Thinks on a Thursday

Reality is the #1 cause of insanity among those who are in contact with it.

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I am a wonk. I was raised in an atmosphere that considered politics a normal occupation of one's thoughts. I listen to Air America Radio while I'm in the barn. I read The Huffington Post & The Daily Kos. I have a habit of watching Hardball while I prepare dinner. I usually catch Keith Olberman & Rachel Maddow as well. I'm occupied with other things while these shows are playing in the background, but I can do more than one thing at a time.

I am saturated with information. And, I am very, very nervous about our condition. So, last night I tried to have Wheel of Fortune on as I went about the task of preparing food for our consumption. If I was not already half crazy, I am now. How long has this thing been on the air and why? It's really no wonder we got to where we are when this sort of mindless drivel is what occupies people's attention. 

Later that evening I got part of my sanity back. The Daily Show. Perhaps there is a god after all. 

I think I am better off in the lounge listening to the piano as the Titanic goes down. Standing on the bow watching as we sail into the iceberg is not helpful, not when there isn't a thing you can do about it. But my natural inclination is to look. I can't help myself, I've got to see. 

My fault is I'm an old sixties radical who didn't fall in love with the Good Time Charlies who spread the doctrine of greed and so-called individualism. The lie of a Free Market & Free Trade. The misguided and misleading notion that if we willingly concentrate the wealth at the top it will benefit the rest of us. I am a student of history and I knew better. It didn't do me any good in the end, because people like me were relegated to the corner and told to stay there. We get punished the same as those who told us to shut up.

I think a fitting sentence for the Wall Street thugs and the Bush collaborators would be an eternity of endless loops of Wheel of Fortune.

Entitlement

We all are aware of the financial turmoil in the US and the rest of the world. Many people are feeling pain and worry. Speaking in terms of TRILLION is becoming normal. Trillion has become the new billion. Our money is being used to bail out investment firms and the largest insurance company in the world. Very few citizens are pleased with this. 

So, yesterday I hear about a weeklong junket to an expensive resort for top producers for AIG. $440,000.00 of tax-payer dollars. This made me very upset. This morning I hear AIG got another 37 billion on top of the 85 billion they received last month and this bit of news is followed with the fact that AIG has another expensive junket planned and has every intention of following through with it. The CEO says it is standard practice and they intend to go forward with it, but perhaps they will reexamine their spending policies at some time in the future. Something is wrong. The culture that has developed within the monied circles is so clueless and shameless that there isn't a hint of understanding the impropriety of these actions. Business as usual, except it's now on the taxpayer's dollar instead of the shareholder's dollar.

Tuesday evening John McCain said entitlements would need to be cut. He is looking at cutting Social Security by 1.3 trillion dollars. Sorry my friends, but the fact is the entitlements are too expensive. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid just can't be funded as they should be, what can we do? Now go back and read the prior paragraph.

Stick it to the least fortunate and least likely to be able to do anything about it. This is America and we, as a body, need to feel shame.

Going to Hell In a Hand Basket?

Or, are we already there. America currently has somewhere around 

-500 billion in its budget this year and is straddled with a mind-boggling 9 trillion in National Debt. We borrow from anyone who will loan us money, we see our long-standing institutions purchased by foreign companies, we have lost our ability to make anything. We have become a third world country.

Now we are going to bail out Wall Street. My head is spinning so fast I don't know which way is up. I really do believe I am Alice and I've gone through the looking glass. I have some understanding of how we got here, which probably makes it worse.

In 1953 the modern conservative movement was coalesced in a book by Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind. From this sprang Willian F. Buckley's publication, The National Review, giving the conservative movement within the country a nationally distributed voice. This in turn lead to the rise of Barry Goldwater, a Senator from Arizona. He was seen as a viable challenge to JFK in the 1964 election. JFK was assassinated in Nov. of 1963, ensuring that Goldwater did not have a chance at the presidency in 1964. But, he helped build a movement that became a tidal wave by the time Ronald Reagan emerged. Reagan gave a nationally televised speech in favor of Goldwater in the waning days of the 1964 election, which propelled him to national prominence overnight and eventually the governorship of California. It was during the start of his first term as governor that the plan was formulated to run him as president. The conservatives were not happy with Gerald Ford, nor any of the moderate Republicans and were waiting for the time, which came after Jimmy Carter's troubled presidency.

To digress, after the Goldwater defeat the conservatives devised a long-term plan to gain the support of the people who had traditionally voted Democratic, the working class or blue-collar worker. This is a group that had voted concerning their own financial well-being and they were slowly but consistently being turned. Irrelevant social issues began to be substituted for meat and potato issues. This early plan included the funding of conservative think tanks, such as the Heritage Foundation, to have a funding vehicle for the movement. For example, the Heritage Foundation bank rolled the Rush Limbaugh  radio show for several years until he had time to seep into the public conscious and then gain support from advertisers. Without this funding agent the show would have been off the air within a year.

So, 1980, Ronald Reagan wins by a landslide, with the help of the so-called 'Reagan Democrats'. Where am I going with this? From the very moment the New Deal came into place the conservatives have vowed to undo it. There should not be any involvement of government in peoples lives, there should not be any government funded social programs and the big one is Social Security. It has been on the radar screen from the start. Free marketeers, personal responsibility, absolutely they believe in government staying out of the way of business. Business knows what is best and will correct itself. Ronald Reagan put the ball into motion, G. H. W. Bush continued the course, and alas, so did Bill Clinton. So called free market policies went on steroids during the G. W. Bush administration, resulting in the mess we now face. The irony is, free marketeers are now wanting and will get, a massive amount of money, government money (our money) to bail out investment bankers who created convoluted schemes for the purpose of their incredible enrichment. So we have free market profits and socialized losses. And anti-government types keeping a straight face as they bludgeon us into submission with, once more, fear.

Bear Sterns is a done deal. We now own 80% of AIG and now there will be, minimally, another 700 billion for further bail outs. Anyone consider where all of this cash is coming from? Are we giving consideration the the ever-shrinking value of the dollar because of the wild use of capital which we don't have? Give any thought to the world market deciding to trade in Euros as opposed to dollars and what that will mean. As I said, we don't make anything here anymore, we import our goods, which will become ever more expensive as our dollar deteriorates. Commodities always rise in cost as the dollar devalues, i.e oil and corn, grains.

So, do you feel safe now?

Issues of the Day

As I was driving to the grocery store this morning I listened to the radio. So, in January of 2009 a new President will inherit a 500 billion budget deficit and a 9 trillion national debt. We are borrowing money to prop up our country from anyone we can get it from and we have become THE debtor nation of the world. I think very few citizens pay any attention to this, understand how it is devaluing the dollar and impacting our security. As we look to the outside forces in our concern for safety and security we are living on a ticking time bomb of ever-growing debt.

Rather than worry about 'lipstick on a pig' I think our time would be better spent on an issue such as this that has tremendous potential for disaster. We are, I believe, all living in a house of cards and we had better get a handle on it and not be distracted by non-issues.

The Convention is Coming, The Convention is Coming!

The Republican National Convention will be in St. Paul, Mn. My home town. I can't think of a larger irony than that. St. Paul, the die-hard core of Democratic politics is hosting the Republican Convention. It feels like Alice has gone through the looking glass! Right now I wish I still lived there as I am sure there will be high drama in town. In the past several years the ability to exercise your guaranteed right to assembly has been curtailed, putting protesters in 'freedom zones'. Silly me, I thought the entire country is a freedom zone, what was I thinking.

Lest it is felt that I am not fair, let me say that yesterday I caught a portion of a story about Denver and the Democratic Convention. There where wire cages set up to put protesters in as they were arrested. There had been talk of topping them with razor wire. Razor wire! Where are we and what have we become? People have a right to protest, all people. If they are causing harm to others, then they must be stopped, but the act itself is not an offense and it certainly doesn't require metal cages topped with razor wire. To be fair, it was decided that the razor wire was maybe a bit over the top.

It has been a slow but steady decline to this, although it has been accelerated over the past few years, but the slow decline has made it possible to convince the population that what is done 'to protect us' is in our best interest. 

I much prefer a messy and imperfect democracy to a perfect autocracy.