Tag Archives: economy

Political Rants

Year 10.

Wtf, what a year, eh? At least those of us who made it through… made it through. Just a few closing thoughts before that ludicrously pointless ball of Christmas tree lights falls, signaling the arbitrary beginning to another great year.

Economy. At the end of a tumultuous year, we are still at nearly 10% unemployment as it is currently calculated, meaning that it’s probably closer to 16% in real terms, maybe higher. I can tell you that, of the family members and close friends who have lost a job in the past year to 18 months, 2 out of 3 are still looking for work. This is probably a familiar story across the country. And yet, some seem to be doing quite well. American businesses – and I mean BIG businesses – have amassed huge piles of cash over the past year. The stock market – and therefore, investors – are doing better. And on Wall Street, the bonuses were fatter than a Christmas goose once again. (They’ve got a tax cut on the way, too.) Even with all that, they managed to take a swipe at Obama, who has done little more than wag a finger at them. There’s gratitude for you.  

War. Our glorious victory in Afghanistan was about nine years ago, one of the darkest winters I can recall, and the start of a long, bloody chapter in the history of American empire. Anything like the bloodiest ever? Likely not. It is just as well that we remember how many lives were lost in Korea in the early 1950s, in Vietnam in the 1960s and ’70s, in Central America and southern Africa in the 1980s, and elsewhere. Even individually, they make Iraq and Afghanistan seem like relatively minor catastrophes, though either of our most recent wars would put  us into Milosevic territory (and probably beyond). Still, Afghanistan has the distinction of being our longest war, as well as one we should have known better than to ignite (happy as we were to help strand the Soviets there during the 1980s).

Social Programs. Despite (and partially because of) the new health insurance reform bill, this has not been a good year for the social safety net. Political players are positioning themselves to implement massive cuts in Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid over the coming two years. They’ve ginned up fear of the deficit, sapped the federal budget with Obama’s tax compromise, and set up the hurdles in advance, the first being the continuing budget resolution that will run out in March. Watch – that’s when they will bring out the long knives. We’d best be ready for them.  Read Dean Baker’s excellent blog as well as Ezra Klein’s interview with James Galbraith, and start talking to your friends about this … yesterday.

Here’s to a better year next time around.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Turning Japanese.

Looks like we all drive with Boehner. And perhaps swim with Aqua Buddha.

Okay, so… here’s the irony of this mid-term election. Admittedly Obama isn’t the most “outside of the box” thinker imaginable, but when he came into office two years ago, he had a relatively ambitious agenda that included a major stimulus package. The original version included infrastructure spending that would have put some fuel into this sluggish recovery. The Republicans had decided, of course, to vote no on everything, including cloture for all Senate bills, making the bar for passage of anything more than sixty votes. The stimulus got watered down with tax cuts – 30% or so was tax cuts – to bring along people like Arlen Specter, who was a Republican then.

Of course, that spending package worked by all measures… but only so well, as tax cuts have always been a pretty poor method for stimulating the economy. The G.O.P. then tag the dems with the “failed stimulus”, even though its lack of broader effectiveness was largely due to their stonewalling. Now the voters, in their understandable anger at this failure, have put the Dems out and, by extension, House Republicans back in charge, so any correction of this is extremely unlikely. So… it looks like we’re headed for Japan in the 1990s – a zombie economy, staggering along for the next decade, suffering from our unwillingness to take bold action. The deficit hawks have gained the upper hand for the nonce, and that is not good news for the rest of us.

Not that the G.O.P. House will seriously move to cut the deficit. As of yet, they have been unable to name even a few billion dollars worth of cuts they would be willing to make. Not to mention the fact that they seem determined to continue boring the hole through the treasury that Bush started with his tax cuts for the rich and famous. If they do that and succeed in repealing the health care legislation, we’re effectively talking about another $1.7 trillion in debt added on to what they claim is a staggering total already. Does that sound serious to you? Perhaps they’ll try to resurrect Dubya’s Social Security privatization plan to underwrite such largesse to the wealthy. (Since their successful House campaigns were floated by post-Citizens United corporate cash, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.)

Here’s my suggestion, Mr. President. Take that $700 billion tax cut they want to give to the wealthy and propose adding it to the cuts for the bottom 97%. Let them vote against that one.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Pay days.

Writing this totally on the fly, so try to read fast and skip over any errors in grammar (or judgment). Have a heart, will you?

Tax fraud. It was probably inevitable that, as the sunset for the Bush 2003 tax cuts approached, the chorus of whining from the well-to-do would begin in earnest. Now we are faced with the remarkable phenomenon of hearing politicians who identify the federal deficit as public enemy #1 argue forcefully for an extension of tax relief for millionaires that will add hundreds of billions of dollars to the national debt over the next ten years. I know Americans have a short memory, but some of you out there must surely remember the 1990s. Were rich people overtaxed in those days? They seemed to be living pretty high at the time. Then their president, W. Bush, had the audacity to deeply cut their taxes with one hand while he launched two pointless wars with the other. Having blown a huge hole in the budget, they now want to stretch it wider. Time to come in now, children. You’ve had enough fun.

Job one. The president has been speaking a bit more forcefully about the economy in recent days. That is good, but not good enough. We need a deeper, broader commitment to the notion of full employment in this country, and to back it up with some appropriate action.  Various T.V. pundits blandly claim that there is little government can do, but I disagree. The fact is, government has to take steps to provide incentive to industry to employ workers in this country. They could start with procurement. The entire Federal Government, including the Defense Department, should require all contracts to be fulfilled with U.S. labor. If we need it, let’s build it here. We’ve got the skills, the money, and a workforce more than ready to do the work.

Would this be in violation of our myriad trade agreements? I hope so. Then maybe we could dump out of them altogether. That is the commitment Obama needs to make. Stop making it easy to export manufacturing and other jobs. Use the power of the federal government to drive domestic manufacturing and service employment. And for Christ’s sake, if people are willing to work and can’t find a job, provide them with work.

There’s plenty that needs doing in this country. Let’s get it done… and put people to work at the same time.