Morals or Ignorance?

It's not just a morality play.

There has been a plethora of books, papers, and articles in recent years on how personality determines politics. In particular we find an effort to understand the gap between liberals and conservatives on the myriad ways they, we, interpret social phenomena, our religious orientation, our social attitudes, and of course, our political motivations and, ultimately, how we vote. Prominent among these are Chris Mooney's The Republican Brain; Jonathan Haidt's most recent, The Righteous Mind, and material referenced in earlier posts, such as George Lackoff's, The Political Mind, Drew Westin's, The Political Brain, along with the numerous works of Robert Altemeyer.

It is true that different values are driving us, as well as different ways in which people process data, through a moral filtering process. There is also growing evidence that small physical differences in our brains may help explain our different emotional responses, whether we feel disgust, fear, or anger on the one hand, or acceptance, curiosity, or even indifference, on the other.

There remains something lacking in this narrative, however, a narrative that is promoted most enthusiastically by psychologists. And that may be the problem. In a nutshell, it gives too much credence to what are seen as additional moral foundations, and understates the role of ignorance. Indeed, there is a tendency for some, and that would include Jonathan Haidt, to lump such fine qualities as ignorance, prejudice, hate, bigotry, racism and xenophobia into a new sanitized category called morality. Doing so deemphasizes the demonstrable fact that many people are not just processing issues and data through a different set of moral filters, though that is part of it. Nor will it do to declare such reactionary attitudes as simply different but equally legitimate moral code, something that, as Haidt would have it, defines conservative values in ways that liberals seem to not understand and don't appreciate. 

Much of the other material by Mooney, et, al, is not prone to equating hate with morality, but it too may be understating the role of abject ignorance and how it helps drive behavior.

There is a component to all of this that is far more prosaic. Many of us are cocksure in our views on sundry issues and policies, yet the briefest of inquiries reveals not merely different opinions, but testable ignorance of the most elementary facts. In other words, many will arrive at their viewpoints not through or entirely through, considered analysis, different world view, moral framework, or ethical sensibilities. Instead, opinions and attitudes are far too often developed and retained through abject ignorance. People are, as the saying goes, entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts.

You cannot, for example, make a scientific or factual case for creationism. You hold creationist views because they accord with your religion-imbued sense of morality, to be sure, but also because you do not understand evolution, will not consider it, and often find comfort making demonstrably misinformed comments about it.

Creationism is but one example; the same goes for so much else. I've mentioned Haidt, who has developed the idea of conservatism as additional layers of morality, layers he says liberals don't have. I will revisit his theses, because there is much there, and much that is challengeable.

Of course, the issue remains why many of us have the propensity to misinterpret or show a willful refusal to consider alternative analyses. Apparently it is easier for certain squeamish academics to pretend that wildly different viewpoints are, on some level, equally valid, than it is to declare that an opinion on various issues of the day is flat-out wrong and arrived at not because proponents have a factual basis for their view, but because they don't. They may have a moral filter that data must pass, as we all do, but their assessments are destined to be flawed without a greater determination to come to grips with empirical reality, no matter how irritating some find it. Perhaps this is why psychologists can more easily engage in sometimes dry and abstract theorizing on the nexus of personality, attitudes, and political orientation. Many political scientists and other policy wonks facing real world problems have more difficulty with such aloof equanimity.

Let me be very clear on this point. If I believed the crap that teabaggers do, I would be upset too. If I thought ACORN had helped Obama steal the election, or that he was willfully undermining our country because he is morally debased, or black, or Muslim, or Benghazi!, I would be upset too. But I know the stream of examples the Right trots out, such as stories involving the IRS or Benghazi, to be non-scandals, because I am willing to read complete analyses.

There is, of course, an element of subjectivity in deciding, for example, whether Obama used the IRS to attack conservative non-profits (he didn't). But what struck so many of us as ideological determinism-and jaw-dropping stupidity- was the astounding ability of right-wing voters to ignore mountains of data and context, and draw hard, fast, self-serving conclusions. It was not the venom so much as it was the mangling of the issues, facts, and storyline. It is clear that those with the most toxic views aren't even trying to understand hot-button topics. And yet if you tell Fox-viewing devotees that Ronald Reagan raised taxes multiple times, that he dramatically increased federal spending, or that the US went from the world's largest creditor nation to the world's largest debtor nation on his watch, they may go apoplectic with rage. But these are not opinions, or moral values, or policy preferences: they are facts. 

To be human is to be flawed, but conservatives are especially adept at holding views that reveal their indifference to how they arrived at them.

Wall Street Should Reconsider Its Allies

By now it should be clear that Wall Street money was behind the rise of the Tea Party, a loose ragtag collection that felt empowered enough to attend rallies and hold misspelled signs as they vented and raged. Call them Wall Street's shock troops. It was a deft move; convince the middle class, at least enough of it- the white, disaffected, conservative, Republican-voting, mostly Southern portion, to howl against President Obama and how his radical Marxism was going to destroy the economy. But by all means ignore what Wall Street banks had been doing to the economy and how relentlessly wealth trickled upwards--out of the middle class communities, including those in reliably Republican Red states, and into the hands of banks and the investor class. That the investor class has been able to shield huge amounts of money from taxation, often sending it abroad where it did no good for the middle class communities that once held it, and how this is the primary driver of government debt; its all several dots that teabaggers refuse to connect.

Wall Street appears to be reassessing its strategy. It was never the investor class's intention that a right-wing, pseudo-populist Tea Party would actually win more than a token few seats in Congress. The intention was to deflect government from doing anything to rein in Wall Street's gravy train and to make sure rank and file Republican voters didn't start caring that Wall Street is corrupt and reckless. A couple more dots not connected.

Instead, we are now witnessing, once again, what happens when right-wing extremists, the perpetually-aggrieved sons of the South, actively undermine that which they cannot control. The South with its deeply undemocratic instincts on full display, has proven to us once again that this country has never truly been a united states.

Wall Street may have seriously misjudged Southern animosity towards government, the one that feeds and protects the investor class, but it also misjudged Barack Obama. The instinctive reaction to Democratic presidents, one that is seriously at odds with reality, and one that even the moneyed class makes, is that they are bad for business: They raise taxes and impose regulations. And everyone knows that doing that slows growth and kills jobs. "You can't tax your way to prosperity." "Government just gets in the way." The bromides are endless.

Sorting out whether such boiler-plate corporate talking points are actually true will have to wait for another post (Actually, the data is compelling: Wall Street is a blight on the US and Democrats have a better record on growth, job creation, and the budget). The point here is that corporate America, and especially Wall Street, have much for which to be thankful. In a more just and equitable world, one that believes that equal application of the law is not a mere slogan, many bankers and traders would be doing hard time and not printing their own "get-out-of-for-free" cards.

But prison terms and inadequate legal representation are for the poor and working class. White shoe lawyers, fines, and no admission of guilt are the quite acceptable cost of doing business for the wealthy. This is an arrangement that Obama need not have tolerated, but he did. And the re-imposition of regulations proven to be highly effective in the past, the ones that brought us decades of banking stability? Obama didn't go there either, to the utter dismay of many banking experts.

I don't expect teabaggers to figure it out, but Wall Street should know that energy production in the US has increased dramatically since Obama took office. Remember how Republicans told America that Obama would cave to environmentalists and implement job-killing energy legislation, all because of that hoax called global warming? How we would have $10/gal gasoline, and how it was all part of his socialist plan? The reality is this: "US oil output hit its highest level in 20 years in July in a power shift with big geopolitical consequences." And this: "U.S. To Become World's Largest Oil Producer, Overtaking Russia."

Wall Street knows this and benefits from it. Instead, it feared that Obama would raise their taxes to a level that still would have been lower than that under Reagan, implement sensible regulations that had been in place under Reagan, and, I don't know, uphold the law.

So right wing operatives, financed by Wall Street and others, told a gullible and poorly-informed America that Barack Obama was radically anti-business and therefore anti-American. Two easy marks: Teabaggers, who are predictable prey to fear, uncertainty, and doubt. And President Obama himself, who should have done more to put an end to Wall Street's plunder. If Wall Street were more honest, and if teabaggers were more educated, they would realize Barack Obama has governed like a moderate Republican. 

Presidential Limits

It is difficult to overstate the steaming shit pile that was handed to Barack Obama on his first day of office. Those who choose to ridicule the President for pointing this out have forgotten the "yeah, that's right," chorus line that Republicans sang so heartily when Reagan took office and how he would fix all the terrible things Carter had done. They, and Reagan, knew what they were doing; every positive snippet of news was to accrue to Ronnie; any bad news was obviously the legacy of his Democratic predecessor.

Don't let your brain take the lazy way out on this. Don't say both parties do it and leave it at that. Both parties throw blame at their opponents, to be sure. but it is an insipid and unhelpful observation. Let's not forget that the federal budget deficit, the national debt, and the trade imbalance were all relatively modest when Reagan took office. Our infrastructure at that time was viewed around the world as excellent, and manufacturing played a proportionately far larger role. We had the world's largest current account surplus when Carter left office. When Reagan left, we had the world's largest deficit.

The point here is not to claim that Carter did such a wonderful job. But we must remind ourselves how much this country, and this economy, have changed in recent decades. When President Obama took the oath of office in a ceremony that Chief Justice Roberts screwed up, he faced the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. He also inherited two long and costly wars that served little purpose except to get men killed and enrich defense contractors, as war always does.

But even if you support(ed) the war(s), and choose to not blame Bush (or Cheney), the point remains that the US fought those wars without paying for them. That much is indisputable. Instead, the horrendous costs, separate and addition to the Defense Department's already mammoth budget, were added to our federal debt. That was George Bush's decision, not Obama's.

And need I remind anyone that those wars came after Bush passed his huge tax cuts for the wealthy, thereby giving back the budget surplus carefully built up during the Clinton era when tax rates and economic growth were both higher.

The real point here is the severe constraints Barack Obama faced when he took office, many of which John McCain would have also faced had he won. Taxes, primarily for the rich, had been reduced so much early in Bush's tenure that it has become arithmetically impossible to meet our relatively modest social spending needs, our huge military appetite, our substantial and neglected national infrastructure, and also balance the budget. And this is on top of a massive trade deficit, a declining manufacturing base, and most jarringly, the fallout from Wall Street's casino capitalism.

I have posted before on the overwhelming challenges Obama faced on inauguration day, challenges that would be huge even if Congress decided to, you know, work together and solve some problems. Unfortunately, President Obama has had to face an additional challenge that a President McCain would surely not have--unprecedented obstructionism. Along the way, Americans have come to learn, to their disgust or delight, the surprising flaws of our federal government and how determined ideologues can lay bare the constitutional limitations of the executive branch.

Republicans control only the House; Democrats control the Senate, despite all appearances, and, of course, the White House. And yet Dems in the House are helpless to stop the unending stream of bills that Tea Party reactionaries promote.  Well, you might say, Republicans control the House, so it figures they would dominate legislation. In the Senate, however, Democrats are in a clear majority, but it usually makes little difference because of the Senate's self-imposed 60 vote supermajority "requirement."

Thus, even flaccid and feeble legislation, mere tweaking, has little chance of being enacted. Anything that does pass is so watered down as to be useless. And that is not because most members of Congress, or even all Republicans always want to oppose the President; it is sufficient that only a determined minority, the Tea Partiers of the House and Senate, choose to obstruct, as they so often have. Let me put it this way: the seemingly intractable John Boehner would not be making those asinine, vapid, and breathtakingly stupid comments on economic policy if teabaggers in his party did not have such a tight grip on his nuts.

Historians are at pains to find a period when the flaws of the federal government were so transparent. Parliamentary governments around the world are taken back by the inability of America's two-party presidential system of government to tackle the most basic tasks, such as properly regulated banks, appropriate tax revenues, a modern infrastructure, and demographic well-being, such as on health care, child mortality, and housing. All of these are becoming a national embarrassment, instead of world-leading, as they once were.

We are now seeing with increasing frequency that even legislation large majorities of Americans want, such as background checks on gun purchases, cannot get passed. There are just enough Republican reactionaries in the House, sometimes helped out by pandering Democrats in the Senate (I'm looking at you, Max Baucus), to derail even the most popular legislation. This can happen, mind you, even when a majority of both houses of Congress and the president favor such legislation. This is not majority rule, it is not even checks and balances as the founding fathers envisioned. It is the tyranny of an ideologically-driven minority.

This is new territory for America.

You Don't Need No Stinkin' Education

On December 24th I wrote about tea party policies on education in Texas and how concerned many conservatives are about teaching kids to think critically. I wish I could say that was just an aberration, a temporary victim of the current partisan climate. Unfortunately,  it reveals a fundamental conservative willingness to educate but not empower. Such, of course, is not education but vocational training.  

Sara Robinson captures the contradiction embedded in the wholly false belief that conservatives and progressives alike support education because it is non-partisan:

The education of our children is a core cultural and political choice that reflects the deepest differences between liberals and conservatives.

The Conservative War On Education continues apace, with charters blooming everywhere, high-stakes testing cementing its grip on classrooms, and legislators and pundits wondering what we need those stupid liberal arts colleges for anyway. (Isn't college about job prep? Who needs to know anything about art history, anthropology or ancient Greek?)

Amid the din, there's a worrisome trend: liberals keep affirming right-wing talking points, usually without realizing that they're even right wing. Or saying things like, "The education of our children is a non-partisan issue that should exist outside of any ideological debate."

The hell it is. People who say stuff like this have no idea what they're talking about. The education of our children is a core cultural and political choice that reflects the deepest differences between liberals and conservatives -- because every educational conversation must start with the fundamental philosophical question: What is an education for?

Our answers to that question could not be more diametrically opposed.

Robinson proceeds to explain that difference: conservatives, especially the more authoritarian variety, have been pushing education, from grade school through college, as a training ground where one can acquire skill sets corporations want and are willing to pay for. This might seem reasonable to some; after all, why study in a field that offers poor employment prospects? However, it is a market-oriented interpretation that says the value of a college degree depends on the salary it commands. As such, your value to a corporation should be your prime educational motivation. Don't waste your time on anything that doesn't impress a potential employer.

It should be obvious, though apparently it isn't, that education-as-vocational-training is deeply contrary to one of the proudest achievements of the Western intellectual tradition; an authentic education that empowers individuals to think critically, evaluate complex issues, and to appreciate learning and scholarship not only because it gives meaning to the lives of individuals but because it is what makes us a civilization and not just employees.

Recently North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory, you can guess his party affiliation, publicly denounced certain educational choices students are making at state universities. It was as if he was reading from the "The Authoritarian's Guide to Education."

In a national radio interview Tuesday with Bill Bennett , U.S. Education Secretary during the Reagan administration, McCrory said there's a major disconnect between what skills are taught at the state's public universities and what businesses want out of college graduates.

“So I’m going to adjust my education curriculum to what business and commerce needs to get our kids jobs as opposed to moving back in with their parents after they graduate with debt," McCrory said, adding, "What are we teaching these courses for if they're not going to help get a job?"

McCrory said he doesn't believe state tax dollars should be used to help students at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill study for a bachelor's degree in gender studies or to take classes on the Swahili language.

“If you want to take gender studies that's fine. Go to a private school, and take it," McCrory said. "But I don't want to subsidize that if that's not going to get someone a job."

Where to begin? McCrory seems to think that broadening one's mind and learning real-life skills are mutually exclusive. For most students, they merely take a course or two; they don't major in subjects he disdains. It's called exploring new fields, expanding your mind, A.K.A an education. His argument, increasing voiced by conservatives, is that middle-class students--primarily those who attend state universities--should abandon scholarship as academic pretenses and just make themselves attractive to employers. He is telling the middle class to get a certification, not a diploma.

McCrory suggests that anyone wishing to study more academic subjects--he facetiously suggests Swahili, should attend a private college. Apparently only the wealthy should dabble in rarefied subjects; public schools are for training one to be a useful cog in the corporate wheel.

Swahili? Governor, your racism is showing. How many people at North Carolina public universities, which includes the excellent UNC-Chapel Hill, does he think actually study Swahili? Or gender studies, where he shows his sexism. And given the relatively poor showing of Americans with foreign languages and world affairs, you would think public officials would want to encourage our students to learn more about the outside world. 

He also reveals a distrust in the market mechanisms Republicans so often adore. Cannot students decide which courses are of value? Are not they best suited to decide what's best for themselves? The market will speak without meddling politicians interfering with individual choice. Isn't that the sermon conservatives preach?

Governor McCrory may want us to think he is just being practical, but he is promoting a social hierarchy that Southern whites have always favored, what I have called Dixification. If you really want to study for the personal enrichment, he says, do so at a private college, and have lots of money. Public colleges apparently should be relegated to vocational training. He has such a restrictive interpretation of what education is and what it should do that he thinks that offering serious academic choices to middle-class students is elitism.

He has it backwards.

The Road to Plutocracy

The United States once generally adhered to economic policies that were pretty common sense on their face: We believed in economic democracy, not oligarchy, we believed that severe maldistribution of wealth was not just fundamentally unfair, but unsustainable and dangerous. For generations we properly regulated banks and we had few banking issues as a result.

When the US fought wars, we paid for them in part with steeply progressive--and temporary--tax rates. It was obvious to us and to our trading partners that manufacturing and a modern infrastructure were the bases of economic strength; banks should only play a supportive role. Moreover the US generously supported public universities, which returned the favor by providing us with scientific and technological preeminence. Economic doctrine and history both informed mainstream policies.

We once understood that a strong middle class was essential to overall prosperity as well as the foundation of democracy and free elections. As part of the social contract, industry generally worked with labor, offering wages that were in line with ever-rising productivity. There was little vilification of labor unions at a time when membership was far higher. Corporate dividends and government interest were paid overwhelmingly to Americans and not to neo-mercantilists in Asia and shadowy investors in the Cayman Islands. While the wealthy have always benefited the most, dividends and interest payments in the past were mostly pumped back into local communities. In other words, debt and equities were held almost entirely by Americans. Recipients spent this unearned income within the US, largely in their own communities. That which they saved went into a local banks and credit unions, not Wall Street. This whole process helped grow the economy and stabilize neighborhoods.

We would have been aghast at the idea that massive, intractable trade deficits would arrive and be accepted with surprisingly alacrity. That banks would be allowed to once again trade in securities, take wild, highly-leveraged bets with other people's money, dominate the political process, and virtually insulate themselves from legal accountability. Because of compliant politicians who now have all the money they need to stay in office, the big banks and other stars of Wall Street have been able to maximize gains to themselves, and spread losses onto others, primarily tax payers. This includes companies that have been propped up by taxpayers. It's a sweet deal for the investor class; get the middle class to foot the bill, while dividends and capital gains go overwhelmingly to the investor class. It is, at its simplest, a rigged financial system that has privatized the gains and socialized the costs.

It is all coming undone, though not by the middle class, not by local banks, not by unions, and certainly not by gays, secularists, feminists, immigrants, or Democrats trying to rein in a bloated defense budget. But we have been assured repeatedly that minimal regulations are good because unfettered financial markets will make the best decisions, that they allocate capital most efficiently. Neo-liberalism fetishizes minimal regulations, free and unmonitored movement of capital, low taxes, and free trade.That same neo-liberalism has been a cheerleader for policies that have hollowed out our industrial base, turned the economy over to a rapacious financial system, have put us into deep debt to Japan, China, and elsewhere. In the process, dividends and interest payments that used to stimulate the American economy now stimulate theirs.

Now we are told to spend freely, with few admonishments to save more. Our economic system is now deeply dependent on middle class consumers willing to endlessly consume, a process that is far less beneficial than in decades past because so much of what we buy is imported. Part of the massive earnings enjoyed by our trading partners is now used to finance US debt. The Reagan administration set us on this course of indebtedness because it knew foreign governments had piles of US dollars, and because conservatives in our own government refused to allow a level of taxation that would pay the bills. The 1% are now able to avoid taxation on income that would have been taxed in the past; taxes that would have helped to pay for the Iraq war, which has gone unpaid, and such things as maintaining a modern infrastructure.

Most of the middle class is in serious debt. Families will not and should not spend freely if their job security is in question. Many have experienced wage reductions as they move from one employer to another. An ever-growing proportion of American families realize they cannot simultaneously save enough for retirement, pay for basics, including health care, rising food and energy prices--especially in the face of no commensurate wage increases-- and also set aside for their children's needs, including college tuition. This is not a sudden condition; it has been building for decades.

The right wing and other intellectual thugs want you to believe that it started with President Obama. They hope you don't notice the policies they are espousing are the same ones that have been largely in place for most of the last 30 plus years.

It is, in any event, a laughably ignorant concept to argue that Obama is even in a position to have anything more than a modest effect, for good or bad. The conditions that most people and the government are now in are far larger and intractable for any president to handle. It has taken America 30+ years to get here, it cannot be turned around in four years, not when Bush handed Obama a shit storm and two unpaid wars, not when Republicans oppose him on every substantive point, and not when those same Republicans are able to exploit what we now see are serious shortcomings in the structure of our system of government.

It has taken the US decades to drift into the present condition. During this time the wealthy have garnered ever more of the wealth, paid ever decreasing taxes for it, run corporations that have earned more, paid lower wages, have been taxed less, and have more freedom to move capital around the world, and fewer obligations to middle class families. This is as the wealthy have always wanted it, and it is what today's Republican Party wants. Their biggest concern is that President Obama would do something to stop this inexorable trend towards plutocracy.

Hey, Big Spender

Republicans have now accepted as an article of faith that President Obama is not merely a  "tax and spend liberal," but that his spending is reckless, unprecedented, and making things worst. That Republicans have actually convinced themselves that Obama is far left, radical, socialist, or even just liberal, says more about the cognitive filters many wear.

For the most part, Obama's critics on the right have got their arguments about federal spending almost completely backwards. And yes, Mitt Romney is leading the way.

First, here is Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post:

There are those who tell the truth. There are those who distort the truth. And then there’s Mitt Romney.

Every political campaign exaggerates and dissembles. This practice may not be admirable — it’s surely one reason so many Americans are disenchanted with politics — but it’s something we’ve all come to expect. Candidates claim the right to make any boast or accusation as long as there’s a kernel of veracity in there somewhere.

Even by this lax standard, Romney too often fails. Not to put too fine a point on it, he lies. Quite a bit.

“Since President Obama assumed office three years ago, federal spending has accelerated at a pace without precedent in recent history,” Romney claims on his campaign Web site. This is utterly false. The truth is that spending has slowed markedly under Obama.

An analysis published last week by MarketWatch, a financial news Web site owned by Dow Jones & Co., compared the yearly growth of federal spending under presidents going back to Ronald Reagan. Citing figures from the Office of Management and Budget and the Congressional Budget Office, MarketWatch concluded that “there has been no huge increase in spending under the current president, despite what you hear.”

Quite the contrary: Spending has increased at a yearly rate of only 1.4 percent during Obama’s tenure, even if you include some stimulus spending (in the 2009 fiscal year) that technically should be attributed to President George W. Bush. This is by far the smallest — I repeat, smallest — increase in spending of any recent president. (The Washington Post’s Fact Checker concluded the spending increase figure should have been 3.3 percent.)

Here is how factcheck.org summarizes their findings:

Is President Obama’s spending an “inferno,” as Mitt Romney claims, or a binge that “never happened” as an analysis touted by the White House concluded? We judge that both of those claims are wrong on the facts. 

The truth is that the nearly 18 percent spike in spending in fiscal 2009 — for which the president is sometimes blamed entirely — was mostly due to appropriations and policies that were already in place when Obama took office. 

That includes spending for the bank bailout legislation approved by President Bush. Annual increases in amounts actually spent since fiscal 2009 have been relatively modest. In fact, spending for the first seven months of the current fiscal year is running slightly below the same period last year, and below projections.

Finally, Rex Nutting of the Wall Street Journal's Marketwatch, acknowledges that:

Of all the falsehoods told about President Barack Obama, the biggest whopper is the one about his reckless spending spree.

As would-be president Mitt Romney tells it: “I will lead us out of this debt and spending inferno.”

Almost everyone believes that Obama has presided over a massive increase in federal spending, an “inferno” of spending that threatens our jobs, our businesses and our children’s future. Even Democrats seem to think it’s true.

But it didn’t happen. Although there was a big stimulus bill under Obama, federal spending is rising at the slowest pace since Dwight Eisenhower brought the Korean War to an end in the 1950s.

Even hapless Herbert Hoover managed to increase spending more than Obama has.

Here are the facts, according to the official government statistics:

• In the 2009 fiscal year — the last of George W. Bush’s presidency — federal spending rose by 17.9% from $2.98 trillion to $3.52 trillion. Check the official numbers at the Office of Management and Budget.

• In fiscal 2010 — the first budget under Obama — spending fell 1.8% to $3.46 trillion.

• In fiscal 2011, spending rose 4.3% to $3.60 trillion.

• In fiscal 2012, spending is set to rise 0.7% to $3.63 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate of the budget that was agreed to last August.

• Finally in fiscal 2013 — the final budget of Obama’s term — spending is scheduled to fall 1.3% to $3.58 trillion. Read the CBO’s latest budget outlook.

Over Obama’s four budget years, federal spending is on track to rise from $3.52 trillion to $3.58 trillion, an annualized increase of just 0.4%.

There has been no huge increase in spending under the current president, despite what you hear.

Facts don't seem to carry the weight they used to. Teabaggers will keep howling about how Obama is killing us with spending and debt, all part of his socialist takeover of America, you see. They demanded tax cuts from Bush, and now bitch that those same tax cuts have blown a hole in the federal budget. They have never read a formal paper on what Keynesian spending really means, and they don't understand why, for example, Europe's current austerity measures are counterproductive.

Bear in mind we are talking about a very large swath of voters, a majority some might say, who have a terrible time thinking through the most elementary, face-palm-in-disbelief moments imaginable. You know the types; the ones that cannot find Iraq, New Zealand, or Austria on a map; or the embarrassing number who think the sun revolves around the earth, or believe their pastor when he says evolution has been discredited.

Yeah, those people. They are easy targets for simplistic sloganeering. And Romney knows it.

Impressive

You've got to hand it to Republican Party operatives. After more than 30 years of constant effort, conservatives within the party, media, the judiciary, and in the corporate world, have managed to turn upside down much of what the public thought it knew about government, unions, taxes, and even teachers.

I make a distinction between Republicans and conservatives that some may see as unnecessary; are not Republicans and conservatives synonymous? Pretty much, at least in 2012, but it would be difficult to overstate just how far to the right the Republican Party has lurched; a process that began, to the dismay of millions of moderate and liberal Republicans, with the nomination of Barry Goldwater in 1964. The cleansing process picked up rapidly in the 1980s and 1990s, with numerous watershed moments, such as the arrival of Newt Gingrich and the politics of destruction. As testimony to Republicans' new approach to governing, many will recall that the Party was able to keep Whitewater in public view, with the help of a stupidly compliant press, for literally years on end, only to have the process finally wind down having demonstrated no presidential malfeasance.

From the judicial standpoint, it was a waste of time and taxpayers' money. But upholding the law had nothing to do with it. The objective was to vilify a Democratic President, obstruct his agenda and ability to govern, and convince the public that conservatives stood on principles. The never-ending rush to spin the story helped feed the narrative that liberals are not to be trusted. Even today people will refer to Whitewater as a scandal, forgetting that there was no wrongdoing, despite years of investigation. It was only a scandal because the Republican hierarchy kept claiming it was. And many will be surprised when reminded that the 12 years of Reagan and Bush saw a dramatically greater number of actual convictions, not accusations, than in the eight years of Clinton. If the reality goes against what you had heard and "just assumed," it is because Republicans worked hard to make it so, for they have shown a superior ability to get their ideas into the media and into people's heads. They dominate most narratives because they understand how to make their messages simple and emotional. What sounds implausible or even ridiculous at first becomes accepted as truth if repeated enough. All propagandists understand this. This why Republicans have said for decades they, against all evidence, are the party of personal responsibility, fiscal prudence, and limited government. Voters who don't study the facts have come to accept this narrative.

And now we see Republican spin taken to new heights, creating a parallel world of logic and reason. They have managed what should have been impossible in a sane world of evidence, facts, and reason; divert enough of the electorate's, and the media's, attention away from the Wall Street banks and turn the middle class against itself. Significant numbers of Americans now think that public workers earn too much, are lazy and irresponsible, and are a drain on our fragile economy.Too many show an infantile understanding of economics by buying into Republican rhetoric that teachers' salaries are too high, so we must rein in those destructive teachers' unions. "Never mind that stuff you hear about Wall Street. Those guys deserve every penny they got, and besides, look at all the jobs they create."

The truly reprehensible thing about Mitt Romney is that he personally promotes these ideas and never once has acknowledged that the Bush tax cuts, which he wants to deepen, have been a prime contributor to the federal deficit. Everything the man says indicates he will be for the one percent and will penalize the working class, and yet he is running as a viable candidate.

And as we just saw in Wisconsin, there are plenty of voters who are fine with Scott Walker's effort to strip away the hard-fought gains by teachers and other public workers. Many now instinctively believe that there is such a thing in America as "big labor," and that cutting back salaries and benefits of teachers, librarians, firefighters, cops, and others, will somehow drive the economy forward, that and more tax cuts for the wealthy. Republicans have apparently convinced more than a few that teachers are now fat cats. The Wall Street bankers that drove the economy into recession have almost entirely avoided legal scrutiny. Forgotten is their unforgivable act of paying mammoth executive compensation with the very tax dollars meant to stabilize the catastrophic mess they created. No accountability, no significant judicial proceedings, and the few penalties levied have been easily paid and treated as nothing more than the cost of doing business.

The banks got away with it while attention has been diverted to where Republicans want it. They, including Mitt Romney himself, have convinced many that pushing back against the oligarchy is class warfare, but endless bitching about teachers and other members of the middle class, with an eye to stripping their rights and reducing their pay, is productive policy. And they have roughly half of that middle class believing it.

That is quite an accomplishment.

Reckless Indifference

This lengthy chart reveals much about what powerful Republicans think of the rest of us. A quick look below at the tax proposals of the Republican presidential candidates reveals just how willing they are to exacerbate inequality.

It should be apparent that each proposal overwhelmingly benefits those already wealthy and will have little positive impact on millions of struggling families. It should be equally obvious that these tax proposals will make the deficit much worse.

None of the candidates has any intention of reimplementing the tax structures of the past that helped create the middle class, provided for solid growth, paid for defense-and wars-with taxes, and managed to balance the budget, or come very close to it.

There is only one major difference between now and earlier in the post-war period, up to the 1980s, and it isn't government spending. The difference is that 30+ years of tax cuts for the wealthy, starting with Ronald Reagan, have shielded the very wealthy from the taxes they used to pay. That has created a two-fold tax structure: the middle and working class are asked to pay more, and the budget shortfalls, dramatically larger than in the past, end up as government debt, picked up by China and other trading partners.

The current set of proposals only worsens the trend. Every detail is a giveaway to America's richest.


Tax Proposals Infographic by: Certified Tax Coach

Why Occupy Wall Street is Angry

This country once had a stable financial system. It was the direct result of the New Deal. The crash of '29 had been created by greed, lax rules, and government institutions unequipped and ideologically unprepared to tame capitalism's most rapacious players.

Enter FDR and the New Deal. With it Americans enjoyed roughly 50 years of prosperity and a largely stable banking system. The good 'ol days, as conservatives seem to pine. And there was good reason why we look fondly at what seems to have been our economic heyday. What conservatives forget is that we had far less income inequality, higher taxes, greater union membership, lower consumer, state and federal debt. We had a trade surplus, a much larger manufacturing base, and little outsourcing. And we did not have job-killing free trade agreements, such as NAFTA!

Underlying all of this was a rigid set of banking rules that, among other things, kept commercial banks out of the stock market and enforced prudent capitalization requirements. Upon assuming office, President Reagan immediately worked to overturn regulations and help Wall Street's rise to dominance, a rise that continues today despite Obama's half-hearted and ineffectual efforts to reprioritize Main Street.

Banks quickly capitalized on the changes Reagan set in motion; systemic banking failure began within a few years. Those failures have been with us in regular intervals ever since, all the while wealth continues to concentrate in the hands of those who created the economic chaos in the first place.

Here is Elizabeth Warren explaining the process.

US as Third World

On August 25 I had a post on Wall Street and how it bought and captured the institutions originally meant to ensure the public was served. I wrote then, and I say here again, the outsized role of the financial sector and the obscene, short-sighted, and shameless priorities of a reckless investor class, complete with unprecedented lack of accountability and legal liability, are at the heart of America's economic difficulties.

Corporate America's dominance of media and public discourse gloss over the fact that said financial dominance was what conservatives wanted; it was they that pushed through legislation favorable to the wealthy, investors (wealthy or not), and corporations. Conservatives, especially the wealthy variety, have gotten most of what they have wanted; lower taxes, fewer regulations, free movement of capital, lucrative defense contracts, and more.

Crap about how progressive agendas have hurt America are the imaginary domain of the ignorant. Union membership is now at negligible levels, far below similar countries. Labor unions have been weak for the last 30-odd years and getting weaker, just what  conservatives wanted.

New Deal legislation had made banking relatively safe and stable for generations. It was conservatives who said barriers between banking and finance were dated and holding us back. So Republicans in Congress overturned Glass-Steagall. Conservatives got what they wanted. Casino capitalism almost immediately ensued; financial meltdown soon followed. They wanted taxpayers to bail out the banks, and without any meaningful reform to prevent further catastrophes or undeserved enrichment. They got that too.

Wages for most workers have been flat for decades, precisely what conservatives have wanted. The US was a wage leader before Reagan; since then, wages for most have been flat. Conservative policy has been to suppress wages however possible. Conservatives got what they wanted.

The list goes on and on; our nation's richest and most powerful get what they want; favorable legislation, weak regulation, accommodating regulators, court rulings, and a compliant press. This should all be obvious to anyone who pays attention and doesn't walk on their knuckles. But reality struggles for attention in the face of a conservative noise machine that continually distracts voters.

Conservatives have also favored free trade, the mantra, the religion, the chiseled-in-stone gospel of laissez faire economics. It is front and center in the pantheon of conservative political economy, right up there with free markets. And here again, conservatives get what they want.

Conservatives, including Republican party operatives, rarely miss a chance to pimp free trade doctrine. American media usually goes along with Republican talking points. Even if one does find articles that dutifully report massive deficits, and even outsourcing, there are few coherent and visible efforts that explain the ramifications in detail and dare to analyze free trade as class warfare or why a lack of industrial policy is destroying us.

To get just an inkling of how international trade is playing out for the US, have a look at the figures below (Data are from Alan Tonelson's America's Increasingly Third World Trade Profile).

Below are the top ten US trade SURPLUS manufacturing categories for Jan.-June, 2011
(billions of current U.S. dollars)

Waste & scrap materials:  +$15.53
Spacial classification provisions:  +$11.44
Plastics & resins:  +$10.19
Soybeans:  +$8.81
Non-anthracite coal and petroleum gases:  +$7.18
Corn:  +$6.67
Wheat:  +$6.45
Cotton:  +$6.39
Misc. basic organic chemicals:  +$3.87
Non-poultry meat:  +$3.85

Next are the top ten US trade DEFICIT manufacturing categories for Jan.-June, 2011
(billions of current U.S. dollars)

Crude oil & gas:  --$121.13
Autos & light trucks:  --$37.82
Petroleum refinery products:  --$27.62
Computers:  --$22.50
Broadcast & wireless communication. equip.:  --$22.35
Goods returned to Canada & reimported:  --$21.47
Audio & video equipment:  --$15.80
Pharmaceuticals:  --$13.38
Telecommunications hardware:  --$12.72
Computer parts:  --$12.67

Notice a pattern? The US has become a big supplier of scrap and raw materials. Although the data do not show it, this is a substantial reversal of a few decades ago, when the US had a trade surplus in a variety of manufactures, especially high-end, high-tech goods.

Now look at the sectors with the biggest trade deficits. Except for oil, they are all manufactured goods that not long ago were among America's biggest contributors to what we once had, a trade surplus.

There is much to address here. My intention in future posts is to further explore issues in international trade and to demonstrate that America's free-trade ideology and the policies and practices that have resulted, are primarily in the interests of the overclass, have shaped corporate America to serve the interests of that overclass, but are damaging for the country as a whole.

Don't let conservatives tell you the US has a trade deficit because our taxes are too high, wages are too high, unions are too powerful, or regulations are too onerous.

They are wrong on every point.

Willful Ignorance

OK, this is not new, but it serves as a reminder of how nutty some in Washington have become. Back in late March all 47 Republicans introduced a constitutional amendment that would require a balanced budget with spending capped at 18% of GDP.

I can hear it now: "What's wrong with that? 'bout time we get spending under control." People who ask that are either achingly naive about economics, the federal budget, and how government works, or they are teabaggers.  Lots of overlap there. And if you are wondering why there is no discussion on how to reel in our monstrous defense budget to, you know, cut wasteful spending, that's because there isn't any.

I will have to pick at the balanced budget fallacy a few snippets at a time. For now it is worth noting that none of the budgets Ronald Reagan or Bush the Lesser submitted were balanced. And Republicans, including the current leaders, were more than happy to raise the debt ceiling as needed when their man was in the White House. Here are some specifics:

June 2002: Congress approves a $450 billion increase, raising the debt limit to $6.4 trillion. McConnell, Boehner, and Cantor vote “yea”, Kyl votes “nay.”
May 2003: Congress approves a $900 billion increase, raising the debt limit to $7.384 trillion. All four approve.
November 2004: Congress approves an $800 billion increase, raising the debt limit to $8.1 trillion. All four approve.
March 2006: Congress approves a $781 billion increase, raising the debt limit to $8.965 trillion. All four approve.
September 2007: Congress approves an $850 billion increase, raising the debt limit to $9.815 trillion. All four approve.

More on raising the debt ceiling at Think Progress. More on the nutty idea about a balanced budget amendment here and here.

Meanwhile, j4kesutter has his own way of addressing teabagger wisdom in letter to the illiterate. Not sure what you mean, j4kesutter. Tell us how you really feel.

On an entirely different note, Hawaii has a web site up that allows you to explore the joyful possibilities of carving up the state's voting districts at this reapportionment map.

The US Could Really Use a Third Party

Here is Cenk Uygur laying into a Representative Earl Blumenauer, who, as a member of the Progressive Caucus, is supposed to fight for the middle class against the Republican efforts to turn over even more of the economy to Wall Street.

But even Blumenauer acts like he gets his talking points from Paul Ryan. What the hell is wrong with Democrats when they say that raising the retirement age for social security is negotiable?

This is not specifically about the retirement age; that issue alone is not a cure-all, and it isn't the end of the world either. The huge problem in all of this is that Republicans have set the parameters and they have got at least some feckless Dems, including Blumenauer, to negotiate within those parameters. The result is that every piece of budget-related legislation that has come from the House has involved funding cuts for America's poor, its children, its elderly, the dispossesed, and the working class, or it involves tax cuts, and deregulation for the investor class.

What Blumenauer needs to say is that it is ridiculous to even be discussing a raise in the retirement age for social security in the first place. Instead of shit about people living longer, he should be hammering home the fact that even in this slow economy, SS is once again running a surplus, a fact that completely undermines scare talk about "fixing" it.

Social security was able to run up a $2.6 trillion surplus thanks to tweaks made in the early 1980s (under Reagan!). The problem is not with social security, which has worked extremely well; the problem is that politcians "borrowed" that surplus and blew it on other programs, wars, and tax cuts for the wealthy. And now they do not want to pay it back. Republicans want you to think that SS is a huge drain on the federal budget. They are lying through their goddamn teeth.

So why can't guys like Blumenauer make these points? Dems are not fighting back on issues like social security, which should be easy to defend. It's a freakin slam dunk as far as the facts are concerned. 

Cenk hammered him for it, and Cenk was absolutely right.



hat tip to moxnews.com

Why the Rich Vote Republican

On March 23, I posted an article on the results of wage suppression and the shift in wealth from Main Street to Wall Street. Here is another revealing graph. Not sure you can see it well, but the vertical green line indicates the beginning of the Reagan Presidency. The blue line represents the average income in real terms, of the bottom 99% of all Americans; the pink line indicates the top 1%.

The effects of FDR's New Deal, beginning in 1935, vividly show how the American middle class was created.  The graph also shows how that same middle class has been squeezed in recent decades as conservative policies, such as outsourcing, hostility to unions, financial deregulation, an indifference to deindustrialization and other feckless trade policies, have dramatically stunted average income for the bottom 99% (a trend that began before Reagan) and have boosted average incomes for the top 1%, primarily through tax cuts, just as dramatically.

If you are the least bit willing to give your brain a chance, you must surely realize that Republicans are pushing policies to further undermine the middle class and shift ever more wealth to the very top.

The Results of Wage Suppression

Negligible wage growth for most Americans has been an underreported feature of our political economy for an entire generation. This is as corporate America has wanted it, not because they don't want Americans in general to have higher incomes, but because they care first and foremost about their bottom line. That may seem normal to Americans who grew up in a post-Reagan society, but the result is that corporations have come to dominate policy, and economic ideology, as never before. What is best for citizens, families, and communities need not concern the corporation or the investor class.

We are now seeing the results of 30+ years of wage suppression and the gigantic growth in inequality that was inevitable. In a very recent study by The Economic Policy Institute, Lawrence Mishel reveals just how little workers have benefited from decades of substantial productivity growth:

Over the last 30 years there has been very modest wage growth for the typical worker. This is not because the economy was weak and employers were strapped for cash or profits. The economy enjoyed soaring productivity between 1980 and 2009. The Figure compares median wage growth over that period to average gross domestic product growth per worker, a measure of what each individual worker, on average, contributed to the overall economy. This is equivalent to the growth of income per worker as well. While average income per worker grew 59.0%, median wages grew by just 11.2%. Over this same period the amount of wealth (household assets less liabilities) per worker grew by 63.7%. 

What we usually hear and read is the ignorant and asinine contention that unions and public sector workers are to blame for deficits, poor productivity, and slow growth.  This is a nauseatingly stupid position, and it figures that teabaggers would get behind it. In reality, wage growth has never been a policy goal for most politicians. As Mishel writes, "The focus instead has been on policies that claimed to make consumers better off through lower prices: deregulation of industries, privatization of public services, the weakening of labor standards such as the minimum wage, erosion of the social safety net, expanding globalization, and the move toward fewer and weaker unions."

Below is a graph taken from Mishel's paper. It shows as much as any single graph could as to why so Americans are hurting, despite working longer hours even as they fall into debt. The benefits of all that toil, investment, education, and innovation are not accruing to the middle class, but to upper management and the investor class. (Interestingly enough, the graph shows a distinct, recent uptick in both private and public sectors, even as productivity continues to climb. When was that? After Obama took office. No wonder Republicans hate facts).

In a nutshell, the gap in recent decades means that working- and middle-class incomes have not kept up with corporate America's ability to pay them. Workers' incomes would be significantly higher, but our overclass is pocketing the difference. 

Those outsized bonuses gotta come from somewhere. 

Willful Ignorance

Mike the Mad Biologist has an interesting post up at his blog. He is incredulous, as am I, at the number of Americans who have utilized government programs, but did not do not realize what they used was in fact, from the government.

I have reproduced the chart to which he refers. It is a little small; you may have better luck reading it at his site, which I linked above. Note that the original study is from Reconstituting the Submerged State: The Challenges of Social Policy Reform in the Obama Era (2009), which can be downloaded here (PDF). It is an academic study, so teabaggers won't read it, and Sarah Palin can't.

As Mad Mike observes: "Anyone who follows politics regularly is aware of the phenomenon of the voter who 'wants the government to stay out of my Medicare' (Medicare is a government program). But a huge fraction of recipients of government aid do not believe they have received government aid."

While the data are subject to different interpretations, I think Mike is spot-on when he says:

 

"This seems a case of willful ignorance by definition. Government aid is for lazy slackers, for 'welfare queens', and, in some people's minds, for those people. Decent, hard-working people don't receive government aid, even when they do. In other words, any program that helps middle-class people, people like themselves, is, by definition, not aid, because government aid is inherently pejorative."

 

Pervasive and willful ignorance of government's role is the legacy of Ronald Reagan, who assured us repeatedly that government was our biggest problem.  Republicans have continued to frame the debate over government's role, while Democrats have responded ineffectively. A generation of fantastically ill-informed voters is the result.

 

Pushing Back Against Reagan Mythmaking

The 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan's birthday is almost upon us and the myth makers on the American right are gearing up for his beatification. Although you won't see much of it from our for-profit media, many are determined to push back and present a more realistic view of our 40th president and the legacy he created.  

For example, in Ronald Reagan, Enemy of the American Worker, Dick Meister relates how stridently anti-labor Reagan was. In a blatant display of institutional capture, Reagan turned over control of the National Labor Relations Board to anti-labor hacks who, indifferent to the NLRB's mandate, stonewalled efforts by labor to seek relief for workers illegally dismissed for attempting to organize unions. 

In The Reagan Ruins, Robert Borosage explores the peculiar disconnect between the myth of Reagan today and the reality of his presidency. The man expanded government, raised taxes multiple times (remember revenue enhancements?) oversaw a dramatic increase in our trade deficit, and turned the US from the world's largest creditor to the world's largest debtor. On the other hand, he did give rich people tax breaks, greatly increased military spending, gutted consumer protection laws, and began the turn towards an economy dominated by Wall Street. And that, apparently, is what conservatives want.

And finally, Will Bunch has an article over at Daily Kos that details the coming hoopla to which we are going to be subjected. Millions of dollars are being poured into an extravaganza meant to sear an image of Reagan-as-god into the fact-challenged, the wavering, and those too young to remember the guy.

Bunch reminds us that social security is strong today because Reagan saw fit to increase payroll taxes (after giving tax cuts to the rich), ensuring a multi-trillion dollar social security surplus, and the continued success of a popular program.

Bunch is the author of  Tear Down This Myth: The Right-Wing Distortion of the Reagan Legacy.

Whitewater, Part II

Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks is spot-on in this clip. He makes almost all the points I myself try to make about the recent Republican accusations of corruption in the White House (no wonder I like him!). Note especially the almost comical position of Congressman Issa, who acknowledges that Bush signed TARP into law, but all that money must surely be corrupting the Obama Administration, so naturally one starts off with well-publicized accusations. The lack of evidence is apparently beside the point. Cenk also speaks of the $ billions that went unaccounted for in Iraq; a fact, not an accusation, of which Issa has nothing to say. 

Readers should note the real reason for Issa's aggressiveness. Republicans are going to do the same thing to Obama that they did to Clinton; endless investigations along with the accusations, the circus atmosphere, and the ample opportunities to implant in the minds of voters that Obama must be stopped. Republicans were able to drag out Whitewater for almost the entire eight years and never found anything. Their objective was to destroy Clinton. Failing that, to embarrass him, undermine his administration, and suggest to voters that the man was tainted, as if mere accusations meant scandals. 

Far more officials in the administrations of Bush the Elder and Reagan went to prison than those under Clinton, a fact almost completely forgotten by voters and our feckless media. But a generation of Americans will forever link Clinton to Whitewater. That, of course, was an objective. To be sure, Clinton created his own mess with Monica Lewinsky, but that was after almost everything else had run its course.

Republicans have shown a determination to set the narrative on Obama through every means possible, and that now includes subpoena and investigatory power. They spent years trying to destroy Bill Clinton, with limited success. They are set to do it again with Obama. They sense weakness, and the political and social climate has become dysfunctional, so the outcome may be different this time.  As Cenk says, "they're coming after you."

The Road to Oligarchy

When you spend a lot of time studying a subject, or follow events closely, you may assume that the issue at hand has become common knowledge, or at least has the attention of most sentient beings. I learned long ago, and still have to remind myself, that this is usually not the case. Recently I was again surprised by a poll that showed that 94% of Americans do not know who John Boehner is. This is a man who is constantly in the news, and in front of a camera. People will learn more than they wanted to know when he becomes Speaker of the House in January.

For the same reason, I have to assume not many have kept up with this country's slide into oligarchy. The evidence is there, and so is the reportage. It is not comforting.

For a small sampling, see Robert Freeman's article, It's Official: Rich Declare War on the Middle Class. As Freeman relates, "... all of the income and wealth gains for middle Americans from the “golden years” between 1945 and 1975 have now been wiped out.  Or more accurately, have now been transferred to the very rich."

Andy Kroll's How the Oligarchs Took America notes how thoroughly conservative elites have captured institutions, including the court system, the media, and the minds of many Americans since Ronald Reagan (greed is good). He also refers to an excellent new book that happens to be on my ever-growing reading list, Winner-Take All Politics, by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson. As Kroll relates,

Unlike so many pundits, politicians, and academics, Hacker and Pierson resist blaming the usual suspects: globalization, the rise of an information-based economy, and the demise of manufacturing. The culprit in their crime drama is American politics itself over the last three decades. The clues to understanding the rise of an American oligarchy, they believe, won’t be found in New York or New Delhi, but on Capitol Hill, along Pennsylvania Avenue, and around K Street, that haven in a heartless world for Washington’s lobbyists.

And for an analysis on how our warrior class has assisted the transfer of wealth, see Gilbert Mercier's cheerily entitled The American Empire is Collapsing and Americans Will be the Last to Know. My only quibble is that many Americans do know (there I go again), but we are at a loss as to what we can do.

Policy Preferences and Democratic Weakness

On Wednesday I shared a small taste of Bill Maher's skeptical attitude about American voters' understanding of issues and policies. He, of course, is not the only one who notes a wide and long-standing anti-scientific, anti-intellectual streak in this country.

Is it getting worse? It would seem so, in part because of a new level of right-wing aggressiveness, much of it associated with Sarah Palin and teabaggers. Palin sneers at those pointy-headed intellectuals, and the teabaggers eat it up. In her crowd, anti-science has become fashionable and, perversely, is viewed as virtuous.

And yet...  

RJ Eskow, a Senior Fellow with The Campaign for America's Future, cites many reasons to feel good about the wisdom of Americans, at least a majority of us. He has collected some impressive polling data, complete with compelling pie charts that show clear majorities of Americans prefer progressive legislation and policy choices. To wit:

     1.  A large majority opposes cuts to social security;

     2.  Seven in ten oppose raising the retirement age;

     3.  A plurality says to raise taxes on the wealthy;

     4.  Nearly 4 in 5 are against cuts in Medicare;

     5.  Nearly 2 in 3 oppose cuts in lending for college tuition;

     6.  About 6 in 10 say to do more to assist unemployed workers

     7.  4 in 5 say to do more to reduce poverty
     8.  Seven in 10 favor more regulation on Wall Street

Such clear preferences do not demonstrate that people actually understand the details or implications of their choices (3 in 10 don't favor Wall Street regulation?); but they do show that most people want government to help them, not get out of the way, as Republicans since Reagan have claimed. 

As I have posted before, it is essential that we understand the role of political identity. The polls Eskow cites suggest most American prefer, wait for it -- socialism -- a strong dollop of the European model, complete with much more equitable income distribution (say it ain't so Ayn Rand). Many gravitate towards Republicans because it suits their personalities. They want to see politicians project strength, conviction, and detemination. Republicans may have an unusual obsession with swagger, symbolism, and simplistic interpretations of complex issues, but nobody likes to see weakness in their elected officials. And that is what we have mostly seen in the last two years with Dems in the White House and Senate.

People want the Democrats to win, but they have no patience with any party that says it stands for the middle class and then repeatedly squanders its opportunities. Many Americans may be uninformed, many have short memories, and many are impatient, not realizing how long it takes to turn our economy around. Those are faults of the electorate that complicate governing in the US. But nobody is making Democratic politicians look weak except themselves.

Republicans write the script only because Dems let them.

Lies, Liars, and Tax Policy

There is an excellent post at ourfuture.org, called Taxes: Myths and Realities. There is a lot in it, so I will just hightlight and paraphrase portions. Be sure to read the whole article. Lots of links too.

1. "President Obama's tax cuts benefitted more than 95 percent of Americans."

Teabaggers have mindlessly brayed that President Obama has raised their taxes, and don't Dems realize you can never raise taxes in a weak economy? In reality, 95% of Americans received a refund of nearly $3000, a 10% increase from the previous year. Moreover, the Obama tax cuts concentrated on working poor and the middle class. Families in the bottom quintile received an average cut of $604 from the 2009 tax cut legislation. The same group received an average of $22 from the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2006, despite Bush's repeated insistance that they were a boon for all Americans.

Is it necessary to point out that the bulk of Obama's tax cut went to the middle class, which will mostly spend it, and Bush's cuts, which went overwhelmingly to the rich, who mostly save it?

2. "Conservative tax policies helped the rich the most, and left everyone else poorer."

This has become indisputable. When conservative economic policies are in place, wealth is distributed upwards. See their links and then read The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger, by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett to understand why inequality is so pronounced in the US, and why it is hurting us.

3. "It's the wealthy and corporations, not working Americans, who avoid taxes."

Right again; I really need to develop this single issue, that the wealthy, especially the super-wealthy, have untold numbers of ways to avoid taxes not available to others, because it is one that most Americans don't really understand, and for an entire generation we have listened to Republicans howl about high taxes, welfare queens, and how lazy, indolent, slackers are sucking big bucks from the wealthy, who, of course, earned it all fair and square through pluck and diligence. 
 
This is some serious bullshit, but it points to the ability of Republicans to creat a politically advantageous framework; that real Americans, the ones from the heartland, are hardworking, sensible, and vote Republican. The poor and disadvantaged are actually lazy and dishonest, don't you see? They are just gaming the system, and wouldn't you know it, they usually vote Democrat. 

Nice framing, except that it is nonsense. As the site says, with data from the Government Accountability Office, "A whopping two-thirds of American corporations and foreign corporations doing business in the United States pay absolutely no federal income taxes—despite taking in $2.5 trillion in sales."

Meanwhile, here is David Stockman, Reagan's budget director. He is effectively acknowledging the unsustainability of Reaganomics, especially the obsession over tax cuts, an idea which has infected Republicans ever since.