The year 2010, the end of the first decade of this new century, may very well go down in American history as the year the varying political constituencies tried to see who could reach bottom first. It was not the incalculable amounts of money spent or the seemingly interminable campaigning, which were painful enough. It was not the polarizing rhetoric or the negative attacks politicians hurled at one another or even the persistent commitment to ridiculing one’s political opponent. It was, in the end, the fact that America’s politicians and their spin doctors completely disregarded the intelligence of the American electorate and the never-ending claims of anger driven by personal attacks that sullied this year’s political season.
We have been told by pundits, again and again how frustrated and angry we are, so instead of responding to that frustration and anger, politicians chose to stoke the fire, fueling the fears that are directly attributable to the current jobless rate, and in doing so, offered few solutions. I think I finally understand Mario Cuomo when he said that politicians campaign with poetry and govern with prose.
This of course is not the sole fault of the politicians. Something is very wrong when candidates are judged not by policy initiatives and creative ideas designed to resolve the frightening economic, social and international challenges, but instead are assessed by how effectively they perform on TV and who has the best sound bite.
It is of course critical for politicians to be skilled in reaching out to the American public so as to generate interest and support for their respective campaigns, but somehow we have sunk to the depths of indecency when our leaders invoke hatred, racism, sexism, fear of anyone different and what seems even more shameful is that we seem to encourage them in their pursuit of “take no prisoners” politics.
We all suffer when even before the votes are counted, the Republican leader in the U.S. Senate declares that it is his Party’s agenda between now and 2012 to make sure that Obama is a “one-term President.” I can understand that Senator McConnell of Kentucky wants a Republican to occupy the White House in 2012, but shouldn’t he be more committed to helping to govern in a way that will result in millions of Americans returning to the workplace? Shouldn’t he be more preoccupied with completing the drawdown in Iraq and ending the horrific war in Afghanistan? Shouldn’t he be more concerned with America’s crumbling infrastructure and failing public education system? Maybe it is just me, but I am more frightened by the words of Senator Jim DeMint, Republican from South Carolina who just months before the final vote on healthcare reform declared that he wanted the vote to be the President’s “Waterloo” thereby denying healthcare coverage for 30 million Americans than I am of the cost of providing access to healthcare for those Americans. Why is it right to spend billions on fighting two wars on the other side of the world, but it is wrong to help 30 million Americans right here have access to healthcare?
President Obama came into office immediately taking on the critical challenges of a failing economy, rising unemployment, and a desperately dysfunctional healthcare system, all within the first eighteen months of his new administration. Overly ambitious? Foolish? A formula for a mid-term election rout? Perhaps all of those things. The rise of the Tea Party was fueled in part by a small but raging opposition to the bank bailouts and the Troubled Assets Recovery Program (TARP) and let’s not forget the derisively put “Obamacare.” It is no small irony that the bailouts and TARP were on President Bush’s watch, something we seem to have forgotten due to some kind of national memory loss. Blamed for an anemic stimulus and unemployment at 10%, Democrats took what President Obama himself called a “shellacking” in this year’s mid-term election. Just two years after the President’s historic election, one of my favorite news magazines, The Economist, blared on its cover immediately following the mid-terms a picture of a posse: “The Republicans Ride In.”
Fighting between the left and the right will never be over. I don’t mean just the cable show battles, but the struggle between those who advocate government to play a major role in bettering society and those who consider such collective action as threats to individual liberties and freedoms; between those who are wary of unbridled and powerful economic interests and those who ally themselves with the forces of unrestrained capitalism, between those who champion tolerance and diversity and those who will fight to the death to protect and advance their version of American fundamentalism.
And yet, it is not always so black or white, us versus them or good against bad (take your pick on what is good or bad). Believe it or not, there are issues and even moments in American history that have transcended and defied the usual divides. Unless we somehow find our way and locate common ground we can all stand firmly on, compromises notwithstanding, then politics in American will devolve into one long, hideous war and on Election Day 2012, it could become even more hideous and last a lot longer.
Friday, December 24, 2010
Friday, December 17, 2010
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell—an Embarrassment
What will be the future of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, a military policy restricting the service of lesbian, gay and bisexual personnel?
In 1778, General George Washington ordered the dishonorable discharge of Lt. Frederick Gotthold, a Navy Ensign, on sodomy charges. This action on the part of Washington was a continuation of British policies prohibiting gay sex in the armed forces. The policy has been more or less continuously enforced ever since. In 1992, President Bill Clinton promised to end the ban, but ultimately negotiated a compromise with Congress that became known as ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT)” which prohibits gay sex but also prohibits any extensive investigation of same.
As it is laid out in USC 10 £ 654, the policy reads, “A member of the armed forces shall be separated from the armed forces under regulations prescribed by the Secretary of Defense if the member has engaged in, attempted to engage in or solicited another to engage in a homosexual act or acts.”
Over 13,000 United States military personnel have been discharged under the policy since 1994. A 2006 study conducted by the University of California at Santa Barbara estimated that since its implementation, DADT has cost the U.S. military $363.9 million. The authors of the study emphasized that this estimate is conservative and does not take into consideration strategic vulnerabilities or possible casualties resulting from the discharge of relatively scarce personnel such as Arabic translators.
President Obama has supported repealing DADT since the beginning of his presidential campaign, as has every leading Democratic candidate since 2000. George W. Bush supported the policy and his predecessor Bill Clinton signed it into law.
According to a May 2005 Boston Globe poll, 79% of Americans—including 58% of self-identified conservatives—supported allowing lesbians and gay men to serve openly in the military. I should however, in the interests of full disclosure, share with you that the shift in public opinion has been gradual; only 63% supported lesbian and gay military personnel in a 2004 Gallup poll and 40% in a 1993 Gallup poll.
The most common argument against allowing lesbians and gay men to serve openly in the military is that it would negatively impact unit cohesion, as homophobic personnel would not want to serve in close quarters with lesbian and gay personnel. Military Times, a conservative leaning magazine to which many military personnel subscribe, found that 10% of readers polled stated that they would actually leave the armed forces if lesbian and gay men were allowed to openly serve.
The reality however, is that the inclusion of lesbian and gay personnel has had no discernibly negative impact on unit cohesion in other countries that allow gay and lesbian personnel to openly serve, such as Australia, Britain, Canada, Israel, France and Russia. A 2008 study by the University of California at Santa Barbara, chaired by four retired military officers (including a vice-admiral and a brigadier general), found no legitimate basis for the argument that allowing gay personnel to serve would undermine unit cohesion.
From a strictly constitutional perspective, the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause reads: “No state shall…deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws…” Because the policy of DADT results in lesbians and gay men being part of an identifiably targeted group, and no compelling basis can be stated to justify discrimination against lesbian and gay personnel, DADT would appear to be unconstitutional under this clause. That said, the U.S. Supreme Court has been reluctant to enforce the equal protection clause in cases involving lesbians and gay men.
While the policy has often been described as an executive branch decision, 10 USC £ 654 must either be struck down by a federal court or repealed by Congress. The Military Enhancement Readiness Act, legislation currently before Congress, would end the ban and advocates have suggested attaching it to the 2011 defense reauthorization bill, but a 2010 repeal is beginning to seem more likely, given the voracious appetite of the war in Afghanistan.
In 1778, General George Washington ordered the dishonorable discharge of Lt. Frederick Gotthold, a Navy Ensign, on sodomy charges. This action on the part of Washington was a continuation of British policies prohibiting gay sex in the armed forces. The policy has been more or less continuously enforced ever since. In 1992, President Bill Clinton promised to end the ban, but ultimately negotiated a compromise with Congress that became known as ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT)” which prohibits gay sex but also prohibits any extensive investigation of same.
As it is laid out in USC 10 £ 654, the policy reads, “A member of the armed forces shall be separated from the armed forces under regulations prescribed by the Secretary of Defense if the member has engaged in, attempted to engage in or solicited another to engage in a homosexual act or acts.”
Over 13,000 United States military personnel have been discharged under the policy since 1994. A 2006 study conducted by the University of California at Santa Barbara estimated that since its implementation, DADT has cost the U.S. military $363.9 million. The authors of the study emphasized that this estimate is conservative and does not take into consideration strategic vulnerabilities or possible casualties resulting from the discharge of relatively scarce personnel such as Arabic translators.
President Obama has supported repealing DADT since the beginning of his presidential campaign, as has every leading Democratic candidate since 2000. George W. Bush supported the policy and his predecessor Bill Clinton signed it into law.
According to a May 2005 Boston Globe poll, 79% of Americans—including 58% of self-identified conservatives—supported allowing lesbians and gay men to serve openly in the military. I should however, in the interests of full disclosure, share with you that the shift in public opinion has been gradual; only 63% supported lesbian and gay military personnel in a 2004 Gallup poll and 40% in a 1993 Gallup poll.
The most common argument against allowing lesbians and gay men to serve openly in the military is that it would negatively impact unit cohesion, as homophobic personnel would not want to serve in close quarters with lesbian and gay personnel. Military Times, a conservative leaning magazine to which many military personnel subscribe, found that 10% of readers polled stated that they would actually leave the armed forces if lesbian and gay men were allowed to openly serve.
The reality however, is that the inclusion of lesbian and gay personnel has had no discernibly negative impact on unit cohesion in other countries that allow gay and lesbian personnel to openly serve, such as Australia, Britain, Canada, Israel, France and Russia. A 2008 study by the University of California at Santa Barbara, chaired by four retired military officers (including a vice-admiral and a brigadier general), found no legitimate basis for the argument that allowing gay personnel to serve would undermine unit cohesion.
From a strictly constitutional perspective, the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause reads: “No state shall…deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws…” Because the policy of DADT results in lesbians and gay men being part of an identifiably targeted group, and no compelling basis can be stated to justify discrimination against lesbian and gay personnel, DADT would appear to be unconstitutional under this clause. That said, the U.S. Supreme Court has been reluctant to enforce the equal protection clause in cases involving lesbians and gay men.
While the policy has often been described as an executive branch decision, 10 USC £ 654 must either be struck down by a federal court or repealed by Congress. The Military Enhancement Readiness Act, legislation currently before Congress, would end the ban and advocates have suggested attaching it to the 2011 defense reauthorization bill, but a 2010 repeal is beginning to seem more likely, given the voracious appetite of the war in Afghanistan.
Friday, December 10, 2010
Compromise = Victory
After months squabbling, posturing and pointing fingers, both Houses of Congress are edging towards some kind of resolution regarding the Bush tax cuts. Millions of Americans are out of work, but I think most of us can agree that many of the people who sit in both Chambers of the Congress deserve their jobs the least.
President Barack Obama has structured a compromise with the Republicans who for the better part of a year have fought tooth and nail to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest two percent of us. President Obama had been arguing that with the economy gasping for air, that it made absolutely no sense to keep providing tax breaks to those who need it the least. Even billionaires like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have expressed their support for the President’s position, but the Republican Party, hell bent to be the party of the rich, has put it all on the line to ensure that the wealthiest Americans get to keep all their money and the poorest Americans get to keep less.
Faced with the ethically bankrupt decision of the Republicans to allow unemployment insurance to expire for millions of Americans, especially so close to the holiday season, the President rightly spoke of how the GOP was in reality holding jobless Americans hostage so he had no choice but to strike a compromise. It reminds me of that age-old TV storyline where a kidnapper is holding a child hostage demanding a huge ransom for her safe return. Obviously, the parent will give the kidnapper whatever they demand knowing that in the end, the kidnapper will pay for their misdeed.
One could easily have the expectation that the Republicans along with their allies, the so-called Blue Dog Democrats, will surely pay a price at the polls in 2012 for taking such a public stand in support of the rich. They gained control of Congress because of a populist uprising, consisting primarily of Tea Partiers and other Americans who called themselves patriots.
The reality however, is that there is absolutely nothing patriotic about ensuring that the gap between the rich and poor widens to the point that America becomes an aristocracy. There is no justification for giving the rich tax cuts since despite what Republicans are saying they are not the ones who are creating jobs. Less than two percent of all tax returns for small businesses are filed by those earning over $250,000 per year and the rest of us can no longer afford to make them richer than they already are.
By securing this compromise, President Obama has shown Americans that the Republicans really have no desire to control the deficit. By turning their backs on an opportunity to reduce the deficit by taking back a tax break from those who did not need in the first place, The GOP is demonstrating that they only want to control the deficit on the backs of America’s middle class and America’s poor.
This is what President Obama had to say earlier this week about the compromise: “Republicans will block a permanent tax cut for the middle class unless they also get a permanent tax cut for the wealthiest Americans, regardless of the cost. We saw that in two different votes that were taken this weekend. And without a willingness to give on both sides, there is no reason to believe this stalemate won’t continue well into next year. This would be a chilling prospect for the American people, whose taxes are currently scheduled to go up on January 1st.”
I hope that as we get closer to November 2012, the American people will remember that the Republican’s first order of business after their mid-term election victory was to fight for tax cuts for the rich—the same rich who are not investing in the American economy but who along with banks are hoarding their wealth.
The President made the right decision to compromise and while thus far in his administration, having values when dealing with Republicans and weak-kneed Democrats afraid to govern has proven to be a liability, this is a political and moral victory for President Obama.
President Barack Obama has structured a compromise with the Republicans who for the better part of a year have fought tooth and nail to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest two percent of us. President Obama had been arguing that with the economy gasping for air, that it made absolutely no sense to keep providing tax breaks to those who need it the least. Even billionaires like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have expressed their support for the President’s position, but the Republican Party, hell bent to be the party of the rich, has put it all on the line to ensure that the wealthiest Americans get to keep all their money and the poorest Americans get to keep less.
Faced with the ethically bankrupt decision of the Republicans to allow unemployment insurance to expire for millions of Americans, especially so close to the holiday season, the President rightly spoke of how the GOP was in reality holding jobless Americans hostage so he had no choice but to strike a compromise. It reminds me of that age-old TV storyline where a kidnapper is holding a child hostage demanding a huge ransom for her safe return. Obviously, the parent will give the kidnapper whatever they demand knowing that in the end, the kidnapper will pay for their misdeed.
One could easily have the expectation that the Republicans along with their allies, the so-called Blue Dog Democrats, will surely pay a price at the polls in 2012 for taking such a public stand in support of the rich. They gained control of Congress because of a populist uprising, consisting primarily of Tea Partiers and other Americans who called themselves patriots.
The reality however, is that there is absolutely nothing patriotic about ensuring that the gap between the rich and poor widens to the point that America becomes an aristocracy. There is no justification for giving the rich tax cuts since despite what Republicans are saying they are not the ones who are creating jobs. Less than two percent of all tax returns for small businesses are filed by those earning over $250,000 per year and the rest of us can no longer afford to make them richer than they already are.
By securing this compromise, President Obama has shown Americans that the Republicans really have no desire to control the deficit. By turning their backs on an opportunity to reduce the deficit by taking back a tax break from those who did not need in the first place, The GOP is demonstrating that they only want to control the deficit on the backs of America’s middle class and America’s poor.
This is what President Obama had to say earlier this week about the compromise: “Republicans will block a permanent tax cut for the middle class unless they also get a permanent tax cut for the wealthiest Americans, regardless of the cost. We saw that in two different votes that were taken this weekend. And without a willingness to give on both sides, there is no reason to believe this stalemate won’t continue well into next year. This would be a chilling prospect for the American people, whose taxes are currently scheduled to go up on January 1st.”
I hope that as we get closer to November 2012, the American people will remember that the Republican’s first order of business after their mid-term election victory was to fight for tax cuts for the rich—the same rich who are not investing in the American economy but who along with banks are hoarding their wealth.
The President made the right decision to compromise and while thus far in his administration, having values when dealing with Republicans and weak-kneed Democrats afraid to govern has proven to be a liability, this is a political and moral victory for President Obama.
Friday, December 3, 2010
Awwww--the US Government is just like your family
So, your mortgage is overdue and you are lying awake at 3 a.m. wondering where the heck the money is going to come from this month when the hallway smoke alarm goes off. Now what should you do? Well, if you are like Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, those erstwhile members of President Obama’s deficit reduction commission who decided to make a splash while the President was visiting Asia, you would probably leap out of your bed, ignore the fire, run outside and plant a For Sale sign in the front yard.
Problem solved!
Let’s just ignore the fact that 9.6 million of our fellow citizens are flat out of work and more than 25 million other Americans are either out of work, trying to make ends meet with one or more part-time jobs, or maybe, they have simply given up. And if that were not enough, it is projected that Social Security will have exhausted its reserves by 2035. It must be a national emergency.
Those who are supposedly in the know seem to think there is an emergency. While watching CNN earlier this week, I watched John King and Ali Velshi comfort each other by showing their enormous wisdom when they shared with the rest of us that “deficit reduction will be the single biggest political issue over the next two years.”
John King wowed us all by stating that “The American people are ahead of their government and their politicians on this, because Ali, as you know, over the past two or three years every family in America has had to make incredibly difficult choices and do things they didn’t want to do. And so they look at Washington and they say why won’t you do things that you don’t want to do, why don’t you do something about this and be grown-ups?”
Of course, it is obvious that the thing to do is to immediately cut government spending, reduce demand which will result in putting more people out of work. Hey, the Republicans have promised us that if we just do that, prosperity will be here again.
As much as I like the guy, President Obama is just a little responsible for this government/family analogy. During his 2010 State of the Union Address when he first announced the formation of the Bowles-Simpson deficit reduction commission he said, “Families across the country are tightening their belts and making touch decisions. The Federal Government should do the same.”
I mean after all, the United States government is just like your family. Can your family run deficits? Except for mortgages, auto loans, college loans, credit cards of course. Otherwise your family is exactly like the Social Security Administration, the Federal Reserve, the Pentagon, all those agencies. So get off your butt and go out and build some bridges, shore up the infrastructure, build some highways and high speed rail. Just make sure that you pay as you go.
Getting back to the deficit reduction commission: Just before Bowles and Simpson decided to beat their own panel to the punch and made the decision to speak out before the commission had even voted, CBS News conducted a survey to find out what Americans want from the new Congress to focus on beginning next January after they are sworn in. Fifty-six percent said “economy and jobs.” Believe it or not, the second biggest issue was “healthcare” at fourteen percent. And dragging up the rear was the “Budget deficit/national debt” at a staggering six percent!
The best way to cut the deficit is---hands? That’s right! The best way to reduce the deficit is through good old fashioned economic growth. The deficit we are burdened by today was caused almost entirely by the Bush tax cuts and the recession—to say nothing of the cost of waging war in Iraq and Afghanistan simultaneously.
As my favorite economist, Dr. Dean Baker recently wrote on his website, “Anyone who bothered to sit down and look at the numbers would see that there was not a big deficit problem by any realistic measure until the housing bubble collapsed.”
For almost two years prior to the bubble collapse, Dean Baker warned often about the dangers of the then growing housing bubble. So, by the same mentality that made most of us discount those early naysayers to our invasion of Iraq, Baker just is not taken as seriously as those who scream on the radio and write in Op-Ed pages from coast to coast scare talk about deficit burden. And this, even after Dr. Baker was proven ultimately correct about the housing bubble all along and despite the fact that he writes in very easy to understand language so that we can all get it without getting a headache struggling through economic language that would drive Adam Smith to drink.
For the immediate future, Dr Baker writes that “people who want lower deficits in the current slump want more people to lose their jobs.” OK—maybe some of them don’t really want people to lose their jobs, but that would be the impact nonetheless. More importantly, further out into a more distant future, a huge part of the U.S. debt problem is due to Medicare (already the trumpets are being sounded by doctors threatening to leave Medicare if rates are cut). During the healthcare debate, Baker wrote that “Per person costs are projected to rise from a bit more than twice the average of other wealthy countries to three or four times the average per person cost. If healthcare costs increase as projected, it will have a devastating impact on the economy.”
What is the solution that Bowles-Simpson and company offer? “Establish a process to regularly evaluate cost growth.”
Man, what will they think of next?
Problem solved!
Let’s just ignore the fact that 9.6 million of our fellow citizens are flat out of work and more than 25 million other Americans are either out of work, trying to make ends meet with one or more part-time jobs, or maybe, they have simply given up. And if that were not enough, it is projected that Social Security will have exhausted its reserves by 2035. It must be a national emergency.
Those who are supposedly in the know seem to think there is an emergency. While watching CNN earlier this week, I watched John King and Ali Velshi comfort each other by showing their enormous wisdom when they shared with the rest of us that “deficit reduction will be the single biggest political issue over the next two years.”
John King wowed us all by stating that “The American people are ahead of their government and their politicians on this, because Ali, as you know, over the past two or three years every family in America has had to make incredibly difficult choices and do things they didn’t want to do. And so they look at Washington and they say why won’t you do things that you don’t want to do, why don’t you do something about this and be grown-ups?”
Of course, it is obvious that the thing to do is to immediately cut government spending, reduce demand which will result in putting more people out of work. Hey, the Republicans have promised us that if we just do that, prosperity will be here again.
As much as I like the guy, President Obama is just a little responsible for this government/family analogy. During his 2010 State of the Union Address when he first announced the formation of the Bowles-Simpson deficit reduction commission he said, “Families across the country are tightening their belts and making touch decisions. The Federal Government should do the same.”
I mean after all, the United States government is just like your family. Can your family run deficits? Except for mortgages, auto loans, college loans, credit cards of course. Otherwise your family is exactly like the Social Security Administration, the Federal Reserve, the Pentagon, all those agencies. So get off your butt and go out and build some bridges, shore up the infrastructure, build some highways and high speed rail. Just make sure that you pay as you go.
Getting back to the deficit reduction commission: Just before Bowles and Simpson decided to beat their own panel to the punch and made the decision to speak out before the commission had even voted, CBS News conducted a survey to find out what Americans want from the new Congress to focus on beginning next January after they are sworn in. Fifty-six percent said “economy and jobs.” Believe it or not, the second biggest issue was “healthcare” at fourteen percent. And dragging up the rear was the “Budget deficit/national debt” at a staggering six percent!
The best way to cut the deficit is---hands? That’s right! The best way to reduce the deficit is through good old fashioned economic growth. The deficit we are burdened by today was caused almost entirely by the Bush tax cuts and the recession—to say nothing of the cost of waging war in Iraq and Afghanistan simultaneously.
As my favorite economist, Dr. Dean Baker recently wrote on his website, “Anyone who bothered to sit down and look at the numbers would see that there was not a big deficit problem by any realistic measure until the housing bubble collapsed.”
For almost two years prior to the bubble collapse, Dean Baker warned often about the dangers of the then growing housing bubble. So, by the same mentality that made most of us discount those early naysayers to our invasion of Iraq, Baker just is not taken as seriously as those who scream on the radio and write in Op-Ed pages from coast to coast scare talk about deficit burden. And this, even after Dr. Baker was proven ultimately correct about the housing bubble all along and despite the fact that he writes in very easy to understand language so that we can all get it without getting a headache struggling through economic language that would drive Adam Smith to drink.
For the immediate future, Dr Baker writes that “people who want lower deficits in the current slump want more people to lose their jobs.” OK—maybe some of them don’t really want people to lose their jobs, but that would be the impact nonetheless. More importantly, further out into a more distant future, a huge part of the U.S. debt problem is due to Medicare (already the trumpets are being sounded by doctors threatening to leave Medicare if rates are cut). During the healthcare debate, Baker wrote that “Per person costs are projected to rise from a bit more than twice the average of other wealthy countries to three or four times the average per person cost. If healthcare costs increase as projected, it will have a devastating impact on the economy.”
What is the solution that Bowles-Simpson and company offer? “Establish a process to regularly evaluate cost growth.”
Man, what will they think of next?
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
The Un-Friendly Skies of the Transporation Security Agency
For many years after its creation, TSA was a really expensive theatre production playing in a city near you. For what has now seemed like forever, when flying, you had to take your shoes off, and if you had a backpack you had to take that off as well and then sort your backpack’s contents in order of importance into seven or eight different containers.
Then, when you inevitably set off the metal detector, because you left your belt on to keep your pants up you have to walk through again, this time with an under-paid, bored TSA agent looking at you as if you were Osama bin Laden.
Thankfully, technology has come to the rescue and those days of cheap theatre are over—or are they? With a recent budget increase, TSA now has state-of-the-art theatre props for their production. Instead of a cranky, overly sensitive metal detector, the TSA has now installed full-body scanners that while they can search every nook and cranny of your person, could also give you cancer after multiple scans over a period of years.
In theory, this new technology seems like a fantastic way to stop the terrorists from doing what they do. Unfortunately, these new scanning machines are also a huge invasion of privacy and more importantly, they can be dangerous to your health.
Each time you fly the now un-friendly skies of TSA, you must first pass through these new fangled scanners where you will be subjected to a small dose of radiation. Admittedly, it is similar to the dosage you receive when x-raying your leg or foot after an accident—they pose no real risk by themselves. The challenge however, is that repeated use of these scanners can statistically increase your risk for cancer over your lifetime. And what is even more frightening is that this small dose of radiation is considerably more dangerous to young children.
If you happen to be someone who never takes these kinds of cancer scares seriously, you must at least see how the privacy of everyone passing through one of these scanners is unreasonably compromised.
These scanners, which are supposed to make us all safer, actually take a full body image and then displays it to a so-called “security enforcement officer.” These images show everything—never mind mom’s warning about dirty underwear—these scans expose every oddly shaped toe, every meal eaten during the past week and of course, the male genitals. This last bit of unsettling consequence of the full body scan if nothing else, probably lends credibility to the old saying that “Men can read maps better than women. Cause only the male mind could conceive of one inch equaling a hundred miles.”
This, for me, extends far beyond any definition of a reasonable policy. While I support the government’s right to sometimes pry, this is something that I think we can all agree crosses the line.
One strange and troubling aspect of all this is that despite the insistence of the TSA that all these images are immediately deleted from their system, there have been several instances of these images being obtained by groups not affiliated with the government, one of those being a privacy watchdog. A positive feature of the system is supposed to be that the stations we all pass through to be scanned are remotely monitored, which means that at the very least, they are after all transmitted over the internet somehow.
As it should be, one does have the option to refuse the health risks associated with radiation scanning and privacy invasion. The alternative to avoiding these scanners is a rather aggressive pat down by a TSA officer. So, instead of getting hit with a dose of radiation, the passenger who enjoys their right to privacy is then given the opportunity to have a perfect stranger feel them all over with gloved hands. Previously, pat downs were accomplished with the back of the hand, but with the adoption of these new security measures, TSA agents have become more aggressive fortified in their behavior by new security regulations that suggest using the palm of one’s hand and getting very personal between the legs is a new standard.
This, naturally is designed to force you into the body scan process because after all, who wants some stranger groping them between their legs, tea baggers notwithstanding.
The TSA of course insists that these pat downs are performed by a professional workforce and that there is absolutely no intent on the part of any TSA officer to take advantage of the situation. Yeah right.
So my friends, if you are flying this weekend, or for Christmas or for any reason in the coming months. I would advise you to not fly unless of course the distance is so great that other modes of transportation would take forever to get you where you want or need to go.
Apparently, from now on purchasing a plane ticket is enough to make you immediately a suspected terrorist. With all the rights we continue to relinquish in the name of national security or even our own security, soon folks will be judged solely by the ethnicity of their clothing or appearance or their skin color. But that could never happen—could it?
Then, when you inevitably set off the metal detector, because you left your belt on to keep your pants up you have to walk through again, this time with an under-paid, bored TSA agent looking at you as if you were Osama bin Laden.
Thankfully, technology has come to the rescue and those days of cheap theatre are over—or are they? With a recent budget increase, TSA now has state-of-the-art theatre props for their production. Instead of a cranky, overly sensitive metal detector, the TSA has now installed full-body scanners that while they can search every nook and cranny of your person, could also give you cancer after multiple scans over a period of years.
In theory, this new technology seems like a fantastic way to stop the terrorists from doing what they do. Unfortunately, these new scanning machines are also a huge invasion of privacy and more importantly, they can be dangerous to your health.
Each time you fly the now un-friendly skies of TSA, you must first pass through these new fangled scanners where you will be subjected to a small dose of radiation. Admittedly, it is similar to the dosage you receive when x-raying your leg or foot after an accident—they pose no real risk by themselves. The challenge however, is that repeated use of these scanners can statistically increase your risk for cancer over your lifetime. And what is even more frightening is that this small dose of radiation is considerably more dangerous to young children.
If you happen to be someone who never takes these kinds of cancer scares seriously, you must at least see how the privacy of everyone passing through one of these scanners is unreasonably compromised.
These scanners, which are supposed to make us all safer, actually take a full body image and then displays it to a so-called “security enforcement officer.” These images show everything—never mind mom’s warning about dirty underwear—these scans expose every oddly shaped toe, every meal eaten during the past week and of course, the male genitals. This last bit of unsettling consequence of the full body scan if nothing else, probably lends credibility to the old saying that “Men can read maps better than women. Cause only the male mind could conceive of one inch equaling a hundred miles.”
This, for me, extends far beyond any definition of a reasonable policy. While I support the government’s right to sometimes pry, this is something that I think we can all agree crosses the line.
One strange and troubling aspect of all this is that despite the insistence of the TSA that all these images are immediately deleted from their system, there have been several instances of these images being obtained by groups not affiliated with the government, one of those being a privacy watchdog. A positive feature of the system is supposed to be that the stations we all pass through to be scanned are remotely monitored, which means that at the very least, they are after all transmitted over the internet somehow.
As it should be, one does have the option to refuse the health risks associated with radiation scanning and privacy invasion. The alternative to avoiding these scanners is a rather aggressive pat down by a TSA officer. So, instead of getting hit with a dose of radiation, the passenger who enjoys their right to privacy is then given the opportunity to have a perfect stranger feel them all over with gloved hands. Previously, pat downs were accomplished with the back of the hand, but with the adoption of these new security measures, TSA agents have become more aggressive fortified in their behavior by new security regulations that suggest using the palm of one’s hand and getting very personal between the legs is a new standard.
This, naturally is designed to force you into the body scan process because after all, who wants some stranger groping them between their legs, tea baggers notwithstanding.
The TSA of course insists that these pat downs are performed by a professional workforce and that there is absolutely no intent on the part of any TSA officer to take advantage of the situation. Yeah right.
So my friends, if you are flying this weekend, or for Christmas or for any reason in the coming months. I would advise you to not fly unless of course the distance is so great that other modes of transportation would take forever to get you where you want or need to go.
Apparently, from now on purchasing a plane ticket is enough to make you immediately a suspected terrorist. With all the rights we continue to relinquish in the name of national security or even our own security, soon folks will be judged solely by the ethnicity of their clothing or appearance or their skin color. But that could never happen—could it?
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Here we go!
It’s happened. The Republicans gained 61 seats in the United States House of Representatives and damn near took control of the United States Senate. So, what’s next?
Republicans and their tea-party allies are gearing up to do two things: Repeal the healthcare legislation passed in the last Congress and limit President Obama to a one-term presidency. And the way they have determined to do this is to scare the American people into voting for their side and the best way to do that is to convince us that our role as a superpower is finished unless we put them in control of both the White House and Congress.
The vanguard of the tea party movement are the deficit hawks who must believe that they are in the home stretch of their efforts to repeal this year’s healthcare legislation since they appear to be pulling out all the stops. The strategy of pointing to the deficit as the reason for all our ills is gaining momentum because opponents of any kind of government spending program—except defense—are turning up the heat by resorting to the infamous standbys of racism and xenophobia.
The latest salvo from the right is an ad sponsored by Citizens against Government Waste. This ad is being widely shown on television in addition to being available at their website. It depicts a classroom in the year 2030 in which a group of Chinese students are learning from their teacher the reasons that great countries throughout history have ultimately declined. The list includes the Roman Empire, the British Empire and of course, the United States.
This is not the first time that the Right Wing in this country has appealed to racism and xenophobia. The China threat is a common thread running through all their media offerings, but this new ad takes this despicable strategy to a whole new level.
At the risk of insulting your intelligence, I just want to make the point here that the amount that our country owes to China and other foreign countries is determined by the trade deficit—not the budget deficit. So the connection makes absolutely zero sense, even at the most basic level. Cutting the budget deficit will in no way reduce or remove the amount the United States owes China if the trade deficit between our two countries remains the same.
The trade deficit in turn is the result of an over-valued dollar. A high dollar makes imports cheap. This causes us to buy more imports. A high dollar also makes our exports more expensive so foreigners will buy less of our exports. High imports and low exports are what cause a trade deficit. This is why Ben Bernanke this past week decried China’s policy of under-valuing their currency.
So, if one is upset about the extent to which China and the rest of the world are gobbling up U.S. debt and other American assets, then they should be angry about our over-valued dollar or how that policy plays right into China’s strategy of under-valuing their own currency. Blaming the budget deficit for what is going on in the international marketplace is just an effort to use racism and xenophobia to support an argument that cannot stand on its own merits.
We should all feel insulted because the merits of the arguments presented in this ad would be laughable if they were not being taken so seriously by millions of Americans.
It is critical for us to understand that the borrowing that took place to finance the stimulus created no debt burden since it largely came from the Federal Reserve Board. This means that the government sold bonds to the Fed, which in turn refunded the interest it received back to the Treasury. Last year, the Fed refunded $77 billion to the Treasury, almost 40 percent of the government’s net interest burden!
The reality is that America has no short-term deficit challenge. If the budget deficit was smaller we would have higher unemployment. How does having more parents lose their jobs help our kids?
Over the long term, America is projected to face a deficit problem only because of its healthcare system. If per person healthcare costs in the United States were comparable to costs in any other industrialized or wealthy country, America would be looking at huge budget surpluses in the distant future, not deficits—and the little bit of reform we managed to squeeze out of the last Congress could all disappear if a Republican attempt to repeal that legislation is successful.
This my friends, is why honest people talk about ways to continue to fix the healthcare system, continue to stimulate the economy, end unemployment, strengthen our efforts to continuously reform the financial system, bring our soldiers home from Iraq and Afghanistan and to develop and pass a comprehensive and fair immigration policy—while the rest produce racist ads about exploding budget deficits.
Republicans and their tea-party allies are gearing up to do two things: Repeal the healthcare legislation passed in the last Congress and limit President Obama to a one-term presidency. And the way they have determined to do this is to scare the American people into voting for their side and the best way to do that is to convince us that our role as a superpower is finished unless we put them in control of both the White House and Congress.
The vanguard of the tea party movement are the deficit hawks who must believe that they are in the home stretch of their efforts to repeal this year’s healthcare legislation since they appear to be pulling out all the stops. The strategy of pointing to the deficit as the reason for all our ills is gaining momentum because opponents of any kind of government spending program—except defense—are turning up the heat by resorting to the infamous standbys of racism and xenophobia.
The latest salvo from the right is an ad sponsored by Citizens against Government Waste. This ad is being widely shown on television in addition to being available at their website. It depicts a classroom in the year 2030 in which a group of Chinese students are learning from their teacher the reasons that great countries throughout history have ultimately declined. The list includes the Roman Empire, the British Empire and of course, the United States.
This is not the first time that the Right Wing in this country has appealed to racism and xenophobia. The China threat is a common thread running through all their media offerings, but this new ad takes this despicable strategy to a whole new level.
At the risk of insulting your intelligence, I just want to make the point here that the amount that our country owes to China and other foreign countries is determined by the trade deficit—not the budget deficit. So the connection makes absolutely zero sense, even at the most basic level. Cutting the budget deficit will in no way reduce or remove the amount the United States owes China if the trade deficit between our two countries remains the same.
The trade deficit in turn is the result of an over-valued dollar. A high dollar makes imports cheap. This causes us to buy more imports. A high dollar also makes our exports more expensive so foreigners will buy less of our exports. High imports and low exports are what cause a trade deficit. This is why Ben Bernanke this past week decried China’s policy of under-valuing their currency.
So, if one is upset about the extent to which China and the rest of the world are gobbling up U.S. debt and other American assets, then they should be angry about our over-valued dollar or how that policy plays right into China’s strategy of under-valuing their own currency. Blaming the budget deficit for what is going on in the international marketplace is just an effort to use racism and xenophobia to support an argument that cannot stand on its own merits.
We should all feel insulted because the merits of the arguments presented in this ad would be laughable if they were not being taken so seriously by millions of Americans.
It is critical for us to understand that the borrowing that took place to finance the stimulus created no debt burden since it largely came from the Federal Reserve Board. This means that the government sold bonds to the Fed, which in turn refunded the interest it received back to the Treasury. Last year, the Fed refunded $77 billion to the Treasury, almost 40 percent of the government’s net interest burden!
The reality is that America has no short-term deficit challenge. If the budget deficit was smaller we would have higher unemployment. How does having more parents lose their jobs help our kids?
Over the long term, America is projected to face a deficit problem only because of its healthcare system. If per person healthcare costs in the United States were comparable to costs in any other industrialized or wealthy country, America would be looking at huge budget surpluses in the distant future, not deficits—and the little bit of reform we managed to squeeze out of the last Congress could all disappear if a Republican attempt to repeal that legislation is successful.
This my friends, is why honest people talk about ways to continue to fix the healthcare system, continue to stimulate the economy, end unemployment, strengthen our efforts to continuously reform the financial system, bring our soldiers home from Iraq and Afghanistan and to develop and pass a comprehensive and fair immigration policy—while the rest produce racist ads about exploding budget deficits.
Friday, November 5, 2010
Finally it's over--but what happened!?
Now that the mid-term elections are finally over, President Obama may not feel like it, but he is a man for whom fortune has smiled upon. The new kid on the block from Illinois who joined the United States Senate in 2005 could have never expected to become President in less than four years. Though he has never lacked in self-confidence, I am sure that he thought that his chance to run would come much later than it actually did.
One of the conditions that made it possible for Barack Obama to be swept into office was the financial panic following the utter collapse of Lehman Brothers just two years ago in September, simultaneously exposing John McCain’s limitations in his understanding of basic economics. Obama was not only better at communicating with the electorate, be also had that distinct coolness about him that projected him as the man with the plan for the times that were becoming increasingly troubled by the hour. At his inauguration, President Obama enjoyed comfortable majorities in both Houses of the US Congress and the President himself literally basked in an international display of goodwill. People like me began to wonder whether the Republicans who had been soundly thrashed in 2006 in President Bush’s own mid-term election (lame duck administration that it was) and then profoundly beaten at the polls in 2008 would ever recuperate.
So, how is it possible that just 21 months later, the Democrats were thoroughly repudiated at the polls and the Republicans have taken control of the House of Representatives and damn near seized control of the United States Senate? The first response is that the same “perfect storm” that blew Barack Obama into office has now come close to wrecking his presidency. As with most things however, there is definitely more to it than simply that. To really understand what has happened, it is important for us to review the past two years in three distinct, different issues: the legacy he inherited from George Bush, the vicious struggle over healthcare reform and the chasm that exists now between the American people and the man whom they voted for in 2008 to engender hope while bringing change to a nation reeling from economic distress and all of the accompanying symptoms of a national malaise.
Thanks George.......
We all knew, even as we pulled the lever, that if elected, Barack Obama would, as the Economist said, ‘inherit the in-box from hell.” Our banking system was near collapse, the economy in general needed critical resuscitation and there were two unfinished wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. If that was not enough, there was also fear over the state of the environment.
Since his election, Obama has had to find solutions to not only these crises, but new ones, as they often do, erupt, such as a BP oil rig exploding and filling the Gulf of Mexico with more than 170 million gallons of crude oil. Nevertheless, the Obama administration tackled some huge economic problems almost before they had cleaned the trash from the mall after the inauguration—and had experienced some apparent success.
At the top of the list was the immediate need to stabilize our financial system. As the Bush administration slipped into oblivion, the President somehow managed to talk a reluctant and almost unwilling Congress into enacting the Trouble Assets Recovery Program (TARP) using $700 billion of taxpayer money to keep the system from sinking. Not only did Senator Obama vote for the TARP, he had to finish the job that Bush started as President Obama. In doing so, his administration resisted the notion to assume public ownership of the banks and instead had his economic advisers devise a system of “stress tests,” a controversial approach that took time to finally kick in but ultimately, appeared to work. So much so in fact, that American banks today are better capitalized than they have been for decades.
The rest of the economy however, was also clamoring for attention. The banks which had been lending to almost anyone, suddenly stopped lending and the ability of consumers to, well, consume, evaporated. Two weeks before the presidential election, the Fed forecast that the rate of unemployment which was then 6.6%, would continue to rise for the next two years and that in 2010, the nation would only witness a moderate recovery.
During the transition, President-elect Obama launched the argument for a stimulus bill that would increase public spending while at the same time, cutting taxes. The American Recovery and Re-investment Act (ARRA) that he signed into law in February 2009 allocated $787 billion, almost all to be spent in two years: roughly one-third in tax cuts, one-third in new spending and one-third in transfers to the states whose budgets had hemorrhaged to the point where state governments had begun to eliminate services, such as police and fire protection as well as the almost wholesale firing of school teachers.
To add to the nightmare, President-elect Obama had to figure out what to do regarding GM and Chrysler. These former bastions of Detroit were now tottering on the edge of extinction, poised to implode and take more than a million jobs in the process. President Bush, in the last days of his presidency threw them a lifeline, but it would be up to President Obama to make the excruciating decision to bail them out. The Obama administration provided GM with $50 billion in return for just a little over 60% of its shares. It wasn’t all easy however, the firm had to declare bankruptcy and fire its management team. As with the banks, this appears in hindsight to have been a good call: both GM and Chrysler (now under new ownership) are back in profit mode and the federal government is preparing to dispose of its ownership status.
Unfortunately (to say the least), not much has changed. Despite the fact that the banking system has been pulled back from the brink of oblivion and the car industry has truly recovered, the stimulus, the Recovery Act in other words, has failed to put even a small dent in the unemployment of millions of Americans. While the economy is not shedding jobs at nearly the rate prior to November 2008, new jobs aren’t being produced either and the rate of unemployment stubbornly hovers at 10%.
Republicans of course, claim that this is proof that the stimulus has been nothing more than one grand failure. Worse, the Republicans have seemed to conveniently forgotten how this whole mess started. Republican campaign ads during the recent mid-terms accused the Obama administration of causing ‘massive unemployment, higher taxes, higher prices’ and anything else they could think of—all conditions that began to manifest themselves between 2000 and 2008. Don’t get me started.
There were, believe it or not, liberal economists such as Drs. Dean Baker and Paul Krugman who argued that the stimulus was not nearly large enough, that the President was being too careful. But at the time, it just did not seem that way. The stimulus combined with the TARP looked like the White House was playing fast and loose with the American taxpayers money.
The land of the free and the home of the brave—just as long as you don’t get sick........
Seven months ago, in what may have been the proudest moment of his presidency, President Obama finally signed into law a legislative act designed to reform America’s system of taking care of its people. The lack of universal healthcare in America has long caused the rest of the world’s industrial nations to at the very least look at us askance, wondering why we could not extend the best medical care in the world to all of our citizens.
That all changed at the stroke of a pen. This new legislation compels all of us to purchase health insurance or be fined. Poorer buyers will get a subsidy and in return for acquiring more than 30 million previously uninsured customers, many of them both young and healthy, insurance companies are compelled to offer more generous coverage. The most critical thing for most of us is that insurance companies can no longer deny coverage due to a pre-existing condition. They are also not allowed to put a cap on how much health care they will pay for over one’s lifetime.
The Republicans, who by now were proudly touting themselves as the “Party of No” fiercely opposed the initiative, and as it struggled through the House, some Democrats were concerned that not one Republican would join with them. Unfortunately, the fear of death panels and all the other cockamamie visceral attacks that came from the Right ensured that no Republican would cross the aisle. In addition, a new political force had begun to make its presence known, the so-called tea partiers, a name selection that must have our founding fathers rolling in their graves. The fact that President Obama relinquished control over the development and passage of the healthcare legislation to congressional Democrats didn’t help matters either and so a bill the Obama administration had hoped to sign into law by the summer of 2009 did not actually become the law of the land until the spring of this year, having failed to garner the vote of even one Republican in either House.
Sadly, the defeat of the Democrats at the polls this past week did not happen due to the merits or even the deficiencies of the healthcare reform bill. The unsettling truth is that despite all of the hullabaloo, and more importantly despite its importance, health care is just not what is most on voters’ minds today. When asked in poll after poll which issue would impact their vote this past Tuesday, 35% of the electorate asked chose the economy and jobs while only 10% chose healthcare. The irony may be that the reason why American voters didn’t choose healthcare is because President Obama’s victory in getting the legislation passed may have taken that issue out of the limelight. And to be truthful, at a time of economic distress, it is no wonder that most Americans are more concerned about how to survive than they are concerned about getting sick.
Where have all the flowers gone.................
Two months ago, Gallup published a poll in which it listed five of the Obama administration’s main achievements and asked respondents whether they approved of them. A majority (61% to 37%) approved of one: the reform of the financial regulations passed this past summer. Every one of the other four was rejected: the rescue of the financial system (61% to 37%); the stimulus (52% to 43%); the bail out of the auto industry (56% to 43%) and healthcare reform (56% to 39%).
There is absolutely no doubt in anyone’s mind. The mid-terms election has ignited the struggle of President Obama to save his presidency. On the campaign trail these past few weeks, there has been a slight resurgence of the candidate Obama as he connected at least with his base, which in itself is quite a victory. At a speech in Chicago just hours before the election, he put into words the strategy of the Party of No, describing Republicans as folks who while understanding that they had created a huge economic disaster, could distance themselves from ownership of the failing economy by just saying “No!” to everything Obama and the Democrats tried to do. And by saying no to even the kind of policies they have historically supported like helping small businesses or cutting taxes, they could be angry with those who are struggling.
There is no doubt in my mind that while this is simply a too-easy perspective of why things have gone wrong politically for the President and the Democrats, there is also admittedly some truth. What’s more, the kind of attacks that have sprung from the mouths of the likes of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh are more filthy and visceral than any I have seen in six decades. Even the anger from the Left towards George Bush, a president the Left vilified, pale in comparison and despite what they say, there is also no denial that at the very least, the attacks against Obama are not at least tinged with racism.
Of course, the Republicans take an opposing view to this assessment. Republicans claim they have voted against every White House initiative because they felt they needed to assume the posture of a “principled opposition” and resist the notion of squandering Americans hard-earned tax dollars.
Finally, I bet if you close your eyes for a moment and think back to February of 2009 when Rick Santelli, a former Chicago trader, publicly screamed at news of a plan to help homeowners who had become delinquent on their mortgage, “This is America! How many of you people want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgage that has an extra bathroom and can’t pay their bills” you will realize that it was at that moment that the tea party movement was born. As my mother used to say, “It’s going to get worse before it gets better honey.”
Like many who supported Barack Obama in 2008, I expected so much more than what I have gotten these first two years of his presidency, namely, stronger healthcare reform with a public option, comprehensive immigration reform, action on first saving and then improving the environment and most importantly, an immediate exit from Afghanistan.
Tuesday for some may have been the beginning of the end to that dream, but it is my hope and prayer that somehow, these next two years will provide opportunities for the President to have the kinds of accomplishments that will help put Americans back to work, secure the peace and become the kind of leader I still think he is, one who because of his own inherent diversity can help to heal the racial, social and economic divide that threatens to destroy us from within unless we can learn to once again desire to help one another and maybe just a little more importantly, trust one another again.
One of the conditions that made it possible for Barack Obama to be swept into office was the financial panic following the utter collapse of Lehman Brothers just two years ago in September, simultaneously exposing John McCain’s limitations in his understanding of basic economics. Obama was not only better at communicating with the electorate, be also had that distinct coolness about him that projected him as the man with the plan for the times that were becoming increasingly troubled by the hour. At his inauguration, President Obama enjoyed comfortable majorities in both Houses of the US Congress and the President himself literally basked in an international display of goodwill. People like me began to wonder whether the Republicans who had been soundly thrashed in 2006 in President Bush’s own mid-term election (lame duck administration that it was) and then profoundly beaten at the polls in 2008 would ever recuperate.
So, how is it possible that just 21 months later, the Democrats were thoroughly repudiated at the polls and the Republicans have taken control of the House of Representatives and damn near seized control of the United States Senate? The first response is that the same “perfect storm” that blew Barack Obama into office has now come close to wrecking his presidency. As with most things however, there is definitely more to it than simply that. To really understand what has happened, it is important for us to review the past two years in three distinct, different issues: the legacy he inherited from George Bush, the vicious struggle over healthcare reform and the chasm that exists now between the American people and the man whom they voted for in 2008 to engender hope while bringing change to a nation reeling from economic distress and all of the accompanying symptoms of a national malaise.
Thanks George.......
We all knew, even as we pulled the lever, that if elected, Barack Obama would, as the Economist said, ‘inherit the in-box from hell.” Our banking system was near collapse, the economy in general needed critical resuscitation and there were two unfinished wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. If that was not enough, there was also fear over the state of the environment.
Since his election, Obama has had to find solutions to not only these crises, but new ones, as they often do, erupt, such as a BP oil rig exploding and filling the Gulf of Mexico with more than 170 million gallons of crude oil. Nevertheless, the Obama administration tackled some huge economic problems almost before they had cleaned the trash from the mall after the inauguration—and had experienced some apparent success.
At the top of the list was the immediate need to stabilize our financial system. As the Bush administration slipped into oblivion, the President somehow managed to talk a reluctant and almost unwilling Congress into enacting the Trouble Assets Recovery Program (TARP) using $700 billion of taxpayer money to keep the system from sinking. Not only did Senator Obama vote for the TARP, he had to finish the job that Bush started as President Obama. In doing so, his administration resisted the notion to assume public ownership of the banks and instead had his economic advisers devise a system of “stress tests,” a controversial approach that took time to finally kick in but ultimately, appeared to work. So much so in fact, that American banks today are better capitalized than they have been for decades.
The rest of the economy however, was also clamoring for attention. The banks which had been lending to almost anyone, suddenly stopped lending and the ability of consumers to, well, consume, evaporated. Two weeks before the presidential election, the Fed forecast that the rate of unemployment which was then 6.6%, would continue to rise for the next two years and that in 2010, the nation would only witness a moderate recovery.
During the transition, President-elect Obama launched the argument for a stimulus bill that would increase public spending while at the same time, cutting taxes. The American Recovery and Re-investment Act (ARRA) that he signed into law in February 2009 allocated $787 billion, almost all to be spent in two years: roughly one-third in tax cuts, one-third in new spending and one-third in transfers to the states whose budgets had hemorrhaged to the point where state governments had begun to eliminate services, such as police and fire protection as well as the almost wholesale firing of school teachers.
To add to the nightmare, President-elect Obama had to figure out what to do regarding GM and Chrysler. These former bastions of Detroit were now tottering on the edge of extinction, poised to implode and take more than a million jobs in the process. President Bush, in the last days of his presidency threw them a lifeline, but it would be up to President Obama to make the excruciating decision to bail them out. The Obama administration provided GM with $50 billion in return for just a little over 60% of its shares. It wasn’t all easy however, the firm had to declare bankruptcy and fire its management team. As with the banks, this appears in hindsight to have been a good call: both GM and Chrysler (now under new ownership) are back in profit mode and the federal government is preparing to dispose of its ownership status.
Unfortunately (to say the least), not much has changed. Despite the fact that the banking system has been pulled back from the brink of oblivion and the car industry has truly recovered, the stimulus, the Recovery Act in other words, has failed to put even a small dent in the unemployment of millions of Americans. While the economy is not shedding jobs at nearly the rate prior to November 2008, new jobs aren’t being produced either and the rate of unemployment stubbornly hovers at 10%.
Republicans of course, claim that this is proof that the stimulus has been nothing more than one grand failure. Worse, the Republicans have seemed to conveniently forgotten how this whole mess started. Republican campaign ads during the recent mid-terms accused the Obama administration of causing ‘massive unemployment, higher taxes, higher prices’ and anything else they could think of—all conditions that began to manifest themselves between 2000 and 2008. Don’t get me started.
There were, believe it or not, liberal economists such as Drs. Dean Baker and Paul Krugman who argued that the stimulus was not nearly large enough, that the President was being too careful. But at the time, it just did not seem that way. The stimulus combined with the TARP looked like the White House was playing fast and loose with the American taxpayers money.
The land of the free and the home of the brave—just as long as you don’t get sick........
Seven months ago, in what may have been the proudest moment of his presidency, President Obama finally signed into law a legislative act designed to reform America’s system of taking care of its people. The lack of universal healthcare in America has long caused the rest of the world’s industrial nations to at the very least look at us askance, wondering why we could not extend the best medical care in the world to all of our citizens.
That all changed at the stroke of a pen. This new legislation compels all of us to purchase health insurance or be fined. Poorer buyers will get a subsidy and in return for acquiring more than 30 million previously uninsured customers, many of them both young and healthy, insurance companies are compelled to offer more generous coverage. The most critical thing for most of us is that insurance companies can no longer deny coverage due to a pre-existing condition. They are also not allowed to put a cap on how much health care they will pay for over one’s lifetime.
The Republicans, who by now were proudly touting themselves as the “Party of No” fiercely opposed the initiative, and as it struggled through the House, some Democrats were concerned that not one Republican would join with them. Unfortunately, the fear of death panels and all the other cockamamie visceral attacks that came from the Right ensured that no Republican would cross the aisle. In addition, a new political force had begun to make its presence known, the so-called tea partiers, a name selection that must have our founding fathers rolling in their graves. The fact that President Obama relinquished control over the development and passage of the healthcare legislation to congressional Democrats didn’t help matters either and so a bill the Obama administration had hoped to sign into law by the summer of 2009 did not actually become the law of the land until the spring of this year, having failed to garner the vote of even one Republican in either House.
Sadly, the defeat of the Democrats at the polls this past week did not happen due to the merits or even the deficiencies of the healthcare reform bill. The unsettling truth is that despite all of the hullabaloo, and more importantly despite its importance, health care is just not what is most on voters’ minds today. When asked in poll after poll which issue would impact their vote this past Tuesday, 35% of the electorate asked chose the economy and jobs while only 10% chose healthcare. The irony may be that the reason why American voters didn’t choose healthcare is because President Obama’s victory in getting the legislation passed may have taken that issue out of the limelight. And to be truthful, at a time of economic distress, it is no wonder that most Americans are more concerned about how to survive than they are concerned about getting sick.
Where have all the flowers gone.................
Two months ago, Gallup published a poll in which it listed five of the Obama administration’s main achievements and asked respondents whether they approved of them. A majority (61% to 37%) approved of one: the reform of the financial regulations passed this past summer. Every one of the other four was rejected: the rescue of the financial system (61% to 37%); the stimulus (52% to 43%); the bail out of the auto industry (56% to 43%) and healthcare reform (56% to 39%).
There is absolutely no doubt in anyone’s mind. The mid-terms election has ignited the struggle of President Obama to save his presidency. On the campaign trail these past few weeks, there has been a slight resurgence of the candidate Obama as he connected at least with his base, which in itself is quite a victory. At a speech in Chicago just hours before the election, he put into words the strategy of the Party of No, describing Republicans as folks who while understanding that they had created a huge economic disaster, could distance themselves from ownership of the failing economy by just saying “No!” to everything Obama and the Democrats tried to do. And by saying no to even the kind of policies they have historically supported like helping small businesses or cutting taxes, they could be angry with those who are struggling.
There is no doubt in my mind that while this is simply a too-easy perspective of why things have gone wrong politically for the President and the Democrats, there is also admittedly some truth. What’s more, the kind of attacks that have sprung from the mouths of the likes of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh are more filthy and visceral than any I have seen in six decades. Even the anger from the Left towards George Bush, a president the Left vilified, pale in comparison and despite what they say, there is also no denial that at the very least, the attacks against Obama are not at least tinged with racism.
Of course, the Republicans take an opposing view to this assessment. Republicans claim they have voted against every White House initiative because they felt they needed to assume the posture of a “principled opposition” and resist the notion of squandering Americans hard-earned tax dollars.
Finally, I bet if you close your eyes for a moment and think back to February of 2009 when Rick Santelli, a former Chicago trader, publicly screamed at news of a plan to help homeowners who had become delinquent on their mortgage, “This is America! How many of you people want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgage that has an extra bathroom and can’t pay their bills” you will realize that it was at that moment that the tea party movement was born. As my mother used to say, “It’s going to get worse before it gets better honey.”
Like many who supported Barack Obama in 2008, I expected so much more than what I have gotten these first two years of his presidency, namely, stronger healthcare reform with a public option, comprehensive immigration reform, action on first saving and then improving the environment and most importantly, an immediate exit from Afghanistan.
Tuesday for some may have been the beginning of the end to that dream, but it is my hope and prayer that somehow, these next two years will provide opportunities for the President to have the kinds of accomplishments that will help put Americans back to work, secure the peace and become the kind of leader I still think he is, one who because of his own inherent diversity can help to heal the racial, social and economic divide that threatens to destroy us from within unless we can learn to once again desire to help one another and maybe just a little more importantly, trust one another again.
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