Same Old Party

GOP Still Doesn’t Get It

     The Republican Party took a big hit in the Nov. 4 elections, all across the country and not just at the top of the ticket. Subsequent hand wringing within the party suggested there was a widespread realization the party needed a major change.
     Republican behavior since then shows the party still does not get it. From Nov. 5 on, Republicans around the country have spouted the same old lines they have always had, most of them Pavlovian responses, led by the same old “tax cuts!”
     Choosing Michael Steele as chairman of the national GOP is not going to help the party change. Steele embodies two elements sacred to the party and its old thinking—Christianity and business. He was born on an air base (to a widow, but with no reference to a military father or the circumstances), he was educated in Catholic Schools and even attended a seminary set to become a priest, and most importantly from a political point of view, he was a corporate lawyer who helped the Wall Street gang that built the unsupported economic bubble that just burst.
     Republicans probably chose Steele because he is black, a token they hoped would attract African-Americans, and presumably Hispanics, away from the Democratic Party they so overwhelmingly backed in the election.
     The wealthy black face that stood out when he addressed a sea of white faces at the Republican Convention is not likely to understand any more of the needs of the nation’s poor and minorities (shamefully, usually the same) than his audience. His only public break with party doctrine has been that he supports affirmative action.
     The GOP response to the stimulus package offered by the new administration to help fix some of the mess left by the previous Republican administration was just about the same response it would have made 10 years earlier. Ditto the response to bringing back some regulation to help balance the greed that has been driving the nation.
     Even before Barack Obama was sworn in as president, the GOP was hurling negative invectives his way and Rush Limbaugh, whose ability to generate interest declined as George W. Bush brought the party down, returned to set the same petty oral agenda for at least the next four years.
     The GOP has never served the interests of the poor, the minorities or even much of the middle class and indicated in the first three months after the election it probably never will.
     The Republican Party’s only salvation may be to split into two parties, ceding one part to the right-wing nuts who salivate at the mention of key words to wallow in the world of hatred and meaningless issues. The remainder would work to build party of moderates that just might attract enough voters away from the Democratic Party to be viable once again, representing not only business interests, but the interests of the customers of business as well.

(from www.straightrecord.com)

 

Gift Card From Your Government

Trickle-Up Bailout Card—Part II

     Instead of bailing out the economy by spreading government money at the top of the income pyramid, we suggest the government concentrate instead on the bottom of the pyramid, spread the bailout money there and let it trickle-up through the economy.

     But our proposal also relies on some social engineering attached to the funds. Since the ails of the domestic auto industry are front and center now, we will begin with that.

     Call it a bailout by gift card, the giver being the store of last resort, the federal government. The givees would be American households, each with a choice of which gift card to receive.

     Under the plan, the household would receive a huge amount of the equivalent of cash (huge having much more meaning at the bottom of the scale than at the top) they could not spend frivolously (except in the many instances of buying an unnecessary car), and that in turn would stimulate the neediest segments of the economy as well as benefit the societal problems of the environment, alternative fuels, credit, savings and many others.

     As we said in Part I, there may be many problems with the proposal, but the thinking in Washington has been nowhere near considering a new way of dealing with the financial crisis while at the same time steering the American public in the direction they as well as the U.S. automakers should have been moving before the economic bubble burst.

     1. Gift card for a car, $20,000 for one of the “big three,” $5,000 all others. The card would be good only for cars that meet government-set criteria, the social engineering part of the proposal. They must meet some combination of a minimum mileage standard, carbon footprint standard, reliance on alternative fuels, safety and a few other concerns. Those cars currently produced have been rated on most of those standards by the Environmental Protection Agency.
      The U.S. automakers were selling about 3.6 million cars a year in 2000 when they were riding high. In November of this year, the month they went begging for a bailout, they were selling about 2.1 million. Thus, if the $20,000 stimulus led to 1.5 million sales, presumably the automakers would be out of financial trouble with time to retool and begin making only cars that meet those government criteria. There is $30 billion of the $700 billion bailout funds, leaving $670 billion.
     2. Gift card to pay off credit card debt, but coupled with new usury laws at the federal level more stringent than new ones scheduled to take effect, perhaps limiting the cards to pay off debt capped at a certain interest rate. The average American household has $8,000 in credit card debt and 48 million spend more than they earn. That amounts to $384 billion, trimming the bailout fund to $286 billion if all 48 million took that option.
     3. Gift card to pay off student loans, recover mortgage stability, cover the cost of alternative energy sources or a variety of other “green issues.” Recent figures put 2 million homes facing foreclosure because of the credit crisis, and at an average of $35,500 to save each household, the cost would be $71 billion. About 6 million outstanding student loans amount to $85 billion, or an average of $14,600 each. A $10,000 card would cost $60 billion. Those two programs would cost $157 billion, leaving $129 billion worth of cards for those who select from other government priorities.
     4. Subject the gift cards to taxes, but couple that onerous requirement with a supplementary card in the form of a certificate of deposit, treasury bill or federal bond that would not be redeemable for at least another year, to cover those who do not plan well for the extra tax burden of having thousands added to their tax bill the filing period after they receive the gift card. The forced savings also would be beneficial in introducing some people to the idea of the value of having savings to help them weather crises such as this one.

(from www.straightrecord.com)

Bailout or Gift Card?

Bailout by Trickle-Up Gift Card—Part I

     The effort to correct the financial crisis in the United States has been largely ineffective, and for good reason. The people in charge, mostly at the top of the economic arm of the Bush administration, but aided and abetted by similarly minded people in Congress, continue to focus on the top of the pyramid instead of the bottom.
     We continue to beat the drum here in favor of some “trickle-up” economic thinking instead of “trickle-down.” So here is a proposal for consideration that is outside the box of what everyone has been hearing from those in charge.
     This proposed solution, as with much of outside-the-box thinking, probably has some holes in it others will be quick to point out, but at least consider it as a possible point of departure for figuring out a solution.
     This proposal was inspired by one of a series of off-the-wall suggestions from largely uninformed and somewhat naïve people (and this proposal may give us membership in that group) in response to proposals from the top.
     Most are based on faulty math and false statistics, so let us begin with some true figures. The $700 billion bailout package the federal government currently is sitting on is equivalent to nearly $7,000 for each of the 111.2 million U.S. households. There are 138 million taxpayers, but millions who don’t earn enough to pay taxes.

     Throwing that much money at every U.S. family without strings attached would only encourage more of the same reckless spending without solving the financial or any other problems. But the idea does suggest a trickle-up solution that inspires us to give some serious thought to the basic idea.
     We see a possibility of solving not only the financial crisis, but many other social crises in America with that $700 billion. Unfortunately the people in charge of those funds don’t see the little people way down there at the bottom of the pile have looked only at the top of the financial pyramid because of trickle-down groupthink. Even our suggestion begins with the classic Republican economic model of tax credits to be filtered back into the economy through private enterprise.
     The stimulus checks so far have been ineffective in overcoming the financial collapse, in part because they are too little at a maximum of $600 per taxpayer and totally unstructured. Even if those checks had stimulated anything, they would have had only a narrow impact.
     The incoming Obama administration faces many more problems than the financial crisis, although it currently takes first place in concern. The major issues include the climate crisis, the associated issue of U.S. dependency on both foreign and domestic oil, the individual-based credit crisis, the savings crisis, foreclosure crisis and on and on.

     So what if the government, instead of worrying about big business and those at the top of the financial pyramid, it focuses instead on a “trickle-up” plan, beginning at the bottom of that pyramid.
     That brings us to the proposal. Shoot holes in it as you will, but at least consider it as a takeoff point for considering a solution to the crises at hand. We can already see some problems with foreign trade agreements, political problems and other likely attacks on the proposal, but let us consider it as a new way of looking at the situation.
     Instead of bailing out anyone, give not a three-figure stimulus check to each American taxpayer, give each of the 111 million households (rather than each of the 138 million taxpayers, since the very bottom does not make enough to pay taxes) a gift card similar to those offered by stores and good only in that store, valued at $5,000 to $20,000.

Next: Part II–Gift cards for, cars, cards, loans and green 

(from www.straightrecord.com)

Bleeping the Bard for Blago

Macblago and Lady Macblago

     Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s wife has been tagged with the nickname Lady Macbeth for her role in his plots to extort a job from President-elect Obama and favorable treatment from the Chicago Tribune. That inspires an update of two Shakespeare speeches:

  

             Macblago, thane of Illinois:
        Is this a bleep’n phone which I see before me,
        The receiver in my hand? Let me extort thee.
        I have funds not, and so I phone thee still.
        Art thou not, bleep’N prez, sensible to my need     
        For secretary of health? Or art thou but   
        An honest man, a Chicago weirdo,
        And I a bleep’n gov, left without a brain. 

 

                    Lady Macblago:
Now, damn’d Rod, now I say—one, two, three jobs.
Tis time to bribe. Hell with em. Bleep, my Rod, bleep, a prez and
A Trib? What need we fear who taps us, when it’s you who
Goes to jail? Yet, who would’ve thought those bleep’n men would bleep’n
Have none our bleep’n graft in them?                                

  

(from www.straightrecord.com)

Blago Seeking Bandits

Taking Hubris to the Max in Illinois

      It takes an ego as big as the moon to consider oneself a candidate for high public office such as U.S. senator or governor. A reporter who has spent a career rubbing shoulders with people of high office should be immune to such feelings, but it never ceases to amaze just how much hubris some of these people can have.
     The prize, which we hope will remain his for generations, goes to Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, a Democrat. His case is one of massive hubris overlain by extreme corruption and, most surprisingly, naivete.
     His case would be arrogance on a massive scale anywhere in the country, but in Illinois, he has got to be kidding. The FBI (unbleeped) affidavit summarizing the case showed he had been under investigation for corruption since the day he took the (ha-ha) oath of office in 2003. The U.S. attorney is from outside Illinois because a former senator with the same last name urged his nomination, believing someone from Illinois unlikely to fight corruption.
     His wife, Patti, is the daughter of a 32-year Chicago alderman and nobody needs to be reminded of what that means. Blagojevich succeeded a Republican governor who is now in jail for corruption, a two former governors who were indicted after they left office; and that was all since Chicago’s Al Capone days.
     Probably because of its long history of corruption problems, Illinois is unique in that it has the Better Government Association, formed as a result of the Capone-led corruption. And guess what; it often works with Illinois news outlets, including the Chicago Tribune, in its investigations. And the Tribune itself was investigating the U.S. attorney’s investigation of Blagojevich and in contact with that office.
     Blagojevich had to know he was under investigation and even said to a fundraiser (over the phone), “You gotta be careful how you express that and assume everybody’s listening, the whole world is listening. You hear me?” Turns out it was.
     And yet, with all that behind him, Blagojevich apparently was naïve enough to believe he could shake down the Chicago Tribune and the president-elect and get away with it. As one Chicago wag said, “he doesn’t need a lawyer; he needs a psychiatrist.”

    “Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Lord Acton  

(from www.straightrecord.com)

Obama’s Good First Move

Jobs and Infrastructure

 

     We may be accused of belaboring the subject, but our two main mantras on this site bear constant repeating—“those who don’t remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” and the theory of “trickle-up” economics should be applied to government as a whole. 

     President-Elect Barack Obama has given the first solid indication he may attempt to take this country down the path we believe to be the key to remaking America. He is beginning with a “killing two birds with one stone” solution to two of the country’s major domestic problems.
     A trickle-up view of economics sees the people at the bottom of the income scale as the starting point, lifting them up to enable them to contribute more to society and become the buyers who keep small and then ever-larger businesses in business.
     For too long, our economy has relied on the trickle-down theory of helping businesses expand in the belief they will then hire more workers and help the entire economy: the trickle-down theory. The main difference between the two major parties is the Republicans believe to serve that theory, all federal funds should be channeled through businesses, e.g., that health care should not be direct from the government to the citizen, but should be provided with tax credits to be spent buying health care from a provider, a business.
     The trickle-up theory says that if the money is given directly to a universal health-care system, more funds would be available because they would not be siphoned off by a corporate, for-profit bureaucracy.
     HMO stands for “health maintenance organization,” an entity that was supposed to lower health costs, by working to keep their members healthy before they can contract a more-costly disease or other ailment. The meaning of HMO has been lost almost since they day they were created.
     The current economic crisis resulted from the collapse of a house of cards built on the failed “trickle-down” theory taken to its lunatic zenith, creating a situation where the gap between the rich and poor in this country is now the largest it has ever been. Keeping the middle- and low-income in their status has meant fewer buyers for the goods in American commerce. The crisis adds to that by taking away disposable income from the middle-class and keeping the low-income in their place, both income classes increasing without a job.
     The lame-duck Republican administration, as with most administrations, relied on lagging statistics to decide whether to respond to inflation and recession that was felt first at the low-income level and left to trickle up to engulf the middle-class while the statisticians waiting for months on the numbers that would prove what the lower-income classes already saw. It should not have been a surprise that any increase in the cost of fuel and food is going to affect first those without disposable income.
     So it was not surprising that when the outgoing administration saw a credit crisis building towards collapse, it attempted to solve the problem at the top, believing the solution would trickle down to the bottom.

     Ever since the 1970s, even before the first oil crisis led to an economic crisis almost as big as the current one, experts have been warning about our collapsing infrastructure, e.g., roads, pipes, wires, dams, bridges, tunnels, much of which needed to replaced decades ago. The infrastructure is a looming crisis almost as big as the financial one.

    So now, with an administration set to take charge with intelligence behind it instead of ideology, Obama has chosen to help out bottom half of American society by pumping money into finally dealing with the infrastructure, a huge task not seen since the Great Depression and one that would provide jobs for all the unemployed and the soon-to-be Under the trickle-up theory, the top half of the economy will benefit from having more people with money they have to spend, and in some cases some they do not have to spend.
     There are many other things that need to be done to get the nation back on track, but providing jobs while halting the deterioration of the infrastructure is an excellent start for the incoming Obama administration.

(from www.straightrecord.com)  

Reconsidering the GOP

GOP = SOP: The Same Old Party

     The week after the devastating rejection of the Republican Party at American polling places, the Republican Party at all levels has been undergoing a self-assessment, a “what went wrong,” if you will.
     The upshot of what has been said by the congressional GOP leadership and would-be leadership, from the Republican Governors Association and from other party members across the country is: same old party.
     Apparently, they just don’t get it.
     It seems all they could come up with is something like, “We forgot to follow Reaganism.” That sounds just about it, except when one asks what “Reaganism” is, the response is all over the board.
     One may recall that Reagan ran on and championed in the early years of his eight-year administration, a balanced budget. He championed reduced spending and he championed lower taxes for businesses, and all the other stuff the anti-government clique supposedly holds so dear, and about which they complain when the government, at any level, fails to deliver.
     That is not a very good explanation of what Reaganism is, but then neither are any of the other definitions posited by its adherents. It supposedly covers “family values,” whatever they are, a Pavlovian response to the flag, motherhood and apple pie on the good-feeling side and to socialism, communism and the anti-Christ, whatever that is, on the “let’s go get ‘em side.”
     And therein lies the problem of the newly introspective Republican Party—“We forgot who we are, but who are we?” Unfortunately for the GOP, it is still the party of the cold war that no longer is, “support our troops” that amounts to little more than pasting a yellow-ribbon decal on the SUV, and give corporations and the elite what they want because the largesse will trickle down to the masses, eventually.
     All summed up, Reaganism, as amorphous as it is, is little more than “us versus them,” the them meaning anybody who doesn’t look and act like us, the us being the white upper-class in gated communities with enough money to send their kids to schools where the riff-raff are not bothersome.
     For some strange reason, Reaganism attracted a lot of blue-collar America in 1980 and for many years later, which meant it also attracted the immigrant-American, both segments that believed somehow that trickle-down economics would benefit them. They were the “Reagan Democrats.”
     Twelve years of Reagan and the elder Bush, an eight-year interregnum of the Clinton presidency and then eight years of the foolish Bush appears to have convinced “Reagan Democrats” the term applied to them was an oxymoron.
     Natural Democrats, blue-collar Americans, immigrants, all the people who do the real work that makes the nation run on time, largely saw the light this year and came home to the party that actually represents them and does not just repeat nice-sounding phrases.
     The Republican Party needs to decide what it really stands for. Sarah Palin currently is the darling of the party’s right wing, but the continued adulation of her suggests the party may be self-destructive if it does not jettison her and the rest of the far right and begin representing a larger segment of the population, one that is a bit brighter and more sophisticated.
     That would leave the party unburdened by the right-wing fanatics and focused on the commercial sector and those who have disposable income and feel the GOP is better at protecting it for them—from taxes, the criminal class, other riff-raff and whatever. But that may not leave the party with enough adherents to win elections.
     The irony of the Bush years is that the financial crisis in the United States has reduced the number of well-off voters while increasing the number of poor, a mix that does not bode well for the future of the GOP—er, SOP.

 (from www.straightrecord.com)

Candidate for AG?

Specterlation About DOJ

     This site did not intend to join all of the speculation about whom Barack Obama would or should choose to serve in his Cabinet, but we find one somewhat intriguing. It needs a lot of thought because it is fraught with danger, but it would be a twofer, perhaps a threefer.
     Largely overlooked in the heat of the presidential campaign was the extremely important need to retrieve the U.S. Constitution from the Bush administration’s shredder and begin pasting it back together.
     There are some who justifiably claim this is a matter so urgent and important, it should be at the top of Obama’s agenda instead of the economy or Iraq.

     To bring the United States back under the aegis of the Constitution, Obama needs a dedicated attorney general already on record as one of the harshest critics of the Bush administration and its disastrous toady in the job, Alberto Gonzales, when it comes to constitutional matters.
     The selection we are talking about is Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa. He has been livid and unstinting in his criticism of the administration’s use of the Justice Department to run roughshod on the rights not only of detainees alleged to be terrorists, but also on its own citizens in the name of fighting terrorism.

     As a Republican, his appointment also would serve to provide someone who could act somewhat as an ombudsman to the White House to make sure it did not try to keep all the extralegal powers Bush grabbed for himself, a grab likely to be exposed when the details of all of his secret executive orders are learned. That would be Specter’s second value as the next AG.
     His third contribution would be to give up a Republican seat in the Senate and let a Democratic governor, Ed Rendell, appoint the next senator from Pennsylvania, possibly putting the Democratic majority in the Senate over the magic 60-vote line without needing turncoat Joe Lieberman to remain in the party.
     That is the positive side of this nomination. The negative is that Specter is as unpredictable as earthquakes and can sometimes go off on some gawdawful quests, none more so than his vicious behavior in the Judiciary Committee’s hearings on the Clarence Thomas nomination to the Supreme Court, who himself was a pitiful selection for the job. We don’t mean to be equally vicious here, but as a saving grace, that did occur before Specter’s brain cancer was discovered and treated.

(from www.straightrecord.com)

 

Same Court For 4 Years

Just a Placeholder, Not a Changer

     The decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in a case involving sonar damages to marine animals during military training is a reminder of what the election of Barack Obama really means.

     Anyone looking for a change on the court during his term is likely to be highly disappointed. Obama’s election only resulted in a placeholder in the White House, not someone with an ability to change the harshly conservative tone of the court.

     Chief Justice John Roberts delivered the opinion in the case that sided with the military, in which he suggests the military and its commander-in-chief should be taken at their word. Joining Roberts were Clarence Thomas, Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Joseph Alito.

     Kennedy and Scalia are the only two of the five who are older than Thomas’s 60, Alito being 58 and Roberts a relatively young 53. The four who manage to temper the court when Kennedy swings their way are at least 70, the oldest being John Paul Stevens at 88. Ruth Bader Ginsberg is 75, Steven Breyer is 72 and David Souter 69.

     If any change is going to take place on the court in the next four years, it is likely to be one of those four, whom Obama can now place.

     But nothing is going to change the tone, so get used to it.

(from www.straightrecord.com)

Another Imperial Presidency?

 

The Dangerous Path of Executive Orders

      A disturbing juxtaposition of news items began the week as the United States began its transition of governments. The new government will behave as the old in at least one respect.
     And lay this one on the Democrats who took control of Congress and announced immediately (through the new House Speaker Nancy Pelosi) that there would be no attempt to impeach President Bush.
     The head of Barack Obama’s transition team, John Podesta, said, “There’s a lot that the president can do using his executive authority without waiting for congressional action, and I think we’ll see the president do that. I think that he feels he has a real mandate for change. We need to get off the course that the Bush administration has set.”
     But Podesta, and the Obama camp, apparently does not realize that course the Bush administration set was enabled to a great extent by broadening the use of executive orders way beyond its legal authority and is the basis of many of the impeachable offenses the Democrats declined to address.
     To wit, from the New York Times: The U.S. military was given authority through an executive order signed by Bush in 2004 to attack Al Queda anywhere in the world, even in countries not at war with the United States, a gross violation of international rights.
     Before that, we learned executive orders were signed with impunity to violate constitutional rights, the Geneva Convention and all sorts of domestic and international laws as the Bush administration behaved as if it was above and beyond any and all laws.
     That behavior established a dangerous behavior that eventually could lead to an authoritarian state if the checks and balances embodied in the U.S. Constitution are not used to hold that behavior in check.
     The best way to do that would have been to begin impeachment proceedings against Bush, even if there was no real sentiment to take them to the ultimate and oust him from office. The great value of the proceedings would have been to let future presidents, including Obama, know they do not have this power, regardless of how powerful and regal they may feel in the Oval Office.
      That needed to be done because once a president, or anyone else for that matter, is given authority, regardless of how ill-gotten it is, is not likely to want to give it up, as we have warned on this site before.
      Our worst fears have been realized, in the person of John Podesta, who presumably is relaying the sentiment of the Obama presidency to be.
      Congress needs to step in say, “Hey, wait just a darn minute here. We are in the same party, but we didn’t support Obama to be elected as king, merely as a president. Back off or we’ll start tying your hands.”
      Beyond that, somebody needs to take the Bush executive orders to the Supreme Court, and get the judicial branch to do its part in bring- ing the executive branch back within the constraints of the Constitution. This might be a good activity for the Republicans while people biased for their party are still running the court.
      Obama assumption of Bush violations is not change we need. Legislative and judicial branches with the guts to rein back in the executive branch is the change we need.

(from www.straightrecord.com)