Bush the Lighter

If you can't tell already, I find Jeb Bush to be an intellectually contemptible person. I am not the only one to realize the "smart one" label was laughably misplaced. It's as if he doesn't bother to keep up and assumes his conservative instincts will see him through. Recently he went on record saying the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is no longer needed; specifically stating that a federal role was not needed to ensure voting access in certain states with a history of voting rights denial, e.g., Jim Crow. He said this with what should have the benefit of hindsight. It should have been as obvious to him as the rest of us that, because of the Court ruling, the states no longer bound by the VRA, primarily in the South, immediately began re-implementing voting restrictions, measures that would not have passed muster with the VRA- and all done by Republican-controlled states and municipalities because there was no longer VRA-mandated federal oversight.

This is precisely what what liberals warned would happen and precisely what the Supreme Court majority assured us would not happen.

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Speaking of pompous presidential candidates, those of a certain age remember how George Bush the Elder played the racial fear card with that infamous Willie Horton political attack ad, the one that attacked Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis because he, as Massachusetts governor, had allowed Mr. Horton, a felon, to have a weekend pass. You know the story; Willie stabbed and raped at the first opportunity. Bad call, Gov. You know why you remember it? Because Republicans played that Horton attack ad incessantly and made sure everyone had their primal fears rubbed raw. Republicans know fear helps them win elections; they stoke it every chance they get.

So it is interesting how Huckabee has largely avoided a similar fate. You do remember the incident, don't you? OK, most of us don't, nor did we hear much about it at the time, which is really my point. Fortunately, some have seen fit to remind us.  And yes, if Huckabee starts to climb in the polls, one or more of his Republican opponents may bring up his Willie Horton moment.

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Business Insider reports that economists are surprised that consumers are saving more than expected. This can be a problem in an economy where consumer spending plays such a dominant role. "Secular stagnation," they say. They shouldn't be surprised. As I have said more than once about job security; it has been stripped away for millions of us, and when people know they don't have job security, along with low wages and benefits, they do the rational thing and cut back on spending, especially when credit card debt is already high. It really should be obvious why households feel the need to save and pare down debt.

All that cheap plastic crap from China will sit on Walmart's shelves for a little longer, so there is a good side, I suppose.

Innovation is Secondary

Ever notice how little time politicians spend debating the core issues that concern the politically literate? And how easily our media chases after, or creates, secondary issues? It was painful enough to watch the tepid and interminable process known as the presidential election campaigns. And now with mid-terms approaching, we are reminded just how shallow American elections, and the media that feeds off them, have become. What really is killing us is the abject inability or unwillingness to understand and confront our rigged and dysfunctional system. Our overclass has no intention of letting public discourse ever become constructive and insightful. Our corporate media is only too happy to fixate on the trivial, or otherwise shine its investigative spotlight on important but secondary issues, including education, the federal debt, and other seemingly constructive topics such as innovation.

As America continues to struggle, many continue to tout the value of innovation-- in technology and commerce, mostly-- but also in education and government. President Obama himself has often stressed the importance of innovation; how we once had it in abundance, how it now is eroding, and what we must do to get it back. The value of innovation would seem to be something that progressives and conservatives could mostly agree on, and that helps explain why the President talks about it. It seems, on its face, to be non-partisan.

However, when President Obama talks about the importance of innovation, he has often, inadvertently or not, folded it in with other conservative talking points. We need to "work harder," "stay in school," --or go back to school-- and get that degree or those credentials. It's a competitive world out there; if you can't get the job you want, it's because you are not properly trained and credentialed. And, of course, you cannot blame corporate America if you don't have the proper skills. We must not let down them down; work harder and prove your value to the job creators. This is the central tenant of individualism.

It's all quite clever, really, for the constant adulation of individualism tends to shut down debate and analysis of US political economy. It is all up to you. The rich earned all they have, and if you don't like your lot in life, it is your fault and only you can change it. This mantra allows the overclass to largely avoid honest media examination or a concerted pushback from a mostly insouciant population that is chockablock with low-information voters, has a short attention span, allows itself to be constantly distracted by inanity, and takes solace in religion. Corporate media operates within this milieu, invariably giving voice to conservative operatives who lecture and berate as class warfare any attempt to lay bare our breath-taking inequality. The ideology of individualism allows our overclass to pin society's ills on our growing underclass.

Obviously, there is much to be said for staying is school, seeking additional training, or more broadly, the role of innovation. American commerce still provides sundry example of where hard work and innovation can take you; they are the twin edges we must sharpen if we are to meet future challenges.

However, every speech devoted to either of these takes the focus away from the underlying causes of US difficulty; jobs, to be sure, but also wage levels for the jobs we still have. Most people are in fact employed, and most jobs have not been outsourced or lost to foreign competition. What is not being acknowledged is that a disproportionate number of the jobs Americans now have face little foreign competition. That's the good part; the bad part is modest wages, benefits, and skill requirements for so many of these jobs. You don't need a degree to work fast food, retailing, and the like. And what about that other more technical job you went to back to school for, got a degree in, and now are heavily in debt for? Sorry, that job has been filled.

The problem of our sluggish economic growth is not a lack of innovation. We have bought into an economic doctrine that sanctifies free trade, financial deregulation, including unfettered flow of capital, and an obsession with credit and debt. It is a system designed by and for banks and the investor class, with little regard for main street or the middle class. The result is an indifference to massive trade deficits, dangerously leveraged banks, and an increasingly ability of the wealthy to avoid taxation and accountability. Employees are seen as a mere input in this profit model. Low wages are good since they improve the bottom line. If workers are recalcitrant and actually want a living wage, management should be free to outsource production to low wage countries. To hear some tell it, management is virtually obligated to fire its American workers and seek cheap unregulated workers abroad for improving the bottom line is management's only real responsibility. It's what the investors want, you know.

And the people who work for the company? That's labor, an input. Lower input costs mean higher profits. Why pay more? Any manager who does not seek to maximize profits is doing a disservice to investors, just like they were all taught in American business schools. It's all very rational and efficient, don't you see?

Innovation does not directly address any of this. We have innovated like crazy and what are the results? Entire industries have been shipped overseas. Because we have allowed our industrial base and concomitant skills to erode, seeking out overseas producers has become the default position. A generation has grown up assuming that American reliance on foreign manufacturers is the natural order of things.

Nor do the calls for greater innovation say who will benefit from the results. Asia is a huge beneficiary of US economic policy. For generations our tax dollars have poured into basic R&D, much of it going to public universities. It has been a great success story, and it has played a key role in America's development. As with the recent rounds of stimulus spending, many of those tax dollars end up in Asia. Working harder, as both Republicans and Obama have exhorted, does nothing to change the imbalances. US corporations already have what they always want; cheap labor, huge profits, and a compliant, cheer-leader government. The investor class took a hit in 2008, but they have recovered nicely, and have fat dividends and lightly-taxed capital gains to show for it.

So the middle class needs to work harder? Because corporate America's profits are not high enough? Because the job creators need help? Americans are already working harder than elsewhere in the OECD; we also have, in recent decades, relatively little to show for it. Wages have been suppressed, union membership has plummeted, and pensions and benefits have become even more rarefied, not because of foreign competition, or globalization, but by design. It is the direct result of illegitimate policies made in response to legitimate economic challenges.

Innovation will help; it always has. But the role of innovation has been undermined for the same reason our middle class and techno-industrial base have. A little history shows that nations that support each of these have thrived. Those that let their financial sector dominate have crumbled. America will not be an exception.

Austerity's Strange Logic

I have had a few things to say about Social Security over the years (including here, and here). My prime concerns have focused on how mischaracterized it is as a drag on the federal debt, which it isn't, and how successful it has been, despite repeated and wildly inaccurate claims to the contrary.

A recent article by Marty Wolfson has helped put some perspective on how Social Security works, and why current attempts, by Republicans mostly, but also by some Democrats, to curtail it in the name of austerity is so wrong. When speaking of the federal debt, Wolfson reminds us that: 

Two quick points should be noted here: 1) Recall the long-standing theme presented mostly by Republicans who howl that social security will run out of money by (insert scary date here), and use that questionable assertion as evidence that social security does not work, and that the solution is to either privatize it or cut benefits immediately. The implication is that cutting benefits will reduce the Social Security payout and thus increase its viability. Two) Although supporters of social security like to point out, correctly, that the program pays for itself, by law, through contributions, I now think I see why conservatives believe the system adds to the federal debt. By law, paid-in Social Security contributions don't sit in a shoe box, nor are they invested in stocks, like Wall Street would like. The US government takes the $ billions in cash it receives each year and puts it in Treasury securities. As Wolfson puts it:

The $17 trillion (federal debt) figure is a measure of “gross debt,” which means that it includes debt owed by the U.S. Treasury to more than 230 other U.S. government agencies and trust funds. On the consolidated financial statements of the federal government, this intragovernmental debt is, in effect, canceled out. Basically, this is money the government owes itself. What is left is termed “debt held by the public.” It is this measure of debt that is relevant to a possible increase in interest rates due to competition for funding between the private and public sectors. It is also the category of government debt used by the Congressional Budget Office and other analysts. (Of course, the full economic significance of any debt measure needs to be considered in context, in relationship to the income available to service the debt.) The total debt held by the public is $12 trillion. 

The Social Security Trust Fund comprises $2.7 trillion of the total $5 trillion of various US Treasury debt instruments held in those myriad intragovernmental accounts. Not bad for a governmental agency that is supposedly going broke.

Social Security accumulated all these Treasury securities because of the way that its finances are organized. Social Security benefits to retirees (and to the disabled) are paid for by a payroll tax of 12.4 % on workers’ wages (with 6.2% paid by the worker and 6.2% paid by the employer), up to a limit, currently $113,700. If, in any year, Social Security revenue is greater than what is needed to pay current retiree benefits, the surplus must, by law, be invested in Treasury securities (most of which are “special obligation bonds” issued only to the Social Security Trust Fund).

So why are the calls for austerity so ill-advised?  And why is it so obvious to those of us who bother to research the issues (and have a coherent analytic framework, but I digress) see that "fixing" Social Security is not the true objective? The fact that the program is running up large surpluses which then must be parked in Treasury securities sounds good in a way; surpluses sound better than deficits, which would surely drive fiscal hawks crazy. I'm guessing that some congressional supporters in years past helped to ensure a surplus condition so that conservative critics would have less to bitch about. No such luck, for now the critics bemoan the large surplus the Social Security Trust Fund now maintains, though they invariably just call it debt, and then they still insist that the money will run out in, what?, 28 years? 75 years? As if suddenly there were no adjusting allowed, as we have successfully done in the past.

Here is the simple reality. The Social Security Trust Fund was not envisioned to have such large surpluses as it currently has. The fact that there is a meaningful surplus is a signal that contributions are unnecessarily high, or that the payout in benefits is needlessly low, or some combination of the two.

As Wolfson writes: 

Therefore the $2.7 trillion of Treasury securities held by the Trust Fund came about not because entitlements are out of control and the government has been forced to borrow to meet retiree benefits, but rather because future retirees have paid more taxes than necessary to meet benefit obligations. Workers have essentially been prepaying into the Trust Fund in order to provide for their future benefits.

The most pointedly ignorant response, the one that Congressional Republicans keep making, is to suggest that we cut benefits. Doing so will only serve to drive the imbalance further by decreasing the outflow of benefits and further increasing the need to issue or maintain Treasury securities for the inflow of money earmarked for future claims. It is precisely the opposite of what austerity proponents claim. A far more useful solution would be to increase benefits, and pump more money into the economy and at the same time reduce the need to buy ever more Treasury securities. 

A careful reading of Republican proposals and positions makes it clear that actually fixing most government institutions, programs, or issues, is no longer that party's objective, certainly not with this tea bagging crowd. The most jaw-droppingly obvious solutions, which have worked well in the past, are studiously avoided, and kept from the public, the media, and legislative consideration. And that is because the objective, not of all conservatives, but of true Tea Party devotees, is to emasculate the federal government. Those who actually read American history know this has always been the case.

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. 

Class Warriors Explain Those Horrible Taxes

The picture below recently ran in the Wall Street Journal. It is a clumsy attempt to show us how horrible President Obama's taxes policies will be for us in 2013 what with those massive, job-killing tax hikes set to kick in.

I should not have to explain this, right? It is laughable, yes?

What? You're not laughing? OK, perhaps you cannot read the fine print, so here is my point. I will assume the Journal's calculations are correct. After all, taxes usually do go up when taxes are raised. However, the only way one can come up with attention-getting tax increases of up to $21,608 is to use outlandish income examples, as the Journal has done.

A single parent, with two children--and a $260,000 income. Uh, yeah, that is pretty typical. And that sad face she has; her kids look like they are out of a Dickens novel. The rest of them look as bad. The young single women in the bottom left will also be financially ruined; she only makes $230,000 per year, while the family of six squeezes by on $650,000.  Great time to be retired, I guess; no tax increase and hey!, $180 grand a year.

Does anyone think any of the four examples represents anyone other than the 1%? With massive deficits, rising poverty, and a right wing that howls incessantly about balancing the budget, how many Americans think that tax increases running from 0% to 3.3% on people earning in the range of a quarter million and more are where we should direct our tears of outrage?

The Journal could have used income figures of say, $40,000-$60,000, a range far more representative of most Americans. The problem is that the thousand dollar tax hikes it portrays would no longer hold true, and that, of course, is why the Journal didn't use them. It had to willfully and crudely mislead, and hope that we wouldn't notice.

Does the Wall Street Journal think it is being clever?  Or is it even more tone-deaf to America's reality than I thought?

Hat tip to Avedon Carol. Another read, with maybe a clearer picture is here.

Critical Thinking

Earlier in the year there was a spate of articles on the Texas Republican Party, and its concern over the teaching of "critical thinking," and whether it should be in the Texas public school curriculum. In response, the same people who consider it essential that students learn logical analysis, fact from fiction, evidence from assertion, and a general willingness to challenge received wisdom, are also mostly the same people who drop their jaws in disbelief that certain politicians and educators in Texas would be opposed to what most of us consider to not only be an essential 21st century skill, but one that is already in short supply.

But it really isn't that surprising, not if one accounts for the world view of those who are skeptical if not outright defiant about critical thinking, and what they prefer be taught in its place. 

Conservatives have often argued that much of what comes under the rubric of critical thinking undermines authority, especially parental authority, and gives license to students not to merely question authority, but to subvert it. Empowering the student to think systematically, analyze, and challenge the views of others--and not merely accept--is now seen by the Texas GOP as subversive. This is merely the current version of an age-old pattern: The aristocracy is to be educated, peasants are to work; the masses are to be controlled and remain illiterate; the clergy will interpret and obfuscate doctrine as needed. No Latin for you.

Cognitive scientist George Lakoff has laid out the key distinctions rather well. Many conservatives, but especially authoritarians (and not, by way of comparison, libertarians, even conservative ones), see humans as essentially evil and sinful in nature. They-we-must undergo a strict and disciplined upbringing, where we learn  obedience and submission to authority. The central authority figure is the father, he who dispenses judgement and punishment.

In contrast, more liberal households are more likely to encourage their children to explore, create, and examine the how and why of life. Less rote memorization, more hands up in the classroom, and more critical thinking, just that which irritates the Right. This talk of creativity and exploration is all fine up to a point, they say, but not if it undermines the family, other authority figures, and moral certitude. For such authoritarians, a strict father is preferable to a nurturing mother.

The Texas Republican Party Platform of 2012 is unambiguous: "We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority (emphasis mine)."

Silly me, I thought a central point of education was to challenge a student's "fixed beliefs."

In an insightful, if distressing, article called How the Conservative Worldview Quashes Critical Thinking -- and What That Means For Our Kids' Future, Sara Robinson writes:

In the conservative model, critical thinking is horrifically dangerous, because it teaches kids to reject the assessment of external authorities in favor of their own judgment -- a habit of mind that invites opposition and rebellion. This is why, for much of Western history, critical thinking skills have only been taught to the elite students -- the ones headed for the professions, who will be entrusted with managing society on behalf of the aristocracy. (The aristocrats, of course, are sending their kids to private schools, where they will receive a classical education that teaches them everything they'll need to know to remain in charge.) Our public schools, unfortunately, have replicated a class stratification on this front that's been in place since the Renaissance.

Robinson makes the point that education is inherently a partisan issue, something conservatives seem to realize more than progressives. We had been making great strides in this country primarily because of two interrelated trends: an expanding middle class and an ever-widening public school system that was tasked with educating millions who, in times previous, would have been relegated to cheap, ignorant labor.

We are witnessing trends, policies, and attitudes that are threatening to reverse these gains. As taxes are cut, and state and local budgets come under pressure, a curriculum that educated us, and made society less coarse, has come under attack as humanities, philosophy, music, art, and now critical thinking, are being curtailed. While many school districts attempt to upgrade math and science, a laudable objective, many schools are forced to gut enriching subjects simply because budgets compel them.

But this is not strictly an issue of budget constraints. Again, Sara Robinson:

It's obvious that stripping these mind-expanding fripperies out of the curriculum -- as conservatives are proposing, often with no push-back at all from liberals -- serves the narrow, functional conservative view of education and citizenship very well. But we let them win this point at our peril. It's not exactly accurate -- but nonetheless true -- to say that the reason we call it "liberal education" is that the more of it you have, the more liberal you're likely to be. If we buy into the idea that critical thinking is somehow non-essential, we're not only betraying the entire future of the liberal tradition in America; we're also depriving future generations of the basic skills and knowledge they'll need to defend their democracy from the plutocrats who are always standing in the shadows, determined to wrest it from them.

More tax cuts will be implemented long before any real reduction in the federal debt takes place. So don't expect positive changes in public education any time soon, unless you think charter schools and vouchers are an improvement.

At least the Pentagon gets all the money it needs.

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.

Hypocrites

The heavyweight Republicans featured in the video--including Mitt Romney--supported the Vietnam war, but pulled various strings to avoid serving themselves. This is not news for most of us, but really; which of Romney supporters can honestly say that if the circumstances were reversed, they would not have howled endlessly about the horrid hypocrisy? Imagine if Obama had demonstrated in favor of Vietnam, Iraq, or wherever, including support for the draft, and then skipped out of that same draft and went to, of all places, France?

You know damn well that teabaggers would be apoplectic with rage.

Republicans viciously denounced Bill Clinton as a draft dodger, but have no problem when Romney bailed, Bush used his connections, and Dick Cheney said he had "other priorities." The difference is Bill Clinton opposed the war, period. Each Republican featured in the video below was in favor of sending others to die in their stead. These are the same people who have consistently supported tax cuts for the wealthy, knowing full well that that each of these horrifically expensive wars would not be paid for and would add grievously to the federal debt. 

Never forget these are the same people and party that were able to convince many voters that decorated combat veteran John Kerry was a traitor. Imagine if Obama had national guard records that suddenly went missing, like Bush's did.

Nice comparison with Muhammad Ali, who stood on principle and willingly paid the price. 

Avoiding the Real Issues

As America continues to struggle, many have reminded us of the value of innovation-- in technology and commerce, mostly, --but also in education and government. President Obama himself has often stressed the importance of innovation; how we once had it in abundance, how it now is eroding, and what we must do to get it back. The value of innovation would seem to be something that progressives and conservatives could mostly agree on, and that helps explain why the President talks about it. There is, of course, less agreement on just how innovation should be enhanced, and what the proper role of government should be.

When President Obama talks about the importance of innovation, he has often, inadvertently or not, draped it in conservative talking points. We need to "work harder", "stay in school", --or go back to school-- and get that degree or those credentials. It's a competitive world out there; if you can't get the job you want, it's because you are not properly trained and credentialed. And, of course, you cannot blame corporate America if you don't have the proper skills. We must not let down them down; work harder and prove your value to the job creators.

This storyline is not so wrong as it is incomplete. Obviously, there is much to be said for staying is school, seeking additional training, or more broadly, the role of innovation. American commerce still provides sundry example of where hard work and innovation can take you; they are the twin edges we must sharpen if we are to meet future challenges.

Every speech devoted to either of these takes the focus away from the underlying causes of US difficulty; jobs, to be sure, but also wage levels for the jobs we still have. Most people are in fact employed, and most jobs have not been outsourced or lost to foreign competition. What is not being acknowledged is that a disproportionate number of the jobs Americans now have face little foreign competition. That's the good part; the bad part is modest wages, benefits, and skill requirements for so many of these jobs. You don't need a degree to work fast food, retailing, and the like. And what about that other more technical job you went to back to school for, got a degree in, and now are heavily in debt for? Sorry, that job has been filled.

The problem of our sluggish economic growth is not a lack of innovation. We have bought into an economic doctrine that sanctifies free trade, financial deregulation, including unfettered flow of capital, and an obsession with credit and debt. It is a system designed by and for banks and the investor class, with little regard for main street or the middle class. The result is an indifference to massive trade deficits, dangerously leveraged banks, and an increasingly ability of the wealthy to avoid taxation and accountability.

Employees are seen as a mere input in this profit model. Low wages are good since they improve the bottom line. If workers are recalcitrant and actually want a living wage, management should be free to outsource production to low wage countries. To hear some tell it, management is virtually obligated to fire its American workers and seek cheap unregulated workers abroad, for improving the bottom line is management's only real responsibility. It's what the investors want, you know.

And the people who work for the company? That's labor, an input. Lower input costs mean higher profits. Why pay more? Any manager who does not seek to maximize profits is doing a disservice to investors, just like they were all taught in American business schools. It's all very rational and efficient, don't you see?

Innovation does not directly address any of this. We have innovated like crazy and what are the results? Entire industries have been shipped overseas. Because we have allowed our industrial base and concomitant skills to erode, seeking out overseas producers has become a default position. A generation has grown up assuming that American reliance on foreign manufacturers is the natural order of things.

Nor do the calls for greater innovation say who will benefit from the results. Asia is a huge beneficiary of US economic policy. For generations our tax dollars have poured into basic R&D, much of it going to public universities. It has been a great success story, and it has played a key role in America's development. And like the recent round of stimulus spending, much of those tax dollars ends up in Asia. Working harder, as even Obama has exhorted, does nothing to change the imbalances. US corporations already have what they always want; cheap labor, huge profits. The investor class took a hit in 2008, but they have recovered nicely, and have fat dividends and lightly-taxed capital gains to show for it.

So the middle class needs to work harder? For them? Because the job creators need help? Americans are already working harder than elsewhere in the OECD; we also have, in recent decades, relatively little to show for it. Wages have been suppressed, union membership has plummeted, and pensions and benefits have become even more rarefied. All of this is the direct result of flawed policies made in response to legitimate economic challenges.

Innovation will help; it always has. But the role of innovation has been undermined for the same reason our techno-industrial base has. Economic history is very clear on this: Nations that vigorously promote and defend their industrial and technical base have thrived. Those that didn't, and let their financial sector dominate, have crumbled.

America will not be an exception.

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.

Our Low-Wage Recovery

There has been lots of talk in the air about what this country needs. Republican presidential candidates have been almost unanimous about the value of cutting taxes, by which they mean the top tax rate, the one that affects the wealthy. And we must get the corporate tax rate down as well; it tops out at 35% and that must surely be why American corporations are having trouble competing, except that they aren't. The premise for lowering the top corporate tax rate is that corporations actually pay the current rate. They don't. What they do pay are the most obscene compensation packages in the world.

And let's not forget to cut spending, lots of it. Please tell me you find it odd --in a simple math that doesn't add up kind of odd-- that proponents of spending cuts, meaning nearly every conservative member of congress, simultaneously insist on budget-destroying tax cuts for the wealthy, those who have already enjoyed a generation of such largess, even as they yelp about the deficits those tax cuts created. The national debt is so horrible that we must gut spending on society's most vulnerable to save the republic, but apparently not so horrible that we can't give more tax breaks for our most privileged.

So why has our recession lasted so long? It isn't because taxes are too high, or because we have a large budget deficit.

The reason is that we are turning into a low-wage country. Look at chart below. It shows the share of employees in low-wage work. Hey, we are number one. Yes, I know, having a crappy job is better than no job at all. But this is a long ways from the can-do spirit that this country once had, back when it was an unambiguous economic superpower, back when its tax rates were much higher and wages grew along with productivity. I've discussed the wage-productivity divergence here and here.  



As Tavis Smiley and Cornel West have shown, many of the newly created jobs are "...in the restaurant, retail, temporary service, social assistance and hospitality sectors. In other words, low-wage jobs, most without health benefits or paid sick leave."  Additional analysis of the significance of the chart above, including America's growing wage polarization, is at "Economist's View."

In other words, low wages means marginalized families with low consumption. Not only can they not save, provide for their children's education, and pay for health care simultaneously, they simply cannot buy much of the products that both corporations and merchants need them to buy. The inability to consume more, regardless of how one feels about materialism, prolongs the weak recovery because everything is predicated on sales, not low taxes. Businesses, especially the smaller ones on Main Street America that do not have foreign sales, do not want lower taxes or cheaper workers. They want more customers.

“It is to the real advantage of every producer, every manufacturer and every merchant to cooperate in the improvement of working conditions, because the best customer of American industry is the well-paid worker.” FDR

Fight Back, With a Message

Here is a way to make your voice heard. It isn't new, but I like it. Send them a message --and make them pay for it.



Not sure about the wooden shingle; you can probably find some free cardboard lying around.

She'll Do More Good As Senator Anyway

Elizabeth Warren is running for Scott Brown's senate seat in Massachusetts. You may recall that Warren was the favorite to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a position she did not get because President Obama caved in to Republican demands. Instead, she was appointed as a special adviser, where she reports directly to Timothy Geithner, a man who is a big part of the problem, and does not want to see or hear her.

For those keeping score at home, Warren is seeking the seat held for decades by the Lion of the Senate. No-name Brown lucked into his temporary job when State Attorney General Martha Coakley, who had all the advantages, instead ran an inept and listless campaign that disgusted many democratic stalwarts and independents alike.

So, yeah, Warren for Senate, 2012. Chances are good this will turn out better than if she had been buried in that bureau with a man like Geithner always ready to block reform.

I might add that people like Warren are advocating what we had in this country in the past. It is not some dangerous and untested territory to want to protect consumer interests or to hold financial firms accountable for their behavior. We had higher tax rates, lower debt, stronger growth-and far more equality-before we began the long slide towards reduced taxes on the wealthy, the gutting of regulations, and the growing dominance of a financial sector that is beholden to no one.



If you want to know how Warren thinks, and in the process learn a lot about the mess the American middle class is in, read this book.

What Have Unions Done For Us?

I don't imagine that many have seen this video, but it should at least give pause for thought about this country's ridiculous and staggeringly ill-informed assault on American labor. It started with Republicans, of course; they have hated working Americans for generations. But the real problem is that too few Democrats seem prepared to fight for what made this country great.

Nor can we depend on our feckless media to remind us of what we once had and why we had it. Without a more vigorous media, voters remain confused, uninterested, and susceptable to manipulative framing that has reached absurd levels. 

Ignorant shits who can't tell you what GDP stands for, or how many Senators are in their state have convinced themselves they know what this country needs. They have lapped up right wing crap about how "big labor" is strangling the economy. They don't hear, and don't bother to read about, how high union membership coincided and contributed to middle class stability, at a time when we had a much greater manufacturing sector as well as a trade surplus.

All of this happened while the US was a creditor nation, consumers had far less debt, did not rely on two or more jobs to make ends meet, and were able to save far more. Nor did our government depend on our trading partners' dollar surpluses to buy our debt. And it all happened when marginal tax rates were far higher than today.



Now look at the graphs below. You can see that most of America has not done well economically in the last 30+ years, not considering overall growth. This is why we have a stagnant economy; wages are too low, which has led to weak demand. Does it look like the tax burden, regulations, or labor unions have held back the rich? Does it look like they need more tax breaks?

FDR's New Deal created the middle class. Son, if you don't know that, you need to set about reading some American economic history. You do know what FDR stands for, yes?

Teabaggers Want Chaos

As I write this, politicians and ideologues alike are working, with various degrees of sincerity, to come to an agreement on a budget and a possible balanced budget amendment, all the while under threat from a small minority of Representatives, voted into office by a small minority of voters, to not raise the federal debt ceiling and bring a level of chaos and pain upon the country that even most Republicans agree would be disastrous.

There are several scenarios in all of this; One is that Republicans exact a huge price in the way of spending cuts, no new taxes, and the debt ceiling is raised. Republican threats to sabotage the economy work. Said economy likely sputters just in time for election season. Republicans, knowing that Americans have short memories, will blame Dems and Obama in particular.

The second scenario is that Republicans exact a huge price in the way of spending cuts, no new taxes, but the debt ceiling is raised only temporarily. Economy sputters because of reduced government spending, which even worries the Chamber of Commerce (but not the Club for Growth), and Republicans not only blame the Dems and Obama in the upcoming elections, they get to sabotage the economy again by threatening to oppose further debt ceiling hikes, unless, you guessed it, further spending cuts. They may insist on repeal of last year's health care reform.

A third scenario is just as repulsive but a bit trickier for Republicans. Not all of them want to just threaten the economy; it's not just a negotiating style with some of them. Republican members of Congress are on record as saying they will not vote to raise the debt ceiling even with spending cuts. And that is because they want to induce chaos. Forcing the federal government to default will, they say, create enough dispair that they can then force through a balanced budget amendment. (Not sure how that could work? Read Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine).

The intransigence of the Teabagger wing of the Republican Party, where most of the hard-line "let the government default" members are, has created governing challenges for the more establishment members of the Party. It is they, not the Dems, who are giving John Boehner gray hair.

It has become obvious that the Teabaggers are no longer playing by the script Republican operatives set for them. Wall Street financed the Teabagger movement specifically as a way to keep Democrats in check. Fact is, Wall Street loves government, as long as it gets what it wants from it; lax regulatory enforcement, if not outright deregulation, lucrative government contracts, preferential tax rates, and no meaningful reforms or investigations. Republicans are especially willing to let the Wall Street Casino continue.

But Wall Street has seriously underestimated the anti-government lunacy of Teabaggers. Most Republicans, the ones promoting Wall Street's interests, have never been especially interested in the deficit.They certainly did not care during the Bush era. Recall Dick Cheney's claim that Reagan proved "deficits don't matter." If Republicans had been interested in the budget deficit, they would not have pushed for a continuation of Bush's tax giveaway to the wealthy. They went back to harping about the deficit just as soon as the two-year tax extension was in place. Even now, virtually no Congressional Republican will agree to any tax increases on the wealthy whatsoever. Their priorities are low taxes and other privileges for the wealthy and for corporate America, reduced social spending on the poor, and high spending on defense. Reducing the deficit is further down their priority pole. 

But not, of course, for the true believing Teabaggers. My own take on this is that enough Teabaggers will very reluctantly agree to a deal that gets them most of what they want; they will have to give up on the chaos-through-default option for now. Boehner et. al. will have to remind them to the very end that destroying the country is not a vote-getting strategy. Nor will they get a balanced budget amendment. That will piss off the Teabaggers big time, and you can bet they will be back with it next year.

Democrats, on the other hand, should not agree to any of this madness. They have yet to appreciate that most Americans support them on this. 

President Obama should invoke the 14th amendment. But he won't.

Republican Statesman

Eric Cantor, mealy-mouthed little shit. I am glad the media is finally on to this guy.

Good one, Luckovich!

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.

America's Problem is Low Taxes, Not Spending

It has quickly become a Republican talkling point that the US does not have a taxation problem; it has a spending problem. No need to raise taxes, they say. Just cut all that wasteful spending, and we will be all right. After all, teabaggers tell us we are Taxed Enough Already.

The reality is dramatically different. The chart below shows "general government expenditures as a percent of GDP". It is taken from the OECD "iLibrary" and can be found here. The bars represent each country's annual average for 2006-8. The blue bar is the average for all OECD countries combined.

The US is the seventh bar from the left, below the average and far below most of  Europe's most developed states. Note also that the gray diamonds hovering above each bar represent that govenment's average expenditure for 1995-97. They show that the spending percentage for the US was virtually unchanged for the subsequent decade.

The reality is that US government expenditures are a relatively modest percentage of GDP. Needless to say, US expenditures would be even lower were it not for our monstrously expensive industrial-military complex.

In other words, the US is not spending nearly as much on non-military items as some politicians would have you believe. Our overall spending levels are relatively low, and entitlement spending that directly benefits families is even lower. The US does not have a tax and spend issue. Our national debt is burgeoning because we keep reducing taxes on the wealthy and on corporations.

The chart below shows spending for families as a percent of GDP for the US and four other OECD members. This represents the socialistic spending and entitlements Republicans say is out of control and must be cut. Background and additional charts can be seen here.

Finally, have a look at the next chart. It comes from the same place as the first one. It also encompasses the same time frame. The one below measures taxes as a percent of GDP. The US is the fourth bar from the left, putting us even further down the OECD list.

To summarize, the US is not a tax and spend socialist nightmare. Government spending is comparatively low; spending on entitlements, welfare and the like is proportionately even lower. Teabaggers and others who buy into Congressman Paul Ryan's asinine spending bill, the one that guts Medicare and lowers taxes on the rich even more, are full of some serious shit.

Read Robert Reich, who details why we must raise taxes on the rich.

TARP Has Worked Out Well

Turns out the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, has done rather well for the government. People will always debate whether TARP was truly necessary in the first place. Detractors from across the political spectrum will always claim it did not have the desired effect. But one of the biggest gripes about TARP, an argument especially dear to the American Right, was that it was going to add greatly to the national debt. Stop the bailout, they foamed.

Turns out it won't. BusinessWeek, no liberal hotbed, reports that taxpayers are enjoying an 8.2% return on their investment, a far higher return than on 30-year Treasury bonds. And you thought that Marxist from Kenya was just giving the money away. You know, 'cause he wants to destroy America. 

Public perception has yet to catch up with reality. And in this nutty election season, the disconnect is especially wide. The Democratic Party's inability to get its message, and its accomplishments, across to the public is frustrating. Many have emotionally innoculated themselves against reason and evidence, especially those who insist on having their feel-good pout. They are not going to let little things like facts get in the way.

I'm looking at you, teabaggers.

Catfood Commission Sprays Wider Swath

Recall that President Obama's debt commission was created to find ways to address the federal debt. Stopping the endless wars and the obscenely expensive military-industrial complex would seem to be a good start, but remember there are Republicans involved. Recall also that Democrats in Congress did not support the debt commission, and voted it down. Obama created it by issuing an executive order, and now you have Republicans on the commission, including the duplicitous co-chair, Alan Simpson, talking about the need to "reel in" social security.

Credit is due to Dems who saw it coming and refused to enable Obama's enemies. Obama either did not see it coming (possible), or did see it, and thought it a good idea (more likely). You know, bipartisanship and all. Either way, Obama has a lot of explaining to do to those irresponsible whiners who put him in office. You know, the ones who actually voted for him.
 
Now the catfooders want to go further. Republicans on the commission want to use it as a platform to argue for, wait for it, additional corporate and capital gains tax cuts. At least they are consistent. All their efforts to maintain the status quo involve retaining benefits for the rich, such as extending the Bush tax cuts for all, and every effort to cut spending is done on the backs of the working class.

This election season is like a parody, especially Republicans. I mean, how blatant does it have to get?