A friend sent me this Alex Jones hit piece on Hillary Clinton (yeah, another one), which
claimed she stole the primary election from Bernie Sanders. My friend wanted to know
what I thought of Alex "The Aliens Are Coming ..." Jones' piece. My response was simple and short, and follows below:
1. THE SOURCE: You want to first consider the source. Alex Jones, seriously?
2. SUDDEN ELECTORAL PURITY: When Republicans start complaining about how George W. Bush stole the 2000 election from Al Gore, with the same indignation and energy they exert now, I might take what they have to say about stolen elections a little more seriously.
3. HILLARY STILL WON: While there were numerous late Bernie Ballots counted after the June 7 elections, Hillary still won California (for example) by over 375,000 votes.
In all cases, it's best to remember that anyone backing the GOP this election cycle can't live without conspiracy or fear. They need the drama, or else there's no way for them to understand the world they live in.
They can't explain the election and popularity of the nation's first Black president without conspiracy or fear ...
They can't explain how the economy is better today than it was 7 1/2 years ago without conspiracy or fear ...
They can't explain why Benghazi is more important than the more than 20 embassies and consulates that were attacked during the Bush administration - which left 66 dead -without conspiracy or fear ...
In a few words, the GOP needs the drama that comes with conspiracy and fear to help their world make sense. Applying logic and common sense turns their world upside down which, in many ways, helps explain the popularity of Donald Trump. - Mark
For those who want to believe that violence against the police is up under President Obama (and because of Black Lives Matter protests), know one thing: Not only are shooting deaths of police officers down under President Obama, but so are police fatalities.
One more thing. More police officers die on the job in states with more guns.
As Detective Joe Friday used to say on Dragnet, "Just the facts, ma'am, just the facts".
The New Yorker has an interesting article suggesting that "All Scientists Should Be Militant Atheists." Drawing from the Kim Davis Show currently playing out in the national media, the article begins by asking, "To what extent should we allow people to break the law if their religious beliefs are in conflict with it?"
After getting past the extreme examples of not allowing people to behead one another, or demanding that veils be worn in public, the author, Lawrence M. Krauss, gets to what's really at stake: protecting society from fanatics and extremists of all stripes. Krauss writes:
No idea or belief should be illegal; conversely, no idea should be so sacred that it legally justifies actions that would otherwise be illegal. Davis is free to believe whatever she wants, just as the jihadist is free to believe whatever he wants; in both cases, the law constrains not what they believe but what they do.
Of course, Krauss recognizes that protecting one another from the crazies in our society isn't the only issue here. In many ways, we're having this absurd Kim Davis moment because we're slipping as a culture and society.
One one level we have people conflating Kim Davis' arrest with the arrest of civil rights activists like Martin Luther King, Jr. because of how she's standing up for her beliefs. This is absurd.
You can't be a civil rights advocate when you're trying to deny a group of people access to equal protection under the law. As comedian Larry Wilmore points out, if we're going to compare Kim Davis to anyone from the 1960s it should be former Alabama Governor George Wallace, who famously tried to keep black students out of the University of Alabama.
Another indicator of societal decline is how we've enshrined one set of religious ideas over all others, including our secular ones. Lawrence Krauss points out:
The Kim Davis controversy exists because, as a culture, we have elevated respect for religious sensibilities to an inappropriate level that makes society less free, not more. Religious liberty should mean that no set of religious ideals are treated differently from other ideals. Laws should not be enacted whose sole purpose is to denigrate them, but, by the same token, the law shouldn’t elevate them, either.
For my money I'd argue that we've become so "politically correct" that tolerance has morphed into a desultory "hands off" approach to religious beliefs - at least Christian beliefs - even if they trend towards bigotry. It's as if, in the process of trying to separate church and state, we've unwittingly created a wall that both protects and encourages religious extremism in America.
One of the reasons for this, according to Lawrence Krauss, is that scientists have backed away from their historical duty. They no longer challenge the myths and superstitions that have dominated our lives over the millennium because, in part, they don't want to break social protocols. Krauss writes that scientists should become more forceful in what they uncover, even if it offends religious sensibilities:
Five hundred years of science have liberated humanity from the shackles of enforced ignorance. We should celebrate this openly and enthusiastically, regardless of whom it may offend.
What Krauss is suggesting is that we shouldn't become intellectually lazy in the name of religious freedom, or political correctness. The reason is simple. As the scientific community has backed away from challenging ignorance and false piety the religious charlatans and carnival barkers have been emboldened.
The result is the sensibilities of the religious extremists are easily offended because their delusional agenda(s) dominate our town square. Unfortunately, the toxic stupidity building around Kim Davis' stand not only pollutes our political environment, but it's poisoning our intellectual well too (to be sure, Fox News got the ball rolling).
What's really distressing is how Americans who think they understand American history ignore that we've already had this state-religion discussion. Seriously. Over 200 years ago the Founding Fathers contemplated the very same issues.
Guess what they did?
They created a Constitution with no mention of Jesus, Christianity, or the Bible. They were creatures of the Enlightenment - which is rooted in the scientific method - and worked to create a nation that could function with diverse economic, religious, and cultural values.
This meant not elevating religion above the national ideal.
To make sure we got the point they added the First Amendment, which said there would be a separation of church and state. You could worship any religion you wanted, but not at the expense of broader societal freedoms.
As an added bonus, before the Constitution was signed a series of articles were written to explain what was in the Constitution. These article are widely considered one of America's greatest contribution to political philosophy, and are known to posterity as The Federalist Papers. Can you guess what's missing?
I'll make it simple. There's nothing in The Federalist Papers that remotely suggest our nation was founded on the principles of Christianity, Jesus, or the Bible.
So, yeah, the fact that we're having this discussion again is a tragedy.
No, scratch that. It's a farce.
The fact that we're having this discussion again, when we should have learned long ago about the dangers of trying to inject religion into our political lives, is what makes the Kim Davis Show a farce.
The smart readers understand the paraphrased quote ... and why America's in trouble.
One of the reasons the Democrats took a beating yesterday is because they allowed a group of scared white men to set the political narrative (more on this below). As well, instead of embracing President Obama's hard fought successes and achievements from the past 6 years, the Democrats chose to distance themselves from the President - as if he was the obstructionist.
Let's take a look.
No one embraced the successes of Obamacare ...
No one mentioned the Obamacare rebate checks insurers had to send back after charging policy holders too much ...
No one mentioned the differences between what President Obama inherited and where we are today ...
No one mentioned the record obstructionism in the U.S. Senate, where the filibuster effectively became the "60-vote rule" that's stalled hundreds of pieces of legislation on President Obama's agenda ...
Instead, Democrats allowed a small group of paranoid crazies - who vowed not to work with President Obama, and then worked to shut down the federal government - to set the narrative ...
This same group of people not only worked to sabotage the president but encouraged America to see the worst in a man simply - as Lyndon Johnson understood very well - because he's African-American, which riled up the base and made for good politics ...
How else do you explain America ignoring the successes that the GOP deliberately tried to stall, and worked to discredit?
You know the media's not going to talk about any of this.
Just saying.
- Mark
Click here for a mainstream media version of what I'm saying from the Washington Post. And, yes, the GOP makes it all about Obama, which the Democrats ran away from without even trying to embrace the advances and successes.
Health care costs in 2013 were lowest in a decade (Insurance Journal).
MARILYN MONROE NOTES
Marily Monroe changed the career of Ella Fitzgerald by telling the owner of Hollywood's popular - and segregated - Mocambo Club that if he booked Fitzgerald she would take a front table every night Ella played (Elephant Journal / Ellafitzgerald.com).
The 7 craziest Obamacare conspiracy theories (Mother Jones).
For the Truthers out there ... 9/11 firefighters reveal that it was bombs that destroyed WTC lobby (TopInfoPost).
Melting ice forms lake in the North Pole (CBS News).
GENERAL POLITICS AND ECONOMICS
The war on America's social contract. Detroit is the front line (Nation of Change).
Detroit follows the lead of Cyprus and will "bail-in" pensioners in order to save the bets made by the banks (Truth Out).
The three biggest lies used to explain why corporate taxes should be lowered (Nation of Change).
E-mail trail links Bush foundation, education officials and corporations together in effort to advance charter schools, on-line education, and standardized one-size fits all scores that make corporate donors richer (Washington Post).
A multi-currency world is on the horizon, which means we are returning to the more competitive, and contentious, Victorian Age (Financial Times).
The 217 Representatives who voted to allow the NSA to continue spying on all your data ... and, yes, Bakersfield's own Kevin McCarthy is one of them (Tech Dirt).
Yeah, your liberty and freedom are for sale ... Lawmakers who voted to allow continued NSA spying received, on average, double the campaign cash from the defense industry than those (205) who voted no (Wired).
FBI admits flying drones over the U.S. without warrants (RT).
You can't make this stuff up ... the future home of the Department of Homeland Security, and other national security crazies, was once a mental hospital (Bloomberg News).
Hacker who was going to demonstrate how to remotely kill pacemaker patients dies day before he was going to present in Las Vegas (RT).
Welcome to post-Constitution America ... Big Brother is upon us (Nation of Change).
You know this clip is good because one of Bakersfield's right wing radio personalities mocked it on their FB page, only to have their Tea Bagging and right wing followers go after it too. It explains in just over 7 minutes what's happened to the fiscal health of our country since the trickle down ideologues took over, and how the financialization of our economy came about.
It's a bit over generalized, but it gets the point across. Enjoy ...
At the end of the day I'm not sure if the Tea Baggers and right wing crazies don't like this clip because they don't understand it, or because they live in such a closed universe. It's probably a little of both. Connecting concepts with facts is difficult when Fox-Rushbo-Glenn-Levin etc. are the ones yanking your intellectual chains.
Either way, it's interesting to see right wing comments on stuff like this. What's really amusing is that many of them get so bent out of shape defending a sputtering paper economy created by Americas elite, but are completely clueless to the fact that America's financial aristocracy - people like the Romneys and the Kochs - look at them as a bunch of chumps.
In the movie The Crazies a small Iowa town is suddenly plagued by insanity (and death) after a mysterious toxin contaminates the water supply. The infected crazies are listless and engage in repetitive speech before going after the healthy members of the population. Those who are not infected are forced to defend themselves by killing their toxic neighbors and friends. It's a pretty grisly movie, but it conveys the idea of what happens when a segment of the population is contaminated, can't think straight, and then go crazy on the normal people who are left to defend the gates of civilization. I'm inspired to bring up The Crazies because unhinged Obama haters seem to have become infected with the market virus called trickle down theory. And it has made them crazy. Worse, they are hell bent on coming after and infecting the rest of us with their failed but toxic reality.
The fact that thirty years of trickle down economics has crashed and burned - and brought us nothing but record debt and a collapsed economy - doesn't matter to those who drink the toxic Kool-Aid created by Ronald Reagan. Living in a political bedlam only they understand, they continue to believe that the super rich need more deficit funded tax cuts, and even more deregulation. Lately, fearful of another four years with President Obama, several of my conservative friends on Facebook seem to have taken a second dose of the trickle down toxin and gone completely bat shit crazy. Like the repetitive crazies in the movie, in drone-like fashion they repeat the same Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, et al. inspired story lines over and over.
From placing the blame on President Obama for the budget mess, to saying he has raised taxes to record levels, to arguing that he has accomplished nothing while in office, the arguments are the same. Apart from accusing President Obama of being a "liar" because of how he broke his campaign promises, like the crazies in the movie these guys don't rest. It doesn't matter - as I have repeatedly pointed out to these people - that the same unfunded spending policies that President Bush put in place are still with us, dragging our economy down ...
Seriously, it doesn't matter how much evidence that I point to, they continue to believe that the unfunded spending programs that were initiated under President Bush are President Obama's programs. Ergo, President Obama is to blame for spending more than we take in when the data tells us otherwise ...
The primary justification for blaming President Obama is pretty simple. Essentially the crazies argue that President Obama has been in office long enough, and even once had both houses of Congress under Democratic control. Because he has not fixed our economy they argue that he is to blame for the budget and financial mess left by President Bush. This is powerful stuff. But only if you're crazy. They don't understand that President Obama never really had both houses in Congress. Lukewarm and turncoat Democrats in the Senate (Nelson, Lieberman, etc.) regularly voted with the GOP. They also don't understand that his faux majority in the Senate was effectively lost when Senator Kennedy passed in 2009. And they sure like to ignore, in crazy-like fashion, that the GOP has pursued record breaking filibuster threats whenever President Obama proposes anything of substance.
For the crazies in crazy land none of this matters because, well, they're crazy. It also doesn't matter - as I predicted in January of 2009 - that the GOP effectively promisedthat they would not work with President Obama in 2009, and then deliberately stalled and failed to work with him after winning the House in 2010. And the proof is in the pudding. The GOP controlled house has not found the time to vote once on the president's jobs bill. But they sure have found the time to vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act 33 times, even though they know it won't pass in the Senate and that President Obama would veto the bill. It doesn't even matter that our nation has suffered because of their crazy games. As long as President Obama looks bad the Republicans believe their immediate goal of turning him into a one term president (which is part of a larger GOP strategy) will become a reality. Deliberately going out of the way to undermine the health of our nation by going after one guy is seriously crazy (you could also make the case for sedition and treason, but that's another story for another day). This probably explains why one of my FB friends who says that he is not a Birther went out of his way to present an entirely made up story where President Obama supposedly claimed (and then took his time taking back) that he was born in Kenya. Tell me, who does this kind of stuff? But wait, we're not done yet. There's even more crazy out there.
The GOP likes to argue that taxes are at record high levels. They are not. In fact, corporate taxes as a percentage of revenue and GDP are lower today then at any time since the end of World War II. Seriously, they are. And, for the record, individual tax rates are at their lowest levels in 60 years. I've presented this information to the crazies many times.But like the crazies in the movie, they apparently don't read. Since they do not read, as you can imagine, they are not even tryingto do the math when it comes to the budget. One person, responding to one my op-eds in our local paper, claimed that President Bush only raised the deficit by $2 trillion dollars! Now that's some serious crazy.
Blame shifting, congressional games, math dystopia, and deliberately sabotaging the president's agenda are all in a days work for the crazies. They don't even care to discuss the merits of President Obama's accomplishments. For them, there are none. The only thing that's important for our Obama hating political crazies is that President Obama is discredited and made a one term president ... and that we become infected with their virus.
Have you ever wondered what the difference is between systemic risk and financial risk? If you don't know, don't worry, you're not alone. Niether does Standard & Poor's.
In very simple terms, Standard & Poor's can't distinguish between political brinkmanship and the GOP's stupidity in Washington (systemic risk) and financial risk (a debtor that can't pay). What pushed the U.S. to the verge of default last week were the political games - and not the financial capacity - of Washington. Standard & Poor's doesn't understand this distinction and, to show they didn't understand it, downgraded the credit rating of the U.S.
Helping us to understand all of this in real simple terms is former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, who penned yet another excellent post on what caused markets to go nuts today. In a few words Reich points out that the Republicans used our nation's debt as an excuse to try and shrink the size of government. In the process they pushed policy goals that they can't pursue - or accomplish - on the merits of their arguments. Put more simply, the GOP's out of control political budget insanity (like Wall Street's gambling and greed) created what we call systemic risk.
It's happened before, and will happen again. Our job is not to lose our heads when it does. Standard & Poor's lost their head.
What Standard & Poor's need to understand is that the GOP's insanity is based on their knowledge that republicans can't convince Americans that they need to give up their Social Security or Medicare benefits (which they paid for). Instead, to accomplish their political goals, the GOP has decided to blackmail America. If effect they said "if you want us to raise the debt ceiling you will have to cut the size of government."
If Standard & Poor's understood this simple fact they would've been able to see that the GOP's game playing - and not America's capacity to pay - is what caused our debt ceiling crisis. It was politically manufactured. A politically astute credit rating agency would've seen this. It would've then issued an AAA rating.
Then (and this is the key point) Standard & Poor's would have explained how the GOPs indulgence of the Tea Party - and not America's ability to pay - created the mess we saw last week. They could have explained, for example:
... like Stalin or Mao in their heyday, the GOP manufactured, and then used, a crisis to try and accomplish policy goals that they can't convince middle America to back on the merits. Perhaps the worst part of this is that, like Stalin or Mao, they're doing this in an effort to create a mythical world that exists only in their crazy little minds.
Instead of distinguishing between systemic risk and financial risk Standard & Poor's went crazy, and simply downgraded America's credit. In the process S&P aided the GOP in their ridiculous goals (which include painting President Obama as a Crisis President), while giving the Tea Party crazies a pass because S&P failed to explain how the Tea Party crazies impact the process.
But wait, it gets worse.
While they won't admit it, Standard & Poor's believes that by downgrading the credit of the United States that ordinary Americans will believe they're making a professional judgment. In fact, what S&P is trying to do is make up for their incompetent grading just before the 2008 market collapse.
If you recall, before 2008 they gave mortgage backed securities (MBS), shady derivative instruments, and the eventually bankrupt Lehman Brothers AAA to A ratings. When the MBS and derivative markets crashed, and brought our economy to brink of disaster, S&P had egg on it's face. Downgrading America's credit is their incompetent way of trying to make amends. Great.
The end result is that America paid dearly for Standard & Poor's financial incompetence after 2008, and are now paying for their political incompetence with a credit downgrade that threw Wall Street into a tizzy today.
Fortunately, while Standard & Poor's told the world to be cautious when considering the purchase of U.S. Treasury Bonds (essentially IOUs issued by the U.S. government) the money world yawned (or laughed?) at S&P's political ignorance and decided to purchase U.S. Treasury Bonds anyways.
It's a mess out there. It has been for some time. Unfortunately, for some analysts, it's also amateur hour. Those analysts appear to be housed at Standard & Poor's.
- Mark
P.S. I'll post Lawrence O'Donnell's "Last Word" commentary on Standard & Poor's incompetence when I find it. He really nails the stupidity behind the downgrade.
UPDATE to the UPDATE: Here's the link to the S&P report which lowered the U.S. credit rating down to AA+ from AAA. While it's important to note that S&P is concerned with the Republican party refusing to raise revenues - "We have changed our assumption on this because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues, a position we believe Congress reinforced by passing the act. Key macroeconomic assumptions in the base case scenario include trend real GDP growth of 3% and consumer price inflation near 2% annually over the decade ...") - S&P took "no position on the mix of spending and revenue measures that Congress and the Administration might conclude is appropriate for putting the U.S.'s finances on a sustainable footing." Put another way, it gave the Tea Party a pass, while saying very little about repealing our budget busting tax cuts. S&P can - and should - do better than this.
What do you know? The Birthers actually did us a favor. They're going to help us understand why we can ignore the "let's-see-the-body" crowd.
After killing Osama Bin Laden President Obama made it clear that the world doesn't need to see Bin Laden's mutilated carcass hanging in front of us. There were plenty of people involved (go ahead, question the Navy Seals), enough evidence collected (which should worry al Qaeda operatives), and real time crow-eating (read, Pakistan) for those of us in the reality based world to know that Bin Laden is dead.
Carrier-speech grandstanding ...
... or reality TV-like displays of chest-thumping patriotism simply aren't necessary for this White House. This is where the Birthers are going to help us out.
Anyone who saw how Orly Taitz, Eric Bolling of Fox News, or how Donald Trumpupped the ante after President Obama released his long form birth certificate learned one thing: The crazies and lunatic fringe will never be satisfied.
Because they continue to cling to their thinly veiled racist-Manchurian Candidate theories about President Obama, Americans are able to see with great clarity just how out of touch the Birthers are. They live in an entirely different world than you and me.
We don't need to waste our time indulging their fantasies.
Today, we have the "carnival barkers" calling on President Obama to release photos to prove that Osama Bin Laden is dead. But they forget one thing, which proves they're nuts: Even if President Obama authorized the release of Bin Laden's photos the conspiracy theorists and their media support staff (Fox News) would still criticize President Obama.
But this time they would criticize President Obama for putting on a show that rattles Islamic sensibilities ... for over sensationalized the issue ... for putting our troops in harms way ... for, well, you get the picture. These people aren't playing with a full deck.
The Birthers and their psychological shadows - who are now emerging because Bin Laden's photos haven't been released - are disturbed people who live in the dark corners of the human experience. They have to. The real world is too hard for them to figure out. They can't accept a black man as president the United State. So they work to create a world that delegitimizes him ... He can't be a citizen ... How did he get into Harvard? ... President Obama created the budget mess ... and on it goes.
Similarly, the partisan Obama-haters who think we need to see "proof" of Bin Laden's death are hoping to create doubts where none should be cast. It's part of the delegitimization process. It's their life-blood. For al Qaeda supporters, and professional conspiracy theorists, proof is required because who they are depends on sustaining invented myths and legends.
But proof of Bin Laden's death won't satisfy any of these groups. Nothing will. It only encourages them to create new theories that must be proven false, again. It's the process and the recognition that makes them feel important.
If most Americans didn't see this before the Birthers they can see it now. So, on behalf of those of us who live in the real world, thank you Birther Nation.
This is funny. I always enjoyed how Yosemite Sam got hot and bothered over trespassers getting "footy prints" all over his desert. It's a classic. Best of all, the clip reminds me of how people are getting hot and bothered over the WikiLeaks document dump that's all over the Internet. Seriously.
Why beat up the camel on Julian Assange for dropping "footy prints" all over when there's all kinds of "footy prints" already out there?
I've been watching the WikiLeaks-National Security drama unfold for the past week and see Yosemite Sams and political theater all around. Indeed, cries of treason and terrorism are almost as absurd as are suggestions that we should consider both the death penalty and the censorship of private media groups for those who helped publish WikiLeaks' documents.
What a bunch of drama queens. Here's why.
What About Scooter Libby (and Iraq)?
Remember I. "Scooter" Libby? He was convicted of lying to conceal the involvement of the Bush White House in leaking the identity of an active CIA agent. Curiously, the same people who either gave Libby a free pass or provided propaganda cover are now suddenly concerned over national security secrets. Why is that?
And what about all the lies and corruption that led us into war in Iraq in the first place? Where's the indignation here? The last time I looked, going to war on a pack of lies has produced far more death, destruction, and debt than what WikiLeaks has done.
State Secrets Exposed? Hardly
Still, I'm particularly amused by the absurd claims of damage to our national secrets. As I pointed out months ago, starting with the cold war our nation has slowly become an overly militarized and secretive state. The events of 9/11 only made this trend worse.
How bad is it? Think about this:
* We now have over 10,000 counter terrorism, homeland security and intelligence locations across the country.
* We have over 850,000 intelligence personnel with "top secret" access.
* We also produce over 50,000 intelligence reports (no doubt all "top secret") every year.
What this means is that most of the cables that were downloaded and transferred to WikiLeaks were already accessible to around 3 million diplomats, military people, agencies, and private security companies (and their staff) at many levels. In addition, most of the stuff we've seen from WikiLeaks we've known about for years. As John Allen Paulos put it, "Something is not all that secret ... if millions of people can pull it up on their computers."
But Let's Kill the Messenger Anyways ...
Just as I'm concerned by the absurd claims of damage to our national secrets, I'm equally concerned over the equally absurd notion that killing the messenger, Julian Assange, will somehow make us safer (or send a message). Just as Yosemite Sam did himself a disservice by beating the heck out the poor camel, going after Julian Assange and WikiLeaks will not make anyone safer.
This is the 21st century. Because there are lots of "footy prints" out there we will have more WikiLeaks. What our diplomatic corps needs to keep in mind is what I tell my students - don't write or post anything that would prove embarrassing if it were put on the front page of a newspaper.
Concluding Comments
As we privatized and expanded our military apparatus the result has been that we've ended up with more and more national security crazies. Their level of importance (in their minds) is tied to the amount of top secret stuff they work with. Many of them think they're the second coming of James Bond. They're not.
With so many top secret clearances, and with so many hands and eyes in the national security pot, many of them are doing little more than looking for Boris and Natasha ...
This is why so many work to classify everything that crosses their desks as "top secret" - even when the information is run of the mill stuff that can be easily accessed on the Internet. While much of the stuff our analysts see is important, they don't want to appear insignificant by missing anything or, worse, be accused of overlooking some thing.
Put another way, our evolving cloak and dagger culture is increasingly making a mockery of national security.
Still, we're urged to kill the messenger of leaked national security documents because the documents are considered so "top secret" that only a few million should have access to them. The reality is the WikiLeaks document dump revealed petty gossip, and proved more embarrassing than many are comfortable with. Worse, they show how we've become an overly secretive and militarized culture - which allowed us to be lied into a war of choice that we still don't know how to leave.
WikiLeaks did us all a favor by reminding us all of this.
Update: This piece from Arianna Huffington argues that the WikiLeaks that were posted revealed little because they were limited and vetted by Julian Assange's group. Put another way, they provided no national security threat (unlike George Bush's wars). It also underscores my point that we live in the 21st century, and that there will be more WikiLeaks coming down the pike. Just because the U.S. gets embarrassed by inconvenient stories - many of which should not even be classified - should not be the basis for turning exposed lies into protected speech (while the truth becomes criminal). This is especially pertinent for the Obama administration, who turned its back on their opportunity to expose and prosecute extraordinary lies when they had the opportunity. At the end of the day, Huffingtonpost reminds us, we should be focusing on transparency and what the government is doing, instead of protecting the lies that make Washington insiders uncomfortable.
This was sent to me from a student who remembered some of my lectures (a nice compliment; thanks), and thought it hit on many of the same themes I discussed last year. I agree ...
While the ad definitely captures the empire-in-decline narrative, the story-line, unfortunately, is incomplete. Generic spending on government programs and "waste" aren't entirely to blame for our nation's debt problems.
Government bailouts for the private sector (which really took off under Reagan), favorable legislation for the rich (which undercuts our tax base), and a culture of war (fomented by the war crazies) have as much to do with our current financial mess, if not more, than expenditures on services and waste. Indeed, President Reagan effectively tripled our national debt, while President Bush doubled it (then he poisoned the financial well by setting up a trillion dollar bailout and government guarantee program for good measure).
Still, the ad is vivid, and sends a message about our nation's decline, and our seeming inability to do anything about the root causes of debt.
Translation: "I don't see no credit market Chernobyl-like meltdowns in America."
One of the things you get when you follow free market ideologues long enough is that their words come back to haunt them. In this case former Federal Reserve Chair (1987-2006), Alan Greenspan, claimed in 2004 that credit markets were just fine. Big private market players, rather than "over regulated" banks, were spreading money and credit around efficiently.
Private market players (our shadow banking system), Greenspan argued, know what they're doing. Even if they were funding the purchase of toxic assets, and providing easy money that helped create our housing bubble, they were the ones who were on the hook if they lost money -- so the argument went. The market not only knew best according to Greenspan but, in this case, had created a "new paradigm of active credit management."
No Chernobyl-like credit market meltdowns were on his horizon.
Then the September 2008 credit market meltdown happened. Ooops.
Mr. Greenspan spoke up again on Sunday (Aug. 1). He claimed that we should repeal President Bush's tax cuts for the rich because we can't afford them. Specifically, he said (in typical Greenspanspeak):
"We believe it is appropriate to let those tax cuts that go to the most fortunate expire,"
I have only one question. Where the hell was this Alan Greenspan when President Bush said we needed tax cuts for the rich in 2001?
If you recall, when George W. Bush ran for president in 2000 he gained considerable support telling America that the surpluses generated during the Clinton administration was "your money." It didn't matter that we had a $5.6 trillion national debt to pay down. In his mind budget surpluses should be given back to the American taxpayer in the form of tax cuts. So, instead of paying down our national debt (where were the Tea Bag crazies then?), President Bush proposed tax cuts, most of which would go to the nation's wealthiest Americans.
As he pointed out in his book The Age of Turbulence, Greenspan supported tax cuts at the time because "chronic surpluses could be almost as destabilizing as chronic deficits." We have two problems here. First, while we had a budget surplus in 2001, we hadn't started to run "chronic" surpluses. Second, Greenspan ignored how previous Republican tax cut policies had effectively quadrupled our national debt between 1981 and 1993.
What's key here is that Alan Greenspan knew all of this. Yet he still supported tax cuts that would primarily benefit the wealthy (yes, he understood the Bush proposal) to deal with "chronic surpluses."
To be sure, Greenspan was careful to say at the time that he supported tax cuts in general, and not necessarily President Bush's tax cut proposal. But he was being politically naive, at best. More probably, as an Ayn Rand sycophant, Greenspan was using his position to help get more money into the hands of private market players. More bluntly, he was playing a parlor game and was deliberately disingenuous.
Whatever inspired him, with decades of experience in Washington, Greenspan had to know that his congressional testimony supporting tax cuts would give President Bush the political gravitas - or greenlight - he needed to ram his tax cut program through congress. Ten years later, and with an additional $5 trillion added to our national debt, Mr. Greenspan is now saying "Hey, I think we need to pay for these tax cuts."
Still, perhaps we shouldn't be so hard on Greenspan and his sudden fiscal two-step. As chair of President Reagan's National Commission on Social Security Reform (the "Greenspan Commission") Alan Greenspan supported raising social security (FICA) taxes on the middle class in 1983 to help pay for projected social security shortfalls.
Got that? To deal with looming deficits in 1983 a tax hike on middle-class America was fine. This helps explain why the payroll (FICA) tax was raised in the 1980s (yes, President Reagan raised taxes). But to deal with real deficits in 2001 ($5.6 trillion) Mr. Greenspan was fine with tax cuts, most of which would go to America's wealthiest class.
Are you kidding me? How do you go from, "Let's raise taxes on the middle class to pay for projected shortfalls" in 1983 to "In spite of an actual $5.6 trillion debt, let's take projected surpluses and use them for tax cuts, which will go primarily to the rich" in 2001?
Now, in 2010, we have Mr. Greenspan saying that we should allow tax cut legislation that benefitted primarily the richest Americans to "expire" because we can't afford them. I guess you're never wrong if you're an intellectual schizoid ...
So, which Mr. Greenspan should we go with? Mr. We-Should-Pay-Our-Bills-So-Let's-Tax-The-Middle-Class? (1983), or Mr. To-Hell-With-the-Deficits-Taxes-for-the-Rich-Are-OK-by-Me? (2001), or Mr. Ooops-Now-We-Should-Pay-Our-Bills? (2010). Will the real Mr. Greenspan please stand up. Cue the music...
For my money, we also run into problems when we sit down and do the math.
What we find is that the billion dollar surpluses, generated in part by the social security tax hike, were effectively handed over to America's wealthiest during the Bush years -- making it one of the greatest transfers of wealth in human history. No wonder the far right is afraid of discussing class warfare. They're winning, and they don't want America to find out how it happened.
Today America finds itself staring at bloated budget deficits (a product of Bush's failed policies), more than $12 trillion in debt (due to a failed trickle-down theory), and another social security hole that Republicans claim can only be fixed with more tax cuts and deregulation.
(To be sure, the vast majority of our projected social security short fall is attributed to slowing wage growth and increased inequality in America. These are two economic shifts that Greenspan's commission didn't anticipate. Then again, they probably didn't anticipate the Republican Party tearing up the post-war social contract, which helped slow wage growth and increased income gaps in America.)
In all cases, Mr. Greenspan now concedes there was a flaw in his model, and that he was shocked by the results of the casino mentality that he helped create.
Incredible. Still, the damage has been done. And Alan Greenspan was there egging it on, every step of the way.
While Greenspan 2010 seems to be channeling Greenspan 1983, the reality is Greenspan 2001-2006 -- and the policies he rubber stamped during his time at the Fed -- is emerging as the winner in this Greenspan vs. Greenspan Cage Match.
Unfortunately, that's bad news for the rest of us.
- Mark
UPDATE (12/17/12): I just found this Tom Tomorrow cartoon. It pretty much explains the post ...
