The war in Afghanistan passed a grim milestone this past Friday in a horrible reminder of just how protracted and costly this war has become. As volunteers placed miniature American flags upon the endless rows of little white headstones at Arlington cemetery, the 1,000th soldier to die in Afghanistan breathed his last breath. Appropriately enough, his death also came just days away from the war in Afghanistan becoming America’s longest war.
It has been almost nine years since the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in the weeks immediately following Al-Queda’s attacks on American soil on September, 11, 2001 and the war has gone on and on, drifting in and out of public consciousness as some distant conflict, constantly overshadowed by the far more costly Iraq war.
Whether a response to terrorism was required or not, the years have taken their toll and even this “war of necessity” has resulted in hundreds of tragedies that multiply exponentially, impacting more and more American families on a daily basis. As allied forces prepare for a major offensive in Kandahar this summer, there seems to be no end in sight to this conflict.
President Barack Obama has added thousands more American troops into the Afghan theatre of war and for the first time ever, the number of American forces in Afghanistan exceeds that in Iraq. Afghan war costs will also eclipse those in Iraq this year for the first time since the 2003 invasion that brought down the regime of Saddam Hussein.
As almost anyone would imagine, hawk and dove alike, escalating the war has its price. The number of U.S. fatalities in and around Afghanistan in 2009 doubled the death count of 2008. By the time 2010 draws to a close, there will be almost 100,000 American troops in Afghanistan for a total foreign military presence of 150,000 troops.
As Americans head to the polls this fall they will among other things be looking closely at the trillion dollar cost to the American treasury for our involvement in both Iraq and Afghanistan thus far. For those in this country who are so concerned about the national debt, this might be a good place to start whittling it down. Already, a $60 billion war funding bill has cleared the US Senate and now awaits passage in the US House of Representatives next month.
In a recent news conference, when President Obama was asked about his plans to begin transferring control of security to Afghan military and police in those parts of the country that are least contested, he referred to that strategy as a “big messy process.” Not his usual eloquence but accurate nonetheless. To add to that, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has already begun the process of backpedaling away from any U.S. troops being withdrawn during the summer of 2011—an earlier prediction now viewed as hopelessly optimistic.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration’s criticism of Afghan President Hamid Karzai for allowing fraud and corruption to be representative of his rule has been replaced by the need to expand the use of unmanned drones and US Special Forces for targeted killings along the border with Pakistan. It seems that President Obama and his advisers take the war far more seriously than the Afghan President as Karzai spends his time making nice with his Iranian neighbors, borrowing a page from the American handbook of politics by allowing himself to be blown in whatever direction the so-called populist winds are blowing. So, while American boys are dying in Afghani villages and mountain passes, he is proudly exclaiming that he would join the Taliban “resistance.”
When President Bush invaded Afghanistan, the stated objective was to protect the United States from extremist threats from distant lands. Since that time, the Taliban has regrouped, Osama bin Laden has continued to avoid capture and Afghanistan is once again engulfed in war.
There are many in this country who point to the fact that since our invasion of Afghanistan and the subsequent invasion of Iraq, that we have not suffered an attack on our country like the one we suffered on 9/11. For all the soldiers who now lie dead on this Memorial Day, they are the ones who paid the ultimate sacrifice for that claim and all the claims throughout our history that have sent our sons and daughters to war, not the politicians who sent them there and continue to do so.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Financial Sector Reform--Or is it?
The United States Congress has finally decided to govern. More than likely action on financial regulatory reform is a little too late for this body of incumbent politicians but, possibly in time to do some good for the American people.
This past Thursday, lawmakers made two key changes to financial sector reform legislation making its way through the U.S. Senate. In a 64-35 vote, the Senate voted to create a ratings board overseen by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) designed to decide which credit rating agencies will rate mortgage-backed and other “structured” securities. It is necessary to do this because currently Standard & Poor’s and the Moody’s Investment Service have historically inflated the value of the very same mortgage bonds that they are paid to assess.
Public pension funds blame S&P and Moody’s for helping to cause the global financial crisis by assigning top rankings to mortgage-linked securities that blew up when the housing market collapsed in 2007 and 2008. Lawmakers and regulators have debated since then on how reduce this “staggering conflict of interest”
Senator Franken, not only a freshman Senator but one who arrived months late to begin his term because of endless recounts and lawsuits challenging his victory in Minnesota, seemed to grasp the conflict and its resolution rather quickly. Moving to halt such practices is as Senator Franken said in a statement, a no-brainer. During floor debate on his amendment, he stated that “There is a staggering conflict of interest affecting the credit-rating industry. Issuers of securities are paying for the credit ratings. They shop around for their ratings.”
Before we break out the Franken for President banners however, let’s keep in mind that the new ratings board proposed in his amendment would oversee only structured securities, leaving Wall Street salespeople free to carry on the rigging of ratings for other instruments.
In the second key change to the financial regulatory reform package, merchants may finally get relief from the onerously high “interchange” or swipe. These are fees card-issuers charge to process debit-card transactions. Similar to Senator Franken’s amendment in terms of its reform power, this second change, as far as reforms go, is also pretty low-hanging. Even those same Wall Street honchos who decry any kind of financial reform have expressed support for ending the high fees merchants pay for the ‘privilege’ of processing debit-card transactions.
What makes this interchange limit sponsored by Senator Richard Durbin, (D-Ill.) so weak is that it applies only to debit cards—leaving credit-card fees alone. That is a major concession to financial firms because the swipe income they derive from credit card transactions dwarfs what they receive from debit card purchases. Senator Durbin’s original proposal had targeted both.
So, despite all the fiery rhetoric in Washington lately, the reform bill in its current form remains fairly tame, at least relative to the crisis that plunged the country into its current state of economic recession. It will put a dent in bank profits, but it won’t drastically alter the paradigm of the way they do business. Wall Street is relatively unscathed.
That could all change next week however as the US Senate is scheduled to vote on three major provisions that, if passed, could significantly alter the financial landscape. One amendment, backed by Senator Blanche Lincoln, (D-ARK.), would force banks finally to unload their derivatives businesses.
Another would also forbid banks from engaging in proprietary trading. This practice occurs when banks actively trade stocks, bonds, currencies, commodities and their derivatives or other financial instruments with its own money as opposed to its customer’s money, so as to make a profit for itself. They act like a hedge fund and many critics of this practice insist that large banks purposely leave ambiguous the amount of non-proprietary trading they do versus the amount of proprietary trading they do because it is felt that proprietary trading is riskier and results in more volatile profits.
For example, if a company sold stock with a bank, whoever first purchased shares would possibly have a difficult time selling them to buyers if those buyers were not familiar with the company. Consequently, the investment bank then agrees to buy the shares sold in order to identify another buyer. This, by the way, provides liquidity to the marketplace. The bank normally does not care about the fundamental or intrinsic value of the shares, only that it can sell them at a slightly higher price than what it paid for them. To accomplish this, the investment bank employs traders who over time begin to devise different strategies within this system designed to earn even more profit independent of providing client liquidity, and this is how proprietary trading was created.
Proprietary traders have the highest value at risk among other activities at the bank and this is why investment banks such as Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and the late Merrill Lynch are known to have earned a significant portion of their profits through proprietary trading.
Finally, a third provision would inhibit U.S. states in protecting consumers from predatory lending and related abuses while providing more power to the federal government to protect consumers. Most Senate Democrats however, along with the White House and even many state attorneys general are pushing for a version that would have federal regulators set a minimum standard while allowing states to push for tougher rules as they feel appropriate.
As one would imagine, the financial industry strongly opposes the bans on derivative and proprietary trading while supporting the federal government’s right to “preempt” state-level financial enforcers. I suppose we are all about to find out if Congress really means business. As George Washington so eloquently phrased it, “Guard against postures of pretended patriotism.”
This past Thursday, lawmakers made two key changes to financial sector reform legislation making its way through the U.S. Senate. In a 64-35 vote, the Senate voted to create a ratings board overseen by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) designed to decide which credit rating agencies will rate mortgage-backed and other “structured” securities. It is necessary to do this because currently Standard & Poor’s and the Moody’s Investment Service have historically inflated the value of the very same mortgage bonds that they are paid to assess.
Public pension funds blame S&P and Moody’s for helping to cause the global financial crisis by assigning top rankings to mortgage-linked securities that blew up when the housing market collapsed in 2007 and 2008. Lawmakers and regulators have debated since then on how reduce this “staggering conflict of interest”
Senator Franken, not only a freshman Senator but one who arrived months late to begin his term because of endless recounts and lawsuits challenging his victory in Minnesota, seemed to grasp the conflict and its resolution rather quickly. Moving to halt such practices is as Senator Franken said in a statement, a no-brainer. During floor debate on his amendment, he stated that “There is a staggering conflict of interest affecting the credit-rating industry. Issuers of securities are paying for the credit ratings. They shop around for their ratings.”
Before we break out the Franken for President banners however, let’s keep in mind that the new ratings board proposed in his amendment would oversee only structured securities, leaving Wall Street salespeople free to carry on the rigging of ratings for other instruments.
In the second key change to the financial regulatory reform package, merchants may finally get relief from the onerously high “interchange” or swipe. These are fees card-issuers charge to process debit-card transactions. Similar to Senator Franken’s amendment in terms of its reform power, this second change, as far as reforms go, is also pretty low-hanging. Even those same Wall Street honchos who decry any kind of financial reform have expressed support for ending the high fees merchants pay for the ‘privilege’ of processing debit-card transactions.
What makes this interchange limit sponsored by Senator Richard Durbin, (D-Ill.) so weak is that it applies only to debit cards—leaving credit-card fees alone. That is a major concession to financial firms because the swipe income they derive from credit card transactions dwarfs what they receive from debit card purchases. Senator Durbin’s original proposal had targeted both.
So, despite all the fiery rhetoric in Washington lately, the reform bill in its current form remains fairly tame, at least relative to the crisis that plunged the country into its current state of economic recession. It will put a dent in bank profits, but it won’t drastically alter the paradigm of the way they do business. Wall Street is relatively unscathed.
That could all change next week however as the US Senate is scheduled to vote on three major provisions that, if passed, could significantly alter the financial landscape. One amendment, backed by Senator Blanche Lincoln, (D-ARK.), would force banks finally to unload their derivatives businesses.
Another would also forbid banks from engaging in proprietary trading. This practice occurs when banks actively trade stocks, bonds, currencies, commodities and their derivatives or other financial instruments with its own money as opposed to its customer’s money, so as to make a profit for itself. They act like a hedge fund and many critics of this practice insist that large banks purposely leave ambiguous the amount of non-proprietary trading they do versus the amount of proprietary trading they do because it is felt that proprietary trading is riskier and results in more volatile profits.
For example, if a company sold stock with a bank, whoever first purchased shares would possibly have a difficult time selling them to buyers if those buyers were not familiar with the company. Consequently, the investment bank then agrees to buy the shares sold in order to identify another buyer. This, by the way, provides liquidity to the marketplace. The bank normally does not care about the fundamental or intrinsic value of the shares, only that it can sell them at a slightly higher price than what it paid for them. To accomplish this, the investment bank employs traders who over time begin to devise different strategies within this system designed to earn even more profit independent of providing client liquidity, and this is how proprietary trading was created.
Proprietary traders have the highest value at risk among other activities at the bank and this is why investment banks such as Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and the late Merrill Lynch are known to have earned a significant portion of their profits through proprietary trading.
Finally, a third provision would inhibit U.S. states in protecting consumers from predatory lending and related abuses while providing more power to the federal government to protect consumers. Most Senate Democrats however, along with the White House and even many state attorneys general are pushing for a version that would have federal regulators set a minimum standard while allowing states to push for tougher rules as they feel appropriate.
As one would imagine, the financial industry strongly opposes the bans on derivative and proprietary trading while supporting the federal government’s right to “preempt” state-level financial enforcers. I suppose we are all about to find out if Congress really means business. As George Washington so eloquently phrased it, “Guard against postures of pretended patriotism.”
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Crying Over Spilt Oil
The admission last week by Tony Hayward, Better Petroleum’s (BP) Chief Executive Officer, that his company was “absolutely responsible” for the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico came amidst an environment in which BP spokespersons spent the entire week before attempting to point blame on to Transocean, the firm that owns the actual drilling rig on which the blowout occurred. On Thursday, May 14th, BP finally took full responsibility for the cleanup operation and promised to pay all necessary and appropriate clean up costs.” In full disclosure, the oil giant was forced to confirm what President Obama had already proclaimed publicly, that BP would be footing the bill. To paraphrase U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, ‘the U.S. Government’s job is to keep its boot on BP’s neck throughout this environmental disaster.’
Everyone however is playing politics, not least a federal government with a long history of ignoring Louisiana’s woes. Not wanting to repeat the catastrophic mistakes made by the Bush administration in dealing with Hurricane Katrina five years ago, President Obama and his administration have responded quickly and massively to this latest Louisiana environmental crisis. But neither a relatively contrite BP nor a responsive President will be enough to prevent what will ultimately go down in history as the world’s most devastating oil spillage to date. For this, BP in particular, and the oil industry in general, must assume their share of the blame when these events occur. It was BP who made the management decision to drill the deepest wells in the Gulf of Mexico and it was its business strategy to become the leader of the oil industry’s drilling frontiers in the Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic.
BP, formerly known as British Petroleum, has long been accused of putting profits before safety. As I did the research for this blog, I discovered that the kind of oil drilling blowout that has occurred in the Gulf is not uncommon, nor is the event of a fail-safe device doing just that—failing. So it is a little late now for BP to discover that staunching the three leaks on the Gulf’s ocean floor with robot-controlled submersibles is like doing open heart surgery in total darkness. This is also not the time to attempt strategies never tried before at this depth such as building and then lowering a 74 ton steel funnel over the leak and then “hoovering” or pumping the oil to the surface and into giant oil cargo ships. These strategies with their un-tried technologies should have been tested and then tested again before BP got the license to drill in the Gulf—or anywhere else for that matter.
As it usually is however, when profits are measured against safety, it was the other way around. BP is in the forefront of lobbying to contain the regulatory framework within which it has been operating in the Gulf of Mexico. Last year, the oil conglomerate spent $15.9 million on federal lobbying regarding such issues as drilling for oil on the outer continental shelf. Even as this disaster continues to unfold, BP continues to oppose tougher rules of safety inspection, arguing that voluntary compliance is enough. One has to ask the question, how much less of a disaster would this be if almost $16 million had instead been invested in oil spillage preventable or containable technology?
On Friday, May 15th, President Obama, who seems to have seemingly backed away from his recent limited support for off-shore drilling also seems to be losing his patience with oil company executives and officials who have been trading blame since the rig exploded. "I will not tolerate more finger-pointing or irresponsibility," he said in the White House rose garden, flanked by members of his cabinet. "The system failed, and it failed badly. And for that, there is enough responsibility to go around. And all parties should be willing to accept it."
This catastrophe is not unfolding off the coast of Nigeria or Azerbaijan, but on home turf and on primetime television. Maybe now, it will become clear to everyone, that off-shore drilling is not a wise response to our energy needs after all. That the Sarah Palin cry to “Drill baby drill” is a recipe for disaster, just as a Palin presidency would be.
Everyone however is playing politics, not least a federal government with a long history of ignoring Louisiana’s woes. Not wanting to repeat the catastrophic mistakes made by the Bush administration in dealing with Hurricane Katrina five years ago, President Obama and his administration have responded quickly and massively to this latest Louisiana environmental crisis. But neither a relatively contrite BP nor a responsive President will be enough to prevent what will ultimately go down in history as the world’s most devastating oil spillage to date. For this, BP in particular, and the oil industry in general, must assume their share of the blame when these events occur. It was BP who made the management decision to drill the deepest wells in the Gulf of Mexico and it was its business strategy to become the leader of the oil industry’s drilling frontiers in the Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic.
BP, formerly known as British Petroleum, has long been accused of putting profits before safety. As I did the research for this blog, I discovered that the kind of oil drilling blowout that has occurred in the Gulf is not uncommon, nor is the event of a fail-safe device doing just that—failing. So it is a little late now for BP to discover that staunching the three leaks on the Gulf’s ocean floor with robot-controlled submersibles is like doing open heart surgery in total darkness. This is also not the time to attempt strategies never tried before at this depth such as building and then lowering a 74 ton steel funnel over the leak and then “hoovering” or pumping the oil to the surface and into giant oil cargo ships. These strategies with their un-tried technologies should have been tested and then tested again before BP got the license to drill in the Gulf—or anywhere else for that matter.
As it usually is however, when profits are measured against safety, it was the other way around. BP is in the forefront of lobbying to contain the regulatory framework within which it has been operating in the Gulf of Mexico. Last year, the oil conglomerate spent $15.9 million on federal lobbying regarding such issues as drilling for oil on the outer continental shelf. Even as this disaster continues to unfold, BP continues to oppose tougher rules of safety inspection, arguing that voluntary compliance is enough. One has to ask the question, how much less of a disaster would this be if almost $16 million had instead been invested in oil spillage preventable or containable technology?
On Friday, May 15th, President Obama, who seems to have seemingly backed away from his recent limited support for off-shore drilling also seems to be losing his patience with oil company executives and officials who have been trading blame since the rig exploded. "I will not tolerate more finger-pointing or irresponsibility," he said in the White House rose garden, flanked by members of his cabinet. "The system failed, and it failed badly. And for that, there is enough responsibility to go around. And all parties should be willing to accept it."
This catastrophe is not unfolding off the coast of Nigeria or Azerbaijan, but on home turf and on primetime television. Maybe now, it will become clear to everyone, that off-shore drilling is not a wise response to our energy needs after all. That the Sarah Palin cry to “Drill baby drill” is a recipe for disaster, just as a Palin presidency would be.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
I Love a Family Squabble!
No, I don’t mean a normal family squabble. Most families don’t communicate with each other enough to squabble. What I mean here is the squabble going on within the Republican Party.
The election of President Barack Obama has created a firestorm of protest among the right in this country and they have used the now too familiar strategies of fear and even hatred to galvanize people who heretofore hated our system of government so much they simply stayed home.
Pundits would have you believe that the sudden appearance of the so-called tea party movement on the political scene is attributed to a rising tide of voter anger. It is instead, an awakening or in some cases a reawakening of a right wing mentality that led to a 400% increase in death threats to the President of United States immediately following the swearing in of President Obama. The reality of a Black American presidency was simply too much for Americans who hate so much they have grown to hate their own kind for not being radical enough. The sad reality to all this is they have the audacity to claim they are not racist, that instead they just hate Obama. Of course the picket signs they carry which utilize racist caricatures of our President don’t mean their racist. They just are trying to make a point.
As the primary season for the much ballyhooed November 2010 election begins in earnest this coming week, establishment Republican candidates are the ones who find themselves in a fight because they have failed to be conservative enough. The upcoming Republican primary season could finally provide a real test of the strength and viability of the tea party.
Florida’s Governor, Charlie Crist, made the decision last week to bolt from the Republican Party as a candidate for the U.S. Senate and instead make his run for office as an Independent. In doing so, Crist manages to avoid a primary fight with former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio, the fair haired boy of tea party activists who have targeted Crist and other mainstream Republicans for being too moderate in their politics. Those crazies you saw last summer who showed up at town hall meetings armed to the teeth and accusing Jewish legislators like Barney Frank of being “fascists” because they supported healthcare reform have now turned their madness on their own kind for not being conservative enough.
In a political environment where all 435 House seats and 36 Senate seats are up for grabs, Democrats are hoping that recent signs that the American economy is gaining strength and improving along with the Republican infighting that has broken out primarily due to the tea party and its allies will help them to save their lead in both Houses. Even someone who carries a sign at a tea party rally that displays a caricature of President Obama as the devil knows that the more the economy and employment improves, the harder it is for the Rush Limbaugh’s of the world to spread their message of hate and discord.
An early contest will be on Tuesday in Indiana where tea party favorite Marlin Stutzman is challenging former Senator Dan Coats for the Republican nomination for retiring Senate Democrat Evan Bayh’s seat.
Today, Republican Senator Bob Bennett faces a pack of conservative challengers at the state party convention and polls today indicate he may not survive. Senator Bennett, who has always been viewed as a conservative Republican has been viciously attacked by the extreme right wing of his state party for voting in favor of the so-called Wall Street bailout.
On May 18th, Kentucky will host a showdown between Republican mainstream favorite Trey Grayson and Rand Paul, a physician and son of guess who….libertarian Republican Congressman Ron Paul. He has been supported by tea party groups and none other than former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. More on her in just a bit.
Winning in either state would be a huge victory for the tea partiers which to date has already lost in a special House election in New York and eight Republican primary challenges to Republican House incumbents in the great state of Texas.
One of the most telling Republican primary campaigns will end in Arizona on August 24th when President Obama’s opponent in the 2008 presidential campaign Senator John McCain faces the vitriolic and extremely conservative former Congressman J.D. Hayworth. Hayworth throughout the campaign has managed to push McCain further and further to the right most notably on the draconian immigration law recently passed by the Arizona state legislature and signed into law by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, a Republican who faces her own challengers from the right. Senator McCain, once a moderate on immigration and who was initially opposed to the law, ultimately threw his support to the law in the face of increasing right wing furor over his moderate stance.
And now, the coup-de-grace: It appears that the Sarah Palin endorsement of California Republican candidate for Governor Carly Fiorina has infuriated California tea party activists as well as the movement in general.
Apparently, ex-Governor Sarah Palin has outraged some of her fans with an endorsement of former Hewlett-Packard executive Carly Fiorina in the GOP’s U.S. Senate primary in California. Palin endorsed Fiorina on her Facebook page stating that her experience running a major corporation is sorely lacking in Washington. Fiorina, a former adviser for the McCain-Palin 2008 ticket got the endorsement over former congressman Tom Campbell who is leading in most polls and Chuck DeVore, a favorite of tea party activists who posted en masse on Palin’s Facebook page pleas for Palin to recount her endorsement of Fiorina and instead endorse their guy Devore, even though he lags behind a distant third to both Fiorina and Campbell.
True to form, Palin later posted an addendum to her endorsement stating that “some reaction right out of the chute calls for more information.” Oops……..
Dawn Wildman whose San Diego based Southern California Tax Revolt Coalition has about 2,000 members said she has been fielding calls and emails from tea partiers who feel betrayed by Palin’s endorsement.
“My first thought when I heard about the endorsement was, wow, I guess she doesn’t plan to run in 2012” Wildman said. She went on to say that “I think most of us see Palin as a company girl now, meaning the GOP. For her to endorse Fiorina wasn’t terribly shocking. I think what is more interesting is that Palin tries to suggest she aligns herself with the tea party movement but is clearly out of touch with what the tea party movement is saying in California.”
You gotta love it……….
The election of President Barack Obama has created a firestorm of protest among the right in this country and they have used the now too familiar strategies of fear and even hatred to galvanize people who heretofore hated our system of government so much they simply stayed home.
Pundits would have you believe that the sudden appearance of the so-called tea party movement on the political scene is attributed to a rising tide of voter anger. It is instead, an awakening or in some cases a reawakening of a right wing mentality that led to a 400% increase in death threats to the President of United States immediately following the swearing in of President Obama. The reality of a Black American presidency was simply too much for Americans who hate so much they have grown to hate their own kind for not being radical enough. The sad reality to all this is they have the audacity to claim they are not racist, that instead they just hate Obama. Of course the picket signs they carry which utilize racist caricatures of our President don’t mean their racist. They just are trying to make a point.
As the primary season for the much ballyhooed November 2010 election begins in earnest this coming week, establishment Republican candidates are the ones who find themselves in a fight because they have failed to be conservative enough. The upcoming Republican primary season could finally provide a real test of the strength and viability of the tea party.
Florida’s Governor, Charlie Crist, made the decision last week to bolt from the Republican Party as a candidate for the U.S. Senate and instead make his run for office as an Independent. In doing so, Crist manages to avoid a primary fight with former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio, the fair haired boy of tea party activists who have targeted Crist and other mainstream Republicans for being too moderate in their politics. Those crazies you saw last summer who showed up at town hall meetings armed to the teeth and accusing Jewish legislators like Barney Frank of being “fascists” because they supported healthcare reform have now turned their madness on their own kind for not being conservative enough.
In a political environment where all 435 House seats and 36 Senate seats are up for grabs, Democrats are hoping that recent signs that the American economy is gaining strength and improving along with the Republican infighting that has broken out primarily due to the tea party and its allies will help them to save their lead in both Houses. Even someone who carries a sign at a tea party rally that displays a caricature of President Obama as the devil knows that the more the economy and employment improves, the harder it is for the Rush Limbaugh’s of the world to spread their message of hate and discord.
An early contest will be on Tuesday in Indiana where tea party favorite Marlin Stutzman is challenging former Senator Dan Coats for the Republican nomination for retiring Senate Democrat Evan Bayh’s seat.
Today, Republican Senator Bob Bennett faces a pack of conservative challengers at the state party convention and polls today indicate he may not survive. Senator Bennett, who has always been viewed as a conservative Republican has been viciously attacked by the extreme right wing of his state party for voting in favor of the so-called Wall Street bailout.
On May 18th, Kentucky will host a showdown between Republican mainstream favorite Trey Grayson and Rand Paul, a physician and son of guess who….libertarian Republican Congressman Ron Paul. He has been supported by tea party groups and none other than former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. More on her in just a bit.
Winning in either state would be a huge victory for the tea partiers which to date has already lost in a special House election in New York and eight Republican primary challenges to Republican House incumbents in the great state of Texas.
One of the most telling Republican primary campaigns will end in Arizona on August 24th when President Obama’s opponent in the 2008 presidential campaign Senator John McCain faces the vitriolic and extremely conservative former Congressman J.D. Hayworth. Hayworth throughout the campaign has managed to push McCain further and further to the right most notably on the draconian immigration law recently passed by the Arizona state legislature and signed into law by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, a Republican who faces her own challengers from the right. Senator McCain, once a moderate on immigration and who was initially opposed to the law, ultimately threw his support to the law in the face of increasing right wing furor over his moderate stance.
And now, the coup-de-grace: It appears that the Sarah Palin endorsement of California Republican candidate for Governor Carly Fiorina has infuriated California tea party activists as well as the movement in general.
Apparently, ex-Governor Sarah Palin has outraged some of her fans with an endorsement of former Hewlett-Packard executive Carly Fiorina in the GOP’s U.S. Senate primary in California. Palin endorsed Fiorina on her Facebook page stating that her experience running a major corporation is sorely lacking in Washington. Fiorina, a former adviser for the McCain-Palin 2008 ticket got the endorsement over former congressman Tom Campbell who is leading in most polls and Chuck DeVore, a favorite of tea party activists who posted en masse on Palin’s Facebook page pleas for Palin to recount her endorsement of Fiorina and instead endorse their guy Devore, even though he lags behind a distant third to both Fiorina and Campbell.
True to form, Palin later posted an addendum to her endorsement stating that “some reaction right out of the chute calls for more information.” Oops……..
Dawn Wildman whose San Diego based Southern California Tax Revolt Coalition has about 2,000 members said she has been fielding calls and emails from tea partiers who feel betrayed by Palin’s endorsement.
“My first thought when I heard about the endorsement was, wow, I guess she doesn’t plan to run in 2012” Wildman said. She went on to say that “I think most of us see Palin as a company girl now, meaning the GOP. For her to endorse Fiorina wasn’t terribly shocking. I think what is more interesting is that Palin tries to suggest she aligns herself with the tea party movement but is clearly out of touch with what the tea party movement is saying in California.”
You gotta love it……….
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Return to the Scene of the Crime: Goldman Sachs
All this past week, during the congressional hearings regarding the conduct of Goldman Sachs which many believe helped to precipitate the current economic recession we are all struggling with, Republican politicians and conservative commentators have been blaming the Democrats for being politically opportunistic and using Goldman Sachs as a political football. The Wall Street Journal has been running Op-Ed pieces as well as editorially tinged articles that speak to the innocence of Goldman Sachs. That in fact, they were doing the right thing and should not be blamed for any wrongdoing.
Those who have taken up the cause of defending Goldman Sachs should be careful however that they do not appear to be giving the embattled company and other Wall Street firms a pass when those firms not only act illegally, but also injure innocent investors and consumers in the process.
The evidence is mounting that Goldman Sachs deserves to be taken to task for its wrong doing. It bet against its own clients, pushing rotten investment opportunities on unsuspecting clients that its own staff used foul language to describe. It put clients in untenable positions by betting on a continued rise in mortgage backed securities by selling them derivatives tied to toxic mortgage loans secretly hand-picked by a hedge fund client who was himself betting on the failure of these loans.
Is your head spinning yet? To make it even more dizzying….it was all an integral part of the churn of bad mortgages entered into by people who could not afford the loan payments once they were adjusted (ARMs) to double and in some cases triple within a year or two of purchasing their house.
Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein told the Senators during the hearings those customers buying securities from Goldman came looking for risk, and “that’s what they got.” But that is NOT what they got at all. What they found themselves unwittingly involved in was a poker game where the dealer knew that the cards he was dealing were guaranteed to be a losing hand.
The actions of Goldman trader, Fabrice Tourre, in the middle of this gigantic scam has led to civic fraud charges by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). He has testified this past week with a straight face how sorry he was by what happened, but he also said that he believed his “conduct was proper.” In an email to a friend however, he boasted about the circumstances he was exploiting: “the business is dead and the poor little subprime borrowers will not last long.”
As horrible as the truth about what Goldman Sachs perpetrated regarding the burst of the American housing bubble that ultimately brought about the greatest recession in our country since the 1930s, there is more.
Goldman Sachs shenanigans and illegal behavior was not limited to bringing the US housing market to its knees. They also assisted in bringing about Greece’s economic implosion, which is reverberating throughout Europe even as you read this blog.
Several years ago, Goldman Sachs helped Greece in a massive deception of masking the true extent of its debt by creating a special kind of swap with fictional exchange rates as part of an attempt to disguise what turned out to be an additional $1 billion of credit that Goldman Sachs arranged for Greece to receive. This credit, disguised as a swap, did not appear in any Greek debt statistics which gave investors at that time a false reading of Greece’s overall economic solvency.
When the truth surfaced, it not only caused a massive blow to the Greek economy, Goldman was there on the scene, betting against the Greek economy and exacerbating Greece’s rapidly dissolving wealth.
Sound familiar?
Utilizing the same demonic strategy it used to destroy the American housing industry, the creating of credit-default swaps which effectively allow banks and hedge funds to wager on a default by an individual borrower, a company, an industry, or in the case of Greece, an entire country, Goldman Sachs has created an opportunity for itself and other traders who own these swaps to make a windfall of profits should Greece ultimately fail to honor its debts. Philip Gisdakis, head of credit strategy at UniCredit in Munich described this strategy best when he said that “It’s like buying fire insurance on your neighbor’s house and then burning it down—you create an incentive to burn down the house.”
Not that the United States Congress or the Federal Reserve or even the SEC is without fault, but Goldman Sachs and any other Wall Street firm which has behaved similarly deserve to be the object of public scorn and ridicule. More importantly, they should be held accountable and liable for their wrong doing. Betting against their own clients while fraudulently concealing material facts and then doing everything they could to ultimately manipulate the markets were serious breaches of trust on which an honest and viable marketplace depends on to function properly. The actions of Goldman Sachs have caused innocent people across the entire economic spectrum to lose by gobbling up the wealth and economic security of Americans from every walk of life—from the richest investor to the kid behind the counter who asks you if you want fries with your burger.
So, what is the answer to all this? There is no one answer I suppose but a good starting point is where we almost are, financial regulatory reform. The real question however is not whether there needs to be reform, but how much reform is required? The argument of less or more of a regulatory environment supports the notion that there is, at least in principle, a market that in the minds of some is far too little regulated and needs to be reined in while others would leave it alone or reduce the current level of regulation.
I have little hope that the catastrophic economic environment we are all struggling in right now will ultimately result in a marketplace that will experience a major paradigm shift of regulatory policy however unless we, the American people, come together and challenge the right and the left to cease and desist in pitting one American against another. I doubt any re-tooling of our regulatory environment will go beyond the familiar debate of more government versus less government without the full throttled engagement of the entire country. Coming together in one, nonpartisan voice with a minimum of finger pointing is the only way Wall Street will learn the lesson that cheating is no longer allowed.
Those who have taken up the cause of defending Goldman Sachs should be careful however that they do not appear to be giving the embattled company and other Wall Street firms a pass when those firms not only act illegally, but also injure innocent investors and consumers in the process.
The evidence is mounting that Goldman Sachs deserves to be taken to task for its wrong doing. It bet against its own clients, pushing rotten investment opportunities on unsuspecting clients that its own staff used foul language to describe. It put clients in untenable positions by betting on a continued rise in mortgage backed securities by selling them derivatives tied to toxic mortgage loans secretly hand-picked by a hedge fund client who was himself betting on the failure of these loans.
Is your head spinning yet? To make it even more dizzying….it was all an integral part of the churn of bad mortgages entered into by people who could not afford the loan payments once they were adjusted (ARMs) to double and in some cases triple within a year or two of purchasing their house.
Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein told the Senators during the hearings those customers buying securities from Goldman came looking for risk, and “that’s what they got.” But that is NOT what they got at all. What they found themselves unwittingly involved in was a poker game where the dealer knew that the cards he was dealing were guaranteed to be a losing hand.
The actions of Goldman trader, Fabrice Tourre, in the middle of this gigantic scam has led to civic fraud charges by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). He has testified this past week with a straight face how sorry he was by what happened, but he also said that he believed his “conduct was proper.” In an email to a friend however, he boasted about the circumstances he was exploiting: “the business is dead and the poor little subprime borrowers will not last long.”
As horrible as the truth about what Goldman Sachs perpetrated regarding the burst of the American housing bubble that ultimately brought about the greatest recession in our country since the 1930s, there is more.
Goldman Sachs shenanigans and illegal behavior was not limited to bringing the US housing market to its knees. They also assisted in bringing about Greece’s economic implosion, which is reverberating throughout Europe even as you read this blog.
Several years ago, Goldman Sachs helped Greece in a massive deception of masking the true extent of its debt by creating a special kind of swap with fictional exchange rates as part of an attempt to disguise what turned out to be an additional $1 billion of credit that Goldman Sachs arranged for Greece to receive. This credit, disguised as a swap, did not appear in any Greek debt statistics which gave investors at that time a false reading of Greece’s overall economic solvency.
When the truth surfaced, it not only caused a massive blow to the Greek economy, Goldman was there on the scene, betting against the Greek economy and exacerbating Greece’s rapidly dissolving wealth.
Sound familiar?
Utilizing the same demonic strategy it used to destroy the American housing industry, the creating of credit-default swaps which effectively allow banks and hedge funds to wager on a default by an individual borrower, a company, an industry, or in the case of Greece, an entire country, Goldman Sachs has created an opportunity for itself and other traders who own these swaps to make a windfall of profits should Greece ultimately fail to honor its debts. Philip Gisdakis, head of credit strategy at UniCredit in Munich described this strategy best when he said that “It’s like buying fire insurance on your neighbor’s house and then burning it down—you create an incentive to burn down the house.”
Not that the United States Congress or the Federal Reserve or even the SEC is without fault, but Goldman Sachs and any other Wall Street firm which has behaved similarly deserve to be the object of public scorn and ridicule. More importantly, they should be held accountable and liable for their wrong doing. Betting against their own clients while fraudulently concealing material facts and then doing everything they could to ultimately manipulate the markets were serious breaches of trust on which an honest and viable marketplace depends on to function properly. The actions of Goldman Sachs have caused innocent people across the entire economic spectrum to lose by gobbling up the wealth and economic security of Americans from every walk of life—from the richest investor to the kid behind the counter who asks you if you want fries with your burger.
So, what is the answer to all this? There is no one answer I suppose but a good starting point is where we almost are, financial regulatory reform. The real question however is not whether there needs to be reform, but how much reform is required? The argument of less or more of a regulatory environment supports the notion that there is, at least in principle, a market that in the minds of some is far too little regulated and needs to be reined in while others would leave it alone or reduce the current level of regulation.
I have little hope that the catastrophic economic environment we are all struggling in right now will ultimately result in a marketplace that will experience a major paradigm shift of regulatory policy however unless we, the American people, come together and challenge the right and the left to cease and desist in pitting one American against another. I doubt any re-tooling of our regulatory environment will go beyond the familiar debate of more government versus less government without the full throttled engagement of the entire country. Coming together in one, nonpartisan voice with a minimum of finger pointing is the only way Wall Street will learn the lesson that cheating is no longer allowed.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Go Home Latino!
It has finally begun. The lack of a thoughtful and fair immigration policy driven by well crafted and constitutionally appropriate law has resulted in anti-immigration forces gone mad.
Arizona is at ground zero of our broken immigration system. As the state receiving the largest number of illegal immigrants across our common border with Mexico, it should be no surprise to President Obama or anyone else in the White House or in Congress, that the citizens of Arizona have reached the breaking point in their frustration at the vacuum of leadership from the Federal Government. The courts have ruled that illegal immigration is a Federal problem, but as in most scenarios where leadership and determination are required, Congress has yet to deliver a comprehensive solution and so the people have acted on their own. Understandably, people are frustrated and want action.
There is something about the phenomenon of action that feels satisfying. We identify a problem and naturally want to resolve it. We develop and implement laws that appear at first blush to do what needs to be done: punish people who break the law, deport people who do not belong here. Unfortunately however, sometimes what looks and feels right, isn’t always right. Sometimes, we end up with a law driven by a knee-jerk reaction that wastes precious resources and in the end, did absolutely nothing to get to the root of what was wrong in the first place.
The so-called Safe Neighborhoods legislation passed by the Arizona state legislature last week and then rapidly signed into law by the Governor is this kind of misguided action. Despite its passage, there are indeed legislators who voted against it and even John McCain spoke out against its passage. They understand that ultimately it will end up costing the state of Arizona resources that are already in short supply. They realize that the bill will wreak havoc in the communities and lead to the kind of racial profiling that has plagued our nation for decades. But the majority voted for this bill because they think it will make people feel better—that finally, someone is doing something.
In the words of a popular expression that drives me crazy when I hear it, “At the end of the day” it will not make people feel better. Rather, this bill will create a whole new set of challenges, particularly for the very people it is supposed to help—Arizona’s law enforcement officials.
The signing of this bill into law will now shift the burden of enforcing immigration laws on the shoulders of cash poor local police departments who can barely afford funded enforcement efforts, much less un-funded ones. More importantly, this bill will exacerbate already existing community tensions and undermine public safety by making immigrants fearful of cooperating with police investigations.
The most tragic aspect of this bill however will be that Arizona will be forced to waste millions to defend itself against the civil rights lawsuits that are certain to come. Just ask the people of Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Texas where similar anti-immigration laws were ultimately struck down by the courts at great expense to the taxpayers of those states. Already stumbling under record budget deficits, someone forgot to ask the question if Arizona really needs to spend even a nickel on an immigration law that will do nothing to solve the crisis of illegal immigration.
What has been needed since the first immigrant crossed our border illegally is comprehensive legislation designed to eliminate the underground economy that everyone knows exists but no one in leadership wants to recognize. We need to figure out how to get un-documented immigrants documented so that they can begin to pay back taxes and/or fines. We need immigration reform that will result in illegal immigrants learning English and being placed on local, state and federal tax rolls and most important, we must work together in an effort to truly bring an end to illegal immigration by punishing law-breaking employers who depress wages for everyone, immigrant and citizen alike, while ignoring un-safe conditions in the workplace.
The Arizona state legislature instead focused on political theatre. Lawmakers chose the low road of polarizing Arizonians rather than designing real reform which would have moved the state forward in a unified manner. The ultra-conservative Arizona state legislators who wrote and along with their constituents, drove this bill to passage, are playing the same old game of demonizing immigrants for cheap political points when ironically, they themselves are descendants of European immigrants who have come here by the millions since the only law in America was British.
With her signature, Governor Brewer has set the stage for her state’s dwindling resources to be consumed in a fight that cannot be won. As she scribbled her name across the bottom of this most recent legislative nightmare, she held up her state as an example of how to hate people who look different from most of us but who share the same dreams and aspirations in what they want for themselves and their families.
Arizona is at ground zero of our broken immigration system. As the state receiving the largest number of illegal immigrants across our common border with Mexico, it should be no surprise to President Obama or anyone else in the White House or in Congress, that the citizens of Arizona have reached the breaking point in their frustration at the vacuum of leadership from the Federal Government. The courts have ruled that illegal immigration is a Federal problem, but as in most scenarios where leadership and determination are required, Congress has yet to deliver a comprehensive solution and so the people have acted on their own. Understandably, people are frustrated and want action.
There is something about the phenomenon of action that feels satisfying. We identify a problem and naturally want to resolve it. We develop and implement laws that appear at first blush to do what needs to be done: punish people who break the law, deport people who do not belong here. Unfortunately however, sometimes what looks and feels right, isn’t always right. Sometimes, we end up with a law driven by a knee-jerk reaction that wastes precious resources and in the end, did absolutely nothing to get to the root of what was wrong in the first place.
The so-called Safe Neighborhoods legislation passed by the Arizona state legislature last week and then rapidly signed into law by the Governor is this kind of misguided action. Despite its passage, there are indeed legislators who voted against it and even John McCain spoke out against its passage. They understand that ultimately it will end up costing the state of Arizona resources that are already in short supply. They realize that the bill will wreak havoc in the communities and lead to the kind of racial profiling that has plagued our nation for decades. But the majority voted for this bill because they think it will make people feel better—that finally, someone is doing something.
In the words of a popular expression that drives me crazy when I hear it, “At the end of the day” it will not make people feel better. Rather, this bill will create a whole new set of challenges, particularly for the very people it is supposed to help—Arizona’s law enforcement officials.
The signing of this bill into law will now shift the burden of enforcing immigration laws on the shoulders of cash poor local police departments who can barely afford funded enforcement efforts, much less un-funded ones. More importantly, this bill will exacerbate already existing community tensions and undermine public safety by making immigrants fearful of cooperating with police investigations.
The most tragic aspect of this bill however will be that Arizona will be forced to waste millions to defend itself against the civil rights lawsuits that are certain to come. Just ask the people of Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Texas where similar anti-immigration laws were ultimately struck down by the courts at great expense to the taxpayers of those states. Already stumbling under record budget deficits, someone forgot to ask the question if Arizona really needs to spend even a nickel on an immigration law that will do nothing to solve the crisis of illegal immigration.
What has been needed since the first immigrant crossed our border illegally is comprehensive legislation designed to eliminate the underground economy that everyone knows exists but no one in leadership wants to recognize. We need to figure out how to get un-documented immigrants documented so that they can begin to pay back taxes and/or fines. We need immigration reform that will result in illegal immigrants learning English and being placed on local, state and federal tax rolls and most important, we must work together in an effort to truly bring an end to illegal immigration by punishing law-breaking employers who depress wages for everyone, immigrant and citizen alike, while ignoring un-safe conditions in the workplace.
The Arizona state legislature instead focused on political theatre. Lawmakers chose the low road of polarizing Arizonians rather than designing real reform which would have moved the state forward in a unified manner. The ultra-conservative Arizona state legislators who wrote and along with their constituents, drove this bill to passage, are playing the same old game of demonizing immigrants for cheap political points when ironically, they themselves are descendants of European immigrants who have come here by the millions since the only law in America was British.
With her signature, Governor Brewer has set the stage for her state’s dwindling resources to be consumed in a fight that cannot be won. As she scribbled her name across the bottom of this most recent legislative nightmare, she held up her state as an example of how to hate people who look different from most of us but who share the same dreams and aspirations in what they want for themselves and their families.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Cry Me a River
In the movie, Apocalypse Now, Robert Duvall, when describing combat in Vietnam says, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”
Well, when the movie is made about the Obama presidency, possibly some actor will utter the words, “I love the sound of Republicans crying in the morning.” Wa-Wa-Wa. The Republicans lost the Presidency in 2008 and just before that, they lost the Congress. With President Obama finally governing, he and the U.S. Congress have passed a health care bill and 30 million more Americans have health care. In addition, people cannot be refused coverage because of pre-existing conditions and single children can now remain on their parent’s healthcare plan until age 26. In politico terms, Republicans and their tea party cohorts have lost the biggest domestic political struggle since the passage of Medicare. According to them, what this really means is an end to America as we know it. We now live in a socialist state, President Obama has brought down American capitalism and we all have been forced to live in a totalitarian nightmare reminiscent of Nazi Germany.
Right-wing radio and television hysterically attempt to outdo one another in how insulting they can be to Democrats and anyone who thinks differently than they do and how destructive of the truth and common sense they can be. As President Obama scribbled his name across health care legislation that for 100 years Presidents had been trying to sign, Rush Limbaugh screamed on the radio that America’s private insurance industry would, in short order, be bankrupted. A couple of weeks before the signing, Limbaugh promised us—he promised us—to leave America and move to Costa Rica if health care reform became law. Apparently, no one bothered to inform his wizardry that Costa Rica is home to a government funded, single-payer health care system. Unfortunately, Mr. Limbaugh has decided to stay here with us after all.
With all his buffoonery however, Rush Limbaugh had nothing on Glenn Beck, of FOX television when this paragon of ‘truth’ yelled over national TV that the signing of health care reform was comparable to the tragedy of “Pearl Harbor.” Joining in the fray, Mark Stevens wrote in the National Review that America’s “global capacity” will need to be sacrificed so that we can pay for Grandpa’s health insurance. Assuredly, we are now all doomed to die a horrible death in a nuclear war because we stopped building missiles and started taking care of each other.
The most ridiculous assessment however came from right wing blogger Matthew Vadum who wrote, “Fascist House Democrats are preparing to euthanize America.”
As I watched on CNN the last day of health care debate in the U.S. House of Representatives, with the CNN poll showing that the majority of Americans were against passage, it occurred to me that in America, while we value public opinion, this is not the way we get things done. We determine who will legislate for us through elections, not surveys. I remembered also that during the impeachment of President Clinton, two-thirds of the American people were not in favor of impeachment, yet the Republicans went forward anyway.
Furthermore, it has become apparent to me that Republican paranoia, now fed incessantly by a disorganized, disjointed, but loud and unruly bunch of people called tea partiers (the original tea partiers, if you will remember, dressed up as American Indians to destroy British tea on board British ships. Even as a little boy I could not understand why they just didn’t do it as themselves. Why it was necessary to put the blame on Native Americans has always bothered me) is actually an act of history repeating itself. In 1935, the Republican Party said of Social Security that it was the “enslavement of workers” and the “lash of the dictator” and other such similar ridicule. Ronald Regan warned America in 1965 that if Medicare became law “you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was like in American when men were free.” We all know how that ended. Ronald Regan spent eight of his sunset years as President of the United States.
The shout for repeal has now become a whisper almost no one can hear. In any event, Republicans would not get anywhere close to the two-thirds majority in the Senate needed to override President Obama’s veto. Consequently, by 2012, when death panels have failed to come into existence, the insurance industry is actually healthier with 30 million new customers as opposed to being bankrupt as the economic expert that he is Rush Limbaugh has predicted, the campaign for President in America will be driven by issues other than the passage of health care.
Returning for a moment to the CNN poll I referred to above, the interesting reality of that poll is that 13% of the 59% who stated their opposition to the health care bill incredibly did so because it failed to go far enough in reforming health care! Further, when they were asked who they trusted more to fix health care in America, President Obama or congressional Republicans, respondents overwhelmingly selected the President at 51% to 39%. Su much for the accuracy of so-called “scientific polling.”
As I have written in previous blog postings, there are already a few conservative and Republican operatives who warn that the Republican Party is foolish if they continue to make themselves beholden to the “hysterical accusations and pseudo-information” of right-wing entertainers such as Limbaugh and Beck. David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter has written in his blog that the so-called tea party “thrives on confrontation and recrimination” rather than governing.
Conservative columnist David Brooks has said that “The tea party is a large, fractious confederation of Americans who are defined by what they are against” and Bruce Bartlett, another conservative blogger cites a survey of tea partiers at a recent demonstration outside the White House that showed most of them know little or nothing about the policies they so loudly and viciously oppose.
It has been my experience, in my more than 60 years on this planet, that when people shout out racial slurs and sexual insults that it means more than anything else that they have got nothing better to say. The American people are better than that.
Well, when the movie is made about the Obama presidency, possibly some actor will utter the words, “I love the sound of Republicans crying in the morning.” Wa-Wa-Wa. The Republicans lost the Presidency in 2008 and just before that, they lost the Congress. With President Obama finally governing, he and the U.S. Congress have passed a health care bill and 30 million more Americans have health care. In addition, people cannot be refused coverage because of pre-existing conditions and single children can now remain on their parent’s healthcare plan until age 26. In politico terms, Republicans and their tea party cohorts have lost the biggest domestic political struggle since the passage of Medicare. According to them, what this really means is an end to America as we know it. We now live in a socialist state, President Obama has brought down American capitalism and we all have been forced to live in a totalitarian nightmare reminiscent of Nazi Germany.
Right-wing radio and television hysterically attempt to outdo one another in how insulting they can be to Democrats and anyone who thinks differently than they do and how destructive of the truth and common sense they can be. As President Obama scribbled his name across health care legislation that for 100 years Presidents had been trying to sign, Rush Limbaugh screamed on the radio that America’s private insurance industry would, in short order, be bankrupted. A couple of weeks before the signing, Limbaugh promised us—he promised us—to leave America and move to Costa Rica if health care reform became law. Apparently, no one bothered to inform his wizardry that Costa Rica is home to a government funded, single-payer health care system. Unfortunately, Mr. Limbaugh has decided to stay here with us after all.
With all his buffoonery however, Rush Limbaugh had nothing on Glenn Beck, of FOX television when this paragon of ‘truth’ yelled over national TV that the signing of health care reform was comparable to the tragedy of “Pearl Harbor.” Joining in the fray, Mark Stevens wrote in the National Review that America’s “global capacity” will need to be sacrificed so that we can pay for Grandpa’s health insurance. Assuredly, we are now all doomed to die a horrible death in a nuclear war because we stopped building missiles and started taking care of each other.
The most ridiculous assessment however came from right wing blogger Matthew Vadum who wrote, “Fascist House Democrats are preparing to euthanize America.”
As I watched on CNN the last day of health care debate in the U.S. House of Representatives, with the CNN poll showing that the majority of Americans were against passage, it occurred to me that in America, while we value public opinion, this is not the way we get things done. We determine who will legislate for us through elections, not surveys. I remembered also that during the impeachment of President Clinton, two-thirds of the American people were not in favor of impeachment, yet the Republicans went forward anyway.
Furthermore, it has become apparent to me that Republican paranoia, now fed incessantly by a disorganized, disjointed, but loud and unruly bunch of people called tea partiers (the original tea partiers, if you will remember, dressed up as American Indians to destroy British tea on board British ships. Even as a little boy I could not understand why they just didn’t do it as themselves. Why it was necessary to put the blame on Native Americans has always bothered me) is actually an act of history repeating itself. In 1935, the Republican Party said of Social Security that it was the “enslavement of workers” and the “lash of the dictator” and other such similar ridicule. Ronald Regan warned America in 1965 that if Medicare became law “you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was like in American when men were free.” We all know how that ended. Ronald Regan spent eight of his sunset years as President of the United States.
The shout for repeal has now become a whisper almost no one can hear. In any event, Republicans would not get anywhere close to the two-thirds majority in the Senate needed to override President Obama’s veto. Consequently, by 2012, when death panels have failed to come into existence, the insurance industry is actually healthier with 30 million new customers as opposed to being bankrupt as the economic expert that he is Rush Limbaugh has predicted, the campaign for President in America will be driven by issues other than the passage of health care.
Returning for a moment to the CNN poll I referred to above, the interesting reality of that poll is that 13% of the 59% who stated their opposition to the health care bill incredibly did so because it failed to go far enough in reforming health care! Further, when they were asked who they trusted more to fix health care in America, President Obama or congressional Republicans, respondents overwhelmingly selected the President at 51% to 39%. Su much for the accuracy of so-called “scientific polling.”
As I have written in previous blog postings, there are already a few conservative and Republican operatives who warn that the Republican Party is foolish if they continue to make themselves beholden to the “hysterical accusations and pseudo-information” of right-wing entertainers such as Limbaugh and Beck. David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter has written in his blog that the so-called tea party “thrives on confrontation and recrimination” rather than governing.
Conservative columnist David Brooks has said that “The tea party is a large, fractious confederation of Americans who are defined by what they are against” and Bruce Bartlett, another conservative blogger cites a survey of tea partiers at a recent demonstration outside the White House that showed most of them know little or nothing about the policies they so loudly and viciously oppose.
It has been my experience, in my more than 60 years on this planet, that when people shout out racial slurs and sexual insults that it means more than anything else that they have got nothing better to say. The American people are better than that.
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