Southern Order

You've read here before how I have bemoaned Dixification, the preferred socio-economic model of Southern conservatives, and how it is spreading to the rest of the country. I've written about the centuries-long tradition of a deeply anti-democratic model of hierarchy and privilege, of low wages, benefits, taxes and regulations; replete with voter restriction, fierce hostility to unions, and the ongoing animosity to any social change that upsets long-standing social hierarchies.

Again, the argument is that conservative politicians support policies that do not make economic sense, but that is not the intent. Liberal policy wonks scratch their heads trying to figure out why Republicans are so determined to avoid sensible and proven policies. But they misunderstand the nature and intent of the deeply reactionary politicians that now dominate that party, many state governments, and come January, even more of the federal government.

It is gratifying, in a grim sort of way, to see there is a growing awareness of what Dixification is and how it is redefining national politics as never before.

To cite just one example, Doug Muder's recent post reminds us that the current invective from teabaggers is Southern at its core:

It’s not a Tea Party.

The Boston Tea Party protest was aimed at a Parliament where the colonists had no representation, and at an appointed governor who did not have to answer to the people he ruled. Today’s Tea Party faces a completely different problem: how a shrinking conservative minority can keep change at bay in spite of the democratic processes defined in the Constitution. That’s why they need guns. That’s why they need to keep the wrong people from voting in their full numbers. 

These right-wing extremists have misappropriated the Boston patriots and the Philadelphia founders because their true ancestors — Jefferson Davis and the Confederates — are in poor repute.

But the veneer of Bostonian rebellion easily scrapes off; the tea bags and tricorn hats are just props. The symbol Tea Partiers actually revere is the Confederate battle flag. Let a group of right-wingers ramble for any length of time, and you will soon hear that slavery wasn’t really so bad, that Andrew Johnson was right, that Lincoln shouldn’t have fought the war, that states have the rights of nullification and secession, that the war wasn’t really about slavery anyway, and a lot of other Confederate mythology that (until recently) had left me asking, “Why are we talking about this?”

By contrast, the concerns of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and its revolutionary Sons of Liberty are never so close to the surface. So no. It’s not a Tea Party. It’s a Confederate Party.

Let's be clear on this: the most powerful members of Congress are overwhelmingly from the old Confederate south. They are deeply overrepresented in Washington, all the more so when voting population is considered. They are not here to work together, or fix things, to improve government, to promote democracy, nor to put the economy back on track. They are here to reestablish the old order, destroy what they hate, and maintain privilege and power for the few.

Come Together?

Ralph Nader has a new book out, called Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State. In it, Nader argues that some elements of the Right and Left are beginning to come together as they slowly realize they have a common enemy, Wall Street in particular, corporatism in general.

Progressives, including Nader, had much of this figured out long ago; whether it be the corrupting influence of wealth and privilege, the contradictions of neoliberal economics, the laughable asininity of supply-side economics, the  illogical and self-serving gospel of free trade and more: It was the Left, the true Left, not the Clintons and their Democratic Leadership Council, nor the New Democrats, nor other Republican Lites, including President Obama, that long ago saw the corporate train wreck heading our way.

Only now, with so much evidence that even Fox cannot spin it all away, we see at least some working and middle class conservatives, including those who identify with the Tea Party, are finally realizing they have been played by the Republican establishment, those at the very top of the conservative wealth and power structure. 

The Left, broadly defined, has long wondered how the reactionary Right, especially working class rank and file Republicans, could so blindly and aggressively support Republican politicians who so clearly violate what teabaggers claim they stand for, or what they consider to be morally sound.

Nader is not alone on this. I myself have argued there is a substantial ideological and policy opening that could allow the two otherwise disparate forces to work together. Issues such as an abusive financial sector, corruption, inequality before the law, the bill of goods called free trade, secret offshore bank accounts -- an issue that hurt Romney with working class Republicans --are issues that animate both the Left and more than a few Tea Party adherents.

Mike Konczal argues that the Tea Party and Wall Street actually get along just fine. He makes some good points, but it is important to note that Konczal's focus is on elected politicians, those whose elections are financed by Wall Street, and not rank and file teabaggers. It is this latter group's interests which diverge most strongly with the plutocracy, even if they often seem doggedly unaware of it.

And ultimately, this is why Nader's belief that liberals and teabaggers will work against a common enemy may be wishful thinking, at least until even more pain is felt. Few conservatives, and especially tea partiers, even now, will listen to arguments made by progressives. Or to put it differently, many teabaggers will be open to an idea or policy until they realize it is a progressive one, or on those occasions when President Obama supports it. As an aside, I might add they also don't realize how often President Obama sides with the center-right, such as through his enforcement of domestic spying programs initiated by Bush, his unwillingness to prosecute Wall Street banks, or the continued care and feeding of a bloated military.

Their common sense is overwhelmed by a condition that Fox News has worked hard to develop. Fox News Channel President Roger Ailes once said he was less interested in giving viewers the news than in how they felt about it. Blame it on cable TV and the Internet, but fewer of us are willing to listen to, and think through, viewpoints we don't like and may not want to hear. Authoritarians, which populate the Tea Party, are especially impervious to uncomfortable facts and are especially rigid, often contradictory, in their views, but we are all susceptible. Add to this a visceral hatred for liberals that runs deep in America, even though conservatives support liberal policies far more than they realize, that ensures that many on the right will reject policies and programs they would otherwise support if psychology played less of a role and evidence-based economics played more. It does not help that progressive views are relatively complex and do not lend themselves to easy bromides, slogans, or bumper stickers.

It would undoubtedly gall many teabaggers, were they suddenly to acquire a more rounded education, that Marx was right; class defines everything. Those at the very top have always used the state for their own ends. The enduring challenge for the rest of us, one we are currently failing, is to keep in check the predatory nature of the neoliberal overclass.   

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.

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.

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.

Blame Romney?

The Republican Party has been good at setting narratives, some uplifting, some not. The last four years have been deeply negative because that is where the Party is headed, but also because they don't hold the presidency. Hence the unceasing narrative, successfully planted in the minds of many, that Barack Obama is not one of us; he's foreign, ineligible, out of touch, neo-colonial, Marxist, Muslim. The drumbeat never ends because Republicans understand their base and how it is motivated by fear and uncertainty, and they understand better than Dems that winning elections is about telling emotional stories.

The current presidential race has all of the standard Republican boilerplate, but we have  seen many Republicans stray off message in recent years, to put it mildly. One has to wonder why deeply conservative candidates believe attacking women, social security, medicare, Hispanics, teachers, a struggling working class, and more, could be a winning campaign strategy. Attacking everyone who is not like you is not a recommended approach to expanding the voter base. 

And now Mitt Romney, goaded by teabaggers everywhere, has taken the face of 21st century Republicanism much further to the right. It is hard to believe this is the same party that brought us fiery fighter Teddy Roosevelt, calm and fair Dwight Eisenhower,  and bland but sensible Gerald Ford. Even Dick Nixon looks positively moderate by comparison. Romney had an opportunity to bring sense to his party and denounce the worst and most radical elements, but for probably personal reasons, he has chosen to pander to them instead.

And now he appears trapped by their ideology. Weeks before the general election, it is obvious that Romney, and many other downticket candidates, not only have espoused unpopular and destructive policies, which are obvious to many of us, but that he has run a poor campaign, which is obvious to almost everyone. And it has come at a time in the election cycle when far more people are paying attention. To be sure, many Republicans warned long ago that Romney was not their guy. And now that it is too late, it has become obvious to many party bigwigs that Romney was a weak choice.

However, it is precisely Romney's weaknesses that are giving Republicans a new narrative to invent. The angle being developed is that if Obama is reelected, it will be Romney's fault; he is, after all, a weak campaigner. It is only Sept 30, and a Romney defeat is still far from certain, so manufacturing excuses in advance does not look like a winning strategy.

And yet we can see a subtle whisper campaign starting to build. The Republicans, they tell us, could have, should have, won the presidency, if only they had had a candidate who knew how to campaign. Republicans are now assuring themselves they have the right policies, the right prescriptions, the right everything; it's just that Romney put up a weak campaign. Who knew?

And Obama? Because he is all those terrible things Republicans say he is, there is no way he should be winning this thing. It is, you see, just more proof that Romney was a weak candidate. If you buy into right-wing critiques of Obama, then voters should have flocked to Romney. This was the expectation, even from Romney himself. Few are willing to admit they massively misconstrued the electorate.

If Romney loses, especially if he continues to offend voters, he will be crucified by his party. He was never especially popular anyway. He won the nomination because he was able to pander to the right, and because the other Republican candidates were even weaker and more risible than he. The election is weeks away and Republicans have to convince voters that it is not the Republican brand that is to blame, just that one guy at the top of the ticket. And if he does in fact lose, it is only because he was a crappy campaigner.

What other reasons could there be?

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. 

Amend 2012

It was two years ago this week when five corporatists on the US Supreme Court made the ludicrous argument that corporations are people and that not allowing them to spend unlimited money on political campaigns would be denying them their right, as people, to free speech. Thanks to their ruling in Citizens United vs. FEC, not only do rich people have more free speech, corporations do now as well. And since we do not hinder free speech, we cannot hinder the free flow of money into politics. Corporations can now buy elections and politicians more blatantly than ever before. Since money is fungible, that guarantees foreign corporations will be in on it as well. It's free speech, you see. It's right there in that constitution teabaggers keep waving around.

Corporate America dominates government, politicians, the voting process, and the media that covers it. Citizens United has helped turn us into a banana republic that allows an oligarchy to subvert our entire political economy. The impact of that ruling will surely be magnified greatly in 2012, a presidential election year. 

Robert Reich reviews the issue and invites us to learn more and get involved in the only way we can to reduce the ridiculous and corrupting influence of corporate money in elections. He joins with amend2012.org and others to push for a constitutional amendment that states what should have been obvious; corporations are not people. They do not get to buy elections.

Think about Citizens United the next time Republicans claim they favor strict constructionism. Think about that case's tortured logic that effectively guarantees that corporations will buy elections the next time conservatives complain about activist judges.

Moyers on Plutonomy

Here is Bill Moyers taking a page from the late Edward R. Murrow when he says having a bias is not a bad thing as long as you don't try to hide it.

Their bias is my bias: Plutocracy and democracy don't mix. Moyers explains how we have now arrived at plutonomy and why it matters.




For teabaggers inclined to obsess over what our founding fathers and past patriots had to say about wealth inequality, I offer some insights.

Occupy Wall Street's Message

Leave town for a week and look what happens. Our corporatist media is finally paying some attention to Occupy Wall Street. Not that it is offering many insights. The prevailing characteristics seem to be that protesters are malevolent malcontents, dirty fucking hippies, and anarchists, all in a stew of disorganized resentment. In particular, the claim is that the OWS protesters do not have a coherent message.

No coherent message? Really? Anyone who cannot immediately grasp the significance of the protest is likely to be uninformed teabaggers, fearful of all that they don't understand, or class warriors, like the Republican presidential candidates, Romney and Cain in particular.

How obtuse, or ideologically rigid, do you have to be to not see that America's wealthy corporatist media is determined to delegitimize citizens who have decided to fight back against Wall Street's recklessness?

Here is Alan Grayson taking the small amount of time needed to explain to dickhead PJ O'Rourke what the Occupy Wall Street protests are all about.

The privileged class is letting its fear show. Nice to see we got their attention.

Our illiberal Media

Have you been following the action on Wall Street? You know, the protests by a couple of thousand of people near the stock exchange, complete with handcuffing, mace, and arrests? What? You haven't heard of Occupy Wall Street?

You aren't alone, and that is the way our corporate media wants it. The video below will give you an idea of how corporate domination of American media plays out. The point here is not whether you agree with the protesters, or think Wall Street is, or isn't, at the heart of America's economic pain. The point is that almost no mainstream media outlet is willing to cover, even critically, the mini-occupation, the arrests, the shouting. The foreign press is covering it, as are alternative news sites on the Internet. Our major networks will get to it, but they will be slow and shallow; the more revealing the story, the slower and shallower the coverage will be.

How can you not cover protests in the streets, Wall Street? And as Keith Olberman notes, if this were a crowd of teabaggers bitchin' about taxes or Obama's birth certificate, the coverage would have been wall-to-wall. This is what media do in banana republics, or the old Soviet Union.

You see what they want you to see.




Speaking of Wall Street, if you get a chance, get a copy of Inside Job.

Politics as Personality

There is an interesting new study on the personality of Teabaggers called Cultures of the Tea Party, written by Andrew Perrin of University of North Carolina, Steven Tepper of Vanderbilt University, and others. It's posted at TPM (that's Talking Point Memo, not Tea Party Movement).  It is basically a personality inventory of persons who identify with the so-called Tea Party.

The study identifies four primary cultural dispositions: authoritarianism, ontological insecurity (fear of change), nativism, and libertarianism. None of these strike me as dispositions I would personally want to have; they are sub-clinical conditions that most of us would want to address or suppress.

Libertarianism, you might say, is different. Isn't it all about freedom, rugged individualism, and equality in a free, unregulated market, where we are all unfailingly rational in our pursuit of maximum utility?  Isn't that just the stuff the Founding Fathers wanted?

That's what true believers would say. Many respondents, and especially teabaggers, have some idea what libertarianism means. I don't believe they have actually thought about it that much, but they like the idea of libertarianism, at least the version preached on Fox News and talk radio. As with many other philosophical concepts whittled down to talking points, proponents embrace it without necessarily understanding it. They identify with the concept of libertarianism, but not necessarily with nativism or fear of change, two traits that many of us have not thought much about, and may not feel comfortable acknowledging.

The authors' definition of libertarianism is questionable. In their survey they asked respondents whether they favored more rules restricting personal expression, such as public dress codes, content (censorship) on TV and the Internet. Tea Partiers scored a bit higher than average on this.

Is that really getting at libertarianism? Are questions about personal expression and Internet censorship acceptable proxies for libertarian ideas of free markets and free enterprise? High scorers would as likely be progressives as Ayn Rand acolytes.

Nativism focused on attitudes on immigration and immigrants. Negative or anti-immigrant scores indicated high levels of nativism. Now that's got teabagger written all over it.

Ontological insecurity measured attitudes towards social and cultural change. Previous studies on right-wing attitudes have shown hostility to change and preference for tradition, so no surprise here, either.

This leaves us with authoritarianism, what I believe is the most important of the four cultural dispositions, in part because of its troubling implications. The authors measured authoritarianism by attitudes towards child-rearing. The study replicated previous studies which show that authoritarian parents demand high levels of obedience from children, and are less willing to allow them to decide, and think for, themselves. Authoritarians show a strong "father knows best" attitude.

The authors did not elaborate much on the implications of their findings except to argue that the Tea Party Movement cannot be fully appreciated without understanding the significance of the four cultural dispositions, especially in the way they coalesce. However, one can see why teabaggers are so intolerant of outsiders and why they like to see themselves as the "real America," not those blue state big city elitists who vote for communists  Democrats. It has less do with an understanding of policy and more to do with personality.

Nice study, but by far the single best source on authoritarian personality has been Bob Altemeyer. But there are others that are getting some deserved airtime, including George Lakoff, and Karen Stenner.

Altemeyer has repeatedly found that authoritarian personalities have high levels of ethnocentrism, high levels of submission to "legitimate" authority, and high preference for what one could call tribalism, an us-vs-them world view that is intolerant of those outside of their experience. That includes different skin color, religion, creed, and sexual orientation. I'll say right here that Altemeyer makes clear that authoritarianism really means right-wing authoritarianism, or RWA. While not all conservatives are authoritarians, those with right-wing sentiments will generally show elevated authoritarian traits. And those who score high on authoritarianism are invariably right wing. Left-wing authoritarianism is practically a oxymoron.

RWA's also show a marked preference for absolute or simplistic interpretations of complex events. They often accuse others of ethical or moral relativism.

Altemeyer stresses that authoritarian behavior reflects genuine personality traits, and not policy preferences. This helps explain the constant moralizing of authoritarians, and why many of their policy preferences seem so incoherent and contradictory to the rest of us. As George Lakoff has argued, the authoritarians moral sense is fundamentally different than others and has given rise to fundamentally different political views. 

I am just scratching the surface on this; there is so much more already in the literature and I'm guessing more to come. That's cool, but I know that most people do not read academic literature. The problem is that the implications of the role of RWA are anything but academic. They are pervasive and troubling. 

I'll explain why in future posts.

Red State Mythology

Here's Rick Perry, trying to claim that abstinence is an effective means of adolescent birth control. Not only is there no evidence that abstinence programs work, he looks fairly stupid trying to claim there is. His handlers must wince when they see performances like this.



Meanwhile, Red State mythology suffers another bitch slap from reality. Conservatives, Republicans, teabaggers, Bible-belters and the rest love to claim that middle America is the real America; god-fearing, family-first types who honor traditions such as marriage and the wedding vows they swore to uphold. 

I can hear it now: "No gay marriage here, fella. Real 'merkins don't like that filth. If you want to see how weak socialistic liberals want to destroy 'Merkin culture, go to California or Massachusetts. But we take marriage seriously around here."

Apparently not, Teabags; here's a list of the ten states with the highest divorce rate. Leading the pack is Oklahoma, followed by Arkansas, Alaska, Alabama, Kentucky, Nevada, Mississippi, Georgia, Tennessee, and Arizona.

Nevada is arguably purple, but the other states are bright red, the pride and joy of conservative America.

Media: Once Bitten, Twice Shy on Texan Bloviators

It is gratifying that so many are already speaking out against Rick Perry and his Presidential campaign. This contrasts with Bush, where we suffered from a national press that acted like it was his lapdog.

Take, for example, that hotbed of Marxism, The Houston Chronicle, which has enough journalistic integrity to remind us that Texas's recent job creation has nothing to do with Rick Perry, though he is quick to claim credit.

According to their online edition, there are 10 reasons why:

1. Rising oil prices) Glad to see Texans admit that much of the wealth in their state was already there in the ground when they arrived; swaggering Republicans have nothing to do with it. (Same for Alaska, Sarah)

2. Government growth) Ouch, that one must be galling to Randian purists. But as the Chronicle notes, government jobs grew twice as fast as private sector jobs since 2000. Teabaggers aren't going to like that.  Such jobs expand the tax base, and create ancillary jobs in Texas just like everywhere else.

3. Military spending) The feds ratcheted up military spending since 2001, back when Bush the Lesser completely missed the 9/11 warning signs. But since that time, TX has had more than its share of taxpayers' money, from other states, pour into the state's huge military facilities.

4. No housing bubble) This is fairly involved. Read the Chronicle's take on it. But note the irony; Texas has strict regulations on mortgages. The downside is home ownership is very low, but hey, no disaster as in other states. Why? Because of strict and enforceable regulations, exactly what conservatives claim are a drag on the economy.

5. Cheap Immigrant labor) Now this is one area conservatives love; docile, cheap, non-unionized workers with few rights, no benefits, no pensions, no strikes, and no worker's comp claims (see chart below). And these low-paying and low-skilled jobs are a major portion of those Perry claims he created.

There are five more reasons, some of which Texas politicians could ostensibly take at least some credit, such as the state's high-tech industries. But the Chronicle's argument is that these too are long-standing conditions; maybe someone can take credit, but it ain't Perry.

As far as current conditions are concerned, Perry needs to explain his state's poor socio-demographic standing, as the chart below reveals (From Texaswatch.org).

Not a record I would want to run on.

Ass Backwards Anger

Yesterday I came across this little item posted on my Facebook page by a teabagger who has often posted or commented approvingly of teabagger nostrums. We'll call her Sal.

Sal had the following data posted on her FB page:

Salary of the US President ..................$400,000
Salary of retired US Presidents .............$180,000
Salary of House/Senate .......................$174,00​0
Salary of Speaker of the House ............$223,500
Salary of Majority/Minority Leaders ...... $193,400
Average Salary of Soldier DEPLOYED IN IRAQ $38,000
I think we found where the cuts should be made ! If you agree.. RE-POST

This is the sort of pointless, feel-good pablum that ignorant teabaggers cannot resist. It's identity and tribalism substituting for knowledge and analysis.

So let's see; in our multi-trillion dollar economy, the salaries of Congress and the President are budget-busters and must be cut; you know, to save the country. Most members of Congress could make more in the private sector; most will when they leave government. Let's be clear about this: Congressional pay is relatively low compared to what most members of Congress could be doing; law and lobbying are two lucrative choices. Some prefer to line their pockets at Fox News.

Most members of Congress are relatively wealthy. They did not go into politics for the salary; the graft, kickbacks, and influence-peddling, perhaps, but not the salary. And while most are wealthy, some are not. Suppose we did slash pay for elected officials. That would make Congress more of a rich man's club than it already is. Only those independently wealthy could afford to serve in Washington. I think we already have a serious problem of bright and able, but not rich, individuals spurning government service because of low pay.

I realize that may not make any sense to people who think we can fix education by cutting teachers' salaries and benefits.

Sal is correct in her concern over the plight of our troops serving in harm's way. She seems unconcerned about the massive amounts of money being spent on the twin rat holes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Corporate America loves a bloated defense industry and it loves war. Every bomb, every sortie, every meal, every piece of equipment and spare part represents profits for defense contractors.

Now I know full well we have legitimate national defense interests, so you teabaggers can stop soiling your pants. My disgust is with simpletons who lose all sense of perspective. I mean, how many times do we have to hear about how defense contractors have overrun cost projections and trot back to the Pentagon for more. "We figured $4 billion for this project, but we will need a few billion more." And they get it. Talking about gaming the system.

Where is the outrage when the Army is charged $800 for a wrench, or $2000 for a toilet seat? Where is the outrage when the Pentagon admits it cannot account for billions of dollars in cash, lost in Iraq? Or the fact that Donald Rumsfeld himself publicly stated that the Pentagon's accounting was so flawed that a total of $2.3 trillion could not be located?

Do you remember when he said this? Sept 10, 2001. Talk about being pushed off the front page by subsequent events! And that does not account for the disappearing billions in Iraq after 9/11. Here is the video explaining where teabaggers should be venting their pathological and misplaced rage:



So um... yeah, government wastes money. But getting worked up over salaries of our elected officials and ignoring the real costs inflicted on us by corporate America, special interests, and our increasingly powerful overclass requires willful ignorance from those who have their brain stuck up their ideological ass. Pull it out, clean it off and give it a chance to learn about the pitfalls of misinformed ideological sophistry.

The videos below is a parody starring the infamous Nathan Spewman, but makes the same points in a slightly different way (I see Ugly Betty is grown up and very un-ugly).

Part One



Part Two:

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.

Economic Stupidity at Work

Teabaggers in Congress are hard at work saving you money:

WASHINGTON -- If you think Congress doesn't understand the economy now, wait till you see what a key House panel wants to do to the people who help figure it out.

Lawmakers are taking on the budget for the Census Bureau, pushing cuts that could leave economists and businesses in the dark about key economic information even as they are trying to map a path through a treacherous, uncertain economy.

The House Appropriations Committee is set to put the final touches on a funding bill Wednesday that proposes to slash the government's data collection arm by 25 percent -- a cut that economists and statistics experts say could end up costing taxpayers and businesses billions.

"It's essentially turning out the lights as economic policymakers are trying to do their work," said Andrew Reamer, a George Washington University professor who focuses on economics and U.S. competitiveness.

The bill is the Commerce, Justice and Science appropriations measure for 2012, and the cuts in question target the Commerce Department's Census Bureau -- recently one of the bogeymen of the right. The cuts would take effect in October, leaving the bureau little time even to plan to mitigate the impacts.

And those impacts would be many. The Census Bureau declined to comment, but a member of Congress was willing to pass along the agency's estimate of what the cuts could mean.

"It would have major, permanent impacts on the nation's economic and demographic statistics," the bureau said, according to Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), a member and past chair of the House Joint Economic Committee.

"It leaves me rather speechless, actually," said Maurine Haver, the head of the National Association of Business Economists' statistics committee. "I just don't understand it."

Experts on the Census said there are several programs the bureau runs that could be affected by the proposed cuts. One is the $124 million Economic Census, which serves as the benchmark for the nation's fiscal reports, including evaluations of the Gross Domestic Product, jobs data and economic activity across industries.

"The Economic Census is the foundation for the country's most important measures of our economy," Maloney said. "A cut to the Census Bureau of this magnitude will undermine the confidence in our fundamental economic statistics, like the GDP..."

Read the entire article here.

One wonders what the strategy is, if any. All indications are that businesses are significant users of census data. Republicans usually want to undercut the weakest and most vulnerable in society, not business. One could argue that teabagger members of the House are so determined to cut spending, and show their constituents what a fine job they're doing, that they will attack whatever low-hanging fruit they can find. Many freshmen Republicans, the ones put into office by teabaggers, don't actually believe in government anyway.

The cynic in me says conservatives politicians want to hide America's deteriorating socio-economic demographic data from voters, the public, and the world, not unlike the way other countries do it, such as China. Researchers can bang Republicans over the head with empirical reality, sometimes known as facts, but it's harder if you can deny them some of that data in the first place. It is no coincidence that conservatives are the most vociferous opponents of the Freedom of Information Act.

Meanwhile, have you seen the new Fox News Logo?




The irony is that Fox viewers are far less likely to understand the joke precisely because they watch Fox News.

Only a Republican Could Catch Osama, Right?

Jed Lewison's post at Daily Kos helps explain what is so contemptible about the Teabagger mindset; facts don't matter --not when they interfere with ideology.

When George W. Bush took office in Jan 2001 there were 111,634,000 private sector jobs. When he left office in Jan 2009 there were 110,981,000 private sector jobs.

When Bush took office in Jan 2001 there were 20,835,000 government sector jobs. When he left office in Jan 2009 there were 22,582,000 government sector jobs.

That means during Bush's eight years in office, we lost 653,000 private sector jobs and gained 1,747,000 government sector jobs.

Moral of the story: Barack Obama is a Kenyan socialist fuckstick.

And George W. Bush saved capitalism. Plus, he got bin Laden too.

They just can't stand that the guy they hate keeps messin' with their identity, their worldview, and their authoritarian personalities. Isn't Obama supposed to be a weak, feckless, immoral Democrat who wants to destroy America?

No, assholes. You're wrong again.

In your face, bitches

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.

I Paid More Taxes Than Exxon, Boeing, B of A Combined

Lots of data has come out recently about how little America's top corporations are paying in taxes, both federal and state, and that's despite earning huge profits. So where is the outcry from teabaggers? Where are the demands about "paying your fair share"?

What makes this especially contemptible is that corporate America has managed to get Republicans to yelp about our high corporate tax rate, as if any corporation actually paid anything close to the nominal rate. How many times have we seen Republicans and other intellectual prostitutes stand before a camera and say we can create jobs and get the economy going if we would just lower corporate taxes? This does not even include the numerous corporations that not only do not pay taxes, but get $ millions or even $ billions back from the feds.

Senator Bernie Sanders has released a list of corporate giants that pay dramatically lower taxes than their profits would suggest. The list, shown below, is available from various websites. I got it from here. 

1)      Exxon Mobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009.  Exxon not only paid no federal income taxes, it actually received a $156 million rebate from the IRS, according to its SEC filings.
2)      Bank of America received a $1.9 billion tax refund from the IRS last year, although it made $4.4 billion in profits and received a bailout from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department of nearly $1 trillion.
3)      Over the past five years, while General Electric made $26 billion in profits in the United States, it received a $4.1 billion refund from the IRS.
4)      Chevron received a $19 million refund from the IRS last year after it made $10 billion in profits in 2009.
5)      Boeing, which received a $30 billion contract from the Pentagon to build 179 airborne tankers, got a $124 million refund from the IRS last year.
6)      Valero Energy, the 25th largest company in America with $68 billion in sales last year received a $157 million tax refund check from the IRS and, over the past three years, it received a $134 million tax break from the oil and gas manufacturing tax deduction.
7)      Goldman Sachs in 2008 only paid 1.1 percent of its income in taxes even though it earned a profit of $2.3 billion and received an almost $800 billion from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury Department.
8)      Citigroup last year made more than $4 billion in profits but paid no federal income taxes. It received a $2.5 trillion bailout from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury.
9)      ConocoPhillips, the fifth largest oil company in the United States, made $16 billion in profits from 2007 through 2009, but received $451 million in tax breaks through the oil and gas manufacturing deduction.
10)  Over the past five years, Carnival Cruise Lines made more than $11 billion in profits, but its federal income tax rate during those years was just 1.1 percent.

The video below is a compilation of taxpayers wanting to know why they pay their share, and many corporations don't. Some nice suggestions about how we can share the video and make people more aware of what this country has become. If enough people can make these points, maybe we will hear less of this obscene shit about how teachers need to take a pay cut to balance the budget.

Because, sweetheart, if we don't push back, it will only get worse.