It’s an election year and who’s back to visit but Pappy Tax Cut? That’s right – with the financial markets reeling from imploding mortgage-based securities and record high energy prices, the duopoly of federal office holders has decided to cut some checks and pass them out to us proles. Guess they figure we’re pissed off enough to warrant bribery at this point. In any case, a recession during an election year is bad news for either party in a divided government, so you are seeing the kind of “bipartisanship” that in another might be considered a mild form of totalitarianism. Sure, we’re blowing billions of dollars a month (to say nothing of lives lost) trying to hold on to our imperial stake in Iraq and perpetuating astounding economic inequality through a tax system heavily skewed in favor of the hyper-rich, but we’ll borrow even more money now for a one-shot payoff to the American people in hopes they’ll go out and shop and forget about how fucked up everything is.

This is a bit like having a boss that never gives raises but passes out the occasional bonus when he’s feeling magnanimous (trust me, I’ve been there). It doesn’t raise your standard of living… or even maintain it in an environment of rising costs. It just buys temporary quiescence and gives the master a good end-of-year write-off. It keeps our mind off the fact that, for many of us, this “job” doesn’t include health coverage and that the minimal retirement plan is under threat of being dismantled and sold off, Pinochet-style. Even worse, the money they’re sending us is being borrowed from… us. Future us, that is. It’s like they’re Citibank or someone, offering us an extension on our credit line. Write yourself a check and take a much needed vacation! Pay nothing until next April! Kind of freakish. I suppose perhaps the most remarkable thing about the “stimulus” package, as currently proposed, is the fact that it extends something to low and middle income people at all. Sure, they boned the poor and the unemployed on extended benefits, but for this crew of Halliburton Republicans and Eisenhower Democrats, this plan is practically socialism.

Doing this must gall Bush no end. He’s been going around for years repeating the same hackneyed talking points about the U.S. economy, about its “strong fundamentals” and its “resilience”, and never was heard a discouraging word. As recently as this week, his drone Condi “Supertanker” Rice was praising our economic strength at Davos. Lord knows, Bush despises having to reverse himself, like the Custer character in Little Big Man. (I wonder if his father and the old man’s somewhat embarrassing friend had to shame Dubya into it? Hmmmmm….) Whatever its genesis, this half-measure Keynesianism can be seen as the ownership class’s bulwark against much more meaningful adjustments, like restoring some measure of taxation to the extremely rich (i.e. those few who have benefited tremendously from the economic order of the past 25 years), or slapping an excess profits tax on the oil companies, or re-regulating the financial/banking sector, or dismantling the so-called “free trade” investors’ rights agreements. Not that any leading candidates from the nominal left are advocating this, but there’s always a chance someone will if people get mad enough.

For right now, we’ll be expected to subsist on the bone they throw us… and on the cheap spectacle of Bill and Hillary Clinton ripping up what’s left of the Democratic party to advance their careers (all they’ve ever done, really).

luv u,

jp

As of this writing, there have been 3 “major” primary contests on the Republican side – Iowa, New Hampshire, and Michigan – and just as many winners. Good grief. One might only hope that it would continue along these lines, right up to their caveman convention. Still, I’m certain they’ll congeal around one of those disgusting blisters and proceed with their usual (and often successful) attempt to race-bait, terror-scam, and otherwise bluster their way into the White House for another term. Hardly matters who the actual candidate will be – whichever one takes his party’s grisly mantle, he will no doubt benefit enormously from television ads that open with an ominous low note and a blurry photograph of their opponent. Just hold out for a few more weeks, folks, then it’ll be open season. (They’re loading up the slime cannons right now.) And whoever emerges from the fray with the most votes this November… well, their savaged remains will take up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Okay, so what are the Democrats doing? Well, they’re busily generating ammunition for the Republicans to use in their Fall campaign. Expect to hear familiar themes being sounded across the airwaves this fall, to say nothing of what will arrive in your mailbox (and inbox). During the 2006 congressional race – a hotly contested one up in my neck of the woods – the national Republican party was airing T.V. ads and sending out glossy fliers depicting pole dancers that they inferred had some tenuous connection with Democratic candidate (now congressman) Michael Arcuri. That was just plain low, sure, but what impressed me most was the sheer volume of advertising. If nothing else, it gives you a sense of what it’s like to live in a contested state – something New York has not been since maybe 1984, with respect to the general election. So pretty much any negative campaigning during primary season will be recycled and amplified by the opposition come September.

In one sense, this is the dynamic that drove Democratic support for the Iraq war authorization resolution back in 2002. Many war supporters wanted to inoculate themselves from being attacked as “soft on Saddam” and, more generally, “soft on terror”. I don’t believe for a moment that it was any great moral leap for Hillary Clinton to vote with the president on that. She practically out-Cheneyed Cheney on the Senate floor as they debated that ridiculous resolution. And my feeling is that she will take ownership of that vote again if circumstances allow her (and the administration) to act as though there’s something to celebrate in our Iraq policy. That’s why John McCain is strutting around like a turkey… because he feels like his brick-brained support for the invasion of Iraq is finally paying off. Hillary may end up playing that card as well. Never mind that their support for the war has led to the deaths of probably 750,000 to 1 million people and created 4 million refugees. That’s Rwanda territory, far outstripping Saddam’s record… and they can stack that atop the probably 500,000 who died as a result of U.S./U.K. -driven sanctions during the 1990s. And I don’t hear any convincing talk of withdrawal from either side, so it’s likely to add up to even more.

Bottom line: whoever wins, Iraq loses. You can take that to the bank.

luv u,

jp