Death Spiral

This is the beginning and the end, from which there's no finding our way back.

All over the United States, community college enrollments have surged with unemployed and underemployed people seeking new skills.

But just as workers have turned to community colleges, states have cut their budgets, forcing the institutions to turn away legions of students and stymieing the efforts to retrain the workforce.

Unemployment is highest among the nation's lesser-educated workers, and for them, community colleges offer a critical pathway to new jobs: Classes are open, relatively cheap and often tailored to picking up job skills.

The process of retraining these workers is considered vital to rebuilding the economy.

It'll get worse. In my state, incomprehensibly, people voted down an initiative that would have created an income tax (we currently have only sales taxes and property taxes) only for the very wealthy. Lowering property taxes for everyone, increasing taxes on families making more than $500 400K (corrected, embarrassingly, via Frank), it would have raised two billion for education.

It was trounced.

The reborn Republican party, enabled by teabaggerism, is not just about the ignoring of education. It's the derision of it, proudly. Along with the supplanting of it by biblical literalism. The consequences are already profound, and we ain't seen nuthin' yet.

I guess we can drive around potholes; oil won't run out for a few more decades. But the end of education is fast suicide. We have been overtaken by the false notion, promulgated by Reagan, taken to a destructive extreme by George W. Bush, and now the basis for current Republicanism, that we don't need to pay for anything, that all spending by the government is bad, that people ought to fend for themselves. That it is ruinous to our country, obvious to anyone willing to have a look, is of no importance. I got mine, f*ck you, I don't care. Credit to teabaggers for being willing to be explicit about it. Shame to everyone else for buying in, while trying to paint it as patriotism; or, worse, to call it Christianity.

What it is is rationalized selfishness. What it is is a death spiral.

Philosophy

Being separated by a thousand miles, my brother and I don't see each other much except, as in the present case, when we gather at my mom's bedside for the latest crisis. (This one seems to be passing, allowing her to return to the ever-ravenous dementia which has eaten most of her past, present, and long-since, her future.)

He was always, and remains, a social liberal. He supported Obama (I'm pretty sure) after his significant financial contributions to Hillary failed to get her there. Now, he's disappointed and has become quite conservative fiscally. While my brother agrees with me that many in the tea party (I'd say most, if not all; he might not) are nutjobs or deeply misled, he believes the movement is not about the crazy stuff, but about philosophy: what is the role of government?

My problem is that it's not really framed that way; or, at least, that in order to get the teabaggers on board with the "philosophy," the powers behind it have to lie and distort. And, more significantly, philosophically, to hide the ball. Not to mention encouraging the coalescing around them of the theocracy-wanting brand of evolution-denying christianists, and the usually suspect fringe hate groups of the right. So, philosophy or not, it's a con-job.

But the question is a fair one, and has been at the heart of our politics forever. What is the role of government? How much will that role cost? How much can we or will we pay for it? Very, very few -- I'd say none -- of the people behind the curtain want to say. The cuts required to maintain -- or, as some would have it, further lower -- the Bush tax cuts and to balance the budget would be truly draconian. It would mean government as military bases, maybe a couple of courtrooms.

My brother seemed to be predicting an end to public education; or, from a practical standpoint, he'd more likely to say, claiming that it's just no longer economically viable. To the question of what happens to those who can't afford private education, I gathered he was saying they'd rely on charitable contributions, and, maybe, the remains of a broken public system. It's certainly true that we're failing our kids with public education in many areas, but it has in part to do with the tax cuts that have already occurred, and there's no way to see improvement in the tax-intransigent world. (The failings have been evolving long before the current economic crash. Prop 13 was a long time ago.) He didn't have much of an answer to what happens to the inner city kids if there isn't enough charity to go around.

Nor do teabaggers.

So let's have that discussion, out in the open. Let's replace the Nazi placards and Foxobeckian simplicities and conspiracies with the real thing. What tax rates do we want, can afford? What government will remain, what will be the consequences? Do we cut loose those in need? What will be the effect on society if we do? Does it matter or not, philosophically, and selfishly? Is it dog-eat-mano and let the cow chips fall in the woods; or does society in general, and individuals in particular, benefit from helping others? Should I care if there are more people living on the streets, fewer well-educated people coming up, people without access to health care until they're dying? If we consign one stratum of society to inferior schools, will it matter? Will we fail to educate the girl who'd have cured cancer, or shall we assume there'll always be another? Is destiny determined by birth?

If so, so much for "the American dream."

Maybe it'd be easier the other way around: to ask what we think government ought to do, and then figure out what it costs, and what tax rates would do it. I wish Barack Obama would give a speech saying exactly his vision of those things, and demand Rs do the same. Let the voters see the real numbers, the real implications, and choose. Implicit in the action of congressional Ds is the conclusion that there are certain things which are bottom-line necessary to a functioning society, and we must do them. Then figure out how to pay for them, like you have to do when you need a new roof. (And, yes, I know paying for it hasn't been high on the list in many past instances, except under Clinton. But the ACA is -- theoretically -- paid for, and Bush's Medicare grade D wasn't. There's tax and spend, and there's don't tax and still spend. How do we get back to sanity when the insane are calling the shots?)

Implicit in teabaggerism, it seems to me, is the illusion that the roof we have will last forever; or that when we need money, cut taxes, and it will magically appear; or God will provide; or if some people out there do need a new roof, it's up to them to pay for it. (If you can't pay, get buckets at the flea market. Just don't come around my place looking for shelter.) What I don't get is that the people they want to return to power have never done the paying part, either; nor have they ever put up realistic numbers; nor have things ever worked out as they predicted. Economies get worse when those guys are in power, and better under the ones they want to kick out.

My brother asks fair questions, necessary questions. But, far as I can see, they're not in any way addressed by teabaggers or their titular leaders like Silly Sarah and eGregious Glenn. The guys in the shadows have, Grover Norquist, the corporate billionaires: they've said, simply, we don't care.

And the RWS™ have said we're not gonna ask, we don't want to know. So shut up.

And the Republican congressional leaders have just said you bring the smoke, we've got the mirrors.

Truth Teller

Saying the obvious, Ronald Reagan's own budget director (David Stockman is still alive? Who knew?) calls out Congressional Republicans. To people with fingers in their ears, saying "la la la la la" as loud as they can, he argues:

IF there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing. The nation’s public debt — if honestly reckoned to include municipal bonds and the $7 trillion of new deficits baked into the cake through 2015 — will soon reach $18 trillion. That’s a Greece-scale 120 percent of gross domestic product, and fairly screams out for austerity and sacrifice. It is therefore unseemly for the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, to insist that the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers be spared even a three-percentage-point rate increase.

The article, which appears in NYT online next to an ad (when I first saw it, anyway) showing Fred Thompson asking for help in keeping the Bush tax cuts (because god knows we need to help the rich actors, for the good of... the rich actors) also says:

More fundamentally, Mr. McConnell’s stand puts the lie to the Republican pretense that its new monetarist and supply-side doctrines are rooted in its traditional financial philosophy. Republicans used to believe that prosperity depended upon the regular balancing of accounts — in government, in international trade, on the ledgers of central banks and in the financial affairs of private households and businesses, too. But the new catechism, as practiced by Republican policymakers for decades now, has amounted to little more than money printing and deficit finance — vulgar Keynesianism robed in the ideological vestments of the prosperous classes.

This approach has not simply made a mockery of traditional party ideals. It has also led to the serial financial bubbles and Wall Street depredations that have crippled our economy. [Emphasis mine, but it should be everyone's.]

Okay, yeah, the Keynesianism dig is aimed at Democrats. Nevertheless, it's refreshing, if also amusingly ironic, to have the guy who engineered the first shot at destroying fiscal responsibility under wrongly-revered Ronnie Reagan speak up now. A few decades too late, but still...

Andrew Sullivan, among the last thoughtful conservatives writing in public, had this to say after reading Stockman's piece:

No intellectually honest person can hold Barack Obama responsible for this long term sabotage of America's fiscal health. The spending he has authorized has to be seen in the context of the massive financial crisis that nearly caused the second Great Depression and may well still cause a lost generation of output and jobs and productive lives.

But the central point Stockman makes is that all of this was not conservatism as it should be, but the degenerate mockery of conservatism that has come to dominate the GOP: a blend of fiscal abandon, politicized religion, lawless foreign policy and utter electoral cynicism. Until this is confronted, owned and refudiated, we may have a Republican future ahead, but not a conservative one.

Such reality-based thinking, of course, has been and will always be thoroughly rejected by the RWS™ and their teabagging fodder.

Evo

From the St. Louis Dispatch.

Where It Is

Just a thought: in this economy, as millions are losing their jobs and millions more are taking pay cuts or working reduced hours, those who continue to retain large incomes are, by comparison, even more flush (not to mention fortunate) than a year ago. Money is scarce, prices are down. Bargains are out there, for them as has.

So. One could argue (and, by golly, I am) that getting rid of the bushian tax cuts for the wealthy makes even more sense now, urgently. De facto, the rich are even richer than they were. How much feeding at the trough of ill fortune do they need?

As he promised, Barack Obama is playing it down the middle, trying to get broad consensus even at the expense of some supporters. He still plans significant tax cuts to most people, an idea my warmth for which is luke, depending on the final details. (In that, it would appear, I'm not alone.) But he's also, evidently, planning to hold off on re-establishing pre-disaster tax rates for those making over 250K. To me, the only argument in his favor is gaining a few Republican votes. I don't discount that; and Obama's commitment to reaching out is something that drew me to him (even as most detractors failed to see it, or willfully ignored it.) Still, the deficit handed to him by Bush is already 1.2 trillion -- a number that would scare the shit out of me, except that it's beyond comprehension. And that's BEFORE any Obama plan.

There are indications that Obama will be looking at Social Security and Medicare as areas for savings. It's ballsy. And, as I've said many times, necessary. Probably doomed, too. Yet, given future projections, it's the responsible thing to do, and will likely alarm the left more than the right (until, perhaps, it comes down to indexing benefits for the wealthy! Also the right thing.)

But there's an obvious need for balance. The unneeded and overly generous tax cuts of Bush are a large part of why we're where we are. There's only so far one ought to go to gain favor with those whose ideas torpedoed the boat in the first place, and then threw an anchor to those in the water. People who continue to make a quarter million bucks a year are doing very well indeed: better than ever. (Might that have been the whole point?) Take away a little of it (and, really, it IS comparatively little), and they'll STILL be way better off than they were. And most assuredly better than everyone else. (Okay, yeah, like the rest of us lots of them must have lost money in the market. But having a big income makes it a hell of a lot easier to take. I was never at the 250K mark, but I was working during the last three recessions and the pay check eased a lot of worry.)

Hey, Rush? Sean? Bill? Mitch? Newt? Patriots of the first order?

Money. Mouth.

.

If I Had A Ham.....

Barack Obama has said the current economic collapse is the "final verdict" on the Bush/McCain economic policies. Republicans are saying it's not the policies, it's the execution. Lowering taxes raises revenues, lowering taxes raises revenues, lowering taxes raises revenues. The only reason it's never worked is because spending was never under control. And the only reason deregulation hasn't worked is because people got greedy.

My mom used to say "If we had ham, we could have ham and eggs, if we had eggs."

I'll stipulate: taxing at 100% would stifle the economy. You stipulate: taxing at 0% would stifle the government. Clearly, there's a range, a taxonomic sweet spot. Reagan never found it, Bush and Bush never found it. Clinton seems to have. During his presidency, the economy soared, revenues leapt, the budget was balanced. Over the objections of the Newtonian congress, with only Democrats favoring, taxes were increased. It's been argued that it was only after certain tax cuts were forced, in 1997, by the Republican congress, that the economy really took off. Well, maybe. It's interesting, though, that as soon as things started falling apart under Bush, Republicans immediately started blaming it all on Clinton. So which is it? 1997 was the reason for everything wonderful, or the 1993 plan was so evil it caused problems even after it was Reaganized?

Here's the thing: let's assume it was the 1997 Republicans that saved the economy. Maybe that was, in fact, the sweet spot. What, then, about the increased tax cuts of George Bush? Might we not all agree that he missed the zone? That a return to the tax status of 1997 might, in fact, make sense? And isn't that, after all, what Obama and the Democrats have been proposing? Get back to the tax levels which were, in fact, a compromise between Clinton's 1993 plan and the Republican push-back; and which the Republicans are touting as the real reason for Clinton's success? Seems like an easy agreement. We already made it once.

If we cut taxes, we'll balance a budget, if we cut spending. 

If we had ham, we'd have ham and eggs, if we had eggs.