Reality's A Bitch

This isn't just about hypocrisy, or death panels, or Jan Brewer, but that's where the discussion has to start:

“How many people have to die before you are prepared to reverse your decision on the transplant operations?” seemed like the obvious question.

She said she thought that was unfair and started to explain how dire the state’s financial situation is. If people are so worried about the transplant patients then they should ask the federal government in Washington to send us more money, she said.But she would not explain to me, or to any Democrats in the state capitol, what she has done with the nearly $200 million she was already given in ‘stimulus funds’ to spend on anything she liked.

Cut federal government spending/give us more federal money. Repeal health care/give us the money in the health care bill. End Obamacare because it's rationing/ration medical care to save money.

Sure, it's hypocrisy of the first order. Of course, it's completely dishonest and untenable. That much goes without saying. Or, rather, it's what I, along with everyone else with more than two neurons to rub together, have been saying: teabaggerism (ie, Reaganomics) simply doesn't work; can't work. Has never worked.

The larger point, though, is how tough it really is. The times are tough, the solutions -- if any -- are tough. It's easy to laugh (and I do) or cry (and I do) at people like Jan Brewer; but the fact is she's fighting the same battle as everyone else. She -- like the teabaggers of which she's a prime example -- simply has an empty quiver.

But she is a real-world example of what happens when you apply too-easy answers to too-hard problems. Naive, she may be. Crazy. In over her head. But she's just doing what a hell of a lot of people do when the going gets tough. Go into tilt mode. Resort to magical thinking. Sadly, it's human.

Probably because we weren't intelligently designed.

There's just no way to get from here (badness) to there (wonderfulness) without doing some really hard, really unpleasant things, really controversial things. Things that will require compromise, facing facts, admitting that there's no magic; in short, things that seem as far from teabagging Republicanism (as opposed to the kind that was around a generation ago: thoughtful, in a word) as Glenn Beck is from planet Earth.

Nor are Democrats above criticism: the idea of "belt-tightening," as in correlating social programs with need, raises screams from the extremes. As opposed to the Rs, however, they do recognize the needs we face and that they'll have to be paid for. That tax cuts aren't magic mushrooms.

So Jan Brewer is a microcosm. Sadly, she represents far too many of us -- enough that, looking below the surface of folly, it seems literally impossible that we're any longer equipped as a nation to do what needs doing. And pardon me for saying so, but I see it as of a piece with our (Foxoreillian cries of anti-christianism notwithstanding) ever-increasing national religiosity. Religious thinking (ie, relying on the unprovable, the not reality-based, believing whatever it takes to feel safe in a dangerous world) is fine when confronting the unknowable, like death. There, other than being the basis for wars and mass killings, for discrimination and hatred, it works well. But when the problems are in the now, and require workable solutions in real time, before the end times, it lacks a certain, well, functionality.

Teabaggerism is not just like religion. It is religion. The problem is that, with religion, whether one is right or wrong won't be determined in this world. With teabaggerism, with Reaganomics, it's already known. And Jan Brewer's dilemma shows it, as clearly as a mushroom cloud.

Saddest of all, when confronted with the impossibility, the response is to dig in deeper.

And this kind of crap hardly suggests any impending breakthroughs.

Socialist Agenda

Well, now it's official. Glennnn Beck was right: President Obama, in his Nazi-socialist-communist-America-hating-Kenyomuslim way, is wrecking capitalism. As planned, no doubt, in Bill Ayers' basement fortress:

American businesses earned profits at an annual rate of $1.659 trillion in the third quarter, according to a Commerce Department report released Tuesday. That is the highest figure recorded since the government began keeping track over 60 years ago, at least in nominal or noninflation-adjusted terms.

The government does not adjust the numbers for inflation, in part because these corporate profits can be affected by pricing changes from all over the world and because the government does not have a price index for individual companies. The next-highest annual corporate profits level on record was in the third quarter of 2006, when they were $1.655 trillion.

Since the obvious question has been answered, what with the above, General Motors, and all, here's my remaining one, and it's to the teabaggers and their favorite (aside from birtherism, Reaganovoodoo economics, and re-writing the Constitution) theme: what is a more glaring example of "income redistribution" than what's happened over the last decade?

WASHINGTON — The recession seems to be socking Americans in the heart as well as the wallet: Marriages have hit an all-time low while pleas for food stamps have reached a record high and the gap between rich and poor has grown to its widest ever....

....Marriages have been declining for years due to rising divorce, more unmarried couples living together and increased job prospects for women. But sociologists say younger people are also now increasingly choosing to delay marriage as they struggle to find work and resist making long-term commitments.

In dollar terms, the rich are still getting richer, and the poor are falling further behind them.

The income gap between the richest and poorest Americans grew last year to its largest margin ever, a stark divide as Democrats and Republicans spar over whether to extend Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy.

The top-earning 20 percent of Americans – those making more than $100,000 each year – received 49.4 percent of all income generated in the U.S., compared with the 3.4 percent made by the bottom 20 percent of earners, those who fell below the poverty line, according to the new figures. That ratio of 14.5-to-1 was an increase from 13.6 in 2008 and nearly double a low of 7.69 in 1968.

At the top, the wealthiest 5 percent of Americans, who earn more than $180,000, added slightly to their annual incomes last year, the data show. Families at the $50,000 median level slipped lower.

Seriously: this is income redistribution of the most perverse sort, of the sort that leads countries to collapse. By definition, ANY tax change leads to redistribution of income; and let's agree that there's no formula which would be considered fair by everyone. Nevertheless, the current situation, deriving in large part from the Bush tax cuts, seems untenable in anything but a non-democratic society, one in which the upper crust ignores the needs of everyone else, except to the extent necessary to keep them alive and productive enough to provide the labor force they require. It's the sort of imbalance that in past times led to tumbrels, knitting, and baskets of heads.

Not now. Today, the people most adversely affected, blinded by constant news distortion, astroturfing, and the baiting of fear and hatred, are demonstrating in favor of the very kind of economic unfairness that, even in the darkest of ages, has led such people to rise up in their own defense. Now, they threaten violence in order to preserve the system that is grinding them into dust.

I mean, yeah, okay: they don't like having a black guy in the white house; they hate immigration, they're convinced the black guy is coming for their guns. But the tax thing, the health care thing, regulating banks? Really? They'd rather destroy their own futures than acknowledge the lies that Fox "news" and the RWS™ are deliberately feeding them; they'd consider an end to Obama worth the price, even if the price is the end of America.

How strange are the times in which we live. How disconnected from reality and from their own interests are those enabling the destruction to continue. Really and truly, it's absolutely remarkable, and entirely incomprehensible.

Bartlett Pares

I have occasionally noted that there remain a few sensible Republicans. Within that vanishingly small group is Bruce Bartlett, Reagan's chief economic adviser, to whom I've referred in the past. He keeps pouring the cold water of truth on the hot fire of right-wing rhetoric. Recently, titled "Reagan's Tax Increases," there's this:

It may come as a surprise to some people that once upon a time in the not-too-distant past Republicans actually cared enough about budget deficits that they thought raising taxes was necessary to bring them down. Today, Republicans believe that deficits are nothing more than something to ignore when they are in power and to bludgeon Democrats with when they are out of power.

That followed a statement, illustrated below, that made reference to:

the many tax increases supported and signed into law by Ronald Reagan, which eventually took back half of the 1981 tax cut

Some things in politics are simply so obvious that they ought not need stating. For example: to achieve sustainable fiscal sanity, we'll need a combination of tax hikes and spending reduction. Or this: health care reform will eventually require some form of public option that does not rely on insurance companies, and it will also need to include some sort of prioritizing of spending. Or this: lasting peace in the Middle East will include the relinquishing of some settlements and territory by Israel and the sharing of Jerusalem by the Palestinians.

What is in question is whether there will ever be politicians with the brains and guts and honor to say what does need to be said, and to do what needs doing. Sadly, it doesn't seem to matter that we have a president willing and able. He seems drowned in the din raised by the RWS™ and smothered by the cynicism of the current Republican leaders and the teabaggers to whom they pander. Truth and sanity have no place at their table. And as for the Democrats, strength and bravery have none at theirs.

Spotting Virgins

Something about a red spot behind the ear proves whether a man is a virgin or not. So says a Vietnamese acupuncturist. Of great interest, and happily, neither gay sex nor jerking off affects the test.

She says she was first taught how to determine if a man has ever had sex by feeling their pulse. She later developed the ear-spot method on her own. She says the spot will only disappear after heterosexual intercourse and is not affected by gay sex or masturbation.

It's in print, so it must be true. It's so true, in fact, that it led to the freeing of three men convicted of rape. To the admiration of lots of folks.

Vietnamese newspapers have dedicated profiles to Hong and her virginity test, crediting her with helping to free the men while not expressing any skepticism of her ability. Earlier this week, she went on an online chat on Pioneer newspaper where readers expressed their "great admiration" for her efforts.

There's a reason I'm posting this. It shines a bright light on belief in silly things, like "alternative medicine." This lady's techniques are no different from homeopathy, reiki, you name it: unproven claims (disproved, in many cases), supported with wild credulity. I'd assume that most Western people who believe in alternative medicine (I repeat: if it works, as proved by studies, it's not "alternative," it's medicine) would laugh at this lady's virginity test. But they're totally down with their water and its memory, their chakras and chi, their flushes and detoxifiers. From twenty thousand feet, there's not a bit of difference: needing sop, wanting magic, hating the hard stuff, people buy the b.s. peddled by fakers, quacks, and the self-deceived.

For that matter, it's exactly like teabaggerism and Reaganomics; and all of it is explained by this.

He Lives

As I've said here in various ways at various times, it's been clear from the time of his ascension that the Undead King of Republicans started this country on its inexorable descent from greatness. Selling smoke, as he used to sell smokers, he convinced his subjects of something patently impossible, like perpetual motion (and, by golly, the idea lives perpetually): namely, that you can have everything you want, and not pay for it. Even if by "you" is meant "you, and not... them." Ronnie, revered as only false gods can be revered, told people what they wanted to hear, let them believe what they wanted to believe, and set sail on the course to ruin, holding the tiller while Republicans rode rapturously. Rowing still a sunken ship, his rudderless retinue of relics regale recalcitrant regretters of receded royalty with raptuous rhetoric, rarely regarding recent reality. Ruinous Ronnie Reagan: razer of the Republic.

So, here's an article that displays it quite well. Not, of course, that such data will convince believers. Belief, after all, is what you use when evidence is either lacking or refutes your magical thinking. But, always hopeful that a single person might, for a second or two, have clarity before shrinking from it as Nosferatu shields himself from sunshine, I offer this:

"It seems that you can look at a chart of almost anything and right around 1981 or soon after you'll see the chart make a sharp change in direction, and probably not in a good way. And I really do mean almost anything, from economics to trade to infrastructure to ... well almost anything. I spent some time looking for charts of things, and here are just a few examples. In each of the charts below look for the year 1981, when Reagan took office.

Conservative policies transformed the United States from the largest creditor nation to the largest debtor nation in just a few years, and it has only gotten worse since then:"

There follow, in the article, several more charts in logical sequence, showing the same trend, the same break point, in various economic parameters.

The year of our lord nineteen eighty one is exactly the time to which Congressional Republicans, the RWS™, and Foxobeckian teabaggers would like us to return. (After Reagan, ever so briefly, there was a moment when a Republican was, by some measure, serious about fiscal responsibility. He was, naturally, summarily disowned by the true believers.)

Twenty years ago, the last serious Republican effort to reduce the budget deficit took place when George H.W. Bush agreed to negotiate with congressional Democrats on a budget deal. As a consequence, many Republicans disowned his efforts and abandoned him in 1992, leading to his defeat. Today, the idea of cooperating with Democrats on deficit reduction is viewed as a total loser by all Republicans. Until that perspective changes, the elder Bush will remain the last Republican who took fiscal responsibility seriously.

Hey! Now that I think of it, if we could teabag our way back in time, we should. AND VOTE RONNIE OUT OF OFFICE BEFORE HE EVER GETS IN. Now THAT'S what I'd call taking our country back!!

Getting Regular

If Rand Paul has his way, we'll end all regulating of business. Same with a former pro football player in my state, running against Patty Murray. Get rid of 'em all, he says. Ditto John Boner, Mitch McConnell, and Sarah Palin, who's against regulations except when she's not. (Okay, let's give Sarah a pass: she really has no idea what she believes (except in faith healing.))

It's insanity. Who but Republican politicos and the usual RWS™ could actually try to make the case that the response to under-regulated banks and oil wells is to deregulate even more? Here's an article on the subject that feels eminently reasonable to me:

...it’s hard to think of a recent disaster in the business world that wasn’t abetted by inept regulation. [...]

These failures weren’t accidents. They were the all too predictable result of the deregulationary fervor that has gripped Washington in recent years, pushing the message that most regulation is unnecessary at best and downright harmful at worst. The result is that agencies have often been led by people skeptical of their own duties. This gave us the worst of both worlds: too little supervision encouraged corporate recklessness, while the existence of these agencies encouraged public complacency.

In particular, its concluding paragraph resonates:

...[S]uccessful regulation, by filling information gaps and managing risk, fosters confidence in the safety and honesty of markets, which in turn makes them bigger and more robust. The pharmaceutical industry, for instance, would be much smaller if people were seriously worried that they might be poisoned every time they took a new drug. And though executives chafe at financial regulation, the protection it provides makes investors far more likely to hand them money to play with. If we want our regulators to do better, we have to embrace a simple idea: regulation isn’t an obstacle to thriving free markets; it’s a vital part of them.

And yet our country is steeped (get it?) in teabaggers demanding the return to every policy that got us where we are. In our history -- and it's not like you have to go very far back for examples -- there are countless examples of deregulated industries going wild to the detriment of our economy and to the harm of consumers. Are there really any examples of the opposite; of over-regulation causing such economic (and ecologic) violence as we've just seen?

It's like that forget-zapper thingy that Tommy Lee Jones used to such good advantage. Who knew it'd work on half the population of an entire -- and supposedly enlightened -- country?

Oh, yeah. Karl Rove knew. So did Newt Gingrich. And Mitch McConnell, and Tom DeLay, and Dick Armey (who founded a whole army of dicks.) Sarah, Michele, Glenn? Not so sure. I don't think they've ever understood what went on or what's going on, only how to whip up frenzied support for nonsensical positions on wrongly-defined problems. But what's the difference? Whether by deviant design or insane intention, the result is the same: ill-informed voters masterfully manipulated into voting against their own interests, while being led to believe they're doing the opposite, forgetting the lessons of recent history, so recent as to be reverberating in the very air they breathe.

Two Thoughts

Being brief, here: my laptop hard-drive crashed, with the potential for ruining my marriage as it takes with it a couple of years' worth of photos. I'd been meaning to get the latest OS and set up automatic backup... So, as I fight for online time, I may have to yield gracefully.

Meanwhile, this: first, I really wish the Obama recovery plan included MORE infrastructure spending and LESS tax cuts. Why? Because tax cuts don't work and spending does. Or is it the other way around? Anyway, the amount going to individuals hardly seems enough to affect much change. What did you do with your previous "stimulus" check? If tax cuts were the panacea the Republicans keep claiming they are, why are we where we are? It needs to be said loudly. In this, bipartisan ship means the R's can join in and share the glory, or they can dig in and share the balcony.

Second: Lots of Republicans are suddenly likening Obama to Reagan. But wait a minute: did they hear the part of his inaugural where he said something about the question not being whether government is too big or small, but whether it works? So I'd like to hear an overt repudiation of the slow disaster Reagan began when he said government isn't the solution, it's the problem. Since then, Republicans have done their best to prove him correct, by screwing up every governmental action they took. Obama hinted at it. Now he should say it: government isn't the problem, BAD government is the problem. And we've had just about enough of it. Put Reagan and Bush where they belong, quoting the Republican diety one more time: in the dustbin of history. 

Rock. Place (hard).

The deficits run up by George Bush and his Republican congress, even before the so-called bailout (more properly: the unfettered giveaway, with no strings, to the usual beneficiaries of Republican fiscal policy, disregarding the greater good, continuing the discredited delusion -- even Greenspan finally figured it out -- that "markets," ie fat cats, will do the right thing) are appalling. The last two years haven't been much better. Balanced budgets, as a matter of principle, are a long-term necessity, far as I can tell. "Families must balance budgets," we are told, "so why not government?" Despite the fact that the two -- government and family -- are in no way comparable, I agree.

Except now.

Other than dead-enders like Boehner and McConnell (obstructionists for its own sake, it would appear) and Sanford, out of whose cold dead hands Reagan mythology will never be pried, virtually everyone agrees some sort of mega-stimulus is required in these times. Details, a few billion here or there, are rightfully in dispute. But not the central idea. So the question is, ma nishtana ha government ha zeh michol ha other governments? (Apologies to anyone who actually knows Hebrew: I'm taking a wild swing here.) Why is the federal government different from other governments?

What's going on in state governments is instructive. Most require, by state law, balanced budgets. No exceptions for exceptional times. Thus we observe, in California, the nub of the problem: they're screwed. It's about the same, but to a lesser degree, in my state, and in virtually every state with budget requirements so mandated. In hard times, it's the very programs most likely to help turn things around that get cut: education, help for the needy, infrastructure. Yet raising money via taxes seems similarly counter-productive. What are governors to do? Make things worse, through no fault of their own.

Already, there are consequences, with more on the way, undoubtedly.

To my eye, Ronald Reagan screwed us when he was alive, and he's doing it still, from the grave: California never recovered from Prop 13. States that bought into his philosophy (more likely, that of those who whispered into his hollow ear) are now reaping the sour harvest. If it's right, under dire circumstances, for the federal government to spend more than it has, why isn't it so for the states? Even those valued families, when the chips are down, have to. Hard times call for hard times.

From what little I know, a significant part of Obama's stimulus will be in the form of money given to states; maybe not exactly in the form of cash, but in grants for specific "shovel-ready" (look for that one on end-of-year lists of phrases whose disappearance is hoped for) projects. Isn't there a certain amount of charade in that? If states can accept such money -- printed money adding to the amount we all owe to the future -- why the fiction of balanced budget? In effect, it's a pretense that "conservative" economics still are a worthy construct. "Cut spending," said Sanford, above. "Screw 'em," is what he means.

If it's true -- I don't know myself, but I'm easily impressed by Nobel Prizes -- that the idea of low taxes and deregulation and (theoretically) less government as the answer to every economic question is now thoroughly discredited, then why is there this residue across the states? Stuck in the middle with no good answers, governors are having to choose between two wrongs: cut services essential to recovery, take money out of people's hands by raising taxes. All in the name of failed economics.

If my surgical practice had been carried out like the economic practices of the last few decades, not changing when the data demanded it, I'd have been defrocked long since. Sued into submission. Run out of town. My errors would have been shouted in the halls of every hospital whose corridors I'd trod.

But then, surgery is about reality. Not to mention helping people; getting things done.

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