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Apparently, that’s my problem. It’s the root cause for why I’m not happy with Obama’s performance. Obama is actually doing a great job. I’m just incapable of seeing it because of my rigid, gratuitously liberal ideology.

Okay, so that explains my discontentment. I’m just a curmudgeon. How does Obama explain his falling poll numbers among independents? He’s losing the liberals, but they’re obviously a bunch of malcontents like me. But the independents? I think I know the answer to that one; they’re also in a very liberal mood these days.

Here’s the thing about America; we’re kind of fickle. When things are going well enough for us economically, that we don’t have a care in the world, we’re conservatives. Remember the late 90s when we had the luxury of talking about Bill Clinton’s penis in perpetuity? We had that luxury because we were employed and generally well off. We could indulge in cockpalooza because we weren’t looking for jobs. We weren’t worried about where our next meal was coming from, and we weren’t one paycheck away from total financial ruin. When Americans are financially prosperous, we start to go right in our thinking. The thought process is; “well I’m working and earning a good living, so someone else is clearly sponging off of my hard earned tax dollars”. You see, when are in a position of thinking that you’re not taking anything out of the system, you start to resent having to pay into it at all. 

Inversely, when times are tough, we all become filthy socialists. Programs like unemployment insurance, medicare, medicaid, and social security suddenly become essential components of the American compact. They suddenly become entitlements. Not in that dirty way of peh, entitlements that you didn’t earn and don’t deserve, you fucking freeloader! No, they become entitlements in the, “I paid into this program that I am now entitled to collect out of”.

We’ve seen these (now) predictable shifts in the ideology of the American people over and over again. The most glaring example being the transition from Hoover to FDR. America was ready to be socialized a la The New Deal. They weren’t sitting in front of their radios, in their Hoovervilles cheering spending cuts. It happened again in the transition from Clinton to Bush 2.0. Americans had jobs, and therefore had the luxury of swinging right. 

So when Obama was elected, his victory was born out of our desire for a little bit of socialism that had been missing from our lives. He was elected to be the dirty hippie that would counteract the policies that left us unemployed, uninsured, and drowning in mortgage debt. This simple fact seems to be lost on him and every member of his administration, regardless of what polling tells them.

When Americans disliked the health reform bill because it didn’t go far enough to change the system, it was because we were all being gratuitously liberal and just couldn’t appreciate a good compromise.

When Americans wanted to eviscerate Wall Street with strict regulations, we hated the ineffective reform bill that ultimately passed because we were being gratuitously liberal and just couldn’t appreciate a good compromise.

When the debt ceiling discussions were going on and congress was talking about cutting the crap out of programs that help the middle class to tread water, while preserving ever single penny of savings that the elite have enjoyed, Americans were unreasonable in their disapproval of the situation. We were just being gratuitously liberal and just couldn’t appreciate a good compromise.

This is honestly how they’re looking at the situation! Never mind the fact that his approval rating went up when he passed the stimulus package. That was a meaningless spike and Americans clearly prefer compromise to socialism.

I don’t know why it is that politicians seem to completely lose touch with Americans once they get elected. And I definitely don’t understand how it is that they become incapable of making the most obvious observations in the world. Nothing I’ve said in this post extends beyond the bounds of common sense and observation. Yet this administration seems oblivious to all of it.

They may be correct in their assumption that most Americans won’t notice that the debt ceiling deal just made college $8,000 a year more expensive. But they’re dead wrong if they think that we won’t notice that life is getting harder. As a country, we may not be engaged in the policy changes that make life more difficult, but we’re definitely noticing that we’re working harder and have less to show for it than our parents did. There’s a palpable anger in the air.

More and Americans are figuring out that Obama is never going to deliver on the hope that he promised. But there’s no one out there to give them new hope, so we’re left with a void.

My hope is that we eventually reach a level of hopelessness that motivates us into action. Not useless action like voting or picking the most likeable corporate shill to support, but real action. Action like collecting signatures to pass publicly financed campaigns all across the country. And action like squelching the myth of corporate personhood once and for all.

Dammit! There I go being gratuitously liberal again.

 

I’ve been waiting to comment on this whole debt ceiling nightmare until it came to a conclusion, so as not to sound like a pessimist. I didn’t want to sound hyperbolic in beating up on Obama prematurely. Well now we have a good idea of where this is all going, and I can’t possibly beat up on Obama excessively. 

I have so many thoughts on this whole debacle that I hardly know where to begin so I’ve decided to start at the end.

The “deal” is a turd that no one can polish. In exchange for what has historically been the routine task of raising the debt ceiling, Obama agreed to more than $1 in cuts for every dollar that the debt ceiling was raised. Are you fucking kidding me? This is a compromise?

And the cuts themselves seem shady, vague, and downright implausible. Am I really supposed to believe that we’re going to cut 350 billion out of defense? How the fuck is that going to happen? Aren’t there legions defense industry lobbyists whose sole purpose in life is to piss of as much tax payer money as humanly possible on useless equipment that doesn’t work, and that we don’t need? We’re supposed to believe that the politicians they’ve bought and paid for just went along with cutting defense? The only possible cuts to defense that I can see congress agreeing to, are those that pertain to veteran’s benefits. Why do I say that? Because veterans don’t have lobbyists. They’re the easiest target to hit in defense spending.

And I love how there are a first round of cuts with more cuts to come by the end of the year. What the fuck is that? Well let me tell you; it’s all meant to confuse and obfuscate so that we can’t tell exactly what gets cut and when they do it. Now that the debt ceiling crisis is over, does anyone believe that the nightly news will do much reporting on cuts to education, infrastructure, food safety, and a dozen other programs that are responsible for keeping us from becoming a third world country?

And what the fuck is up with this “super congress” bullshit? First of all, I think that most Americans would be overcome with joy if we had an adequate congress. Secondly, we’re supposed to be living in a representative government. Are we going to get to vote on who sits on this “super congress”? Who doesn’t think that the democratic representation in this “super congress” isn’t going to be Mark Warner and Mary Landrieu? Does anyone really think that Dennis Kucinich has a snowball’s chance in hell of being one of the democratic delegates to this super, special congress?

Now I want to rewind back to the beginning of this whole nightmare. Why, when republicans started this talk of spending cuts, didn’t Obama counter with a rational framing of the situation? Why did he accept their premise? Why didn’t he point out that cuts to domestic spending, in this economy are disastrous? Why didn’t he point out that policies like stimulus spending have resulted in more jobs being created by this administration that the entirety of the eight years of the previous one? Why didn’t he make sure that the conversation was about jobs instead of cuts? Why did he perpetuate the rhetoric that entitlement reform is vital to reducing our debt? Is he stupid? 

Here’s a graph that shows who owns our debt:

 

 Let’s take a close look at these numbers. The biggest chunk of our debt is owned by “US investors and private institutions”. Who is that? It’s mostly pensions and retirement accounts, as well as some investors. That would be us as in, you and I. The next biggest chunk of our debt is owned by the Social Security trust fund. That would be us as in, you and I. There are two other owners that I would like to point out; the US civil service retirement fund and the US military retirement fund. These are the nasty, worthless sloth sucking us dry through their government jobs. In other words; us as in, you and I. If you add up the money that is owed to us, we own 67.4% of the debt of the United States.

So when you hear anyone talk about cutting entitlements, what they’re getting at is not paying back the social security trust fund, the civil servant pension fund, and the US military pension fund. Do you think that Obama is unaware of who owns our debt? Or, is it possible that he wants to cut entitlements so that he doesn’t have to pay us back in order to balance the budget?

By the way, they’re called entitlements because it’s our fucking money. We’re entitled to get it back exactly as we were promised we would.

And remember a couple of weeks ago, when it became clear that the republicans were willing to play chicken with the debt ceiling? Remember how many people thought that Obama could invoke the 14th amendment to raise it without congress? And do you remember how Obama took that off the table right away? Why did he do that? Is he stupid? Or is he in on the plot to rob the middle class?

Oh, and do you remember when Obama insisted on a 1/1 ratio of increased revenues to spending cuts? Yeah, me neither. Is he the world’s shittiest negotiator, or is he in on the plot to rob the middle class?

Also, do you remember when he insisted on expiring the Bush tax cuts early in order to help bring the deficit down? Oh right, that never happened. He never mentioned the Bush tax cuts. You decide; is he in on the plot to rob the middle class so that the rich can stay rich without contributing a fucking thing to the country that enables them to be rich, or is he just a hapless rube?

There was a story floating all over the internet last Friday about how Apple Computer had more money in the bank than the US government. I saw people posting it all over the place. I didn’t see much discussion about how that happened. I didn’t see many people talking about the fact that Apple is sitting on all of this money that they were able to amass in part, because they’re paying a pittance in taxes compared to what they were paying when they started out. I didn’t see much talk about the fact that those tax cuts lead to money in the bank for Apple, rather than leading to more jobs for Americans.

Through this whole “negotiation”, I never heard a single word about how US corporations are sitting on 2 trillion dollars in cash reserves while nearly ten percent of Americans are unemployed. I heard plenty about “sacrifice”, but none if it was about sacrificing one cent of that 2 trillion dollars. Why is that? Why didn’t Obama bring up that one simple fact that would have had Americans pouring out into the streets with outrage? Is he stupid? Or is he in on the plot to rob the middle class in order to keep the rich on top of the economic food chain?

I titled this post “President McCain” because as this debt ceiling theater was being played out for us, I couldn’t help but think that we would have been better off if McCain had won the election. Yes, you read that right and no, I haven’t lost it. Think about it, do you think that entitlement cuts would even have entered the discussion if John McCain were president? Or do you think that democrats would have united against a republican president in blocking those cuts, as they have with so many republican presidents before? Don’t you think it’s harder for democrats to stand up against the leader of their own party?

A few of them have spoken out about what an incredible shitty deal this is for America’s middle class. John Conyers, the very first politician to support Obama in his bid for the presidency, suggested that it’s time for Americans to stand up and fight Obama.

I’ve always believed that only a democratic president could unravel the social safety nets in this country. I didn’t think that it would be Obama. I, unlike most political junkies, can admit when I was wrong.

And yes, a big part of me wishes that McCain had won the last election.

 

No, I’m not referring to France. I’m talking about The United States. Yup, I’m just as shocked as you are, but it turns out that we’re all just a bunch of granola eating, dirty hippie liberals.

We just needed Scott Walker to help us see ourselves for what we really are. LIBERAL (peh!). Many, many polls have been taken in the past couple of weeks to assess how America feels about commandant Walker’s actions in Wisconsin. Turns out that Americans aren’t for taking away collective bargaining rights from people, to the tune of 2 to 1. Two thirds of us have a sense of decency, not to mention forethought.

Oh, but we’ve only touched the tip of the Birkenstock with that little factoid. NBC News and the Wall Street Journal commissioned a poll to figure out how Americans would balance the budget if it were up to them. Let’s start with what the pollsters presented to the sample group. They used the actual budget of the United States, more or less (you can download the actual report here if you want more detail). They broke the budget down to discretionary and non-discretionary line items and gave the respondents options for generating revenue, as well as the option to cut spending. Here’s what the respondents did:

76% of respondents cut spending by an average of $145.7 billion. They cut;

$109B out of defense
$13.1B from intelligence
$12.8B from Iraq and Afghanistan
$6.7B from veteran’s benefits
$4.6B from federal highways
$3.2B from the space program
$2.6B from medical research
$2.5B from homeland security
$2.3 from farm subsidies
$2.3B from air travel and roads
$1.8B from development assistance
$1.8B from military aid
$1.6B from the State Department
$1B from land management
$.4B from nuclear weapons
$.2B from federal law enforcement
$.2B from global health
$.1B from mass transit

But is wasn’t all cuts. They also made increases in certain areas (brace yourselves for a big whiff of patchouli);

• $5.2B increase in job training
• $4.6B increase in higher education
• $3.3B increase in energy conservation/renewable energy
• $2.7B increase in elementary/second education
• $2B increase in subsidies to small farms
• $1.5B increase in pollution control
• $1.4B increase to special education
• $1.1B increase to humanitarian aid
• $.9 increase in science
• $.2B increase in housing programs
• $.1B increase to federal prisons
  

Fascinating, right? But it really gets interesting when you break the respondents down by political affiliation. The biggest spending cuts were made by independents who cut $195.5B out of the budget. The next biggest spending cutters were democrats, who cut $157.3B out of the budget. The “fiscally conservative” republicans were only able to cut $100.7B out of the budget. Any guesses who landed at the bottom of the budget cutting list? I’ll give you a hint – they can’t fucking balance a budget any better than they can spell protest signs. Yep, teabaggers could only bring themselves to cut $100B out of the budget.

I realize that this is getting super fucking wonky with all of the numbers, but I found this report endlessly fascinating so I’m going to continue.

Democrats were the biggest raisers of spending, but not in any meaningful (in terms of adversely affecting the overall budget) way. In fact, when it came to job training, democrats wanted to raise spending from $4B to $9.2B. Independents wanted to go higher than democrats, to $14.4B.

Every group wants to cut defense, so we’ll never see that happen in actuality. Independents cut defense more than any other group, coming in at a cut of $154.1B. Democrats cut defense by $131B. Republicans only cut defense by $56B, but they cut it!

Here are some interesting areas where all groups agreed and differed:

Ready for another dose of American granola? You know how you constantly hear that Americans prefer cutting spending to increasing taxes? Well, that turns out to be true only if they’re not looking at real numbers. 91% of respondents in this poll increased taxes by an average of $291.6B. The amount of tax increases by group looks about how you would expect;

• Teabaggers – $188.2B
  
• Republicans – $229.9B
• Independents – $305.5B
  
• Democrats – $338.5B

All of the groups favored a progressive tax rate (meaning that the more you make, the higher the percentage you pay), but republicans and teabaggers were much more forgiving to the higher tax brackets than independents were. Predictably, democrats really stuck it to the rich.

On every single issue of taxation (estate, corporate, personal, etc) each group raised taxes. Yup, even teabaggers. Only 17% of republicans favored the estate tax breaks that Bush enacted and Obama extended. Let me repeat that so that it really sinks in; only 17% of republicans support the current estate tax levels.

On the issue of capital gains, both independents and democrats want to either raise the percentage of taxation or treat capital gains as income, thereby raising the percentage of taxation! Only teabaggers (68% of them), had a decisive majority that don’t want to raise capital gains. Republicans were divided with 49% against raising taxes, 46% for raising taxes.

Every group agreed that oil companies don’t need the tax breaks they’re currently enjoying, and they would all repeal them.

Every group overwhelmingly agreed that they wanted to fix the social security shortfall by increasing they payroll tax limit from the current level of $106,000 to at least $156,000. 38% of respondents went further and removed the cap entirely and chose to take social security contributions on all money earned. There wasn’t much deviation on this among the different party affiliations. Every group overwhelmingly chose to raise the retirement age, but only to 68. Only 1/3 were willing to go up to 70.

I can keep going, but I won’t. You should definitely download the report from the link above if you want to see more.

Let me summarize what I got from this report, other than the fact that America is made up of liberals (as defined by Fox News).

First and foremost, I see that a strong political ideology creates blinders that make it harder to get things done. That applies to both the left and the right. That being said, left wing ideology doesn’t seem to be as debilitating as right wing ideology does. Over and over again in this report, independents were much closer to democrats than to republicans. Teabaggers were consistently way out there.

When it comes to coming up with solutions to problems, nothing should be off the table, unless you have historical precedent that demonstrates failure. You shouldn’t let your ideology create your facts. It should be the other way around.

It’s clear that one side does love their unicorns more than the other does. Republicans are emotionally attached to the “trickle down” theory that is demonstrably false. But, they’re not as attached to it as our government is. When they were presented with the budget in detail, they all deviated from that ideology to a greater extent than any administration in the past thirty one years has.

But the thing that most struck me about this poll is that our government isn’t representing us. Not any of us. If you had to put a direction on it, you could make a case that our government is to the right of all of us. “Right” as defined by a greater deference to corporations and corporate interests. But that isn’t really an accurate description of what’s happening here. It wouldn’t be hyperbolic to say that what we’re experiencing here is an oligarchy.

Oligarchy

[ol-i-gahr-kee]
–noun, plural -chies.
1. a form of government in which all power is vested in a few persons or in a dominant class or clique; government by the few.
2. a state or organization so ruled.
3. the persons or class so ruling.

We have a government that serves only the interest of its donors. And last year, when the Citizens United decision came down from the supreme court, the system insured that it’s donors will never be the people. The supreme court gamed the system and completely locked the citizenry out of it. In 2008 when Obama ran, he kept repeating that 90% of his contributors were ordinary citizens making small contributions. While those statements were completely accurate, they didn’t tell the whole story. The contributions made by 90% of his donors represented 50% of the total amount that he raised. The other 50% came from corporate interests. Believe it or not, a 50-50 ratio is astonishing. Corporate contributions typically eclipse private contributions so what Obama accomplished was amazing.

But it will never, ever happen again. The supreme court made sure of that. If we don’t all work to pass laws that make the public financing of campaigns mandatory, we well never be represented by our government. None of us, conservative or liberal, will get the opportunity to be heard or represented.

If we don’t change the system, we’re fucked. We need to stop focusing on the democrat or the republican in the race. Party affiliation is irrelevant because both sides can only get their campaigns financed by entities that don’t give a shit about you or me.

The ideological lines between right and left are drawn between having faith in corporations versus having faith in the government. Both sides are wrong. The growing wealth disparity on the country has proven that corporations aren’t going to do right by the workers. And Citizens United has insured that good government isn’t possible.

So if you’re having a political debate with someone from a different political persuasion, and you’re taking the pro-corporate or the pro-government side, your point sounds like nonsense to the person you’re talking to because it is nonsensical. You’re having the wrong debate, and you have to realize that the team you’re on isn’t on your side.

Obama is not a great president because the system won’t allow him to be. He has to fellate Wall Street if he wants to have a single democratic congressman or senator elected during his term. Democrats idealize Obama’s presidency at their own peril. Look at what happened to republicans when they idealized Bush’s eight year fucking nightmare. That didn’t turn out to well for republicans, not to mention America and the world.

It’s time to play for your own team. Fuck the politician you’re spending your time or money on. Use that energy to change the system. We need to get public financing of campaigns on ballot measures in every state across the country. We need to stop having stupid fights amongst ourselves and unite around our own self interest. America will never embrace its inner hippie (again, as defined by Fox News) until we do.