The day After and What Might Have Been

I learned a couple of things from Tuesday night’s election. We now have another category the GOP loses, the unmarried voter. I also learned the difference between independents and moderates in this present day. The independents are conservatives who have left the Republican Party for some reason and the moderates are Democrats who don’t align themselves with the progressives/ liberals. These labels change meanings from cycle to cycle.

The two major parties interpreted the results of the Tuesday night’s election results differently as we might expect. The GOP is split because some cheered Chris Christie’s landslide victory and others said that New Jersey was not a model to copy for the 2016 presidential election.

The Republican Party doesn’t think they lost the Virginia’s governor’s race because if they would have had a better candidate, poured more money into it, and emphasized the failure of Obamacare at the start, they would have won that contest. It’s another case of “if we would’ve scored more points “ logic.In fact, even though Ken Cuuccinelli admitted he lost, he has yet to call the governor elect Terry McAuliffe to congratulate him. The governor’s race in Virginia was very similar to the congressional race in Alabama where the business establishment ousted the tea party from gaining office. In Virginia, they withheld campaign funds and poured in money into the Alabama congressional race. The establish GOP beat the tea party this time around but not enough to discourage them from running candidates in 2014.

The DNC may be sorry for not putting up of much of a fight in the New Jersey governor’s race but they saw Christi winning since Cory Booker decided not to challenge him. Preliminary polls show Hillary Clinton beating the governor in his own state by six points, so the confidence that he can be beaten is there.

Democrats are like the team that kicks the last-second field goal for the win because they took the governorship of Virginia, but now they have to govern, no time to brag, analyze or declare a mandate. Terry McAuliffe has to find a way to convince the one chamber the GOP controls, to enroll in Obamacare.

Democrats saw new hope in passing minimum wage increase legislation. New Jersey passed a minimum wage hike despite having a Republican governor. The party was also delighted that New York City will get a very liberal mayor who will govern that way.

Republican leaders are trying to say Tuesday’s night’s election was the referendum on Obamacare, but that is very shortsighted. As he usually does, Jon Stewart went through his archives to show the same horror stories existed prior to 2009. Today we’re seeing the horror stories because a lot of lazy reporters are not doing their due diligence. October is usually the month health insurance companies reevaluate their policies with their customers.

As usual, the negativity has drowned out the good news. We just found out yesterday that our economy expanded to 2.8% annual rate during the months of July through September but then the shutdown came. The report stated that exports were rising, businesses were building their inventories in anticipation of sales, home construction was on the rise but then we got struck with another self- inflicted crisis. The naysayers are blaming President Obama and his policies for a stagnant economy but the economic data doesn’t support that.

I keep reading the letters about economic doom, but I don’t see any evidence of that. Yesterday, while I was at therapy, I overheard a conversation about a tamale order. The lady said that she was willing to pay $10.00 a dozen. Look at the cost of ingredients that go into making the delicacy; it wasn’t inflation that cost the price to rise from $7.25 a couple of years ago. I think the restaurants are taking advantage because that there are less people making good tamales these days. That’s just a small example where we can’t always use generally accepted economic reasoning to come to the same conclusion. We were led to believe that you can’t raise the minimum wage without hurting the economy but we know that’s just a myth. We no longer believe that we can’t raise taxes on the rich because it will hurt growth.

I don’t blame people for directing all their bitterness toward President Obama by trying to belittle his credentials, decisions, and policies because that comes with the territory, it’s called “sour grapes” I’ve noticed a pattern with these people; they don’t have an alternative solution. I’ve done my share of criticizing Ron Paul and President George W. Bush, but I submitted the details of why I felt that way.

The President Throws Down the Gauntlet

One of the best lines from President Obama’s speech is afternoon was when he said, “You just can’t be against something; you've got to be for something.” He told the Republicans stop having meaningless votes on repealing Obamacare and come up with a better plan. I took it to mean “put up or shut up.” The Affordable Care Act has never been popular in polls (34% approve, and 47% oppose)but as Cokie Roberts said this morning, the Kaiser Foundation has a much better poll which shows that people love different components of the Affordable Care Act, but they are still confused about certain aspects of the plan. Who can blame them with the smokescreens the GOP throws out. Senators Ted Cruz and Mike Lee want to tie repealing Obamacare to raising the debt ceiling and are willing to shut down the government over it. They might as well call for shutting down the government right now.

President Obama will continue to use his bully pulpit because he knows that his good plans will never see the light of day in Congress. The president has seen his approval dropped to a low of 45% because of the staggering economy. Congress has dropped to an all -time low of 12% and 57% of the voters would vote to replace everyone, and that doesn’t bode well for the GOP if they want to retake the Senate.

The president talked about investing in our future, and he emphasized it by saying, “if you think education is expensive. wait until you see how much ignorance costs in the 21^st century.” He knows Congress is a problem, so he said he will bend the ear of educators, business leaders and CEOs to get something done. The president said that the FCC is currently working to get high- speed Internet to  in 99% of our schools. That was one example of what a president has the power to do. The other is making the costs of making higher education affordable.

I liked that the president brought up the idea of a minimum wage increase and said he will reward the CEOs and business leaders who treat their employees’ right. He singled out Costco and the Container Store for the efforts in paying their employees a decent wage, providing health care and other benefits.

The president was honest by saying that even if we don’t implement all of his ideas, the economy will keep growing because of our resources, standing, and  our resilient people, but we will grow at a much slower pace. He said most of our bridges would be eligible for Medicare. Our buildings, airports and broadband services need upgrading and repair because we’re falling behind our competitors.

The Republicans will roll their eyes, some will write pessimistic, uninformative letters –to- our editor and others will continue to oppose anything that President Obama is for. Let them consume themselves with President Obama,phony scandals,$17 trillion debt ,empty rhetoric and keep supporting their bad legislators because our economy will continue to improve without any help from them, and the voters will take notice in 2014.

Another Month…Another Novosad anti-Obama Letter

Mr. Allen Novosad has posted another anti-Obama letter, but it hasn’t made our on line forum yet, so I’m not able to provide a link. While we are on that subject, I could not access the digital version of the Victoria Advocate using the forum this morning. Luckily, I have the VA app on my iPad.

Mr. Novosad you have a serious case of Obama derangement syndrome. You are now blaming the voters who voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012 for the struggling economy and national debt. The debt has been accumulating for decades, but our country is showing signs of recovery. President Obama held his head high at the recent G7/G8 meetings because the United States and Germany were the only participants at that summit who could point to signs of recovery. We have a long way to go because even at our most positive predictions show that we won’t have unemployment at 5% until the year 2020. The Fed Chairman just hinted that he might take off the training wheels off (quantitative easing) in the fall because of the improvement he is seeing. Can you name one GOP bill that has been passed ,in the last fours years, that is responsible for the economic gains?

Mr. Novosad said Democrats and others who voted for President Obama were blinded by his blackness and rhetorical skills so much that we overlooked his lack of experience. This is coming from someone who will probably vote for someone like Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio or Rand Paul and was willing to elect the likes of Sarah Palin to be vice president. A man like Allen Novosad will never understand the meaning of “hello pot meet kettle.”

I have to remind Mr. Novosad, that the 2008 financial crisis happened in the fall of 2008, so the voters were unlikely to turn over the reins to the party who got us into the mess. Mr. Obama won the three presidential debates, and he won by a landslide. In fairness to John McCain, no Republican could have beaten Barrack Obama or Hillary in 2008. If Hillary  had won, you would have used the “she was elected because people wanted the first woman president.” It’s never “we lost because people do not like our policies, agenda or ideology.” You keeping thinking that you won even thou the GOP has lost the presidential popular votes in the last five of six elections.

In 2012, the economy was terrible and the Republicans had a chance to unseat the incumbent but your party chose to elect the most electable from the clown show that they had to choose from.  Your party ran a Wall Street Republican who blamed the 47% as being takers in our struggling economy. Mitt Romney promised more tax cuts for the rich and a tax plan that would cut taxes by 20% across the board, but he never said how and the rest is history. You can blame it on a hurricane,naïve voters, or anything else you want but it won’t change the results.

Republicans like Novosad always leave out the part about key members of GOP leadership (on the night of the first Obama presidential inaugural festivities,) cooking up a plan to deny the president any support. They also forget that Democrats and independents favored Obama’s plan for health care over the GOP plan during the election. Yes, the Dems went alone because they didn’t have another option. They only had 59 senators (we all know it takes 60 votes to approve anything, nowadays) because the Coleman/Franken race in Minnesota was held up in the courts for a while. The Affordable Care Act, when fully implemented, will make believers out of many skeptics but the GOP loyalists will fight it to the bitter end.

Scandals you say Mr. Novasad, but they will never meet the definition of a real scandal like invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 and is the basis for the turmoil that we see in the Middle East today. The scandals Mr. Novosad mentioned are just scripts for the next Fox News show. The American people are worried about jobs not about so-called scandals that never materialize. Allen will never know that a self-admitted conservative Republican IRS office manager in Cincinnati said the screening technique used were not politically motivated. You see; Mr. Novosad will never read the actual transcripts of the investigation. Republicans are frustrated because President Obama is as pure as the driven snow when it comes to ethics. Remember, he was only a senator for two years, so Washington did not get a chance to corrupt him. You can legitimately be against his policies and ideology, but you are going to have to find the smoking gun before you can mire him in scandal.

Mr. Novosad named the usual six Obama scandals but one of them made me laugh out loud. He blamed the Obama administration for obtaining billions of phone calls and Internet information on American citizens. Hello, Allen, did you have a good five-year nap? Those policies existed under warrantless surveillance for several years before Obama became president. I read where NSA wiretapped Senator Obama in 2004.

No, Mr. Novosad, the Democratic congressmen are not the cause for the so-called danger you think our nation is experiencing, and your way of life may not be what the majority of America wants.

Congress has an all-time low 10% approval, and your party controls one body of Congress. Your party could not pass the usual bipartisan farm bill because your far-right representatives put in some poison pills. Your party wanted to cut $20 billion from the food stamp program and give those funds to millionaire farmers. No self-respected Democrat would ever do that. The 62 Republicans who voted against the bill only did so because they didn’t think that the cuts in food stamps were enough. The people you should be going after are the far-right loons in your party like Louie Gohmert, who said.” "When I look into the eyes of constituents, who want to provide for their children … and they talk about standing in line, I've heard this story so many times … standing in line at a grocery store behind people with a food-stamp car—one individual said, I love crab legs. You know, the big king crab legs. I love those. But we haven't been able to have those in who knows when. But I'm standing behind a guy who has those in his basket, and I'm looking longingly like, when can I ever make enough again where our family can have something like that, and sees the food-stamp card pulled out, and provided, he looks at the king crab legs and looks at the ground meat, and realizes because he does pay income tax, he doesn't get more back than he pays in, he is actually helping pay for the king crab legs when he can't pay for them for himself." It’s statements like these that make your party less credible because they have become commonplace. We can’t go one day without hearing a stupid comment by a Republican. It’s sad because people like Allen Novosad believe in people like Louie Gohmert because he tickles their ears. The crazies on the right dominate politics because the media loves to interview crazy people (yes,the crazy comments are only coming from the right) but it’s making the Democratic Party the default for serious governing. The Democrats will get all the blame because they are expected to govern but without a challenge, our party will become complacent.

Going Back to the Basics

I'm all about crossing the bridge into the 21st Century, but I don’t want to forget all the basics that got us here. There is no short cut for hard work and patience, tolerance, compromise and perseverance should continue to be the formula for success. 

The president, whomever it might be, is often used as the reason our country is doing poorly by those who voted for the other guy.  In some cases that happens to be true but history won’t make that decision for centuries.  Nowadays, some forget  everything they learned in civics 101 and equate the president to a dictator.  It's as if, your vote for a representative and a senator doesn't matter because the three co- equal bodies of government simply cannot the match the  innumerous powers of the executive branch.

Catch phrases, sound bites, and slogans like “ small government, less taxes, and less regulations” will always get applause but in most cases it’s just a self –fulfilling prophecy for failure.  We should want effective government, size and scope will ultimately decide that; not  a predetermined goal of privatizing everything.

Let’s analyze Rosalie Sykora’s recent letter to the editor  in which a poster named Brain Vandale thinks everyone would agree with her. I certainly don’t but first we have to get down  to basics and compare the two eras.

I believe it took 4 years to complete the Hoover Dam,  but about 100 people died in doing so. I think OSHA would not have allowed that and today the EPA will rightly ensure that clean air and water will not be jeopardized.

Rosalie said “ maybe a project like the Hoover Dam is what the Obama and his progressive movement should be looking at.” Rosalie, all you have to do is watch a couple of hours of MNBC and  you would see a commercial of Rachel Maddow standing by the Hoover Dam emphasizing the need for such a project, metaphorically speaking. You would also see the likes of Ed Schultz, Lawrence O'Donnell and Chris Hayes doing the same thing. You might check back to some of the president's stump speeches standing by a bridge in a republicans district telling the people to urge their congressman to vote for an infrastructure project.

This how it works Rosalie.  We don't need dams but we need mass transit, broadband, and energy projects but the president can’t just sign a work order and make it happen. The House of Representatives should be the first body to take up this issue because they control the purse strings.  It would be a fool’s errand to ask the Tea Party to consider borrowing three trillion dollars, even at these low interest rates and almost a guarantee to recoup all the money with interest to boot.  That leaves the Senate to take the lead as they have in all major pieces of legislation this year because John Boehner is the weakest Speaker of the House since its inception. The Senate would likely pass the bill, but then we go back to square one.  I agree, creating jobs should be a priority right now but the sequester is giving us the opposite.

I shook my head in amazement of how John Stossel of Fox News compared the folks of the Great Depression to those on public assistance today.  He didn't say that our government ran out of national assistance and soup lines were commonplace until that became unsustainable because we had not yet implemented a Keynesian recovery policy.  Many people died, and that would be the case today if not for SNAP,Medicare,Medicaid,unemployment benefits and Social Security.  Revisionist history has made people like John Stossel a rich man.

It's all about basics because states like California and Oregon, where they have implemented the Affordable Care Act (ACA), insurance rates are dropping.  States like Texas and Louisiana will fight the health care law, purely on ideological grounds, will likely see their insurance rates rise. The GOP said that they would no longer try to repeal the entire ACA but now will take steps to defund it, which will weaken it, for its eventual downfall.  The GOP has also abandoned" Repeal and Replace,” so under their plan,you are on your own.

Some corporations have to step up and start paying decent wages, although  it will temporarily weaken their stock value. That's what we're seeing, it's a rich man's recovery.  Yes, housing automobile sales are rising but when unemployment is at 7.5%,the well- off are the ones purchasing.  Republicans haven't figured out that when you cut food stamps, it affects Wal-Mart, and the industries that rely on the purchases of poor people. And that’s just what we see on the spreadsheets, how well will that child do in school when you just cut off their fuel for their nutrition lacking brain cells?

I find it a complete waste of my time to argue with someone who doesn’t believe in science, basic math, accepted economic principals, or substantiated facts.

You can’t stop to gloat

This morning's job numbers ruined the celebration party for the GOP. It's as it's as someone turned off the juke box as they were still celebrating Romney's debate victory. Romney surrogate, former governor of New Hampshire, John Sunnu, told Andrea Mitchell,"What people saw last night, I think, was a president that revealed his incompetence, how lazy and detached he is, and how he has absolutely no idea how serious the economic problems of the country are, and how he has failed to even begin to address them,” Sununu — a top Romney surrogate — said on MSNBC Thursday. Those views are shared by people who think that this president is a product of affirmative action. They themselves could never make the grades to get into Harvard, or have what it takes to win the presidency, so they can't see how President Obama could accomplish all this.

This morning's job numbers show that we created when 114,000 jobs last month but most importantly it dropped the unemployment rate from an 8.1% to 7.8%. The 7.8% is what will be the headlines in tomorrow's newspapers because that's what it is on today's online versions. The conservatives have already cracked up their spin machine to create another government and liberal media conspiracy theory. We can argue the accuracy of those numbers, but we can't deny it's the same metric that has been used since we've been using the data. The numbers are good, but we would need another 10,000 jobs, in order to keep up with a population growth. We also have to remember that 7,600 people turn age 60 everyday and just give up being part of the workforce. It's a known fact that those with a college degree have an unemployment rate of around 4%. We also know that the most important statistic is how the voter feels on November 6th. As I've said all along, we have a consumer-driven economy, so when consumers start spending, inventories will drop and no matter what party of affiliation a business owner subscribes to, they will have to hire to keep up. The June and July job numbers have been revised upward. The housing market is starting to pick up; manufacturing is up slightly and so is consumer confidence.

We Democrats can't gloat because there will be one more job's numbers before the election but it is my opinion that the undecided will have made up  their mind by then. Recent voter suppression may have been overturned by federal judges but some voters may not be aware of that. It’s no time to get complacent or take time out to “smell the roses.”

I'm just saying that if we sit back and try to imagine lady justice balancing that scale. On one hand, we have a debate victory and on the other, we have an optimistic job number. It's my opinion that the job numbers will weigh so heavily in the president's favor that it will throw the debate victor off the scale. The Romney camp will have to go back revise their stump speeches where they say that unemployment has never been below 8%. They will make it the point that it's not good enough and the administration will admit that but touting Romney 12,000,000 jobs without specifics is not a good counter argument. I don't think the job numbers will get below 6% for another two or three years, no matter whom the president is.

Mitt Romney is dismissing the recent job numbers, but he threw those ardent supporters who agreed with his 47% comment under the bus, by admitting that those comments were wrong. That's what he would've said if Obama would have pressed him on it the other night. I think the reason for Mitt Romney's new found confidence is that he finally got out of that shell the hard-right conservatives put him in. He will now be the moderate Republican he's always been; he'll agree with the group he's talking to at the moment. The conservatives have no choice, but to sit back and hope that Paul Ryan will influence him. If you're a Romney supporter, you best not plant your feet in cement on what he says because there's video evidence to show that's not a good idea.

The way I see it

It's unfortunate these political arguments always end with the name calling except in a few cases. I've had more than my share but nowadays, I'm choosier with whom, I argue with. I write a political blog, so I understand that readers will disagree with my viewpoints, but if we can't have a rational discussion; then it's not worth discussing.

I downloaded the latest Vanity Fair because it had a behind the scenes look at President Obama. The author of the article is Michael Lewis. He said that President Obama does not like politics. He’s not like Bill Clinton, who can tell you who is running for county judge in some obscure district in Montana. He’s not like Lyndon Johnson, who would shake your hand, pour you a drink, and light your cigar knowing all along that he was going to stab you in the back to get what he wants. He’s not superficial, so that makes it awful hard for him to broker a deal with the opposition party. That’s where Joe Biden comes in, and it sheds some light on why we have gridlock. Many times the constituents are highly polarized, and they pressure their representatives into not compromising, which is not the way Washington is supposed to work. There is no clear-cut truth certain ideology or solution, but many don’t believe that.

I've had my share of arguing with right wing Laissez-Faire capitalists and those who still live in the "Red Scare" days of Joe McCarthyism. To them, sharing or doing something good for someone is considered socialism because we know anything government spends on the poor, minorities and the disadvantaged is outright socialism. It doesn't matter if they have any boots; they should assimilate themselves pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. I'm going to be 67 years old, and I have yet to meet any of those people bellowing “socialism” who knows the definition of the word. They just call any government expenditure- socialism, but they'll be there to collect their Social Security and Medicare. Oh, if they only knew how their company placed their bids for government contracts... That's OK by me because I know the true meaning, of "we the people" and I believe and understand the general welfare clause of the constitution.

During the Clinton years, it was about the children and what that ill moral man did in the sacred White House. We heard about Reagan never taking off his jacket while he was in the West Wing and other superficial tales. Today the Reaganites throw out “what are we going to leave our grandchildren “when talking about the debt and deficit. There was no such talk when we borrowed money to give two tax cuts to the wealthy, engage in two wars, and put a seven trillion dollar drug prescription bill on the credit card. They will never mention the environment and leaving our grandchildren a healthy planet. Republicans shrug it off saying it's the greatest hoax ever.

I know that they are varying opinions about the state of our economy, and you're pretty naive if you think one economic philosophy or economists knows all there is to know. No one cans accurately predict what the Asian markets or European markets will do to influence our economy. Others can stay up all night worrying about the debt and the deficit, but I would like our government to worry about jobs because without jobs the inevitable will happen. We owe a lot of the debt to ourselves. We also know that we need to reform our tax structure, entitlements and defense spending but at the same time invest in education, infrastructure and innovation. We don't need to drastically bring down the debt and deficit; all we need is a downward trend in the outlining years.

Then there is that group who wants to cut down the size of government, so it would fit nicely inside a Radio Shack outlet. You heard it during the GOP presidential debates where Ron Paul and Rick Perry wanted to eliminate five government agencies. They’ll call Social Security, a Ponzi scheme and want the feds to send Medicaid block grants to the states. They have their eye on privatizing Medicare and eliminating good public schools by issuing school vouchers. This group will fight tooth and nail against any private/ public ventures because  if successful; it ruins their argument that government is totally inept. They don’t want to raise taxes because it might give the government the money it needs to be more efficient; notwithstanding making Grover Norquist wave that “no new taxes “pledge in front of their faces.

This group knows that government is the equalizer, and they can’t stand it. It gets in their way when they try to pollute in order to get more profits, cheat consumers, discriminate or implement unfair work policies. This powerful group has a lot of big money behind them, and they have already brought the private sector unions to its knees, and it now only represents 7% of the working force. All that’s left is the public unions which represent about 30% of public workers and it is in their sights. This started 30 years ago when they pitted good union labor jobs performed by high school graduates against workers from third-world countries. That is the formula for concentrating all the wealth at the top and leaving little for consumers to satisfy our demand problem. It’s a perfect storm of low or stagnant wages and tax cutting. All is not lost Wall Street is at 13,000, Fortune 500 companies have $2 trillion in reserve, and the banks have another $2.5 trillion sitting in the vaults of the Federal Reserve.

This will have to serve as my old Saturday morning vent because I will be out of town attending to personal matters.
Have a good weekend.

Why Attack the Poor?

I shouldn't be surprised because I've seen and read about the ignorance of attacking the indigent in these precarious times. During the 1929 Great Depression, the poverty-stricken farmers were the scapegoats instead of the big banks who had a great role in bringing down our financial system. I wouldn't mind it so much if the claims of millions of able-bodied men too lazy to go to work were true and backed by documented facts. The information I get by reading our local paper and our online forum is equivalent to neighborhood gossip. A couple of back -to- back letters indicate that hard-working Republicans are supporting democratic leaning ingrates with their tax dollars. There's even one neighborhood Jezebel, who has six kids and is clamoring for more just to receive more government money. How many times have I heard stories like that before?

The truth is Democrats aren't as anxious as their Republican counterparts to make drastic cuts on entitlements and social programs. Those programs are in need of reform and reasonable cuts, but it shouldn't be at the expense of giving tax cuts to the wealthy. That doesn't make economic or moral sense. I do know that we should heed to the warnings of the Congressional Budget Office about the fiscal cliff that we are approaching. We will go back into a recession if we insist on the $500 billion in tax increases and spending cuts set to hit in January. Those are the issues we should be concentrating on instead of constantly hammering the poor.

There certainly is some waste in the SNAP (food stamps) program, which comes out to $176 million but that's just 0.0444% of the $400 billion total waste of government dollars. We are a wasteful nation; we throw away 40% of our food supply, which amounts to $165 billion every year. That's the reason I can never understand why some people are totally against child nutrition programs and free school lunches. Do we want to punish the children, so we can send a lesson to possible irresponsible adults? I would rather error on the side of compassion, especially after seeing what we throw away.

Our country was hemorrhaging jobs at the rate of 500,000 to 750,000 a month before President Obama ever took office, so why is it surprising that the costs of food stamps went from $17 billion to $76 billion during the recession? Are we supposed to believe that John McCain would have kept the food stamps cost at $17 billion during the recession? 46 million Americans are on the SNAP program and 87% of those are seniors, single moms and children, so that leaves about 6 million of our fellow Americans vulnerable to being called lazy able-bodied people living off the government dole. Those people have to be careful because they're being scrutinized because their neighbors are probably reading their mail to come up with their assumptions. That's funny because a government check is a government check; there are no known ways of how to tell if they are SSI checks, Social Security or a tax refund. I wonder if the busybodies know the difference between their primitive mythology and actual facts. I will admit that I don't have any substantial facts to back up my assumption that people would rather work for a living at a decent wage then depend on something that's neither permanent nor guaranteed.

I've been told many times that it's the role of the church's and individuals to give a helping hand to the poor, not the government. That's good in theory; in fact ideal but a lot  of poor children would starve waiting on that to happen, and statistics bear that out. A 2011 IRS report reveled that “In 2008, the IRS says, Americans wrote off $172.9-billion in charitable contributions, a 10.6-percent drop from 2007. Its estimates for 2009, released this month, project a 14-percent drop, to $148.6-billion."

http://philanthropy.com/article/Americans-Gave-a-Lot-Less-in/127244/

I won't pretend that this blog will generate a good discussion about public policy, the role of government, or the safety net because people are locked in their own beliefs. It doesn't really matter whether it's 1929 or 2012. My opponents on this subject will call me a statist because I'm not in lockstep with their beliefs. I believe that government definitely has a role as a policeman in some cases, but frequently it's mostly about being the equalizer. I love the idea of entrepreneurs building their business from the ground up, but I don't look down at them if they take advantage of a government grant or a preferable loan rate for start-ups. I don't believe that we will get out of our economic doldrums without the help of government because the free market corporations are not stepping up. I saw a group of Romney supporters at one of his political events wearing tee shirts, with “I built this business" across the front. Do those people suffer from an inferiority complex that they need to be reminded of their accomplishments every day? If you're really that great you don't have to toot your own horn; others will gladly do it.

This blog will take the place of my occasional “Saturday Rant" blog because I'll be out of town tomorrow...I hope everyone enjoys their weekend.

We live in a BS world

After watching a movie called “Margin Call" with Kevin Spacey, reading some comments at the VA and watching political shows and reading today's wonderful article titled "Why we need better nonsensical talk “by Tom Purcell, I’m convinced that we live in a BS world. I don't see us improving our situation until we go back to calling “a spade a spade."

We are still at a stage where we have decided that “parenting" and ridding the teachers union are the answers to our education problem. That's BS, they may be the major components but real problem solving has to be a work around the perceived problems and not just continue to throw up our arms and quit. I think the answer is revising the outdated system we are using but this is just a small example; I won't dwell into the details at this time.

The movie “Margin Call" wasn't what I expected because the theme was more like the movie " 12 angry men" because it was about a Wall Street firm, its managers and employees, and it all took place at the firm's location. It was about Wall Street recruiting the brightest people and turning them into used car salesmen, selling worthless securities with a passion and using money to ease their conscience. Those of us who are in the market cheered them on but when we found out that their actions caused a financial meltdown, we wanted to crucify them. It went onto show that a Wall Street firm or a corporation does not have the soul or a conscience. After one of their analysts showed them a computer model analysis where their junk assets had run its course; they decided to pass the junk off to their competitors, creating a free fall liquidation of many firms. The firms paid their top employee's lucrative bonuses before liquidation. Then came the taxpayer lending them funds at 1% interest; they in turn charged 3% interest pocketing a 2 percent gain; yet, we applauded them for paying back their taxpayer loans. That's the BS society we live in; as long as they paid us back, we forgave them for the financial meltdown causing millions to be unemployed, mortgages going under water and a further mistrust of our Financial System. We still don't have regulations in place to prevent another financial crisis and not one CEO went to jail because in our BS society, what they did was legal.

I agree with Tom Purcell's assessment" We want to be lied to in America. Whereas the truth can be painful, costly and time -consuming, we're suckers for a skillfully told yarn, and it puts us at ease and helps us sleep better at night.” Do we honestly care what a policeman does to arrest a suspect at 3:00AM? Have we explored the difference between preventing voter fraud and voter suppression? Do we seriously expect to solve our racial problems without exploring the past? This past weekend, the words of my unrealistic niece could have been an example of the point Tom Purcell was trying to make. We were having a discussion about the unemployment rate and how difficult it was for those that became accustomed to making over $80,000 a year and then having to face a layoff. She said that they could work three jobs instead of staying at home collecting unemployment and being picky about their job offers. First, the laid-off people would have to face mortgage and vehicle payments larger than the wages they would get from those three jobs; that's if they were available. And that's just a start. The county city and local businesses would have to deal with $800,000 of revenue if a mere 10 people were laid off. The people making $80,000 bought products that people working at Burger King could never afford. That's the type of BS country we live in; simple answers for complex problems. You could make a full circle and we would get back to reason parents may not have time to help their children with their home work.

The World Changes

I finally got to finish three parts (5 1/2 I hour) PBS documentary by Ken Burns titled “Prohibition." The documentary was an eye-opener. It made me realize as to how we have not changed a bit, all we do is change the characters. For example, remember all the hoopla about Muslims erecting a mosque at Ground Zero and Republican legislators changing the name of French fries to freedom fries. According to the documentary during WWI, the name for German sourdough bread was changed to freedom bread, and people were killing German dachshund dogs, and one man was hanged because he was overheard speaking German to his neighbor. That was our initial world war, and we overreacted and 9/11 was the first time our mainland had been attacked and we did the same .The 2008 Financial Crash was the first financial crisis since the 1929 Great Depression, yet we still don't have regulations in place to prevent "Too Big to Fail."

Ron Paul would've felt at home in the 20th century because the 18th amendment banning the use of alcohol (Prohibition) for public recreational purposes was considered the most liberty destroying legislation of our lifetime. Police chiefs across the nation reluctantly stated that over 40% of their forces were involved in the illegal sale of alcohol. It was legal to brew a small amount of alcohol for personal consumption, or for a doctor to prescribe rum and whiskey for medicinal purposes but those exemptions led the honest shopkeeper and the small-time doctor yielding to the temptation of making a lot of bootlegger money. The documentary was more about life lessons, than it was about the illegal consumption or the selling of alcoholic beverages. The people of that time over consumed alcohol which led to domestic abuse, poverty, medical problems, but it was a classic case for the reason we cannot legislate morality.

I would like to think that we're much more intelligent these days but we may not be. Democratic presidential nominee, Al Smith, lost his election to Herbert Hoover because he was a Catholic running on an anti-prohibition ticket. The KKK printed thousands of hate pamphlets that predicted the Pope would occupy the White House, openly burned crosses and marched in anti-Smith rallies. The Klan publication, Fellowship Forum, showed a Cabinet meeting with the Pope and a dozen fat priests sitting happily around the table, with Smith, in bellboy livery, serving them liquor. No Klan tale, however, surpassed the story that the Holland Tunnel secretly connected to the Vatican! The Republican Party never admonished the tactics. I can see the similarities without the openness, in the Mitt Romney campaign. It's funny because Al Smith's opponents would have liquor at all their strategy meetings.

Today, one of our biggest problems is income inequality, but we cannot get a handle on it until we know its cause. I'm convinced that this started in the Reagan era when they started implementing tax policies to favor the rich. During the past 30 years, the gap between the wealthy and the middle class is as large as it has ever been. Income inequality was one of the causes for the 1929 Great Depression where wealth accumulated at the top and never trickles down, so when the stock market crashed there was no one left to revive the economy. The scapegoats of that time were the poor farmers, and today we have a 9.0 unemployment rate, yet people are chastising the poor for not working.

I've seen where some posters are just parroting what they hear from the single source articles they read every day, or they try to incorporate their pet peeves into every argument. Let's take this “taxing the rich" argument. That's just a diversion that emphasizes the point by saying that if we confiscated all their assets, and we still wouldn't have enough money to balance the budget. That's not the point at all. For argument's sake, let's skip the reasons, of how we got in this predicament for right now but let's concentrate on how we will get out.

We need a plan to start reducing the debt and deficit just when we start showing signs of recovery because you can't do both at the same time. We can immediately cut out the wasteful spending but eliminating programs creates layoffs (consumers) who just might go on the public dole. We still have to invest in education, research and development, infrastructure and innovation. Revenues will have to be part of the mix even though some right-wing partisans are starting to say that a balanced approach is just a liberal socialist talking point. You don't have to be a mathematician to know that if you don't cut defense spending or tax the top 2%, the cuts will all come on the backs of the poor, the elderly, and education. We will never reduce the debt to zero in our lifetime, and the best we can do is to start seeing a downward trend in the foreseeable future. All the talk about reducing capital gains rates and reducing the corporate rates to zero are just smoke and mirrors because, once the economy starts to revive, the unemployment rate will go down, as well as deficit reduction as the tax revenues increase. We can restructure our income tax code later when cooler heads prevail. We're treating this economy like we reacted to 9/11 because it's not a situation that we are accustomed to. We don't need a reactionary economic policy.

There's not a day that goes by where we don't read about some elaborate plan to fix our economy in our local newspaper and public forum. It's as if it's a sure-fire fix without giving thought to history or established economic theories. Some posts their proposals multiple times, as if the more you see them, the likelihood they will take hold. The posters want a flat tax because they don't know or care about the income inequality we're suffering from. Some favor "austerity only" not recognizing that it will do more harm than good and one would have to look no further than to our European trading partners as proof. They talk about a "strong dollar" but fail to grasp that even though that is desirable in the future, it would leave our goods on the shelf right now. Think about it, Dillard’s, Macy’s, Tiffany, and Neiman Marcus don't have Black Friday sales but Walmart, Target and Best Buy do.

 In the meantime you can't place all the blame on the Federal government and allow the multinational corporations to go untouched.  We have a DEMAND problem right now, of which the government can't do anything about. On of our biggest trader (Europe) is having a financial crisis of their own. Once consumers start spending, some of our jobs will come back but we still don't have a lot of manufacturing jobs that usually gets an economy up and going like Germany did. We have a service based economy. I hope some of these little tidbits will help you understand some of the problems we are having,you might disagree,so feel free to share where I might be wrong. It's the only way we all learn together,so we don't have to keep repeating the myths of the past.

Puppets on a string

I can still remember September 15 of 2008 because that's the date Lehmann brothers went down and almost took down our entire country’s Financial System in a domino effect. However clumsy it was and I think Federal Chairman Bernanke, Secretary of Treasury  Hank Paulson and President Bush made the right decision when they decided to let the taxpayers bailout out Wall Street.  Yet, we still have those that will shill for Wall Street and big corporations because they think taxes and regulations will  weaken them.

I know after 30 years of Ronald Reagan’s prophecy of “ government is a problem not the solution” the followers will all defend trickle down economics'. They will go to bat to give the top 2% a tax cut and go out of the way to see that Wall Street and the corporations have very little interference in the pursuit of the almighty dollar. The republicans have a bill to restrict the EPA from enforcing current emission laws and they want to repeal the finance reform package the democrats passed.  This is the basis for local bloggers like Observer and rollingstone to that the top 2% and the big corporations should not be tampered with if we're to have a robust economy.They are puppets on a string.

Conservatives accused President Clinton of “tax and spend politics” when he raised income taxes on the very wealthy to pay for investments in economic development, education, and new technology. [Washington Post] But Clinton’s policies yielded 23 million new jobs—nearly five times more new jobs than Bush created with his tax cuts for the super-rich. [Bureau of Labor Statistics]

The problem is not that corporations are overtaxed. In fact, a whopping two-thirds of American corporations and foreign corporations doing business in the United States pay absolutely no federal income taxes—despite taking in $2.5 trillion in sales. [Government Accounting Office] In 2005, 28 percent of large foreign companies doing business in the United States (those with more than $250 million in assets or $50 million in sales) paid no taxes.

There's a point of overtaxing and over regulations but we can’t come to the table if zero is the starting point.  I bet the majority of Americans believe that cutting discretionary spending by $61 billion is a great start at getting our fiscal house in order. Not so, says Goldman Sachs that large of an amount would cut the GDP by 2% and other economists have said that it will lead to 700,000 jobs being lost.  There is a rule that says “ when consumers and businesses are not spending- government has to.” we don't want to make the same mistakes of the 1929 Depression by drastically reducing government spending before full recovery. We should sit down at the table and discuss 10 year plans of tax reform, entitlement reform, and defense cuts with tax increases that will trigger if we don't mean our goals.

I'm completely ignorant when it comes to local politics because Lamppost wrote a blog that doesn't make any sense to me.  I'm pretty sure the posters that responded understood what he was talking about because he was articulate and but I don't know if his message was about the good ole boy system, volunteering, or a combination of both. I guess I’m that far behind with my head buried deep in the sand.  Someday,I will will get someone to explain all this to me.I don’t know if “puppets on a string” applies because I don’t know who the puppets are.

In the meantime Mike Huckabee thinks Obama was born in Kenya and Chris Matthews is going off the edge like Charlie Sheen and Rick Perry thought Juarez was part of Texas.