpower

According to Juan Cole:

Some years are pivotal and serve to mark off eras of history. 2011 saw the end of American hyperpower, and it announced the end of a decade of US-Muslim conflict that began with 2001. It saw the killing of Usama Bin Laden, the virtual rolling up of al-Qaeda, the repudiation of al-Qaeda’s methods by the masses of the Arab world, and the US military withdrawal from Iraq. The upheavals of the Arab Spring and subsequent elections have led to Muslim fundamentalist parties being drawn into parliamentary politics on a Westminster model, rather than remaining sect-like corporate groups outside the body politic.

[...]

The end of the Cold War, which had stretched from 1946 to 1991, had left the political elites of the United States and Western Europe without a bogeyman or security threat on which they could run for office and through which they could funnel resources to the military-industrial complex that largely pays for their political campaigns. With Russia in steep decline in the 1990s and China still run as a small, cautious power, the US emerged as what the French called a Hyperpower, the sole superpower. US hawks were impatient that Bill Clinton seemed not to realize that he had complete freedom of movement for a brief window of time. It was the new US status of hyperpower that allowed the G. W. Bush administration to respond to the September 11 terrorist attacks by launching two major wars and a host of smaller struggles, all against targets in the Muslim world.

As of 2011, the age of the US hyperpower is passing, along with the possibilities for American wars of choice, i.e., wars of aggression.

Was 2011 the year that signals the end of America as the only World Hyperpower. Al Jazeera showed an hour long program called Empire that suggests it was. Here is an excerpt from the transcript of that program (transcript here.)

Marwan Bishara

This is Empire.

Hello and welcome to Empire. I am Marwan Bishara. The United States has the world’s biggest economy, strongest military and the most influential culture. It’s the only power with a global project defended and supported by more aircraft carriers, Fortune 500 companies and most successful media-tainment conglomerates than any other. But America’s post-cold war optimism, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, has given way to pessimism, forecasting a declining power and more crucially, the end of an American era. The rise of new divisional and global powers, coupled with Washington’s recent war fiascos and financial crisis have worsened the outlook for America’s future.

Countless books have gone beyond recent developments to illustrate a persistent decline with titles like Suicide of a Superpower, The Empire Has No Clothes, Taming American Power, Nemesis, The Last Days of the American Republic, Colossus, The Rise and Fall of The American Empire and Selling Out a Superpower. But how serious are the Doomsday scenarios? Is this decline temporary or reversible and what does it mean to America and the rest of the world? Well joining me to answer these questions and more are Tom Engelhardt, editor of the American Empire Project and a popular website Tomdispatch, the author of the United States of Fear. Susan Glasser, editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy magazine, former editor at the Washington Post and co-author of Kremlin Rising Vladimir Putin’s Russia And The End of Revolution. And Cynthia Enloe, professor of woman’s studies and international development at Clark University, the author of The Real State of America Atlas, Mapping the Myths and Truths of the United States and Bananas, Beaches and Bases, Making Feminist Sense of International Politics. Last, but not least, Stephen Walt, professor of International Affairs at Harvard University, the author of Taming American Power and co-author of the Israel Lobby. Our starting point is US strategic overstretch.

The show itself is here:



America's relative economic decline internationally has been quite obvious for several decades. In some ways I suspect that America has been trading the existence of its middle class for the military that has substituted for the economic dominance that existed after the end of WW II. The election of Ronald Reagan as President signaled both the end of increases in real wages for workers and the sharp increase in the absolute size of the American military. That increase in the military has been the largest single reason for the deficit that the Conservatives have decried since Obama was elected President, but the deficit has occurred primarily under Republican Presidents.

Now the Wall Street banks have given the world the Great Recession and America can no longer afford to spend a third of the federal budget on a military force that is more expensive that the total military forces of every other nation in the world.

All of these trends came together in 2011. Something is going to have to change radically in 2012. In fact, it may have already changed and we are only just beginning to see what broke. As this election year plays out a lot of it will be exposed - and the fear of the changes will bring forth a lot of lies to conceal the facts. 2012 is going to be a rough year.

Republican elites practice politics as warfare, not bipartisanship

The media is setting up a fiction that the Republican Party has pragmatic, rational elites with only an extremist fringe that makes a great deal of noise. This fits with the already existing media fiction that both parties have an extremist fringe but are essentially just alike. This existing fiction is the basis of the idea that there is a "centrist" position that, if only a few courageous politicians would stand up and support it then America could be governed by a bipartisan government that solved real problems.

This media-stoked deal of bipartisanship is a ridiculous fiction, of course. It has no basis in reality. But then the media itself has almost no basis in reality any more. Now Ed Kilgore, James Vega, and J. P. Green describe America's current political reality:

The most dangerous group of political extremists today is not the grass roots supporters of the Tea Party. It is the major sector of the Republican financial and ideological elite who have embraced the philosophy of “politics as warfare.”

[...]

Extremist political parties share a large number of common characteristics, one critical trait being a radically different conception of the role and purpose of the political party itself in a democratic society.

In the politics as warfare perspective a political party’s objective is defined as the conquest and seizure of power and not sincere collaboration in democratic governance. The party is viewed as a combat organization whose goal is to defeat an enemy, not a governing organization whose job is to faithfully represent the people who voted for it. Political debate and legislative maneuvering are seen not as the means to achieve ultimate compromise, but as forms of combat whose objective is total victory.

This basic conception of the role of political parties leads to the justification and use of two profoundly anti-democratic strategies.

First, in the politics as warfare perspective it is a legitimate strategy for a political party to paralyze the workings of government in order to prevent a democratically elected government of an opposing party from implementing the platform on which it was elected. In the politics as warfare perspective the extremist political party accepts no responsibility for stability—engineering the failure of the existing government is absolutely paramount and any negative consequences that may occur in the process represent a kind of “collateral damage” that must be accepted as inevitable in warfare.

Historically, the Republican Party never embraced this strategy at any time during the Democratic administrations of Truman, Kennedy or Carter. The strategy first made its appearance when Newt Gingrich engineered the shutdown of the government in 1994. After Obama’s election in 2008 the use of this “paralyze the government” tactic accelerated dramatically with the conversion of the filibuster into a minority veto of virtually all majoritysponsored legislation and a Republican bar to the huge numbers of judicial and administrative appointments. Previous generations of Republicans would have been scandalized by the notion of crippling the administration of justice by leaving courts grotesquely understaffed in order to prevent the appointment of individuals who did not strictly adhere to conservative orthodoxy.

The most dramatic escalation of this approach, however, occurred after the elections of 2010 and was reflected in the rejection of the very substantial reduction in federal spending that Obama offered the Republican house majority. Observers concurred that the deal was far more favorable to conservatives in terms of policy than the deal Ronald Reagan accepted in 1986 on tax reform or that Newt Gingrich accepted on welfare reform in 1995. But public statements by Republican leaders indicated that the deal was rejected in substantial part on the explicitly political grounds that any legislative agreement that produced a “victory” for Obama was unacceptable. In effect, the political objective of weakening the president had actually become a higher priority than the achievement of the most fundamental long-sought conservative policy goals.

It is almost impossible for anyone who does not remember previous eras of American politics to realize how extraordinary this transformation actually is. It would have been literally inconceivable to the Republican senators and congressmen of the 1950s and 1960s.

The second, even more directly and profoundly anti-democratic strategy that directly flows from the politics as warfare philosophy is the calculated attempt to disenfranchise likely pro-Democratic voters.

There were no systematic Republican initiatives to disenfranchise voters during the Nixon, Reagan or Gingrich eras. But after the 2008 elections Fox News began promulgating the notion that massive voter fraud had occurred. Fox News featured a video of two members of the New Black Panthers at a single polling site more than 100 times on its national programs, asserting that they had intimidated voters in order to insure Obama’s election.

Even after it was conclusively demonstrated2 that sworn eyewitness testimony had been intentionally falsified in order to fabricate this charge, Fox continued to air the accusations and to assert that they were the tip of the iceberg of similar incidents. In parallel, accusations were also made that massive numbers of fraudulent votes had been cast in the election. The result of these charges was a widespread grass-roots effort by local tea party groups to police polling places and record incidents of intimidation and fraudulent voting during the 2010 elections—an effort that produced not a single documented case anywhere in the country. Nonetheless, there is now a major, nationally coordinated and massively funded effort to prevent pro-Democratic constituencies from casting their ballots. TDS managing editor Ed Kilgore accurately summarized the situation as follows: Central Eyewitness Testimony.

In the wake of the 2010 elections, Republican governors and legislatures are engaging in a wave of restrictive voting legislation unlike anything this country has seen since the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which signaled the defeat of the South’s long effort to prevent universal suffrage. This wave of activism is too universal to be a coincidence, and too broad to reflect anything other than a general determination to restrict the franchise. Millions of voters are affected….

As Ari Berman explained in an excellent recent summary of these developments for Rolling Stone, restrictive legislation, which has been introduced in 38 states and enacted (so far) in at least 12, can be divided into four main categories: restrictions on voter registration drives by nonpartisan, nonprofit civic and advocacy groups; cutbacks in early voting opportunities; new, burdensome identification requirements for voting; and reinstitution of bans on voting by ex-felons.

While new voter ID laws have clearly been coordinated by the powerful conservative state legislative lobbying network ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), other initiatives have spread almost virally. Virtually all of these restrictions demonstrably target segments of the electorate—the very poor, African-Americans and Hispanics, college students, and organizations trying to register all of the above—that tend to vote for Democrats.

In previous decades large sectors of the Republican elite would have been extremely uncomfortable with such measures and a significant group would have been vocally critical. Today, however, there is literally not a single significant figure in the Republican universe who is publicly objecting. The overwhelming influence of Fox News and talk radio have converted the notions that Obama represents a threat as massive as the rise of Hitler did in Germany, and that massive voter fraud is occurring all across the country, into passionately held urban legends that Republican elites no longer dare—or indeed
even wish—to challenge.

There are two profoundly disturbing conclusions that must be faced: First, the paralysis of government and the disenfranchisement of citizens are not “business as usual” for American conservatism. They are not attempts to prevent or reverse the enactment of particular policies and bills to which conservatives object but are rather strategies that strike at the most basic institutions and operations of representative democracy itself. To put it bluntly, they are not the policies of conservatives—they are strategies of political extremism.

Second, these strategies are not the products of a disreputable fringe of grass roots conservative activists, but have been designed, executed, endorsed and financed by a major sector of the Republican and conservative financial and ideological elite. The extraordinary fact that there is no major group or individual within the Republican coalition vocally objecting to these measures, as would have occurred in the past, offers the most profoundly disturbing evidence imaginable of the widespread tacit approval by the Republican elite.

There is more in this very clear analysis of the collapse of American democratic politics.

It is my opinion that America has a new aristocracy - one I call the moneyed elite. It consists largely of extremely wealthy families who want their power and wealth to gain control of the federal government, along with the Wall Street banking elite who handle the money belonging to those wealthy elite, and the social group that provides top executives to the large American and multinational corporations. An especially important element of this is Newscorp because it is a multinational moneyed elite predator which, because of its multinational status can avoid much of the regulation that national governments attempt to apply to the moneyed elites.

The federal government has, since the Great Depression, regulated the moneyed elites and provided justice to the working and middle classes. It is this regulation that the moneyed elites wish to break. The takeover of the Republican Party by these elites and the application of the strategy of politics as warfare is their current effort to weaken the power of the federal government to control them.

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Addendum 1:33 PM CST
Paul Krugman points to the extremism described above very, very clearly.

Progressives are atheistic socialists who want to impose Sharia law. Class warfare is evil; also, John Kerry is too rich. And so on.

The key to understanding this, I’d suggest, is that movement conservatism has become a closed, inward-looking universe in which you get points not by sounding reasonable to uncommitted outsiders — although there are a few designated pundits who play that role professionally — but by outdoing your fellow movement members in zeal.

It’s sort of reminiscent of Stalinists going after Trotskyites in the old days: the Trotskyites were left deviationists, and also saboteurs working for the Nazis. Didn’t propagandists feel silly saying all that? Not at all: in their universe, extremism in defense of the larger truth was no vice, and you literally couldn’t go too far.

Many members of the commentariat don’t want to face up to the fact that this is what American politics has become; they cling to the notion that there are gentlemanly elder statesmen on the right who would come to the fore if only Obama said the right words. But the fact is that nobody on that side of the political spectrum wants to or can make deals with the Islamic atheist anti-military warmonger in the White House.

Strap yourself in; this is not going to be fun.

I think - perhaps just hope - that the Occupy Wall Street movement is the first real indication that the mass American population has begun to awaken to the threat that the American conservative movement as it is now structured poses to American democracy and to American values.

Compare the OWS demonstrators to the Tea Partiers; They each represent the elites fighting over Washington, D.C.

Todd Gitlin explains the Occupy Wall Street movement - at least in part - in today's New York Times. He briefly states how the OWS movement resembles the early Tea Party movement. Both are rebellions against the domination of American politics by unelected elites who are out strictly for their own gain at the expense of the middle class - and in the case of the OWS, the working class.

Then he explains how the two movements differ - the Tea Partiers are a strongly hierarchical movement which finds the elites it follows are out of power.

The Tea Party, for all its apparent populism, revolves around a vision of power and how to attain it. Tea Partiers tend to be white, male, Republican, graying, married and comfortable; the political system once worked for them, and they think it can be made to do so again. They revile government, but they adore hierarchy and order.

The OWS individuals in contrast show:

Deep anger at grotesque inequities extends far beyond this one encampment; after all, a few handfuls of young activists do not have a monopoly on the fight against plutocracy. Revulsion in the face of a perverse economy is felt by many respectable people: unemployed, not yet unemployed, shakily employed and plain disgusted. A month from now, this movement, still busy being born, could look quite different.

And yet it remains true that the core of the movement, the (mostly young and white, skilled but jobless) people who started the “occupation” three weeks ago, consists of what right-wing critics call anarchists.

[...]

IN this recent incarnation, anarchism, for the most part, is not so much a theory of the absence of government, but a theory of self-organization, or direct democracy, as government. The idea is that you do not need institutions because the people, properly assembled, properly deliberating, even in one square block of Lower Manhattan, can regulate themselves.

[...]

This new protest style is more Rousseau than Marx. ... It likes government more than corporations, but its own style is hardly governmental. It tends to care about process more than results.

And oh, how it loves to talk. It is no surprise that it makes fervent use of the technologies of horizontal communication, of Facebook and Twitter, though the instinct predated — perhaps prefigured — those tools. Not coincidentally, this was also the spirit of the more or less leaderless, partyless revolutions of Tunisia and Egypt that are claimed as inspiration in Lower Manhattan. An “American Autumn” is their shot at an echo of the “Arab Spring.”

OCCUPY Wall Street, then, emanates from a culture — strictly speaking, a counterculture — that is diametrically opposed to Tea Party discipline. ... Such movements hope to remain forever under construction, fluid, unfixed. They slip laughingly through the nets of journalism, which prefers hard-and-fast answers to the question “What do you people want?”

[Can] ... the inchoate quality of the Occupy Wall Street movement ... continue[?] Probably not, since an evolving alliance demands concrete goals, strategies and compromises. But perhaps something of the initial free spirit can flourish. There is plenty of public sentiment to nourish it. It doesn’t take public opinion polls to detect American anger at the plutocracy and the impunity with which it lords it over the country.

The culture of anarchy is right about this: The corporate rich — those ostensible “job creators” who somehow haven’t gotten around to creating jobs — rule the Republican Party and much of the Democratic Party as well, having artfully arranged a mutual back-scratching society to enrich themselves. A refusal to compromise with this system, defined by its hierarchies of power and money, would be the current moment of anarchy’s great, lasting contribution.

Until now, fury at the plutocracy and the political class had found no channel to run in but the antigovernment fantasies of the Tea Party. Now it has dug a new channel. Anger does not move countries, but it moves movements — and movements, in turn, can move countries. To do that, movements need leverage. Even Archimedes needed a lever and a place to stand to move the world. When Zuccotti Park meets an aroused liberalism, the odd couple may not live happily ever after. But they can make a serious run at American dreams of “liberty and justice for all.”

I like Gitlin's distinctions between the OWS demonstrators and the tea partiers. Both are angry at the disaster the elites have heaped on America and on most Americans. One major difference between the two groups, as Todd Gitlin points out, is that the OWS are anarchists and the tea partiers deeply love hierarchy and order (even to the point of approaching fascism though they will never admit that.)

But another major distinction Gitlin does not discuss is the distinction between the groups of elites the two groups each oppose and support. The OWS is an organization in opposition to the Wall Street elite bankers and to the wealthiest families in America who are trying to carve out tax exemptions and regulation exemptions for themselves at the expense of the rest of the people in the economy. Add the top executives of the largest oligopoly and monopoly firms in America who want the same exemptions from taxes and regulations and who also want to destroy all workers' institutions starting with unions.

The "elites" the tea partiers oppose appear to be governments in general when not Republican dominated, unions, Democratic and Socialist politicians, Secular Humanists/Atheists/Muslims/etc., and intellectuals of all types, particularly those who claim that Global Warming exists, is largely man-made and is getting worse. They are also angry at government which rejects their desire to carry firearms anywhere and any time they wish. To a great extent the elites the Tea Partiers support caused the Great Recession which all Americans (except the wealthy elites themselves) currently are suffering from.

Where there appears to be a strong anarchist element in OWS, there is clearly a strong Libertarian element mixed with a strong Christian religious fundamentalist element in the Tea Partiers. Both strongly oppose certain elites. But the elites each oppose are quite different.

It's the battle between those elites which is behind the current paralysis in Washington, D.C. The two different groups of elites are battling over control of government and much of the battle is now centering over the refusal of the conservatives (for whom the tea partiers are surrogates) to let government function at all if they cannot control it. The level of dysfunction has clearly reached the point where political professionals on both sides are speaking out.

The differences between the demonstrators in the Occupy Wall Street movement and the Tea Partiers mirror the competing factions currently paralysing Washington, D.C. and preventing the government from functioning.

The run-up to the 2012 election is going to get very interesting. We've seen nothing yet.

The best description of modern American politics yet written

"As Hannah Arendt observed, a disciplined minority of totalitarians can use the instruments of democratic government to undermine democracy itself." This is quoted by Steve Benen this morning. He also adds:

There is one great overwhelming dilemma that dominates American politics in this early part of the 21st century. It is not the extent to which President Obama has failed to meet the expectations of the progressive base, though this matters. It is not the lazy, negligent, and incompetent establishment media, though this matters, too. The issue that should dominate the landscape is the radicalization of the modern Republican Party and the effects of having one of two major political parties descend into madness.

What brought Steve to write this? It is an article entitled "Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult" by long-time Republican Congressional staffer Mike Lofgren. Lofgreen recently retired after 28 years of working with Republicans on the Hill. Here are some excerpts:

Both parties are rotten - how could they not be, given the complete infestation of the political system by corporate money on a scale that now requires a presidential candidate to raise upwards of a billion dollars to be competitive in the general election? Both parties are captives to corporate loot. The main reason the Democrats' health care bill will be a budget buster once it fully phases in is the Democrats' rank capitulation to corporate interests - no single-payer system, in order to mollify the insurers; and no negotiation of drug prices, a craven surrender to Big Pharma.

But both parties are not rotten in quite the same way. The Democrats have their share of machine politicians, careerists, corporate bagmen, egomaniacs and kooks. Nothing, however, quite matches the modern GOP.

To those millions of Americans who have finally begun paying attention to politics and watched with exasperation the tragicomedy of the debt ceiling extension, it may have come as a shock that the Republican Party is so full of lunatics. To be sure, the party, like any political party on earth, has always had its share of crackpots, like Robert K. Dornan or William E. Dannemeyer. But the crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital center today: Steve King, Michele Bachman (now a leading presidential candidate as well), Paul Broun, Patrick McHenry, Virginia Foxx, Louie Gohmert, Allen West. The Congressional directory now reads like a casebook of lunacy.

[...]

A couple of months ago, I retired; but I could see as early as last November that the Republican Party would use the debt limit vote, an otherwise routine legislative procedure that has been used 87 times since the end of World War II, in order to concoct an entirely artificial fiscal crisis. Then, they would use that fiscal crisis to get what they wanted, by literally holding the US and global economies as hostages.

[...]

Everyone knows that in a hostage situation, the reckless and amoral actor has the negotiating upper hand over the cautious and responsible actor because the latter is actually concerned about the life of the hostage, while the former does not care. This fact, which ought to be obvious, has nevertheless caused confusion among the professional pundit class, which is mostly still stuck in the Bob Dole era in terms of its orientation.

[...]

It should have been evident to clear-eyed observers that the Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe. This trend has several implications, none of them pleasant.

In his "Manual of Parliamentary Practice," Thomas Jefferson wrote that it is less important that every rule and custom of a legislature be absolutely justifiable in a theoretical sense, than that they should be generally acknowledged and honored by all parties. These include unwritten rules, customs and courtesies that lubricate the legislative machinery and keep governance a relatively civilized procedure. The US Senate has more complex procedural rules than any other legislative body in the world; many of these rules are contradictory, and on any given day, the Senate parliamentarian may issue a ruling that contradicts earlier rulings on analogous cases.

The only thing that can keep the Senate functioning is collegiality and good faith. During periods of political consensus, for instance, the World War II and early post-war eras, the Senate was a "high functioning" institution: filibusters were rare and the body was legislatively productive. Now, one can no more picture the current Senate producing the original Medicare Act than the old Supreme Soviet having legislated the Bill of Rights.

Far from being a rarity, virtually every bill, every nominee for Senate confirmation and every routine procedural motion is now subject to a Republican filibuster. Under the circumstances, it is no wonder that Washington is gridlocked: legislating has now become war minus the shooting, something one could have observed 80 years ago in the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic. As Hannah Arendt observed, a disciplined minority of totalitarians can use the instruments of democratic government to undermine democracy itself.

John P. Judis sums up the modern GOP this way:

"Over the last four decades, the Republican Party has transformed from a loyal opposition into an insurrectionary party that flouts the law when it is in the majority and threatens disorder when it is the minority. It is the party of Watergate and Iran-Contra, but also of the government shutdown in 1995 and the impeachment trial of 1999. If there is an earlier American precedent for today's Republican Party, it is the antebellum Southern Democrats of John Calhoun who threatened to nullify, or disregard, federal legislation they objected to and who later led the fight to secede from the union over slavery."

A couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption. Should Republicans succeed in obstructing the Senate from doing its job, it would further lower Congress's generic favorability rating among the American people. By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner.

A deeply cynical tactic, to be sure, but a psychologically insightful one that plays on the weaknesses both of the voting public and the news media. There are tens of millions of low-information voters who hardly know which party controls which branch of government, let alone which party is pursuing a particular legislative tactic. These voters' confusion over who did what allows them to form the conclusion that "they are all crooks," and that "government is no good," further leading them to think, "a plague on both your houses" and "the parties are like two kids in a school yard." This ill-informed public cynicism, in its turn, further intensifies the long-term decline in public trust in government that has been taking place since the early 1960s - a distrust that has been stoked by Republican rhetoric at every turn ("Government is the problem," declared Ronald Reagan in 1980).

The media are also complicit in this phenomenon. Ever since the bifurcation of electronic media into a more or less respectable "hard news" segment and a rabidly ideological talk radio and cable TV political propaganda arm, the "respectable" media have been terrified of any criticism for perceived bias. Hence, they hew to the practice of false evenhandedness. Paul Krugman has skewered this tactic as being the "centrist cop-out." "I joked long ago," he says, "that if one party declared that the earth was flat, the headlines would read 'Views Differ on Shape of Planet.'"

[...]

This constant drizzle of "there the two parties go again!" stories out of the news bureaus, combined with the hazy confusion of low-information voters, means that the long-term Republican strategy of undermining confidence in our democratic institutions has reaped electoral dividends. The United States has nearly the lowest voter participation among Western democracies; this, again, is a consequence of the decline of trust in government institutions - if government is a racket and both parties are the same, why vote? And if the uninvolved middle declines to vote, it increases the electoral clout of a minority that is constantly being whipped into a lather by three hours daily of Rush Limbaugh or Fox News. There were only 44 million Republican voters in the 2010 mid-term elections, but they effectively canceled the political results of the election of President Obama by 69 million voters.

[...]

This tactic of inducing public distrust of government is not only cynical, it is schizophrenic. For people who profess to revere the Constitution, it is strange that they so caustically denigrate the very federal government that is the material expression of the principles embodied in that document. This is not to say that there is not some theoretical limit to the size or intrusiveness of government; I would be the first to say there are such limits, both fiscal and Constitutional. But most Republican officeholders seem strangely uninterested in the effective repeal of Fourth Amendment protections by the Patriot Act, the weakening of habeas corpus and self-incrimination protections in the public hysteria following 9/11 or the unpalatable fact that the United States has the largest incarcerated population of any country on earth. If anything, they would probably opt for more incarcerated persons, as imprisonment is a profit center for the prison privatization industry, which is itself a growth center for political contributions to these same politicians.[1] Instead, they prefer to rail against those government programs that actually help people. And when a program is too popular to attack directly, like Medicare or Social Security, they prefer to undermine it by feigning an agonized concern about the deficit. That concern, as we shall see, is largely fictitious.

[...]

I have joked in the past that the main administration policy that Republicans object to is Obama's policy of being black.[2] Among the GOP base, there is constant harping about somebody else, some "other," who is deliberately, assiduously and with malice aforethought subverting the Good, the True and the Beautiful: Subversives. Commies. Socialists. Ragheads. Secular humanists. Blacks. Fags. Feminazis. The list may change with the political needs of the moment, but they always seem to need a scapegoat to hate and fear.

It is not clear to me how many GOP officeholders believe this reactionary and paranoid claptrap. I would bet that most do not. But they cynically feed the worst instincts of their fearful and angry low-information political base with a nod and a wink.

[...]

I do not mean to place too much emphasis on racial animus in the GOP. While it surely exists, it is also a fact that Republicans think that no Democratic president could conceivably be legitimate.

Then he lets loose on the failures of the political Democrats. And he is dead right!

The reader may think that I am attributing Svengali-like powers to GOP operatives able to manipulate a zombie base to do their bidding. It is more complicated than that. Historical circumstances produced the raw material: the deindustrialization and financialization of America since about 1970 has spawned an increasingly downscale white middle class - without job security (or even without jobs), with pensions and health benefits evaporating and with their principal asset deflating in the collapse of the housing bubble. Their fears are not imaginary; their standard of living is shrinking.

What do the Democrats offer these people? Essentially nothing. Democratic Leadership Council-style "centrist" Democrats were among the biggest promoters of disastrous trade deals in the 1990s that outsourced jobs abroad: NAFTA, World Trade Organization, permanent most-favored-nation status for China. At the same time, the identity politics/lifestyle wing of the Democratic Party was seen as a too illegal immigrant-friendly by downscaled and outsourced whites.[3]

While Democrats temporized, or even dismissed the fears of the white working class as racist or nativist, Republicans went to work. To be sure, the business wing of the Republican Party consists of the most energetic outsourcers, wage cutters and hirers of sub-minimum wage immigrant labor to be found anywhere on the globe. But the faux-populist wing of the party, knowing the mental compartmentalization that occurs in most low-information voters, played on the fears of that same white working class to focus their anger on scapegoats that do no damage to corporations' bottom lines: instead of raising the minimum wage, let's build a wall on the Southern border (then hire a defense contractor to incompetently manage it). Instead of predatory bankers, it's evil Muslims. Or evil gays. Or evil abortionists.

How do they manage to do this? Because Democrats ceded the field. Above all, they do not understand language. Their initiatives are posed in impenetrable policy-speak: the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The what? - can anyone even remember it? No wonder the pejorative "Obamacare" won out. Contrast that with the Republicans' Patriot Act. You're a patriot, aren't you? Does anyone at the GED level have a clue what a Stimulus Bill is supposed to be? Why didn't the White House call it the Jobs Bill and keep pounding on that theme?

You know that Social Security and Medicare are in jeopardy when even Democrats refer to them as entitlements. "Entitlement" has a negative sound in colloquial English: somebody who is "entitled" selfishly claims something he doesn't really deserve. Why not call them "earned benefits," which is what they are because we all contribute payroll taxes to fund them? That would never occur to the Democrats. Republicans don't make that mistake; they are relentlessly on message: it is never the "estate tax," it is the "death tax." Heaven forbid that the Walton family should give up one penny of its $86-billion fortune. All of that lucre is necessary to ensure that unions be kept out of Wal-Mart, that women employees not be promoted and that politicians be kept on a short leash.

It was not always thus. It would have been hard to find an uneducated farmer during the depression of the 1890s who did not have a very accurate idea about exactly which economic interests were shafting him. An unemployed worker in a breadline in 1932 would have felt little gratitude to the Rockefellers or the Mellons. But that is not the case in the present economic crisis. After a riot of unbridled greed such as the world has not seen since the conquistadors' looting expeditions and after an unprecedented broad and rapid transfer of wealth upward by Wall Street and its corporate satellites, where is the popular anger directed, at least as depicted in the media? At "Washington spending" - which has increased primarily to provide unemployment compensation, food stamps and Medicaid to those economically damaged by the previous decade's corporate saturnalia. Or the popular rage is harmlessly diverted against pseudo-issues: death panels, birtherism, gay marriage, abortion, and so on, none of which stands to dent the corporate bottom line in the slightest.

He then explains what really matters to the Republican Party of 2011. I list here only his three categories.

1. The GOP cares solely and exclusively about its rich contributors.The party has built a whole catechism on the protection and further enrichment of America's plutocracy. Their caterwauling about deficit and debt is so much eyewash to con the public.
2. They worship at the altar of Mars.While the me-too Democrats have set a horrible example of keeping up with the Joneses with respect to waging wars, they can never match GOP stalwarts such as John McCain or Lindsey Graham in their sheer, libidinous enthusiasm for invading other countries.
3. Give me that old time religion.>Pandering to fundamentalism is a full-time vocation in the GOP.

There is a lot more in this great article. And it is written by a man who has been on the inside with the Republican leadership for nearly thirty years.

Remember "a disciplined minority of totalitarians can use the instruments of democratic government to undermine democracy itself." This article explains how it is happening to America right now. It is a process of the Republicans attacking to destroy American democracy and the hapless Democrats simply failing to defend democracy when it is under attack.

2012 is going to be a pivotal election for America, probably one as important as the election in 1860.

Does the economy now need government stimulus or austerity?

Is the current economic set of problems the result of Democratic policies as implemented by Obama, or is the economy sputtering because the Republicans who control the House of Representatives refuse are doing their free market fundamentalist austerity policies? David Shorr writes on that issue:

The heart of the Republican argument is the claim that government spending and taxation is "job-destroying" and otherwise harmful to the economy. Well, this view among Republicans (and sympathetic deficit-hawk Dems) put limits on the 2009 stimulus package and ruled out the possibility of a subsequent injection of stimulus. So if the economic disaster brought about by Bush policies wasn't proof enough, we are tragically getting another demonstration of what happens when free market fundamentalist policies win out over J.M. Keynes' time-tested, Great Depression-taming approach.

The real problem with Republican obstructionism isn't its rigid refusal to compromise or cynicism in wishing for the president's failure. What we have here is a grand experiment for our grand debate over government expenditure, regulation and the provision of public goods, i.e. whether they are necessities or threats for the economy. We should take the GOP at Grover Norquist and Ayn Rand's word; cuts in budgets and the public sector is the job- and prosperity-creating tonic for what ails our economy. Republicans have succeeded in sidelining the government and preventing it from propping up weak demand. It's not a stretch, therefore, to say this is the Republicans' economy -- not because of George Bush, but because of Paul Ryan, Michele Bachman, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Rand Paul, Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, the Koch Brothers, Richard Viguerie...

The scorekeeper on this experiment can be considered to be the bond market. When the policies begin to work then businesses will begin to expand and they will need funds. Investors will invest in the companies and in the stock market rather than in the bond market. Demand for safe government bonds will drop, requiring bond issuers to offer higher interest rates.

In other words, low bond interest rates means that the economy is still doing poorly, higher bond interest rates will indicate that the economy is improving.

The Republican led charge into cutting government spending has resulted in the lowest bond interest rates since the 1950's. The markets are speaking very loudly. Why aren't the Republicans in the Congress listening? Or do they have other purposes rather than improving the American economy?

Religion in Politics

Really, when you listen to Michelle Bachmann and Rick Perry wrap themselves in god for their political audiences, don't they sound desperate? Here is one view.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Debt Ceiling results likely to trigger second Dip Recession

For anyone who has studied Macroeconomics and understands that the economy is driven by consumer demand (Kenyse) rather than money supply (Friedman) or taxes (idiocy from know-nothing conservative politicians.) The Congressional conservative political extortionists have forced Congress under threat of destroying the economy to cut programs that would create jobs and consumer demand in the debt ceiling discussions.

The Financial Times (registration required) has some understanding of economic history and reports this:

"Unless we are missing something the US is one false move away from a recession," says Jim Reid, strategist at Deutsche Bank, who has warned the US could be approaching a "1937 moment" - when authorities removed post-Depression stimuli from still-fragile markets and triggered another recession. This risk, he says, has in fact only been magnified in the markets' eyes by agreement on raising the US debt ceiling.

[Quote Source - Talking Points Memo.

This is in addition to Larry Summers OpEd in today's Washington Post:

"With growth at less than 1 percent in the first half of this year, the economy is effectively at a stall and facing the prospects of shocks from a European financial crisis that is decidedly not under control, spikes in oil prices and declines in business and household confidence," Summers writes. "The indicators suggest that the economy has at least a 1-in-3 chance of falling back into recession if nothing new is done to raise demand and spur growth."

Frankly I think that Summers is being optimistic. He's writing to the inside the Washington, D.C. beltway crowd who will reject the truth that their common "wisdom" that the idiocy which has engulfed Washington for the last month or two was completely meaningless and in fact was destructive of the American economy.

As we have seen since the Great Recession started, the inside the beltway crowd will accept nothing except economic happy talk. It's been consistently wrong, but the idea seems to be that recognizing how bad the economy really is and developing policies to improve jobs and consumer demand will never work if the "powers-that-be" ever admit publicly how bad the economy really is and how much work is going to be required to turn the economy around.

The Republicans have set America up for the second dip of the Great Recession. It's probably because they think they can run more successfully against Obama in 2012 during true recession than they could if the economy is growing, but the Republican leaders planning this will never admit it and the followers will not believe it.

My bet is that the economy has less than one-in-ten chances of not going into the second dip the Republicans so avidly hope for.

Obama's position on politics and political principle

Spend three minutes listening to this:

Global Warming threatens the very sense of self of conservatives so they reject the science reflexively

The Republicans have, since being taken over by conservatives, adamantly refused to even consider the possibility that global warming is true. Their reaction has been irrational to the extreme. Rhania Kalek describes this as being a bad case of cognitive dissonance.

Climate change poses a profound threat to many things that right-wing ideologues believe in. Conservatives tend to champion individual freedom, private property rights, small government, free markets, and above all else, unfettered industrial capitalism. Industrial capitalism is an economic system predicated on the accelerating extraction and consumption of fossil fuels for energy, which is driving the climate change we face today. To accept this basic premise, one is compelled to question the wisdom of capitalism itself, which is a terrifying notion for conservatives. And it doesn't take long to recognize that conservative values are inherently antithetical to the desperately needed actions to tackle global climate change.

Seriously dealing with the threat of climate change would require government to heavily regulate corporations and subsidize renewable energy. It would entail a strong international body, most likely boosting the power of the UN. It would bring an end to the inefficient and energy-wasting free-trade agenda, as localizing economies would become necessary to sustain communities. And, most importantly, confronting climate change demands addressing climate justice for developing nations suffering from the pollution of industrialized nations, or more simply, a redistribution of wealth from North to South. Climate change poses a direct threat to the spread of free markets, the maintenance of national sovereignty, and the continued abolition of governmental regulations, all key components of the conservative agenda. These are the types of ideas that cause conservatives to gasp, point, and shout "communist!"

When we recognize the role of cognitive dissonance, it becomes clear that conservatives and Republicans are more likely to dispute or deny the scientific consensus and the claims of the environmental community, in order to defend the industrial capitalist system. It is far more simple to deny science, than to accept that one's worldview is wrong. Unfortunately, environmental organizations are in a kind of denial as well. Climate change is about an economic model that demands infinite growth on a finite planet. However, environmental groups are reluctant to relate climate change to economics and politics, probably because conservatives would see it as confirmation of the right-wing myth that global warming is a socialist plot to redistribute the world's wealth.

For a conservative whose entire identity is defined by faith in the economics of capitalism and free markets, acceptance of climate change poses a danger to their sense of self, and will be avoided at all costs. Therefore, attempts to persuade this portion of the country with science and logic is a lost cause. However, for those of us who truly care about the future of our one and only planet and our species, it is time that we face what we have been loath to highlight in the past: Unfettered industrial capitalism is unsustainable and is causing climate change to spiral out of control. Until we begin to challenge the economics fueling environmental degradation, we are no better than our climate denying counterparts.

Consider what cognitive dissonance is.

there is a tendency for individuals to seek consistency among their cognitions (i.e., beliefs, opinions). When there is an inconsistency between attitudes or behaviors (dissonance), something must change to eliminate the dissonance. In the case of a discrepancy between attitudes and behavior, it is most likely that the attitude will change to accommodate the behavior.

The Republicans are going to resist any attitudes that challenge their strongly held free market beliefs. Those beliefs are core to the personality and self of strong free marketers such as Rand Paul, Lyin' Paul Ryan, David Koch, Dick Armey and Alan Greenspan. They have to deny global warming or admit that the strongest beliefs on which their core selves are based are wrong. They will not be convinced by science or facts. It is pathological with them.

---

The article is largely based on a sociological study entitled THE POLITICIZATION OF CLIMATE CHANGE AND POLARIZATION IN THE AMERICAN PUBLIC’S VIEWS OF GLOBAL WARMING,2001–2010 published in

Sociological QuarterlyVolume 52, Issue 2, Article first published online: 18 APR 2011

Lying sociopaths are in control of America, America's finance, and especially the Republican Party.

The last decade has seen a series of financial scandals that have been getting bigger and bigger. Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia, Tyco, followed by the massive Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist James B. Stewart writes that they all share a common thread: They were all base on lies. This short list is only the tip of the iceberg.

instances of perjury and false statements are on the rise at the highest levels of business, politics, sports, and culture.

Is it any surprise that the Republican Party in America today has an ideology based on nothing but lies? It's not just politics. It's also the financial industry and the mass media, both of which have been concentrating rapidly for the last 30 years. This puts then under the control of a very small group of people who for the most part are complete sociopaths.

The various government agencies established over the previous century to catch financial scams based on lies appear to have been incompetent, but they may also have been totally overwhelmed. The lies are epidemic and those who should have been working to prevent the lies (like auditors) have been bought off or sidelined.

James B. Stewart has written a book Tangled Webs which describes one example of these scams surrounding us today. CNN Money has published an excerpt. How they failed to catch Madoff. Catching madoff shouldn't have been hard:

Madoff repeatedly changed his story, he contradicted himself at every turn, and written records flatly disproved many of his assertions, had anyone bothered to check. Worst of all, the SEC knew he was lying and was one phone call away from catching him.

This is the conclusion that the article comes to:

for all the missteps by the SEC, it came amazingly close to catching Madoff. Thomas Thanasules deserves a promotion and recognition for spotting the Madoff issues in the Renaissance e-mails and bringing them to the attention of his superiors. Michael Garrity and others in the SEC's Boston office [who were eager to pursue Markopolos's claims] also showed genuine enthusiasm and an investigative bent. Would that their instincts had extended further into the agency.

Judged by the duration and magnitude of his fraud, Madoff would seem the most cunning and skilled of liars. That's what David Kotz assumed when he began his investigation. "I assumed Madoff was a genius, a master, that nobody would have had a prayer of figuring him out," Kotz said. But in fact, Madoff was no better than average, if that. Written records flatly contradicted his lies, had anyone bothered to check them. He repeatedly changed his story on numerous points: whether he did or didn't trade options; whether he did or didn't manage money for individuals; who did or didn't handle his trading; how many clients he had; and how much money he managed. Madoff had the temerity to lie about what he said to Lamore to Lamore's face. "He wasn't a good liar," Kotz concluded. "He couldn't keep his story straight. He was no evil genius."

As of late 2010, two years after the Madoff scandal broke, the SEC had taken no disciplinary or other measure against anyone involved in the various Madoff investigations. The SEC officials' collective failure is, as Madoff himself put it, astonishing. It will surely rank as one of the greatest regulatory failures ever, not just because of the size of the fraud, but because it was staring them in the face.

Personally I think that America and particularly the Republican Party has been taken over by amoral self-centered wealthy sociopaths, and everyone else is afraid to challenge their lies.Go read the excerpt from the book.It's How they failed to catch Madoff.

This political questionnaire by PEW Research is fun

Go to this link and answer the questions. It will tell you where you fit in the political spectrum in America. The explanation is more fun than the questionnaire itself, of course.

How to handle America's critical problems

Suppose America had two sets of problems that threatened national security. Also suppose they took two different approaches to dealing with those problems.

The first approach is to bring in experts, assign them as leaders and make them personally responsible for the overall results. Then task them to select the very best personnel, reward them well for taking the job, give them the best training at government expense and provide them with all the tools required to do the job in an outstanding manner. Measure the accomplishment of the job carefully. Carefully provide social support to the employees for the work they are doing and tell them repeatedly that the job they are doing is of great importance and that the nation is proud to have the services of such employees. Then, when the job is not being done adequately change the managers because they were made responsible. The leaders are considered ultimately responsible for the results.

The second approach is to Elect whoever promises the best results if you make the radical changes in the way the job is done that they demand. Offer low pay to the workers even when there are many alternative professions that are more rewarding, less work and pay much better. Then provide as little in the way of tools as can be afforded and demand that the employees get their own training at their own expense. Then carefully measure the jobs they do and castigate them repeatedly for every failure especially when the tools they have and the raw materials they are working with are substandard. Micromanage the employees efforts. Blame the employees for the overall results even though they are working long hours and skimp on financial support while not penalizing the leaders they work for. The employees are considered ultimately responsible for the results.

Which approach do you think is more likely to get world class success?

It should be no surprise that the first approach is the way America operates its military and the second approach is the way America operates its public schools.

Dave Eggers and Ninive Clements Calegari have written an excellent OP-Ed in the New York Times which makes exactly this point with pointed information to back it up.I strongly recommend reading the OP-ED.

Both military and education functions are essential to society and both are mission driven and require a large contingent of well-trained and motivated professionals to succeed. That is, they do not fit into the money economy in any self-supporting manner. Instead both functions are required for the money economy to function well. The military quit trying to fight wars profitably after the repeated failures of mercenary armies (and the government that hired them) during the Thirty Years War. When do Americans realize that public education is as essential to the nation as military and policing and similarly cannot be operated by educational mercenaries?

Bill Moyers describes the problems of informing the public about political and business corruption

Bill Moyers has published an article that says a great deal about the reason why America's government is no longer working. Here is a key paragraph:

The late scholar Cleanth Brooks of Yale thought there were three great enemies of democracy. He called them "The Bastard Muses":

• Propaganda, which pleads sometimes unscrupulously, for a special cause at the expense of the total truth;
• sentimentality, which works up emotional responses unwarranted by, and in excess of, the occasion; and
• pornography, which focuses upon one powerful human drive at the expense of the total human personality.

The poet Czeslaw Milosz identified another enemy of democracy when, upon accepting the Noble Prize for Literature, he said "Our planet that gets smaller every year, with its fantastic proliferation of mass media, is witnessing a process that escapes definition, characterized by a refusal to remember." Memory is crucial to democracy; historical amnesia, its nemesis.

Against these tendencies it is an uphill fight to stay the course of factual broadcasting. We have to keep reassuring ourselves and one another that it matters and we have to join forces to defend and safeguard our independence. I learned this early on.
[Formatting added by the editor of WTF-o]

Bill Moyers goes on to describe some instances in which he helped expose corruption in politics, but one item in the story is especially memorable. It involves exposing wrong-doing by corporations.

But shining the spotlight on political corruption is nothing compared to what can happen if you raise questions about corporate power in Washington, as my colleague Marty Koughan and I discovered when we produced a program for David Fanning and "Frontline" on pesticides and food. Marty had learned that industry was attempting behind closed doors to dilute the findings of the American Academy of Sciences study on the effects of pesticide residues on children. Before we finished the documentary, the industry somehow purloined a copy of our draft script - we still aren't certain how - and mounted a sophisticated and expensive campaign to discredit our program before it aired. Television reviewers and editorial pages of key newspapers were flooded with propaganda. Some public television managers were so unnerved by the blitz of misleading information about a film they had not yet broadcast that they actually protested to PBS with letters that had been prepared by the industry.

Here's what most perplexed us: the American Cancer Society - an organization that in no way figured in our story - sent to its 3,000 local chapters a "critique" of the unfinished documentary claiming, wrongly, that it exaggerated the dangers of pesticides in food. We were puzzled. Why was the American Cancer Society taking the unusual step of criticizing a documentary that it had not seen, that had not aired and that did not claim what the Society alleged? An enterprising reporter named Sheila Kaplan later looked into those questions for the journal Legal Times. It turns out that the Porter Novelli public relations firm, which had worked for several chemical companies, also did pro bono work for the American Cancer Society. Kaplan found that the firm was able to cash in some of the goodwill from that "charitable" work to persuade the compliant communications staff at the Society to distribute some harsh talking point about the documentary before it aired - talking points that had been supplied by, but not attributed to, Porter Novelli. Legal Times headlined the story "Porter Novelli Plays All Sides." A familiar Washington game.

Others also used the American Cancer Society's good name in efforts to tarnish the journalism before it aired, none more invidiously than the right-wing polemicist Reed Irvine, who pumped his sludge through an organization with the Orwellian name Accuracy in Media. He attacked our work as "junk science on PBS" and demanded Congress pull the plug on public broadcasting. Fortunately, PBS once again stood firm. The documentary aired, the journalism held up and the publicity liberated the National Academy of Sciences to release the study that the industry had tried to cripple.

This is really a long way from the ideal of representative democracy we were taught about in civics. This is the corporations working to take control of America and simply do whatever they want to do in the name of increased profit. It is the story we all know of Wall Street which, in its greed, sold mortgage backed securities with essentially fake financial insurance that made the securities seem like a sure route to wealth for the investors. Instead they were the destruction of the Wall Street banks and the world economy. For a while in the fall of 2008 Wall Street was literally dead.

Only amazing efforts by governments around the world and handouts of lrge sums of taxpayer money to the very banks that caused the problem saved the world economy from the second Great Depression. We still call the residue of that period the Great Recession and we will not recover for years.

Wall Street and the American corporations do not want that story told. Go back and look at the list of four highlighted items above. All of them are in play, especially propaganda and the strange amnesia of the public.

Go read Moyer's entire article. As usual it is both very good and highly entertainikng.

What has happened to the Democratic Party as a national organization?

Should the Democrats be nationalizing the Democratic political message the way the Republicans have or should the Democrats continue to run primarily a district-by-district set of campaigns with each candidate crafting the message to match what he or she thinks his voters want to hear from him?

The following was posted yesterday by at MyDD.

...in November, I was angry. The Democrats had just backed away from the only winable fight on the Bush Tax Cuts, and seemed hell bent on heading into the election with nothing much to get voters, at home either content or disenfranchised, out to the polls to fight back. Part of that was the policy they were defending, and part of it was the lack of any unified, consistent message. You can't campaign on principle your policy doesn't back up, and the principle the policy does portrays -- Eh, we sorta tried? -- isn't a winning slogan. Ta-da! GOP "mandate."

Jason is right. It appeared to me that the national Democratic Party did not want to put out a national Democratic message because it would have damaged too many already threatened blue dogs. So the Democrats ran district by district while the Republicans nationalized their message. Then, of course, the Citizens United decision allowed the national Republicans to throw tons of money into the election, and FOX News is one massive propaganda organization. They all demonized the Democrats.

Remember 2008 right after Obama was elected when the talk was that Bush/Cheney had made the Republican Party so toxic they wouldn't be able to win elections for decades and might even have to change the name of their party?

It didn't help a bit that the Republicans in Congress ran a two year program to stop the Democrats from doing anything to alleviate the problems caused by the Great Recession, especially unemployment. That worked for them also. The Republicans caused the Great Recession and the Wall Street collapse, so they lost in 2008. Obama came in and in two years was unable to break the lock the Republicans have had on the Senate so Obama and the Democrats were in office and got blamed for the problems the Republicans caused either through greed or through political calculation.

Well, with the Republicans in charge of the House a lot of the political terrain has changed. Now the Democrats can sit on the sidelines and expose the less than photogenic behavior of the conservatives. Take a look at what Steve Benen wrote today:

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) defended proposed Republican budget cuts to popular domestic programs Sunday as necessary to maintaining fiscal health.

"No matter how popular sounding these programs are, they jeopardize our children's future," the House Budget Committee chairman said on "Fox News Sunday."

So, let me get this straight. In order to help protect the interests of our children, we have to cut Head Start, student loans, Title I grants (which help schools with kids who live in poverty), and nutritional aid for pregnant women and women with young children.

By making these cuts, Paul Ryan believes he's helping make children's futures brighter. Presumably, the House Budget Committee chairman also intends to teach kids about fire safety by handing them matches and lighter fluid, and encouraging them to play.

Indeed, as far as Ryan is concerned, we just can't afford Head Start, student loans, Title I grants, and nutritional aid for pregnant women and women with young children, but we can afford tax breaks for people who don't need them, costing far more money.

But it gets better. Steve also pointed out:

The DCCC targeted 19 GOP House incumbents, nearly all of whom represent districts won by President Obama in 2008, blasting their support for a spending-cut plan that would "cut education" and "cut science and technology research," which would in turn cost jobs. Soon after, some of the Republicans facing the heat felt a little defensive.

In other words, the ads had the intended effect. GOP lawmakers in competitive districts wanted to be seen as cutting spending, but started getting nervous when Dems told their constituents about the breadth of the possible cuts.

This is a step toward nationalizing the 2012 campaign, something that Obama is going to have to do anyway if he is going to win reelection. But will Obama then shut down the Democratic national messaging machine again after 2012 and force the individual Democratic candidates to run mostly on whatever message each of them can craft?

Consider what Jack Balkin wrote on this subject:

What we are facing today is likely to be importantly different from previous periods of divided government before the George W. Bush Administration. The reason is that at the national level, contemporary American politics suffers from a pathological and debilitating condition: the emergence of parliamentary parties in a presidential system.

Democracy in the United States is based on a presidential system, in which different parties can control the presidency and the houses of Congress. In a parliamentary system, by contrast, the prime minister is head of government and also a member of either the majority party or a party in the majority coalition. Presidential systems have regular elections; there is no possibility of bringing down a government with a vote of no confidence (other than the possibility of impeachment and removal). In parliamentary systems, the head of government can call for new elections at different times, and the legislature can dismiss the head of government by a vote of no confidence.

The American system has long presumed that in periods of divided government, the President will be able to create coalitions with members of both parties in order to pass legislation. This is possible in part because, at least since the Civil War, and until very recently, American political parties have been agglomerations of heterogenous interests, and relatively ideologically diverse. (During the New Deal, for example, northern liberals, Catholics, and blacks coexisted in the same Democratic party as Southern whites). The heterogeneity of American parties is due partly to historical contingencies, and partly to the fact that candidates run to represent particular geographical constituencies in different regions of the country (rather than having seats assigned to them based--in whole or in part--on a party list). Parliamentary parties in most countries, by contrast, tend to be more ideologically coherent and centrally controlled. (Unlike the United States, with its first-past-the-post system, many parliamentary democracies also have some seats awarded by proportional representation, which also tends to concentrate power in the central party apparatus.)

In the past several decades, however, American political parties have come to resemble European-style parliamentary parties, as the old party system inherited from the New Deal has broken down. Each party is increasingly ideologically cohesive, and strongly differentiated from members of the other political party.

The way this point is usually expressed is that the parties are increasingly polarized. But a more appropriate way of saying this is that representatives of the two parties in Congress are behaving more like parliamentary parties. Perhaps ironically, given their anti-European rhetoric, the Republicans behave more like a European-style parliamentary party than the Democrats, who still retain more moderates in the House and Senate.

There are many overlapping reasons for this polarization. One is the primary system, which tends to produce less moderate, more ideological candidates. A second is the system of campaign finance. The national parties have more control over individual members because of the amount of money they can bring to bear (or withhold) to promote (or punish) candidates in the primary and general elections.

Parliamentary-style parties may work well in parliamentary systems, but their emergence in a presidential system is a particularly worrisome development.

I think we will see more nationalized politics from the Democrats because they have to match what the Republicans are already doing. This is going to be one more major strain on our political system, something which will cost the United States in both international power and in economic power. I'm not sure how long it will take the denizens inside the Washington beltway (what Paul Rosenberg called Versailles) to realize that the old rules really aren't working properly and the Republicans are actively screwing everything up for the rest of us. America is off in unknown territory without a guide.

Is privatization really better than government providing benefits?

Ed Wallace is an expert on history of the automotive industry, has his own radio show and writes a regular weekly article on the automotive industry. Hus articles are also published in Business Week, but I get them in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Much of what he writes is history. One of the things Ed has come across is how Chicago sold off 36,000 of the city's parking meters to Morgan Stanley Bank for 75 years for a mere $1.2 billion dollars in a one-time payment.

Morgan Stanley eventually took majority ownership of the city's parking meters for 75 years, in exchange for a one-time payment to Chicago of just under $1.2 billion. According to Chicago Sun Times political columnist Carol Marin, almost immediately the cost of using a parking meter inside the Loop jumped to 28 quarters ($7) for a two-hour period.

In the meantime, most cases of privatizing public services are blatant theft of public tax money.

But quickly increasing the cost of parking wasn't the only pain inflicted by the new owners. Many parking meters couldn't handle that much loose change in one day, and once full the meters would accept no more change; anyone who parked by one was doing so illegally. Yes, the number of parking tickets jumped so much they had to stop writing them while new meters that would accept credit cards were installed. Even more interesting is that LAZ Parking - also owned by Morgan Stanley - was responsible for collecting the coins out of the meters and issuing the parking tickets.

The meters were set to demand payment 24 hours a day and seven days a week, ending the free parking that enticed many families to downtown Chicago on Sundays.

Chicago's Inspector General analyzed the deal only after it was done; and on June 1, 2009, his report on the sale said officially that Chicago had gotten the short end of the stick. The report faulted William Blair's calculations of the 36,000 parking meters' present and future value: they were worth not a mere $1.2 billion, but more in the neighborhood of $2 billion. Seems Blair wrote the entire report from the investors' perspective, not from that of the real owners, the people of Chicago. The Inspector General concluded that the entire deal was "dubious."

It should be noted that Daley's friend Blair wasn't the only one who profited by suggesting and promoting this deal. The Mayor's former spokeswoman, Avis LaVelle, emerged from it with a new job - spokeswoman for Morgan Stanley's parking meter entity.

Is this more efficient than government? Or is it a secret deal by politicians to make the politicians and Morgan Stanley rich? I know which one I believe. But Ed also points out another case.

ABC News did a story about Florida's privatizing its food stamp operations to J.P Morgan - which in turn contracted a call center in India to process the claims. Imagine that. Florida gives taxpayers' money to J.P. Morgan, which to make a greater profit uses that money to hire people in India, putting Floridians out of a job. Then out-of-work Floridians have to call India to get approved for food stamps.

OK. Frequently private business does provide products and services to customers at a lower cost than government can. But it depends on who the customers are!

A private business has the privilege of selecting what market it will serve. They ignore all other people. Government does not have that privilege! Government is responsible for everyone who is within its jurisdiction. Private enterprise businesses lower their costs by limiting who they have to provide products and services to.

Anyone who does not fall into their market is ignored or abandoned. Government, on the other hand, deals with the people private enterprise drops. Consider New Orleans and Katrina. No private insurance company covered Katrina damage. Government had to step in and deal with the damage that private enterprise could not handle. So government has expenses that private businesses simply will not pay. Hurricanes, Tornadoes, war, crime, accidents - government is going to send people in to deal with those things when private business does not because it cannot.

As Ed Wallace says, "'privatization' is code for 'profitization' and the public gets none of the profits." Private business is not more efficient than government. It just serves different (and profitable) markets while leaving the unprofitable business that has to be done to government.

Right-wing hate-mongers and the unstable individuals they direct and encourge to act

Steve Benen wrote about the shooting of Democratic Congresswoman Gabby Gifford in Tuscon, AZ:

it seems there are two main, big-picture observations that are being bandied about. The first is that this is an excellent time for political pugilists to appreciate the power of language, and come away from this tragedy exercising better judgment. There's a level of toxicity in our discourse just isn't healthy, and it tears at the societal fabric that holds the country together.

The second is that Loughner, by all accounts, is clinically ill, and what might set off an armed mad man is necessarily unpredictable. To this extent, the political/rhetorical environment isn't to blame for yesterday's events; the sickness of a disturbed young man is.

I'm inclined to think the two points aren't mutually exclusive.

It's true. The two points aren't mutually exclusive. An unstable person with a tendency to act out his fantasies is more likely to do so when he is given permission by others to act.

There are indications that Laughner is such an unstable individual. Laughner was rejected by the Army as unsuited to join, and the community college he had been attending has expelled him until he could demonstrate that he was not so mentally deranged that he would not be a danger to other students there. As news about him is reported it's pretty clear that he does not have the ability to predictably control his actions. So he has already been recognized as an unstable individual. What does the current political climate in America do to individuals like Laughner?

There are unstable individuals out there who are more likely to go shooting someone, but what has happened is that the right-wing hate-meisters are setting a climate that gives these individuals targets to hate and they also set a climate that further gives them permission to go after those targets. Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh and their ilk name the targets. Sharron Angle - the Republican nominee for Senate - publicly told him to consider "Second Amendment remedies." The only thing missing in the connection is a direct statement to the crazy individual "Now. Go shoot so-and-so."

Sara Robinson wrote an article that listed the similar incidents between January and June of 2009. Chip Bertle summarizes
the dynamic.

Hannah Arendt described the process of demagoguery leading to violence as it occurs in totalitarian regimes ranging from Hitler to Stalin. The demagogue frames the target, but leaves off a direct call for violence. But the message is clear. Unstable people often act first. Political ideologues, however, can be mobilized as the process continues to act as a group.

This really is how organized terrorism begins.

I consider it very likely that soon right-wing politicians and pundits are going to start traveling with open armed guards "because the climate is so dangerous to public figures." (Another market for Blackwater/XE?) That will be another major step towards creating a violent political climate.

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One other thing to consider. The right wing repeats the idea "Guns don't kill. People kill."

Yeah? Watch movies and monitor the tone of the movie when the scene with someone pulling out a gun and cleaning, loading or just checking it. The music gets more ominous as does the entire tone of the movie. Other weapons have similar responses, but a gun has a much stronger one normally. A gun is a symbol of preparing for violence.

So if the climate around you is threatening, it is traditional in America to reach for a gun. Then if something startles you or threatens you, what happens next? Someone gets shot at or even killed.

Guns may not kill, but they make it a lot more likely that someone will get badly hurt or killed.

So what would be hurt if America simply eliminated wealthy people?

Ted Frier suggests a really different relationship between America's rich and the rest of us.

In an essay last July that asked the provocative question: "have the American people outlived their usefulness to the rich?" one-time William F. Buckley protégé Michael Lind may have put his finger on why today's Republicans can so unashamedly insist on billions for the wealthy while guiltlessly threatening to cut off any help at all for Americans who are out of work.

Time was, says Lind, when the rich and everyone else co-existed according to an ancient and honored social contract: "In return for receiving a disproportionate amount of the gains from economic growth in a capitalist economy, the rich paid a disproportionate percentage of the taxes needed for public goods and a safety net for the majority."

The economic elite needed ordinary people to consume the products put out by the factories the rich invested in. The upper class also needed commoners to be foot soldiers to fight its wars against "totalitarian empires that would have created a world order hostile to a market economy."

But globalization has eliminated the first reason for the rich to support this bargain, says Lind, while the emergence of quasi-public mercenary armies like Blackwater has undermined the second.

"And this marks a historic change in the relationship between capital and labor in the US," Lind insists.

Even the robber barons of the Gilded Age generally recognized the necessity of a rapprochement with labor, says Lind, because the rich lived near the working classes, depended on the domestic American market for their fortunes and were always generally alert to labor strikes and the prospect of revolution should their exploitation of the masses get out of hand.

But this is no longer the case. "Many of the highest-paid individuals on Wall Street have grown rich through activities that have little or no connection with the American economy," writes Lind. "They can flourish even if the US declines, as long as they can tap into growth in other regions of the world."

This is the central argument against supply-side wizardry and extending tax cuts for the rich.

Elites can make money from factories in China by selling to consumers in India, says Lind "while relying entirely on immigrant servants at one of several homes around the country." Between the profits they can earn from overseas factories in countries policed by brutal autocracies, and factories in the US manned by non-voting immigrant labor, "the only thing missing is a non-voting immigrant mercenary army whose legions can be deployed in foreign wars without creating grieving parents, widows and children who vote in American elections." That, maybe in part, is what the Dream Act is about.

There was a time when rich and poor alike subscribed to the promise that a rising tide raises all boats. But American investors and corporate managers no longer need the rest of America to prosper, says Lind, since "they can enjoy their stream of profits from factories in China while shutting down factories in the US." And if Chinese workers have the impertinence to demand higher wages, says Lind, American corporations can find low-wage labor elsewhere.

It may be true that the rich are invested in foreign corporations that do most of their business in the US Market. But this too is changing.

"American consumers are tapped out," says Lind, "and as long as they are paying down their debts from the bubble years, private household demand for goods and services will grow slowly at best in the United States. In the long run, the fastest-growing consumer markets, like the fastest-growing labor markets, may be found in China, India and other developing countries."

The point is, says Lind: If the rich do not depend for their wealth - or even their security -- on American workers, consumers and soldiers "then it is hardly surprising that so many of them should be so hostile to paying taxes to support the infrastructure and the social programs that help the majority of the American people. The rich don't need the rest anymore."

This is an interesting and in fact realistic evaluation of the relationship between the American wealthy and the rest of us. But Ted is asking if the wealthy need the rest of us. That question can easily be reversed! What do we need the wealthy for??

Face it. If the top 2% of the American population own over 40% of the wealth in America, then the American wealthy are well on the way to becoming the new American aristocracy. Aristocracy - That's the American government! That means that America is on the way to no longer being a democracy.

Any surprise in that? The current American federal government is controlled by the 100 wealthy people in the Senate, and the American Congress is controlled by the K-Street lobbyists for the wealthy. Who provides the money used by the candidates for President? largely America's wealthy, that's who.

Why is a major element of the conservative American party demanding elimination of the only American tax on wealth - the inheritance tax? Come on. The children of the wealthy did absolutely nothing to earn their inheritance! All they do is fight to protect that wealth. That is the definition of being conservative. America is no longer a meritocracy in which people personally earn what they are paid. When 2% of the population mostly inherit their wealth and own over 40% of America's wealth, that is an aristocracy that is controlled by those who never earned what they control.

Why are we currently sending Americans to fight in Afghanistan? We were attacked in 9/11 as a direct blowback from the political operations of American oil companies in the Middle East. The Mullah's in Iran took power because they were rejecting the Shah which BP and the American CIA had placed into power to replace the legitimately elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh He threatened to nationalize Iran's oil companies.

From my experience both inside and outside the Republican Party, I've gradually come to believe that one of the major differences separating Republicans from Democrats is that Democrats view service in Congress as the pinnacle of their careers while Republicans look at their time on Capitol Hill as an internship - a chance to do their time, pay their dues and build up a resume of favors and chits they can cash in later for a far more lucrative second career as lobbyist or corporate hack.

Yes, Democrats pass through the same revolving door between government and K Street that Republicans push on. But Republican behavior while still in government seems far more devoted towards creating jobs for themselves when that Big Day finally arrives and they get to make the jump to an appreciative corporate sector.

I am thinking, of course, of parasites like Wendy Lee Gramm (wife of former Senator Phil), the one-time federal regulator with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission who enabled Enron to become the 8th largest corporation in American, and a ticking economic time bomb, when she gave its corrupt owners a waiver to trade energy derivatives without oversight -- and then jumped into bed with the company as a member of Enron's board and, adding insult to injury, its audit committee.

I am also thinking of former Louisiana Republican Congressman Billy Tauzin. As chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Tauzin was instrumental in writing a Medicare drug benefit into the 2003 bill that specifically barred the government from negotiating drug prices for Medicare recipients. With that chit for Big Pharma firmly in hand, Tauzin was able to cash in his time in government for a position as president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.

The point is, examples of corruption like these are now so commonplace they often pass without notice or comment and are very nearly to the point of being accepted as the new political normal.

Consider this carefully. Nothing is enacted today in American politics unless the very wealthy get their share of it and permit it. The American wealthy killed the public option during the effort to create universal health care.

Business lobbyists aren't supposed to act as surrogate whips for the Republican leadership or personally draft statutes themselves. "But it turns out there's no actual law against it."

Scientists and bureaucrats are expected to testify truthfully to Congress when asked. "But it turns out that no regulation prevents political appointees from keeping them muzzled and providing bowdlerized testimony in their place."

All of these things, says Drum, "serve a single purpose: passing business-friendly pork as efficiently and as quietly as possible. Tax bills, energy bills, Medicare prescription bills: all become mere vehicles for corporate largesse."

And when push comes to shove Republicans simply lie.

"Lying has become a systematic necessity," writes Chait. The reason is obvious. "If the Republicans had truly believed that the public shared their goals, businessmen would simply have come forward to proudly announce their support for the tax cuts, explaining that rewarding wealth and success would create a rising tide for one and all."

But they didn't. Instead, says Drum, Republicans sold their tax cuts as a way of giving back the surplus to hardworking Americans. Then Republicans sold it as a way to fight recession. Then they sold it as a way of making the tax code fairer to the poor. "Any rationale would do," says Drum, "except the real one." And America invaded Iraq to destroy Weapons of Mass Destruction.

You can tell that America's New Oligarchy and their Republican house servants are waging class war against the rest of America today because they squeal "class warfare!!!" whenever their shenanigans are found out and exposed.

Eventually, says Drum, someone needs to notice "that Republican policy is no longer rooted in any kind of recognizable conservative principle" and is instead "little more than a program of preventing the middle class from sharing in the gains of economic growth and divvying up the resulting loot among the richest of the rich."

[...]

Americans, says Lind, need to begin exercising their unused political authority to demand that their elected representatives give them a new social contract that requires American corporations and America's economic elites to create jobs in this country, for American workers.

And if that doesn't interest corporate shareholders and their managers, says Lind, then perhaps they can do without those legal privileges which are granted to them courtesy of the sovereign American people - such as the legal right to form corporations and do business at all.

The American people, says Lind in short, need to start insisting "that the United States will be a democratic republican nation-state, not a post-national rentier oligarchy.

Really. What do we need the super wealthy for anyway? All that want from the rest of us now is our bodies in their wars to protect their international wealth.

It's time to return to a 90% inheritance tax. America should return to being a middle class nation with little room for power controlled by inherited (read unearned) wealth!