October 2010 Archives

Dear America,

Now that the November 2010 election is virtually over, commentary on the election and more importantly on the 2012 election is proliferating. And as I read and listen to it, I see one common thread that is disquieting. The teleology of politics in all of the new conventional wisdom is inverted as it has been in this country virtually forever, and why it never occurred to me I cannot say. The colloquy is directed at what the Democrats must do to regain power, or what the Republicans must do to retain it, and that is what is wrong with American politics. Instead of being driven by the task of meeting the expectations of the American people-- making manifest what is best for us-- the orientation of all of the discussion, and indeed of politics as well, is toward political success. The process has become an end in itself, and as a consequence, accomplishing what America needs is only a means to an end if it is a factor in decision making at all. What the politicians want to know is how they can get elected to office when all we want is for them to do the best and right thing. That is why we have Mitch McConnell and John Boehner (McBoehnell). That is why we have health insurance reform instead of health care reform. That is why we have an eviscerated financial reform law instead of real financial industry regulation. It is also why we do not have a comprehensive climate control law, or a campaign reform law that actually ensures that the electorate is informed and that it knows by whom it has been informed. That is why a politician like Mitch McConnell can admit that his goal is to demolish the Obama administration and that he will use the next two years to make sure that President Obama is not reelected, rather than vowing that he will work tirelessly to do what is right and what is best for the American people. That is why people like McBoehnell get reelected rather than defeated, or perhaps more aptly, impeached. Our politicians feel free to admit that their ambitions come before our wellbeing. And whose fault is that?

We have become as cynical and misguided as they are and in the process, we have been inured to the flaunting of what is the basest of political motivations: the quest for power. We have allowed our politicians to invert our politics, which should be the primary means of advancing the common weal. Now, or at least for the past two years in the case of the Republicans and the Republican conservative complex (Rcc) including both the Tea Party Movement and the Blue Dog Democrats in congress, withholding popular well-being has become an acceptable means to the now morally and ethically acceptable purpose of regaining power, and we, the American people, have endorsed their strategy and their ethos, or we are about to in this election. There is no point in whining about it, but we should acknowledge our choice so that when it bears its inevitably bitter fruit we will know what to correct. The decay in our political system is most manifest in a few specific areas, but the easiest to observe is health care.

In 2003, at the height of the Bush administration's moral sway over the country, universal health care in some form was favored by fully two thirds of the American people. And even as recently as 2009, when asked specific questions on the subject Americans favored assuring health care for everyone by means of a mandate for employers that they provide insurance, a federal insurance plan or by some other means, including in the opinions of many a public health care system. But the Democratic plan that ultimately became law was only health insurance reform, meaning that it mandated that every citizen provide his own insurance or pay a penalty and regulating the quality of policy provided by insurers. And the reason that such a diminished, and arguably undesirable outcome had to suffice is that the Rcc united against a "single payer system," which would have been some kind of federally controlled health care system either through payment of taxpayer dollars for everyone's care of what amounts to eminent domain-- the federalization of the whole health care system making doctors government employees. Mind you, single payer systems prevail in the vast majority of industrialized nations; the notion that someone can die for lack of money alone is unpalatable in most civilized cultures-- but not in ours. And the reason is our politics.

Sarah Palin, for example, perhaps the least qualified national figure to comment on or even contemplate such a complex subject, popularized a myth about what became the current law-- admittedly is a pale substitute for universal health care-- that it provided for "death panels." There is no need to go into the details that she apparently fabricated to serve her political aspirations, but suffice it to say that not only is it untrue but it is absurd. Yet, a substantial number of the American people, people who claim to love freedom and democracy but are loathe to do anything that requires effort to protect it, failed to find out for themselves what the law said and instead, fell over the divide between humanistic political belief and conservative demagoguery. McBoehnell (Mitch McConnell and John Boehner) did nothing to disabuse those people of the canard that Palin had foisted on them, but rather they seized upon it to further their ambitions: McConnell to be Senate Majority Leader and Boehner to be Speaker of the House. That was the beginning of the downward spiral in the quality of our politics that has brought us here today, or I should say tomorrow. The same tactics were employed with regard to financial system reform, campaign reform, environmental and energy reform and much more, all while they overtly worked to thwart the will of what was the majority in November 2008, and we should not forget that fact. They told us outright that their purpose was to seize control of the system, they then blatantly hijacked the Senate through use of the filibuster, eviscerating the plan for America that a majority of senators and representatives were sent to Washington with after the last election, and then blamed them for failing to produce.

The people of this country forget that Hitler rose to power in an election by use of demagoguery. We forget that we were once a nation of people dedicated to one another, not to wealth and power. My only hope is that we recover our national memory soon.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

The outlook for the Democrats in next Tuesday's election is grim, and I will admit that that outlook fills me with consternation. But the election itself, along with the election in 2012, may be the most important in terms of understanding elections in America since...well, maybe ever. In the last election, Democrats hit big for the second time in a row, and that was remarkable. We, America, elected our first president of color-- I don't say black president for the same reason that I don't say white president as Mr. Obama is both-- and the election appeared to be a repudiation of Republican politics and policy compounding and reiterating the immediately previous electoral repudiation. All three branches of our federal government were controlled by the Democrats, though that control was largely illusory because of the Senate, given the use of the filibuster by the opposition, which cripled the entire federal government at times. The out party became the dis-loyal opposition, by its own admission at the highest levels in that Congressional leaders in both houses overtly vowed to thwart the Obama administration and the Democratic congress, and they acted in virtual unanimity, essentially leaving no doubt as to what they were doing, or rather, what they were trying to prevent the Democrats from doing and why. And now, in this election, everything that the Democratic Party has accomplished or taken a stand on-- health insurance reform, financial reform, campaign reform, economic stimulus, the process of ending our involvement in the war in Afghanistan andmore-- has been branded a function of the Obama administration's tenure, even though only half of the Democratic era at hand featured his presidency, thus ascribing everything negative to the president, which was the Republicans' intention all along.

So what we have as a predicate for the outcome next Tuesday is plain to see, definable and quantifiable. And in that light, what seems to be the imminent ouster of the Democrats from control of at least the House of Representatives will be of historic interest to political scientists, sociologists, psychologists, economists, politicians themselves, and probably everyone who is even interested in how our democracy works, and given the success of what the Republicans have done, our governing process will be infused with a new level of incivility. But just to be clear about my opinion in this regard, let me condense my thoughts by pointing to a few salient verities that I think no one can dispute. First, the Obama administration has had only two years in power. Second, the Democrats have controlled Congress for only four years after twelve years of Republican control of Congress, and of the Senate as well except for a two year period when that body was split 50-50. Third, the financial crises that led to the current hard times started in the Bush years after only two years of Democratic Congressional control following twelve years of Republican control. Fourth, job losses in the hundreds of thousands per month started during the Bush administration after less than two years of Democratic control of the Congress. Fifth, decreases in the loss of jobs per month did not start until after the financial stimulus package was passed, but it started almost immediately and has turned into a monthly increase in jobs. Sixth, the TARP was passed at the end of the second Bush term in office by the nearly two year old Democratic Congress, but at the behest of the Bush administration and with the signature of President Bush. Seventh, during the Republican control of both the executive and legislative branches, the largest tax cut in history was passed, but by the end of the Republican tenure in the executive branch, jobs were being lost at record rates. Eighth, at the end of the second Bush administration, the United States was still embroiled in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ninth, in the first year of the first Bush administration while the Republicans still controlled both houses of the legislature if you consider that the Vice President breaks all ties in the Senate, the federal budget showed a surplus and the national debt was less than $6 trillion, and when the second Bush administration ended, it was nearly $9 trillion, but with another trillion or more to come on account of the tax cuts.

When historians and political analysts look at this election, they will be interested to know how that Republican record was ignored and the confidence of the American electorate in the Republicans was enhanced sufficiently after four years of plain repudiation that the Republicans were returned to power. There will be charts and graphs, hyperbole and minimization of the facts as appropriate to the point of view of the analyst in 2011, but the dispositive information on the subject won't be in until the 2012 election. When the Republicans retake the reins, they will become responsible to rectify what they say the Democrats left them, but what they previously left the Democrats as well. They will be charged with the task of reversing what they say was the Democratic impetus in the wrong direction, but they will also inherit the problems that the previous years of Republican control left behind for the Democrats, and actually much more going back to Ronald Reagan and the first President Bush, interrupted only by Bill Clinton who handed a nearly $200 billion budget surplus over to them. And the irony is, they probably have only two years to do it in, just like the term they gave the Democrats.

That is why for the Democrats, this election is actually a no-way-to-lose proposition. If the Republicans are up to the task and their credos of diminished government, reduced entitlements and tax cuts to create wealth all the way down the economy actually work, we get lower taxes, though we probably will not get wealthier if the past thirty years of supply-side economics is any indicator. And while those in need will be neglected, there will be a job for everyone including my two children who both will have graduated from college by then, and the Democrats, who will no doubt go along as the loyal opposition will be able to say that while they did not agree with the Republicans, they cooperated but did not obstruct. But there will still be millions who rely on the federal government-- the sick, the poor and the elderly to name but a few groups-- who will have lost much, leaving the Democrats plenty of room in the halls of Congress for election and reelection. But if the Republican strategy fails, if enriching the rich doesn't enrich anyone else, if tax cuts do not produce employment, if business continues to run roughshod over everyone else, and that's what happened during the Bush years, the Republicans will be gone for a long time, and President Obama and a Democratic majority will be reelected. Compassion will replace incivility and greed, and the length of the American memory for the implications of Republican policy will be considerably lengthened, and more importantly, clarified. So, as to the Republicans, they were brave to bight off this big chunk. Now let's see if they can chew it.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

I find myself wondering in these final days before the November 2010 election how the American body politic is reconciling the various elements of the Republican Party's overall position on the subject of the proper role of government with the things that the Republicans actually do. It would be one thing if there was a universal thread that held together all of the elements of their platform with their conduct of the peoples' business, like what they profess it to be: smaller government is better for us. But that is only what they say when it is convenient. Otherwise they ignore that principle.

For example, when it comes to drugs, they are all for prohibitions of all sorts: on marijuana, cocaine, illicit use of prescription drugs and needle exchanges for example. But when it comes to religion, they insist that we all have it. And as to negotiating with drug companies on the prices of drugs provided to the elderly under Medicare, they were against it, favoring allowing the market to regulate itself. But as to medicine, they have been puling about the cost of medical care since the Democrats brought the health care issue to the Congress for reform; if they are for the free market in pharmaceuticals, how can they criticize doctors for getting what they can. And when BP spilled oil all over the Gulf of Mexico, Republicans like Bobby Jindall, the Governor of Louisiana, were extremely critical of the government-- the Democratic government-- for failing to do more, like take the reins from private enterprise when it failed to deal with the spill successfully in a reasonable time. But then, as soon as the Obama administration instituted a moratorium on deep water exploration pending the development of plans to deal with future spills, the Republicans returned to their anti-government-interference creed and demanded that the moratorium end as it was interfering with the oil industry's activities.

Worst of all is financial reform. There is no denying that big finance, that is the "banks" on Wall Street, brought our economy to its knees with practices that make alchemy look like empirical science: selling investments in derivatives (little more than insurance policies on bad debt) that they had designed to fail, and then betting against their investing clients who bought those derivatives. In general they were making money from thin air and proclaiming themselves geniuses for getting rich while producing nothing but grief. But the Republicans had the audacity to criticize the Democrats for the TARP program necessitated by that corruption even though it was created by the Bush Administration to keep the whole corrupt system from collapsing and bringing us all down with it. And when the Democrats passed a financial regulation bill to keep this all from happening again, and that only after the Republicans managed to dilute it, the Republicans criticized the Democrats again claiming that the law was too stringent-- an interference with the free market that they tout so highly. It was as if they didn't even know that deregulation of the financial system for thirty years had just created a world in which the robber barons once more ruled and almost managed to steal it all for themselves...again.

But there is much more. We have two wars, jingoistic Republicans' wars, George Bush's and Dick Cheney's wars, that have been costing upwards of $150 billion a year for almost ten years, but the Republicans complain about the national debt as if they had nothing to do with it. They passed tax cuts when they were in control of Congress that cost trillions, but they blame the Democrats' $800 billion stimulus package and health insurance reform for the deficit. They tout tax cuts as the solution to our financial woes, but they still criticize the stimulus package even though $300 billion of its $800 billion was in the form of tax cuts. They criticize spending on infrastructure projects, but when any bill comes to the floor, it is loaded with pet infrastructure projects designed to bring money to their districts, and not incidentally sway votes. They criticize the Democrats for "back room deals" in the course of creating the health care insurance law, but they insist that in the course of campaigning, Karl Rove and his fellow Republican operatives be able to manipulate the voters with not just impunity, but with anonymity as well. They criticize the Democrats for not listening to the people, but it is the Republicans who have vowed to prevent renewal of tax cuts for 98% of the American people if the richest 2% don't get theirs, and even that isn't all.

But why go on ranting. The American people will decide what they want next Tuesday and we will all get what the majority of us want, which appears to be more Republican policy and law. And if that is what we Americans want, that is what we should have. I have only one question. What did you and I do to deserve it? I, for one, love my wife and children, visit my mother regularly, and I never kick dogs. It must have been something you did.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

Our electoral fate has all but been cast. The outcome of the election a week from tomorrow can barely be altered now, and it appears, if the authorities on the subject are right, that the Republican Party will take over The House, or at least nearly do so, and that they may even take over The Senate. So, discussing why the American people have rejected the Democratic majorities at this point is of no real purpose. The fact is that, even if the Republicans take over neither house of Congress, they will at least gain enough seats to thwart virtually every effort made by the Democrats as the Republicans' ruling minority in The Senate will only be strengthened, meaning that even with two or three defections, cloture of debate will be impossible for the Democrats, even if they maintain the majority. And without the Senate, no bill can become law. The only hope that the Democrats have for passing any other part of their platform is that the Tea Party candidates who win will form a recalcitrant force relative to the Republican leadership and that therefore, the Democrats will still be able to muster majorities on occasion even though the conservative bent of the Tea Party affiliates will make even that nigh unto impossible. So, given what appears to be a fait accomplis, the only remaining question is how should the Democrats proceed from this point forward.

The most obvious option is for them to become the disloyal opposition that the Republican Party has been. There would be a political symmetry to doing so, but there would be no service to us, America, in choosing such a course. Besides, taking the obstructionist approach would only prolong what is already wrong, and ironically, it would probably strengthen the Republican Party in the next presidential election. They could do again what they have done this time, that is point to the Democrats and say that their actions-- in the case of obstructionism their impedance of action-- continues to be the cause of our misery and that they therefore do not deserve our confidence. No, sheer obstruction is not be course to choose; it would be destructive and it would not yield even a political gain. In fact, the Democrats will have to exert a Herculean effort to avoid the appearance of obstruction because the Republicans will try to go back to where they took us before, and more of the same would not be good for anyone except them...not even for their constituents except for the two percent who have most of the money already.

Then of course, the Democrats could continue to swim against what appears to be the tide, pursuing the common weal in the way that the American public seems to be rejecting: attempt to thwart the Republican effort to repeal health insurance reform and financial industry regulation, continue to seek campaign finance reform, oppose tax cuts for the rich and propose further stimulation of the economy through government spending on infrastructure. But that effort would likely yield nothing but the appearance of effete partisanship that will effectively banish Democrats and their humanistic policies to the political tulles for a decade or more. Taking a high profile approach to criticizing the Republican conservative complex (Rcc) would seem like sour grapes, not a sane voice in the wilderness. Such stridency would appear hysterical and petulant, not righteous and indignant.

The course I advocate is passivity. Allow the Republicans to yield to the pressures that the Rcc will exert and, while trying to prevent a wholesale return to plutocratic control, permit the Republicans to thrash away at our economic problems with the same passion and self-serving philosophy that they used to drive our capitalistic economy to ruin. There are only two years until President Obama runs for reelection and all those current incumbents whom the electorate throws out return to ask the American people if they get it yet. In two years, it is unlikely that our situation will be much better, and even if it is, it should also be possible to demonstrate that the Republicans just happened to be there when it happened. The results of Republican policy changes will be further stratification of the economy, if more jobs then certainly lower wages, and lost ground for the working man with bigger yachts for the owners. But I doubt that any of that will occur for reasons that I have cited before. We were thirty years allowing supply side economics to bring us to our knees. It is going to take more than two or four years to stand us up straight again. And in two years, when tax cuts have served no purpose but to make the rich demonstrably richer and financial deregulation has served no purpose but to allow Wall Street to flourish on the claim that its denizens are the smartest guys on earth and deserve to be irrationally wealthy while producing nothing-- when our twenty four or five year old post-college age children no longer have health insurance and enough people and their children have lost their insurance because some adjuster has discovered reason to believe that they suffer from a preexisting condition-- the Republicans will have a lot to explain, and it won't be as easy as pointing a dirty finger and saying, "not us...them!"

I say, give the Republicans just enough rope to hang themselves. Let them have their way just short of allowing them to create another depression. Let the American people realize that they need government in their lives to protect them from rapacity, injustice and greed, and then ask them if they are sure that those things are what they wanted when they threw out the Democrats and restored the Republicans to power. My bet is that the Democrats won't even have to say "I told you so." All they'll have to do is show up.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

The election impends and the issues on which we must all decide how to vote become more obscure with each passing day. The negativity of the campaign process has never been more starkly displayed than it has been in this election; never before have I seen such abjectly immoderate personal vituperation, and a corresponding dearth of factual content in political advertising. In Connecticut, for example, we have our Attorney General running against the multi-millionaire CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, which neither exists world wide nor is about wrestling, nor is even entertaining to anyone in touch with reality. Attorney General Blumenthal has been tarred with a broad brush by Linda McMahon, whose most recently disclosed claim to fame is that she allowed her husband, the founder of the enterprise she supposedly ran, to make her get on her hands and knees in a ring, in public, and bark like a dog. Given what that incident reveals about her character, you can imagine the things she is saying about her opponent.

In New York, the Governor's race is between a rich businessman named Paladino and Andrew Cuomo, the scion of Mario Cuomo, a former governor of New York himself. Paladino has boosted his name recognition by accusing Andrew Cuomo of extramarital affairs, the accusation stemming from the fact that the press disclosed that Paladino has an illegitimate daughter from his own infidelity. When Paladino was asked for proof of the allegations against Cuomo, he vacillated between recantation of the allegation and trying to stand above it, never adducing an iota of evidence in the process. And then, after several truculent exchanges with members of the press when confronted with the baselessness of his claims, he threatened to "take out" a reporter for his persistence and his alleged lurking about the Paladino residence.

In California, the governor's race has declined in quality as well. Meg Wittman, the eBay CEO emeritus, had a nanny who, it turns out, was an illegal alien. Actually, it is probably defensible that she employed the woman for nine years and didn't know about her immigration status: fake social security cards and the like are obtainable as are the other forms of proof of legal status required for employment. But now the woman faces deportation, and Wittman has cut her loose, or as my kids say, thrown the woman under a bus. I suppose that after you have spent tens of millions of dollars of your own money in pursuit of your new hobby-- and politics must be a hobby because she hadn't even voted for twenty eight years prior to her decision to seek office-- you do what you have to, and people become expendable. But I can't help wondering how her opponent, former governor Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown might have handled it. He is a little daffy, but at least he is humane.

There is a theme here, I think, and it parallels the prevailing notion that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. But in this instance, I think that the prevailing notion involves a camel and the eye of a needle. It is hard to believe how universally the rich have discredited themselves in recent politics, but in this most recent pre-election season in particular. There have been rich people in government who have acquitted themselves well once in office. Teddy and Franklin D. Roosevelt, patricians both, served both as governors of New York and as President of the United States. Nelson D. Rockefeller was also governor of New York, and of course there was John F. Kennedy-- a congressman, a senator and a president. They all had foibles and peccadilloes, involving women mostly, but they were noble in all public respects, never publicly indulging in the licenses that the rich seem to take for granted in that they have the buying power to purchase them. They were all people who at least had some tact, and more importantly gentility, though Teddy Roosevelt did like to shoot large living things, all that in contrast to what we are seeing today: a crassness and a baseness of character that certainly does no credit to the rich as a group.

You all know my bent, and I won't deny that I correlate that crassness among the newly rich political class with their Republican affiliations, but setting my own bias aside, the nature of the current crop of rich would-be office holders serves only to crystalize what I believe this election to be about. The Democrats have said very little about what they have accomplished in the past two years. Our children up to the age of twenty six, many of whom cannot find work or insurance, can stay on our insurance policies now because of health insurance reform, and they cannot be denied that coverage because of preexisting conditions. The financial industry, which the Republicans tout as our life's blood donor, is being re-regulated after three decades of deregulation importuned by the Republican conservative complex (Rcc). And there would be campaign regulation too, wringing some of the big money out of the process if the Rcc weren't opposing it on such flimsy pretexts and yet so adamantly. The ads on television and radio have obfuscated the issues to the point that the Democrats don't dare mention health insurance or the financial industry, and the public interest in what they have gained is flagging rapidly thanks to the torrent of not just misinformation, but of dysinformation that conservative and monied interests have unleashed. So, given the dearth of actual information on which to decide how to vote, how should we make up our minds?

Well, my opinion is that we should vote on the basis of ethos. As I have admitted many times, I see Republicans as oriented toward materialism and the Democrats as oriented toward humanism. And that is how I am deciding how to cast my vote. I cannot know whose mud should stick to the wall since both sides are slinging it. But despite the lack of utility of campaign ads, I have tried to keep myself sufficiently informed in other ways about how the last two years of Democratic hegemony have changed things in this country, albeit insufficiently changed for my satisfaction but as much as could be expected given the Republican oath to obstruction that they all seem to have taken. I have always advocated that we all, America, vote with out own heads, not someone else's, and I still think that that is how it should be, so don't take this the wrong way, but I am voting Democratic across the board this time. It's a vote not from my head or even someone else's, but from my heart.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

J.P. Morgan Chase & Company (J.P. Morgan), its eponymous founder being known a little over a hundred years ago as a "robber baron," is one of the largest financial institutions in the world-- only euphemistically susceptible of description as a bank. Earlier this month, it reported third quarter 2010 earnings of nearly $4.5 billion. According to the New York Times report on those earnings, J.P. Morgan's total loan portfolio was less than $100 billion. Thus, extrapolating from these quarterly earnings, the institution would earn approximately $18 billion over the course of a year on all of its business when its conventional banking activities might earn six or seven billion dollars if only interest on money lent, given the level of commercial interest rates today, were counted, which begs this question: how does J.P. Morgan Chase, or any other big financial institution for that matter, actually make most of its money. The Times illuminated that subject on Monday.

One of the businesses J.P. Morgan is in is called "securities lending." The way it works is that various pension funds and mutual funds deliver stocks they hold to J.P. Morgan, which lends them out to others in lieu of cash deposits that secure the loans. Then, J.P. Morgan places those deposits for the mutual and pension funds in what are supposed to be relatively secure investments, and it takes a fee for doing so-- in the case reported in The Times, about forty percent of profits. Sometimes those investments go bad, but J.P. Morgan suffers no exposure to the related losses; the funds bear them all. So J.P. Morgan is essentially the partner of the investor when the investment pays, but not when it fails, and I doubt that that is all there is to the enterprise.

For example, to whom does J.P. Morgan lend those securities, and for what purpose. I assume that the lent out shares are used to deliver on something I have decried many times before in these letters: short selling. Investors who want to bet against a given company can sell shares of the company's stock even though they don't own any, but the sale goes through just like any other. In other words, the short seller borrows the shares and delivers them to the buyer, and he pays a security deposit for the stock he has borrowed. That security is what J.P. Morgan invests for the owners of the stocks, or at least they invest sixty percent. The other forty percent is J.P. Morgan income. But there is an ancillary benefit that inures to J.P. Morgan and the other financial institutions that play in this game: they know who is selling short and what they are selling, and thus, they can plan their own investments on that basis. Just to put the value of that information into perspective, it is estimated that $2.3 trillion worth of shares are out on loan, meaning that J.P. Morgan and its confederates in this business know a huge amount about the enormous downward pressure on shares of various companies that short selling $2.3 trillion worth produces, and they know it in a very timely fashion. That allows them to invest their own money on the basis of the self-fulfilling prophecy that short selling really is when it occurs with the kind of magnitude that we are discussing here, and sometimes the financial institutions involved place their bets against the interests of their clients, separate from the accounts and asset management activities for which they get paid by those investors. So, this unsavory business accounts for a portion of the non-lending income of big financial institutions, but there must be many more pieces to this puzzle, one of which we saw with the sub-prime mortgage crisis.

You may recall that the banks-- and I use the term loosely-- lent out money on impossibly favorable terms knowing full well that those terms were temporary and that a great many of the people to whom they lent the money could not pay it back at the higher interest rates they would eventually have to pay. That might have been less critical if the banks had shown some restraint when reality struck, however they began to foreclose without compunction, and the housing bubble burst. But even that might have been manageable if it hadn't been for the other businesses that our financial institutions were in. For example, they packaged those loans, knowing that many of them would go bad and sold those packages to their investment clients, thus getting those bad investments off their own books and into the accounts of clients who had trusted them for sound advice. And as if that weren't bad enough, our financial industry then began selling insurance on those packages of bad loans-- derivatives as they were called-- making money off their perfidy one more time without regard for the possibility that they might have to cover the losses that were inevitable. Then they created and sold derivatives on those derivatives. Not to put too fine a point on it, our financiers screwed everyone over and over again, but worst of all, they are now complaining that everyone hates them as if that opprobrium were unjust. Even more brazen is their denunciation of the financial regulations passed by Congress even though they do little to curtail the banks' activities other than shedding some much needed sunlight on them. And all the while, guess who is in their corner, taking their part and complaining right along with them: the Republican Party and the Republican conservative complex (Rcc), and now even the Tea Party Movement seems to be buying that party line on the theory that if the government is regulating it is also intruding. Why they aren't just as critical of what amounts to the financial industry's piracy escapes me.

That is the one central thing that I have to criticize conservatives for. They will tolerate anything that business does, just so long as business does it to someone else. But that's the irony here. The price paid for the rapacity of the financial industry was, and apparently continues to be, the predation that most Americans suffered in their savings accounts, IRA's, 401(k)'s and the equity loss on their homes, liberals and conservatives alike. But they are going to vote Republican anyway. Go figure.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

The election that is now impending is going to be a matter of choice for the entire electorate as to whether we want the government to play a substantial role in our lives. The Republican Party and the Republican conservative complex (Rcc) have developed a persistent and ubiquitous patter that is being subscribed to by the great mass of the voting public, and the election seems likely to be turned on their ardent beliefs in that regard. As a nation, we are heading back to an era when the government was a vestigial organ that everyone recognized as extant but only peripheral to daily life. That is what the Tea Party wants for its members, and for the rest of us as well, and it now appears that that is what we will get in increments as the body politic gravitates slowly but inescapably toward their position. Our economy will not improve substantially for perhaps another eight years, and maybe a decade, and all the while, the Republicans will point the finger at the Democrats with the virtual impunity that these bad times have endowed them with; it seems that the body politic is not willing to recognize the illogic in it. But there was recently an incident that was an augury of what we will become if we do not see the light.

In a rural area of Tennessee where affluence is nothing but a pipe dream, there is a town that does not have the tax base necessary to fund its own fire department. But things do catch fire there as they do everywhere else, so provisions had to be made. Thus, the town made arrangements with neighboring towns to provide fire services in exchange for an assessment on each home owner of seventy five dollars a year, but payment of the assessment was left to the individual at his own discretion: the government provided the opportunity to get services and left it to each citizen to get them or not as he chose. Predictably, at least one citizen bet that he would never need fire services and he declined to pay in order to save himself the seventy five dollars a year. Unfortunately however, he bet wrong. His house caught fire and he had to call the fire department, but to no avail. Oh, the fire department did come but only because his neighbors called in fear that the fire in his house would spread to theirs. Out of compassion, the neighbors plead with the firemen to put out the fire in the man's house, and even offered to pay substantially more than seventy five dollars for them to do so, but neither the firemen themselves nor their supervisors would budge, and the house burned to the ground. Of course the man had paid for insurance, so his house will be rebuilt providing that his refusal to pay the assessment was not a violation of policy terms, but that just begs the question of whether he would not have been better off to pay the government assessment of a few dollars rather than the private insurance premium that was certainly several times that amount, because private enterprise couldn't save his house, and because of his choice, the government that he didn't want to pay for wouldn't.

The ethos of the Tea Party Movement is that of the man who saved seventy five dollars but lost his home. They stand for the proposition that they should not be forced to pay for health insurance, but they are simultaneously opposed to the taxes necessary to fund emergency rooms and free clinics so that those who cannot or won't buy insurance will have somewhere to go for medical care. They are against infrastructure spending even in a time when it serves the binary purpose of enhancing woefully deteriorated roads and bridges and the ancillary purpose of producing jobs because they are against a deficit and a national debt that admittedly have been increasing rapidly of late, but that have been looming over their heads for decades (except briefly when a liberal president worked with a conservative congress to create a budget surplus that the ensuing conservative administration immediately squandered). They justify expulsion of the Democrats in Congress with the fact that they happen to be in the room now, but never point to the conservative administrations that reinstated deficit spending after a year of surplus thus planting the seeds of the burgeoning debt we are experiencing now while continuing the deregulation and government largess directed toward the affluent that got us here. They want to privatize Social Security even in the face of a stock market and a financial industry that have looted the retirement assets of many millions who have or will have to rely on them for their sustenance in old age.

It all reminds me of a popular admonition: be careful what you wish for, for you may well get it. Unfortunately, as I have said before, the rest of us will get it too. So be prepared for more houses burning while firemen watch. Accustom yourselves to people dieing of diseases for which there are cures as doctors stand by without acting. Don't count on the road in front of your house being repaved when the asphalt cracks and the pot holes get big enough to swallow your car. And when the kids go to school and they have to share their text books with the neighbor's child, don't call the school board to ask why. It is like when my son talks about how we have become too reliant on technology. He thinks we should grow our own vegetables and hunt for our own meat, build our own barns and ride horses rather than drive around in our cars. He resents the world that necessitates that he work for someone else rather than sustain himself naturally-- just because he needs a cell phone.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

This past Friday, I had a conversation in the ordinary course of commerce that was unremarkable until the end when, as the young man left he said, "By the way, have you heard that Obama raised the tax on rent?" I asked him where he had heard that, and he told me that his boss had told him. "There is no tax on rent," I told him, and then I added that in the future, when his boss, or anyone else for that matter tells him something like that, he should look it up for himself. As the conversation was just a fleeting exchange as he went out the door, I didn't get a chance to tell him the rest of the germane details: that the President doesn't impose taxes, Congress does, and that as far as real estate taxes are concerned, neither the President nor Congress imposes them; they are imposed on the local level by cities and towns as authorized by the state legislatures. But in that brief exchange, my consternation rose to almost unbearable levels as I realized that the guy going out the door is the problem in American politics-- him, his boss, and the person who concocted that bizarre notion about taxes on rent. The problem is all of those untraceable lies that-- I can't help myself-- I attribute to the Republican conservative complex (Rcc) along with the fact that so many of us will believe practically anything we hear or read from such people as long as they say or write it with an air of conviction. The problem is canards circulated by people who know that they are false but circulate them anyway out of sheer Machiavellianism: power at any cost. Sarah Palin says that there will be "death panels" if the health insurance reform bill passes, someone starts the rumor that President Obama is a Muslim, that he was not born in the United States, that he hates whites, that he created the Toxic Asset Relief Program (TARP), and now that he is unilaterally imposing taxes on rent, and those who are willing to think with someone else's head instead of their own believe. Whether those dispersers and proliferators of untruth are fools or frauds doesn't matter. What they do is shameful. It is insidious.

After all, to what motive can you ascribe the choice to use such tactics? Why would someone seek power at the cost of his or her integrity? The answer is that people who are willing to compromise their characters in such a fashion seek power at any price, and they are a danger to us all as the quest for power and wealth at the cost of virtue is not in any way synonymous with the desire to serve. It is the desire to be served, and that is at the core of Republican doctrine: the rich will provide, and therefore, we must give over our resources to them for husbanding. We must hand them the power to feed, clothe and shelter us because we cannot do it without them. And the prospect of doing so is what we face in light of what we in America are being importuned to believe; this is what the drafters of the Constitution feared.

In number 10 of "The Federalist" papers, James Madison pointed to the hazards inherent in allowing the electorate at large to control the operation of government directly, advocating instead the republic for which the Constitution actually stands. And in numbers 62 and 68 of "The Federalist," Alexander Hamilton and James Madison noted specifically that the use of the electoral college and the state legislatures as buffers between the people on the one hand and the power of the Presidency as well as excessively transitory law on the other, was universally approved by those who took it upon themselves to propound and ultimately ratify the Constitution. You see, on both the liberal and conservative ends of the political spectrum, on the nationalist and federalist ends, on the republic and democracy ends and at all points in between in our nascent political establishment, our founding fathers did not trust the people to be prudent, effectively echoing over and over the observation that the human species was as yet insufficiently evolved to act without self-interest in mind. And that idea has always offended me-- that the masses are a many headed beast incapable of making sound judgments...that we are a mob...a rabble. But last Friday, I began to question my reservations about the judgment of those formulators of our government and system. But that bearded young man, who either had never paid rent or didn't even connect the fact that his rent is what his lease calls for, not that amount plus a percentage of taxation, that blithe fellow who didn't even bother to question such a preposterous idea, is going to cast a vote in a few weeks with millions like him, and based on the beliefs that have been foisted upon them by their neighbors, their friends, their mothers and fathers, and yes, the Rcc, they will most likely cast a vote for the disloyal opposition to our presently Democratic Congress. They will cast all of our fates to the Republican wind for lack of the inclination find the truth for themselves.

In "The Republic," Plato advocated rule of his utopian city-state, Killopolis, by philosophers who would become kings. His lack of regard for both politicians and the mob inspired him as they did the authors of "The Federalist" more than two thousand years later, and my bearded friend merely validated in the present the notion that the vast majority of human beings cannot overcome insularity of mind and interest when deciding how to deal with the rights and needs of others; they would prefer to believe in convenient untruths. Perhaps they should not be trusted. But then there are Jesus Christ, Abraham Lincoln, Mohatma Ghandi and the rest who so loved the people that they sacrificed themselves to preserve their rights to liberty and self-determination. Even the Federalists opted in the end for a constitution that, while it does insulate government from the caprice of the people in many respects, defers to the citizens of the United States of America as long as they do not oppress one another. In the end then, I guess we all must have faith in one another and hope for the best...but speak up when the opportunity presents itself and makes it necessary to do so. So keep talking America. There are less than three weeks to go until, as I always say of election day, the majority of us get what they deserve, but the rest of us get it too.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

I have admitted my affinity for certain political commentators in the past, in particular for David Brooks and Paul Krugman. I admire Brooks for his moderate, centrist though distinctly Republican point of view. But in the end, he is just another letter writer like me. Krugman however is another story. He is a Nobel laureate in economics, so when he speaks to his subject, he does so not just from an authoritative vantage point, but with the approbation of the world. All I really have in common with him is a certain grayness of beard and a Keynesian perspective; like most everyone else, I can only fantasize about making a contribution to the world of the magnitude of his. So, though I read them both with interest and admiration, when I read what Krugman says I am also in his thrall. But sometimes even he appears to miss what seems to me to be the obvious. Specifically, on Monday, he contributed a piece to the New York Times more or less reiterating his recurring point about the steps the Obama administration has taken to address our economic pain. That point has been from the beginning that the stimulus package was never enough to accomplish its intended purpose, and each time he expresses that opinion, he supports it with facts and data that lead ineluctably to the conclusion that he is urges on us: that more is needed, not less. But through all of his comments I have not been able to ascertain his position on an economic postulate that I find particularly questionable: that tax breaks create jobs and foster prosperity. And on the occasion of this piece, I am led to believe that we disagree on this point, at least in some of the details.

The Republican conservative complex (Rcc) has touted tax breaks as a panacea on every possible occasion at least since their rise to preeminence as a basic element of economic conventional wisdom during the Reagan administration. The premise is that when those with money get more of it, they invest in the process that enriched them in the first place: commerce. It is presumed that they have some essential instinct that drives them in that direction, and that therefore, they will not pocket tax refunds but will rather expand physical plant, enhance production techniques and give raises to workers who deserve them. But here we are after seven years of a tax cut that put more money per capita in the hands of the top 2% of earners than it did in the hands of any other 20% or 30% segment of the population. Yet, our economy dove into this abyss while those tax cuts were in effect. In addition, the cash-on-hand of business in general, which presumably is partly the creation of those tax cuts, is not being reinvested in economic growth. It is being hoarded not for a rainy day, but for a sunny one. Business, which the Rcc supposes to be the patron of our economic system, is sitting out this cataclysm rather than doing with the tax savings that we gave them what we predicated the gift upon. Yet the Rcc still insists on this premise: that the rich are our friends and our benefactors. And frankly, with the state in which our political system currently exists and the nature of political rhetoric today, it is hard to disabuse our body politic of that notion. Even our President cleaves to the proposition that business can be stimulated into growth with tax cuts and easy credit. Apparently, even Mr. Krugman believes in the tax cut fairy because in his Monday commentary, he reiterated his view that the dimension of the stimulus package was too small, and in the course of doing so, he made note of the fact that 40% of the original stimulus comprised tax relief, some of which was not directed at business, but much of it was. And this is where I must depart from Mr. Krugman's school of thought on taxes, just as I do the Rcc's school of thought, because when you couple Mr. Krugman's observation about the scope of tax relief in the stimulus package with the claim of the Rcc that the stimulus was too large and yet unproductive, you cannot escape the cognate conclusion that even tax cuts that were too large-- that is the Bush tax cuts and the $320 billion in tax cuts within the $800 billion stimulus package-- did not stimulate the economy. And that fact begs the question, under what circumstances has or will tax cuts ever stimulate the economy.

Let me be clear about my point. I have opined from the first time I wrote to you, America, that money in the hands of those who will spend it is the key to our recovery, but even then only after the vast majority of us have put our individual financial houses in order by paying off unmanageable debt and creating a financial cushion in each of our households. And there is some support for that notion in the data that continues to come out showing that rates of savings are increasing and debt is decreasing, albeit in large part through write offs by financial institutions, but also in part because both old and new participants in the consumer side of the economy do not appear to be indulging in credit buying to the extent that was commonplace before 2009-- the volume of our consumer debt is not growing though our mature, buying population is. To the extent that tax cuts put food money in the hands of the hungry and clothes money in the hands of those who need them, they stimulate commerce by making the purchase of those goods possible whereas it would not have been without tax relief. But there does not seem to be any evidence that tax cuts for those who are not compelled to spend what they get actually increase anything but bank deposits, and bank deposits don't stimulate anything unless they are in turn lent out for expansion of business-- the buying of houses and such-- and they are not being so lent at this time. So why are tax cuts so popular with those who are supposed to understand it all?

I believe that the reason that the Rcc line continues to go effectively unchallenged is that our experts are not asking the right questions. We should not be asking for evidence of the benefit of tax cuts because any figures one chooses can be used to point in a variety of directions. The question we should be asking universally is this: what is the mechanism by which that principle works. How do tax cuts convert to prosperity and how reliable is the mechanism by which they do so? Then, once we have asked that question we can ask the next one: so why hasn't it worked so far. It comes to this. If the Republicans are so smart, why aint we all rich?

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

In 1977, the Supreme Court of the United States reversed the decisions of a series of Illinois courts that prevented the National Socialist Party of America-- effectively the American NAZI party-- from marching in Skokie, Illinois. Like many other examples of seminal law, the case stood for the right of a group broadly regarded in this country as despicable to express its odious opinion in public, albeit within certain limits, in the same way as would be afforded the most esteemed of groups expressing the most widely held of beliefs. That is perhaps an oversimplification of the issues presented by the parties to the case and of the procedural and technical aspects of the case as well, but it accurately states the principle. The cornerstone of the foundation of our liberty is the virtually unabridgeable right to express opinion contrary to the popular sentiment; content, with only a few exceptions, does not qualify as a reason to curtail the right of free speech. Whether one is a NAZI or a veteran of the war against them, he has the right to speak about it within certain restraints that obtain only at the fringes of the right. That is not my opinion, that is the law, and it is also one of the principles on which American democracy is and always has been based.

Now, comes Fred Phelps. He is a Baptist fundamentalist, with all that that entails, and he is an activist for his cause as well. Unfortunately, he is also a bigot and a fire-and-brimstone moral absolutist who believes that we are all going to hell for, among other things, allowing same sex marriage in the United States of America. And he is so confirmed in his belief that he goes with his tiny, isolated congregation of wingnuts-- actually that is somewhat unfair...to wingnuts-- I assume at considerable expense, all over the country to openly profess this and other views by picketing various funerals and parades, in the case relevant here a funeral for a marine fallen in Afghanistan. Funerals are his specialty-- you may remember him from the press coverage he got when he and his coven picketed the funeral of Matthew Shepard, who was beaten and left to die tied to a fence because he was a homosexual-- but apparently restraint and compassion are his long suit. Mr. Phelps and his tiny congregation at Westboro Baptist Church near Topeka, Kansas, mostly family and extended family members, went to a funeral in Maryland to raise placards bearing their creed: "God hates fags" and "Thank God for dead soldiers" two of their placards read. On the belief that America is doomed, and that the young marine had died for a morally bankrupt nation, they went half way across the country to say so in the cruelest of fashions at the most painful of moments. The City of Topeka has tried, according to the New York Times, to silence Mr. Phelps and his congregation, or at least to prevail upon them to move somewhere else, but they have resisted successfully for decades, and the city is not alone in its rejection of Mr. Phelps's and his cruel tactics.

The Father of the marine in question, Albert Snyder, sued Mr. Phelps and won a $5, 000,000 dollar judgment against him and his church, but the judgment was reversed by the federal appellate court, from which reversal Mr. Snyder appealed with the support of the American Legion and more than forty each state attorneys general and senators, all of whom filed or signed Supreme Court amicus briefs in support of Snyder's cause. Even Bill O'Reilly supports Mr. Snyder, offering to pay the substantial court costs for the U.S. Supreme Court Appeal, according to Wikipedia at least. That seems only fair as Mr. Phelps had the foresight to raise eleven of his thirteen children to be lawyers, and from what I have seen and heard, the daughter who argued the case before the Supreme Court knows her first amendment law, which has probably come in quite handy.

It should be understood that the first amendment has exceptions that have developed over centuries of just this kind of test of the American resolve to guaranty freedom of speech-- the Skokie case is the most recent high profile example, but there are many others in areas like commercial speech, hate speech, libel and slander. And frankly, as a lawyer it has always been my opinion that while freedom of speech is sacrosanct, civil remedies for those who are rightly offended by it should not be barred, though the Supreme Court of the United States does not see it my way as the law deems state court civil judgments to be state actions, and thus a restraint of any civil right that is attendant to the case on which those judgments are rendered. So this case is a close call for the same reason that all the others were when they were decided: the specific facts make a difference. The primary distinguishing fact in this case was that the protest took place a thousand feet from the church where the funeral was held and it disbanded when the funeral was over and the cortege had passed by. No one from the group went to the cemetery or to the Snyder home. They bespoke their obscenities and left. Those who complained of the speech in question were not a "captive audience," which is a significant legal fact. The demonstrators never trespassed on private property, and to their way of thinking, their tactics were justified by what they feel is a matter of profound public significance-- all relevant factual elements of their defense. It is not as clear a call as the parties who have aligned with the good guys would suggest, and while the case itself has its significance, those aligned parties are the real matter of interest.

We have a conservative Supreme Court today. Justices like Antonin Scalia have claimed to be "strict constructionists," meaning in his case that the original language of The Constitution as it was intended to be understood by the founding fathers is how our rights should be defined. The fact that the founding fathers all owned other men and women, that the women in their lives could neither own property, enter into contracts nor vote doesn't hold any weight for Scalia, and the fact that the world is completely different in every significant detail is not provocative to him either, and he is not alone. Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito are cut from the same cloth, and then of course there is Justice Thomas-- I'm not sure even he knows why he thinks what he thinks, but he is on the conservative end of the bench. They are what I would call constitutional fundamentalists and they are as hardened in their beliefs as Mr. Phelps is in his-- the irresistible force meets the immovable object. That wing of the court will be faced with the choice of permitting desecration of perhaps the most treasured of things in a time of war-- the body of a fallen soldier-- or preserving freedom of speech as the authors of The Constitution envisioned it. These men are not just constitutional purists, they are true believers as well.

Thoreau wrote in a little referenced essay called "Civil Disobedience" that one who wishes to disobey the law for principle must accept the consequences if he is earnest in his cause. And we have had examples of that basic axiom in the form of many men: Martin Luther King, Mohatma Ghandi, Medger Evers, Abraham Lincoln and hoards of protesters at every rally from the Hay Market riots to the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention. Personally, that is the way I would go in this case: Phelps can say what he likes, but because he went too far, and did so unnecessarily and chose circumstances in which to speak that were gratuitously offensive, even sadistic, he is exposed to civil liability. In such a holding there is no prior restraint of speech and no governmental retribution or punishment because that is the nature of civil tort law: it is compensatory. That would necessitate that the Supremes vacate the punitive damage award allowed by the lower court, but the point would still be made, and I think, justice served. However, the conservative wing of the court has failed the test of symmetrical legality in its recent decisions, so there is really no way to predict what they will do. I know only this. The Westboro Baptist Church case is what they get paid for. We have a right to demand that they get it right, no matter what they choose to do. Let's hope for the best, America. And if we get something less, we will have George Bush to thank. After all, Alito and Roberts were his babies.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

The deeper we get into this election season, the move perplexed I become about the improvement in the prospects of the Republican Party. These aren't Abe Lincoln's Republicans anymore.  Our governor's race here in Connecticut disturbs me because both the Democrat and the Republican are calling each other liars, and it seems probable that that is the only thing that each of them is telling the truth about. But after all, they are politicians and prevarication is an art form in their culture. Telling just enough of the truth to mislead is a mark of a facile nature, which is probably very useful when dealing with nothing but other facile people, and that it seems is what politicians do. In New York, the governor's race is far less civilized than is the race here in Connecticut. Andrew Cuomo, the Democrat, is a brass knuckles politician whose father, Mario Cuomo, was probably the greatest president the United States never had. Mario was, and still is, an elegantly forceful personage. He radiates the kind of confidence that is born of good ideas and sincerity. Andrew may have good ideas too, but he also has that hardened look about him that suggests cynicism, and perhaps even a touch of megalomania. Still, when he stands next to his Republican opponent, Carl Paladino, Andrew is as non-threatening as the Easter Bunny. That is what disturbs me about the Republicans' prospects. Paladino may not be the stereotypical Republican candidate, but he seems to be a caricature of one, possessed of the same qualities of the common version, but in such overabundance as to make those qualities clearly definable...and ominous. He demonstrates such venomous truculence, such a tendentious ulterior motivation and gratuitous meanness of spirit that if I were choosing the poster child for the Republican conservative complex (Rcc) and the Republican Party, I would choose Paladino. He is Karl Rove come out of the closet.

Paladino became a national figure over the past few days for his very public remonstration with a reporter from the New York Post whose only apparent offense was asking Paladino if he had any evidence to support his accusation that his opponent had had extra-marital affairs. It should be noted that Paladino withdrew the accusation when first asked to prove it, but he recanted his recantation the next day. Paladino threatened the reporter by saying that he would "take [him] out" along with others, and while he was at it, he characterized the most prominent figure in the New York state legislature as a criminal, something that even that figures most vigorous and persistent political adversary, the benign New York City mayor emeritus, Ed Koch, called an outrageous accusation. And since that public self-destructive outburst, Paladino has professed to have reformed, each time only to fly his true colors again. He has gone from being competitive to being twenty four points out of the race, and that is something that New Yorkers should thank themselves for. But I must say in Paladino's behalf that he is at least open about who he is and why he is that way. I don't think the same thing can be said about Karl Rove, Mitch McConnell or John Boehner to name just a few of the high profile Republicans who are engineering the Republican resurgence.

But there is something else in the Republican approach to the election process and it is disturbing-- something beyond vitriol and slyness. Rove's role in these elections is a good example of it. Though he is not running for office himself, he continues to be a high level Republican operative by inspiring and guiding three or more purported public service organizations that are funding and creating some of the most dubious political ads yet aired in the media. I heard one of the most recent ones, for example, was rated "barely true" by a fact checking organization that rates the ads of candidates from both ends of the political spectrum all the way through the middle. But what is disturbing is that these ads cut such a fine line between truth and falsity, telling enough of the former to leave the latter in their wake. If the purveyors of these ads had done so inadvertently, they might just have been foolish or reckless. But while prevarication may be clever, it is no accident, and the use of it to influence the vote is insidious. I might even say evil...intentionally so. And that is what perplexes me: what is their motivation? What do they want?

It seems that all of this is directed at one thing: the concentration of wealth in the hands of the few. But those who are at the controls of these efforts already have wealth. One of Rove's compatriots in his movement is a billionaire media mogul, and he is not the only billionaire in their little cabal. There are two brothers in the fossil fuel business-- who have more money than anyone could ever spend-- seeking to defeat an environmental referendum passed some time ago by supporting a new referendum aimed at deferring environmental measures until unemployment gets down to a level that California has rarely seen over the past thirty years according to Governor Schwarzenegger, all for the purpose of avoiding the expenditure of what to them would be a paltry sum to prevent a new coal powered power plant from having to clean itself up. And the list of the rich and powerful goes on, but how much richer can they get. What can they gain through their machinations, and mind you, I am not asking out of a desire to vilify them, though I do think that they are villains. I am sincerely curious. What are they trying to achieve?

Of course, I will never find myself in their circles of friends, so I will never be able to ask. Maybe some day there will be a study of these people. We could learn a lot from such a study, and perhaps we could even find out how to give them the kind of peace that would allow them to stop their quest for wealth without end and leave some for the rest of us. But until that study is done and the results are published, we will have no way to know why they do what they do. We will just have to satisfy ourselves with making sure that they don't succeed in doing it. Are you with me, America? We have nothing to fear but...them.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

As we continue in our long slog through the campaign season toward the elections in November, the sound and fury coming from both sides of the campaign trail continues to signify more than nothing, but not much more. Both sides persist in trumpeting their doctrinaire positions, thus generating far more heat than light. But the fundamental distinctions between the Democratic ethos and that of the Republicans-- the heart of the differences between the two sides of the political dialectic-- go un-discussed though they are probably the sole basis on which to make a distinction between sound policy and more of what got us to where we are. For example, the core tenet of the Republican philosophy is the free market, but no one looks at the free market from the critical perspective of its historical performance as a guiding principle, though not for lack of a history to examine. Considering just the past thirty years, the myth that free market capitalism is the route to a fair and vibrant economic system is amply demonstrated to be false. Consider the peremptory notion that regulation is inimical to economic efficiency, that is that it impairs the function of the free market, which has become axiomatic for Republicans almost as if the contrary indications do not exist. But the economic reality is all around them, and it is all around us too; the deemphasizing of anti-trust laws, including in the financial arena, the deregulation of some industries and the horizontal integration of businesses like oil have all affected those of us on the consumption side of supply side economics dramatically, and not in a good way. And we have an ever freer market to blame.

For example, the Glass-Steagall Act kept banks from both saving money for their customers and risking that money in the pursuit of those banks' own profits at the same time, but in the mid nineties, the act was repealed. When added to the trend away from preventing critical mass in business-- that is governmental decisions permitting conflations of business interests that effectively diluted to the point of insignificance the statutory laws against monopolies and cartels-- the result was a merging of those two often conflicting business purposes in individual financial entities, and the consequence was the recession that still hangs over us like a toxic miasma. And then there is the oil industry, which has gone from comprising dozens of major companies to being just the few whose names we all see every day next to signs emblazened with gas prices that would have been obscene if their comparable numbers had appeared thirty years ago. But there is a sense in which it is impossible to pin those problems on deregulation. The Republican conservative complex (Rcc) continues to squirm out from under the responsibility for the occurrence of what they have advocated for so long by pointing to things like growth in the Gross Domestic Product, which measures only wealth at the top of our economy, while avoiding discussion of the economic stagnation suffered by those who live below that level. But throwing that ball back and forth does not seem to precipitate any political awareness in the electorate. What is needed is clear reference to a manifestation of the free market that is palpable to each of us and clearly discernable. The first example that comes to my mind is cable television.

I'm like most every other American. I love television, though there is very little to watch on it most of the time. And it would be worse if we didn't have cable, which I dare say is the sentiment of the vast majority of Americans today. In fact, of what is good on television, a great deal is available only if you have cable. Cable television is effectively a public utility. To give credit where it is due, most of the cable infrastructure, especially what they call the last mile-- the part of the system closest to the consumer-- was created by business interests in much the same way that AT&T built the land based telephone system. And like the telephone system, the cable system was regulated at one time and prices and services were thus controlled. But in 1984, during the Reagan years, cable television was deregulated pursuant to the premise that a free market functions best. It was supposed to encourage competition, deregulation was, but it has instead created an enormous cartel of cable service providers who do not seek to compete in one another's areas of control, and that can't be a coincidence. Thus-- and you most certainly are aware of this without me mentioning it-- you have no choice as to who provides you with cable television. You can get satellite service, but you need a dish and good weather to enjoy that. And now, there is another equivalent of cable in the form of AT&T's U-verse, but there are rumors about the quality of that service too. So there actually is no substitute for the cable system, and only the cable providers-- Cox, Comcast, Time-Warner, etc.-- can provide it because they own the infrastructure and the Federal Communications Commission will not order them to share it, get the picture? No regulation and no competition: the best of all possible worlds if you are a big business.

When electricity was deregulated, at least in Connecticut, the infrastructure continued to belong to the utility companies that built it, but they had to allow other companies to provide the electricity over their lines. The consequence was that competitive pricing led to consumer benefits in the form of lower individual costs and persistent downward pressure on prices. The result of deregulation in the telephone industry was the same with many telephone companies vying for every customer's business. But when it came to cable, probably because it was not one big company but several big companies that were deregulated, no competition ensued upon deregulation. The cost has continued to climb and the number of stations that each of us is forced to pay for but that we don't want continues to grow, always enriching those same few major corporations that may be contributing to the growth of the Gross Domestic Product, but they are taking the money with which they do so out of our pockets, and the governments of the nation, the states and our municipalities have failed to intervene. The free market in cable television has yielded the same thing that the free market in oil has yielded: bigger, richer companies that make their campaign contributions to Republican candidates religiously.

So, that is an albatross that the Democratic Party should be hanging around the average Republican candidate's neck. It is the evidence that conservative capitalism is a lie that serves the marketers in the free market, but allows their predation on the patrons. And there are more big sea birds that can be strung on that necklace for the Rcc to overcome, which may be the intent of Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic National Committee, but we will have to wait and see now that Pelosi says that the gloves are off. Look out Rcc. We've got your canard for you...and we're going to tell everybody.  Are you listening, America?  Are you voting, America?

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

The gridlock in American politics is of course about power. The Democrats have it at the moment in the sense that they are the majority in both elective branches of the federal government, and with a mere forty one senators, the Republicans have the power to prevent virtually all exercise of that power. Thus, the internecine struggle between the two parties is cynical and likely to continue indefinitely, but assuming that the politicians involved are actually men and women who are acting on sincerely held beliefs, admittedly an audacious and probably false assumption, the quest for power is only the manifestation of the real problem. At the heart of the failure of American politics is a certain kind of entrenched thinking. It is the teleological process of seizing upon a self-serving idea and then finding authoritative support for it in the form of a doctrine propounded by someone who has written a book about it. Our problem in America is dogma.

In an article in the New York Times on Saturday, the author of the article pointed out the reliance of the Tea Party Movement and some of its more notable acolytes on what the reporter called "long obscure texts by dead writers." The first one mentioned is Bastiat's 1850 work, "The Law," in which he opined that taxation to pay for schools or roads was government sanctioned theft, an idea whose time had come in the years just after the French Revolution, but whose time has long since gone by now in the twenty first century. Imagine where we would be without Eisenhower's initiative to build a national infrastructure, and the American historical reliance on public education for the development of the thinkers who invent, innovate and cure. Yet, despite the obvious anachronism that is Bastiat's thinking, the Tea Party Movement, Ron Paul and Glenn Beck in particular, rely on it and tout it as authoritative just because someone wrote it a hundred and sixty years ago. The dogma that the Tea Party Movement has chosen is an antique, but it supports their goal of relieving themselves for the well-being of anyone else, so they cleave to it like moss on a never rolling stone. I suppose Bastiat, like Beck and Paul, would have felt that left to its own devices American industry would eliminate child labor voluntarily, but unfortunately, Bastiat died before the industrial revolution. Beck and Paul however are still here, and they have seen that industry did not do so. The Supreme Court and the Congress did. On that basis alone, I would have to criticize reliance on Bastiat's thought as "uninformed" in the modern sense, and I would be kind to say that Beck's and Paul's reliance on it is at best misguided.

Then there is the reliance of the movement on a Viennese Nobel Laureate in economics from the middle of the twentieth century named Friedrich Hayek for the proposition that a government that intervenes in the economy will not stop there but will inevitably intervene in every aspect of private life. And that is the very premise upon which the Tea Party relies for its popularity among those who will think what they are told without inquiry if it supports their personal beliefs. But even Hayek said that there is a role for government in society, stating that a rigid reliance on the capitalist principle of laissez-faire economics-- in other words the "free market"-- was a mistake. Ironically, to that point in the history of economics at least, free market advocates were called "liberals" presumably because the word liberal connotes freedom in the general sense. But Hayek was ambivalent about such liberalism, and he acknowledged in his work that government had a role to play, for example, in protecting the worker from abuse and controlling the monetary system, which ultimately means finance including banking and investing. In fact, it was the lack of order in our financial system to which he attributed the onset of the depression that started in 1929. It was in his estimate lack of regulation that caused the crash, not too much of it.

And before there was the Tea Party Movement there was Reaganomics, which was based on what we all know as "supply side economics." The essential notion, propounded and touted by a select group of economists many of whose names most of us would know, was that if we let the rich control the production of more goods, we will all benefit from working for them as they do so. Hayek's seminal work, the one that the Tea Party Movement cites, was called "The Road to Serfdom." But in terms of structure, the supply side economics scenario is more suggestive of serfdom than is classic Keynesianism. In supply side economics, those of us who provide the labor must rely on the paternalism of the rich for our livelihoods, either directly or indirectly. We must hope for their largess and patronage, and thus it is supply side economics that suggests feudalism, not modern Keynesianism. It was feudalism that thrived on serfdom. But capitalism does not thrive on it as evidenced by the fact that over the past thirty years the wealth that the working man has produced has not trickled down on him: just the opposite. None-the-less, even our president relies on supply side doctrine to some extent when he proposes certain measures to stimulate the economy. Though statistical evidence demonstrates that small business generates no more jobs than any other segment of our economy, the contrary is still the dogma on which our politicians often rely when making policy.

My point is that no one dares to challenge orthodoxy anymore. And while the Republican conservative complex (Rcc) is steeped in supply side doctrine, the liberal establishment still pays the doctrine deference despite its obvious, documented fallacious nature. That is why I always try to think with my own head rather than blindly subscribing to the thoughts of others. It is not that no one else can be right. It is just that the fact that someone famous-- or in the case of the Tea Party Movement's patrons someone once famous-- says something doesn't make it so. And that is where we are today. As a nation we must cease to fear original thought by insisting that no idea is valid unless someone who has written a book about it says it is. We are allowed to think for ourselves in America, and while some dusty old books contain wisdom, we should understand that some of them are dusty because they don't.

Your friend,

Mike