California Free Press

Off the Top of My Head

A Superpower in Decline

by John Lawrence

1) Rights taken away from women. The Arizona Supreme Court’s decision to outlaw nearly all abortions in Arizona will likely lead to an influx of patients fleeing the state to find care in California, abortion rights activists said.

2) The world's policeman can't police its own borders. The asylum law lets anyone setting foot on American soil ask for asylum. Court dates for asylum cases are, on average, more than four years out in the future, and even longer for final decisions. Over 3 million cases were pending before immigration courts near the end of 2023, with the backlog growing by 1 million since 2022.

3) The archaic electoral college has never been replaced by a direct popular vote for President. The result is that the winner of the popular vote has not been elected President. Gore won the popular vote in 2000, but Bush was elected President. The Florida Supreme Court sided with Gore, but Bush appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ultimately voted 5 to 4 to reverse the Florida court’s decision and halt the recount. With Florida in hand, Bush won the Electoral College 271 to 266, while Gore ended up getting 500,000 more votes in the popular vote. As a result Gore's push for limits on global warming was lost as Bush promoted fossil fuels. Also Bush lied the US into a disastrous war in Iraq that resulted in Iraq becoming an ally of Iran.

4) 750 military bases in 80 countries are sitting ducks for an attack by Iran or its proxies. The largest U.S. base in the Middle East is located in Qatar, known as Al Udeid Air Base and built in 1996. Other countries where the U.S. has a presence include Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The US spends more on its military than the next 10 countries combined. Three American service members were killed and dozens more were injured in an unmanned aerial drone attack on a base known as Tower 22 in Jordan on January 28, 2024. Now that the US is expecting an attack by Iran, which sitting duck will be next?

5) An insurrectionist with several dozen indictments is allowed to run for President. Last year, Donald Trump became the first former president of the United States to be criminally indicted. Over the span of five months, he was indicted in four separate criminal cases and charged on a total of 91 felony counts.

6) Futile wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Bush lied us into war in Iraq. Osama bin Laden eventually killed in Obama administration by small Seal team, proving futility of invading Afghanistan

7) Wealth inequality. The United States exhibits wider disparities of wealth between rich and poor than any other major developed nation. There are now more billionaires than ever: 2,781 in all, 141 more than last year and 26 more than the record set in 2021. They’re richer than ever, worth $14.2 trillion in aggregate, up by $2 trillion from 2023 and $1.1 trillion above the previous record, also set in 2021. 

8) Housing unaffordability. San Diego families need an income of nearly $275,000 a year to afford a mortgage on a home, which is nearly double what it was before the pandemic, according to a new report from the real estate website Zillow.

9) Homelessness is an intractable problem. On any given night in the United States, more than half a million people experience homelessness.

10) The filibuster rule and the bicameral legislature. Nothing much can get done unless one party controls both Houses of Congress and the Presidency. President Biden looks stupid since he can't even keep his commitments to NATO because the Republican controlled House won't vote the funds Biden has promised. This means Ukraine will lose the war with Russia, and other countries cannot trust the US to keep its commitments.

11) The Second Amendment. No other country allows the uncontrolled proliferation of guns. More Americans died of gun-related injuries in 2021 than in any other year on record, according to the latest available statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). That included record numbers of both gun murders and gun suicides.

Off the Top of My Head

It's Time for a Cease Fire in Ukraine

by John Lawrence

Biden should snatch victory from the jaws of defeat in Ukraine by calling for a cease fire and a peace process. It doesn't look like he's going to get Congress to allocate the money that Ukraine needs to continue the war which has degenerated into a grinding war of attrition. The lines seem to have been drawn mainly as they existed in 2014 when Russia took over Crimea and large portions of the Donbas, a process which Obama didn't raise a hue and a cry about. Biden, on the other hand, has burnished his Cold War credentials and got his ego involved in expressing outrage over what Obama considered a fait accompli. Meanwhile, people are being killed and real estate is being destroyed mainly in Ukraine. Those seemed to be the ground rules which Biden predetermined: (1) the fighting would take place only in Ukraine, not in Russia and (2) American weapons but no American boots on the ground or in the air would be used. The war was supposed to be a defensive war in which Russia was to be pushed out of Ukraine which would maintain the territorial integrity of Ukraine. It seems that this objective can no longer be obtained in light of the fact that the US Congress is vaccilating over sending more money to Ukraine so it can continue a pointless war of attrition. There must be a better way. Yes, there is and that is to envision a peace process as an alternative to more killing and real estate asset destruction.

What would a peace deal in Ukraine look like? Writing in the New York Times, Julian E. Barnes said this on February 4, 2024:

Last year’s Ukrainian counteroffensive was a failure. Russia’s defenses in the territory it has captured look impenetrable. Republicans in Washington are blocking further Ukraine aid. President Volodymyr Zelensky is on the precipice of firing his top general — who may well become his chief political rival.

It’s a difficult moment for Ukraine. And another year of frontal assaults on the trench lines could make 2024 look like 1916, a year in World War I that brought harrowing loss of life but few battlefield gains.

...

But the situation is grim. The country has lost nearly one-fifth of its territory. In 2014, Russia took Crimea and orchestrated a separatist rebellion in parts of the Donbas. It grabbed the rest since the current phase of the war began in 2022.

Ukraine has lost a generation of young men — killed and wounded — to the war. It is also running out of ammunition, supplies and equipment. While Europe just approved $54 billion in economic assistance, it is American money that delivers Kyiv’s military might. But most House Republicans now oppose further Ukraine aid. And even pro-Ukraine Republicans are asking Biden administration officials what strategy can break the current battlefield stalemate. Meanwhile, the funding is ensnared in a border policy debate.

If Ukraine can’t get what it needs to beat Russia, what kind of deal could it make?

The author goes on to say

Vladimir Putin may accept a peace deal that gives him the territory he occupies now and that forces Ukraine to stay neutral, halting its integration with Europe. Ukrainians call this bargain a capitulation. But without additional American aid, they may be forced to take it.

A better deal for Ukraine would give it back at least some of its land, plus a promise that the United States and Europe would help defend it against Russia. Perhaps then Putin would think twice about further attacks. In this scenario, Ukraine might not join NATO or the European Union immediately, the prospect of which helped drive Russia’s invasion in the first place.

So with the prospect that Biden will not be able to successfully prosecute a proxy war in Ukraine against Vladimir Putin and the fact that the American people have either lost interest or don't want to fund this war any longer, he might better initiate a peace process there instead of continuing a futile, bellicose operation just as America is about to vote in November on whether Biden should get another four years. The continuation of the war in Ukraine does not enhance his prospects. More money for military operations in Ukraine might be better spent in rebuilding Ukraine after a cease fire has taken effect. A peaceful settlement might recognize the lines of control where the front lines exist now. Down the line a plebiscite could determine which side should control the disputed territory. Russian is the most common first language in the Donbas and Crimea regions of Ukraine and the city of Kharkiv, and the predominant language in large cities in the eastern and southern portions of the country. People in this area might prefer to be aligned with Russia rather than Ukraine. If so, it makes sense to stop the fighting, institute a cease fire and start a more orderly and civil process to determine the future of this part of the world. One less war in the world is always a good thing. The principals need to get their egos and recriminations out of the way first before this can happen.

Off the Top of My Head

The Negativity of the Republican party Preceded Trump. He Just Came to Embody It.

by John Lawrence

The vitriol expressed towards Barack Obama by the Republican party existed before Trump even entered the race. The controversy regarding Obama's birth certificate is something that Trump just latched on to and capitalized on as his entree into national politics. He saw an opportunity and he acted on it. During Barack Obama's campaign for president in 2008, throughout his presidency and afterwards, there was extensive news coverage of Obama's religious preference, birthplace, and of the individuals questioning his religious belief and citizenship – efforts eventually known as the "birther movement", by which name it is widely referred to across media. Conspiracy theories proliferated during Obama's run for the Presidency. There were some that encouraged the electoral college not to certify Obama. Activists unsuccessfully lobbied Republican members of Congress to reject the 2008 Electoral College vote and block Obama's election when it came before Congress for certification on January 8, 2009. This set the stage for Trump's unsuccessful attempt to manipulate the electoral college after the 2020 election in which he lost to Joe Biden. Republican finagling with the voting system is nothing new. Neither is their promotion of conspiracy theories in order to defeat their opponents and gain power in the US government.

Donald Trump predicated his run for the Presidency in 2016 on lies and deception. That should have been enough to disqualify him right there. But it wasn't and lies and deception became a staple of Republican, and, therefore, US politics. Lies and deception were mainstreamed and normalized. The New York Times weighed in thusly:

[The fact that Obama was not born in the US] was not true in 2011, when Donald J. Trump mischievously began to question President Obama’s birthplace aloud in television interviews. “I’m starting to think that he was not born here,” he said at the time.

It was not true in 2012, when he took to Twitter to declare that “an ‘extremely credible source’” had called his office to inform him that Mr. Obama’s birth certificate was “a fraud.”

It was not true in 2014, when Mr. Trump invited hackers to “please hack Obama’s college records (destroyed?) and check ‘place of birth.’”

It was never true, any of it. Mr. Obama’s citizenship was never in question. No credible evidence ever suggested otherwise.

In fact, it took Mr. Trump much longer than that: Mr. Obama released his short-form birth certificate from the Hawaii Department of Health in 2008. Most of the world moved on.

But not Mr. Trump.

He nurtured the conspiracy like a poisonous flower, watering and feeding it with an ardor that still baffles and embarrasses many around him.

Mr. Trump called up like-minded sowers of the same corrosive rumor, asking them for advice on how to take a falsehood and make it mainstream in 2011, as he weighed his own run for the White House.

And there you have the essence of corruption in American politics. The fact that anyone can base a political campaign on something that he or she knows to be a lie just because they can get a large portion of the electorate to believe in it is part and parcel of the American system. And now, despite the fact that there is plenty of evidence including 91 indictments that Trump perpetrated a hoax on the American public, still a large number of the American people still believes in him. He has created a personality cult around himself based on lies and deception yet the American system of government so far has not been able to prevent him from possibly attaining the office of President of the United States again! Surely, this is free speech run amok. The First Amendment should not entertain the possibility that lies and conspiracy theories should be left to fester and confuse the American public. Free speech should not allow that lies and deception are allowed into the political arena so that a politician can actually win office by convincing people to believe them. The cult centered around Trump has progressed or degenerated to the point that his believers have their own egos invested in the lies, and so are reluctant to disabuse themselves of them for fear of losing their self identity. It is easier to go on believing what they thought to be true, even though these beliefs have been thoroughly debunked, than it is to admit that they were fooled.

Rudy Giuliani said it best:

"Over the next 10 days, we get to see the machines that are crooked, the ballots that are fraudulent, and if we’re wrong, we will be made fools of. But if we’re right, a lot of them will go to jail. Let’s have trial by combat. I’m willing to stake my reputation, the President is willing to stake his reputation, on the fact that we’re going to find criminality there."

They were wrong and they have been made fools of. However, a large percentage of the American people are not willing to admit that they have been made fools of. Their collective egos will not entertain that possibility. In order not to think of oneself as a fool, one must go on believing in the lies and deception that Trump is still allowed to spew. His rallies are reminiscent of the rallies of another would be dictator who gained traction with the German people in the 1930s. And still there is no provision in the American constitution or the rule of law that would prevent the dictatorship of Donald Trump from taking place.

Off the Top of My Head

500,000 Killed in Ukraine War. Is It Worth It Just To Insure That Ukraine Can Join NATO?

by John Lawrence

Putin's bottom line is that Ukraine should not join NATO. Biden insisted that it should be able to. That was the impasse that led to the Ukraine war. All that Biden had to do was to negotiate a time period during which Ukraine would not be considered for NATO membership. He would not do that. He could have called Putin's bluff if indeed it was a bluff that Putin would not invade if Ukraine were not allowed to join NATO. If Putin had still invaded after prohibiting Ukraine from joining NATO for a period of time, then the US and the EU could have gone ahead with their current strategy of supplying Ukraine with arms to defend itself. The New York Time reported:

The total number of Ukrainian and Russian troops killed or wounded since the war in Ukraine began 18 months ago is nearing 500,000, U.S. officials said, a staggering toll as Russia assaults its next-door neighbor and tries to seize more territory.

The officials cautioned that casualty figures remained difficult to estimate because Moscow is believed to routinely undercount its war dead and injured, and Kyiv does not disclose official figures. But they said the slaughter intensified this year in eastern Ukraine and has continued at a steady clip as a nearly three-month-old counteroffensive drags on.

Russia’s military casualties, the officials said, are approaching 300,000. The number includes as many as 120,000 deaths and 170,000 to 180,000 injured troops. The Russian numbers dwarf the Ukrainian figures, which the officials put at close to 70,000 killed and 100,000 to 120,000 wounded.

But Russians outnumber Ukrainians on the battlefield almost three to one, and Russia has a larger population from which to replenish its ranks.

Is it worth it? I repeat IS IT WORTH IT? For the principal that any country can join NATO? IMHO war is never worth it. Why is there not a peace movement? If it was so important that Russia keep its hands off Ukraine, why didn't Obama protest in 2014 as Russia seized territory in Eastern Ukraine? To be clear Obama did not want to commit the US to stopping Russian aggression in Ukraine according to Brookings:

As regards the two-year-old conflict between Ukraine and Russia, the president [Obama] said Ukraine is a core interest for Moscow, in a way that it is not for the United States. He noted that, since Ukraine does not belong to NATO, it is vulnerable to Russian military domination, and that “we have to be very clear about what our core interests are and what we are willing to go to war for.”" Obama was hesitant to get involved militarily in Ukraine. "But the president [Obama] has signaled privately that despite all the pressure, he remains reluctant to send arms. In part, he has told aides and visitors that arming the Ukrainians would encourage the notion that they could actually defeat the far more powerful Russians, and so it would potentially draw a more forceful response from Moscow. He also wants to give a shaky cease-fire a chance to take hold, despite a reported 1,000 violations so far, and seems determined to stay aligned with European allies that oppose arms for Ukraine.

“If you’re playing on the military terrain in Ukraine, you’re playing to Russia’s strength, because Russia is right next door,” Antony J. Blinken, the deputy secretary of state, told an audience in Berlin last week. “It has a huge amount of military equipment and military force right on the border. Anything we did as countries in terms of military support for Ukraine is likely to be matched and then doubled and tripled and quadrupled by Russia.”

In February 2014 Obama even threatened Ukraine, not Russia, with sanctions, putting the onus on Ukraine. "TOLUCA, Mexico (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama called on Ukraine’s armed forces on Wednesday to stay out of the country’s political crisis and warned that there would be consequences for those who “step over the line.” Using his toughest language so far in response to a Ukrainian conflict that has drawn threats of U.S. and European Union sanctions, Obama denounced the violence and put the onus on Ukraine’s government to reach a peaceful resolution."

George W Bush, the perpetrator of lying us into the Iraq war, agreed with Obama: "There are good reasons why even George W. Bush backed off (or at least stopped short of pursuing) a pledge to consider Ukraine for NATO membership. First, calmer minds weighed the level of Western interests in Ukrainian independence against the cost of defending it in a pinch, and found the former coming up short." Calmer minds did not prevail, however, when Joe Biden became President. Despite all the good Biden has done domestically, his Ukraine policy has committed the US to what amounts to perpetual war.

Some advisors advocated for a moratorium on Ukraine's joining NATO as a way to stave off war. "Before the Russian invasion, Quincy Institute senior research fellow on Russia and Europe Anatol Lieven wrote that as part of a broader package to stave off war, the United States should propose “the declaration of a moratorium on Ukrainian membership of NATO for a period of 20 years, allowing time for negotiations on a new security architecture for Europe as a whole, including Russia.”"

Putin's primary concern was that Ukraine not join NATO, a concern that was effectively ignored in negotiations leading up to the February 2022 invasion.

"President Vladimir Putin accused Western nations of ignoring key Russian security concerns, following the U.S.′ refusal last week to concede to Moscow’s demands over Ukraine and NATO.

“It’s already clear now ... that fundamental Russian concerns were ignored,” Putin said at a press conference Tuesday, according to a Reuters translation.

Putin said that the U.S. wanted to “contain Russia” and that it was using Ukraine to do that, as he reiterated Russia’s position that any possible membership of Ukraine in NATO would “undermine Russia’s security.”

“Let’s imagine that Ukraine is a NATO member, it is fully packed of weapons, it gets advanced attack means like those in Poland and Romania and it starts an operation in Crimea,” Putin said, describing Crimea, a part of Ukraine annexed by Russia in 2014, as a “sovereign Russian territory.”

“Let’s imagine that Ukraine is a NATO member state and it initiates a military operation. What should we do then, [should we] fight against the NATO bloc? Did anyone think at least something about that? Apparently not.”

Nonetheless, Putin said he hoped dialog over Ukraine would continue and that a way needed to be found to, as he put it, “protect everyone’s security.”

Biden could have acknowledged Putin's concerns regarding Russia's security interests and argued for a moratorium on Ukraine's bid for NATO membership. This may or may not have forestalled Russia's 2022 invasion. If it had, the US and its allies had nothing to lose except the principal that any country should be free to join NATO. If it hadn't, Russia's invasion could be countered with the policy the US has pursued since Russia invaded which is to send weapons to arm Ukraine without putting "boots on the round." Subsequently, Russia secured Ukraine's non-membership in NATO by starting and pursuing what amounts to a perpetual war with the result of 500,000 people killed so far and billions of dollars in destroyed real estate. Has it been worth it to uphold the principal that Ukraine should be free to join NATO. I don't think so. A new security arrangement is needed for Europe including Russia sans NATO.

Off the Top of My Head

The Dystopian American Democracy

by John Lawrence

As set up by the Founding Fathers, the mechanics of the American electoral system inevitably lead to a two party system. This is as opposed to a parliamentary democracy as exists in most other democratic nations. Third parties never make it in American democracy precisely because they take votes away from the party whose views they most closely resemble. Example: the Presidential election of 2000. Since with the American voting system, a voter can vote for one and only one candidate, voters waste their votes voting for a third party candidate who has no chance of winning. Ralph Nader ran as the Green party candidate and won almost 3 million votes, votes which most assuredly would have been cast for Gore if Nader weren't running. As it was, Gore won more popular votes than George W Bush who eked out a victory because of the antiquated electoral college system. If Gore had also won the 3 million votes that Nader received, he may have had enough electoral votes to tip the balance. These voting mechanics have enshrined what is called plurality voting or the first past the post system into law. If the approval voting system had been in effect in 2000, Gore would have won. Approval voting is a system in which a voter can cast votes for all candidates he or she approves of. That means that all those who voted for Nader would also probably have voted for Gore giving Gore 3 million more votes.

Why the two party system, which is the inevitable result of plurality voting, is so toxic is that it leads to a government like we have today in which the two parties are diametrically opposed to each other. Instead of working in the best interests of the American people, the two parties end up fighting each other for power. This produces gridlock and a seesawing back and forth regarding policy depending on which party controls which branch of government. The dystopia that results from this winner take all system is that compromise becomes impossible. All the energy goes into winning and making the other party lose. It is all about the competition between the two parties and not about finding solutions to societal problems that benefit the American people. Another factor is that the plurality system of voting at best leads to majority rule. That means that at best each party represents a majority of the American people and not minorities at all. Certainly neither party needs to seek the votes of the poorest Americans who usually don't vote anyway, and, if they did, their interests need not be served by the winning party.

The American system has become a dystopia precisely because one party is only interested in winning, and, if the other party is in power, in making that party lose the next election. They do this by denying insofar as possible that party from making any constructive changes which might benefit the American people. As the American people get disenchanted with the ruling party because it can't bring about constructive change, they inevitably vote for the other party hoping that they can do what the ruling party wasn't able to based on their campaign promises. In a multi party system such as a parliamentary democracy, a party whose only purpose is to deny the ruling party the ability to bring about constructive change and thereby gain power for itself is less likely to be able to pull this off. A center party is more likely to win. The two party system is more likely to breed two extreme parties diametrically opposed to each other with each party vying for power.

Fortunately, because of his skill and dexterous maneuvering, Joe Biden has been able to bridge a lot of gaps in getting things done for the American people. However, it wasn't without the other party's determinattion to make him fail. Republican leader Mitch McConnell said this about President Obama: "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president." How they endeavored to do this was to make Obama fail at everything he promised in his campaign to do for the American people. If Obama wasn't able to accomplish his campaign goals, the American people would become disenchanted with him and put Republicans back in power. This is why Republicans never compromise with Democrats in the best interests of getting good things done for the American people. They only see these things as "wins" for the Democrats and hence "losses" for themselves. On the other hand, Democrats are somewhat more magnanimous in that they will vote with Republicans some times when they are in power. Example: Democrats voted 3 times to raise the debt ceiling when Trump was in power even though they objected to the $7 trillion that Trump added to the national debt by giving tax breaks to the rich. The only reason Biden was able to accomplish anything or any American President is able to accomplish anything is when their party controls all 3 branches of government. Even then the other party can filibuster making a mockery of the idea of democratic government.

Off the Top of My Head

Why Didn't Democrats Raise the Debt Ceiling When They Controlled Both Houses of Congress?

by John Lawrence

What is clear is that Democrats can only get new legislation passed when they control all three branches of government. This legislation usually increases spending on social programs. Likewise, Republicans can only get their legislation composed - usually of tax cuts - when they control all three branches of government. Both cases usually require the government to deficit spend, the former because of increased government spending, the latter because of decreased government revenues from taxes. So whichever party controls Congress and the Presidency and passes a budget requiring increassed deficit spending should also at the same time raise the debt limit. Make sense? So now we're in this dystopian dilemma that, after Democrats passed Biden's budget requiring a huge amount of government spending, Republicans, who now control the House, effectively want to repeal Biden's budget or else they won't agree to raise the debt ceiling. What a conundrum! These problems would never come up if the party that deficit spent also raised the debt ceiling to accommodate the deficit spending.

Congress has raised the debt ceiling twice under Biden, by about $3 trillion. Republicans voted three times to raise the debt ceiling under President Donald Trump, who added nearly $8 trillion to the national debt. "Republicans in Congress raised the debt three times when Donald Trump was president and each time with Democrat support, but now they won’t raise it, even though they're responsible for more than $8 trillion in bills incurred in four years under the previous administration," Biden said. The 115th Congress (2017–2019) featured unified Republican control of the government with GOP majorities in the House and Senate, and Republican President Donald J. Trump in the White House. So Republicans had no problem with raising the debt ceiling during the Trump administration which added $7 trillion to the national debt. Please note that Democrats could have filibustered the debt ceiling increases during the Trump administration because Republicans did not have a filibuster proof Senate, but they didn't

Raising the debt limit is not about new spending; it is about paying for previous choices policymakers legislated. However, if the previous choice were made by a government controlled by the Democratic party in a two party system, there is every reason to get those choices reversed when the Republican party comes into power and vice versa although Democrats have never tried to bring the country to the brink of default, a game of chicken which Republicans have been all to eager to engage in. They were successful in doing this when Obama was President. Having seen that chaos and mess as vice Preesident, Biden is not willing to engage in negotiations this time around hoping that more sensible heads will prevail. It didn't used to be this way. Sometimes called the Gephardt Rule in honor of Representative Dick Gephardt who introduced its first version, the rule used to provide that when the House agrees to a budget resolution, the Clerk shall prepare a joint resolution suspending the debt limit for the fiscal year covered by the budget resolution. In other words the debt ceiling was automatically effectively raised to accommodate the budget. This all changed when Newt Gingrich became Speaker of the House. When Newt Gingrich took over the House in 1995, he nullified the ingenious “Gephardt rule” that deemed the debt limit to be increased whenever a budget passed. This eventually led to the 1995 and 1996 government shutdowns, when Republicans refused to increase the limit because the president was a Democrat. In 2011, a showdown over the debt ceiling during Barack Obama’s presidency led to the Budget Control Act and ten subsequent years of austerity budgets.

So the simple answer to the question posed by the title of this piece is that, although Democrats controlled both Houses of Congress during the first two years of the Biden administration, they did not have a filibuster proof majority in the Senate. Therefore, they could get a budget passed under the budget reconciliation rule which prevents a filibuster, but they could not raise the debt ceiling because that is subject to the filibuster. Oh what tangled webs these politicians weave! Nothing makes clearer the need to end the filibuster than another round of hostage-taking of the full faith and credit of the U.S. government. Add this to the mounting problems of American democracy. Congress has created an arcane jumble of chaotic rules which threatens government of the people, for the people, and by the people. Go figure.

Off the Top of My Head

The US has a "Version" of Democracy

by John Lawrence

Nowhere in the world does a pure democracy exist not even in the US. Witness one judge, Matthew Kacsmaryk, who was not even democratically elected to that position, is the would be dictator over one issue - abortion medicine. How can this be democracy? None of the Supreme Court Justices who will make the final decision on this matter were democratically elected. They were all appointed by Donald Trump as was Kacsmaryk. Not only that, but this or some other appointed judge could decide unilaterally to take other drugs off the market. What else could they decide? The rule of law in the US is in shambles. Mini dictators in the form of appointed judges can hold sway over a whole host of issues. In fact the US does not even make the top ten list of the most democratic countries in the world according to the Economist Intelligence Unit which compiles an annual list in its Democracy Index. Stanford University political scientist Larry Diamond has a similar list, maintaining that any democracy must include four key elements:

1. A political system for choosing and replacing the government through free and fair elections
2. The active participation of the people, as citizens, in politics and civic life
3. Protection of the human rights of all citizens
4. A rule of law in which the laws and procedures apply equally to all citizens

The US ranks 36th on a list Ranking Countries by Quality of Democracy behind such countries as Costa Rica, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Uruguay, Slovakia and the Czech Republic!

One can see why when one appointed judge can dictate an issue for the whole country! The Washington Post reported:

As a lawyer for a conservative legal group, Matthew Kacsmaryk in early 2017 submitted an article to a Texas law review criticizing Obama-era protections for transgender people and those seeking abortions.

The Obama administration, the draft article argued, had discounted religious physicians who “cannot use their scalpels to make female what God created male” and “cannot use their pens to prescribe or dispense abortifacient drugs designed to kill unborn children.”

But a few months after the piece arrived, an editor at the law journal who had been working with Kacsmaryk received an unusual email: Citing “reasons I may discuss at a later date,” Kacsmaryk, who had originally been listed as the article’s sole author, said he would be removing his name and replacing it with those of two colleagues at his legal group, First Liberty Institute, according to emails and early drafts obtained by The Washington Post.

Yet to hear American politicians talk about it, you would think that the American Constitution is sacrosanct, paramount and equivalent to Moses receiving the Ten Commandments on two tablets of stone. You would think that it is so perfect that it is unthinkable that anyone would want to try to improve it in any way. People take a sacred oath to defend it. It is inconceivable to want to try and replace it like many other countries have done with their constitutions over the years. It is like the Bible, something that cannot be transcended without being accused of heresy, treason or worse.The American Constitution has not been updated in 234 years! On the other hand the current Constitution of France, for instance, was adopted on 4 October 1958. It is typically called the Constitution of the Fifth Republic, and it replaced the Constitution of the Fourth Republic of 1946 ... .

Meanwhile as Republicans exploit every conceivable loophole in the American Constitution, and the Second Amendment is literally tearing the nation apart, the US seems to be making it clear that it is a Republic rather than a Democracy. As Benjamin Franklin said when asked what the US government represented, "It's a republic, my dear, if you can keep it." He didn't even pretend that it was a democracy. While we criticize foreign dictators, we have a homegrown dictator by the name of Matthew Kacsmaryk right here.

Off the Top of My Head

That's Not Who We Are

by John Lawrence

Obama declared: "That's not who we are" when opining about the more hateful aspects of American society. But the reality is that's who we veritably is, at least some of us Americans. It's impossible to generalize about the American character. We are not a monolithic society. Take Charlottesville for instance. Latter day confederates and ku klux klaners. That's not who we are? That's who some of us are. That's the problem. There is no common set of values. Trump said there were good people on both sides. What is the definition of a "good person"? Is it one who fights to maintain his own way of life or is it one who tries to reach accommodation with others and understand their point of view. For America as a nation in general, it is more the former than the latter. Historically at least since WW II, the US has always taken the path of using force and power to maintain its standing in the world and to maintain its right to exploit the resources of weaker nations while ignoring the welfare of their people. The US has supported right wing, authoritarian dictatorships in South America and elsewhere so that the "supply chain" of natural resources could be extracted and shipped back to the homeland while keeping the cheap native labor cheap. There was no effort to improve the lifestyles of the natives. Those locals who sought to do so were overthrown and right wing dictatorships were installed in Chile, Nicaragua, Argentina, Iran and many other countries too numerous to mention. For many years it was all about the oil. Now we realize that that oil transformed into greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere is what's killing us.

When Gorbachev sought detente and the elimination of nuclear weapons in the world, Reagan hung on to his Star Wars fantasy. Neoconservatives in the Reagan administration considered Gorbachev's stated desire to bring peace to the world a sign of weakness to be exploited rather than a signal that a new era of peace could be at hand. This neoconservative foreign policy has been the policy of US Presidents both Democrat and Republican. Jimmy Carter had his Zbigniew Brzezhinski. Nixon had his Henry Kissenger. Reagan and the Bushes had a whole host of neocons fashioning their foreign policy. Reagan himself had no idea about what to do other than that he was against communism. Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick wrote in "The Untold History of the United States":

"But what is Reagan's real legacy? One of the most poorly informed and least engaged chief executives in U.S. history, he empowered a right wing resurgence of hard-line anti-communists who militarized U.S. foreign policy and rekindled the Cold War. He paid lip service to democracy while arming and supporting repressive dictators. He turned local and regional conflicts in the Middle East and Latin America into Cold War battlegrounds, unleashing a reig of terror to suppres popular movements. He spent enormous sums on the military while cutting social programs for the poor. He sharply reduced taxes on the wealthy, tripling the national debt and transforming the U.S. from the world's leading creditor in 1981 into its biggest debtor by 1985. In October 1987, he oversaw the worst stock market collapse since the Great Depression. He let the chance to rid to rid the world of offensive nuclear weapons [proposed by Gorbachev] slip through his fingers because he wouldn't let go of a childish fantasy [Star Wars]. And as for his much-vaunted role in ending the Cold War, as we shall see, the lion's share of credit goes instead to his Soviet counterpart,. Mikhail Gorbachev."

Is it any wonder then, that a chauvinistic and self-serving foreign policy has been internalized by so many "patriots" like the ones who attacked Capitol police on January 6, 2021? They just want what we already have: access to the natural resources of the world for Americans at the expense of indigenous peoples, the continuation of a way of life that favors the fortunes of white, European immigrants at the expense of African American forced immigrants, Latin American immigrants as well as Native Americans. When Obama says over and over, "That's not who we are," it's wishful, thinking because that's exactly who many of us are.

Off the Top of My Head

Ending the Filibuster is Necessary for Voting Reform and Other Crucial Initiatives

by John Lawrence, March 18, 2020

Voting reform at the Federal level is necessary to counter all the state efforts to restrict voting. This is as important as Biden's COVID relief bill which was passed by budget reconciliation and only needed a majority vote. It is important to note how precarious the COVID relief bill was because it got zero Republican votes. If even one of the two Senators from Georgia had not won in the runoffs, there would be no COVID relief bill or Democratic majority in the Senate. The Republican party is the party of NO. Biden's trope of "working across the aisle" is a total fiction and he knows it, but he's trying to keep it alive for appearances sake as it makes him seem more moderate. He knows that he will get no Republican votes for any legislation he wants to get passed, but he will seem less extreme if he at least keeps the idea alive. But when it comes right down to it, Biden will do what he needs to do to get his legislation passed into law. He's  not naive.

So Republican Mitch McConnell has threatened a "scorched earth" policy if Republicans ever regain control of the Senate. He even threatened to defund Planned Parenthood. Golly gee! I'll take that in return for comprehensive national voting reform including eliminating gerrymandering and overruling state efforts to restrict voting. Democrats have a lot on their agenda for helping Americans; Republicans have nothing. Here is McConnell’s complete account of the horrors that await the country were the legislative filibuster to perish:

“As soon as Republicans wound up back in the saddle, we wouldn’t just erase every liberal change that hurt the country. We’d strengthen America with all kinds of conservative policies with zero input from the other side. Nationwide right-to-work for working Americans. Defunding Planned Parenthood and sanctuary cities on day one. A whole new era of domestic energy production. Sweeping new protections for conscience and the right to life of the unborn. Concealed-carry reciprocity in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Massive hardening of security on our southern border.”

Jeesh, Mitch, I'm totally terrified! I say go ahead and abolish the filibuster. When you weigh all the good Democrats can do for the country against all the bad Republicans can do, the scales are tipped heavily in favor of ending the filibuster which is an archaic Jim Crow rule anyway. Any democracy worthy of the name should at least stand for majority rule. The things that Republicans are against are only manufactured pipe dreams anyway for the most part. If we have to give up Planned parenthood and sanctuary cities in return for solving the problem of global warming, I say go ahead and do it. There is so much important business that has to get done that Democrats are capable of doing. Biden learned his lesson under Obama when for 8 years Republicans slow walked him through a futile Presidency. Biden learned his lesson then although he still wants to seem moderate so he will appear to be just that. After Republican intransigence has been conclusively demonstrated, however, Biden will, as a seeming last resort, abolish the filibuster in order to get the job that he came to do done.

The For the People Act (also known as H.R. 1) is a bill in the United States Congress to expand voting rights, change campaign finance laws to reduce the influence of money in politics, limit partisan gerrymandering, and create new ethics rules for federal officeholders. This is the minimum of what needs to be done that will require ending the filibuster. Much needed and much delayed immigration reform will also require that. The question is will the US be a nation that accomplished big things or one in which nothing gets done. Republicans can threaten all they want. Their agenda is a big nothing burger. If HR 1 is enacted into law, they may never be back in power again. Their access to power is based on restricting voting rights. Democratic access to power is based on expanding them. The real question is is the United States going to stand for a real democracy or is it going to retreat into an autocracy. The rest of the world including primarily China is moving ahead while head in the sand Republicans are challenging and threatening Americans with their damaging policies. Biden and the Democrats should not take that bait, and, having learned their lesson from the Obama years, go ahead and do what's necessary to get America on the move again towards a more equitable and rational nation which makes a positive contribution in world affairs.

Off the Top of My Head

Democrats Should Get Rid of the Filibuster No Matter What They Have to Promise Joe Manchin

by John Lawrence, March3, 2021

They have nothing to lose by ending the filibuster and much to gain. Democrats are the party of getting stuff done, stuff that the country and the world needs. On the other hand Republicans are the party of No. With the filibuster in effect they will say no to everything. There is much that needs to get done that will go undone if the filibuster remains in effect. Democrats have nothing to lose, but they need the votes of every Democrat in the Senate including Joe Manchin who has said he's against ending the filibuster. What would Republican do if they were in power without the filibuster? Not much more than they have already done with the filibuster - give tax breaks to the rich which they can do with the budget reconciliation process which effectively nullifies the filibuster for budget related legislation. So Democrats don't have much to fear if Republicans regain control without the filibuster. But the Biden administration needs to do much more than budget related stuff. For example, a national voting rights act which clarifies on a national level voting procedures. Right now each state is rolling back voting procedures in an attempt to massively suppress poor and black and brown voters.

Also the Senate parliamentarian has ruled that the $15 an hour minimum wage increase cannot be part of the $1.9 trillion COVID relief act. She could be overruled by the President of the Senate, Kamala Harris, but this close to the beginning of his administration Biden doesn't want to do anything that radical. However, he has a deadline and that is 2022 when, if history is any guide, Republicans could regain control of one or both Houses of Congress. If that is the case, Biden will be neutered until his term is up in 2024 and will probably not be reelected after Republicans get done harping on him for 2 years that he has got nothing done (thanks to them). Unlike China which has continuity over 5 to 10 years in its policies, the US is in a situation now where it could likely swerve back and forth from left to right every 4 years. That does not lead to much admiration and respect from the other countries of the world which are already doubting how much they should trust and emulate America.

Trump undid as much as he could of what Obama had done by executive order, and now Biden has undid everything that Trump did also by executive order. Trump may have been an anomaly so that from now on good, consistent and stable leadership will prevail. But there is not much reason to believe in this happy scenario. Trump voters seem to be as hostile to the vision of Democrats as Democrats are hostile to the vision of Trump supporters. The two parties are at loggerheads. Will we swerve from belief in the necessity of doing something about global warming to denying global warming exists every four years? Will we go from extolling the benefits of fossil fuels to trying to get rid of fossil fuels every four years. Will we go from concern about the environment to allowing corporations to despoil the environment with impunity every four years? Will we go from tax breaks for the rich to government programs to support the poor every four years?

I'm thinking that, once Biden realizes that Republicans will not support his agenda on anything, he may support removal of the filibuster in 2022 before the next election so that he can force through all the legislation on his list that can't be passed by budget reconciliation. He'll have to buy off Joe Manchin somehow. His vaunted style of "working across the aisle" has been shown to be ineffectual even in his own eyes. That's the painful lesson he learned during the Obama administration when Republicans stalled and slow walked Obama for eight years, and, while they were doing it, they were at the same time putting Obama down for not getting anything done when they were not outright demonizing him. They will attempt the same thing with Biden, but I think Biden has learned his lesson. He will keep up the facade of wanting to work with Republicans, but he won't compromise in any significant way just to be a nice guy and get their support. The Republicans will not cooperate on anything unless they can diminish it and water it down. Obama thought he had to do just that. Biden has lost his naivete.

Off the Top of My Head

Good-Bye Mitch McConnell: Democrats Win Control of Senate. Now They Need to Get Rid of Filibuster to Get Anything Done.

by John Lawrence, January 6, 2021

Nothing turned off GOP voters more than seeing their hero call for a $2000. payment to individuals while Mitch McConnell stood there on the Senate floor and said repeatedly, "Object. Object." Jon Offoss told his supporters that, if he were to be elected and Democrats controlled Congress, Biden had promised to implement the $2000 payments. That would be incentive enough for many Republican voters, especially the non-rich, to vote for a Democrat. Thank God, Democrats will control the Senate and the Roadblocker-in-Chief, will not get the chance to block all progressive Democratic legislation coming forward from the House in the next 4 years. Now there is one more potential roadblock that the Senate has the ability to do away with: the filibuster rule. Meanwhile, on the day Joe Biden is certified by the Congress, Trump, while completely neglecting the fact that yesterday the most people ever died from COVID, is holding another shit show and super spreader event in Washington so his supporters can get off on their collective anger that their hero wasn't reelected in a free and fair election. By the way I noticed in the excellent CNN film about Jimmy Carter (Rock and Roll President) that the Ku Klux Klan in white robes protested openly at one of his campaign events and one of them was carrying a sign, "America First." So that's where Trump got the idea for that slogan.

Even when Democrats gain control of the Senate, opposition party senators can filibuster the majority’s agenda. That means that any one Republican senator can filibuster any progressive piece of legislation that Joe Biden and House Democrats put forward including the Green New Deal, or more appropriately - the Biden New Deal, a public option for Obamacare which would allow anyone to choose Medicare, the elimination of part or all of student loan debt, $2000 COVID relief payments to most Americans and more, much more. The filibuster is not part of the Constitution; it is simply a rule of the Senate which can be changed by a majority vote. Eliminating the filibuster has been characterized as the so-called "nuclear option." Wikipedia notes:

"According to the Supreme Court's ruling in United States v. Ballin (1892), Senate rules can be changed by a simple majority vote. Nevertheless, under current Senate rules, a rule change could itself be filibustered, requiring two-thirds of senators who are present and voting to end debate. (This differs from the usual requirement for three-fifths of sworn senators.)

"Despite the two-thirds requirement described above being written into the Senate rules, any Senator may attempt to nullify a Senate rule, starting by making a point of order that the rule is unconstitutional or just that the meaning of the rule should not be followed. The presiding officer is generally expected to rule in favor of the rules of the Senate, but under rule XX, "every appeal therefrom shall be decided at once, and without debate" and therefore by a simple majority as there is no need for a vote on cloture.

"This happened in 2013, when Harry Reid of the Democratic Party raised a point of order that "the vote on cloture under rule XXII for all nominations other than for the Supreme Court of the United States is by majority vote". The presiding officer overruled the point of order, and Reid appealed the ruling. Mitch McConnell of the Republican Party raised a parliamentary inquiry on how many votes were required to appeal the chair's ruling in that instance. The presiding officer replied, "A majority of those Senators voting, a quorum being present, is required." Reid's appeal was sustained by a 52–48 vote, and the presiding officer then ruled that the Senate had established a precedent that cloture on nominations other than those for the Supreme Court requires only a simple majority. On April 6, 2017, that precedent was further changed by McConnell and the Republican majority, in a 52–48 vote, to include Supreme Court nominations."

Long story short. Democrats can eliminate the filibuster if they really want to. And they really need to do that because the Republican game plan will be to block all progressive legislation by means of the filibuster. Even without Mitch McConnell as chief roadblocker, Republicans will stymie Joe Biden and block all his initiatives. The result is that Biden's initiatives will go nowhere. It would be a total waste of Democratic power now that they have it. Republicans have shown no hesitancy to use their power to the full extent without any pretense of cooperating or compromising with Democrats. Now that Democrats have the power, they should use it starting with getting rid of the filibuster rule. Nobody knows more - from personal experience actually - than President Obama about how the filibuster rule can impede social progress. Republicans used it to effectively neuter Obama during his 8 year Presidency. Washington Post reported:

"Former President Barack Obama called on Thursday for eliminating the filibuster, joining a growing chorus of Democrats who portray the Senate’s signature procedural weapon as an obstacle to social progress that must be abolished if the party captures the Senate and White House.

"The appeal by Mr. Obama to do away with a tactic that Senate Republicans used to thwart him and the Democratic agenda for much of his eight years in office came during his eulogy in Atlanta for Representative John Lewis, the civil rights icon. The former president seized the moment to cast the filibuster as a vestige of a grim period in the United States when Southern lawmakers used it to impede voting rights and other advances for African-Americans."

“Once we pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, we should keep marching,” Mr. Obama said, referring to legislation Democrats are pushing on Capitol Hill in the face of opposition from Republicans. “And if all this takes eliminating the filibuster — another Jim Crow relic — in order to secure the God-given rights of every American, then that’s what we should do.”

So the writing is on the wall. Do we want this democracy to represent the interests of the majority of its people or only the upper 10%? Do we want to save the planet from global warming? If so the Republican call for "moderation" or "compromise" or "not being too radical" will not work. There is a limited time frame for us to act or the planet will soon - in our lifetimes and the lifetimes of our children - become uninhabitable for most people. We have failed to act on this in a timely manner. Now we must play catch up, and there is no time to waste. We have about 10 years to get global warming under control. Don't listen to people that say the Green New Deal is too radical. It's too radical only if we want to let the planet become virtually uninhabitable.

Off the Top of My Head

Beware of Slogans Like "Defund the Police"

by John Lawrence, December 4, 2020

Sloganeering can do more harm than good. Protesters were their own worst enemies when they came up with the slogan, "Defund the Police." Republicans seized on it and put it in their ads to show their base how dangerous and reckless the other side was. The net result was that the protesters just gave ammunition to the other side. Some protesters would tell you that that's not what they really meant. They just wanted more funding to go to social workers. Well, a slogan is a slogan, and Republicans appeal to their base primarily by means of slogans like "Lock her up." So Protesters, Democrats and Countrymen, lend me your ears. Don't indulge in slogans which provide ammunition for ads on the other side. Now "Black Lives Matter" is a good slogan. It's heartfelt, it sums up the situation and can't be used to strike fear into Trump's base. All they can say is "All Lives Matter". Why sure.

Barack Obama had it right. According to The Hill:

Former President Obama said political candidates lose support when using “snappy” slogans like “defund the police,” in an interview scheduled to be released Wednesday.

Obama told Peter Hamby, who hosts a Snapchat political show “Good Luck America,” that those who use the slogan could jeopardize their goals of enacting meaningful reforms for police.

"You lost a big audience the minute you say it, which makes it a lot less likely that you're actually going to get the changes you want done," the former president said in the interview scheduled to go live at 6 a.m. on Wednesday, according to Axios.

"The key is deciding, do you want to actually get something done, or do you want to feel good among the people you already agree with?" Obama added.

The former president’s comments align with other top Democrats who have considered the phrase to be damaging to the Democratic Party.

House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) told NBC News’s “Meet the Press” last month that he believed the slogan hurt some Democratic candidates, like Rep. Joe Cunningham (D-S.C.) who lost to Rep.-elect Nancy Mace (R-S.C.).

The phrase was widely used in connection with the racial justice protests over the summer, following George Floyd’s death in May after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for several minutes, pinning him to the street.

The killing of Floyd, who was Black, triggered calls to defund the police across the country.

The slogan refers to reallocating funding for police departments to social services for minority communities.

Of course. Let me repeat Obama's words: "The key is deciding, do you want to actually get something done, or do you want to feel good among the people you already agree with?" That should always be kept in mind, and those words of wisdom are often forgotten. It's important to strike the right tone when you're trying to get your point across. There has been a huge, by and large successful, push to end the Trump nightmare years and put people into positions of power in this country who want to do something positive for the American people and for the planet Earth. It could have been predicted that Republicans would run ads showing angry mobs burning and looting while shouting "Defund the Police." I said at the time that as the election was getting near, the protesters should get off the streets. After a certain point they were doing more harm than good.

So while some Republicans undoubtedly were elected in the last election cycle because some people recoiled at the sloganeering of the protesters, it all came out OK especially in view of the fact that Trump was defeated. The WPP (White Peoples' Party) still represents a lot of people in this country. After all some 70 million of them voted for Trump. The trick now is for Joe Biden to show in very tangible ways that he wants to accomplish positive things for all the people, the white middle class as well as minorities. He can't just do things for minorities at the expense of white people. His programs must be undertaken with the goal of improving everyone's lives. All Lives Matter. That's the way he will unify the American people and pull people away from Trump's base. When white people can see that their economic lives have improved, then Trump's rhetoric of grievance and fear will lose its power over them.

Off the Top of My Head

Will Trump Detach His Base From the Republican Party?

by John Lawrence, November 15, 2020

It is becoming clear that the base of the Republican party is more loyal to Trump than they are to the Republican party. The base has really become the Trump party and old guard Republicans like Mitch McConnell are getting nervous that they will not remain loyal to the Republican party. That's why Republicans are showing deference to Trump and his pique that the election was illegitimate. They know he lost the election, but they won't come out and say so. Trump's base even held a huge post election rally last Saturday showing their loyalty to Trump not necessarily the Republican party. This makes it more likely that Trump will take his base with him when he leaves office. Effectively, they would become the Trump party. Whether Trump creates his on media empire or associates himself with Fox news or some other media empire, it's clear that there is an audience he can count on.

The Republican party made a deal with the devil in the 1960s after the Democrats passed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. Hitherto southern white supremacists and racists had been loyal to the Democratic party.They decided en masse that, if the Democrats were not going to continue to represent their racism and white supremacy, they would switch parties. Republicans then made a deal with the devil and accepted them with open arms because, while Republicans basically represent the interests of the rich, there are not enough of them to form a majority in a constitutional democracy. So far Trump has represented the interests of the old line Republicans by signing into law huge tax breaks for the rich and deregulating everything that could be regulated. His base hardly noticed except for the pittance of a tax break they got. They were more interested in Trump's conspiracy theories and ongoing campaign rallies where Trump sowed his racist and nativist sentiments and stoked their anger. Now it's clear that, if Trump so desired, he could detach his base that is the Republican base and take them with him forming a separate party devoted to Trump and his conspiracy theories. Trump and his henchmen in the alternative and social media world could create their separate entity and reality, which they've already to a large extent, created. So doing would continue the deep divides within the United States and further sow discord and division.

Aligning themselves with Mitch McConnell and a Republican controlled Senate, if the elections in Georgia don't result in two Democratic Senators, will hamper Joe Biden's attempts to enact any of his agenda in the same way that they blocked Obama's agenda for eight years. Then Trump and/or his family members could storm back in 2022 and 2024 to win back what they perceive they have unfairly lost in the 2020 election. They have labeled any middle of the road Democratic programs as far left or socialist and they will use the same tactics to demonize Joe and particularly Kamala as not representative of their racist and white supremacist values. Meanwhile, all the good work which Joe Biden's agenda represents will not get accomplished just like Obama's agenda was prevented from getting much of anything done except for a watered down version of Obamacare which they demonized ever since its enactment. Democrats, heretofore, have tried to cooperate with Republicans and be nice guys while Republicans have been playing hard ball using every bit of their power to promote their interests without any compromise whatsoever. They even went to the extent of denying Ruth Bader Ginsburg's dying wish that the next President replace her on the Supreme Court. This was after they swore up and down that the next President should replace a Supreme Court Justice a year before the end of the Obama Presidency thus denying Obama that privilege.

Joe Biden could fall into the same trap of watering down his agenda just to please Republicans under the guise of cooperation. He supposedly wants to "work across the aisle." He thinks he can get Mitch McConnell to cooperate with him. My advice is to "speak softly and carry a big stick" in the immortal words of Teddy Roosevelt. He mustn't fall into the same trap that Obama - and for that matter Bill Clinton - fell into by playing nice with Republicans. Trump's base will continue to be more loyal to Trump than they will be to Mitch McConnell or the Republican party. Trump will be more concerned about staying out of jail and deferring his $431 million debt repayment so he will enlist his base along those lines. Trump knows that his personal concerns will diverge from legitimate Republican party concerns once he's out of office, and he will enlist his minions to give him their support. Prodigious and ongoing conspiracy theories will fuel the anger of Trump's base, and there will be demands for his reinstatement as the rightful President of the United States.

Off the Top of My Head

Is the US a Democracy or a Gridlocracy?

by John Lawrence, June 9, 2020

How is the US a democracy when one man can vote against an antilynching law so that it never gets passed? The law that would make lynching a Federal hate crime passed the House almost unanimously, but failed to get passed in the Senate due to one man - Rand Paul. It only takes one Senator to quash a bill and prevent it from becoming law because of the filibuster. This is what makes the US not a democracy but a gridlocracy. There is another way that legislation passed by the House which is the people's chamber never sees the light of day and that is Mitch McConnell, the leader of the Senate. It is up to him whether legislation passed by the House even gets considered in the Senate. That is the antidemocratic power that one man has. How can you say that the US is a democracy when one man has the power to say which legislation is even considered? Even if it passes both Houses, the President can always veto it which makes the US system much more antidemocratic than a parliamentary system.

The bill called the Emmett Till Antilynching Act. It comes to pass as a result of the Black Lives Matter movement. But you see the US political system for what it is when one man can prevent anything from becoming law. That's precisely the reason there is no gun control legislation even though opinion polls show that a majority of the American people want it. In March 2018, 67% of Americans supported stricter regulation of firearms sales, according to a Gallup poll with a margin of sampling error of

+/- 4% at the 95% confidence level, the highest in any Gallup survey since 1993. We'd have it IF the US were a democracy. It's not. The gun control industry has bought the votes of at least one Senator, and that Senator or Senators will always filibuster. The US political system is archaic and needs to be changed. It's not that big a deal. You don't need a revolution to change a Constitution. Most advanced western democracies have done it to bring their political systems up to date. Instead, the US Constitution is treated as sancrosanct and must never be changed sort of like the Bible. Meanwhile, time marches on and other nations march past the antiquated United States.

The New York Times reported:

As Congress prepares to wade into a contentious debate over legislation to address police brutality and systemic racial bias, a long-simmering dispute in the Senate over a far less controversial bill that would for the first time explicitly make lynching a federal crime has burst into public view.

The bill, called the Emmett Till Antilynching Act after the 14-year-old black boy who was tortured and killed in 1955 in Mississippi, predates the recent high-profile deaths of three black men and women at the hands of white police and civilians that have inspired protests across the country. It passed the House this year by a vote of 410 to 4, and has the backing of 99 senators, who have urged support for belated federal recognition of a crime that once terrorized black Americans.

So the American political system is not only undemocratic, it's racist. It's the main reason that hardly any progressive legislation was passed during President Obama's 8 year term in office. Corporations lobby Senators - it's basically legalized bribery - to pay them off so that no meaningful legislation ever gets passed except if it's in their interests, and their interests are always about money. The article continued:

Kamala Harris rose to object, delivering a seething broadside against Mr. Paul as she noted that even as they debated, mourners were gathering to honor George Floyd, the African-American man who died last week after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.

“The idea that we would not be taking the issue of lynching seriously is an insult — an insult to Senator Booker and Senator Tim Scott and myself,” she said from across the chamber floor, referring to the South Carolina Republican who helped write the bill and is the party’s lone black senator.

“To suggest that lynching would only be a lynching if someone’s heart was pulled out and displayed to someone else is ridiculous,” she added. “It should not require a maiming or torture for us to recognize a lynching when we see it and recognize it by federal law and call it what it is, which is that it is a crime that should be punishable with accountability and consequence.”

American democracy has been hijacked by monied interests who can afford to pay off Senators and Congressmen and women as well for that matter. Legalized bribery insures that nothing of any consequence will ever get done in America whether it is racial justice, economic justice or political justice. Can this system be reformed? Perhaps it can, but the reform should start with the Senate and the role that the leader plays in deciding what legislation even gets considered and to the elimination of the filibuster.

Off the Top of My Head

China and India Now Manufacture About 80% of the Drugs Consumed in the U.S.

by John Lawrence, March 29, 2020

The US doesn't even manufacture vital drugs like antibiotics anymore, with the last penicillin factory closing in 2004. But who can blame the drug manufacturers? They're in it for the money. Drugs that you use once or twice and then you're cured are unprofitable. They only manufacture drugs that need to be taken once a day every day for life like high blood pressure and diabetes medicine, and then they outsource the manufacture of those drugs to China because that's the most profitable way to do it. FDA inspectors are unable or unwilling to provide appropriate oversight of Chinese manufacturing. In contrast to the robust testing required for approval for new prescription drugs, the FDA only requires that generic manufacturers prove that patients will absorb drugs at the same rate as the brand-name medications they copy.

But who needs robust drug testing anyway? Ronald Reagan said that the nine most terrifying words in the English language are, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." So who needs the government's help to test drugs? Who needs government's help in a pandemic? Let's get government off our back and let'er rip. And what we surely don't need is government getting into the business of manufacturing drugs themselves and competing with the private sector. That would be socialism!

Many of the generic drugs imported from China are contaminated. So? Caveat Emptor! China is our great friend when it comes to trusting life saving drugs manufactured there, but our enemy when it comes to government sanctioning and disapprobation. We hate their form of government, but we love that we get Chinese laborers to work for a fraction of what Americans make. China and India are now restricting the export of some drugs and medical equipment. That means that Americans will not have the medical equipment and drugs they need due to export restrictions from countries that have a domestic need for those products. They will come first. The US will be last, but that's capitalism!

Big pharma continues to walk away from investment in new antibiotics and there are alarmingly few useful new drugs in the pipeline to deal with the worsening crisis of antibiotic resistance, according to the World Health Organization. So the US has to depend on another country for most of its pharmaceutical needs while at the same time the President is saying negative things about that country. According to him they are not our ally. Not our ally but we're depending on them for life saving medicines ? Does this make any sense? Of course it makes sense because it maximizes profits for private enterprise.

The US wants to have it both ways. They want to say negative things about the Chinese government while at the same time being almost totally dependent on that country for critical medical products as well as tons of other products. It's all about the fact that American corporations want to take advantage of cheap Chinese labor while at the same time the US government feels free to chastise China. The big pharmaceutical companies are not investing in antibiotic research because it is not a lucrative market for them. And BIG Pharma has successfully gotten government off its back because they made sure that in the Obamacare bill, Medicare could not negotiate with the drug companies for cheaper prescription drugs for old people. Score one for the free market! The law states that the secretary of Health and Human Services “may not interfere” in negotiations between pharmaceutical companies and prescription drug insurance plan providers.

At the same time there is much military swagger on the part of the US. China better watch itself in the South China Sea or we will send our mighty aircraft carriers there. "The head of the U.S. Navy warned China that hostile behavior from its coast guard and fishing boats will not be treated any differently from the Chinese navy, the Financial Times reported on Sunday." But what good is the military going to do if the whole world is at the mercy of a virus or a bacteria, if the whole world is brought to its knees except the countries who have invested in the manufacturing of their own critically needed products? Are we going to invade China and demand that they give us the medicine? Yes, we will send our military to make sure that China does not control the South China Sea, but then get down on our hands and knees to beg China to send us critical medicines that are manufactured there. The whole foreign policy regarding China is absolutely nuts.

Agribusiness continues to use antibiotics in animal feed not for the treatment or prevention of disease, but to make them attain higher marketable weights in the quickest possible time. This make more profit for the meat growers and slaughterers. At the same time it decreases the medicinal benefits of antibiotics in humans because the bacteria mutate at a faster rate. Therefore, new antibiotics must be developed, but they aren't being developed. The lucrative drugs are the ones that must be taken every day for life not the ones that, once they have cured a disease, are no longer needed. But we don't want to regulate Agribusiness, do we? We want fewer government regulations because we want to get government off our backs or at least off the backs of private enterprise so they can maximize profits.

For the US to be secure against disease the Federal government must develop the drugs and antibiotics that the pharmaceutical corporations are not developing because they are unprofitable. We can't totally rely on the private sector because the private sector is only in it for the money not for the health of the nation. In a pandemic Reagan's words, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help" are not the most terrifying words in the English language. They're the most reassuring words.

Off the Top of My Head

The Fed Keeps On Bailing Out Failing Businesses

by John Lawrence, March 17, 2020

The Fed announced recently that it would cut interest rates to zero. It has also promised to insert $1.5 trillion of "liquidity" into the markets. It's clear that the US is a society that runs on debt, and the biggest non profit producing industry that has gorged itself on humungus amounts of debt is fracking. But investors are getting weary. S&P Global Ratings this month cut credit ratings of six shale gas producers citing the outlook for natural gas prices. "We are particularly concerned about some of the issuers' ability to access the capital markets given investor aversion to the space," S&P said. But no worries. A Fed bailout is on the way. Zero percent interest. Free money. Whoopee. Frack away.

Just a few days ago, CNBC host Jim Cramer exclaimed, "I'm done with fossil fuel," after disappointing earnings reports from Dow Jones energy giants Chevron and Exxon Mobil. "We're in the death knell phase," he warned. The fracking industry is deathly afraid that, if Bernie Sanders is elected, the gravy train will be over. Fracking has provided a lot of jobs for a lot of people, but it is not profitable if the world oil price is less than $40 a barrel. Right now, thanks to Russia and Saudi Arabia, the price of oil is $30 a barrel. A Green New Deal would have to provide jobs for all those workers in the fracking industry who have been making pretty good money even though the industry as a whole is unprofitable.

The Fed is doing its job to create another tower of debt in the US. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has pointed out that the $1.5 trillion the Fed has injected into the system for "liquidity" could wipe out all the student loan debt in the US which now stands at $1.5 trillion. But the Fed insists that any stimulus to the economy which would actually help working people as opposed to investors has to come from the fiscal side meaning that Congress would have to appropriate the money. The Fed's job is to make sure that no major business player in the US economy goes bankrupt including the US government itself which is wallowing in debt to the tune of $1 trillion a year thanks to Trump's tax cuts for the rich similar to Ronald Reagan's tax cuts for the rich which quintupled the national debt. It took a Democrat, poor old Clinton, to reduce the deficit to zero.

The question naturally arises of why can't the Fed bail out American workers to the tune of $1000 a month as Andrew Yang has suggested especially now that the coronavirus has put a huge damper on consumption which is 70% of the economy. The Fed says, "Not my job. That's Congress' job." The Fed as it turns out is a wholly owned subsidiary of Wall Street. It is not a publicly owned entity. Congress will do nothing to bail out the American people because of the Republican controlled Senate led by Mitch McConnell. Even if Democrats were to attain a majority in the Senate, the filibuster would prevent them from doing anything. So Joe Biden, even if elected, will get nothing substantial done including building on Obamacare. The only reason Obamacare was even passed in the first place was that Democrats had a majority in both Houses and a filibusterproof majority in the Senate (60 votes) for a very short period of time (4 months) during which Obamacare was passed. Good luck Joe.

If the Fed, instead of being privately controlled by Wall Street, were to become a truly public institution controlled by Congress, then maybe it could bail out the general American public instead of failing businesses. According to the rules of capitalism, failing businesses at some point should go bankrupt. The Fed is essentially preventing that from happening thus fueling the stock market. However, the stock market senses that at this point the Fed has used up all its tools and can do nothing further. There is probably too much liquidity in the markets already. Providing more wouldn't do any good. Interest rates are already at zero. The Fed could go to negative interest rates, but that would screw the economy up even more. Perhaps we'll all have to settle for a good old recession after all. But one thing is for certain. About six months from now, Trump will pull out all the stops to get the economy moving again just before the election since he is basing his reelection on a robust economy. However, it all depends on whether or not the coronavirus is under control at that point. If it is, Trump will take credit.

Off the Top of My Head

Poverty in US and China

by John Lawrence, March 16, 2020

According to the World Bank, more than 850 million Chinese people have been lifted out of extreme poverty; China's poverty rate fell from 88 percent in 1981 to 0.7 percent in 2015, as measured by the percentage of people living on the equivalent of US $1.90 or less per day in 2011 purchasing price parity terms. The official poverty rate in the US in 2018 was 11.8 percent, down 0.5 percentage points from 12.3 percent in 2017. This is the fourth consecutive annual decline in poverty. Since 2014, the poverty rate has fallen 3.0 percentage points, from 14.8 percent to 11.8 percent. So the poverty rate in the US is still approximately 17 times the poverty rate in China. Whoever would ever have thunk it?

In last night's debate Joe Biden called out Bernie Sanders for having the unmitigated gall to suggest that China had done a remarkable job in alleviating poverty in that country. So now you can't say a good thing about China or Cuba or Russia without the meme that they are authoritarian countries and have done horrible things. You can't say they have ever done anything good. China built two coronavirus hospitals in little over a week, but you couldn't say that on national TV. This just shows how the American public has been brainwashed by public officials so that nobody can say anything positive about one of our "enemies" without being severely criticized. Bernie happens to be right about Cuba and China and the Sandinistas, but God help him for speaking the truth. Some day maybe the American public will wake up and realize how the US CIA overthrew democratically elected governments in Iran, Argentina and elsewhere.

The New York Times reported that you have a better chance of realizing the American Dream in China than you do in the US. China used to make up much of the world’s poor. Now it makes up much of the world’s middle class. Income inequality has grown in both the US and China. However, it is much greater in the US. CBS News reported:

The top 1 percent of earners in America now take home about 20 percent of the country’s pretax national income, compared with less than 12 percent in 1978, according to the research the economists published at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Over the same time in China, the top 1 percent doubled their share of income, rising from about 6 percent to 12 percent.

While that suggests that China and the U.S. are experiencing growth of inequality in tandem, there’s one major difference, which suggests the problem may be more dire on American soil. That regards how the bottom 50 percent of income earners are taking part in -- or in the case of the U.S., losing out on -- the country’s economic growth.

America has experienced “a complete collapse of the bottom 50 percent income share in the U.S. between 1978 to 2015,” the authors wrote. “In contrast, and in spite of a similar qualitative trend, the bottom 50 percent share remains higher than the top 1 percent share in 2015 in China.”

About 117 million American adults are living on income that has stagnated at about $16,200 per year before taxes and transfer payments, Piketty, Saez and Zucman found in research published last year.

Meanwhile, economic growth in China has been so strong that -- despite widening inequality -- the incomes of the bottom 50 percent have also “grown markedly,” the economists wrote. Their analysis found that the poorest half of Chinese workers saw their average income grow more than 400 percent from 1978 to 2015. For their American counterparts, income decreased 1 percent.

“This is likely to make rising inequality much more acceptable” in China, they noted. “In contrast, in the U.S.. there was no growth left at all for the bottom 50 percent (-1 percent).”

So while the rich are much better off in China, the poor have also gotten much better off. In the US while the rich are much better off, the poor have gotten worse off. Also key industries are located in China not the US. The vast majority of key ingredients for drugs that many Americans rely on are manufactured abroad, mostly in China. The US has offshored manufacturing to China leaving the American middle class without what used to be good paying jobs. The documentary "American Factory", which won the Oscar for best documentary this year told about a GM plant in Dayton, Ohio that closed down leaving 10,000 workers without a job. A Chinese firm, Fukao Glass, bought the old plant and hired back some of the workers, but at less than half the wage they were earning before. This documentary was produced by Higher Ground, a production company owned by Barack and Michelle Obama.

The Obamas have entered into a multiyear agreement to produce TV series and movies with Netflix. “One of the simple joys of our time in public service was getting to meet so many fascinating people from all walks of life, and to help them share their experiences with a wider audience,” Barack Obama said in a statement. “That’s why Michelle and I are so excited to partner with Netflix — we hope to cultivate and curate the talented, inspiring, creative voices who are able to promote greater empathy and understanding between peoples, and help them share their stories with the entire world.”

So perhaps some truth can be brought to bear by the Obamas whose hearts have always been in the right place despite every roadblock being thrown in their faces by Republicans and their media outlets.

Off the Top of My Head

If Biden Wins, Amy Klobuchar Will Be His Running Mate

by John Lawrence

Amy is already campaigning for Joe in Michigan which will be the pivotal state that will determine whether it will be Biden or Sanders. After Tuesday we should know who is going to be the Democratic nominee. Biden won some states on super Tuesday without even having campaigned there or bought one TV ad. His impressive showing on super Tuesday seems to indicate that Democrats want the safe middle of the road candidate to represent them against Donald Trump. Bernie's young voters didn't turn out in big enough numbers. Well, if Joe is the candidate, they won't get their student loan debt forgiven. That's for sure. And we seniors won't get any big increases in our social securitychecks. Joe will mean business as usual even if he beats Trump which he probably won't. I think Trump will beat him like a drum rather than the opposite which Joe proclaims all the time.

For Bernie this will be his last hurrah. One thing is for sure: he has gotten his message out there. The Dems went for the establishment candidate in 2016, and Trump beat her like a drum. The same will probably be true this time around especially if the economy is good. Joe Biden has an absolutely uninspiring message: more of the same from the Obama era. It wasn't that great in the first place. Obamacare was a mishmash thanks to Obama's determination to compromise with Republicans and Republicans turning Obamacare into a bete noir. Obama also is notable for bailing out the banks while not bailing out the many homeowners that went into foreclosure.

Joe Biden will try to coast along for 4 years. That's not what America or the world needs. Trump, for all his mendacity is slightly more mentally alert than Biden and more likely to land punishing blows if there is a Biden Trump debate. Then again Trump may decide not to debate, but to rely on his acolytes like Fox News and numerous devotees to carry his water. With all the ad money at his disposal that would probably win the day. Too bad Bernie's supporters just didn't show up to vote. Maybe they will in Michigan. The country and the world really need Bernie at this critical juncture.

So what will we get with 4 more years of Trump. Four more years of climate change denying which is really what the American people want from their President because they value the American lifestyle more than they value a habitable earth for future generations. Wall Street emphasizes short term profits, and most Americans are imbued with the short term profit mantra. They don't really care what happens to the earth in the future if they have to make sacrifices in their lifestyles now.. It's the American way. Just maximize your profits.

The US Made a Deal With the Devil in Saudi Arabia

by John Lawrence from the San Diego Free Press

Did Saudi Arabia Aid the 9/11 Hijackers?

All indications are that our biggest buddy in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, was directly involved with the 9/11 hijackers, and what's more, exports its extreme form of Islam, Wahhabism, to al Qaeda, ISIS and other groups determined to wipe out the West and Western values. There are 28 pages of the 9/11 report that deal directly with the Saudi role that so far have not been released. They have been redacted because the US relationship with the Saudis would be in jeopardy if they were to be released.

Last week the US Senate passed a bill that would let families of US victims of 9/11 sue the Saudis if they were found to be responsible for 9/11. The Saudis have gone so far as to say that, if the bill became law, they would dump $750 billion worth of US Treasury bonds on the world market. That would blow up not only our relationship with the Saudis, but the world financial system which is predicated on the US dollar being the world's reserve currency and its being necessary for the purchase of oil. That's why other countries that buy oil on the world markets have to hold dollars.

We have been taught to love the Saudis and hate ISIS. Brutal beheadings are shown on the evening news carried out by ISIS. Yet we are never shown a beheading by the Saudis which happens all the time. They're just not videotaped, that's all. The Saudis operate under Sharia law just like ISIS does. A contractor told me recently of his time in Riyadh where the half time entertainment at soccer games was beheadings. Instead of a concert by Beyonce, they'd clear the soccer field, have a beheading or two, then bring back the players for the second half. That's their half time entertainment! Saudi Arabia carried out at least 157 executions in 2015. Yet none of our public officials mention this fact. Beheading is the form of execution in Saudi Arabia, and, according to my friend, it can be for as trivial a peccadillo as embarrassing someone's daughter! After the beheadings the Saudis put the headless bodies on display by hanging them around the city.

The government of Saudi Arabia beheaded forty-seven people on terror charges in a single day at the start of 2016, in the kingdom’s largest wave of executions in more than three decades. Saudi schoolchildren are taught that beheading Christians, Jews and Shiites is just fine and dandy. And these are our so-called "friends" in the middle east!

Every woman in America and the West should be outraged by how the Saudis treat women. They aren't allowed to drive for starters. A hidden camera videotaped a woman being shoved to the ground in a supermarket, her groceries scattered all over the floor, simply because she got in the way of a man. Saudi dissidents secretly videotaped the Saudi religious police - the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, whose job it is to patrol the shopping malls and streets looking for transgressions, accosting a woman for wearing make-up. If they show a few strands of hair which are not covered up by their hijabs and burkas, they could be whipped. Western women rejoice, your lot in life, although not perfect, is vastly superior to your counterparts in the middle east.

President Nixon Sealed the Deal With King Faisal

The deal "oil for dollars" was made by none other that the "deal with the devil" boy, Richard Nixon, himself. In 1973 then President Nixon asked King Faisal of Saudi Arabia to accept only US dollars as payment for oil and to invest any excess profits in US Treasury bonds, notes, and bills. In exchange, Nixon pledged to protect Saudi Arabian oil fields from the Soviet Union and other interested nations, such as Iran and Iraq. It was the start of the deal with the devil. Here is the short version of the sick system we now operate under:

The short version of the story is that a 1970s deal cemented the US dollar as the only currency to buy and sell crude oil, and from that monopoly on the all-important oil trade the US dollar slowly but surely became the reserve currency for global trades in most commodities and goods. Massive demand for US dollars ensued, pushing the dollar's value up, up, and away. In addition, countries stored their excess US dollar savings in US Treasuries, giving the US government a vast pool of credit from which to draw.

That explains why the US has been able to run humongous deficits year after year. Other countries that need dollars are more than happy to park their money in dollar denominated US Treasury bonds. If the Saudis decide they don't want to play this game any longer, dump their $750 billion of US Treasuries and start accepting other currencies as payment for oil, other countries will start dumping their US Treasury bonds. At that point there won't be much of a market for US bonds, and the US might have to stop running deficits and pay as it goes.

So what happens when major countries of the world decide they can obtain oil through various agreements that don't require the US dollar? All that borrowed money that the US has been using and running up sky high national debts and deficits with will represent the chickens coming home to roost. The US won't be able to sell any more Treasury bonds in order to continue running up deficits. The world's reserve currency, the dollar, will have to share the stage with other reserve currencies which are now building up.

The world financial system, which gave the US all kinds of advantages over other countries, will be in disarray. The value of the dollar will collapse. But not to worry. The Fed can just print more dollars to pay off our creditors. That will last for a while but not for long. Eventually, after a long, hard night, the US will have to get its act together and pay as it goes, not dependent on credit from petrodollars. US world hegemony will be kaput. This will inevitably happen anyway as the world transforms from a dependency on fossil fuels and transitions to renewable forms of energy. The byproduct will be that the dollar will no longer be the world's reserve currency and the US deal with the devil will be moot.

The San Diego Connection

OK, let's bring this back to the present day and the aforementioned 28 pages that have been redacted from the 9/11 report. The Saudis don't want them ever to see the light of day because the Saudis were complicit in the 9/11 bombings. 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis. Two Saudis that landed in San Diego before the bombings took place and later became hijackers were given financial support by high ranking members of the Saudi government.

Sources who have leaked some of the contents of the 9/11 report say that there is “incontrovertible evidence” gathered from both CIA and FBI case files of official Saudi assistance for at least two of the Saudi hijackers who settled in San Diego. There was a flurry of pre-9/11 phone calls between one of the hijackers’ Saudi handlers in San Diego and the Saudi Embassy, and the transfer of some $130,000 from then Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar’s family checking account to yet another of the hijackers’ Saudi handlers in San Diego.

The New York Post goes on:

Former FBI agent John Guandolo, who worked 9/11 and related al Qaeda cases out of the bureau’s Washington field office, says Bandar should have been a key suspect in the 9/11 probe.

“The Saudi ambassador funded two of the 9/11 hijackers through a third party,” Guandolo said. “He should be treated as a terrorist suspect, as should other members of the Saudi elite class who the US government knows are currently funding the global jihad.”

But Bandar held sway over the FBI.

After he met on Sept. 13, 2001, with President Bush in the White House, where the two old family friends shared cigars on the Truman Balcony, the FBI evacuated dozens of Saudi officials from multiple cities, including at least one Osama bin Laden family member on the terror watch list. Instead of interrogating the Saudis, FBI agents acted as security escorts for them, even though it was known at the time that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens.

“The FBI was thwarted from interviewing the Saudis we wanted to interview by the White House,” said former FBI agent Mark Rossini, who was involved in the investigation of al Qaeda and the hijackers. The White House “let them off the hook.”

So it's good ole Bush who lied us into the war in Iraq who knew good and well who the culprits were in the 9/11 attack, yet acted as their protector. He even flew members of the bin Laden family out of the country before bin Laden was even a suspect. “Even though American airspace had been shut down,” Sky News reported, “the Bush administration allowed a jet to fly around the US picking up family members from 10 cities, including Los Angeles, Washington DC, Boston and Houston.” “Two dozen members of Osama bin Laden’s family were urgently evacuated from the United States in the first days following the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington,” CBS reported.

Is this all starting to make sense? Republican President Richard Nixon took us off the gold standard, then made a deal with the Saudis so that all transactions for oil would have to be paid in dollars, then he and subsequent US Presidents used the enormous resulting credit and appetite for Treasuries to run up the US national debt. This was followed by President George W Bush's complicity in the 9/11 attacks by protecting the Saudis and letting Saudi officials and the bin Laden family off the hook instead of investigating them. Then, knowing full well who was responsible for 9/11, Bush went to war with a nation that was totally innocent of 9/11 and killed its leader thus unleashing chaos in the middle east culminating in the European refugee crisis. Finally, the cover-up was complete when the 28 pages were redacted during the Bush administration. The release of this information would probably not only implicate the Saudis but their best buddy, George W Bush, as well.

Last Tuesday the US Senate passed a bill that would let US citizens who were victims of 9/11 sue Saudi Arabia. President Obama has said that, even if the bill should pass the House, he would veto it. Why? Because he doesn't want to upset the world's financial apple cart. He doesn't want the Saudis dumping $750 billion worth of US Treasuries on the world market. He doesn't want the Saudis accepting Japanese yen and European euros in exchange for oil. He doesn't want the BRICS countries New Development Bank becoming a rival to the IMF and World bank. He doesn't want the US to lose its hegemony over the world economy. Finally, he doesn't want the US to have to live within its own means and pay its own debts.

I Don't Mourn Scalia's Passing

by John Lawrence

The man who gave us Citizens United and Bush vs Gore is gone from the face of the earth. I for one do not mourn his passing. His decisions have not only contributed to the destruction of the US, but major portions of the world as well, and he was set to destroy the world consensus on climate change which would have destroyed the entire planet.

It was Scalia who said that unlimited corporate campaign spending is something “we should celebrate rather than condemn,” (Citizens United), that vote-counting should be halted for causing “irreparable harm” to the candidate who might lose as a result (Bush v. Gore), that protecting the right to vote is an odious example of “racial entitlements” (comments related to Shelby County v. Holder), and that allowing local anti-discrimination laws to protect gays and lesbians amounts to “special treatment of homosexuals” (Romer v. Evans), the 5-4 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, which held for the first time that the Second Amendment protected an individual's right to bear arms just to name a few of the highlights of his ignominious career.

The Supreme Court was all set to doom President Obama's climate deal he made in Paris. That would have meant that the deal established in COP21 would have fallen apart in the rest of the world as well. If the biggest polluter (the US) couldn't uphold its end of the deal, why should any other country?

Scalia and the 4 Conservatives on the Court Decided a Presidential Election

They appointed George W Bush President. This was the most disastrous decision in US history both from the point of view of Bush's Iraq War which destroyed the lives and property of millions of men, women and children and the 2008 financial crisis which almost brought down the economy of the entire world.

In the 2000 Presidential election they chose Bush over Gore even though, if the election had been allowed to proceed, Gore would have won. Not one of the Court’s four moderates agreed with Scalia that the winner of the 2000 presidential election should effectively be chosen by the five most conservative members of the Supreme Court of the United States. If the election had been allowed to proceed, world history would have been radically changed for the better. And the world would be better off in its ability to fight climate change about which Gore was a proponent and an expert. Scalia and his fellow conservatives were all set to destroy Obama's initiative at COP21, the recent Paris summit.

Scalia's decision to railroad Bush into the Presidency was made according to him "for the good of the people." But was it? Look what we got. A President who ignored warnings of Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US in his presidential daily briefings followed shortly by 9/11. Then Bush lied the US into a war in Iraq presumably on the grounds of the existence of weapons of mass destruction that didn't actually exist. The deaths of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children including both Americans and Iraqis was the consequence of that.

The power vacuum created by the overthrow of Saddam in Iraq was filled by ISIS, the largest terrorist organization the world has ever known. Their attempts to take over real estate in Syria has directly resulted in the Syrian refugee crisis that has overwhelmed Europe as well as the destruction of countless lives and property in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East.

The next horror that Bush presided over was the financial crisis of 2008 which almost inundated the entire world economy, resulted in driving a greater wedge between the 1% and the 99% and increased the inequality gap. The banks got bailed out, and the people got stuck with the bills both as taxpayers and mortgagees. Bush presided over not only the collapse and utter destruction of the middle east but also the collapse of the world economy and the 9/11 debacle.

Between the destruction of lives and real estate in the middle east, the destruction of the world economy and not keeping the US safe from the 9/11 attack (by the way Trump is right about that), Scalia's decision to install George W Bush in the American Presidency was one of the worst in American and world history.

Scalia's death has given the world a reprieve from his terrible decisions among the worst of which was the appointment and installation of George W Bush as President.

Scalia and Supreme Court Conservatives Were Set to Doom Obama's Climate Change Initiative

American leadership on the Paris COP21 deal was and still is paramount and vital. Without it the whole accord would have fallen like a house built on sand in an earthquake. President Obama planned to implement the American part of the deal through an executive order since the Republican Congress has been against everything he stands for from Day 1 and has done everything within its power to humiliate, emasculate, belittle and demean him and turn his Presidency into a complete and utter shambles. Through it all President Obama has acted like a complete and respectful gentleman despite the enormous pressure put upon him. Scalia and his conservatives on the totally politicized and ideologically based Supreme Court decided to put a halt to Obama's climate change plan until they took their good time in getting around to considering and probably defeating it.

Initially, Obama was optimistic about the results of COP21:

He said, "The Paris agreement establishes the enduring framework the world needs to solve the climate crisis. It creates the mechanism, the architecture, for us to continually tackle this problem in an effective way."

"I believe this moment can be a turning point for the world," Obama said, calling the agreement "the best chance we have to save the one planet that we've got."

The accord achieved one major goal. It limits average global warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial temperatures and strives for a limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) if possible.

What Exactly Did Obama Commit the US to in COP21?

President Obama's Clean Power Plan, an Environmental Protection Agency rule designed to cut carbon emissions from power plants, is the centerpiece of Obama’s climate agenda and a major part of the US pledge to reduce emissions as part of the Paris deal.

Power plants will have to cut their carbon dioxide emissions by 32% compared to 2005 levels by 2030. He also committed the US to cutting its emissions from all sources of pollution, including cars and trucks by 26 to 28 percent by 2030, compared to 2005.

Then Republicans and a bunch of southern states set out to doom Obama's climate deal and with it the chances to curtail global warming for the rest of the world. From the New York Times:

Hours after President Obama pledged Tuesday in Paris that the United States would be in the vanguard of nations seeking a global response to climate change, Congress approved two measures aimed at undercutting him.

In a provocative message to more than 100 leaders that the American president does not have the full support of his government on climate policy, the House passed resolutions, already approved by the Senate, to scuttle Environmental Protection Agency rules that would significantly cut heat-trapping carbon emissions from existing and future coal-fired power plants.

The House votes — by 242 to 180 and 235 to 188, mostly along party lines — expanded to a global level the already profound gulf between Mr. Obama and the Republican-controlled Congress on domestic issues, demonstrating that the United States was hardly unified on the issue of climate change even as the president and other leaders sought to project solidarity.

The measures will be sent to the White House, where Mr. Obama has said he will veto them. The Senate approved each measure by an identical margin, 52 to 46, signaling that Republican congressional leaders would not be able to muster the two-thirds majority needed for an override.

When the EPA published the rule in October 2015, it was met with a wave of lawsuits from states, energy companies and interest groups looking to stop it. Judges declined to issue a temporary hold on the rule before the Paris conference, but if the courts stop it in 2016, Republicans say, that would be a sign to the rest of the world that the U.S. can’t meet its climate commitments.

On February 9, 2016, the Supreme Court stayed implementation of the Clean Power Plan pending judicial review. It was assumed that whenever the Supremes got around to reviewing it, it would be rejected by them because of the 5-4 Republican majority on the Court. Now because of Scalia's death, there is not a Republican majority on the Court - there is a 4-4 stand-off - and it is likely that Obama's Clean Power Act will prevail.

Scalia was an unvarnished, intemperate and intolerant ideologue. He was intent on undoing every vestige of progressive legislation the Court had approved from time immemorial. His henchmen were the Republican Senate. Together they did their best to thwart Obama at every turn and turn his Presidency into a mish mash of failures. They worked in conjunction with each other to disparage, denigrate and belittle the President. Their agendas were the same as the Koch brothers and other extreme right wingers.

Scalia used his position on the Supreme Court to attempt to destroy a Presidency and everything it stood for. All I can say is Sayonara Scalia, and maybe now some sanity can be restored to the Supreme Court whether by President Obama or the next Democratic President of the United States. It's worth a huge fight to get the right man or woman on this totally politicized Supreme Court. Let's face it; it's more a matter of their progressive or conservative credentials than it is of the brilliance of their legal intellect.

The Absurdities and Alternative Realities of Republican Politics

by John Lawrence from the San Diego Free Press

The Republican political arena has become the theater of the absurd largely thanks to the emergence of Donald Trump as the new standard bearer of the Republican Party. He has stood all the rules on their heads and made a mockery out of political correctness. Somehow this has breathed fresh air into the stodgy world of Republican memes and mantras.

For example, let's take the birther controversy which the Donald was a big part of a few years ago when he and others made an attempt to prove that President Obama was not a "natural born citizen" as required by the Constitution in order to be President. In fact, as Trump and others maintained, Obama was born in Kenya. Turns out not to be true.

Then enter Ted Cruz and The Donald is up to his old tricks maintaining that Cruz is not a natural born citizen since he was born in Canada. Makes sense since, if Obama had actually been born in Kenya, there would be no doubt that he was not a "natural born citizen" even though he was born to an American citizen mother which no one disputes. Cruz maintains that, since his mother is a "natural born citizen" he is also regardless of what country he was born in. It seems that the birther problem, although not pertaining to Obama, in fact does pertain to Cruz. How ironic! But then leave it to Trump to point out the obvious and destroy a political opponent in the process.

Mary Brigid McManamon, a constitutional law professor at Widener University’s Delaware Law School, in an article, Ted Cruz is Not Eligible to be President, says:

Donald Trump is actually right about something: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) is not a natural-born citizen and therefore is not eligible to be president or vice president of the United States.

The Constitution provides that “No person except a natural born Citizen . . . shall be eligible to the Office of President.” The concept of “natural born” comes from common law, and it is that law the Supreme Court has said we must turn to for the concept’s definition. On this subject, common law is clear and unambiguous. The 18th-century English jurist William Blackstone, the preeminent authority on it, declared natural-born citizens are “such as are born within the dominions of the crown of England,” while aliens are “such as are born out of it.” The key to this division is the assumption of allegiance to one’s country of birth. The Americans who drafted the Constitution adopted this principle for the United States. James Madison, known as the “father of the Constitution,” stated, “It is an established maxim that birth is a criterion of allegiance. . . . [And] place is the most certain criterion; it is what applies in the United States.”

For that matter John McCain, the Republican who ran for President in 2008, was not a natural born citizen either. He was born on a military base in Panama. The Constitution does not make an exception for military bases, and they certainly are not a part of the territorial United States. Democrats shouldn't hesitate to attack Republicans on this issue especially since Republicans created so much misery about it for Barack Obama.

Since You Brought it up Republicans ...

If Cruz ends up being the Republican nominee, it would be up to Hillary or Bernie to make the birther case against Cruz. They would have to do it or they would be remiss in their duty. If they have to sue, let the suit begin. Republicans have no hesitancy about suing Democrats.

Remember George W Bush suing Al Gore and in the process becoming President even though Gore won the election. And Gore was too nice stepping aside "for the good of the country." Then look what happened. Bush lied us into war, took out Saddam Hussein and cast the whole middle east into turmoil with the result that ISIS is casting the whole western world into turmoil, not to mention hundreds of thousands dead and millions of refugees. "The good of the country"? I don't think so.

For nearly 10 years, thousands of conservatives have openly claimed President Obama is not an American citizen. With no evidence at all, they have regularly claimed that instead of being born in Hawaii, he was actually born in Kenya or even Indonesia, to his American mother and African father.

This is from the New York Daily News:

What’s wild is that the true story of Cruz — the one supported by him and by the facts — is actually the exact same fictional story that the birther movement has claimed for 10 years disqualifies Obama from being president.

On Dec. 22, 1970, Ted Cruz was actually born in a foreign country — Canada — to an American mother, Eleanor Darragh, and a father, Rafael Cruz, who was not an American citizen.

His father, born and raised in Cuba, actually did not become an American citizen until 2005. When Ted Cruz was born, his parents weren’t visiting Canada or working on a military base — they had lived there for years.

Now since there is doubt that a Republican running for President is a "natural born citizen," conservatives have their panties all in a wad to redefine what actually is a "natural born citizen." In other words their hypocrisy over this issue is written all over their faces. They unshamefacedly assert that, while Obama is not a natural born citizen since he was born in Kenya to an American mother, Ted Cruz is a natural born citizen since he was born in Canada to an American mother. I guess it has to do more with the fact that Canada is a predominantly white near neighbor to the US while Kenya is thousands of miles away and is predominantly black.

So while conservatives are willing to twist the words of the Constitution when their ox is being gored, they will in no way allow any such twisting regarding the Second Amendment. "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." Well, what does that actually mean?

One interpretation would be that the right to bear arms should only be in the context of a well regulated militia. The militias extant these days are anything but well regulated. Therefore, the right of the people to bear arms necessarily needs to be infringed. Besides in 1776, they didn't have semi-automatic or full automatic weapons. Let the people's right not be infringed when it comes to the weaponry they had in 1776, but the weapons available today are definitely infringable. Conservatives are willing to twist and bend the Constitution when their interests are at stake, but are original constructionists when it's in their interests to maintain wording which in no way is applicable to todays' realities.

Donald Trump and The Wall

One of the most humorous Trump originated issues is the building of The Wall which infuriates the Left and gets cheers from the Right. The absurdity of the situation is that there is a wall already there. Has anyone been to San Ysidro lately? Looks like a wall to me. But all the Yahoo followers of Donald Trump don't already know this. They think it's possible just to walk back and forth across the Mexican American border at will, and Trump doesn't discourage them from thinking this. In fact he maintains that he'll even get Mexico to pay for The Wall. It led to one of the funniest skits on Saturday Night Live when Trump was hosting. In comes the Mexican President with a large Publishers Clearing House style check for The Donald and he says, "Here this is for The Wall."

Now since progressives are supposedly smarter than Trump's followers, why are they so upset over this issue when it is really a non-issue? Sure there are gaps in the wall. It isn't continuous along the whole Mexican American border, but it's there in one form or other along much of it so why is this even an issue? Bush signed the Secure Fence Act of 2006. Work has been underway ever since. By April 2009 Homeland Security had erected about 613 miles of new pedestrian fencing and vehicle barriers along the southwest border from California to Texas. This was during the Obama administration I might add.

To be accurate, Trump should have said, "I will complete the wall along the border," but this wouldn't have the same hyperbolic affect that stating the issue in such stark terms has. Nuances are not The Donald's strong suit. Or maybe they are for the effect he intends to achieve.

In the final analysis The Wall is a fig newton of Trump's imagination calculated to get his supporters cheering and make his detractors apoplectic. This issue is a pure contrivance calculated to rile up and antagonize on the one hand and to pander to people's fears on the other. It's a litmus test to see how your knee jerk reaction defines you as a progressive or a conservative and ignores the reality of what actually is.

Sure a wall could be built or more accurately the gaps could be filled in. Some say it would be prohibitively expensive at $30 billion. That's a fraction of what's being spent on the military-industrial complex which sucks in a trillion or more each and every year. The issue is just a non issue as advanced surveillance systems are already being used at the border and are being expanded and improved each year. Are progressives saying that the "wall" as it already exists should be taken down? I don't think so. Donald is right that every country has the right to protect its borders from encroachment.

Donald Trump and Anchor Babies

While Trump thinks that Cruz is not a natural born citizen since he was born in Canada, he also thinks that babies born in America are not American citizens if their parents are not.

This is from Politifact:

Donald Trump says his plan to roll back birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrants will pass constitutional muster because "many of the great scholars say that anchor babies are not covered."

"Many of the great scholars" -- really? That comment caught our attention.

In case you need a refresher on birthright citizenship: As it stands now, any person born on U.S. soil is a citizen -- regardless of the parents’ immigration status -- because of the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment. Trump has recently advocated for pulling back citizenship for illegal immigrants’ children. Some, like Trump, refer to these children as "anchor babies."

"The parents have to come in legally," Trump said, talking to reporters in New Hampshire Aug. 19. "Now we’re going to have to find out what’s going to happen from a court standpoint. But many people, many of the great scholars say that anchor babies are not covered (by the 14th Amendment). We’re going to have to find out."

Considering that about 300,000 babies are born to illegal immigrants and become citizens every year, we wondered if Trump is right to say that "many" scholars think this isn’t necessarily a constitutional right.

We won’t dig into who’s a "great" scholar, but we will look at how widespread this position is and if "many" say the 14th Amendment isn’t an impediment to Trump’s plan.

The 14th Amendment became part of the Constitution in 1868 following the Civil War. The amendment established birthright citizenship and equal protection under the law for all citizens, making newly freed slaves full American citizens.

The relevant clause reads: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."

Today, this clause is widely understood to mean that the Constitution requires that everyone born on U.S. soil -- regardless of parents’ citizenship -- is automatically an American citizen. We polled a number of experts in immigration law, and each one told us that this is the mainstream view among legal scholars, without question.

"We're going to have to find out," no Muslims entering the US "till we find out what's going on," "many scholars say...", Trump has a way of always qualifying his hyperbole in such a way as to make it sound more reasonable.

It seems that, although Trump may be right about Ted Cruz, he has his head up his ass regarding anchor babies unless you want to change the Constitution. And if you're going to change the Constitution, you might as well change the outdated and dangerous Second Amendment as well to be in line with today's realities regarding guns. Something along the lines of "... a citizen has no absolute right to gun ownership except those guns that were available when the Constitution was signed ..."

So according to Trump, if you're born in Canada, you're not a natural born American citizen, and if you're born in the US, you're not an American citizen either if your parents were not American citizens. How ironic that the birther issue resurfaces at this time to come back and bite Republicans in the ass! Politics really does make strange bedfellows.

Two Cheers for President Obama. Bronx Cheers for Congressional Republicans

by John Lawrence from the San Diego Free Press

Finally, President Obama has found the balls to stand up to Congress. He signed an historic agreement regarding climate change with the Chinese. He has taken executive action on immigration that will put 5 million people's minds at ease, and he would have but didn't need to veto the Keystone pipeline. He has also taken a stand in favor of internet neutrality. All of this despite howls of protest from Republicans in Congress. He's realized the futility of "cooperating" with Congress because they have done nothing but try to intimidate, bully, humiliate and badger him from Day 1 of his administration. He finally realizes that hoping to cooperate with them to "get something done" is a fool's errand and a wild goose chase.

Instead Obama is proceeding down the road available to him by taking executive action to further his agenda without deigning to ask Congress for their approval. Hooray for him! They have done nothing but disapprove of him since he has been in office and after awhile it becomes obvious that you don't ask for approval from someone or someones who disapprove of you no matter what you do. He has extended his hand to them numerous times only to have it slapped down. And this attitude of disparagemnt towards Obama has been amplified by the hatemonger talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck and others. As far as impeachment goes, President Obama is effectively saying, "Bring it on." Let the bloviators and naysayers and bottom feeders scrape together their articles of impeachment. Obama is not letting these guys stand in his way from accomplishing something the last two years of his administration.

Let's consider for a minute his good work on climate change. He has put in place the first-ever carbon pollution standards for power plants in an effort to reduce the nation's biggest source of pollution blamed for global warming - carbon emission from power plants. Almost a third of America's carbon emissions come from electricity generation. A proposed new Environmental Protection Agency rule would reduce such emissions 30% by 2030, compared to the levels in 2005.

In the historic climate change agreement with China, the U.S. pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 26 - 28% by 2025, compared with 2005 levels. In turn, China agreed to peak its greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 - and sooner if possible - and to get 20% of its energy from non-fossil fuel sources by 2030.

Bill McKibben of 350.org has said there are ten great things about the agreement with the Chinese. Here are a few of them. 1) It is historic; for the first time a developing nation has agreed to eventually limit its emissions. 2) Renewable energy is ready to go. It just needs a push from government to surpass fossil fuels in price and efficiency. The Chinese have revolutionized the production of solar energy, driving down the cost of panels by 90% or more in the last decade. They'll be using clean sources to get 20% of their energy by 2030.

3) Finally, world leaders are taking climate change seriously. When the two largest world economies sign an agreement, other nations will perk up and hopefully fall in line behind them. 4) Recent advances in renewables have made it less plausible to build more pipelines like Keystone or approve new fracking ventures. 4) The goals set by the US/China agreement are easy ones to meet. The Germans will be getting 60% of their energy from clean sources by the mid-2020s  which represents considerably more progress than the 20% expected of the Chinese. 5) Movements work and public pressure on the climate change agendas has had great results so far, but there is much more that needs to be done.

However, this agreement is merely a first step. The International Energy Agency warned in 2012 that "almost four-fifths of the CO2 emissions allowable by 2035 [in order to keep global temperature rise below 2°C] are already locked-in by existing power plants, factories, buildings, etc. If action to reduce CO2 emissions is not taken before 2017, all the allowable CO2 emissions would be locked-in by energy infrastructure existing at that time."

As for the Keystone pipeline, it would do nothing for American citizens. Its purpose is to transport Canadian tar sands oil, the dirtiest kind of oil, across the whole continental United States to ports in Texas where it would be shipped off to other countries. The number of jobs it would provide would be minimal and temporary. The Rosebud Sioux have said that approval of the pipeline, which would traverse their tribal lands, would be considered an act of war, and they would fight it tooth and nail. President Cyril Scott of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe said, “Did I declare war on the Keystone XL pipeline? Hell yeah, I did. I pledge my life to stop these people from harming our children and grandchildren and way of life. They will not cross our treaty lands. We have so much to lose here.”

Naomi Klein in her new book, This Changes Everything, has placed her hope for fighting climate change in just such efforts which are happening around the world which she calls "Blockadia."

Blockadia also stretches into multiple hot spots in Canada ... For instance, in 2013 ... a remarkable standoff was playing out in the province of New Brunswick , on land claimed by the Elsipogtog First Nation, a Mi'kmaq commuinity whose roots in what is now eastern Canada go back some ten thousand years. The people of Elsipogtog were leading a blockade against SWN Resources, the Canadian subsidiary of a Texas-based company, as it tried to conduct seismic testing ahead of a possible fracking operation. The land in question has not been handed over by war or treaty and Canada's highest court has upheld the Mi'kmaq's right to continue to access the natural resources of those lands and waters - rights the protesters say would be rendered meaningless if the territory becomes poisoned by fracking toxins.

... for months demonstrators camped near the seismic testing area, blocking roads and equipment as hand drums pounded out traditional songs. On several occasions trucks were prevented from working, and at one point a Mi'kacq woman strapped herself to a pile of seismic testing gear to prevent it from being moved.

When the Royal Canadian Mounted Police moved in and attacked the demonstrators, the rural landscape was turned into a war zone. Elders and children were attacked. Many were arrested including the Chief of the Elsipogtog Nation. Many cop cars were burned by the demonstrators. The Rosebud Sioux promise the same type of response if the Keystone pipeline is ever approved.

As for immigration, Obama is stepping out on this front as well. In his speech November 20, 2014 he outlined the steps he was taking so that five million parents of American citizen children could legally stay in the US. That's a lot of people. Congressional Republicans including tortoise visaged Mitch McGoonell and ale faced John Boner were up in arms. They vowed retaliation including cutting off funding to the Department of Homeland Security, shutting down the government, blocking the confirmation of the president’s nominees and initiating impeachment proceedings against the president.

They are so upset that Obama won't cooperate with them after proving for six years that they can not be cooperated with. He of the immobile ventriloquist dummy's countenance said with barely his lips moving, "If President Obama acts in defiance of the people and imposes his will on the country, Congress will act." Good luck with that. After rubbing Obama's nose in it for six years (remember he said it was his job to make sure Obama would fail), I hope Obama rubs his nose in it and accomplishes a lot without any input from the useless and problematic Congress. Whatever they say in their interminable bloviations is just a lot of hot air, sound and fury signifying nothing.

The New Cold War and the Necessity of Patriotic Heresy

US fallacies may be leading to war with Russia.

Stephen F. Cohen from The Nation

  

August 12, 2014    

 

See also Is the Obama and EU Face-Off With Putin a New Cold War? What Forces Are Driving the Confrontation?  by Frank Thomas and John Lawrence   

  

       

US President Barack Obama (L) meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin during the G8 Summit at Lough Erne in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland June 2013. (Reuters/Kevin Lamarque)

I prepared the text below for remarks to the annual US-Russia Forum in Washington, DC, on June 16. Though held in the Hart Senate Office Building, and well attended, the event was privately organized, without any official auspices. In order to fit the time allocated to speakers, I had to abridge my text. I have restored the deletions here and spelled out a number of my impromptu comments. In addition, I refer to a few subsequent developments to illustrate some of my themes. I have not, however, significantly revised words written to be spoken into the prose I prefer for published articles. —SFC

We meet today during the worst and potentially most dangerous American-Russian confrontation in many decades, probably since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. The Ukrainian civil war, precipitated by the unlawful change of government in Kiev in February, is already growing into a proxy US-Russian war. The seemingly unthinkable is becoming imaginable: an actual war between NATO, led by the United States, and post-Soviet Russia.

Certainly, we are already in a new cold war, which escalating sanctions will only deepen and institutionalize, one potentially more dangerous than its US-Soviet predecessor the world barely survived. This is so for several reasons:

—The epicenter of the new cold war is not in Berlin but on Russia’s borders, in Ukraine, a region absolutely essential in Moscow’s view to its national security and even to its civilization. This means that the kinds of miscalculations, mishaps and provocations the world witnessed decades ago will be even more fraught with danger. (The mysterious shoot down of a Malaysian jetliner over eastern Ukraine in July was an ominous example.)

—An even graver risk is that the new cold war may tempt the use of nuclear weapons in a way the US-Soviet one did not. I have in mind the argument made by some Moscow military strategists that if directly threatened by NATO’s superior conventional forces, Russia may resort to its much larger arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons. (The ongoing US-NATO encirclement of Russia with bases, as well as land and sea-based missile defense, only increases this possibility.)

—Yet another risk factor is that the new cold war lacks the mutually restraining rules that developed during the forty-year cold war, especially after the Cuban missile crisis. Indeed, highly charged suspicions, resentments, misconceptions and misinformation both in Washington and Moscow may make such mutual restraints even more difficult. The same is true of the surreal demonization of Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin—a kind of personal vilification without any real precedent in the past, at least after Stalin’s death. (Henry Kissinger has pointed out that the “demonization of Vladimir Putin is not a policy; it is an alibi for the absence of one.” I think it is worse: an abdication of real analysis and rational policy-making.)

—Finally, the new cold war may be more perilous because, also unlike during its forty-year predecessor, there is no effective American opposition—not in the administration, Congress, establishment media, universities, think tanks, or in society.

In this regard, we need to understand our plight. We—opponents of the US policies that have contributed so woefully to the current crisis—are few in number, without influential supporters and unorganized. I am old enough to know our position was very different in the 1970s and 1980s, when we struggled for what was then called détente. We were a minority, but a substantial minority with allies in high places, even in Congress and in the State Department. Our views were solicited by mainstream newspapers, television and radio. In addition to grassroots support, we even had our own lobby organization in Washington, the American Committee on East-West Accord, whose board included corporate CEOs, political figures, prominent academics, and statesmen of the stature of George Kennan.

We have none of that today. We have no access to the Obama administration, virtually none to Congress, which is a bipartisan bastion of cold war politics, very little to the mainstream media. (Since the Ukrainian crisis deepened, does anyone recall reading our views on the editorial or op-ed pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post or The Wall Street Journal—or seeing them presented on MSNBC or Fox Cable News, which differ little in their unbalanced broadcasts?) We do have access to important alternative media, but they are not considered authoritative, or even essential, inside the Beltway. In my long lifetime, I do not recall such a failure of American democratic discourse in such a time of crisis. (Gilbert Doctorow, an American specialist on Russia and experienced multinational corporate executive living in Belgium, is trying to create a US-European version of the Committee on East-West Accord.)

In my limited remaining time, I will speak generally about this dire situation—almost certainly a fateful turning point in world affairs—in my own three capacities: as a participant in what little mainstream media debate has been permitted; as a longtime scholarly historian of Russia and of US-Russian relations; and as an informed observer who believes there is still a way out of this terrible crisis.

* * *

About my episodic participation in the very limited mainstream media discussion I will speak in a more personal way than I usually do. From the outset, I saw my role as twofold. Recalling the American adage, “There are two sides to every story,” I have sought to explain Moscow’s view of the Ukrainian crisis, which is almost entirely missing in mainstream coverage. (Without David Johnson’s indispensable daily Russia List, non-Russian readers would have little access to alternative perspectives.) What, for example, did Putin mean when he said Western policy-makers were “trying to drive us into some kind of corner,” “have lied to us many times” and in Ukraine “have crossed the line”? Second, having argued since the 1990s that Washington’s bipartisan Russia policies could lead to a new cold war and to just such a crisis—see my articles in The Nation and my books Failed Crusade and Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives—I wanted to bring my longstanding analysis to bear on today’s crisis.

As a result, I have been repeatedly assailed—no less in purportedly “liberal” publications—as Putin’s No. 1 American “apologist,” “useful idiot,” “dupe,” “best friend” and, perhaps a new low in immature invective, “toady.” I expected to be criticized, as I was during nearly twenty years as a CBS News commentator, but not in such personal and scurrilous ways. (Something has changed in our political culture, perhaps related to the Internet.)

Until now, I have not replied to any of these defamatory attacks. I do so today because I now think they are directed at several of us in this room, indeed at anyone critical of Washington’s Russia policies, not just me. (Not even Henry Kissinger and President Reagan’s enormously successful ambassador to Moscow, Jack F. Matlock, have been immune.) Rereading the attacks, I have come to the following conclusions:

—None of these character assassins present any factual refutations of anything I have written or said. They indulge only in ad hominem slurs based on distortions and on the general premise that any American who seeks to understand Moscow’s perspectives is a “Putin apologist” and thus unpatriotic. Such a premise only abets the possibility of war.

—Some of these writers, or people who stand behind them, are longtime proponents of the twenty-year US policies that have led to the Ukrainian crisis. By defaming us, they seek to obscure their complicity in the unfolding disaster and their unwillingness to rethink it. Failure to rethink dooms us to the worst outcome.

—Equally important, however, these kinds of neo-McCarthyites are trying to stifle democratic debate by stigmatizing us in ways that make us unwelcome on mainstream broadcasts and op-ed pages, and to policy-makers. They are largely succeeding.

Let us be clear. This means that we, not the people on the left and right who defame us, are the true American democrats and the real patriots of US national security. We do not seek to ostracize or silence the new cold warriors but to engage them in public debate. And we, not they, understand that current US policy may have catastrophic consequences for international and American security. The perils and costs of another prolonged cold war will afflict our children and grandchildren. If nothing else, this reckless policy, couched even at high levels in relentless demonizing of Putin, is already costing Washington an essential partner in the Kremlin in vital areas of US security—from Iran, Syria and Afghanistan to efforts to counter nuclear proliferation and international terrorism.

But, I should add, we are also to blame for the one-sided, or nonexistent, debate. As I said, we are not organized. Too often, we do not publicly defend each other, though I am personally grateful to James Carden, Gilbert Doctorow and Robert Legvold for having come to my defense. And often we do not speak boldly enough. (We should not worry, for example, if our arguments sometimes coincide with what Moscow is saying; doing so is self-censorship.)

Indeed, some people who privately share our concerns—again, in Congress, the media, universities and think tanks—do not speak out at all. For whatever reason—concern about being stigmatized, about their career, personal disposition—they are silent. But in our democracy, where the cost of dissent is relatively little, silence is no longer a patriotic option. (Personally, as an American, I have come to feel this more strongly, even moral indignation, as I watch the US-backed regime in Kiev inflict needless devastation, a humanitarian disaster and possibly war crimes on its own citizens in eastern Ukraine.)

But, I must also emphasize, we should exempt from this imperative young people, who have more to lose. A few have sought my guidance, and I always advise, “Even petty penalties for American dissent in regard to Russia could adversely affect your career. At this stage of life, your first obligation is to your family and thus to your career. Your time to fight lies ahead.”

Finally, in connection with our struggle for a wiser American policy, I have come to another conclusion. Most of us were taught that moderation in thought and speech is always the best principle. But in a fateful crisis such as the one now confronting us, moderation for its own sake is no virtue. It becomes conformism, and conformism becomes complicity.

I recall this issue being discussed long ago in a very different context—by Soviet-era dissidents when I lived among them in Moscow in the 1970s and 1980s. A few of our supporters who know that history (including Edward Lozansky, a former Soviet dissident, Reagan Republican, and the organizer of today’s event) have recently called us “American dissidents.” The analogy is imperfect: my Soviet friends had far fewer possibilities for dissent and risked much worse consequences.

But the analogy does suggest a lesson. Soviet dissidents were protesting an entrenched orthodoxy of dogmas and uncritical policy-making, which is why they were denounced as heretics by Soviet authorities and media. Since the 1990s, beginning with the Clinton administration, exceedingly unwise notions about post-Soviet Russia and the political correctness of US policy have congealed into a bipartisan American orthodoxy. The natural, historical response to orthodoxy is heresy. So let us be patriotic heretics, regardless of personal consequences, in the hope that many others will join us, as has often happened in history.

* * *

I turn now, in my capacity as a historian, to that orthodoxy. The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not to his own facts.” The new cold war orthodoxy rests almost entirely on fallacious opinions. Five of those fallacies are particularly important today:

—Fallacy No. 1: Ever since the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, Washington has treated post-Communist Russia generously as a desired friend and partner, making every effort to help it become a democratic, prosperous member of the Western system of international security. Unwilling or unable, Russia rejected this American altruism, emphatically under Putin.

Fact: Beginning in the 1990s, again with the Clinton administration, every American president and congress has treated post-Soviet Russia as a defeated nation with inferior legitimate rights at home and abroad. This triumphalist, winner-take-all approach has been spearheaded by the expansion of NATO—accompanied by non-reciprocal negotiations and now missile defense—into Russia’s traditional zones of national security, while in reality excluding it from Europe’s security system. Early on, Ukraine, and to a lesser extent Georgia, were the ultimate goals. As an influential Washington Post columnist explained in 2004, “The West wants to finish the job begun with the fall of the Berlin Wall and continue Europe’s march to the east.… The great prize is Ukraine.”

—Fallacy No. 2: There exists a nation called “Ukraine” and a “Ukrainian people” who yearn to escape centuries of Russian influence and to join the West.

Fact: As every informed person knows, Ukraine is a country long divided by ethnic, linguistic, religious, cultural, economic and political differences—particularly its western and eastern regions, but not only. When the current crisis began in 2013, Ukraine had one state, but it was not a single people or a united nation. Some of these divisions were made worse after 1991 by corrupt elite, but most of them had developed over centuries.

—Fallacy No. 3: In November 2013, the European Union, backed by Washington, offered Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych a benign association with European democracy prosperity. Yanukovych was prepared to sign the agreement, but Putin bullied and bribed him into rejecting it. Thus began Kiev’s Maidan protests and all that has since followed.

Fact: The EU proposal was a reckless provocation compelling the democratically elected president of a deeply divided country to choose between Russia and the West. So too was the EU’s rejection of Putin’s counter-proposal of a Russian-European-American plan to save Ukraine from financial collapse. On its own, the EU proposal was not economically feasible. Offering little financial assistance, it required the Ukrainian government to enact harsh austerity measures and to sharply curtail is longstanding economic relations with Russia. Nor was the EU proposal entirely benign. It included protocols requiring Ukraine to adhere to Europe’s “military and security” policies, which meant in effect, without mentioning the alliance, NATO. In short, it was not Putin’s alleged “aggression” that initiated today’s crisis but instead a kind of velvet aggression by Brussels and Washington to bring all of Ukraine into the West, including (in the fine print) into NATO.

—Fallacy No. 4: Today’s unfolding civil war in Ukraine was caused by Putin’s aggressive response to Maidan’s peaceful protests against Yanukovych’s decision.

Fact: In February 2014, radicalized Maidan protests, strongly influenced by extreme nationalist and even semi-fascist street forces, turned violent. Hoping for a peaceful resolution, European foreign ministers brokered a compromise between Maidan’s parliamentary representatives and Yanukovych. It would have left him as president of a coalition, reconciliation government until new elections in December 2014. Within hours, violent street fighters aborted the agreement. Europe and Washington did not defend their own diplomatic accord. Yanukovych fled to Russia. Minority parliamentary parties representing Maidan and predominantly western Ukraine, among them Svoboda, an ultra-nationalist movement previously anathematized by the European Parliament as incompatible with European values, formed a new government. They also nullified the existing constitution. Washington and Brussels endorsed the coup, and have supported the outcome ever since. Everything that followed, from Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the spread of rebellion in southeastern Ukraine to the civil war and Kiev’s “anti-terrorist operation,” was triggered by the February coup. Putin’s actions have been mostly reactive.

—Fallacy No. 5: The only way out of the crisis is for Putin to end his “aggression” and call off his agents in southeastern Ukraine.

Fact: The underlying causes of the crisis are Ukraine’s own internal divisions, not primarily Putin’s actions. The primary factor escalating the crisis since May has been Kiev’s “anti-terrorist” military campaign against its own citizens, now mainly in the Donbass cities of Luhansk and Donetsk. Putin influences and no doubt aids the Donbass “self-defenders.” Considering the pressure on him in Moscow, he is likely to continue to do so, perhaps even more, but he does not control them. If Kiev’s assault ends, Putin probably can compel the rebels to negotiate. But only the Obama administration can compel Kiev to stop, and it has not done so.

In short, twenty years of US policy have led to this fateful American-Russian confrontation. Putin may have contributed to it along the way, but his role during his fourteen years in power has been almost entirely reactive—indeed, a complaint frequently lodged against him by hawks in Moscow.

* * *

In politics as in history, there are always alternatives. At least three outcomes of the Ukrainian crisis are conceivable:

—The civil war escalates and widens, drawing in Russian and possibly NATO military forces. This would be the worst outcome: a kind of latter-day Cuban missile crisis.

—Today’s de facto partitioning of Ukraine becomes institutionalized in the form of two Ukrainian states—one allied with the West, the other with Russia—co-existing between cold war and cold peace. This would not be the best outcome, but nor would it be the worst.

—The best outcome would be the preservation of a united Ukraine with one state. This will require good-faith negotiations between representatives of all of Ukraine’s regions, including leaders of the rebellious southeast, probably under the auspices of Washington, Moscow and the European Union, as Putin and his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrow, have proposed for months.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s human tragedy continues to grow. Already (by August) thousands of innocent people have been killed or wounded, according to a UN representative, and nearly a million others turned into fleeing refugees. It is a needless tragedy because rational people on all sides know the general terms of peace negotiations:

—Ukraine must become a federal or sufficiently decentralized state in order to permit its diverse regions to elect their own officials, live in accord with their local cultures, and have a say in taxation and budgetary issues, as is the case in many federal states from Canada to Germany. Such constitutional provisions will need to be ratified by a referendum or a constitutional assembly, accompanied or followed by parliamentary and presidential elections. (The rushed presidential election in May was a mistake, effectively depriving nearly a quarter of the country of its own candidates and thus a real vote.)

—Ukraine must not be aligned with any military alliance, including NATO. (Nor must any of the other former Soviet republics now being courted by NATO.)

—Ukraine must be governed in ways that enable it to maintain or develop economic relations both with Russia and the West. Otherwise, it will never be politically independent or economically prosperous.

—If these principles are adopted, they should be guaranteed, along with Ukraine’s present territorial integrity, by Russia and the West, perhaps in a UN Security Council resolution.

But such negotiations cannot even begin until Kiev’s military assault on eastern Ukraine ends. Russia, Germany and France have repeatedly called for a cease-fire, but the “anti-terrorist operation” can end only where it began—in Kiev and Washington.

Alas, there is no such leadership here in Washington. President Obama has vanished as a statesman in the Ukrainian crisis. Secretary of State John Kerry speaks publicly more like a secretary of war than as our top diplomat. The Senate is preparing even more warfare legislation. The establishment media relies uncritically on Kiev’s propaganda and cheerleads for its policies. Unlike the devastation wrought in Gaza, American television rarely, if ever, shows Kiev’s destruction of Luhansk, Donetsk or other Ukrainian cities, thereby arousing no public qualms or questions.

And so, we patriotic heretics remain mostly alone and often defamed. The most optimistic perspective I can offer is to recall that positive change in history frequently began as heresy. And to quote the personal testimony of Mikhail Gorbachev, who once said of his struggle for change inside the even more rigidly orthodox Soviet nomenklatura: “Everything new in philosophy begins as heresy and in politics as the opinion of a minority.”

Stephen F. Cohen is Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies and Politics at New York University and Princeton University. A Nation contributing editor, his most recent books, now in paperback, are Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War; and The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag After Stalin. 

Read Next: Why is Washington risking war with Russia?

Stephen F. Cohen 

August 12, 2014        

Is the Obama and EU Face-Off With Putin a New Cold War? What Forces Are Driving the Confrontation?

by Frank Thomas and John  Lawrence from the San Diego Free Press

Part 1

Some History (J. Lawrence)

Obama and Putin are locked in a dance reminiscent of the Cold War. But their maneuverings don't represent a Cold War not even a cool one. In fact it's more about placing themselves in the most noticeable positions on the world stage, something that each of their constituencies find familiar and even sentimental. Every world leader likes to lead the news, and Obama and Putin are no exceptions.

But first some history. Catherine the Great, one of the supposedly "enlightened despots" of Europe who hobnobbed with the French philosophes, nevertheless expanded the Russian Empire in a quest to attain a warm water port in the Crimea. Her armies fought a war with the Ottoman Empire (modern day Turkey) for control of the Black Sea. Peter the Great had opened Russia up to the Baltic Sea, founding St. Petersburg on the Baltic Coast, but Catherine was determined to expand her southeastern frontier and develop a permanent Russian presence on the Black Sea.

 

Turkish wars and three successive partitions of Poland during Catherine’s reign brought much of modern Ukraine under Russian rule after the region had spent centuries under Polish-Lithuanian control. Catherine’s victories enabled Russia to establish a Black Sea fleet. Special access to the Dardanelles and Bosporus Straits that connected the Black Sea to the Aegean Sea via the Sea of Marmara became a key foreign policy goal for Catherine’s descendants during the 19th century, contributing to the outbreak of the Crimean War (1853-1856).

 

The Crimean War reinforced in Russia a long-felt sense of resentment against Europe. There was a feeling of betrayal that the West had sided with the Turks against Russia. It was the first time in history that a European alliance had fought on the side of a Muslim power against another Christian state in a major war.

 

Russia formally annexed the Crimea in 1783. Then in 1954 Khrushchev decided to give Crimea back to Ukraine. His great-granddaughter said of Khrushchev's motivation "it was somewhat symbolic, somewhat trying to reshuffle the centralized system and also, full disclosure, Nikita Khrushchev was very fond of Ukraine, so I think to some degree it was also a personal gesture toward his favorite republic. He was ethnically Russian, but he really felt great affinity with Ukraine." In other words, there would be some administrative adjustments but it was fully intended that Ukraine would remain within Russia's sphere of influence.

 

After the demise of the Soviet Union, Ukraine started lobbying to become a member of NATO. Russia did not take kindly to having nations on its borders become NATO members. And it's not hard to understand why. Suppose that communist Cuba had influenced Mexico to go communist and to ally itself with Russia. Suppose further that Russians had proposed putting missiles in Mexico on the border with the US. Would the US have stood for it? One only needs to look to history for the answer. The Cuban Missile Crisis almost provoked a nuclear war until the Russians took their missiles out of Cuba. Putting ourselves in Putin's shoes, he must see the introduction of American missiles into Ukraine, should Ukraine become part of NATO, to be a huge threat to the security and the dignity of the Russian Empire. The West would be essentially taking over land fought for by the Russian Czars for hundreds of years. And Putin is the logical descendant of the Czars and the Russian Empire. It would be a huge blow to his self-esteem.

 

Resurgence of Russian Conservative and Radical Forces in the Post-Soviet Era

(F. Thomas)

 

Russia since Yeltsin’s time has been struggling to find a new grand strategy – one that defines who Russians are and where they are going. Yeltsin called this the search for the “Russian Idea” (Russkaya ideya).

Well that Russian Idea has acquired substance from one of the most popular Russian ideologists who is providing theoretical guidance for such a new grand stategy. Anton Barbashin and Hannah Thoburn in a recent Foreign Affairs article say Aleksandr Dugin is the “brain” behind creating a Eurasian Empire, unifying Russian-speaking territories, and resurrecting the imperialist posture of former Soviet Union and Tsarist Russia (see: “Putin’s Brain,” Foreign Affairs, 3-31-2014).

Aleksandr Dugin’s ideology has influenced a whole generation of conservative and radical activists, and politicians. Seeing the rising popularity of his ideas, Putin has been exploiting some of them to explain his own policies and goals following the appropriate historical, geopolitical, cultural party line.

Dugin’s conservative Eurasian ideology rejects liberal, democratic, and capitalistic “Atlanticism”  led by the US. The aim is creation of a Eurasian empire led by Russia to counteract aggression from North Atlantic interests. This conservative doctrine redefines Russian foreign and security policy and preconditions that must be met before Moscow will recognize the independence of post-Soviet states. As something new, it includes extralegal conditions to justify Russian policy and legitimate use of military force to defend Russian speaking communities abroad. Above all, it extols Russia as a unique civilization on its own that cannot be judged by Western standards.

Message? Russia is NOT Europe.  

As this Eurasian conservatism has grown in popularity, it has reignited Russian nationalist thought and pride. It has strong support from members of the security apparatus and military sectors with whom Dugin has had close ties. It is driven by a dedicated core of Russian ultranationalists – disturbed by the Russian state’s weakness since 1991 – whose goal is the restoration of Russia’s rightful glory and national sense of destiny. As one analyst notes, “After the collapse of the Soviet Union, a few hard-core patriotic elements remained that opposed de-Sovietization and believed – as Putin does today – that the collapse was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”

US and European definitions of conservatism are light years apart from those of Russia. EU conservatives and particularly US conservatives are very wary of big government and put the individual first. Russian conservatives back state power and see individuals as serving the state. Russia’s Eurasian conservative strain reflects a long tradition of Russian imperial conservatism – a conservatism that is quintessentially authoritarian, anti-capitalist, anti-American and anti-European. It values submission of the public to the state and submission of individual needs to the needs of the many. It values tradition, religion and a state-organized economy (hence elements of communism). More significantly in these modern times, it is expansionist and part of the motivating ideology behind Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Putin has transitioned to just being another Czar in a long history of authoritarian czars who punished their own people for the good and glory of the nation and, of course, always for the good of the people themselves! Putin’s manic urge to regain Russian self-respect has descended into military, muscle-flexing manipulation tactics, ^e.g. to bring Crimea within its orbit – repeating Catherine the Great’s conquest and annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 1783. At the same time, Putin’s support of pro-Russian separatists to destabilize Ukraine fits perfectly his design to undermine Ukraine’s bid to become a EU member. He wants Ukraine in the Eurasian Economic Union with Belarus and Kazakhstan.

The Incompetence Dogma

by Paul Krugman from the New York Times

June 26, 2014

So Much for Obamacare Not Working

Have you been following the news about Obamacare? The Affordable Care Act has receded from the front page, but information about how it’s going keeps coming in — and almost all the news is good. Indeed, health reform has been on a roll ever since March, when it became clear that enrollment would surpass expectations despite the teething problems of the federal website.

What’s interesting about this success story is that it has been accompanied at every step by cries of impending disaster. At this point, by my reckoning, the enemies of health reform are 0 for 6. That is, they made at least six distinct predictions about how Obamacare would fail — every one of which turned out to be wrong.

“To err is human,” wrote Seneca. “To persist is diabolical.” Everyone makes incorrect predictions. But to be that consistently, grossly wrong takes special effort. So what’s this all about?

Many readers won’t be surprised by the answer: It’s about politics and ideology, not analysis. But while this observation isn’t particularly startling, it’s worth pointing out just how completely ideology has trumped evidence in the health policy debate.

And I’m not just talking about the politicians; I’m talking about the wonks. It’s remarkable how many supposed experts on health care made claims about Obamacare that were clearly unsupportable. For example, remember “rate shock”? Last fall, when we got our first information about insurance premiums, conservative health care analysts raced to claim that consumers were facing a huge increase in their expenses. It was obvious, even at the time, that these claims were misleading; we now know that the great majority of Americans buying insurance through the new exchanges are getting coverage quite cheaply.

Or remember claims that young people wouldn’t sign up, so that Obamacare would experience a “death spiral” of surging costs and shrinking enrollment? It’s not happening: a new survey by Gallup finds both that a lot of people have gained insurance through the program and that the age mix of the new enrollees looks pretty good.

What was especially odd about the incessant predictions of health-reform disaster was that we already knew, or should have known, that a program along the lines of the Affordable Care Act was likely to work. Obamacare was closely modeled on Romneycare, which has been working in Massachusetts since 2006, and it bears a strong family resemblance to successful systems abroad, for example in Switzerland. Why should the system have been unworkable for America?

But a firm conviction that the government can’t do anything useful — a dogmatic belief in public-sector incompetence — is now a central part of American conservatism, and the incompetence dogma has evidently made rational analysis of policy issues impossible.

So, the Republicans have an atrocious 0-6 success rate on their predictions of doom regarding the ACA.It will be 0-7 after the employer...

It wasn’t always thus. If you go back two decades, to the last great fight over health reform, conservatives seem to have been relatively clearheaded about the policy prospects, albeit deeply cynical. For example, William Kristol’s famous 1993 memo urging Republicans to kill the Clinton health plan warned explicitly that Clintoncare, if implemented, might well be perceived as successful, which would, in turn, “strike a punishing blow against Republican claims to defend the middle class by restraining government.” So it was crucial to make sure that reform never happened. In effect, Mr. Kristol was telling insiders that tales of government incompetence are something you peddle to voters to get them to support tax cuts and deregulation, not something you necessarily believe yourself.

Continue reading the main story Write A Comment

But that was before conservatives had fully retreated into their own intellectual universe. Fox News didn’t exist yet; policy analysts at right-wing think tanks had often begun their careers in relatively nonpolitical jobs. It was still possible to entertain the notion that reality wasn’t what you wanted it to be.

It’s different now. It’s hard to think of anyone on the American right who even considered the possibility that Obamacare might work, or at any rate who was willing to admit that possibility in public. Instead, even the supposed experts kept peddling improbable tales of looming disaster long after their chance of actually stopping health reform was past, and they peddled these tales not just to the rubes but to each other.

And let’s be clear: While it has been funny watching the right-wing cling to its delusions about health reform, it’s also scary. After all, these people retain considerable ability to engage in policy mischief, and one of these days they may regain the White House. And you really, really don’t want people who reject facts they don’t like in that position. I mean, they might do unthinkable things, like starting a war for no good reason. Oh, wait.

Continue reading the main story

But that was before conservatives had fully retreated into their own intellectual universe. Fox News didn’t exist yet; policy analysts at right-wing think tanks had often begun their careers in relatively nonpolitical jobs. It was still possible to entertain the notion that reality wasn’t what you wanted it to be.

It’s different now. It’s hard to think of anyone on the American right who even considered the possibility that Obamacare might work, or at any rate who was willing to admit that possibility in public. Instead, even the supposed experts kept peddling improbable tales of looming disaster long after their chance of actually stopping health reform was past, and they peddled these tales not just to the rubes but to each other.

And let’s be clear: While it has been funny watching the right-wing cling to its delusions about health reform, it’s also scary. After all, these people retain considerable ability to engage in policy mischief, and one of these days they may regain the White House. And you really, really don’t want people who reject facts they don’t like in that position. I mean, they might do unthinkable things, like starting a war for no good reason. Oh, wait.

Why Obama and the Democrats Shouldn’t Negotiate with Extortionists

by Robert Reich

Sunday, September 29, 2013                

As a child I was bullied by bigger boys who threatened to beat me up if I didn’t give them what they wanted. But every time I gave in to their demands their subsequent demands grew larger. First they wanted the change in my pocket. Next it was the dessert in my lunchbox. Then my new Davy Crockett cap. Then the softball and bat I got for my birthday.

Finally I stopped giving in. When the bullies began roughing me up on the playground some older boys came to my rescue and threatened my tormenters with black eyes if they ever touched me again. That ended their extortion racket.

What’s happening in Washington these days may seem far removed from my boyhood memories, but Washington is really just another children’s playground. Its current bullies are right-wing Republicans, now threatening that if they don’t get their way they’ll close down the government and cause the nation to default on its debts.

“The American people don’t want a government shutdown, and they don’t want Obamacare,” House Republican leaders said in a statement over the weekend. “We will do our job and send this bill over, and then it’s up to the Senate to pass it and stop a government showdown.”

Really? The American people don’t want Obamacare as much as I didn’t want my softball and bat. 

Okay, maybe not quite as much. But the only settled way we know what the American people want is through the democratic process. And the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is the law of the land. A majority of the House and Senate voted for it, the President signed it into law, its constitutionality has been upheld by the Supreme Court, and a majority  of Americans reelected the President after an election battle in which the Affordable Care Act was a central issue.

Moreover, we don’t repeal laws in this country by holding hostage the entire government of the United States.

The bullies are a faction inside the Republican Party – extremists who are threatening more reasonable Republicans with primary challenges if they don’t go along.

And where are the Tea Party extremists getting their dough? From even bigger bullies – a handful of hugely wealthy Americans who are sinking hundreds of millions of dollars into this extortion racket.

They include David and Charles Koch (and their front group, “Americans for Prosperity’);  Peter Thiel, leverage-buyout specialist John Childs, investor Howie Rich, Stephen Jackson of the Stevens Group, and executives of JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, (all behind the “Club for Growth”); and Crow Holdings’ Harlan Crow, shipping magnate Richard Uihlein, and investment banker Foster Friess; executives of MetLife and Philip Morris, and foundations controlled by the Scaife family (all bankrolling “FreedomWorks.”)

Their game plan is to not just to take over the Republican Party. It’s to take over America. The showdown over the budget and the debt ceiling is a prelude to 2016, when they plan to run Texas Senator Ted Cruz for President. (Cruz, if you haven’t noticed, is busily establishing his creds as the biggest flamer in Washington – orchestrating not only the current extortion but also the purge of reasonable Republicans from the GOP.)

 

Obama and the Democrats must not give in. They shouldn’t even negotiate with extortionists. As I learned the hard way, giving in to bullies just encourages them to escalate their demands.

The President began negotiations with the Republican bullies in 2011 when they first threatened to default on the nation’s debt if they didn’t get the spending cuts they wanted. He negotiated again at the end of 2012 when they threatened to go over the fiscal cliff and take the rest of the nation with them if they didn’t get the budget they wanted. Now they want to repeal a law they detest. If we give in again, what’s next? A coup d’etat?

Bi-Partisanship We Don’t Need: The President Offers to Cut Social Security and Republicans Agree

by Robert Reich 

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

John Boehner, Speaker of the House, revealed why it’s politically naive for the President to offer up cuts in Social Security in the hope of getting Republicans to close some tax loopholes for the rich. “If the President believes these modest entitlement savings are needed to help shore up these programs, there’s no reason they should be held hostage for more tax hikes,” Boehner said in a statement released Friday.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor agreed. He said on CNBC he didn’t understand “why we just don’t see the White House come forward and do the things that we agree on” such as cutting Social Security, without additional tax increases.

Get it? The Republican leadership is already salivating over the President’s proposed Social Security cut. They’ve been wanting to cut Social Security for years. 

But they won’t agree to close tax loopholes for the rich.

They’re already characterizing the President’s plan as a way to “save” Social Security — even though the cuts would undermine it — and they’re embracing it as an act of “bi-partisanship.”
“I’m encouraged by any steps that President Obama is taking to save and preserve Social Security,” cooed Texas Republican firebrand Ted Cruz. “I think it should be a bipartisan priority to strengthen Social Security and Medicare to preserve the benefits for existing seniors.”

Oh, please. Social Security hasn’t contributed to the budget deficit. And it’s solvent for the next two decades. (If we want to insure its solvency beyond that, the best fix is to lift the cap on income subject to Social Security taxes – now $113,700.)

And the day Ted Cruz agrees to raise taxes on the wealthy or even close a tax loophole will be when Texas freezes over.

The President is scheduled to dine with a dozen Senate Republicans Wednesday night. Among those attending will be John Boozman of Arkansas, who has already praised Obama for  “starting to throw things on the table,” like the Social Security cuts.

That’s exactly the problem. The President throws things on the table before the Republicans have even sat down for dinner.

The President’s predilection for negotiating with himself is not new. But his willingness to do it with Social Security, the government’s most popular program  — which Democrats have protected from Republican assaults for almost eighty years — doesn’t bode well.

The President desperately wants a “grand bargain” on the deficit. Republicans know he does. Watch your wallets.

Why Obama Must Meet the Republican Lies Directly

by Robert Reich

Monday, February 25, 2013

The White House apparently believes the best way to strengthen its hand in the upcoming “sequester” showdown with Republicans is to tell Americans how awful the spending cuts will be, and blame Republicans for them.

It won’t work. These tactical messages are getting in the way of the larger truth, which the President must hammer home: The Republicans’ austerity economics and trickle-down economics are dangerous, bald-faced lies.

Yes, the pending spending cuts will hurt. But even if some Americans begin to feel the pain when the cuts go into effect Friday, most won’t feel it for weeks or months, if ever.

Half are cuts in the military, which will have a huge impact on jobs (the military is America’s only major jobs program), but the cuts will be felt mainly in states with large numbers of military contractors, and then only as those contractors shed employees.

The other half are cuts in domestic discretionary spending, which will largely affect lower-income Americans. There will be sharp reductions in federal aid to poor schools, nutrition assistance, housing assistance, and the like. But here again, most Americans won’t see these cuts or feel them.

Moreover, the blame game can be played both ways, and Republicans are adept at slinging mud. When it comes to high-visibility consequences of the spending cuts — such as a sudden dearth of air-traffic controllers — Republicans will dodge blame by happily giving Obama authority to shift spending and find the cuts himself, thereby making the White House appear even more culpable.

Besides, there’s no end to this. After Friday’s sequester comes the showdown over continuing funding of the government beyond March 27. Then another fight over the debt ceiling.

The White House must directly rebut the two big lies that fuel the Republican assault – and that have fueled it since the showdown over the debt ceiling in the summer of 2011.

The first big lie is austerity economics – the claim that the budget deficit is the nation’s biggest economic problem now, responsible for the anemic recovery.

Wrong. The problem is too few jobs, lousy wages, and slow growth. Cutting the budget deficit anytime soon makes the problem worse because it reduces overall demand. As a result, the economy will slow or fall into recession – which enlarges the deficit in proportion. You want proof? Look at what austerity economics has done to Europe. 

The second big lie is trickle-down economics – the claim that we get more jobs and growth if corporations and the rich have more money because they’re the job creators, and job growth would be hurt if their taxes were hiked.

Wrong. The real job creators are the broad middle class and everyone who aspires to join it. Their purchases keep economy going.

As inequality continues to widen, and income and wealth become ever more concentrated at the top, the rest don’t have the purchasing power they need to boost the economy. That’s the underlying reason why the recovery continues to be so anemic.

These two lies – austerity economics and trickle-down economics – are being told over and over by Republicans and their mouthpieces on Fox News, yell radio, and the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal. They are wrong and there are dangerous.

Yet unless they are rebutted clearly and forcefully, the nation will continue to careen from crisis to crisis, showdown to showdown.

And we will have almost no chance of reversing the larger challenge of widening inequality.

President Obama has the bully pulpit. Americans trust him more than they do congressional Republicans. But he is letting micro-tactics get in the way of the larger truth. And he’s blurring his message with other messages – about gun control, immigration, and the environment. All are important, to be sure. But none has half a chance unless Americans understand how they’re being duped on the really big story.

Why Democrats and Republicans Are Both Wrong About the Economy

by John Lawrence from the San Diego Free Press

The unemployment rate is 7.8%. Both parties agree that this is too high, but they propose totally different solutions to create more jobs. The Republican solution is to give more tax breaks and other advantages to the rich and to corporations because they are the job creators. Really? Then why haven't they created more jobs in the last 30 years. This historical experiment of "trickle down" economics has been tried since the time of Ronald Reagan and it has proven to be an abject failure. Yet Republicans are still pushing it as the solution to all our problems. 

Esteemed Nobel laureate and Princeton professor Paul Krugman wants to take the traditional Keynesian approach and do deficit spending to improve the economy. He says there's no reason to worry about the deficit since the US can borrow money at extremely low rates. Not to worry. He sides with Dick Cheney who famously said, "Deficits don't matter." He and Bush then went on to add trillions to the national debt by fighting two unpaid for wars, tax breaks for the rich and an unpaid for prescription drug benefit for seniors that was in reality a giveaway to the pharmaceutical companies. But now that a Democratic President is in office, Republicans are all worried about deficits. They should have been worried when George W Bush was doing the profligate spending.

However, I disagree with both Cheney and Krugman. Deficits do matter and here's why. Sure the government can borrow a lot of money, as much as it wants to, at extremely low rates. But the government has to pay interest on the national debt and that is a growing part of the budget. Interest on the debt is the fourth largest government expenditure after Defense, Medicare and Medicaid. In 2011 Federal, state and local  governments spent $454,393,280,417.03 on interest. It actually came down dramatically in 2012 to $359,796,008,919.49. That's still a lot of money. The Federal government alone spent around $220 billion in net interest on its debt in 2012, and is predicted to spend over a trillion dollars in interest by 2020. That's $1 trillion we can't spend to educate our kids or to replace our badly worn-out infrastructure.

And there's no guarantee that interest rates will continue to remain at historical lows. They are being held there right now by the Federal Reserve's policy of quantitative easing. The Fed is printing money at the rate of $85 billion a month. This money is being essentially given to the large Wall Street banks. Theoretically it's being loaned, but if someone loans you money at a zero interest rate, why would you ever pay it back? It's foolish to think that interest rates will always remain this low and that foreign nations and individuals will continue to loan us money ad infinitum.

The Fed's policy of printing money and then giving it to the big banks relies on the theory that low interest rates will get the economy moving again. The theory goes that people will be attracted to the low interest rates, borrow money and consume. It assumes that banks will actually loan out the money. Since consumption is 70% of the US economy, GDP will increase and that will create more jobs. In other words the Fed is exercising the same trickle down theory of economic growth made famous by Ronald Reagan and that has been tried for the last 30 years and failed. The Fed is essentially devaluing American currency in the hopes that this will create jobs. And it has been a big failure insofar as job creation is concerned but it has kept the US government's borrowing rates low.

So if both deficit reduction and job creation are important, how do you do both. Put simply the US government has to walk and chew gum at the same time. The Republican emphasis on cutting spending, especially spending on social programs, would lead to austerity and that would contract the economy even more. So that isn't the solution. To be fair President Obama has not been on the side of deficit spending as a way to get the economy out of the doldrums. He has been for a balanced approach of stimulating the economy and paying down the deficit. But Paul Krugman and many Democratic theorists like Robert Reich have.

The trick is to note that government spending does not have to be deficit spending. Government spending can increase without incurring greater deficits by increasing government revenues. And there are different varieties of government spending. Republicans favor just giving government money to private corporations and having them do the job. Their policy is to let the government just be a money conduit from taxpayers to corporations. Alternatively, government can spend money directly on jobs programs like rebuilding infrastructure. Instead of using the indirect approach which amounts to pushing on a string which is what the Fed is doing and which Republicans advocate, the government can actually create jobs directly in the public sector. If you want to create jobs, why not just create jobs directly instead of trying to get the private sector to create jobs. President Obama should just get up and say, "We've tried various policies to get the private sector to create jobs; they haven't worked so now the government, the public sector, is going to create jobs directly."

But here's where Democrats and President Obama have a problem. Instead of calling for more revenue by taxing the rich and corporations and government direct spending instead of spending to fund private corporations to rebuild infrastructure, Obama is reticent because he is afraid of being labeled a socialist. No worries, he's already been labeled a socialist despite his administration's being the most pro-business administration in years. And beware of the public/private partnership which is just another variation of the privatization of functions which the government can do more efficiently. We don't want to replace the military-industrial complex with an infrastructure-industrial complex replete with lobbyists, cost plus contracts and highly paid CEOs. There's no need for Wall Street to get involved.

Well, where is the money going to come from? Senator Bernie Sanders has an answer: End Offshore Tax Havens. One out of four profitable corporations pays nothing in taxes. Tax rates on profits are the lowest since 1972. Last year Facebook paid nothing despite having a billion dollars in profits. Government revenue as a percentage of GDP is lower than at any time in history. Corporate contributions to tax revenue are the lowest of any major country on earth. It is absurd for major corporations to stash huge amounts of money in countries like the Cayman Islands which have a zero tax rate. 

Bernie Sanders and Jan Schakowsky have introduced the Corporate Tax Fairness Act. The bill will raise $590 billion over the next decade. The bill will also stop giving tax breaks to corporations for shipping jobs overseas. Their bill would prevent oil companies from disguising royalty payments to foreign countries as taxes in order to reduce their taxes in the US among other things. And it has a snowball's chance in hell of passing. A financial transaction tax would bring in as much as $100 billion annually. We used to have one; Europe just recently enacted one. Let's end the "carried interest" loophole for hedge and private equity funds. Wall Street needs to start paying its fair share.

Corporations have been getting away with murder in not paying their fair share of taxes. This is from an article by Bernie Sanders:

"In 2010, Bank of America set up more than 200 subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands (which has a corporate tax rate of 0.0 percent) to avoid paying U.S. taxes. It worked. Not only did Bank of America pay nothing in federal income taxes, but it received a rebate from the IRS worth $1.9 billion that year. They are not alone. In 2010, JP Morgan Chase operated 83 subsidiaries incorporated in offshore tax havens to avoid paying some $4.9 billion in U.S. taxes. That same year Goldman Sachs operated 39 subsidiaries in offshore tax havens to avoid an estimated $3.3 billion in U.S. taxes. Citigroup has paid no federal income taxes for the last four years after receiving a total of $2.5 trillion in financial assistance from the Federal Reserve during the financial crisis."

The sad fact is that the private sector is not in the process of creating jobs but of destroying jobs through automation and robotics. Almost anything a human being might have done in a job is now being done by robots. Some say that this creates jobs for "knowledge workers." Sure if you're among the upper 1% in knowledge talent. Companies like Microsoft, Google, Apple and Facebook are not looking for the average college graduate. They're looking for the upper 1% of college graduates. Together they employ less than 200,000 people in the US. The top talent in every field are making good money. Everyone else is going downhill if they're employed at all. 50% of college graduates are either unemployed or underemployed in terms of their qualifications. In the 2009-2010 recovery, 93% of the gains in income went to the top 1%. 

Why should the private sector create jobs if they can get a robot to do the work 24 hours a day at a cost of less than $5.00 an hour? If the private sector will not create jobs, that leaves the government to create jobs directly.  Instead of pushing on a string with policies that are supposed to create jobs indirectly by encouraging the private sector to do so, government should get more involved. More government revenues plus direct job creation rebuilding infrastructure could result in growing the economy, providing good middle class jobs and paying down the debt.

Chrystia Freeman in her book Plutocracy explains this phenomenon which results in the divergence of jobs and income, creating a well to do upper 1% class and everybody else:

"This is what ecomomists call the "superstar" effect - the tendency of both technological change and globalization to create winner-take-all economic tournaments in many sectors and companies, where being the most successful in your field delivers huge rewards, but coming in second place, and certainly in fifth or tenth, has much less economic value."

We are seeing the effects of a meritocracy where the top 1% of talent merges with the top 1% in terms of income and wealth. This is great for the top 1% of graduates from elite colleges but not so much for the average graduates of average colleges with $100,000. in student loan debt and a job at Starbucks instead of a career type job in their field. In every field the chasm between the superstars and everyone else is getting bigger and bigger. Inequality increases with the acceleration of meritocracy. Meritocracy and plutocracy converge creating a democratic dystopia.

That's why the government has to step in to regulate this runaway dystopia. Taxes on corporations and the rich need to be increased in order to tamp down inequality. This revenue needs to be redistributed to the former middle class in terms of job programs. It could be redistributed in terms of welfare and unemployment insurance, but this creates a class of dependents. It would be much better to create a middle class of workers rebuilding infrastructure. And this is not a trivial job. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that there is $2 trillion worth of work that needs to be done just to bring roads, bridges and other basic infrastructure up to par. But there is more to infrastructure than just that. When you consider all that needs to be done to prevent and combat the changes due to global warming, there is enough potential work out there to fully employ US workers for generations. Utilities need to be hardened and undergrounded. Fossil fuel powered electric plants need to be converted to solar and wind. Buildings need to be made less energy consuming. High speed rail needs to be implemented. Housing needs to be moved back from the shorelines.

There is no lack of work that needs to be done, and this is work the private sector not only won't do but in many cases it is work that the private sector is lobbying against doing. They profit from using the atmosphere as a dump. It's crucial that the government prevent runaway wealth maldistribution, create jobs that the private sector has no incentive to create and save the planet from ecological disaster.

An Open Letter to President Obama

November 19th, 2012 8:46 AM

By Michael Moore

Dear President Obama:

Good luck on your journeys overseas this week, and congratulations on decisively winning your second term as our president! The first time you won four years ago, most of us couldn't contain our joy and found ourselves literally in tears over your victory.

This time, it was more like breathing a huge sigh of relief. But, like the smooth guy you are, you scored the highest percentage of the vote of any Democrat since Lyndon Johnson, and you racked up the most votes for a Democratic president in the history of the United States (the only one to receive more votes than you was ... you, in '08!). You are the first Democrat to get more than 50% of the vote twice in a row since Franklin D. Roosevelt.

This was truly another historic election and I would like to take a few minutes of your time to respectfully ask that your second term not resemble your first term.

It's not that you didn't get anything done. You got A LOT done. But there are some very huge issues that have been left unresolved and, dammit, we need you to get some fight in you. Wall Street and the uber-rich have been conducting a bloody class war for over 30 years and it's about time they were stopped.

I know it is not in your nature to be aggressive or confrontational. But, please, Barack – DO NOT listen to the pundits who are telling you to make the "grand compromise" or move to the "center" (FYI – you're already there). Your fellow citizens have spoken and we have rejected the crazed ideology of this Republican Party and we insist that you forcefully proceed in bringing about profound change that will improve the lives of the 99%. We're done hoping. We want real change. And, if we can't get it in the second term of a great and good man like you, then really – what's the use? Why are we even bothering? Yes, we're that discouraged and disenchanted.

At your first post-election press conference last Wednesday you were on fire. The way you went all "Taxi Driver" on McCain and company ("You talkin' to me?") was so brilliant and breathtaking I had to play it back a dozen times just to maintain the contact high. Jesus, that look – for a second I thought laser beams would be shooting out of your eyes! MORE OF THAT!! PLEASE!!

In the weeks after your first election you celebrated by hiring the Goldman Sachs boys and Wall Street darlings to run our economy. Talk about a buzzkill that I never fully recovered from. Please – not this time. This time take a stand for all the rest of us – and if you do, tens of millions of us will not only have your back, we will swoop down on Congress in a force so large they won't know what hit them (that's right, McConnell – you're on the retirement list we've put together for 2014).

BUT – first you have to do the job we elected you to do. You have to take your massive 126-electoral vote margin and just go for it.

Here are my suggestions:

1. DRIVE THE RICH RIGHT OFF THEIR FISCAL CLIFF. The "fiscal cliff" is a ruse, an invention by the Right and the rich, to try and keep their huge tax breaks. On December 31, let ALL the tax cuts expire. Then, on January 1, put forth a bill that restores the tax cuts for 98% of the public. I dare the Republicans to vote against that! They can't and they won't. As for the spending cuts, the 2011 agreement states that, for every domestic program dollar the Republicans want to cut, a Pentagon dollar must also be cut. See, you are a genius! No way will the Right vote against the masters of war. And if by some chance they do, you can immediately put forth legislation to restore all the programs we, the majority, approve of. And for God's sake, man – declare Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid untouchable. They're not bankrupt or anywhere near it. If the rich paid the same percentage of Social Security tax on their entire income – the same exact rate everyone else pays – then there will suddenly be enough money in Social Security to last til at least the year 2080!

2. END ALL THE WARS NOW. Do not continue the war in Afghanistan (a thoroughly losing proposition if ever there was one) for two full more years! Why should one single more person have to die FOR NO REASON? Stop it. You know it's wrong. Bin Laden's dead, al Qaeda is decimated and the Afghans have to work out their own problems. Also, end the drone strikes and other covert military activities you are conducting in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Colombia and God knows where else. You think history is going to remember the United States as a great democracy? No, they're going to think of us as a nation that became addicted to war. They'll call us warlords. They'll say that in the 21st century America was so in need of oil that we'd kill anyone to get it. You know that's where this is going. This has to stop. Now.

3. END THE DRUG WAR. It is not only an abysmal failure, it has returned us to the days of slavery. We have locked up millions of African-Americans and Latinos and now fund a private prison-industrial complex that makes billions for a few lucky rich people. There are other ways to deal with the drugs that do cause harm – ways built around a sense of decency and compassion. We look like a bunch of sadistic racists. Stop it.

4. DECLARE A MORATORIUM ON HOME FORECLOSURES AND EVICTIONS. Millions of people are facing homelessness because of a crooked system enacted by the major banks and Wall Street firms. Put a pause on this and take 12 months to work out a different way (like, restructuring families' mortgages to reflect the true worth of their homes).

5. GET MONEY OUT OF POLITICS. You already know this one. The public is sick of it. Now's the time to act.

6. EXPAND OBAMACARE. Your health care law doesn't cover everyone. It is a cash cow for the insurance industry. Push for a single-payer system – Medicare for All – and include dentistry and mental health. This is the single biggest thing you could do to reduce the country's deficit.

7. RESTORE GLASS-STEAGALL. You must put back all the rigid controls on Wall Street that Reagan, Clinton and the Bushes removed – or else we face the possibility of another, much worse, crash. If they break the law, prosecute them the way you currently go after whistleblowers and medical marijuana dispensaries.

8. REDUCE STUDENT LOAN DEBT. No 22-year-old should have to enter the real world already in a virtual debtors' prison. This is cruel and no other democracy does this like we do. You were right to eliminate the banks as the profit-gouging lenders, but now you have to bring us back to the days when you and I were of college age and a good education cost us little or next to nothing. A few less wars would go a long to way to being able to afford this.

9. FREE BRADLEY MANNING. End the persecution and prosecution of an American hero. Bush and Cheney lied to a nation to convince us to go to war. Manning allegedly hacked the war criminals' files and then shared them with the American public (and the world) so that we could learn the truth about Iraq and Afghanistan. Our history is full of such people who "break the law" for the greater good of humanity. Army Specialist Bradley Manning deserves a medal, not prison.

10. ASK US TO DO SOMETHING. One thing is clear: none of the above is going to happen if you don't immediately mobilize the 63,500,000 who voted for you (and the other 40 million who are for you but didn't vote). You can't go this alone. You need an army of everyday Americans who will fight alongside you to make this a more just and peaceful nation. In your 2008 campaign, you were a pioneer in using social media to win the election. Over 15 million of us gave you our cell numbers or email addresses so you could send us texts and emails telling us what needed to be done to win the election. Then, as soon as you won, it was as if you hit the delete button. We never heard from you again. (Until this past year when you kept texting us to send you $25. Inspiring.) Whoever your internet and social media people were should have been given their own office in the West Wing – and we should have heard from you. Constantly. Need a bill passed? Text us and we will mobilize! The Republicans are filibustering? We can stop them! They won't approve your choice for Secretary of State? We'll see about that! You say you were a community organizer. Please – start acting like one.

The next four years can be one of those presidential terms that changed the course of America. I'm sure you will want to be judged on how you stood up for us, restored the middle class, ended the s***ting on the poor and made us a friend to the rest of the world instead of a threat. You can do this. We can do it with you. All that stands in the way is your understandable desire to sing "Kumbaya" with the Republicans. Don't waste your breath. Their professed love of America is negated by their profound hatred of you. Don't waste a minute on them. Fix the sad mess we're in. Go back and read this month's election results. We're with you.

P.S. President Obama – my cell number to text me at is 810-522-8398 and my email is <A href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</A>. I await my first assignment!

How to Go Over the Fiscal Cliff and Still Avoid a Recession

by John Lawrence from the San Diego Free Press

Create an Infrastructure Bank and Transition from a Wartime to a Peacetime Economy.

The deal that Congress and the President made that created the so-called fiscal cliff may not be so bad after all. In fact it has many good elements: raising taxes on the rich which will reduce burgeoning inequality in the US, deficit reduction and reduction of the bloated military-industrial complex budget. The one thing that many experts are worried about is that taking this much money out of the economy will create a recesssion. However, increased economic activity that would offset the fiscal cliff provisions can come about with increased leveraged spending on infrastructure development. A relatively small amount of government money when combined with money from private investors can goose the economy while preserving the good elements of the fiscal cliff deal. This can lead to a conversion of what today is essentially a wartime economy to a peacetime economy and change the US from a national security state - one dependent on military related spending to create jobs - to a world leader in peacetime economic development.

It is important to realize that development of infrastructure in the US will set the stage for the revival of the economy. First class infrastructure will open up possibilities for the creation of 21st century businesses and enable them to thrive. It will also reduce carbon dioxide emissions and thus global warming.

President Obama backed the proposed legislation in February 2008 for the creation of an infrastructure bank. The bank would use the same methods as a commercial bank - that is fractional reserve banking. Fractional reserve banking allows banks to leverage depositor funds so that they can loan out ten times what their deposits are on the theory that not all depositors will want their money back at the same time. In this way banks can make many more loans than they would be able to do otherwise. Obama suggested that the Bank would borrow $60 billion of federal funding to invest in infrastructure over 10 years, while leveraging "up to $500 billion" of private investment. So a relatively small amount of Federal funding could be leveraged up to provide a substantial amount of spending on infrastructure.

The logic behind the bank isn’t hard to grasp. In recent years, reams of white papers have come out describing how much of the nation’s transportation, water and energy infrastructure is in shambles. A 2010 Government Accountability Office report, for one, found that a quarter of the country’s 600,000 bridges are either “structurally deficient” or inadequate to today’s traffic needs. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) estimates that an investment of $2.2 trillion is needed to bring America's infrastructure up to snuff. The US lacks a central source of low-cost financing for big construction projects akin to the European Investment Bank.

The deal that created the fiscal cliff has many good aspects including the following:

1) Taxes are raised on everyone but disproportionally on the rich reducing inequality. 2) A lot of revenue is generated to pay down the deficit. 3) The military-industrial complex takes a big hit. 4) Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and Veterans' benefits are not affected. 5) There is a 5 to 1 ratio between revenues from taxes and savings from cuts.

The only downside to the deal crafted by politicians as a means of kicking the can down the road is that taking that much money out of the economy might cause a recesssion. But here's a way to avoid that: create an infrastructure bank. My premise is that money needs to be taken away from the military-industrial complex establishment and spent on rebuilding infrastructure in the US. In addition new infrastructure such as a smart electric and electronic grid, high speed rail and undergrounding and hardening of all utilities as a way to avoid widespread devastation from superstorms such as the recent Sandy is of paramount inportance. Whether or not we go over the fiscal cliff, creation of an infrastructure bank should be part of any deal before or after January 1.

Here's another way to do it: take some of the money from revenues generated by the fiscal cliff, about one tenth will do, and then, through the magic of fractional reserve banking, that money can be multiplied ten times. The government would make a deposit with savings generated by the fiscal cliff, and then investors would also be invited to make deposits. They would draw interest on those deposits. The bank's sole dedicated purpose would be to loan out or grant money for infrastucture projects. Those loans or grants would be made after due diligence on the requesting company's business model for the infrastructure project it has in mind. These projects could be created by entrepreneurs or by the government itself. Some of these projects could be revenue producing such as toll roads; some could be public investments with interest paid to investors over a period of time.

Obama's proposed Secretary of Business could oversee the infrastructure projects funded by the infrastructure bank to make sure that there is a cohesive vision for a national infrastructure model that made sense as a whole and not a collective hodge podge of unrelated projects that didn't fit together or work together. The Secretary of Business could also oversee industrial policy in the US similar to Japan's Ministry of Industrial Trade and Industry (MITI). MITI  ran much of Japanese industrial policy, funding research and directing investment. In 2001, its role was taken over by the newly created Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI). An industrial policy coupled with an infrastructure development policy could make the US better fit for not only nation building at home but place it on a better footing for international competition. At the same time infrastructure redevelopment would create hundreds of thousands of jobs thereby avoiding a recession and placing the economy on a sounder footing.

The US is lagging other countries in infrastructure development. While other countries have been pouring money into infrastructure, the US has been pouring money into its military-industrial complex. More money is spent on defense than is spent by the next ten highest defense spending nations combined. For example the US ranks 29th among the world's nations in internet speed behind such countries as Romania, Bulgaria and Latvia. We rank first only in price. We pay six to ten times as much as the French, for instance, for a triple play package (phone, cable TV and internet). The French internet is ten times faster downloading and twenty times faster uploading than what most Americans can buy.

Undergrounding of utilities is one much needed infrastructure project. According to a Morgan Stanley analysis, power outages, caused by trees falling on electric power lines cost the U.S. economy between $25 billion and $180 billion every year. In Germany there are hardly any power outages from storms because their lines are all underground. Other infrastructure projects that can be encouraged by intelligent government policies is the creation of and retrofitting of smart buildings.

In Germany architects have created buildings that have a net zero consumption of energy. This translates to fewer carbon emissions into the atmosphere - a good thing. There are over 50 passive houses and at least 100 units with 'plus energy' standard (houses which produce more energy than they need) in Vauban, a neighborhood of Freiburg, one of the largest 'solar districts' in Europe.

"Within Vauban, a new ecologically designed settlement of 2000 houses that is being built on the site of an abandoned French military base, a Solar Village - Europe's most modern solar housing project - is being built at Schlierberg, with 50 solar houses that will produce more energy than they consume, designed by Rolf Disch, one of the most renowned solar architects in Europe. The brightly coloured terraced homes use only 15% of the energy that is needed by Freiburg's low-energy homes, and need additional heat for only a few weeks a year, from a wood chips biomass combined heat and power (CHP) plant."

"A district centre has been created at Vauban with shops, a primary school, kindergartens and public green spaces. Vauban has been designed to create a 'district of short distances' where the schools, farmer's market, businesses, shopping centre, food coop, recreation areas and approximately 600 jobs will be within walking and cycling distance of residents."

The US electric grid is also not performing at the same level it was decades ago. Energy losses in the transmission and distribution system nearly doubled from 5 percent in 1970 to 9.5 percent in 2001. There is also a considerable security risk in the design of the grid with centralized generation plants serving distant loads over long transmission lines. A smart grid would consist of a network with distributed sources of electricity generation from many different types of sources. It would optimize asset utilization and operating efficiency. It would anticipate and respond to system disturbances in a self-healing manner. It would be resilient against physical and cyber attacks and natural disasters.

In summary, the importance of infrastructure development for the long term healing and soundness of the economy cannot be underestimated. The creation of an infrastructure bank as Obama has suggested would be a cost effective way to ward off a recession, leverage government money with private investment and put the US on a sound competitive footing vis a vis other countries of the world. The provisions of the fiscal cliff provide for many good things, among them deficit reduction, raising taxes disproportionally on the rich and reduction of the Defense budget. It might also reduce economic activity leading to a recession unless another way can be found to stoke the economy and employ laid off defense workers. Many of them would welcome the opportunity of switching over to a job in the infrastructure-industrial complex.

Any deal Obama makes, whether before or after the fiscal cliff dive, should provide for infrastructure development, something that is sorely needed in the US both in terms of security from physical and cyber attack and from attacks from Mother Nature which are gearing up in ferocity. Obama may have only one chance to make any kind of grand bargain since the Republicans in Congress will probably be as intransigent and obstructive as they have shown themselves to be for the last four years. He better get it all done in one fell swoop.

Let's Not Make a Deal

by Robert Kuttner

from Huffington Post, 11/12/2012

President Obama gave a pretty good speech on Friday about the economy and the budget. In his most quoted line, the president said, "I am not going to ask students and seniors and middle-class families to pay down the entire deficit while people like me, making over $250,000, aren't asked to pay a dime more in taxes."

So far, so good -- Obama is not willing to accept the Republican demand that all of the deficit cutting come out of spending. And House Speaker John Boehner appeared to give ground, conceding that some "revenue" increase would be necessary, though Boehner still deludes himself in thinking, as Mitt Romney did, that this can somehow be done by "closing loopholes." (The Congressional Budget Office has shot down that balloon. There aren't enough loopholes.)

Obama, evidently, is willing to play hardball to compel the Republicans to allow tax rates on the top two percent to revert to something like the Clinton era top rate of 39.5 percent but spare the bottom 98 percent any tax increases. As Obama put it, "On Tuesday night, we found out that the majority of Americans agree with my approach."

But that was about the only good thing in Obama's speech, or his posture towards the Republicans and the budget. Obama still believes that the economy needs budget cuts of $4 trillion over the next decade.

It doesn't. If anything, it needs spending increases.

We need more public spending both because the private economy is weak and because Hurricane Sandy just revealed the need for hundreds of billions of more outlay to protect our coastal communities from ocean waters that will continue rising. We will need hundreds of billions beyond that invested in renewable energy to keep global climate change from worsening.

But if Obama and the Republicans strike a deal to cut the budget by $4 trillion over a decade, there will not be a penny available for new infrastructure spending. And budget cuts of that magnitude will slow down the recovery.

We have heard a great deal about a "fiscal cliff."

The cliff is partly made up of mandatory budget cuts that take effect in January dictated by the House Republicans back in 2011 as their price for extending the debt ceiling. In addition, the cliff includes automatic tax increases scheduled to kick in as the Bush tax cuts sunset, as well as hikes in payroll taxes that take effect as the temporary two percentage point reduction expires.

All of these automatic budget cuts add up to $560 billion in the next fiscal year. According to the Congressional Budget Office, cuts of that magnitude in a still-fragile recovery would push the economy back into recession. Everyone seems to agree that this cliff is to be avoided.

But the president's own proposed budget cuts of $4 trillion over ten years average out to $400 billion a year. In other words, the Obama Cliff is almost as large as the fiscal cliff that everyone dreads. Whatever the precise mix of tax increases and spending cuts, $4 trillion is too big a cliff.

And while Obama's supposed new toughness on tax policy has gotten most of the attention, he seems poised to give away the store on spending cuts. Recently, Bob Woodward was given a leaked copy of the Administration's offer in the proposed budget deal of 2011 that fell apart because House Speaker John Boehner was unable to deliver his Republican caucus to support any revenue increases.

In that aborted deal, Obama was prepared to cut Social Security and increase the Medicare eligibility age. White House leaks have suggested that both items will be on the table this time. That's bad policy, and worse politics. The clearest principled differences that distinguish Democrats from Republicans is that Democrats are staunch defenders of Social Security and Medicare, while Republicans are eager to cut, privatize, and voucherize.

So the good news is that the Democrats won the election and President Obama's spine has been stiffened on the subject of taxes. The bad news is that the skids are greased for a budget deal that cuts more than necessary, risks putting the economy back into recession, and blurs differences between the parties on critical issues like Social Security and Medicare.

If Obama will just realize it, he holds most of the cards. He prevailed in the election. Most voters agree that the rich should pay higher taxes. Most don't want cuts in Medicare and Social Security.

Tactically, if he just waits and lets the automatic tax increases take effect, public pressure will mount on the Republicans to agree to tax hikes for the wealthiest so that the bottom 98 percent can get tax relief. If Obama just lets the automatic "sequester" take effect, there will be $600 billion in military cuts, and pressure will mount on the Republicans not to allow the cuts to start biting.

The stock market has been swooning since the election for fear that Republicans and Democrats will not agree to a deal in time. Well, let it. Obama should wait for Republicans to come to him.

But by all appearances, the eager-beaver bipartisan Obama that we saw in early 2009, (until he got his clock cleaned) is back. Despite his recent victory, if he is too eager to make a deal, he --and we -- will get rolled.

Last time, Boehner's Republicans saved Obama from himself. This time, it will be up to his fellow Democrats.

Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect and a Senior Fellow at Demos. His latest book is A Presidency in Peril.

The Fiscal Cliff: Why Obama Should Go Over It, If Necessary

by John Lawrence from the San Diego Free Press

The looming so-called crisis facing the US after the reelection of Barack Obama is the fiscal cliff. It has been hyped as something that will bring wrack and ruin to the US economy unless something is done soon to prevent it from happening. However, in my opinion and that of others, if nothing was done and the provisions already agreed upon went into effect on January 1, 2013, it might actually turn out to be the best thing for the US in the long run, mainly because the military-industrial complex would take a hit while there would be no consequences for Social Security, Medicare and Veteran benefits. And it is not exactly what I'd call a big hit for defense. In 2011 the defense budget was $712 billion - larger than the rest of the world's military budgets combined. The 'fiscal cliff' would just mean that the military budget would be $55 billion (or 8%) less in 2013 so what's the big deal especially with two wars coming to an end? Where's the peace dividend in all this? Evidently, nowhere if defense contractors have anything to say about it. The fiscal cliff also provides that defense and non-defense discretionary spending increases from 2013-2021 would be about 1.5% annually, a good thing I'd say.

The other great things about letting the fiscal cliff just happen is that it would represent a relatively big tax increase on the rich and lowering of the deficit - two of Obama's campaign pledges. So Obama could reduce the deficit and raise taxes on the rich just by doing nothing - no negotiations with obstructionist Republicans, no time wasted with John Boehner, no excuses for selling out to his base. It would be a glorious exercise of Presidential power and then he could get on with other business.

Here's the deal on the tax increases. Taxes would go back to what they were under Clinton. Since the Bush tax cuts gave paltry reductions to the middle class and huge reductions to the rich, repealing the Bush tax cuts would mean a paltry increase for the middle class and a huge increase for the rich. That's why Boehner wants to "reform the tax code and eliminate loopholes." This is code for "let's increase taxes in such a way that the middle class not the rich takes most of the brunt." The problem with lowering tax rates and eliminating loopholes is that the lowered rates will remain permanent, a big boon to the wealthy, while eliminating loopholes will be temporary because lobbyists for the rich will go right to work drilling new loopholes as they did after the "tax reform" in the 1980s. Except the middle class loopholes like the mortgage deduction would remain permanent.

In an op-ed in the New York Times, Nobel winning economist Paul Krugman said, "So what should [Obama] do? Just say no, and go over the cliff if necessary." First of all, as others have pointed out, it's more like a hill than a cliff. Second, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages especially if Obama would have to negotiate away the very positive results of doing nothing: 1) a transfer of funds away from the military-industrial complex, (2) going a long way to solve the deficit problem and getting our fiscal house in order, (3) raising taxes on the rich relatively more than on the middle class and (4) reversing the growing economic inequality between the rich and everybody else.

Republicans are using the scare tactic of threatening that letting the fiscal cliff happen will return the economy to recession. The so-called fiscal cliff is actually a good deal for most Americans except for the very wealthy and the military-industrial complex. The outcome of negotiations to forestall the fiscal cliff could actually turn out to be a worse deal for the middle class if Obama isn't careful. He has the stronger bargaining position politically because he doesn't have to run for reelection and the fiscal cliff itself actually mostly favors Democratic principles. But count on the Republicans not to be in a conciliatory mood. Boehner has already indicated that his idea of resolving the fiscal cliff crisis is to not raise taxes on the rich. First of all, their logic is flawed. A tax increase on a successful business is not going to cause layoffs in that business if demand for product is steady or increasing. Second, the employed middle class is going to continue to consume (70% of GDP is consumption) albeit at a slightly lesser rate (a good thing as we discuss later). The concern should be with the already unemployed and marginally employed and the economically vulnerable, but the so-called fiscal cliff doesn't affect them one way or the other. Tax increases on the already employed will be of no major economic consequence or hardship. The biggest threat is that the economy will go into recession because Lockheed Martin will lose a lot of jobs. But so what? If the size of the military-industrial complex is ever to be reduced, it means loss of jobs in the military-industrial complex. It's as simple as that.

There is no political downside for President Obama. He doesn't have to stand for election again. Even if the economy goes into recession temporarily, it will all but be forgotten four years from now especially if the deficit has been reduced and the rich are finally paying their fair share. If there's to be any pain let it happen at the start of a term, not the end. Letting the fiscal cliff happen will accomplish several of President Obama's objectives without him even having to break a sweat. Then he can get on with further accomplishments to add to his legacy. He will be on a roll. He has nothing to lose and everything to gain without negotiating with Boehner and the Republicans. To the extent he negotiates at all, it should be to accomplish his remaining objectives: a huge infrastructure bill to put displaced defense workers and others back to work in the peace industry rather than the war industry and extended unemployment insurance (something taken away by the fiscal cliff).

Letting the fiscal cliff happen will finally do something about growing inequality in the US.

The latest data show the top 1 percent garnering 93 percent of all the gains from the recovery so far. But median family income is 8 percent lower than it was in 2000, adjusted for inflation. The richest 400 Americans now have more wealth than the bottom 150 million of us put together. Political equality is being sacrificed to economic inequality.

In an excellent book, "Winner-Take-All Politics, How Washington Made the Rich Richer and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class" Hacker and Pierson demonstrate that the average after tax income of the richest 1% rose from $337,100 in 1979 to more than $1.2 million in 2006 - an increase of nearly 260%. Meanwhile, average take home pay for the majority of Americans has remained stagnant for 30 years. And this wasn't due to the fact that the super rich are better educated than the rest of us. It's due to the fact that they and their lobbyists have curried favor with Washington politicians and turned the levers of political power to favor their increased economic power largely through an advantageous tax code. It's more crony capitalism than laissez-faire capitalism.

The conventional wisdom is that we can't tolerate another recession. The truth is that we're not only addicted to debt, we're addicted to consumption.  We're addicted to the fact that growing GDP is the answer to all our problems.

It isn't. Since consumption in the US represents 70% of GDP, if people stopped consuming at the present rate, it would mean a diminution in GDP possibly even a recession, but at the same time the American people might be better off. Here's an example. A significant part of GDP is made up by sales at fast food and pizza restaurants. If people cut their consumption of these foods by 50% the economy might go into recession, but the American people would be far healthier. Health care (really it's sickness care) is 17% of the economy. If Americans cut their consumption of unhealthy foods and started exercising, sickness care costs might be reduced to 8% of GDP. This would put the US economy into recession while at the same time the average American would be better off. If Americans stopped going to casinos and gambling, they would be individually better off while GDP would decrease as would the profits of billionaire casino moguls Sheldon Adelson and Donald Trump who tried to buy the Presidential election for Mitt Romney.

There are all sorts of reasons why reducing GDP, even if it meant a recession, might also mean that the American people would be better off. For instance, if I pay you $50. to mow my lawn, and you pay me $50, to mow your lawn, GDP has increased by $100. If we both mow our own lawns, GDP does not increase at all. In general if people do more for themselves and their families rather than paying someone or some corporation for equivalent goods and services, GDP will decrease. The average person, however, will be better off if they save their money and pay down their debts rather than increasing or maintaining their consumption levels. If we go from a cash economy to a do-it-yourself economy we will be better off even if GDP and corporate profits decrease. When we participate in the cash economy most of the profits go to large corporations and are siphoned off from local communities.

Unfortunately, the US economy is addicted to GDP growth as well as debt. Changing priorities and buying habits could result in consumption coming down from 70% of GDP to say, perhaps 60%. Would this throw the economy into technical recession? You bet it would. Would it be better for American families. You bet it would. They would be better off if they readjusted their priorities and became less dependent on consumption and more inclined to produce locally for their own needs instead of purchasing everything at Wal-Mart. However, corporate profits and Wall Street would suffer. Too bad.

Let's give Paul Krugman the last words of wisdom:

"And the looming combination of tax increases and spending cuts looks easily large enough to push America back into recession.

"Nobody wants to see that happen. Yet it may happen all the same, and Mr. Obama has to be willing to let it happen if necessary.

"Why? Because Republicans are trying, for the third time since he took office, to use economic blackmail to achieve a goal they lack the votes to achieve through the normal legislative process. In particular, they want to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, even though the nation can’t afford to make those tax cuts permanent and the public believes that taxes on the rich should go up — and they’re threatening to block any deal on anything else unless they get their way. So they are, in effect, threatening to tank the economy unless their demands are met.

"Mr. Obama essentially surrendered in the face of similar tactics at the end of 2010, extending low taxes on the rich for two more years. He made significant concessions again in 2011, when Republicans threatened to create financial chaos by refusing to raise the debt ceiling. And the current potential crisis is the legacy of those past concessions.

"Well, this has to stop — unless we want hostage-taking, the threat of making the nation ungovernable, to become a standard part of our political process."

President Obama's Accomplishments

Every now and again, the other side likes to claim President Obama doesn't have a record to run on. They're wrong. Here's a taste of why:

(Just a couple of) the Obama Administration's accomplishments:

1. The first bill President Obama signed was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, to help women fight back when they don't get equal pay for equal work.

2. His Recovery Act supported millions of jobs and helped to stave off a second Great Depression.

3. He pushed for and won middle-class tax cuts that benefitted every American worker, and saved the typical family $3,600 in taxes over the last four years.

4. President Obama rescued the auto industry, and now GM and Chrysler are healthier than they've ever been. The American auto industry has added nearly a quarter of a million jobs since June 2009 -- and they most likely wouldn't exist right now without President Obama's leadership.

5. He doubled funding for Pell Grants, helping to make college more affordable for nearly 10 million families.

6. His student loan reform ended billions in subsidies to banks serving as middlemen and reinvested those savings directly into students.

7. The President established the American Opportunity Tax Credit, worth up to $10,000 over four years of college.

8. His Race to the Top Initiative helped spur nearly every state to raise academic standards.

9. His tax cuts, social-welfare programs, and economic policies lifted nearly 7 million Americans above the federal poverty line in 2010.

10. President Obama has signed 18 tax cuts for small businesses since taking office.

11. We've seen 5.2 million new private-sector jobs over the last 31 months.

12. The unemployment rate is at the lowest level since President Obama took office.

13. Health care reform -- passed after decades of failed attempts by every previous President -- provides affordable health coverage to every American and will lower premiums by an average of $2,000 per family by 2019.

14. Obamacare expanded access to lifesaving preventive care such as cancer screenings and immunizations with no out-of-pocket costs for 54 million Americans.

15. Obamacare ends insurance discrimination against the 129 million Americans with pre-existing conditions.

16. Because of Obamacare, over 3 million more young adults have health insurance today than would if the new law hadn't passed.

17. The parents of over 17 million children with pre-existing conditions no longer have to worry that their children will be denied coverage.

18. President Obama has ordered the overhaul of federal government regulations to make them smarter, practical, and more efficient. Just a fraction of these commonsense initiatives will help save businesses $10 billion in the next five years alone.

19. His historic investments in clean energy have helped more than double the amount of electricity we obtain from wind and solar sources and helped increase biofuel production to its highest level in history.

20. President Obama is doubling fuel efficiency standards, which will save drivers more than $8,000 at the gas pump, not to mention lessen the impact of automobiles on our environment.

21. President Obama has taken unprecedented action to address climate change, reaching historic international agreements to curb carbon emissions, and taking action here at home to reduce carbon pollution from our vehicles and promote clean energy production.

22. He has taken historic action to protect our environment -- signing one of the largest expansions of protected wilderness in a generation and putting in place standards to reduce toxic air pollution that will save thousands of lives.

23. President Obama fought for and won landmark Wall Street reform that reins in the abuses that led to the financial crisis and ends the era of taxpayer bailouts and "too big to fail."

24. Wall Street reform created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the nation's first federal agency focused solely on consumer financial protection -- and the Bureau is already protecting families from unfair and abusive financial practices from Wall Street banks and shadowy corners of the financial industry.

25. As part of President Obama's commitment to transparency, the White House has posted its visitor records online for the first time ever.

26. President Obama's all-of-the-above approach to energy has helped cut the United States' dependence on foreign oil to its lowest level in 20 years.

27. President Obama responsibly ended the war in Iraq.

28. He announced a plan to end the war in Afghanistan and transition security responsibility to the Afghan people.

29. President Obama sent the largest security assistance package to Israel in history and funded the Iron Dome system, which is protecting Israeli homes and schools from rocket attacks.

30. President Obama rallied the international community to implement the toughest sanctions on Iran in history.

31. Through the President's historic increases in Veterans Affairs funding, he has expanded and improved healthcare and job training access for our returning veterans.

32. President Obama negotiated the New START Treaty with Russia to reduce the number of nuclear weapons in both countries. At the same time, he also secured commitments from dozens of other countries to lock down nuclear materials.

33. His administration naturalized 11,146 military service members as U.S. citizens in 2010; more than in any year since 1955.

34. President Obama set a bold new plan for the future of NASA space exploration, using the skill and ability of the private sector for short trips to the International Space Station, while building a new vehicle for exploration of distant space, and doing everything in his power to support the economy on Florida's Space Coast.

35. President Obama recognizes that tourism is one of America's largest economic engines; he's worked to encourage international visitors to come here, maintaining our security while keeping millions of Americans in good, paying jobs.

36. He has affirmed his personal support of marriage equality, directed the Justice Department to stop defending DOMA in federal courts, and took the practical and compassionate step of extending hospital visitation rights to same-sex partners.

37. He fought for and won the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, allowing gay and lesbian members of the military to serve openly for the first time in history.

38. When Congress failed to fix our broken immigration system, his administration did everything in its power to improve it, streamlining the legal immigration process and announcing a policy that lifts the shadow of deportation from hard working young immigrants brought to the U.S. as children.

39. Oh, and he gave the order to send troops in after Osama Bin Laden -- and has decimated al-Qaeda's senior leadership.

View the list here.

The Final Days, the Biggest Issue, and the Clearest Choice

by Robert Reich

Sunday, October 28, 2012

As we go into the final days of a dismal presidential campaign where too many issues have been fudged or eluded — and the media only want to talk about is who’s up and who’s down — the biggest issue on which the candidates have given us the clearest choice is whether the rich should pay more in taxes. 

President Obama says emphatically yes. He proposes ending the Bush tax cut for people earning more than $250,000 a year, and requiring those with high incomes to pay in taxes at least 30 percent of any income over $1 million (the so-called “Buffett Rule”).

Mitt Romney says emphatically no. He proposes cutting tax rates by 20 percent, which would reduce taxes on the rich far more than anyone else. He also wants to extend the Bush tax cut for the wealthy, and reduce or eliminate taxes on dividends and capital gains. 

Romney says he’ll close loopholes and eliminate deductions used by the rich so that their share of total taxes remains the same as it is now, although he refuses to specify what loopholes or deductions. But even if we take him at his word, under no circumstances would he increase the amount of taxes they pay. 

Obama is right. 

America faces a huge budget deficit. And just about everyone who’s looked at how to reduce it — the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, the bi-partisan Simpson-Bowles Commission, and almost all independent economists and analysts — have come up with some combination of spending cuts and tax increases that raise revenue.

Just last Thursday, executives of more than eighty large American corporations called for tax reform that “raises revenues and reduces the deficit.”

The practical question is who pays for those additional revenues. If Romney’s view prevails and the rich don’t pay more, everyone else has to.

That’s nonsensical. The rich are far richer than they used to be, while most of the rest of us are poorer. The latest data show the top 1 percent garnering 93 percent of all the gains from the recovery so far. But median family income is 8 percent lower than it was in 2000, adjusted for inflation. 

The gap has been widening for three decades. Since 1980 the top 1 percent has doubled its share of the nation’s total income  — from 10 percent to 20 percent. The share of the top one-tenth of 1 percent has tripled. The share of the top-most one-one hundredth of 1 percent — 16,000 families — has quadrupled. The richest 400 Americans now have more wealth than the bottom 150 million of us put together.

Meanwhile, the tax rates paid by the wealthy have dropped precipitously. Before 1981 the top marginal tax rate was never lower than 70 percent. Under President Dwight Eisenhower it was 93 percent. Even after taking all the deductions and tax credits available to them, the rich paid around 54 percent. 

The top tax rate is now only 35 percent and the tax on capital gains (increases in the value of investments) is only 15 percent. Since so much of what they earn is from capital gains, many of the super-rich, like Mitt Romney himself, pay 14 percent or less. That’s a lower tax rate than many middle-class Americans pay. 

In fact, if you add up all the taxes paid — not just on income and capital gains but also payroll taxes (which don’t apply to income above incomes of $110,100), and sales taxes — most of us are paying a higher percent of our income in taxes than are those at the top. 

So how can anyone argue against raising taxes on the rich? Easy. They say it will slow the economy because the rich are “job creators.”

In the immortal words of Joe Biden, that’s malarky. 

The economy did just fine during the three decades after World War II, when the top tax rate never fell below 70 percent. Average yearly economic growth was higher in those years than it’s been since, when taxes on the rich have been far lower. 

Bill Clinton raised taxes on the rich and the economy did wonderfully well. George W. Bush cut them and the economy slowed. 

The real job creators are America’s vast middle class, whose spending encourages businesses to expand and hire — and whose lack of spending has the opposite effect. 

That’s why the recovery has been painfully slow. So much income and wealth have gone to the top that the vast majority of Americans in the middle don’t have the purchasing power to get the economy moving again. The rich save most of what they earn, and their savings go anywhere around the world where they can get the highest return.

It would be insane to compound the damage by raising taxes on the middle class and not on the rich. 

Logic, fairness, and common sense dictate that the rich pay more in taxes. It’s the key to avoiding January’s fiscal cliff and coming up with a “grand bargain” on taming the budget deficit. And it’s central to getting the economy back on track.

It’s The Old Adage: "Facts Don't Lie, People Do" … We Get What We Deserve

by Frank Thomas

Our political system is so immersed in a sea of lies and distortions, not helped by a professionally uncritical, fact misinformed media that too often plays the snappy, surface, hype-searching analysis and interview game, ‘What do you think? And now what do you say to that?’

There are so many areas of factual and biased distortion of the issues, it’s hard to know where to begin. First, as Clinton rightly stated, the central issue facing us today is, “What is The Role of Government?” Republicans as supply-siders favor an inactive government, tax cuts  (lavishly for high income groups) overly decreased government spending, no unions, privatization of social nets like Medicare, minimum regulations of financial sectors under a small government … all to spur dynamic economic growth. The Democrats favor an active government, basic social nets to protect vulnerable people in bad times and volatile markets, government spurring of infrastructure development, quality public health care and  education, R&D, progressive taxes and closing tax loopholes … all to support middle class progress, a fair playing field, and to contain, if not reverse, our burgeoning, destabilizing income inequality gap.

Let’s review some facts/myths in three federal government areas under different presidencies: federal revenues and spending, federal debt, and job creation. Tables 1-3 confirm numerous recent studies showing persistent US poverty, falling middle class wages, rising inequality, and NO correlation between the top tax rates and economic growth (see “Taxes and the Economy: An Economic Analysis of the Top 10 Tax Rates Since 1945” by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) and the recently released Economic Policy Institute “Review of US Economic Policy”).

I.   Federal Revenues and Spending

 We are programmed that Democrats are high government spenders, big tax and budget deficit ‘producers’ and Republicans are low government spenders, low tax and budget deficit ‘producers.’ TABLE 1 examines these “Myths” (Source: Office of Management & Budget):

________________________________________________________________________
 

TABLE 1:  FEDERAL REVENUES, SPENDING, DEFICITS AS A % OF GDP  (Average Year of Presidential Terms Starting With President Carter)

                                        Revenues          Spending        Deficit(-) 

Prior 30 Year Average      18.1%                19.6%               -1.5%

(1950-1980)

Carter:    1977-80               18.4%                 20.8%                -2.4%

Reagan:  1981-88                18.2%                 22.4%                -4.2%

Bush  I:   1989-92                17.9%                 21.9%                -4.0%

Clinton:  1993-2000             19.0%                 19.8%                -0.8%

Bush  II:  2001-08                17.6%                 19.8%                -2.2%

Obama: 2009-12 (a)         15.4%                24.4%              -9.0%

(a)    Obama inherited Bush II’s mini-depression with the following carryover Deficits: 

           2009                        -10.1%
           2010                          -9.1%
           2011                          -8.7%
           2012                          -8.5%

_____________________________________________________________________________ 

Conclusions: One can hardly call Reagan and Bush I low spending and deficit producers during their presidential terms. Neither reduced the size of government as government spending was well above the 40-year average largely from an ‘explosion’ in defense spending (as generally happens under all Republican administrations). Despite aggressive tax cutting under a false “trickle down” theory, Reagan couldn’t stop the accelerating budget deficits hitting a high of 6.3% in 1983, 5% the next 3 years, falling to 3.1%  by 1988 … largely due to several tax increases by Reagan to counter lost revenues from slashing the top rate from 78% to 28%. While Reagan reduced middle class income taxes, he sharply increased regressive payroll taxes. On the positive side, he also made it tougher to evade taxes and reduced many tax breaks and shelters. He realized his initial sharp tax decreases with exceptionally high defense spending were producing serious budget deficits and debt levels despite expanded job opportunities.

Clinton’s term showed that sound tax policy and moderate spending can go hand-in-hand to produce budget surpluses. Bush II learned nothing from Reagan’s mistakes and gyrated the top rate down while loosening financial regulations even further causing one of the most dangerous recessions since the Great Depression. Little wonder tax revenues dropped during his term of office, and declined further into Obama’s presidency as consumption plummeted well below 70% of GDP.

Then comes Obama’s massive drop in revenues and increase in spending. Now we are drowning in the political chicanery so corrupting our political system … where Republicans accuse Obama of huge deficits and debt levels arising in 2009, 2010, etc., which are mainly a carryover of the Bush Administration’s mini-depression. The same applies to the substantial national debt increase Obama inherited from Bush II’s mini-depression. 

                                       II.    Federal Debt

The political right puts all the blame on Obama for our continuing high deficits and debt levels. My view is they could have been far worse without the $800 billion Obama stimulus and far less if the stimulus had been in the order of $1.2 - 1.5 trillion. Obama can be rightly blamed for not fighting all-out for more stimulus funds, for stoppage of foreclosures, and for not increasing the top income rate back to 39.5% - a very weak compromise he allowed himself to be blackmailed into to keep unemployment benefits going for the innocent victims of Bush II’s mini-depression. As all studies have proven, the tax revenue carryover loss of the Bush tax cuts and drug industry subsidies is in the order of magnitude of $2 trillion during Obama’s term.

Let’s put the historical debt trends into perspective as we have done very briefly for federal revenues, spending, and deficits under different presidents.

________________________________________________________________________

TABLE 2:  GROSS PUBLIC DEBT ON A FISCAL BASIS IN $BILLIONS  (At End of Budget Term In September)

                                  End of Budget       Term Increase
                                   Term - Sept            Amount            %

Carter:  9/30/81               $998                       --                -- 

Reagan: 9/30/89              $2,857                 $1,859           186%

Bush I:  9/30/93               $4,411                  $1,554            54%

Clinton: 9/30/2001           $5,804                  $1,396            32%

Bush II: 9/30/09               $11,910                $6,106           105%

Obama: 9/30/12              $16,000                $4,090            34%

Obama: 9/30/13 est.     $17,000               $5,090             43%         

Source: Treasury Direct, Office of Management & Budget

________________________________________________________________________

NOTE:  Monthly statistics are quoted from January, as US presidents take office at the end of January and from September, as this is the last month of the federal fiscal year. In other words, the election in November will cause a president to take office at the end of January and begin the process of passing a federal budget which takes effect in the October following the election year. Calculating financial data and job growth in this way for each president is in fact more accurate.

Conclusions:  When one properly allocates the carryover deficits and debt caused by Bush II’s policies over 8 years, then one comes to a more accurate picture of Obama’s so-called “bad management” of our nation’s finances. Don’t get me wrong. The numbers are AWFUL! But they are, relatively speaking, from a president faced with the worst structural financial crisis in 70 years, much LESS AWFUL than the debt/deficit results under Bush II’s administration. The spiraling of deficits and debt beginning in 2003 and splurging in big measure over into Obama’s term were a result of Bush tax cuts, drug firm subsidies, wars in Iraq/Afghanistan and the Great Recession.

Again, this is not to say that Obama has sufficiently and forcefully stood up to mitigate the mess he inherited from Bush II. He has given in far too easily to Republican blackmail that started the very first month of his presidency – when both Boehner and McConnell announced they would vote against all of his Administration’s key policy measures (including job stimulus) to ensure his defeat in 2012.       

But, as Table 2 shows, the percentage debt increase over Obama’s one-term was even less than Bush I’s term where there was but one small, short war with Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. But, if elected to a 2^nd term , Obama and the Democrats must come up with many more aggressive actions to keep the national debt from exploding further to the $20 trillion range by the end of his second term. This will definitely mean raising taxes on incomes – perhaps rate-stair-stepped progressively, for example,  on income  above $350,000, above $750,000, above $1,500,000, etc. Despite all of Romney’s blarney that a Defense budget of 5.5% is hardly adequate although it’s almost bankrupting us, Obama needs to get defense expenditures down to less than 4.0% of GDP (as Clinton did) over a 5 year span. This is still DOUBLE the approximate 2% of GDP expenditure rate of all other advanced countries.

Let’s now review the historical job creation trends also on a fiscal basis under various presidents as shown in Table 3.

_______________________________________________________________________

TABLE 3:  JOB CREATION ON A FISCAL BASIS – END OF BUDGET TERM  SEPTEMBER

                                               Jobs Created 1977 - 2012

Democratic Presidents              31,459,000  =  63% over  16 Years

Republican Presidents               18,097,000  =  37% over  20 years

 

Carter:               09/30/81                7,939,000

 

Reagan:    1^st Term  09/30/85           6,552,000

                2^nd Term 09/30/89          10,303,000

Sub-total                                       16,855,000

 

Bush I:                09/30/93               3,032,000

 

Clinton:    1^st Term  09/30/97           12,060,000

               2^nd Term  09/30/2001        8,106,000

Sub-total                                        20,166,000

 

Bush II:      1^st Term  09/30/05           2,716,000

                 2^nd Term 09/30/09          -4,506,000   

Sub-total                                         -1,790,000

 

Obama:          09/30/12                     3,354,000

 

Source:  BLS Data, Wikipedia          

Conclusions:  It’s seems that politicians, media, and some esteemed economists have missed the true dimensions of Obama’s turnaround of the enormous job destruction carried out under Bush II and inherited by Obama as more accurately shown on a fiscal basis in Table 3. Viewed this way: job creation went from a Positive 8.1 million under Clinton’s  2^nd term to a NEGATIVE 4.5 million under Bush II’s 2^nd term back to a Positive 3.3 million in Obama’s 1^st term of 3 years to date on a fiscal basis. Going from a positive 20 million job gain in 8 years under Clinton to negative -1.8 million job loss in 8 years under Bush II – a net disastrous negative job loss reversal of over 22 million to a positive 3.3  million jobs creation in 3 years under Obama is a significant turnaround to say the least. NOT ENOUGH BY FAR, BUT HEADED IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION!            

Let’s not forget that those officially unemployed peaked at an astronomical 15 million PLUS another 8 million underemployed as a result of the Great Recession under Bush II. During the long mini-depression created under Bush II’s watch, corporations have been taking advantage of the crisis to reduce permanently a large number of people through automation – adding more pain upon pain to the middle class while the Republican Congress has been thwarting Obama’s efforts at greater stimulus, leaving quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve as a last resort.

Given these huge comeback structural obstacles, Obama has got to step on the gas pedal for ever stronger job creation in the 200,000 a month range.  Companies are not going to do it. Only government can provide the scale of job and demand push needed through infrastructure investments. Considering the enormity of the financial chaos and job loss situation Obama inherited – the worst in 70 years - Obama has not done badly but must continue to do better.

Facts don’t lie, people do. A fact many politicians and media pundits have amorally become comfortable with in a winner-take-all political system where “hype is life” and brain dead “one-liners” sway the faithful and undecided.

POSTSCRIPT

There’s another indoctrinated MYTH out there we struggle to deal with objectively in our broken social-economic system … namely:

• High taxes discourage growth and productivity: As noted, the non-partisan Congressional Research Service research has found little relationship between the top tax rate and economic growth. In fact, 65 years of tax cuts for the wealthy have produced US “record inequality, not prosperity,” with one of the world’s highest Gini coefficients, says the CRS report.

In a recent Foreign Affairs publication, “America the Undertaxed” by Andrea Campbell, similar research also found little correlation across OECD countries between taxes as a percentage of the economy and the size of the economy itself, as measured by per capita GDP. Nor, according to this research, is there a high correlation between taxes as a percentage of GDP and the annual rate of economic growth. As Andrea Campbell says in her Foreign Affairs article:

 “With the earnings of the top one percent mostly back to their pre-recession levels ( vs. persistent stagnation for the middle class), past experience suggests that a tax hike today would NOT severely damage the economy, and productivity might even rise with the security and investments that government spending can provide.

“In proposing a mix of options to regenerate the economy, from reducing spending to raising revenue, policymakers are confronting the reality of US fiscal policy: compared with its counterparts among the advanced nations, the US tax system collects little revenue, poorly redistributes that money across the population, and is mind-bogglingly complex.”                       

This is something the Romney types unabashedly and greedily exploit to the HILT! Reagan is no doubt shouting from his grave at the elite tax avoiders and tax loophole chasers costing our nation at least $200 billion in lost tax revenues yearly!

POSTSCRIPT …Continued

May I add a few other important facts relating to how the our nation manages corporate tax revenues?

It’s important to point out that US corporate tax revenues as a source of total federal taxes has plunged from 30% in the 1950s to 10% today as described by Andrea Campbell in Foreign Affairs and my writing some time ago,  “Our Fiscal-Economic Quagmire: Some Solutions.”

Despite a seven percentage point higher gap between US top statutory corporate tax rate and the OECD average rate, the US EFFECTIVE corporate tax rate has trended around 13% vs. an  OECD rate of 16%. Thus, US business effective tax rates are LOWER, NOT HIGHER than OECD average rates, contrary to what right wing conservatives often claim.

Why is this so?

Over the years, our US superbly complex tax code has evolved through persistent insider lobbying efforts with the result that statutory rates are applied to a much narrower base of taxpayers or taxpayer adjusted income base – both for individual and corporation incomes. This has been achieved by an intricate, multi-layered barrage of business tax credits, subsidies, and breaks – all of which are practically non-existent in the tax codes of the mature OECD countries.

So, the self-serving right wing political cry the Romneys and Ryans join in that US businesses are disadvantaged with much higher effective tax rates vs. their European business competitors is simply NOT TRUE. What is TRUE, however, is that total European taxes – federal, state, and local – are higher than those of the US as a % of GDP. For example, in 2006 before the financial-crisis startup and long recession, US total tax revenues were 28% of GDP vs. 35% for the OECD. This difference was and continues to be mainly due to Europe’s very stable flowing VAT consumption tax … a tax America doesn’t have. But, over the decades for the majority of the better performing and mature European countries, this total tax difference as a % of GDP has Not resulted in notably lower GDP growth rates vs. the US. Quite the opposite, higher total taxes and clever redistribution of same have resulted in a broad-based sharing in societal progress with relatively low income/wealth gaps between the top 10% and everyone else. 

The mature OECD countries visibly and concretely see a larger share of their tax bill fairly redistributed across all regions and income classes in the form of:

• up-to-date, well-maintained infrastructures; family allowances for children and vacations; quality low-cost, standard basic health care for All with a range of standard-defined upgrades; excellent affordable coverage for serious disabilities; humanly decent unemployment compensation.

POSTSCRIPT  #3

This post Obama-Romney 1^st debate Postscript addresses the  falsehoods and non-sequiturs of the Romney/Ryan cut taxes and spending plan that they say will be Deficit Neutral – a Supply Side Economics cure-all to speed up GDP growth … a policy which caused federal debt under Reagan to increase 186% over 8 years.

Romney and Ryan’s 20% across the board tax cuts without increasing deficits raises an obvious question no one in the media or informed commentator world has raised or put in proper historical perspective.  

Romney assumes that simplifying the tax code (good idea) and then implementing broad-based aggressive tax rate cuts involving trillions in annual federal tax losses will be offset by reducing tax deductions and loopholes he doesn’t identify. BUT, this is mathematically impossible  without dramatic reductions in spending (except Defense) including social nets. This approach, says Romney and Ryan, insures a DEFICIT-NEUTRAL  effect … in other words, the same amount of taxes will be paid on a FISCAL year basis. 

The trillion dollar question is: HOW WILL THIS DEFICIT-NEUTRAL PLAN IMPROVE CONSUMER SPENDING, PRIVATE INVESTMENT and JOBS IF ABSOLUTE EFFECTIVE TAXES PAID REMAIN THE SAME ??

Romney is selling the same economic miracle Reagan/Bush II sold the public: across the board tax and spending cuts to increase jobs without gyrating deficits and debt, nor income/wealth gaps. Romney says under his plan the top 5% will still pay 60% of all income taxes as they do now … but he forgot to say 60% on a much higher total income under 20% lower marginal rates and ever lower rates on capital gains. Remember, the top 5% earn most of their income from capital gains and exploiting offshore tax havens and loopholes. 

We are hearing the same Reagan supply-sider economic assumptions that large reductions across the board in marginal income tax and capital gains tax rates will stimulate more jobs by investments while lowering deficits and debt. Table 4 captures the TRUE Big Picture of what actually happened to tax revenues, spending, deficits, debt, job creation during Reagan’s presidency.

 TABLE 4: 1981-89 FISCAL YEAR RESULTS DURING REAGAN’S TERM 

                            DATA EXPRESSED AS A % OF GDP

                                           1981-1989 Ave.     40 Year Ave.

Federal Revenues                   18.2%                            18.1%

Federal Spending                    22.4%                            20.6%

Deficit                                     -4.2%                             -2.6% 

Federal Debt (a)                    53.1%                           32.5% (Carter’s Term)

Federal Debt Increase (a)      186% = +$1.9 Trillion                             

(a) As of 9/30/1989                                                                                        

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Average Annual Jobs Increases On A Fiscal Year Basis

Carter                                2.0  Mil.

Reagan                               2.1  Mil.                                            

Bush I                                 0.4  Mil.                                                             

Clinton                                2.5  Mil.                                                                

Bush II                               -0.2  Mil.                                                      

Obama                               1.1  Mil. (10/30/2009—09/30/2012)

Sources: Office of Management & Budget, BLS

Reagan’s Supply Side Economic plan increased average annual job growth 2.5% or 2.1 million per year vs. 4% or 2.0 million per year  under Carter. Reagan´s job growth was no better than Carter´s. GDP growth did improve to an average of 1.8% vs. 0.8% under Carter with high inflation.  BUT, Reagan´s supply-side Trickle/Down  tax-spending-cut panacea caused annual deficit and debt levels to MUSHROOM … despite his commendable efforts eliminating tax loopholes and tax avoidance and changing his mind to increase taxes 11 times to offset resulting big deficits! In fact, average yearly growth in federal tax revenues hardly grew as a % of GDP from levels that would have been realized WITHOUT the substantial net tax rate decreases.

Furthermore, unlike Reagan promised, spending INCREASED as a %  of  GDP, not helped by an explosion in Defense spending. Not surprisingly, INCOME and WEALTH GAPS began widening considerably between the top 10% and all other Americans.                      

So, just the OPPOSITE revenues, spending, deficits, debt results and  income-wealth gaps happened from what Reagan  promised – and what Romney and Ryan are now similarly promising with their extreme supply side economics of across the board tax rate cuts under the premise of being Deficit Neutral … an equitable income improvement for the middle class. These were exactly Reagan words when he said a just economic model is one where, “A rising tide lifts all boats.”

WHY DID ABOVE NOT HAPPEN?

Reagan’s income tax rate cuts grossly favored the rich who did not trickle down their expanded income/wealth to the middle class. His lowering of income tax rates for the bottom 50% was largely offset by higher regressive payroll taxes for lower income people. Tax revenue growth remained stagnant and the rate of spending did NOT decline.                                                                                      

His administration forgot, as Romney and Ryan are now conveniently forgetting, that the so-called Laffer Curve  – or  better said, Laugher Curve which is the foundation of conservative Supply Side Economics theory – even warns that tax rates too high or too small will NOT MAXIMIZE tax revenues and hence GDP growth.  Reagan´s extreme tax-cut  policies fell into this trap despite curtailment of tax avoidance schemes and later raising taxes 11 times. Spending grew at a much faster rate and revenues at a very slow rate … with resultant deficit/debt acceleration.                  

What happened under Reagan´s policies was rightly called VOODOO ECONOMICS by President Bush I.  In fact, Reagan´s goal of lowering taxes to increase revenues was seen by many experts as really a “smokescreen” for starving the government of revenues, thus making it smaller.”  Does this right wing goal sound familiar today? Government under Reagan  as well as Bush I, Clinton, Bush II did NOT get smaller.                              

Reagan´s  `Trickle Down´ idea that we can produce our way out of economic slowdowns by seriously cutting taxes and spending without exploding deficits and debt proved FALSE.  California is on the constant edge of bankruptcy from extreme Supply Side Economic policies inherited from Reagan. Such a  policy idea is only TRUE  or possibly has merit  in a HIGH TAX environment which the US does not have and in a WEAK TAX REDISTRIBUTION environment which the US does have. Lowering US taxes under these two  conditions to the right level could indeed raise net tax revenues and cause improved  economic growth. BUT today, the US already has very LOW EFFECTIVE corporate and individual marginal tax rates compared to most developed countries.                                                                               

Compounding the false basis of the Romney/Ryan plan is a gross underestimation of the depth of the Bush mini-Depression hangover where companies are still engaged in balance sheet deleveraging, canceling/delaying investments, laying off/outsourcing workers all to increase cash; and  consumers are still struggling to pay off debts and increase savings; banks building up profit reserves, management bonuses, and restraining lending.                                                                   

This all means the Romney/Ryan (Reagan-like) plan of significantly reducing tax rates for personal income, capital gains, and corporate income will have a negligible effect on job growth, deficit and debt reduction even more so when incorporating idea of OFFSETTING resulting tax revenues losses in the trillions with comparable reductions tax deductions and loopholes.                                          

What Romney/Ryan are in effect saying is that total absolute federal taxes will remain the SAME.                                                              

How does this benefit anyone? Will still unknown Giant cuts in discretionary spending and social nets do the job – e.g., privatize Medicare, repeal Affordable Health Care Act while getting rid of Dodd-Frank financial regulation legislation? How to do this without worsening a slow but steadily improving economic situation and without exacerbating deficits and debt as Reagan and particularly Bush II did on a perilously grand scale? How to do this without investing in infrastructure and education? Without forcing states to increase taxes and fees to compensate for vastly reduced federal support?                      

Romney and Ryan remain vague and obtuse about these questions while comforting those understandably skeptical with the words,  “Trust us, we intend to work together with our Democratic colleagues across the table to arrive at a suitable compromise.”

This brings me back to my original trillion dollar QUESTION:

HOW WILL THIS `DEFICIT-NEUTRAL´ PLAN IMPROVE CONSUMER SPENDING, PRIVATE INVESTMENT and JOBS … IF ABSOLUTE EFFECTIVE TAXES PAID REMAIN THE SAME??

What Republicans Don't Want You To Know About Medicare

by John Lawrence from the San Diego Free Press

According to Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, President Obama is taking $716 billion away from Medicare and giving it to Obamacare. No he's not. We attempt to set the record straight. The crux of the matter has to do with what's called Medicare Advantage which is a privatized version of Medicare. Neither side will use the word privatization, but in a nutshell that's what this issue is all about. That $716 billion represents a pushback by the Obama administration against the forces of privatization which have been at work against government run Medicare for years.

In 1997 our old friend, Newt Gingrich, established the privatization camel's nose under the tent of traditional Medicare with the Balanced Budget Act which included a provision for something called  Medicare+Choice, the precursor to Medicare Advantage. This act let private health care companies compete with traditional government run Medicare. This was step 1 in the privatization of Medicare. During the Bush administration the name was changed to Medicare Advantage. It was an advantage all right - for the private health care corporations who were paid more for each procedure than doctors were paid under government run traditional Medicare - 14% more. In other words Republican congressmen made Medicare Advantage a more attractive program then traditional Medicare, and this lured seniors in opting for Medicare Advantage rather than sticking with traditional Medicare. It was hardly a level playing field. Medicare Advantage was a disadvantage for traditional Medicare.

It is this "advantage" of the Medicare Advantage program that Obamacare seeks to take away which leads to the charge by Romney-Ryan that Obama is taking $716 billion from Medicare and giving it to Obamacare. What he is really doing is taking the $716 billion from the privatized version of Medicare, Medicare Advantage, and using that money to cover poor people thus approaching universal health care coverage for all. Of course, covering poor people at the expense of the private health care corporations' profits is anathema to Republicans.

But let's step back a little in order to try and understand the bewildering array of programs which constitute the social safety net of Medicare. First you pay payroll taxes your entire working life. They're called FICA (Federal Insurance Contribution Act) if you're an employee and SECA (Self Employment Insurance Act) if you're self-employed. It turns out that if you're self employed you pay twice as much in payroll taxes as you do if you're an employee thanks to changes made by Alan Greenspan and Ronald Reagan giving the lie to the Republican meme that they're all about helping the small business person, but that's another story for another day. FICA taxes consist of two parts: social security tax and hospital insurance tax. Hospital insurance tax is what pays for Medicare Part A when you're 65 and enroll in Medicare. Now Medicare Part B is a whole different story. This is the part that pays your doctor and is entirely optional. You can choose to enroll in it and pay a premium (now it's around $100. a month) or to not enroll. Medicare Advantage, which is also called Medicare Part C, is only about Medicare Part B. Confused yet? An enrollee can choose traditional Medicare (Part B) or Medicare Advantage (Part C). Both require a monthly premium.

The Republican plan is to lure seniors away from traditional or government run or "socialized" Medicare and direct them to Medicare Advantage programs run by private insurance corporations. Eventually and stealthily, this would privatize Medicare in and of itself as Medicare Advantage enrollees reach critical mass. Traditional Medicare would then be left to wither on the vine. How do the private insurance companies attract enrollees away from traditional Medicare, you might ask? Good question. They offer some services that traditional Medicare doesn't - like free annual check ups. Thanks to Republican monkeying this logical cost reducing preventative measure has been denied to traditional Medicare recipients ... until Obamacare. Obamacare gives traditional Medicare recipients free preventative benefits - an annual physical exam, colonoscopies and so on. This nullifies the advantage of Medicare Advantage, and is why the Republicans are up in arms. Their carefully laid plan to privatize Medicare is being nullified by Obamacare.

How does Medicare Advantage offer free servuces that traditional Medicare doesn't? It's all about that 114% advantage of traditional fees-for-service that the government pays to the private health care corporations. They then have the option of paying doctors more than they would get for the same service provided to a traditional Medicare enriollee or they can provide more services than a traditional Medicare enrollee is offered or they can keep the money and pay their CEOs more. That's one reason why administrative costs for Medicare provided by private insurance companies are 30% and administrative costs for government run traditional Medicare are 3%.

When Romney-Ryan assert that Obamacare would be taking Medicare away from seniors, they may be partly right because that 14% advantage enjoyed by Medicare Advantage will be taken away. That's what constitutes the $716 billion. Doctors who are receiving more for providing the same service may not be too happy about that. As it is, many doctors refuse to take on Medicare patients because the reimbursements are so low. Also the private health care corporations may cut back on their "lures" - the freebies like gym membership and visual care that they offer that traditional Medicare doesn't. That's why the Obama administration is hesitant to confront this issue head on. They don't want to piss off doctors and seniors who are already enrolled in Medicare Advantage. Many of the advantages of Medicare Advantage will be nullified.

But Medicare Advantage has a dark side. With traditional Medicare you can go to any doctor you want, even specialists, without a referral. You can get a second opinion, even a third if you choose. With Medicare Advantage you have to stick to a certain network of doctors, and you can even be refused treatment under some circumstances. Ah, there's the rub. Medicare Advantage will offer you lures ... cheap lures, but when it comes down to those expensive operations, you might be refused by the insurance corporations the permission to undergo the operation. After all, that's how they make their money - denying service for the expensive stuff while luring you with the cheap stuff.

Step 2 in the privatization of Medicare has to do with the fact that Medicare Part B (traditional Medicare) only pays 80% of the doctor's fees. That other 20% could amount to a lot of money with today's skyrocketing medical costs. But no worries - private health care corporations to the rescue! They offer Medicare supplemental or Medigap insurance. For a small premium (yeah, right) they pay the other 20%. So why doesn't the government offer 100% coverage for a slight additional premium? Right now Medicare Part B costs around $100. a month for 80% coverage. Why not charge a $120. premium for 100% coverage? Instead private health insurance corporations are charging as much or more for the additional 20% as folks are paying the government for the first 80%! Republican meddling and monkeying is responsible for getting the private health insurance corporations' camel's nose under the tent of traditional Medicare Part B. Jeez, thanks Republicans for letting me pay as much to the private health insurance corporations for 20% coverage as I pay the government for 80% coverage. Why isn't this a major issue? But you'll never hear Brian Williams, Scott Pelley or Wolf Blitzer talk about it.

Step 3 in the privatization of Medicare is the by now famous Paul Ryan plan to voucherize Medicare. Whereas the Gingrich plan resulting in Medicare Advantage (advantage to the private corporations) is a Trojan horse sneak attempt, the Ryan voucherization plan is a head long assault on Medicare. It would pay seniors X amount of dollars and then they could go fend for themselves in the private health insurance market. Seniors would have to pony up greater and greater amounts as the government supplied stipends fall increasingly short of the amount required. Also all the old health insurance corporation tricks such as rescission would be reinstated. That means that sick seniors would have to pay astronomcal premiums even to get any health insurance at all, and desperate seniors might be denied a life saving operation. The insurance company not your doctor would decide.

At the root of Medicare's problems is the skyrocketing cost of health care. Cancer drugs are coming on the market which delay death by only a few months but yet cost astronomical amounts. For instance, the cost of the drug Perjeta when combined with Herceptin costs $188,000., but delays the final denouement of death by only six months. It costs $120,000. for four injections of Yervoy which extends the life of advanced melanoma patients by about four months. A Newsweek article asks "How Much Would You Pay For Three More Months of Life?" You can bet your bippie that Paul Ryan's privatized Medicare would not pay it. So expensive therapies and life extending operations are inevitably going to be available only to the rich regardless of whether or not Medicare is privatized or left entirely to the government.

But don't take it from me that taking money away from the privatized Medicare Advantage program and putting it back into traditional Medicare is a good thing. Take it from Wendell Potter who was an insurance industry insider who turned whistleblower:

While insurers liked the part of [Obamacare] reform that would require all Americans not eligible for Medicare or Medicaid to buy coverage from them, they did not like the provision that would eliminate the overpayments the federal government has been paying private insurers for years to participate in the Medicare Advantage program, which was created when Republicans controlled both chambers of Congress in the late 1990s.

A little history: A provision of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, written primarily by the insurance industry and backed by House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, gave Medicare beneficiaries the option of getting their benefits through private insurers. Republicans envisioned this as the first step toward the total privatization of Medicare.

The problem was that insurers were reluctant to jump in unless they could be assured of a substantial profit. To get them to market Medicare Advantage plans, the [Republicans in] government agreed to give them a big bonus. As a result, we the taxpayers now pay private insurers 14 percent more than the per-patient cost of the traditional Medicare program. These overpayments have contributed significantly to the record profits insurance companies have been posting in recent years, even though only 22 percent of people eligible for Medicare have bought what they’re selling.

The insurers were not able to keep the Democrat-controlled Congress of 2010 from eliminating those bonuses when they passed the Affordable Care Act. The law will indeed reduce future Medicare spending—not benefits—by an estimated $500 million over the next 10 years in a variety of ways, one of which is to stop overpaying insurers. This means that they will not get an extra $136 billion that they—and their shareholders—had been counting on, and they’re really bummed about that.

As per usual you won't get the straight scoop from either the Republicans or the Democrats but at heart Obamacare VS Paul Ryan's Vouchercare is an ideological struggle. It's all about privatization vs government run health care or "socialization". Neither side will mention this ideological struggle or the words "privatization" and "socialization" because they have been so thoroughly demonized. The Democrats will not try to convince you that you will be better off if government runs the Medicare program, and the Republicans will not tell you what's in store if private health insurers run the program. So neither side will get near the root of the issue. After all we don't think we want "Big Government" and we don't want to be at the mercy of the profit seeking, highly paid CEOs at their corporate desks either. And so this essentially ideological debate is trivialized.

John Lawrence is enrolled in traditional Medicare Part B and has opted out of supplemental Medicare or Medigap coverage.

Whose Plan Destroys Medicare — Obama’s or Romney-Ryan’s?

by Robert Reich

Monday, August 13, 2012

Stumping in Florida today, Mitt Romney charged President Obama’s Affordable Care Act will “cut more than $700 billion” out of Medicare.

What Romney didn’t say was that his running-mate’s budget — approved by House Republicans and by Romney himself — would cut Medicare by the same amount.

The big difference, though, is the Affordable Care Act achieves these savings by reducing Medicare payments to drug companies, hospitals, and other providers rather than cutting payments to Medicare beneficiaries. A July 24, 2012 report from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office confirms this.

The Romney-Ryan plan, by contrast, achieves its savings by turning Medicare into a voucher whose value doesn’t keep up with expected increases in healthcare costs — thereby shifting the burden onto Medicare beneficiaries, who will have to pay an average of $6,500 a year more for their Medicare insurance, according an  analysis of the Republican plan by the Congressional Budget Office.

Moreover, the Affordable Care Act uses its Medicare savings to help children and lower-income Americans afford health care, and to help seniors pay for prescription drugs by filling the so-called “donut hole” in Medicare Part D coverage.

The Romney-Ryan plan uses the savings to finance even bigger tax cuts for the very wealthy.

Spread the word. Don’t allow the GOP to get away with this demagoguery.

The Terrible Economy and the Anti-Election of 2012

by Robert Reich

Sunday, July 29, 2012

The worst economy since the Great Depression and you might think at least one of the candidates would come up with a few big ideas for how to get us out of it.

But you’d be wrong. Neither candidate wants to take any chances by offering any large, serious proposals. Both are banking instead on negative campaigns that convince voters the other guy would be worse.

President Obama has apparently decided against advancing any bold ideas for what he’d do in the second term, even if he has a Congress that would cooperate with him. 

He’s sticking to a worn script that says George W. Bush caused the lousy economy, congressional Republicans have opposed everything he’s wanted to do to boost it, it’s slowly on the mend anyway, the Bush tax cuts shouldn’t be extended for the rich, and we shouldn’t take a chance electing Romney.

Yet the public wants bigger ideas from the President, and wants to know what he’ll do in his second term to get us out of this mess. A New York Times-CBS News poll released last week showed that a majority of voters believe the president “can do a lot about” the economy. That’s a double-digit jump from the fall of 2011.

The President could propose a new WPA, modeled after the Depression-era jobs program that hired hundreds of thousands of jobless Americans to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure, or a new Civilian Conservation Corps.

He could suggest permanently exempting the first $25,000 of income from payroll taxes, and making up the lost revenues by eliminating the ceiling on income subject to it. He could propose resurrecting the Glass-Steagall Act and breaking up the big banks, so Wall Street doesn’t cause another financial collapse.

But you won’t hear any of this, or anything else of this magnitude, because the White House doesn’t want to take any risks. Polls give Obama a slight edge in the critical eight or so battleground states, so, the thinking goes in the Obama camp, why say anything that might give Romney and the GOP a target?

Besides, polls also show Romney isn’t well-liked by the electorate.

So Obama has decided to campaign as the anti-Romney.

Mitt Romney is playing it even more cautiously. His economic plan is really a non-plan: more tax cuts for the rich, undefined spending cuts, and no details about how he’d bring down the budget deficit. No presidential candidate since Herbert Hoover in 1928 has been more vague about what he’d do on the critical issues facing the nation.

Romney’s advisors assume Obama can’t possibly be reelected with the economy this bad. Just 44 percent of registered voters in a Washington Post-ABC News poll earlier this month approve of the job the president is doing on the economy, while 54 percent disapprove. Even more encouraging for Romney is that 41 percent of those polled “strongly” disapproved of Obama’s economic performance, while just 21 percent “strongly” approved — an enthusiasm gap of major proportion.

So Romney’s advisors have concluded that all Romney has to do between now and Election Day is avoid a mistake that might give Obama and the Democrats something to shoot at.

Romney has decided to campaign as the anti-Obama.

The two anti-the-other-guy strategies fit with a ton of negative advertising that’s just begun but will reach mammoth proportions after Labor Day. Much of it will be financed by super-PACs and by political fronts already taking in hundreds of millions of dollars in secret donations. Romney’s camp hopes to out-negative Obama by almost two to one.

So whatever happens on Election Day, the next president will have to contend with two handicaps. The public won’t have endorsed any new ideas or bold plans, which means he won’t have a clear mandate to do anything on the economy.

The only thing the public will have decided is it fears and distrusts the other guy more. Which means the winner will also be burdened by almost half the electorate thinking he’s a scoundrel or worse.

The worst economy since the Great Depression, but we’re in an anti-election that will make it harder for the next occupant of the oval office to do a thing about it.

Obama the Socialist? Not Even Close

from the New York Times

By MILOS FORMAN

Published: July 10, 2012

WHEN I was asked to direct “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” my friends warned me not to go anywhere near it.

The story is so American, they argued, that I, an immigrant fresh off the boat, could not do it justice. They were surprised when I explained why I wanted to make the film. To me it was not just literature but real life, the life I lived in Czechoslovakia from my birth in 1932 until 1968. The Communist Party was my Nurse Ratched, telling me what I could and could not do; what I was or was not allowed to say; where I was and was not allowed to go; even who I was and was not.

Now, years later, I hear the word “socialist” being tossed around by the likes of Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and others. President Obama, they warn, is a socialist. The critics cry, “Obamacare is socialism!” They falsely equate Western European-style socialism, and its government provision of social insurance and health care, with Marxist-Leninist totalitarianism. It offends me, and cheapens the experience of millions who lived, and continue to live, under brutal forms of socialism.

My sister-in-law’s father, Jan Kunasek, lived in Czechoslovakia all his life. He was a middle-class man who ran a tiny inn in a tiny village. One winter night in 1972, during a blizzard, a man, soaked to the bone, awakened him at 2 in the morning. The man looked destitute and, while asking for shelter, couldn’t stop cursing the Communists. Taking pity, the elderly Mr. Kunasek put him up for the night.

A couple of hours later, Mr. Kunasek was awakened again, this time by three plainclothes policemen. He was arrested, accused of sheltering a terrorist and sentenced to several years of hard labor in uranium mines. The state seized his property. When he was finally released, ill and penniless, he died within a few weeks. Years later we learned that the night visitor had been working for the police. According to the Communists, Mr. Kunasek was a class enemy and deserved to be punished.

I found myself in an equally absurd, but less depressing, situation when I was moonlighting on Czech TV as a moderator, introducing movies, in the early ’50s. It was live, so there was no chance to bleep politically undesirable words. Every utterance, even in supposedly spontaneous interviews, had to be scripted, approved by the censors, learned by heart and repeated verbatim on the air.

When I was preparing to interview one Comrade Homola, a powerful Communist, I sent him questions, but didn’t receive his answers. My boss, also a powerful party member, told me: “He is lazy! Write his answers for him, and remind him to learn them by heart.” So I did.

Comrade Homola arrived at the last moment. When the red light went on and I asked the first question, he reached into his pocket, took out my answers and started to read them, awkwardly and obediently — including my inadvertent grammatical mistakes. And thus, to my consternation, went the whole interview. In the control booth, my boss hit the roof. I was fired the next day for ridiculing a representative of the state.

Whatever his faults, I don’t see much of a socialist in Mr. Obama or, thankfully, signs of that system in this great nation. Mr. Obama is accused of trying to expand the reach of government — into health care, financial regulation, the auto industry and so on. It’s fair to question whether the federal government should have expanded powers: America, to its credit, has debated this since its birth. But let’s be clear about how frightening socialism actually could be.

Marx believed that we could wipe out social inequities and Lenin tested those ideas on the Soviet Union. It was his dream to create a classless society. But reality set in, as it always does. And the results were devastating. Blood flowed through Russia’s streets. The Soviet elite usurped all privileges; sycophants were allowed some and the plebes none. The entire Eastern bloc, including Czechoslovakia, followed miserably.

I’m not sure Americans today appreciate quite how predatory socialism was. It was not — as Mr. Obama’s detractors suggest — merely a government so centralized and bloated that it hobbled private enterprise: it was a spoils system that killed off everything, all in the name of “social justice.”

What we need is not to strive for a perfect social justice — which never existed and never will — but for social harmony. Harmony in music is, by its nature, exhilarating and soothing. In an orchestra, the different players and instruments perform together, in support of an overall melody.

Today, our democracy, a miraculous gathering of diverse players, desperately needs such unity. If all participants play fair and strive for the common good, we can achieve a harmony that eluded the doctrinaire socialist projects. But if just one section, or even one player, is out of tune, the music will disintegrate into cacophony.

I am not asking Mr. Obama and the Republican leaders to stop playing instruments of their choosing. All I am asking is that every player keep in mind the noble melody of our country. Otherwise the noisy dissonance might become loud enough to wake another Marx, or even worse.

Milos Forman won Academy Awards for best director for the films “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Amadeus.”

Mitt Romney: Vulture Capitalist

by John Lawrence

I have never heard so many conservative pundits offering gratuitous avuncular advice to Barack Obama that his campaign strategy attacking Bain Capital will not get him anywhere. Joe Scarborough of Morning Joe on msnbc and others have gone on and on about how using Bain Capital against Mitt Romney is not a good strategy. Well, when conservatives offer advice to Barack Obama about what will or will not work for him, Obama better do just the opposite of what they recommend because ultimately they want him to lose. Therefore, he should double down, not abandon, the Bain Capital strategy.

But the problem with Obama is that he starts out praising Romney for being a good businessman (Clinton said he was "superlative"), certainly something no Republican would do for Obama. Then Obama goes on to say that, while Romney created wealth for himself and his investors, the President of the US must be concerned about creating jobs for everyone. This is a roundabout, circuitous route to putting Romney down, a circumlocution, something the Republicans would never do. Instead, they start right our calling Obama a failure. Obama starts out praising Romney, then seeming to walk on eggshells aiming at a scholarly criticism of his activities at Bain. Obama should get right to the point: Romney made his money at Bain by destroying jobs and companies, picking over their bones like the vulture he is.

Bain Capital is a private equity (formerly known as leveraged buyout) firm. They changed the name  to protect the guilty. What they do is to pick the bones of perfectly healthy companies and in many cases drive them into bankruptcy. Here's how it works: they buy a private company with borrowed money (the leverage in leveraged buyout). But they don't buy just any company. They buy one with assets they can strip. It just so happens that they usually buy companies that have a unionized work force. Why? Because a company with a unionized work force usually has a pension fund. Their goal is to get their hands on that pension fund and transfer that asset to Bain Capital. So they borrow the money to buy a company, strip the pension fund and fire all the unionized workers. Then they hire a nonunionized work force to do the same jobs at half the pay. In this way they claim to have made the company "more efficient." Contrary to Republican hogwash, wealthy Individuals like Romney are job destroyers not job creators. Then the vulture capitalists borrow as much money as they can using the company itself as collateral. The next thing they do is to pay Mitt Romney himself, his partners and investors all the borrowed money plus the pension fund. They may also sell off parts of the company or move jobs overseas. Then the company is left to sink or swim on its own. If it can manage to pay all the increased debt Bain Capital put it in, it swims. If not, it sinks and goes bankrupt. In either case, Mitt Romney and Bain Capital have made tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.

President Obama's attack on Romney and Bain Capital has been rather tepid and timid. He essentially says that, while Romney and Bain have done wonderfully well for Bain Capital's investors making them a lot of money, that this is not the skill set required of the President of the United States who has to create jobs for the general public, not make a lot of money for investors. This is typical Barack Obama rationalizing. Instead, he should go for Romney's jugular, something the Republicans including Romney never fail to do, not congratulate him on making money for his investors. First of all, even the companies that have managed to survive the Bain treatment have ended up with a non-union work force working for minimal pay. The fact that Staples and some others are successful companies has nothing to do with it. Staples was never acquired by Bain. They just played a venture capital role there. Romney's role as a vulture capitalist was to identify companies with tangible assets and then to figure out a way to get control of those assets for Bain and its investors. But it gets worse from there.

This is from the LA Times:

Bain Capital had bought a controlling interest in a paper products company called Ampad for $5 million in 1992. Two years later, after Ampad bought a factory in Marion, Ind., the new management team dismissed about 200 workers, slashed salaries and benefits, and hired strikebreakers after the union called a walkout. “We were just fired,” Randy Johnson, a former worker and union officer at the Marion plant, recalled in a telephone interview. “They came in and said, ‘You’re all fired. If you want to work for us, here’s an application.’ We had insurance until the end of the week. That was it. It was brutal.” In October 1994, Johnson and other striking workers drove to Massachusetts to protest Romney’s Senate campaign. “We chased him everywhere,” Johnson recalled. “He took good jobs with benefits, and created low-wage, part-time, no-benefit jobs. That’s what he was creating with his investments.”

The Republicans like to point out how Solyndra, which was invested in by Obama's administration and then went bankrupt, was a huge flop. No matter how many successes the Obama administration has had, Republicans will characterize the whole program as a failure because of the failure of a small part of it. They don't mention the other successes like saving General Motors. By the same token Obama should talk about Ampad, GST Steel, Aventis and other companies whose bones have been picked by Romney and Bain and ignore any successes Romney and Bain might have had.

This is from Rolling Stone:

And let's take a look at the record specifically of Bain Capital, which Romney owned from 1992 to 2001. • 1988: Bain put $10 million down to buy Stage Stores, and in the mid-'90s took it public, collecting $184 million from stock offerings. Stage filed for bankruptcy in 2000. • 1992: Bain bought American Pad & Paper, investing $5 million, and collected $107 million from dividends. The business filed for bankruptcy in 2000. • 1993: Bain invested $25 million when buying GS Industries, and received $58 million from dividends. GS filed for bankruptcy in 2001. • 1994: Bain put $27 million down to buy medical equipment maker Dade Behring. Dade borrowed $230 million to buy some of its shares. Dade went bankrupt in 2002. • 1997: Bain invested $41 million when buying Details, and collected at least $70 million from stock offerings. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2003.

President Obama is afraid to criticize Romney's Bain Capital days because Republicans will accuse him of being against capitalism. Well, so what. Today's capitalism is not your Grandfather's capitalism. If a law were passed making it illegal to raid a company's pension fund and make a large payout to investors, would that be against capitalism? Capitalism is malleable. It only exists within a legal framework. Some of it should be outlawed like the part that let Romney buy companies with borrowed money and then take a tax writeoff because the money was borrowed. Wall street lobbyists have changed the laws regarding capitalism to their own advantage. The Commodities Futures Modernization Act of 2000 deregulated derivatives and helped to cause the financial meltdown of 2008. Advocating reregulating derivatives is not anti-capitalistic. So if Obama were to go after Romney's record as a vulture capitalist, it does not mean he is against capitalism, only capitalism as it has been "modernized" and deregulated.

Obama should double down on what Romney and  Bain Capital really did which was to load companies up with debt, take the borrowed money for their own personal benefit, raid pension funds, fire unionized workers and hire nonunionized ones at much reduced pay, sell off profitable parts of companies and then force them into bankruptcy. This is exactly what a vulture does: picks apart a carcass for its own profit. He should not give Romney one iota of credit for making money for himself and his investors. After all Romney will never be caught dead giving Obama one iota of credit for anything.

Why “We’re on the Right Track” Isn’t Enough, and What Obama’s Plan Should Be For Boosting the Economy

by Robert Reich

Thursday, April 19, 2012

President Obama’s electoral strategy can best be summed up as: “We’re on the right track, my economic policies are working, we still have a long way to go but stick with me and you’ll be fine.”

That’s not good enough. This recovery is too anemic, and the chance of an economic stall between now and Election Day far too high.

Even now, Mitt Romney’s empty “I’ll to it better” refrain is attracting as many voters as Obama’s “we’re on the right track.” Each man is gathering 46 percent of voter support, according to the latest New York Times/CBS poll. Only 33 percent of the public thinks the economy is improving while 40 percent say they’re still falling behind financially — an 11 point increase from 2008. Nearly two-thirds are concerned about paying for housing, and one in five with mortgages say they’re underwater.

If the economy stalls, Romney’s empty promise will look even better. And I’d put the odds of a stall at 50-50. That puts the odds of a Romney presidency far too high for comfort. Need I remind you that Romney enthusiastically supports Paul Ryan’s wildly regressive budget, and as president would be able to make at least one or possibly two Supreme Court appointments, and control the EPA and every other federal agency and department? 

The Obama White House should face it: “We’re on the right track” isn’t sufficient. The President has to offer the nation a clear, bold strategy for boosting the economy. It should be the economic mandate for his second term. 

It should consist of four points:  

First, Obama should demand that the nation’s banks modify mortgages of homeowners still struggling in the wake of Wall Street’s housing bubble — threatening that if the banks fail to do so he’ll fight to resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act and break up Wall Street’s biggest banks (as the Dallas Fed recently recommended). 

Second, he should condemn oil speculators for keeping gas prices high — demanding that the oil companies allow the Commodity Futures Trading Corporation to set limits on such speculation and instructing the Justice Department to investigate and prosecute oil price manipulation.

Third, he should stand ready to make further job-creating investments in the nation’s crumbling infrastructure, and renew his call for an infastructure bank. And while he understands the need to reduce the nation’s long-term budget deficit, he won’t allow austerity economics to take precedence over job creation. He’ll veto budget cuts until unemployment is down to 5 percent.

Finally, he should make clear the underlying problem is widening inequality. With so much of the nation’s disposable income and wealth going to the top, the vast middle class doesn’t have the purchasing power it needs to fire up the economy. That’s why the Buffett rule, setting a minimum tax rate for millionaires, is just a first step for ensuring that the gains from growth are widely shared.

The President can still say we’re on the right track. But he should also say he’s not content with the pace of the recovery and will do everything in his power to quicken it. And he should ask the American people for a mandate in his second term to make the economy work for everyone, not just those at the top.

Such a mandate can be put into effect only with a Congress that’s committed to better jobs and wages for all Americans. He should remind voters that congressional Republicans prevented him from doing all that was needed in the first term, and they must not be allowed to do so again.

 

The Road We've Traveled

 

Obama Can Do More on Oil Prices

Published on Tuesday, March 6, 2012 by Common Dreams

by Ralph Nader

Gasoline and heating oil prices are ratcheting up. In California, some motorists are paying over $5 per gallon. President Obama declared that "there is no quick fix" for this problem. Meanwhile, the hapless but howling Republicans are blaming him for the fuel surge as if he is a price control czar.

Indeed, President Obama has some proper power to cool off retail petroleum prices. David Stockman, President Ronald Reagan's Budget Director, said it plainly on CNN last week, "Stop beating the war drums right now [against Iran], and Obama could do that, and he could say the neocons are history." Having done his stint on Wall Street, Stockman knows that war talk by the war hawks inside and outside of our government is just what the speculators on the New York Mercantile Exchange want to hear as they bid up the price. Your gasoline prices are not charging up due to strains between supply and demand. Speculation, with those notorious derivatives and swaps, is what is poking larger holes in your fuel budget, according to Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement lawyers. The too-big-to-fail Wall Street gamblers - Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley - are at it again.

Dr. Mark Cooper of the Consumer Federation of America documented that speculation added $600 to the average family's gasoline expenditures in 2011. Earlier, the head of Exxon/Mobil estimated that speculation was responsible for over $40 per barrel in price increase at a time when oil was more than $100 per barrel.

Last June, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chairman, Gary Gensler, declared in New York City that "huge inflows of speculative money create a self-fulfilling prophecy that drives up commodity prices."

Mr. Gensler and the CFTC received more legislated authority to police these Wall Street gamblers, but key members of Congress refused to give him a budget to, in his words, "be a more effective cop on the beat," at a time of sharply-increasing trading volume. Congressional campaign budgets are being swelled by campaign contributions from those very Wall Street gamblers. This is called "cash-register politics." Meanwhile, you the people pay and pay at the pump and wonder why no one is doing anything about it.

But an inadequate budget only explains part of Mr. Gensler's problems. He is continually undermined by other CFTC Commissioners who do not want real enforcement action. He also seems to be wearing down under the pressure.

Back in the 1970s, a sudden increase in gasoline prices - even a few cents - led to an uproar among consumers and demands for regulation, price controls and other government action. Now that the New York Mercantile Exchange, with its big banking and hedge fund speculators loading up on fat profits and bonuses is right here in the U.S., officials are throwing up their hands saying "there are no quick fixes."

Yet by the constant Israeli-Obama-Hillary Clinton-Congressional-AIPAC belligerent talk about Iran developing a capability to produce nuclear weapons is provoking Tehran's warnings about the Straits of Hormuz, and the oil price speculators are having a field day with your gas dollars.

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) regularly demands that that Obama's regulators impose limits on oil speculations. He asserts that the "skyrocketing price of gas and oil has nothing to do with the fundamentals of supply and demand." Even Goldman Sachs analyst, David Greely, claimed Wall Street speculation in the futures market is driving up oil prices.

In response to such clamorings, President Obama announced in April 2011 a new inter-agency working group to combat fraud. Don't hold your breath waiting for any action here.

So why doesn't President Obama invite the various industries such as the trucking and airline companies that are hurt by spiraling oil prices, together with consumer groups, motorist organizations, such as AAA and Better World Society, and the relevant government agencies to generate the pressure on Congress and the recalcitrant members of the CFTC to stop fronting for the Wall Street casino giants?

Mr. Obama and Energy Secretary Chu keep saying that there is enough oil in world markets and that speculatively-driven higher oil prices are undermining the U.S. economic recovery. Yet Mr. Obama seems unwilling to fully use his administration's existing authority to crack down on the surging speculation.

There is much more action possible under current statutory authority for the regulators to use and earn their salaries. They need to hear louder rumblings from the people. While the people need, whenever possible and safe, to walk short distances instead of drive there, if only to stiffen their determination to fight back in more than one way.

Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His most recent book - and first novel - is, Only The Super-Rich Can Save Us. His most recent work of non-fiction is The Seventeen Traditions

Is Obama the Worst President in American History?

by John Lawrence

Republican politicians are in the habit of assailing President Obama with statements like the following: "I believe that President Obama is the worst President in American history." Really? Based on what facts? Was he worse than Willard Fillmore? Was he worse than Franklin Pierce? Was he worse then James Buchanan? According to every poll including the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, C-SPAN and Sienna College, these Presidents are considered the worst. But never mind that. What Republican politicians and right wing talking heads like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and other right wingers do is to create an alternative reality based not on facts but on beliefs. They've constructed a completely fictitious alternative Barack Obama, one that is worthy of being detested and ridiculed and demeaned. Then their job is to sell that image of Barack Obama to the American public. The American public, most of them, have never met Barack Obama. They've never discussed politics, economics or anything else with Barack Obama. Their only knowledge of Barack Obama is whatever comes over the TV tube. So competing realities are out their for defining and either demonizing or angelizing Barack Obama. According to this view of reality, the side with the most TV and media output wins. Republican politicians and TV and talking head radio personalities are mostly either lawyers or people like lawyers with immense powers to persuade and convince people of practically anything. A good lawyer can convince a jury that an innocent man is guilty or that a guilty man is innocent. That is their job, and the better that the lawyer can distort the truth, the better lawyer he or she is considered to be.

When it comes to politics, the more right wing talking heads can convince people that Barack Obama is the worst President ever, the more money they make. The whole point is to demonize Obama by associating him with Muslims or Kenyans or the devil. They  don't quite go so far as to associate him with Hitler. That seems to be one line even the lunatic fringe will not cross. But they tell you he is a European socialist despite the fact that he went all out to save the big banks, the very beating heart of capitalism, from complete collapse in the recent financial calamity. Despite the fact that not one fraudulent banker is in jail, Obama is a socialist. Too bad the Soviet Union no longer exists or they would be tagging Obama with the communist label. So now they are reduced in effect to accusing him of being sympathetic to the European Union! Gorbachev said that the collapse of the Soviet Union would deprive the US of its enemy. How right he was? The US was deprived of its chief bogeyman when the Soviet Union imploded. And they cannot very well demonize The Communist Party of China, our chief trading partner and financial co-dependent. So they are reduced to accusing Obama of being a European socialist.

The dynamic here is to demonize Obama based on beliefs not facts. And they have a lot of money to do it with. In many media markets there are no countervailing views. People are left to the imprecations of Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. So they hear day in and day out that Obama is A TERRIBLE PRESIDENT, the worst President etc. Knowledgable persons whose voices are hardly consulted might say that Obama's predecessor, George W Bush, was among the worst.

A 2006 Siena College poll of 744 professors reported the following results: "George W. Bush has just finished five years as President. If today were the last day of his presidency, how would you rank him? The responses were: Great: 2%; Near Great: 5%; Average: 11%; Below Average: 24%; Failure: 58%." "In your judgment, do you think he has a realistic chance of improving his rating?” Two-thirds (67%) responded no; less than a quarter (23%) responded yes; and 10% chose no opinion or not applicable." Thomas Kelly, professor emeritus of American studies at Siena College, said: "President Bush would seem to have small hope for high marks from the current generation of practicing historians and political scientists. In this case, current public opinion polls actually seem to cut the President more slack than the experts do." Dr. Douglas Lonnstrom, Siena College professor of statistics and director of the Siena Research Institute, stated: "In our 2002 presidential rating, with a group of experts comparable to this current poll, President Bush ranked 23rd of 42 presidents. That was shortly after 9/11. Clearly, the professors do not think things have gone well for him in the past few years. These are the experts that teach college students today and will write the history of this era tomorrow." A 2010 Siena poll of 238 Presidential scholars found that former president George W. Bush was ranked 39th out of 43, with poor ratings in handling of the economy, communication, ability to compromise, foreign policy accomplishments and intelligence. Meanwhile, the current president, Barack Obama was ranked 15th out of 43, with high ratings for imagination, communication ability and intelligence and a low rating for background (family, education and experience).

Bush doubled the national debt from $5 trillion to $10 trillion by giving tax cuts to the rich, an unfunded prescription drug benefit to seniors which was a giveaway to the pharmaceutical corporations and two unfunded wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama took out the leadership of Al Quaeda including Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki, brought or is bringing those unfortunate wars to an end and is doing his best to restore Clinton's tax structure which would raise taxes on the rich while keeping tax cuts for the middle class and poor. Obama's health care act, popularly known as Obamacare, would, among other things, end the insurance corporations' policy of rescission which denies insurance to people with pre-exisitng conditions, close the doughnut hole for seniors and keep young people on their parents' policies till age 26, an important consideration in an era of high youth unemployment. The fact is that Bush Jr was cavalier in implementing policies that were not only disastrous for the US including the war he lied us into in Iraq, but also ran up the national debt in a huge way. These policies are still in effect because of Republican filibusters that keep them in effect. Only now Obama is being blamed for them by the right wing talking heads, and using their powers of persuasion, they are doing their best to convince the American people that Obama is a spenthrift who only wants bigger government despite the fact that there have been massive job losses in the public sector and modest gains in the private sector.

So the fictitious President Obama is what Santorum, Romney, Gingrich, Limbaugh, Hannity and all the rest are trying to sell to the US public. They are fueled with billions of dollars from right wing billionaires like the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson for whom a million or two invested here or there is nothing more than pocket change. With an income of $1 billion a year, which translates to $1000 million a year or $2.7 million a day, these guys can well afford a day's pay to influence elections in their favor. That's pocket change to them. So they associate Obama with Satan. He's supposed to be in league with the devil. They send around emails showing a skunk, half black and half white, and associate that with Obama. There's no depth that they won't sink to to demonize Obama except of course they haven't sunk to the depth of trying to convince us that he's channeling Adolf Hitler. I guess Hitler's considered to be even worse than the devil! And of couse all this is based on statements like "I think that Obama blah blah..." and "I believe that Obama blah blah ...." Nothing based on facts because the facts are quite the opposite of the image they are trying to create

And the truth is that they don't give a rip about all the stuff they try to get the electorate riled up about like the social issues - abortion, birth control, God, gays and guns. These are all smoke screens to hide their real agenda which is tax breaks for the rich, deregulation for corporations and privatization of public schools. Of course they never talk about inequality or the fact that corporations only contribute 8% of Federal revenues instead of the 30% they used to contribute. They don't talk about the fact that the rich pay taxes at a lower rate than the poor. The last thing they want to talk about is the fact that there is $2.5 trillion in the social security trust fund because they want to eliminate social security on the grounds that it is running out of money.

So Obama is terrible, a failure (they love that tag), the worst President in American history based on not facts but beliefs. Except that these intelligent men don't really believe that at all. Just like the lawyer that knows his client is guilty and effectively and skillfully convinces the jury that he really is innocent, right wing talking heads including Republican politicians are trying to draw a picture of Obama as the worst President in American history and then convince you that this belief based reality is the real reality. 

The Republican Myth of Obama’s “Entitlement Society”

by Robert Reich

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

One of the few things Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich agree on is that President Obama is turning America into “European-style welfare culture.”

In his standard stump speech Romney charges Obama with creating a nation of dependents. “Over the past three years Barack Obama has been replacing our merit-based society with an entitlement society.”

Gingrich calls Obama “the best food-stamp president in American history.”

What’s their evidence? Both rely on federal budget data showing direct payments to individuals shot up by almost $600 billion, a 32 percent increase, since the start of 2009.

They also point to Census data showing that 49 percent of Americans now live in homes where at least one person is collecting a federal benefit – Social Security, food stamps, unemployment insurance, worker’s compensation, or subsidized housing. That’s up from 44 percent in 2008.

Finally, they trumpet Social Security Administration figures showing that the number of people on Social Security disability jumped 10 percent in Obama’s first two years in office.

They argue our economic problems stem from this sharp rise in “dependency.” Get rid of these benefits and people will work harder.

But they have cause and effect backwards. The reason for the rise in food stamps, unemployment insurance, and other safety-net programs is Americans got clobbered in 2008 with the worst economic catastrophe since the Great Depression. They and their families have needed whatever helping hands they could get.

If anything, America’s safety nets have been too small and shot through with holes. That’s why the number and percentage of Americans in poverty has increased dramatically over the past three years. According to a study by Northeastern University,  a third of families with young children are now in poverty.

This is the real scandal. For example, only 40 percent of the unemployed qualify for unemployment benefits because they weren’t working full time or long enough on a single job before they were canned. The unemployment system doesn’t take account of the fact that a large portion of the workforce typically works part time on several jobs, and moves from job to job.

Republicans also object to Obama’s health care law, which covers 30 million more Americans than were covered before. That law still leaves over 20 million without health insurance. They’ll get emergency care when they’re in dire straights — hospitals won’t refuse them — but we all end up paying indirectly.  

Regressive Republicans pretend they’re about opportunity. In reality they’re back at what they’ve been doing for years — promoting Social Darwinism.

How Obama's Long Game Will Outsmart His Critics

by Andrew Sullivan

from Newsweek and the Daily Beast, January 16, 2012

The right calls him a socialist, the left says he sucks up to Wall Street, and independents think he's a wimp. Andrew Sullivan on how the president may just end up outsmarting them all. (ed. note: this is the best article and the fairest assessment I've seen on President Obama's accomplishments)

You hear it everywhere. Democrats are disappointed in the president. Independents have soured even more. Republicans have worked themselves up into an apocalyptic fervor. And, yes, this is not exactly unusual.

A president in the last year of his first term will always get attacked mercilessly by his partisan opponents, and also, often, by the feistier members of his base. And when unemployment is at remarkably high levels, and with the national debt setting records, the criticism will—and should be—even fiercer. But this time, with this president, something different has happened. It’s not that I don’t understand the critiques of Barack Obama from the enraged right and the demoralized left. It’s that I don’t even recognize their description of Obama’s first term in any way. The attacks from both the right and the left on the man and his policies aren’t out of bounds. They’re simply—empirically—wrong.

A caveat: I write this as an unabashed supporter of Obama from early 2007 on. I did so not as a liberal, but as a conservative-minded independent appalled by the Bush administration’s record of war, debt, spending, and torture. I did not expect, or want, a messiah. I have one already, thank you very much. And there have been many times when I have disagreed with decisions Obama has made—to drop the Bowles-Simpson debt commission, to ignore the war crimes of the recent past, and to launch a war in Libya without Congress’s sanction, to cite three. But given the enormity of what he inherited, and given what he explicitly promised, it remains simply a fact that Obama has delivered in a way that the unhinged right and purist left have yet to understand or absorb. Their short-term outbursts have missed Obama’s long game—and why his reelection remains, in my view, as essential for this country’s future as his original election in 2008.

The right’s core case is that Obama has governed as a radical leftist attempting a “fundamental transformation” of the American way of life. Mitt Romney accuses the president of making the recession worse, of wanting to turn America into a European welfare state, of not believing in opportunity or free enterprise, of having no understanding of the real economy, and of apologizing for America and appeasing our enemies. According to Romney, Obama is a mortal threat to “the soul” of America and an empty suit who couldn’t run a business, let alone a country.

Leave aside the internal incoherence—how could such an incompetent be a threat to anyone? None of this is even faintly connected to reality—and the record proves it. On the economy, the facts are these. When Obama took office, the United States was losing around 750,000 jobs a month. The last quarter of 2008 saw an annualized drop in growth approaching 9 percent. This was the most serious downturn since the 1930s, there was a real chance of a systemic collapse of the entire global financial system, and unemployment and debt—lagging indicators—were about to soar even further. No fair person can blame Obama for the wreckage of the next 12 months, as the financial crisis cut a swath through employment. Economies take time to shift course.

But Obama did several things at once: he continued the bank bailout begun by George W. Bush, he initiated a bailout of the auto industry, and he worked to pass a huge stimulus package of $787 billion.

All these decisions deserve scrutiny. And in retrospect, they were far more successful than anyone has yet fully given Obama the credit for. The job collapse bottomed out at the beginning of 2010, as the stimulus took effect. Since then, the U.S. has added 2.4 million jobs. That’s not enough, but it’s far better than what Romney would have you believe, and more than the net jobs created under the entire Bush administration. In 2011 alone, 1.9 million private-sector jobs were created, while a net 280,000 government jobs were lost. Overall government employment has declined 2.6 percent over the past 3 years. (That compares with a drop of 2.2 percent during the early years of the Reagan administration.) To listen to current Republican rhetoric about Obama’s big-government socialist ways, you would imagine that the reverse was true. It isn’t.

The right claims the stimulus failed because it didn’t bring unemployment down to 8 percent in its first year, as predicted by Obama’s transition economic team. Instead, it peaked at 10.2 percent. But the 8 percent prediction was made before Obama took office and was wrong solely because it relied on statistics that guessed the economy was only shrinking by around 4 percent, not 9. Remove that statistical miscalculation (made by government and private-sector economists alike) and the stimulus did exactly what it was supposed to do. It put a bottom under the free fall. It is not an exaggeration to say it prevented a spiral downward that could have led to the Second Great Depression.

You’d think, listening to the Republican debates, that Obama has raised taxes. Again, this is not true. Not only did he agree not to sunset the Bush tax cuts for his entire first term, he has aggressively lowered taxes on most Americans. A third of the stimulus was tax cuts, affecting 95 percent of taxpayers; he has cut the payroll tax, and recently had to fight to keep it cut against Republican opposition. His spending record is also far better than his predecessor’s. Under Bush, new policies on taxes and spending cost the taxpayer a total of $5.07 trillion. Under Obama’s budgets both past and projected, he will have added $1.4 trillion in two terms. Under Bush and the GOP, nondefense discretionary spending grew by twice as much as under Obama. Again: imagine Bush had been a Democrat and Obama a Republican. You could easily make the case that Obama has been far more fiscally conservative than his predecessor—except, of course, that Obama has had to govern under the worst recession since the 1930s, and Bush, after the 2001 downturn, governed in a period of moderate growth. It takes work to increase the debt in times of growth, as Bush did. It takes much more work to constrain the debt in the deep recession Bush bequeathed Obama.

Obama, Sarkozy and Taxing Wall Street

Published on Wednesday, January 11, 2012 by CommonDreams.org

by Jeff Cohen

With U.S. media obsessing on the fight here at home among conservatives vying to become president, most of them missed some big news about France, which already has a conservative president.  This week, French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced that he would take the lead – even go it alone within Europe, if need be – in introducing and pushing a Financial Transaction Tax in his country.

That’s right – the conservative president of France wants to tax the financial traders and speculators.

Referring to the tax as a “moral issue” and blaming deregulation and speculation for the global economic meltdown, Sarkozy has said that traders must “repay for the damage they have caused.”

What does it tell us about U.S. politics that the conservative president of France – on this issue and others – is way to the left of President Obama?  The U.S. president has not publicly promoted a Wall Street transaction tax (even though US financial institutions, not the French, were largely responsible for the global financial crisis).

Sometimes called a “Robin Hood tax,” a Financial Transaction Tax is endorsed worldwide by everyone from conservative European leaders to the Pope and Archbishop of Canterbury to Bill Gates and Ralph Nader.  The tax is a tiny per transaction fee and would barely be felt by middle-class investors or their pensions or 401(k)’s, but it could raise big bucks from high-volume investors and impose a brake on the kind of speculation that tanked the world’s economy.  

French President Sarkozy keeps explaining to the people of France and Europe that a small transaction tax raises billions for countries facing deficits.

Wouldn’t it be something if President Obama went to the American people with such a deficit proposal, instead of putting Medicare on the chopping block?

President Sarkozy invokes the “moral issue” of financial institutions repairing the damage they caused.  What a shock it would be to see President Obama aiming the “moral issue” at Wall Street profiteers and demanding repair of damage, instead of rewarding them with top White House jobs.

After failing to get resistant allies among European countries to join him, Sarkozy is going forward on his own – declaring yesterday: “If France waits for others to tax finance, then finance will never be taxed.”

Can you imagine Obama standing up to a resistant Congress on a Wall Street transaction tax?  He can’t even stand up to his own advisers on the issue, according to Ron Suskind’s insider book on the Obama White House, “Confidence Men.”  Suskind reports that Obama briefly embraced the tax and declared at one meeting: “We are going to do this!”  But after Obama’s top economic adviser (and Wall Streeter) Larry Summers criticized the tax, the idea was buried at the White House. 

That was back in 2009.  But the idea is still alive on Capitol Hill.  A couple months ago, Sen. Tom Harkin and Rep. Peter DeFazio introduced a Financial Transaction Tax bill in Congress that would easily raise $350 billion over 10 years.  Rep. John Conyers introduced a similar bill last year – it would tax Wall Street to fund federal jobs programs.

A Wall Street transaction tax is backed by National Nurses United and other unions.  It’s popular with the U.S. public, and would be even more popular if Obama were to campaign for it in 2012. RootsAction.org has gained 50,000 signatures in support of the tax.

You can add your name here to those pushing Obama to (re)embrace the Wall Street tax. 

And don’t get me wrong about President Sarkozy of France.  He’s no great humanitarian.  But he is facing an uphill reelection battle this year and the conservative president understands how popular a financial tax is with voters.

Facing reelection this year, maybe it’s time President Obama came to that same understanding.

Jeff Cohen is an associate professor of journalism and the director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College, founder of the media watch group FAIR, and former board member of Progressive Democrats of America. In 2002, he was a producer and pundit at MSNBC (overseen by NBC News). He is the author of Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media - and a cofounder of the online action group, www.RootsAction.org.

more Jeff Cohen

How a Little Bit of Good Economic News Can Be Bad for the President

by Robert Reich

Monday, January 9, 2012

Two years ago the unemployment rate was 9.9 percent. Now it’s 8.5 percent. At first blush that’s good news for the President. Actually it may not be.

Voters pay more attention to the direction the economy is moving than to how bad or good it is. So if the positive trend continues in the months leading up to Election Day, Obama’s prospects of being reelected improve.

But if you consider the number of working-age Americans who have stopped looking for work over the past two years because they couldn’t find a job, and young people too discouraged even to start looking, you might worry.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics, which measures the unemployment rate every month, counts people as unemployed only if they’re looking for work. If they’re too discouraged even to enter the job market, they’re not counted.

If all the potential workers who have dropped out of the job market over the past two years were counted, today’s unemployment rate wouldn’t be 8.5 percent. It would be 9.5 percent. That’s only a bit down from the 9.9 percent unemployment rate two years ago.

The genuinely good news, though, is the Bureau of Labor Statistics also tells us 200,000 new jobs were added in December. Granted, this doesn’t put much of a dent in the 10 million jobs we’ve either lost since the recession began or needed to keep up with the growth of the working-age population (at this rate we won’t return to our pre-recession level of employment until 2019) but, hey, it’s at least the right direction.

But here’s the political irony. This little bit of good news is likely to raise the hopes of the great army of the discouraged – many of whom will now start looking for work.

And what happens when they start looking? If they don’t find a job (and, let’s face it, the chances are still slim) they’ll be counted as unemployed.

Which means the unemployment rate will very likely edge upward in coming months. This will be bad for the President because it will look as though the trend is in the wrong direction again.

My Political Prediction for 2012: It’s Obama-Clinton

by Robert Reich

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

My political prediction for 2012 (based on absolutely no inside information): Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden swap places. Biden becomes Secretary of State — a position he’s apparently coveted for years. And Hillary Clinton, Vice President. 

So the Democratic ticket for 2012 is Obama-Clinton.

Why do I say this? Because Obama needs to stir the passions and enthusiasms of a Democratic base that’s been disillusioned with his cave-ins to regressive Republicans. Hillary Clinton on the ticket can do that.

Moreover, the economy won’t be in superb shape in the months leading up to Election Day. Indeed, if the European debt crisis grows worse and if China’s economy continues to slow, there’s a better than even chance we’ll be back in a recession. Clinton would help deflect attention from the bad economy and put it on foreign policy, where she and Obama have shined. 

The deal would also make Clinton the obvious Democratic presidential candidate in 2016 — offering the Democrats a shot at twelve (or more) years in the White House, something the Republicans had with Ronald Reagan and the first George Bush but which the Democrats haven’t had since FDR. Twelve years gives the party in power a chance to reshape the Supreme Court as well as put an indelible stamp on America. 

According to the latest Gallup poll, the duo are this year’s most admired man and woman This marks the fourth consecutive win for  Obama while Clinton has been the most admired woman in each of the last 10 years. She’a topped the list 16 times since 1993, exceeding the record held by former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who topped the list 13 times.

Obama-Clinton in 2012. It’s a natural.