Did you know that the Democratic health care overhaul could become law?

Did you know that the replacement of Senator Kennedy with a Republican, which destroyed the Demcratic super-majority, did not kill health care?

No? Then what, you ask, did?

A President who is running from his mandate.

President Obama was elected as an agent of change, “Change we can believe in,” if I remember the catch-phrase correctly. Obama swore to change the culture of Washington, swore to uphold the peoples’ will, swore to get down to business, swore he would get things done.

And for most of that time he has shrewdly played Mr. Inside within the body politic, expertly working Congressional committees to propel the legislation forward. At the same time he has kept up the appearance of Mr. Outside with the populace, venting his anger, presumably shared with The People, over bank bonuses and other examples of “unfairness.”

And he has bailed out the auto companies, saving thousands of jobs, and he has implemented a stimulus plan, saving more jobs while investing in forward reaching policies.

All good stuff.

But we all sense that Health Care is the Great White of this administration. Bag it and you are a hero; fail and you are an empty suit. It’s that stark and that simple.

Obama himself has implored us to understand that the budget cannot be balanced in future years without health care reform, without “bending the cost curve.” He has warned us that we could be the next who cannot afford premiums; who can be denied care because of a loophole in our policy; who can be bankrupted by catastrophic illness. He has laid out the reasons that health insurance should - must - be available to all, regardless of ability to pay. He has made it clear that these changes are absolutely necessary.

There is little dispute.

There is only an opposition party which intends to live up to its name: They intend to oppose anything that can be seen as a victory for this President. It will be interesting to see how willing they are, in an election year, to assist him in his current efforts at bipartisanship. To the extent that they believe they are better served in the coming election by continuing to weaken the President, they will refuse this offer. I expect that they by and large will do just that.

So where does that leave Mr. Change? Pleading for little boys to act like grownups?

This just in: He still has secure majorities in both houses.

No, an omnibus health care bill cannot pass without 60 votes. But budget reconciliations pass with a simple majority, and those bills can and always do contain amendments, which also require only a simple majority.

So, any Democratic Senator can propose an amendment to any budget bill and can get it approved by a majority vote. Now that it’s a part of the bill, it can be passed into law with only a simple majority.

Some call this an “end-around”, and this is presumably why Obama has as yet not thrown his weight behind it. On the other hand, when the minority party has chosen a path of pure obstruction, who is committing the end-around?

At this moment, the country has expressed its determination that both houses of congress as well as the Presidency are to be controlled by Democrats. This means that the country, at this moment, prefers Democratic policies to Republican policies. This means that the country, at this moment, wants Democratic bills to become law.

Once this majority has done what it can, the voters will render approval or disapproval.

So, what is this President so afraid of? Is he afraid that Republicans will say even worse things about him? Psst: They’re going to attack him no matter what he does, and why should he be in any way scared off by the prospect that his political enemies will treat him with hostility?

Is he afraid that voters will see this as a power play and reject Democrats at the polls come November? Then he is selling short his own persuasive powers, because how difficult can it be to explain to the people that:

(a) You put me in charge to make decisions, not to be constantly thrown off course;
(b) You put Democrats in charge of both houses;
(c) Majorities in both houses passed these bills;
(d) These bills are good for the country, and here’s why.

If he can’t do that, then not only is he unqualified to be President, he doesn’t even measure up to the potential he showed on the campaign trail to inspire with his words.

Unless Obama is trying to win a “Least Effective President” lifetime achievement award, and unless he wants to codify the Republican playbook by handing them the win without even putting up a fight, and unless he wants to see the causes in which he believes so deeply, and the people these policies are supposed to help, wither away from lack of support…

Then here is the message:

LEAD, Mr. President.

Just lead.

There is a new opinion piece making the rounds. I have a cousin who shoots these things to me now and then. I’m not sure to what extent she is caught up in any of what follows, but on a quiet Wednesday I took a turn at scoring it. My comments are in blue.

The Vilification of Rush

Liberals would prefer no opposition. Behind the force field of political correctness, there should never be any disagreement once the liberal mind has decided that something is good for society. There can be no opposition to the “correct” way of thinking, and if you don’t think “correctly,” you are attacked.

There came a point early in Bill Clinton’s presidency when he realized that there was no chance of governing from the center. In other words, there was no chance of reaching a consensus between a majority of Republicans and Democrats in order to shape American society.

There was no clean way to do good.

Long before the 1994 midterm elections robbed him of his Congressional majorities, Clinton had been robbed of his initiatives regarding gays in the military and health care reform. He would spend his entire administration being rebuffed regarding climate change mitigation. In short, almost everything Clinton considered important never came to pass.

And yet, he will certainly go down in history as a better, more effective president than were either of the George Bush’s, and unless he learns the hard lessons of the Clinton era, more effective than Barack Obama.

Tavis Smiley famously said to Skip Gates, “I think America is ready for a black man to be president, I’m just not sure this is the black man.”

What did Mr. Smiley mean? I believe he meant that Obama was too much of an idealist. One thing we learned from the excellent documentary “Stand” was that Rev. Martin Luther King was a realist. He knew what evil lurked in the hearts of men, and he knew that not only would many resist his message, they would be galvanized into heated rejection of that message. King accepted those terms and forged on.

I think what Tavis meant was, could Obama learn those lessons? I have accused Obama of thinking of himself as the “National Professor”, whose job it is to teach us how to think more rationally and work together toward the best solutions.

Nice try.

How much more does Obama need in order to understand that his blackness did not end political bickering in Washington? The Republican party is not in awe of his blackness. Social conservatives are not in awe of his blackness. Many fellow Democrats and social progressives are surely not in awe of his blackness. In his effort to remain steadfastly himself, Obama is succeeding at pleasing nobody.

His mantra is “We’ll keep telling the truth until it stops working.” Wouldn’t it have to start working first?

I said before that you can tell a lot about a president’s style and his likely prospects for success by what happens in his first 100 days. Obama may be - and needs to be - an exception to that, much as Clinton was before him. Americans have a way of sending to the presidency men who don’t really have much experience at the matters he will be facing. It’s a sign of our deep distrust of those who may have too much inside knowledge. The disadvantage is that these men have a lot of learning to do. Each of the last three presidents had no national experience. Each had to mount an enormous learning curve. Until 9/11 galvanized his presidency, Bush 43 was also flailing aimlessly through his first year.

Obama may be too bright for his own good. He knows what’s right; can he accept what’s possible? Does he know when to fight to the finish and count the bodies later? Does he understand that watered-down health reform that only kicks the can down the street will be seen as a resounding failure? When has a better chance to make real reform come along? When is it likely to again?

As the old saying goes: “If not us, who? If not now. when?”

One must wonder if Obama understands that the promise of his presidency was vested in him by his populism. He asked us to hope and to dream and to trust and to persevere. Now, seven months into his first and perhaps only term, he has yet to spend even a small dose of his political capital on the issues he’s asked others to care so deeply about, when in fact the reason he is in the oval office at all is because he stirred those passions at the ballot box.

In other words, we sent him there to do the things he promised to do. It’s just that simple.

All the time Obama wastes seeking consensus is being utilized by his opponents to build a better steamroller. Does he realize that? Does he understand that he must get his hands dirty? Does he understand that his great triumph in becoming the first black president in the nation’s history did not change how the game is played?

I can tell you this: his opponents have not been wrong so far in concluding that there’s no fight in this dog.

Do you suppose that’s what Tavis was getting at?

By now you know about Diane Schuler. If you don’t, just google and start reading. She’s the woman who wiped out herself and seven others on the Taconic Parkway in New York on July 26.

It was determined through toxicology tests that she had drunk the equivalent of ten shots of vodka, so recently that some of it had yet to metabolize. She’d been drinking while driving her two children and her brother’s three daughters home from summer camp.

Something very disturbing turned up yesterday, and it makes one thing clear: from the first moment of this tragedy, the family has been orchestrating a cover-up.

The only question is: Why? What do they know that they don’t want us to know?

Here’s the proof: From the very start, Schuler’s brother and the father of the three lost daughters, Warren Hance, told police and the media that his sister had called him from the road, complaining that she was disoriented and could not say where she was, and that he had told her to wait for him to come and get everybody.

We of course know that she failed to heed that advice, that in fact her cellphone was found discarded near the area where the call had been made.

And, as of yesterday, we know that the initial contact was a phone call from Hance’s daughter:

Emma Hance called her father at 12:58 p.m. and said, “Daddy, there is something wrong with Aunt Diane and she is having trouble seeing and she is talking funny, she is slurring,” Mr. Ruskin said. That call was dropped after three minutes and Mr. Hance called back at 1:01 p.m., in a conversation that lasted nine minutes.

Kind of a hard detail to overlook, wouldn’t you say?

So, the chronology now looks like this:

9:30 AM - Schuler and the children leave the campground in Schuler’s Ford Windstar minivan.

10:00 AM - Schuler stops at McDonalds.

10:30 AM - Schuler leaves McDonalds.

11:37 AM - Schuler calls her brother to say that the trip has been delayed by traffic, but that she should have the daughters home in time for a rehearsal later that day.

12:08 PM - Schuler received a call. It is not yet known from whom.

12:58 PM - Emma Hance calls her father to discuss Aunt Diane’s condition. The call lasts three minutes.

1:02 PM - Hance calls Schuler. The call lasts nine minutes.

1:15 PM - Schuler’s phone, now apparently discarded, begins to log missed calls.

1:35 PM - Schuler, having turned onto an exit ramp of the Taconic Parkway two miles back, slams head-on into a Chevrolet Trailblazer in the passing lane, killing all three occupants of the truck as well as herself, her daughter and her three nieces. Her five year old son survives with critical injuries.

And by sheer logic, Schuler had been sipping from the vodka bottle the entire time.

She had also recently smoked marijuana. The toxicology report indicates that the level of the active ingredient in marijuana was sufficient to suggest recent use.

Anybody want to guess what a combination of vodka and pot will do to your senses? Especially a high level of vodka.

There has been rampant speculation that Schuler must be an alcoholic, and that her family must have known. I don’t see enough evidence, yet, to support that logic. If Schuler was indeed an alcoholic, she was clearly a functioning alcoholic. Functioning alcoholics are experts in not only hiding, but regulating their intake. Schuler went on a binge. If she was indeed used to drinking such a quantity of alcohol, then doing so on this day would not have been especially disorienting. If, however, this was an unusual amount for her to ingest, then it wasn’t the act of an alcoholic so much as it was the act of a person trying to get quick results.

And why would a seemingly normal suburban mother be looking to get drunk quick?

The early reports of her condition mentioned that Schuler had an untreated abcess in her mouth.

Well, that might do it. I think if I had an abscess in my mouth, I might be looking to kill the pain, especially with a car full of kids.

Some disturbing things, though: that’s a lot of alcohol, and Schuler had to be conscious of what she was doing while she was doing it. That suggests a reckless streak that, one would think, would be known to her closest associates.

And, of course, the fact that her brother did not admit, at first, that his daughter called him out of concern for Schuler’s condition. Why leave that detail out?

The implication is that Hance knew very well that his sister was drinking and probably drunk, and he was desperate for her to just pull over and let him come get them. One can only surmise that Schuler did not intend to let her brother rescue her from herself. One can only wonder if this scene had been acted out before.

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It is true that I believe that I do not need to know more about Henry Louis Gates and Jim Crowley in order to understand the essential elements of the incident which led to Crowley arresting Gates.

However, such ignorance would do me no good in coming to understand why so many educated black people are certain that there was a racial element to this encounter on the part of the police, and it would do me no good in understanding why so many people who know Professor Gates insist that he could not have provoked his own arrest.

In other words, it’s time for me to take the time to get to know more about this man.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was born in 1950 in Piedmont, WV. He studied at Yale and Cambridge before being offered a post in the Afro-American Studies department at Yale in 1975, at the age of 25.

After being denied tenure at Yale, Gates spent time at Cornell and Duke before settling in at Harvard, where he has been since 1991.

In 1988 Gates published “The Signifying Monkey”, a study of the origins of afro-American culture. It was considered an important work.

Gates has expressed the opinion that you do not have to be of a culture to be an expert in that culture. He believes that a white person, for example, can be an expert in black culture.

In 1997 Time magazine listed Gates as one of the 25 Most Influential Americans.

The above doesn’t tell me much about the man. I’ve watched what video I can find and listened to what audio I can find, to try to get a better feel for the person. He’s been a guest more than once on the Tavis Smiley show. That tells me a lot. It tells me that this man is prominent and that he is well spoken. Tavis doesn’t wast air time on jugglers and clowns, much like Charlie Rose. I respect that about him. It’s the reason I was honored to be a citizen guest on his program twice. Truly honored.

I get the impression that there are people who simply believe it is quite impossible for Gates to have gotten himself arrested. They know a man who is highly educated, cultured, worldly as well as world renowned, well liked and well respected among his peers, a positive influence for many.

And, after all, he was in his own house.

So, to many, this entire thing seems to be “Alice In Wonderland” absurd. Up is down and down is up.

One thing I can tell you about Professor Gates: He knows black from white. He has spent the better part of a lifetime studying differences between black and white society, black and white culture, black and white experiences and belief systems.

The man knows black from white.

And by both his account and the account of the officer, his immediate response to being asked to step outside was to say this: “No I will not! Why? Because I’m a black man in America?”

And I wonder this: would any of those who know and love and respect the professor, would any of you have expected him to behave that way?

I hope that, honestly, the answer is “No.” This man is simply too well educated to put himself in the position of being belligerent with the police, especially without provocation.

In other words, the man seems to have had a bad moment.

To differing degrees, the accounts agree that Gates kept on having that bad moment, right up until the moment he was cuffed.

So, it seems to me he might have been slightly incoherent, and who could blame him? He was no doubt exhausted from his long trip, and was probably disoriented to see an officer standing at his door.

But Gates has said he had an immediate reaction to the presence of the officer, and that he feared being arrested. My question: why? All the officer did was walk up to the door and ask the man to step outside. Based on this, the hairs on Gates’ neck stand up and he fears arrest?

Why?

And so, I maintain that the path to truly understanding this incident goes through the answer to that question.

One thing I know pretty well by now: This incident is not the “outrage” it was initially portrayed to be.

It may be another kind of outrage, and it is critically important how things move forward from here.

“It’s not about me,” he keeps insisting, almost pleading.

Oh, yes it is.

Professor Gates, like President Obama, keeps talking, hoping to make things better, and only manages to make them worse. His statement, released today on The Root:

“It was very kind of the President to phone me today. Vernon Jordan is absolutely correct: my unfortunate experience will only have a larger meaning if we can all use this to diminish racial profiling and to enhance fairness and equity in the criminal justice system for poor people and for people of color.

And to that end, I look forward to studying the history of racial profiling in a new documentary for PBS. I told the President that my principal regret was that all of the attention paid to his deeply supportive remarks during his press conference had distracted attention from his health care initiative. I am pleased that he, too, is eager to use my experience as a teaching moment, and if meeting Sgt. [James] Crowley for a beer with the President will further that end, then I would be happy to oblige.

After all, I first proposed that Sgt. Crowley and I meet as early as last Monday. If my experience leads to the lessening of the occurrence of racial profiling, then I would find that enormously gratifying. Because, in the end, this is not about me at all; it is about the creation of a society in which ‘equal justice before law’ is a lived reality.”

Henry Louis Gates Jr. is editor in chief of The Root.

Professor Gates either still does not get it, or still obstinately clings to the belief that if he repeats a fiction enough times, he can make people believe it’s true.

Noticeably absent in the above remarks are any apology to Sgt. Crowley for his argumentative and non-compliant manner, nor any acceptance of any responsibility at all for the way things turned out.

No wonder he wants this to not be about him.

Vernon Jordan is absolutely correct: my unfortunate experience will only have a larger meaning if we can all use this to diminish racial profiling

If my experience leads to the lessening of the occurrence of racial profiling

But he does want it to be about his blackness. And there is the real issue in all of this, because in every remark Obama has made, he has supported that view, that Gates was entitled to behave the way he did because he is black and therefore “sensitive” to relations with the police.

It ought to be a very interesting conversation between Gates, Crowley and Obama.

More importantly, we cannot settle this issue with innuendo and assumptions. And we cannot and must not give in to any sort of theory that white people simply don’t know better, that they have been “conditioned” to behave a certain way toward black people.

Two things, two real important things: ONE: Professor Gates must then also answer for the social conditioning which led to his own behavior, irrespective of the behavior of the officer; TWO, I want to assure you that a white man who behaved the way Gates did (obviously with different motivation) would have been arrested, and perhaps sooner, and perhaps tased. Whether he and his supporters admit it or not, Gates was shown unusual deference by Sgt. Crowley.

I’ve come to grudgingly accept that some positions are too hardened to budge off of their initial stance that this incident was caused by a racially insensitive police officer. I wonder what they will say when the final report comes out.

Oh how the spool unravels.

Professor Gates made that comment in the course of the following interview (at roughly the 12 minute mark):

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The problem, of course, is that most of us know by now that Sergeant Crowley is not the racially motivated caricature that Professor Gates tried to paint.

It is stunning to listen to Professor Gates give his version of events, and contrast that with Sergeant Crowley’s account. I’m no expert, but Gates sounds quite nervous and not at all down-to-earth when describing the incident. Although Crowley is trained to discuss criminal cases matter-of-factly, his interview comes across much more calm, much more clear. It is impossible to reconcile the two versions. Either Crowley arrested Gates for no reason, which is Gates’ version, or, in front of several other officers and several civilians, Crowley warned Gates twice to either quiet down or go inside, and only when Gates continued to fail to comply, arrested him.

I mean, that’s a lot of people you gave to get to tell the same lie.

So, I think it’s at least highly likely that Gates’ version lacks all the essential elements of truth. He has all sorts of motivation to try to portray himself as the victim. I know it’s unlikely, but I would hope the day will come when Professor Gates admits that his initial version of events was not completely truthful.

Not only does Gates say that officer Crowley has a problem, he accuses Crowley of lying on the police report. The only part of the incident which cannot be verified by others was the part inside the house, where Gates admits he refused to comply and admits that he tried to take charge of the situation. What Gates does not admit is that Crowley had completed his business and was trying to leave, and Gates followed Crowley outside and continued to rant and rave. This last part was done in full view of other officers, at least one of whom, a black officer, supported the arrest “100 percent”.

Now you might say he’s just lining up with a fellow officer. So let’s see what the other witnesses say.

To me, the credibility clearly lies with Crowley, with regard to the factual aspects of the case.

With regard to the sensitivity aspects of the case, I am completely willing to have that discussion, because I’m hearing some things such as Sgt. Crowley was unwittingly conditioned to treat blacks with less respect than he treats whites.

But that’s not racism!, those same people say. In other words, this theory holds that whites mistreat blacks in ways that whites are not even aware of. This theory holds that a white man would have been treated differently because he was white.

But that’s not racism!, they say as they try to dance on the head of a pin.

As the insults just continue to pile up.

Re-posting the interview with Sgt. Crowley:

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I very rarely video blog. Today I was motivated to. I’m not a pro at this and I didn’t prepare beforehand, so I ramble on a bit. I’ve sat through the replay myself, and other than the fact that I constantly switch names and titles, it’s not too drawn out. Yes, it’s about 15 minutes, but as I say in there, this is complicated stuff.

I would hope we’re not being clocked.

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It has finally become clear why the United States elected Barack Hussein Obama to the presidency. It was not to chart a different course in economics. It was not to alter American foriegn policy toward hot spots of conflict. It was for moments such as yesterday, in Cairo. 

Yesterday in Cairo, the National Professor gave a lecture. He did it with a black face and a Muslim name. He did it in the cradle of Islam. And he said all the things that needed to be said.

What other American president could have ever done the same?

And so, we now understand: we elected Barack Obama to make peace with Islam. It was to put a credible face on a message to the Muslim world: Please stop trying to kill us.

Islam

One thing President Obama’s eloquence cannot do, however, is resolve eternal conflicts. Surely he knows this, and yet he uttered a phrase such as this:

the sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam.

This is at once both unnecessarily apologetic and crudely drawn. If there is one thing we understand about Islam, it is that it’s most fanatical proponents do not consider their way of life “tradition” but the word of Allah. And there is, in the view of these fanatics, an absolute conflict between modern ways and their obedience to Islam. What president Obama needed to say was that the Muslim world needs to resolve these internal conflicts; the Muslim world needs a “Pope”, in other words, a grand eminence, most revered and respected leader, and a method by which to choose such a person, and that person must determine what Islam represents in a changing world, and that person must seek a path by which the world does not feel threatened by Islam, and vice versa.

I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world; one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect; and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles – principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.

Yes, president Obama has a tough job, no doubt, trying to make sense of the senseless, but how can he do so without acknowledging that these extremists represent an interpretation of the Koran which is at least tolerated and at best used strategically by the Muslim world itself? Extremism is a method of political disruption and change within the Muslim world; we expect to end Islamic extremism toward the west without resolving this baseline issue? And we expect to solve it without the expressed condemnation of the Muslim world toward such tactics?

President Obama goes on to acknowledge that his words cannot bring immediate change; what he does not say is that his words cannot bring about any change at all. What he failed to say was “It’s on you. Get this figured out.”

Afghanistan

Perhaps the most disturbing signals president Obama sent in this speech were those regarding the justification for war in Afghanistan.

When violent extremists operate in one stretch of mountains, people are endangered across an ocean.

In Ankara, I made clear that America is not – and never will be – at war with Islam. We will, however, relentlessly confront violent extremists who pose a grave threat to our security. Because we reject the same thing that people of all faiths reject: the killing of innocent men, women, and children. And it is my first duty as President to protect the American people.

Make no mistake: we do not want to keep our troops in Afghanistan. We seek no military bases there. It is agonizing for America to lose our young men and women. It is costly and politically difficult to continue this conflict. We would gladly bring every single one of our troops home if we could be confident that there were not violent extremists in Afghanistan and Pakistan determined to kill as many Americans as they possibly can. But that is not yet the case.

And therein lies the true issue: permanent war is justifiable as long as one person lives with the stated intention of committing violence against the United States. Does this president believe that we can continue to be fooled into believing that there is no other way to disrupt terrorism? Does this president believe that Americans expect terrorism to be eradicated from the face of the planet? Does this president forget that, prior to 9/11, the most devastating act of a terrorist to ” the killing of innocent men, women, and children” in America was committed by an American?

And does this president believe that we want our troops hacking thought the mountains in the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan, looking for “bad guys”? Trying to figure out who to shoot and who not to shoot, while trying not to get shot themselves?

President Obama then goes on to mention, in a single paragraph, that “none of us should tolerate these extremists. They have killed in many countries. They have killed people of different faiths – more than any other, they have killed Muslims. Their actions are irreconcilable with the rights of human beings, the progress of nations, and with Islam.” He also said “The sooner the extremists are isolated and unwelcome in Muslim communities, the sooner we will all be safer.” What he failed to address is the simple fact that these extremists believe that they are the ones who correctly interpret the Koran, and that they alone carry forward the true destiny of their faith.

Violence

This same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia; from Eastern Europe to Indonesia. It’s a story with a simple truth: that violence is a dead end.

President Obama was speaking of extremists with that line, but he might as well have been speaking of American foreign policy, a long list of efforts to disrupt the internal politics of sovereign nations by any means necessary, including and especially violence.

Long before the overt wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. provided weapons and support to elements within those countries who were doing our dirty work for us. By now, the rest of the world knows clearly what many in this country simply deny: this country spreads violence, and does so in order to achieve political goals. Did President Obama denounce these tactics? He did not.

I’m trying to make a conscious effort to keep my posts shorter; I will comment on the other topics in the speech: Israel/Palestine, Nuclear Weapons, Democracy and others; in a future post.

I hope somebody reads it. Hey, if you do read it and get something from it, how about telling a friend?

I started this blog after a chain of events led me to discuss the election last October as part of a panel of citizens on the Tavis Smiley radio program. I was told by the person who arranged it, “I don’t know why you’re not doing media.” In other words, he considered me to have been somewhat engaging, and that I ought to do more of it. Well, I had no idea that all I had to do to be more involved in media was to choose to, but now I was being told exactly that.

So, I started this blog. I’d started other blogs before, and some of them are still floating around. What I decided to do this time was to speak in as honest a voice as I could, with regard to the politics of these times and the politics of the economics of these times.

See, when you’ve grown up with something that always was, it’s natural to take for granted that this is the way it has always been and will always be. I grew up in a house with a single black and white TV, with rabbit ear antenna reception for most of that time. My children live in a house with satellite reception and five TVs, including a home theater. They only know it wasn’t always this way because I remind them.

My parents grew up in homes where the primary source of entertainment was radio.

Anyway, so I thought I would start this blog to remind people that nothing is forever. Just because we can’t imagine it any other way, that does not justify a blind acceptance that the current economic system should be salvaged. There were economics before this period of the last 50 years or so, and there will always be economics. There will always be the development, accumulation and trade of goods and services. Most likely, currency or some other financial instrument will be involved. We may or may not continue to gather “wealth” as a retirement hedge. It is possible that some other instrument will replace the accumulation of wealth.

The only way capitalism works, if it has any chance at all, is when people do not attempt to accumulate wealth, but rather when they understand that wealth must be put back to work. When done with entrepreneurial spirit and discipline, capital can very quickly flow to good ideas and help exploit them. What we have dsicovered, however, is that the unscrupulous have learned how to exploit that system for their own gain, to the detriment of all. And they have been allowed to get away with it for generations, because they learned two simple truths:

1. Humans are very easily led, and profit can be made by understanding how to control that tendency.

2. Politics can be bought.

The result of these twin discoveries was that companies formed one after another with one simple design: to convince humans that they needed something, no matter how frivolous it actually was. Certainly, many useful things also were developed, and continue to be. However, it is also well established that separating people from their money is the highest pursuit of capitalism. The voracious, zero-sum nature of this economic system practically requires such an approach.

The great consumption of resources which turned out to be possible within this rapidly growing system gave rise to issues of the health of the planet and its occupants. Industries routinely fought efforts to control such damage, primarily to avoid incurring any costs they did not absolutely have to incur. Some successfully argued that the government was interfering in free enterprise, and labeled their opponents as something which was bad for the economy and therefore bad for us.

And so you have likely grown up equating capitalism with democracy. After all, isn’t socialism the evil system that ended when the wall came down? Wasn’t democracy what they won? The right to live as they choose, to buy what they want, sell what they want, do what they want? Isn’t free enterprise a basic foundational virtue of democracy?

That sounds good, until you ask yourself some more questions. Such as: should access to quality health care depend on your income? Should a person be paid a fair wage for an honest day of work? Should energy be a for-profit enterprise? Should people have to pay for water, sewage and the garbage man? Should an elite few be permitted to control vast sums of wealth?

I’ve always looked at capitalism this way: the object is to own the most money. The object of capitalism, by design, is to accumulate as much wealth as possible. In theory, the game would be over and you would be the winner. In practical terms, a lot of people get abused along the way.

I look into the future and ask: why does it need to be this way? That one single virtue of capitalism, that it can flow very quickly to a good new idea and help to maximize that idea’s potential, has been so overshadowed by all of the system’s negative tendencies: to not care about the environmental damage it can do; to not care about the conditions of its workers, nor their fate when no longer needed; to not care about the future consequences of actions which are producing profit today. To not care that its very intertwined and complex nature makes it extremely vulnerable to unintended consequences with wicked potential.

Thomas Friedman, over in today’s New York Times, this populist poet, this chubby wonk with the bushy face, this oracle of whatever the hell he thinks he’s talking about, blathered on about how immature our democracy seems, when Republicans are attacking Obama for spending all this money, and Obama misses chances to be warm and fuzzy and above it all, and in the end Friedman uses the word “hopefully” incorrectly, four times. I use it correctly in the title to this post.

I wrote a post a couple of weeks ago about “yesterday’s conversations“, that all I hear around me are points which seem so irrelevant to me now. And here is teacher’s pet Friedman talking about the good of the country and saving capitalism as though they are inseparable goals.

Whereas, I see the two as incompatible.

In recent days, President Obama has been seen picking winners and losers in the NCAA college basketball tournament, and on NBC’s Tonight Show, where he bantered with Jay Leno about the economy, and about his lack of bowling skill. He also opened his mouth and inserted his foot when he compared his attempts at bowling to “something from the Special Olympics.”

So brazen was his gaffe that, riding Air Force One back to D.C. after the taping in California, Obama called the director of the Special Olympics to apologize.

This is simply the latest in a series of statements or actions by Obama or a member of his team, which, taken in aggregate, begin to raise the suspicion that this administration is not quite ready for prime time.

Where is Obama’s comprehensive plan to combat carbon emissions? Wouldn’t step one be to curb the White House’s use of carbon emitting machines, such as, oh, just to pick an easy one:

Air Force One?

And I distinctly heard Obama say to Leno that Congress’ efforts to tax the AIG bonuses was misguided, that the effort should be spent on “making sure this doesn’t happen again,” leading to this question: if the Senate passes a similar measure and the bill is presented to Obama:

Will he sign it?

And when will Obama definitively declare whether or not he will rescue failing industries, and what the rationale would be for that in a free enterprise economy? And when will he declare that bailout funds are no longer available? And when will he weigh in on the Federal Reserve’s decision to print another trillion dollars of currency? When will he speak clearly with regard to the future implications of all of the loose money being tossed around today?

When will we see comprehensive job training for displaced workers?

On two separate occasions in the last month, Obama has assured the nation that stocks are a good long term investment (which ones, coach?) and that the economy will, he garuntees, recover (when will we get all the value back that we’ve lost, o wise one, and which sectors should we invest in and which should we allow to die?).

I’ve been saying for some time now that nobody knows what’s going on and thus nobody knows what to do about it, and thus we are trying everything we can think of, most of which has never been tried before, and so here is the only garuntee we can make:

There will be unintended consequences.

Some will say “we’ll just deal with that when it comes”, but what if what comes is worse than what we have now? What if the best course was simply to let it burn?

And remind me again, because I keep forgetting: Why are we so intent on saving the system that is designed to kill the planet?

Mark it down now and remember I said it when the time comes:

Obama will be a one term president.

If you don’t love your babies,
it’s no shame.
We can’t help how we feel, who we are. Maybe you don’t even love yourself.

If you don’t love your babies,
maybe you made a mistake.
It’s OK, we all make mistakes, big ones and small.

If you don’t love your babies,
it’s not your fault.
We can’t turn love off and on like a switch.

If you don’t love your babies,
then maybe what’s best
is that you don’t try to raise them at all.

Do you want to be the next cautionary tale? Do you want the Washington Post to run a series of articles on what’s wrong with the system that let you kill your babies? You don’t blame your babies for your inability to love them, do you? After all, they didn’t make you the way you are. They came into this world as innocently as you once did.

Life chewed you up and spit you out, perhaps. Life dealt you some harsh blows. You never got enough hugs.

I feel you.

But you do not want to be the person who destroyed another life out of spite, or because you didn’t know any other way to be.

You know the pain that bad parenting inflicts, because most likely you experienced the wrong end of it first-hand. Times get tough and some people get tougher in the wrong way. They get tougher on those closest to them, those who they should be reaching out to for support, those they should keep on the most special terms, those who they should be able to trust and to love.

I feel you.

Life is brutal and for many it just keeps getting more brutal. But you do not want to be that person who looked at an innocent baby and saw somebody that should be blamed for your circumstance. 

Maybe you just don’t want to admit that it’s all too much for you. Maybe you just don’t have it in you to take that one big step, and give up your babies so they have a chance to live a different life than the one you did, than the one you are capable of giving them.

Do it before you harm them, physically or emotionally. Do it because they do not need to grow up with anger, fear and hate in their hearts, because they don’t need to live under the threat that any day may be their last at your hands, or that you will commit an unspeakable act of harm against them.

Don’t turn away. The horror is real. Don’t turn away and let it go on. You have the power to do one right thing.

If you don’t love your babies, learn to love them just enough to want for them a better life than you can give them. Just enough to know that they deserve a chance, a chance that you can’t give them.

It sounds awful: “Give up my kids.”

If this makes it any easier, just remember: they aren’t yours. They belong to the world. You don’t “own” them, you are assigned to care for them. If you cannot do that -

No shame. 

But then go do the right thing. And do it for yourself. You deserve to be free from the stress of having these terrible thoughts and feelings. You deserve to avoid doing something that could ruin the rest of your life.

Let’s take a situation where nobody wins, and make it into one where everybody wins. If you need help - reach out. Tell somebody. They’ll help you figure out what to do next.

Then do it.

Today we delve into that microcosm of American society commonly known as the world of sports.

As we spin the globe we focus on the port city of New York, New York, home of the football Jets and Giants.

This past Friday, Plaxico Burress of the Giants shot himself in the leg with a gun in New York City, where you need a permit to carry a loaded gun or you are guilty of a felony with a three and a half year mandatory minimum sentence. Burress did not have a permit.

The team invited him back to their facility.

The team invited him back to their facility.

When the team doctor determined that Burress would not heal before season’s end, the team suspended him without pay. But first, they invited him back to their facility.

Saturday morning, while Burress was being treated, secretly, at a New York hospital, Sean Ellis of the Jets was racing to practice when he passed a police car while going too fast. When he was pulled over, the police officer later stated, Ellis was uncooperative. Eventually a search was conducted, which turned up marijuana and a pipe with which to smoke it.

He played on Sunday.

He played on Sunday.

This would seem to mean that the Jets did not have him piss into a cup and did not then test that piss to see if it came up positive for marijuana. This of course means that they did not wish to know.

Because the legal process takes time to unfold, and because the agreement between the players union and the league calls for no action to be taken until a case is resolved, the Jets and Giants knew that both players remained eligible to play.

That does not come close to explaining why either team would want any such thing as to let these players anywhere near the team.

In the middle of the playoff hunt, these men put their selfish interests ahead of a unit of over 50 men, who have sweated together and struggled together and lost together, and learned how to win together.

Burress stepped outside that circle, committed a felony and caused himself injury. He will no longer be around the team, but only because the wound was too severe. The Giants’ reaction was to welcome him back, and the team has gone on record stating that he will remain a Giant even after his conviction.

The Jets didn’t even announce Ellis’ arrest until 5 days later. We have no idea how this behavior affected Ellis’ preparation, or how much the incident disrupted his and the team’s concentration. We do know that the team was flat on Sunday and got spanked. Ellis was a non-factor, as was much of the defense and the entire offense. Certainly the players all knew what had happened and knew it would become a distraction.

See, one way to avoid the distraction is to send the man home. Let the 50 something other men carry on together.

If this seems harsh, then I say the world has become too soft. If it is harsh to make a man pay a stiff price for causing such harm to his team’s efforts, then I say we aren’t really all that serious about the team effort. And that is a terrible thing to tell those 50 something men, and the organization which supports them, and the thousands of fans who make the effort and pay the expense to see them on Sunday and spur them on, and to the many thousands more who tune in, wherever they are, and watch with pride as their men go to war.

It spits on that.

The big three made their pitch to Congress yesterday. They were all about appearances, too. Driving from Detroit in hybrids instead of flying in separate corporate jets, as they did several weeks ago. Promising to slash their own salaries to one dollar, and to cut executive pay and bonuses.

Just please, please, throw them this lifeline. And do it soon. Real soon. Is this week possible? Next week at the outside?

So, it’s the same pitch, only now several weeks more urgent. Each company is still bleeding red ink, still locked in a credit freeze, still unable to sell vehicles. GM lost over 40& of its sales in November, and other automakers, including venerable Toyota, all saw sales fall off a cliff.

Welcome to the latest chapter in this saga, where the government bails out an industry only to see it collapse further. First the financial sector, and now the manufacturing sector.

How long before steel, rubber, plastic and other manufacturers come running to Congress, begging that they be allowed to live,too?

The question remains the same: exactly when do these companies expect to become profitable again? This meltdown is months old; the recession is a year old, but sales did not drop sharply until the last couple of months. The meltdown is the disaster on top of the slowdown. Capitalism was already trying to grow its way out of the recession. A typical recession lasts 18 months, and they tend to begin and end months before they are recognized as such. Just another example of voodoo economics: they tell us that the recession started last November. They didn’t know that til now?

Of course Congress will cobble together some sort of rescue package, to keep these companies afloat through the spring. Come spring, when the economy is in even worse shape - far worse shape - than it is today, these three companies will be back on Capitol Hill, explaining that they have done everything that was asked of them, but these darn tough economic times just keep hammering away at them, and therefore Congress must, it simply must, extend the lifeline.

Between now and then, through one mechanism or another, they will destroy the compacts they have spent years building with their labor force and retirees. This will be an “at all costs” bailout, the object of which will be to make the case that a dead company is no use to any workers at all, so compromise is the only option.

Well, no.

This isn’t about compromise, it’s about capitulation. The workers are going to be expected to bear the pain of this inept attempt to salvage an industry that for too long lines its own pockets while stonewalling every effort to make them more accountable. More accountable for safety. More accountable for efficiency. More accountable for enviornmentalism.

All along the way, their paid lobbyists and paid Congressmen played hardball. Now, they come to the people’s house and dare to insist that they must be saved, at the expense of the workers who built the industry that they spent years undermining.

So, one option is to let the workers take over. The government assumes ownership of the industry, consolidates the not-so-big three into a single entity, and allows the workers to buy it from them. With financing, of course.

Who do you trust to right this industry: the fat cats who enriched themselves while the business model they created collapsed from beneath them? Or the workers who know that their livelihood depends on building cars that people want to buy?

Cheaper, more efficient cars. That would be a good start. Why was Japan able to see this need but the U.S. wasn’t? You already know the answer: SUVs made more profit than smaller vehicles. That is, until they couldn’t sell any more SUVs.

And showed up on the peoples’ doorstep.

Mr. Will,

As an avowed social liberal, I consider you to be an important voice, not because we see things the same way but because we don’t. I am a keen admirer of your intellect, as I possess a sharp intellect as well. I am nowhere near as educated nor as well read as you, and I am constantly being educated and enlightened by following your train of thought.

Having said that, I have become disturbed with your recent inability to complete a thought. Your columns will start off on a sharp tack, then veer this way and that, then sort of slow to a stop. No coherent development, no walloping final point.

I’ve noticed a tendency amongst social conservatives such as yourself to assume the burden of defending capitalism. Although I understand that social conservatives fancy themselves fiscal conservatives, what I see is an unbridled defense of free enterprise. In other words, Convervative seems to equate to Capitalist. Thus, you collectively have demonstrated that you feel a duty to represent free enterprise in its best possible light in this, perhaps the worst of times.

What I see is that you have undertaken an impossible task, and will likely be undone by it.

Your Sunday column in the Washington Post today clearly calls for government to get out of the way and allow business and industry to cast aside workers, and to greatly reduce the income for those they keep, in order to regain efficiency.

If you are as analytical and skeptical as I believe you are, then you will at some point question whether or not free enterprise capitalism is the best we as humans can do. You will ask if the pain and misery which batters untold millions during economic slowdowns is an acceptable price for economic renewal.

You will ask yourself if our labor and material resources are really being used as wisely as possible. And while you are wondering that, you will ask yourself why this economic system has no use for 9 percent of its potential labor force which is ready and willing to show up for work, if asked. You will, if honest, acknowledge that you consider it acceptable to allow this number to grow.

You will ask yourself why the essential elements of human life: food, fuel, shelter, health care, medicine, are also the most expensive, and thus out of reach to some extent for more than a quarter of the population of this country.

You will ask yourself why more than two thirds of all workers are one or two paychecks away from poverty.

I will ask you this: Would you consider it elitist to defend policies which inflict pain that you will never have to endure? Would that not be a perfect definition of the term?

Imagine this: ABC fires you. WashPost/Newsweek fires you. Your syndicate drops you. Nobody will pay you a penny to publish a word you say.

Your savings lose all of their value. Your home plummets in price and you can’t profit from selling it, but you can’t afford to keep it.

You have to walk away.

Far-fetched, of course. There is a certain momentum to your life that only a sex scandal could derail. But what I want you to do is imagine it. The question is: what would you do next?

Now, imagine a 50-something factory worker, making perhaps $50,000 a year, with perhaps 25 years toward a nice pension. Then his company goes broke and he is out of a job. The pension fund is also broke and therefore worthless. He can’t find anything like the work he used to do. He finds himself in late working life, with no education which has any value in the job market, and no chance whatsoever to make even half of what he once earned.

My question for you is: What did he do wrong?

It’s a breathtaking array of headlines in this morning’s New York Times:

U.S. Unveils $800 Billion Credit Program

President-Elect Starts Taking On Burdens of the Job

Home Prices Hit 2004 Levels in Quarter

When you also consider the $500 billion stimulus package being considered by Congress, and the eventual jobs program which president Obama will be forced to put into place, this bailout is approaching two trillion dollars.

That’s $6,000 for every man, woman and child in this country.

And the meltdown, remember, is global: this rescue will take many times over that amount, when spread among all of the countries in crisis.

And - we’ve only just begun. The arc of this meltdown is in, perhaps, it’s first ten percent. Perhaps less.

Where did all the value go? The better question is: was it ever there in the first place? The actual value of goods and services may not be the same as what a customer is willing to pay at times of high confidence in future returns. In other words, “expensive” money may seem like “cheap” money, if you expect to profit from that investment despite the cost. During an economic boom, this is exactly the psychology: get in while you can! Get out before the bust.
(more…)

Yesterday, president-elect Obama announced that he will put America back to work on his watch. He promised 2.5 million new or salvaged jobs during the course of his plan to rebuild the national infrastructure and develop new, clean sources of energy.

On the surface, putting American workers back to work is clearly something we can all support. After all, so much money has gone into bailing out those who made the huge bets that crashed the world economy; how about a little something for the workers beyond extending their unemployment benefits?

At the same time, the national infrastructure clearly needs attention which it has, for too long, failed to receive.

In a recent column, Pat Buchanan struggled to make sense of the death of American Auto, blaming its demise on unfair competition from abroad, where work, wage and living standards are not as high as in the United States. In other words, the decked is stacked against American Auto. He made the point that for the first time in U.S. history, the government employs more workers than does manufacturing.

President-elect Obama intends to double down on that scenario, or so it would seem.

How will this money be spent? Will the government directly run these projects? Will they be doled out to the companies which promise to do the jobs most cheaply; i.e., beat down workers on wages and benefits? Will start-ups, minorities and other entrepreneurs be encouraged to compete for these projects?

There is still a lot of support for “big business” in the halls of government. The fact that the Senate is dragging its feet in bailing out American Auto should not fool you into thinking that Congress is alright with American Auto failing.

No: they are alright with American Auto declaring bankruptcy, which will allow them to basically dismantle the agreements they have with workers. As others have pointed out, the hourly labor cost paid by the Big 3 is much larger than their competition. There are some specific reasons for this, among them the high cost of health care and pensions. These were generous deals for their time but were deemed affordable based on the industry’s profit level.

They aren’t sustainable in times like these. As a result, Congress looks at the situation and says “Your cost structure is too high. You can’t make money. Why should we throw good money after bad?”

Take it out on the workers.
(more…)

Barney Frank, United States representative from Massechusett and chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, was on the radio this morning, calling not only for a $25 billion bailout of the Dettoit “Big 3″ automakers, but for more after that, if needed. He insists that this will be a loan only, and that Congress must insist on reforms which will right the industry, in order for them to receive the money.

In today’s New York Times, former Massachusetts governor and presidential candidate Mitt Romney called for the industry to declare itself bankrupt, shed current management, and rebuild itself from the ground up.

The automakers and many analysts worry that, once they enter into bankruptcy, they will not have access to the lines of credit they will need to operate, and thus would be forced into liquidation.

If the Big 3 liquidate, the estimate is that 3 million jobs may be lost within the auto manufacturing industry as well as in the ancillary industries which supply parts and which deliver and sell the finished products.

If you’re scoring at home, what this means is that nobody has any idea what to do.

What seems certain is that there will be some contraction in “Detroit”, a moniker which represents the northern auto industry controlled by GM, Ford and Chrysler. This contraction may end up being complete. If so, the north as an industrial center will most likely cease to exist as we know it today. The vast majority of industries in the north are tied to heavy manufacturing, and are built on enormous scales of size. Without an underlying robust manufacturing industry, these ancillary industries will topple in rapid succession.

What seems utterly unknowable is: What to do about it?

The public was not even able to stomach the idea of bailing out Wall Street; Congress essentially had to ignore public will in order to pass the legislation. Those same congressmen will have to run on their record in two years (in the House, that’s everybody; in the Senate, one third), and the relative success or failure of the economy will be perceived by the voting public as a referendum on the plans their congressmen and women did or did not support.

If the government bails out Big Auto, then who’s next? “The Public Dole” is taking on a whole new meaning.
(more…)

I remember the term so well.

Pussy.

It sounded just like what it meant to a 10 year old boy: “You can’t fight, you can’t defend yourself, you might as well be a girl.”

The way it worked was that everybody was somebody’s pussy. There was always a tougher kid. If you failed to catch a fly ball, “Pussy!” If you ran away when a bully came by, “Pussy!” If you wouldn’t climb over the fence to the water tower to get the football back, “Pussy!”

And then, sometimes, to avoid being proved to be a pussy, you would go ahead and climb the fence, and tear up your pants on the barbed wire, and when you got home you’d get your ass whipped.

It was definitely worth it.

Last night my wife and I were discussing the order of things, and I mused that in an uncivilized world, I’d be somebody’s pussy or I’d be dead. She let out a rollicking laugh over that comment, but she also understood the point.

On a small scale, we use whatever tools and weapons we have, to avoid being thought of as weak. I always had books and music and throwing a ball against a stoop and imagining I was Don Drysdale. I always had my mind. And I was pretty fast. I could run. I stood my ground when necessary, but too many times I was outnumbered. It was an up and down journey. It most certainly, as we intellects like to say, “informed my world-view.”

Here in civilzation, bullies don’t rule. All the men get to procreate, not just the alpha male. (Some would say that’s not such a good thing.) Here in civilization, the pen is indeed mightier than the sword.

But when you get down to it, aren’t most of us still somebody’s pussy? Even the richest man in the world might have a wife who controls him. The most pampered woman could have her life snatched away at any moment. We are all dependent on someone or something that we cannot control, that does in fact control us.

And isn’t our world view informed by that reality?
(more…)

Greetings from Absurdistan!

Thank you for joining us. I’m Walt Bennett, your tour guide. We hope you enjoy your journey through a land where the bizarre seems normal and there is always a logical explanation for the illogical.

I’m sure you will agree, that sounds like a fun place! So, let’s gets started on our tour. We’re going to explore some of the more interesting places in Inner Absurdistan.

One of the most funs places to visit in Inner Absurdistan is a little place we like to call Wall Street. There’s actually no wall here, physically speaking. There used to be, to keep the barbarians out. But then we killed all the barbarians and we didn’t need the wall anymore.

Some of you might think that there is a figurative wall here now, which keeps all the barbarians in. If so, congratulations! You are already thinking like an Absurdistani. Soon, such thinking will even begin to seem natural.

Now, here is a special place, a place where very absurd things happen. This place we call “Goldman, Sachs”. Sounds so huffy and important, doesn’t it? Even has the word “Gold”, as in “Gold Standard”, in there.

Question in the back? What’s a “Gold Standard”? Here in Absurdistan we call that a joke. Back in that boring old place our ancestors used to live in, Payasugovia, the Gold Standard was the basis for valuing currency. The more your gold was worth, the more currency you could issue. Now you can see the problem with that, right? What if you want to issue more currency and pay yourselves massive bonuses? And what if the price of gold doesn’t cooperate and keep going up to allow you to print that currency? We can’t have that, so we ditched that anachronistic device many years ago. And as you can see, we have been so much better off without it.

Thanks for the question, now back to our tour. There’s so much to see and so little time.
(more…)

This item appeared  Sunday in the Associated Press:

Obama to use executive orders for immediate impact

Among the measures under consideration:

• Reversing Bush administration policies on stem cell research
• Reversing Bush administation approval for oil exploration on public lands

Thus we can see the beginnings of a two-pronged strategy to solidify Obama’s political standing. In other words, he is already running for re-election.

On the one hand we have seen, in only a few short days since this ‘historic”, “transformational” election, the administration-in-waiting clearly warning its base not to expect immediate change, while promising to “reach across the aisle” to Republicans when crafting policy, and to “govern from the middle.”

The evident hope of such actions is to defuse the right wing by incorporating its issues into presidential policy. Obama fears a fate similar to that of Bill Clinton, who came to power in 1993 with majorities in both houses of Congress and lost both majorities less than two years later, in the first mid-term election of his two term presidency. The failed effort to implement universal health care was sold to the public as a beurocratic nightmare, which it might have been had it been enacted, because it relied heavily on cooperation from employers, health care providers, state and local governments, and the insured themselves.

No such coalition ever emerged, and the plan fell apart bit by bit as more intitial supporters either offered watered-down alternatives or walked away entirely.

Upon losing his Congressional majority, Clinton quickly realized that had to “move to the center” if he was going to have any effect on meaningful legislation; in other words, if he was going to have a record to run on, he had no choice but to cooperate with Republicans.

Well in hand of that message, Obama, the first Democratic president since Clinton, plans to start in the middle. Congressional Democrats are no doubt heaving sighs of relief. There is certain to be a Republican backlash in the near future. The last thing the majority wants to do is to add fuel to the fire by recommending radical solutions to the social and economic problems which are crippling the country, crippling the people who voted them into office. They know that radical solutions are easy targets for political caricature, and that the public is always eager for somebody to mock and to blame. They know how easily the mood of the electorate can shift.

One only need to look back 14 years for a crystal example. Memories in Washington are a lot longer than that.
(more…)

Well I don’t know why I came here tonight,
I got the feeling that something ain’t right,
I’m so scared in case I fall off my chair,
And I’m wondering how I’ll get down the stairs,
Clowns to the left of me,
Jokers to the right, here I am,
Stuck in the middle with you.

The above lyric snippet is from a 1972 song by Gerry Rafferty and Stealer’s Wheel, “Stuck In The Middle With You.” Thanks to the Quentin Tarantino blood-fest “Reservoir Dogs”, it is also associated with slicing off an ear.

Ladies and gentlemen, presenting the woman who will fight to the finish for our right to stay stuck in the middle:

Madam Speaker, Nancy Pelosi.

Quoted in today’s New York Times assuring us:

“The country must be governed from the middle.”

In other words, “Don’t worry, corporate America, nothing significant is going to change.”

We’ll keep right on bailing out the fat cats.

We’ll keep building up the war machine.

We’ll keep wages low and costs high. We’ll keep workers and poor people in their place.

Two days after winning a “transformative” election, we are promised that there will be no transformation.

What did they think we expected of them?

We will find out who’s right and who’s wrong, within the next two months. President Obama will certainly be the first president in history who will need to be as specific about his plans as he will need to be. He will almost certainly be directing Congress’ priorities between now and then.

We need to be directing him. He’s made that clear. He has no intention of leading a charge to the left. He’s made that clear.

Time to push back.

There is no time to waste.

The tom-tom rhythm of far-off danger; can you hear it? Listen closely. Is it getting louder?

The top half of todays New York Times web site offered these headlines:

A Towering Economic To-Do List for Obama

European Banks Cut Rates Sharply

Toyota Slashes Annual Profit Forecast

Bleak Night at Christie’s, in Both Sales and Prices

Mayor Cancels Rebates for Homeowners

I’ve been talking about the tip of the iceberg for weeks. That’s still where we’re at, on the “before” side of how bad things will get. I don’t say this to win the “Bummer Of The Week” award, although I’m sure a lot of you are saying “Come on, Walt, we’ve been through downturns before. We know capitalism is cyclical. We know we have to purge less productive jobs so they can be replaced with more modern, more productive jobs.”

All true, except this is nothing like anything that has come before. This time, the capitalists went broke; their entire structure collapsed. Without a mass infusion of wealth, wrenched from the workers of the world in a ruthless display of power, that system would have already keeled over, a scant several months after the most severe problems arose.

Capitalism, we now know, can fail in a huge hurry.

There would be contraction at this time anyway, as businesses retrench after losing so much value. But combined with the massive pullback in consumer spending, there is no precedent for this meltdown. There is no sector to turn to for good news, other than crude oil - and that is more of an ominous sign of slowdown than any other current sign. It is broadly perceived that there will be much slower economic activity in the months ahead, requiring less oil. Watch for OPEC to continue to slash output, to prop that price back up.

The October jobless numbers come out tomorrow. They will be brutal.

This is the question you have to ask yourself, as you listen to those tom-toms in the distance: will the same tools your ancestors used to deal with that scary threat work this time, or will you need new tools?

This question might also be pertinent: if the capitalists insist that massive unemployment is necessary in a time of retrenchment, why should we hand over what little wealth we have left to these people?

What exactly did the workers of the world do to cause this failure? Oh, that’s right: nothing.

So, one possible option must be considered: attack the threat.

More on how this might be done in future posts.

Today I will physically cast a vote for Barack Obama.

I will, substantively, be casting a vote for change.

To my mind, what it comes down to is this: will the wealthiest one percent give up that wealth peacefully, or will we have to take it from them via any means necessary?

For over a century the oligarchs have been collecting the wealth which was earned for them from the backs of the workers of this world. Now, in the early years of the next century, we see the bankruptcy of that philosophy. We see the physical devastation of the planet. We see the horrifying political conditions under which much of the world lives. We see the abject poverty that too many people, even in the richest nations, suffer. We see the way workers are treated like basic commodities, to be accumulated and discarded as needed.

For over a century they told us that this was the best economic system possible. If that’s true, what does it say about mankind, that this is the best we can do?

I don’t believe that, and I never have.

Now more than ever, the lie has been revealed. Now more than ever, the failure is apparent.

Don’t let them fool you. Don’t let them tell you that we can trim the hedges and all will be fine. Don’t let them tell you that any alternative to capitalism is “even worse.”

Don’t let them scare you into denying control over your own destiny.

We don’t, today, know what the correct answers will be to create an economic system which is truly fair to all. I know that some socialization is inevitable. Energy and Health care should not be for-profit enterprises. A person without access to energy is a primitive being. A person without access to healthcare is one illness away from devastation.

Not only can we do better, we must do better. In two months we will have a unified Democratic government, at a time when the old ideas of defending free enterprise and the rights of the few to control so much of the wealth, have all failed. Many millions in this nation and across the world are, at this moment, being snatched from the middle class and thrown into poverty, as industries and businesses contract as rapidly as possible amidst this enormous economic meltdown.

Who will represent them? Who will make sure that their future is assured? Who will see to it that those who have worked hard and, through no fault of their own, been cast aside, will not be left there to wilt?

Can we count on the unified government to propose and develop these new solutions? If you are under the age of 30, you might believe that “yes” is an acceptable answer.

It is not. By now we know that when we elect people who promise to change Washington, what happens instead is that it changes them. Candidate Obama has promised that it will not happen to President Obama. It will be up to us to hold him to that.

If we fail to insist on real, permanent change, we have only ourselves to blame when things get even worse. And in the end, the revolutionaries will then have been proved right: only all-out war could ever wrest control of the world economy from the hands of the oligarchs.

I don’t believe that, because my hopes and dreams work better when they aren’t so apocalyptic. My hopes and dreams work better when I choose to invest in a future where we vote our way there, where we create a mass movement that rolls over the current alignment and creates a new alignment.

We start tomorrow.

Today in Ohio soon-to-be-President Barack Obama said this:

“Washington will have to tighten its belt and put off spending on things we don’t need. As President, I will go through the federal budget, line-by-line, ending programs that we don’t need and making the ones we do need work better and cost less.”

We are going to have to repeat this a lot over the next four years, and it looks as though we had better start now:

President Obama, you do not get to cry poverty to us, not this time, not after a $750 billion transfer of wealth from the workers of this country to the fat-cat bankers and professional investors. Not this time, when we have a unified progressive Executive and Legislative branch for the first time in over a generation. Not this time, when the world economy is melting down, entire nations are going broke, and many millions of people will be thrust into unemployment through no fault of their own. Not this time, when we need real solutions to the problems of everyday people in this country and in so much of the world. Not this time, Mr. President. Don’t cry poverty to us.

Consider it a manifesto: Don’t Cry Poverty, Mr. President.

Not this time. No, sir.