December 2010 Archives

Dear America,

On Wednesday, I remarked that 2010 had been an uneventful year, and some of you may have thought I had missed a few things. But it seems to me that the year we are about to end was much ado about nothing as opposed to the historical waterfall that the pundits, pols and pollsters would have you believe it was. It may be true that many things happened, but most of them amounted to little or nothing, except for, as I said, the rescue of the Chilean miners. There was the BP oil spill, but outside of it being a bonanza for the news media, it really didn't change much except that Louisiana has a few miles of sand berm offshore that cost millions but did next to nothing courtesy of Governor Jindall...kind of emblematic of the whole year. After all, I'm still eating shrimp from the Gulf of Mexico and they are cheaper than ever-- in fact one of the cheapest forms of protein we can get up here in Connecticut. So despite all the sound and fury, 2010 signified nothing: it was a year in which several important things seemed to happen, but didn't.

For example, The President and the Democrats claimed a great victory while the Republican conservative complex (Rcc) howled claims of tyranny when "health care reform" passed both houses of congress. But in reality, health care reform was little more than health insurance reform, and even that was on a rather limited scale. Granted, there will be no more refusals of coverage for those with preexisting conditions, and my children plus millions more will be able to stay on our health insurance until they finish college and get paying jobs...perhaps...but in return, every American has to buy health insurance from an insurance company. Some of those policies will be subsidized by federal benefits of one kind or another, but that does not alter the fact that the insurance company will get 40 million new customers, and that is where the subsidies will really go: into their bottom lines. As to health care reform-- a single payer system, capping or reducing medical care costs, or any other form of universal coverage with its commensurate savings in cost-- the Rcc, which includes those Democrats who flatter themselves by giving the name "Blue Dog" to their apostasies, prevented it from occurring. So while a few insurance company practices have been banned, health care reform did not occur.

Next was financial reform. A law was promulgated under the name Dodd-Frank for the senator and congressman respectively who shepherded it from committee to The President's desk, but while it created some oversight and minimal checks on the size of financial institutions, it actually did very little to change anything. It did not reverse the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, and therefore left these institutions to continue standing on both sides of their clients and talking to them out of both sides of their mouths with forked tongues: a lot of license for a business that has shown itself undeserving of trust. True, they will have to keep more money on hand, but that will just prevent them from maximizing their legitimate enterprise: lending money. They will still be able to bet on whether the borrowers will be able to pay, though the derivatives with which they place those bets will now be traded on regulated markets, but bet they still will, which means that if they all lay down on the same side again and that side fails, we will be on the hook for another bailout, or we will finally get the depression that the Republicans have been trying to bring us for the past thirty years. It is one more effort by the Democrats that the Republicans managed to water down to a meager gruel. It does nothing to prevent further consolidation of those monster institutions either. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act and its cognate statutory scheme has not been strengthened, and big business will only get bigger. So as for protecting us as individuals with a consumer protection agency to oversee creditor practices, fine...that happened. But as to protecting the American people from the rapacity of a group of men and women who think that capitalism is making money by manipulating capital rather than using capital for productive purposes, they are still their own heroes, and we will continue to be their prey.

Finally, on the issue of tax reform, we got a compromise law, but no reform. All that really happened was that the Republicans got their way all around and got to claim some credit for allowing the things that the Democrats wanted but the Republicans prevented from occurring until the last two weeks of Democratic hegemony in the House of Representatives. They are patting themselves on the back for allowing unemployment compensation to continue when all they did was hold it in abeyance until they got what they wanted, grousing about it all the way. They allowed extension of a couple of other tax programs for the mass of Americans, but they got $23 billion of inheritance tax relief for the richest 6,600 families in the world in exchange, along with $70 billion per year for the rest of the top 2% of earners of course. We got to continue eating while the Republican minority got to buy new boats. All in all, it was another non-event.

And of course there are the things that never happened in any way, like immigration reform for the children of illegal immigrants who have now reached college age and want nothing more than the American Dream-- not necessarily becoming Speaker of the House like John Boehner-- that their parents have helped make possible for the rest of us in many ways but been denied themselves as they hide in the shadows of our economy. The "Dream Act" as it was called could have been a step toward social justice for millions of people whom we have used to do the things we don't want to do but rejected in the social sense, but that isn't going to happen for some time, if at all, now that the Republicans will control the Congress. And while the repudiation of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy did occur, the courts were just about to declare it unconstitutional anyway, so on that one we can thank our congress for nothing...again.

But 2011 is about to begin, and at least there is open and profuse discussion of doing something about the abuse of the filibuster. If just that one thing happens, 2011 will be a more eventful year than 2010. So let's forget about the forgettable past year and embark on the new one. If I have anything to say about it, you will have a good year this year, America. But in the end, I think we are going to have to wait for the Republicans to weigh in on that one.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

2010 was a pretty uneventful year overall, at least until the last two or three weeks of it. There were the Chilean miners, but not much else. And as far as politics were concerned-- as far as American progress toward overcoming the adversity that our financial system wrought-- not much happened there either, largely by design. While the Democrats enjoyed very large majorities in both houses of congress, they were effectively stymied by forty or so recalcitrant, unified Republican opponents in the Senate who, purporting to act in the name of the majority of the American people, dominated our politics as a minority. They took the Republican storming of the November election to be a sign of popular endorsement of their tactics-- that is obstruction rationalized by any half truth necessary to justify it-- and they persisted in their strategy of undermining the opponents' policies by preventing their implementation until nearly the very end of what had seemed to be a Democratic juggernaut. And if the November election was in reality a straw poll on the Republicans' platform and their "end justifies the means...any means" tactics in pursuing it, they will have pulled off a political victory nonpareil, albeit one of dubious moral merit. It may be that the future of American politics is that the party that is willing to use the most effective tactics, whether clever or just dastardly, will control our destiny, and if so, we will be in Republican hands for a long time. I have told my son many times that the person to be wary of in a fight is not necessarily the strongest or the most adroit. It is more often the one most willing to take a punch and to throw one because the only way to defeat him is to disable him since with anything short of that, he will keep on coming until he wears you down. That is the Republicans' strength. You can catch them in lies, you can discredit their motives, you can impugn the rationale behind their position, but they will keep on throwing things at you until through attrition, the will to resist their relentless onslaught fades. Their advantage is that they respect no limits, and honor is not an issue for them. If nothing else, they are formidable.

Thus, impugning their integrity is a more or less futile enterprise. It is like the devastating punch in a brawl that the other guy can still, and is willing to, get up from. As long as the Republicans can get up they will. So the future for the Democrats, and indeed for the entire progressive movement, has to be a tactic different from slugging it out in the middle of the ring: more foot work and hit and run. And the first jab and fade should be a change in the Senate rules on the opening day of the new session. I have brought this up before on several occasion...in fact so often that I am probably as reluctant to say it again as you are to hear it. But if the filibuster is available to them, the Republicans will effectively have control of both houses of congress even though in reality they control only the House of Representatives, though only if the Tea Party sides with them. The result in two years will be that the Democrats' other eye will also be blackened by ineffectiveness, and the Republicans will likely take the Senate as well...maybe even the White House. So the Democrats first order of business on the first day of the next session should be a substantive change in the rules relative to the filibuster. There have been proposals, like continuing the rule that it takes sixty votes to close off debate, but limiting the time frame of a filibuster to a certain number of hours after a cloture vote fails. That kind of change would allow the Republicans to protract the process of passing a bill, but it would preclude their complete interdiction of it. My preference however is that the filibuster be effectively abolished with a rule making fifty one votes sufficient to close debate on a bill. That way, if a majority favors the bill, or at least wants to see an up or down vote on it, the bill will come to the floor and everyone will have to vote in the open. In my opinion, that is how democracy should work: rule by the majority. It is the only way that we can be sure that popular credence controls the fate of an idea rather than the political winds blowing at any given moment. And there is no doubt that there are more alternatives, some of which will likely float through the popular transom over the next two weeks, but whatever change gains favor, politics has to be practiced differently from the way in which it has been over the past two years, which brings me to my point.

We all have to take an active interest in this issue and we all have to let our senators know how we feel about it...and when I say we all, I mean myself too. We cannot idle in neutral for the next two years and expect that anything will change for the better. If we do not deny the Republicans the opportunity to control the Senate with their minority of votes, they will dictate our fate despite the fact that they do not represent the majority opinion. Perhaps such activism is not necessary, but the Democratic Party, the leadership in particular, is like an indecisive pedestrian waiting to cross the street. They are ruled by their fear that what they do to the Republicans the Republicans will do to them, and as a result, the Republicans never suffer any consequences. But as was my experience as a lawyer, if the Democrats use only one tactic-- accommodation-- we will all lose. The velvet glove is fine until it is demonstrated that the other side cannot be stroked into reasonability. However, once it becomes apparent that there is no intention to reciprocate in the opponent, solicitude should be abandoned. It is time to strike a hearty blow because you have nothing to lose. It may be that more conflict is in the offing if the Democrats use vigorous force-- what the Republicans call a "nuclear option" when they are in control-- but if they don't, they can be sure that the Republicans will. Better to strike first, hard and often than to be beaten to a pulp while pleading for civility.

Your friend,

Mike

MichaelWolf@Letters2America.com

Dear America,

In God we trust. That's what it says on our money, and as we all know, especially in America, money talks. Our children say a prayer to God, or stand in silence, before they start school. Our legislators say a prayer to God before each session of congress, Democrats and Republicans alike...and especially Republicans who make the implicit claim that by dint of their virtue, God is on their side. And when we discuss the nature of our country, we talk about Judeo-Christian values. Even a being from another planet who was supposed to embody Godliness and virtue, Superman, prided himself on standing for truth, justice and the American way. We think of our system as the very nature of human aspiration, and therefore, of Godliness and human virtue. Somewhere deep inside, even an American like me, cynic that I am, subscribes to the notion that there is something about this nation that distinguishes it from all the others. But in this era of our political history, I must confess that my doubts are more disturbing than they have ever been.

It starts with the way in which our society has turned when it comes to the needs of our fellow human beings-- away. We have gone from turning the other cheek and doing unto others as we would have them do unto us, to turning our backs and doing for ourselves. Health care reform was a high priority to the majority of us as recently as 2007, but these days it seems to be less important whether everyone has access to the health care he needs than is the size of government. We care more about war and the deficit than we do about our fellow men, but when our legislators gather to vote on the related issues, they first say a prayer. They invoke God and pray for His guidance, and then they do what they have been doing for a long time now. The Republicans claim to need more time to consider and debate the impending nuclear arms treaty, which every major Republican political figure from the past endorses and urges them to pass, and then they stand before the body in which they serve with nothing more to say about it but what they are doing for Christmas. I would call that bearing false witness, which they might remember from the Ten Commandments. They seek to repeal or judicially overturn the health insurance law, which is less than the universal health care that we progressives were seeking but better than nothing, because they claim that it will increase the deficit: hardly doing unto others, don't you think? They profess an intention to overturn the financial reform law because it is too stringent, seemingly forgetting what Christ thought and did about the money changers in the temple. They withhold tax relief and unemployment compensation until they can gain tax relief for the rich as if Jesus Christ never said that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God Matthew 19:24 as if they have forgotten to whom they prayed before they cast their votes.

And after just such a prayer they voted to allow our last president to wage war at the expense of thousands of lives and vast lucre that could have healed and fed millions, but they now claim, again after praying on the subject as they meet to decide, that we are not sufficiently solvent to provide for our unemployed, our infirm and our elderly by supplementing Social Security.

I am not a religious man. I have always believed that we as human beings must render any punishment that evil merits if we wish to deter it, because God knows that the sanction of damnation has not prevented evil in the past. And for that reason, I believe that the Republicans and the Republican conservative complex (Rcc) feel free to indulge in the materialistic rationalization of their inurement to the needs of others: the voters of this nation, the only real enforcers of virtue in politicians, have not held them accountable. Money talks, and it has spoken to those politicians loudly while God and the voters have not. But it is Christmas time, and in this country, whether one is Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Shinto, Hindu or of any other belief or creed, there are ubiquitous reminders of what Christmas is supposed to signify. This is a time for compassion, selflessness, the love of peace, charity...and our legislators, who often wrap themselves in a cloak of putative Christian virtue, may well be thinking about what Christian virtue really is. I myself would not presume to define it, nor would I claim to be possessed of it, though I do my best. But I would argue that a righteous man should be able to identify it for himself when he sees it, which makes me wonder what Republicans see when they look in the mirror and the only person they are trying to convince of their righteousness is themselves.

Your friend,

Mike

MichaelWolf@Letters2America.com

Dear America,

Recent surveys on the mood of the American people suggest a kind of ambivalence indicative of fractiousness and division rather than indifference or universal disdain. According to a Washington Post-ABC poll, we are divided on virtually every issue, and often adamantly so, but overall we are more than 60% in favor of the just-passed tax relief plan that purports to be bi-partisan. And while we disapprove of The President's handling of the economy and taxes, and loudly disapprove of the direction in which the country is headed under our present governmental demography, the Republican Party fairs no better when it comes to public confidence in general. We trust The President more when it comes to helping the middle class, but we trust the Republicans more when it comes to handling the deficit, though at the same time we think that The President is more sincere in his desire to reduce it. Neither party gets majority support for its handling of taxes, and while The President is seen as doing more to compromise his positions than are the Republicans, we view the leadership of our nation to be split almost equally between The President and the Republicans. In short, public opinion is diffuse and confused as well as often internally inconsistent. But there are two elements of the new tax plan that enjoy resounding opinions in the American polity: reduction of the payroll tax, which less than 40% of us favor, and extension of unemployment benefits, which over 70% of us favor. It seems that the one thing that Americans understand the same way regardless of party affiliation or location on the political spectrum is that the government has a role in our lives that is essential, which is providing a "safety net" to protect us from the ravages of our lowest financial and economic ebbs.

Funding unemployment compensation fills an acute need. There are people who have been ravaged by our current economic tribulations and they run the risk of falling below that modicum of weal that we apparently accept in our society as a right. But this period of acute need will end when the business establishment stops sitting on almost $2 trillion that it has skimmed off the top of our cycle of commerce. When and how that will happen is a question for another time, but the need for Social Security will never end because there will always be elderly among us, and there will always be need for a system that can keep their bodies and souls together. It belongs to us as it is funded by us based on the ability in the young to pay in contrast with the inability to sustain themselves once their working lives have ended in the elderly. But the balance between funding and need is shifting, which will necessitate a new formulation of the ratio of one to the other; that is a subject that has been under discussion for at least two decades. Assuming that we wish to maintain current benefit levels, more money will have to be contributed by those who still work, but now both The President and the Republicans are telling us that we can afford to take a break from paying even the insufficient amounts we are currently entrusting to the fund so as to stimulate the economy-- in other words, they want us to spend some of our retirement money now so that the business establishment will see enough demand to release some of their hoarded riches. Like almost 60% of us, I am against it.

We have discussed the nature of the Social Security system in the past, and it appears that the substantial majority of the American people understand how the system works as they see that the money they are encouraging us to spend now, they will be taking back when they turn to the task of balancing the program's books in the near future. And they propose this now after we have just suffered profound calamity in consequence of-- among other things-- that spend now, pay later mentality. The President and the Republicans must be at least as knowledgeable on the subject as nearly 60% of us are, so why are they doing this. Well, though I am not a fan of conspiracy theories, I believe that it is an attempt to set us up to accept the government's arrogation of the right to spend Social Security Trust Fund money to pay off the debt that they have created with war, pandering to their wealthy patrons in the tax system and fostering the growth of business prosperity instead of that of the individual. Sounds a lot like fascism, doesn't it.

There is much to dislike in the new tax law. As to which parts you dislike, it depends on who you are. But there is consensus for the notion that those who have been spit out by our businesses and industries must be sustained: they are people in need and we are a compassionate nation. And there is also consensus that we own the Social Security Trust Fund, and it is our right to have the benefits of that fund when we need them. What our politicians do not seem to understand is that Social Security, among all of the programs that serve one constituency or another, is universally regarded as a socially enlightened enterprise that is woven into our social fabric as tightly and irrevocably as is the capitalist system itself. Whether we regard it as socialism or secular humanism, compassion or necessity, we the people of the United States of America consider Social Security to be foundational in our identity as a people. So, if the federal government as a collective entity thinks that it can gradually erode that notion and in the end convince us that it should be able to use our trust fund for its own purposes, it is sadly mistaken. If they persist in blithely undermining the sequestration of Social Security from the vicissitudes wrought by their folly and political ambition-- a sequestration on which, by the way, they have relied so as to avoid supplementing the fund over these past decades-- they will be simultaneously underestimating the venom of the response their efforts will precipitate...from Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals alike.

It may be only paranoia that leads me to think that they are manipulating us when they give us this payroll tax holiday, co-opting our attachment to the birds in the bush with a bird in the hand. It may also be that there will not be more of the same in our future until we are left with nothing, they will tell us, because we spent it already. But if my concern is well founded, our very virtue is in jeopardy, because providing for our fellow Americans in need, which is what the vast majority of us eventually become, is fundamental to our national concept of what we are. And frankly, it is disturbing to think that we may be getting lulled into becoming something else.

Your friend,

Mike

MichaelWolf@letters2america.com

Dear America,

I was watching one of the plethora of political opinion programs on television on Wednesday night when the moderators brought on two people, one from a progressive activist organization and one from a conservative one. As was to be expected, the discussion immediately turned to the tax legislation that is wending its way through the congress on a course so convoluted and desultory that there is still no telling if or when it will ultimately succeed or fail. And as these colloquies always do, this one eventually descended into the cycle of criticism and response that has allowed the Republican conservative complex (Rcc) to succeed. The progressive activist pointed out that the tax cuts for the middle class might stimulate the economy, but that those for the top 2% of earners were nothing but a giveaway benefiting the rich. That was the point at which the conservative fell back on the signature tactic that the conservative movement has perfected and used with infuriatingly consistent effect: he responded to the criticism by vilifying its proponent rather than by countering the point she made. His ad hominem response was that the progressive was just stooping to class warfare...that America is a meritocracy. In other words, he stated as if it were an indisputable fact that the rich deserve to be rich. And much to my chagrin and surprise, that shut the progressive up completely, just as it seems to have done to the entire progressive movement. No one thinks to respond by saying something like, you didn't respond to my point, or even something as simple as the response I would have given in this case: so what?

The fact is that class warfare is how we got here. The American Revolution was fought against a monarch and his aristocratic minions because they were taking too much from those who produced it. The Tea Party that is all the rage in today's politics was perpetrated by merchants in Indian disguise because of the King's attempt to preserve a monopoly in the tea market held by the British East India Company, an organization of wealthy merchants who had prospered pursuant to the patronage of the British Crown for more than a century and a half before that event in the American colonies. The issue then as now was taxation, but not because it was unjust. The Boston Tea Party occurred because the taxes in question were assessed to the benefit of the rich at the expense of the mercantile class, and that class warfare was the beginning of modern democracy-- and if I recall my history correctly it was a reduction in the tax on tea that provoked the Boston Tea Party "Indians" to action because it made the colonist merchants' black market tea more expensive than that being sold by the British East India Company. All in all therefore, the claim that someone is indulging in class warfare is far from a persuasive criticism given the fact that class warfare-- ironically over another tax reduction favoring the rich-- is how we got to be the model of social justice that we want the world to think we are. In fact, all condemnation of class warfare does is provide cover for the lack of a counter-argument, and for the failure of our brand of capitalism to ensure the very equity and justice that inspires most of us to point out its flaws in the hope of making it better. And as to meritocracy, that case would be even harder to make.

If merit were the source of wealth in the United States, Paris Hilton would be flipping burgers, not gallivanting from one party to another and indulging herself publicly in every way possible. And CEO's who presided over the failure of the corporations they ran would not get tens, or even hundreds of millions of dollars just to go away. Hedge fund managers, who are really just glorified bookies, would not be billionaires, they would be fugitives like those who run numbers on any street other than Wall Street. Mind you, flipping burgers is valid work, but it is not often a pathway to riches, no matter how hard one works at it or for how long. Yet, at the same time, someone like Carly Fiorina, who started out as a Kelly Girl, can become a CEO even though her performance in that role ultimately demonstrated that she was not up to it. She did get rich in the process, but mostly because in the end her board of directors was willing to pay her about $20 million to stop helping the company out of fear that she would help it right out of existence.

All of this goes back to something that has afflicted the liberal movements all along: poor quality thinking. It is not that what liberals think is not valid, it is that they don't know how to say why they think it. It is not that they don't have an argument, it is that they don't know how to make it. And for that reason, eventually people stop listening to them, wandering off in disaffection and frustration-- not driven off by the message, but by the failure to effectively deliver it. That is what has happened today. A titanic wave of progressivism started during the Bush administration and swept Democrats into offices in both houses of the congress and ultimately into the White House as well. We forget how ubiquitous that progressive tide was: in 2007 for example about two thirds of Americans favored universal health care according to polls at that time. And with progressive goals in mind, progressives were sent by the electorate to accomplish them in Washington. But there were enough heretical "Blue Dogs" within the party to slow progress until the progressives among independents lost their zeal and wandered off, many of them abandoning secular humanism all together, out of hopelessness precipitated by the fecklessness of Democrats. And now, the Democrats have lost their chance to implement profound change by failing to seize it when it came, all for want of a persuasive voice to drive their message home. They failed to press the point about tax cuts for the rich before the election, and even when they finally passed a tax bill benefiting only the middle class and sent it to The Senate after the election, they sat silent about it when they should have been drawing attention to the overt hypocrisy of the Republicans' refusal to even allow an up or down vote on those middle class tax cuts, which they professed to favor. Then, before the ink on that bill was even dry, The President commenced negotiations to exchange tax cuts for the rich for the very same middle class tax cuts that the Republicans were blocking, rather than holding the Republicans' feet to the fire over their refusal to allow what they told the voters they wanted for them. In typical Democrat fashion, the congress went one way and the president went another, and we wound up with all of them applauding the opportunity to give the Republicans what they have wanted all along for their rich patrons. So now, with the tax cut victory wind at their backs, what we have to look forward to is conservative victories in debates over higher education, healthcare, financial reform, even non-nuclear peace on earth just because they know how to vilify their critics without responding to their criticisms.

It is a shame that more Democrats didn't take debating in school. It might have changed history if they had because their position is much closer to the American ideal than is the Republicans' message exalting materialism for its own sake-- you know, he who has the most money is the best person. Perhaps the Democrats should have their feet amputated. Then they would be forced to stop putting them in their mouths, or rather to stop letting the Republicans do it for them.

Your friend,

Mike

MichaelWolf@letters2america.com

Dear America,

The chill of winter is setting in in earnest here in New England after weeks of nature's ambivalence. It seemed that we might not have a winter this year, or at least not the kind that is the norm, but single digit temperatures are now a nightly occurrence and snow is becoming a constant threat. It creates a sense of diminished proportion that drives home the insignificance of man when he is set against nature. The desire to hibernate is overwhelming and withdrawal from a frigid world to the warmth and safety of home and hearth becomes irresistible up here at this time of year, and I for one almost never resist it. Unfortunately, the same desire to stay warm and seek respite from the outside world is dominating my political temperament the same way now that the Republican winter is upon us and conservatism has prevailed against all odds. The frustration of watching the internecine changes in American popular political opinion is just overwhelming at the moment, leading me to feel the need to stop swimming against the tide and just drift for a while. But each time I begin to content myself with my observation that on election day the majority of the American people get exactly what they deserve, I am rankled by the realization that the rest of us are getting what they deserve as well. And of course it doesn't help that the news we see every night as we New Englanders indulge in our comforting soups and stews is rife with coverage and commentary on the subject of the imminent tax cuts for the rich that the Republican conservative complex (Rcc) has exacted from us in exchange for the tax cuts and unemployment insurance that the rest of us and our economy so desperately need. It keeps me thinking about the etiology of this latest victory of the impious over the feckless.

It strikes me that the major problem is the prevalence of opinion over fact in the dialogue concerning our national priorities. Perhaps it can be no other way in light of the natures of fact and opinion; as to each of the former there are potentially billions of the latter. But with regard to the current political conflagration-- and it is a conflagration in that it is burning our country down-- I am perplexed by the willingness of our people to close their eyes with regard to pivotal points of both fact and opinion that effect us all so profoundly. Our debt is so large that it is unfathomable, and the deficit that aggregates to that debt continues its unabated rise year after year, yet that debt seems to have slipped everyone's mind. Now, even though the Democratic House of Representatives sent a bill to the Senate extending only the middle class tax cuts in effect boxing the Republicans in and daring them to oppose it, our President has negotiated a way for the Republicans to avoid exposure of their own hypocrisy and give them a virtual promise of an advantage in the 2012 election because now the tax cuts for the top 2% of earners belong to the Democrats thanks to their leader. Neither he nor the public that approves of the "compromise" seems to understand the politics in which they are immersed dispite what they thought about the debt a week ago. Hence, it isn't necessarily what we know or think that is impelling us in the wrong direction, it is what we are doing with those thoughts and opinions that is interdicting our progress toward a bright future.

As to the tax cuts, it all started with the Nancy Pelosi decision to delay consideration of the issue, which she actually could have scheduled a year or more before the November election, a decision that may have lost control of the House for her party. Similarly, the new arms limitation treaty has been stuck in The Senate since its approval by President Obama and the Russian negotiators in April, as are several lofty projects for the betterment of our society, all by virtue of the Republican use of the threat of a filibuster but there is no hue and cry from the masses. And that filibuster has been possible only because the rules of The Senate, subject to change by a simple majority only on the first day of each congress, were not changed by the Democrats when they had the chance two years ago: another missed opportunity. But most daunting of all is the loss of the support of the majority of the American polity. That failure to maintain the popular mandate is a function of the inability of the Democrats to persuade and to explain the issues, much less the facts on which they turn. And the primary reason for that failure is the failure of the Democrats to recognize the role of the news media in the formation of an Rcc consensus. So the only alternative to the systematic failure to win the hearts and minds of the voters is for the Democrats to implement a public information regimen that does not rely on others for the dissemination of the Party's point of view, which is the irony of it all.

President Obama was elected-- and we forget now how steep the odds against election of a President of color were at the time-- because he had a communication network that had never been even approached in terms of effectiveness by any political organization up until that point in time. It was at least as effective as the Rcc propaganda machine that has allowed the Republicans to gain support from campaign ads condemning the Democrats for cutting Medicare when they had been advocating that very thing for a decade, and from ads complaining about the increase in the deficit and the debt caused by the stimulus program when their tenure in congress was the era in which two wars and a trillion dollar plus tax cut favoring rich people most of all had increased the national debt more than had any previous administration in history other than Ronald Reagan's-- also one of theirs. Worst of all, they managed to hang the increase in the national debt resulting from the stimulus package around the Democrats' collective neck when it was necessary only because of three decades of diminishing regulation of the financial industry and the financial collapse it caused, not to mention that 40% of the package was the very tax cuts that the Republicans wanted. And in the bargain, they managed to convince the public that the Democrats failed to compromise in devising that package, which is a contrived rap that the Democrats are still fighting to the extent that they felt sufficiently cornered that they are going to approve exactly what they have opposed throughout the past two congresses: a tax cut for the richest people in the world.

The secret to the Republicans' success, and to President Obama's success in getting elected before that, was mobilization of support, which relies primarily on communication of ideas. Ed Koch was a beloved three term mayor of a city of 8 million mayors, New York, and during his tenure he spent a lot of time talking to people on the street. He would walk up to them and say, literally, "How am I doing?" Even when they had complaints, people loved him for it. So, I have only this to say to the Democrats: talk to me. Talk to everyone...everyday. Don't wait for the press to get the message out. If you do, you'll wait a long, long time.

Your friend,

Mike

MichaelWolf@letters2america.com

Dear America,

I often read the columns of David Brooks and Paul Krugman, just to name two, and find myself lamenting the fact that they continue, as I must admit I do, to say the same things without effect. We are past talking and writing about our failure as a nation. It seems that the only real hope for the redemption of social and economic equity in this country, if indeed we ever enjoyed it, is the potential ascent of some galvanic figure who will sacrifice his political career for principle, and while many of us had hope that Barrack Obama was he, it appears that the American political messiah has not yet come. This did seem the ideal alignment of factors for his emergence: Democratic control of both houses of congress and the White House as well manifesting popular rejection of conservative doctrine-- both social and economic-- after decades of deterioration in the common weal everywhere but at the very top. But the Democratic Party-- its leadership in particular-- has failed to seize the day, and this opportune political medium has been allowed to spoil without spawning anything positive, to paraphrase Shakespeare, to ripe and ripe and then rot and rot. The Democratic party leadership seems to lack the strategic and tactical skill to outmaneuver the other side even when the Republicans are seriously outnumbered. For example, yesterday for the first time since the compromise was announced, I heard a Democratic senator make reference to the fact that there are bills passed by the House and languishing in the Senate to extend unemployment compensation and the middle class tax cuts without those for the top 2% which are not law only because the Republicans are threatening to filibuster. And the only reason that they can do so is that while in power the Democrats have refused to take action to end the filibuster as a tool for thwarting the will of the majority not just of the members of the Senate but, by extension, of the American people. They have also refused to cull from their ranks those who only masquerade as progressives, which process would define the party clearly and thus define its goals clearly as well, and make no mistake about it, those few "Blue Dogs" as they call themselves have colluded with those who oppose the true Democratic Party platform as a matter of persistent obduracy, thus aiding and comforting the opposition while thwarting their own, and they have made all the difference. And perhaps most important of all, the Democrats have let themselves be subjugated by the Republican conservative complex's (Rcc) pronouncements on the definition of compromise: all of what they want and nothing for anyone else.

Thus, it appears that for the foreseeable future money will be power in America, and power will be used to acquire more money for the powerful. Brooks and the rest of us may claim that this advent eventuates from lack of patriotism, failure of will, unwillingness to compromise or sacrifice, or lack of perspective, but it doesn't matter what we call it. The simple truth is that what we have allowed capitalism to become is inimical to social justice, and it didn't have to be. 1% of the nation's population controls nearly half of the nation's wealth, and with the new tax structure that will probably prevail for at least the next two years, after which there is very little hope that that will change because through the inheritance tax changes in the new tax proposal, the rich will be even more able to pass their wealth down to their children, and with it the related power. Yet, in spite of the Republicans admitted intention to preserve that imbalance, the American people put them in power in the House of Representatives, and thus it appears that there is no taste for changing what we have become. In short, we bottom 90% are lost in the wilderness because we bottom 90%, the vast majority of voters, cannot see the forest for the trees. The only question that remains is when pride and greed will manifest themselves sufficiently to result in our complete undoing-- when the American people will once again find themselves where they were at the turn of the last century working seven days a week and never benefiting from it, their children denied education and the opportunities it represents, their health declining for lack of financial resources to preserve it and hope disappeared in favor of despair and resignation. Our children's lives will not be less than ours not just because of diminishing material wellbeing. They will be less because they will have no prospect of overcoming it.

It is a bleak landscape that I have painted here, I know. But I cannot see it any other way anymore. At the end of a brief conversation with someone whom I know only casually, I asked what he thought of the new tax plan. He looked at me blankly, and finally said that it was just more for the rich, as if he'd had nothing to do with it. I pointed out that the Republicans had announced before the election their intention to accomplish just what they wound up doing and I then asked him how he voted, but he didn't answer. He just gave me a regretful smile and walked away. How do you explain the role he played in his own destruction to someone who was warned by the agent of his misfortune as to what he intended to do, but still invited that nemesis in. That's what we need to hear from Brooks and Krugman and the others, because none of the rest of us have any idea how to do so, and in the end, it may well be that nothing else matters.

Your friend,

Mike

MichaelWolf@letters2america.com

Dear America,

Once again, the national Democratic Party has managed to convert victory to defeat without any help from the opposition. In this instance, they will ultimately manage to give the Republicans three victories on a single issue without even resolving it in perpetuity. The first was when the Democrats decided not to put the issue of tax cuts for the rich before the electorate in November 2010, thus allowing the Republican opposition not to fire a load of buckshot they were aiming directly at their figurative foot, but rather to "shellac" the Democrats at the polls. The second is going to occur in the coming weeks as the Democrats indulge in internecine ardor over these tax cuts even though it was their decision in the first place to concede the initiative on the issue until now when it has the potential to be so destructive to the wellbeing of the American public and it is so politically inopportune to press the matter; they may well have no alternative but to concede after displaying their worst shortcomings for all to see. And a third victory for the Republicans will come in two years when they use all this political incompetence against the Democrats in the next national election. If someone had suggested two years ago that the Democrats could be so incompetent as to hold The White House and decisive majorities in both houses of congress but still be not just thwarted, but totally discredited by the likes of Mitch McConnell, John Boehner and forty Republican Senators, no one would have credited the idea. In fact, it would have seemed impossible to accomplish even if they tried. Hell, it's happening and I can hardly believe it.

It started with Nancy Pelosi deciding that there would be no vote on the tax cuts before the election: the one chance the Democrats had to nail the Republicans' hide to the plutocrats' barn door. We will never know why she did it. Perhaps she is really a Republican operative...a sleeper Republican. But it matters not as she set the course and the ship is now aground. Then, as if that were not enough, President Obama negotiated with the Republicans to allow tax cuts for the very richest people in the world when it wasn't his place to be negotiating anything. In fact, debacles like the one that he has created with this agreement are the very reason that our Constitution includes separation of powers: to prevent an executive from producing a unilateral, colossal injustice out of pragmatism or venality, or for that matter out of any other improper or untoward or just plain foolish motivation. And now, our Congress as a whole has insisted on getting into the act, stooping to the Republicans' tactics by refusing to bring the Obama/McConnell proposal to the House floor for a vote-- effectively a filibuster. Thus, any claim they could make that they don't engage in gutter tactics when doing the people's business has been lost along with any hope of claiming the moral high ground.

The irony to all this is that the Democrats could come out of all this smelling like a rose, not because of anything they have or will do, but because of the Tea Party members who will take their seats in the next congress. If the tax cuts are allowed to expire, not just for the rich but for all of us, they will be the first order of business in January whey the 112^th congress convenes. McBoehnell (Mitch McConnell and John Boehner) will immediately take the chance to bloviate in the hope of aggrandizing themselves at the expense of the opposition, and they will insist that the tax cuts for the 2% are necessary to create jobs. But the Tea Party inductees will have none of it, and may even reject the possibility of extending the tax cuts for the rest of us as well. The Republicans will be in the majority in the House of Representatives, so they will have no one else to blame for the failure to give 98% of us tax relief. But wait. A bill extending only the middle class tax cuts has already been passed, though it languishes in the Senate. So it may come to pass that the only way to get any tax cuts is for the Republicans in the Senate to allow that bill to come to the Senate floor for a vote and then help the Democrats to pass it, which is what the Democrats have wanted all along. It would be a sweet turn of the worm in that the desired result of all these machinations will eventuate, but it will come at a cost. Nancy Pelosi will have to either convince everyone that she planned it that way, or she will have to resign, and given the credibility problem that the former represents, I'd bank on the latter. And the half of the Blue Dogs that remain will have to rethink their career plans, because if they want to be reelected, they will have to return to the Democratic fold both for political support and political cover. They're going to want to be on the right side, even if it is after the fact. And finally, President Obama and the rest of the Democrats who wield the power in the national party will have to commit to principle again, eschewing the vain hope of ever governing in tandem with the Republicans, who will not be chastened by their ultimate defeat, if it occurs. They will only be enraged, and the rhetoric they will employ will be as virulent and venomous as a swarm of killer bees. So it will be for the Democrats to tacitly learn their lesson and quietly lick their wounds while staying under cover for a while. That's what a big dog does when he wins a bloody fight.

Your friend,

Mike

MichaelWolf@letters2america.com

Dear America,

The Republican conservative complex (Rcc) has controlled American politics for the past year, and thus has dictated the Obama administration's legacy into the annals of history, and perhaps that of the progressive movement as well, and they have done it with two instruments: the filibuster and the Democrats own diffidence. With just those two tools, they have probably ensured that Barrack Obama will be a one term president, that universal health care will not become an enduring reality in any form for at least a generation, that the financial plutocracy will be a controlling oligarchy in this country for the foreseeable future, and that Republican hegemony in American politics will endure for another twenty years or more whether they are in the majority or not, because they are willing to do whatever it takes and sacrifice whomever it harms to do so. They did it with forty votes in the U.S. Senate (a minority) over the course of a period of about one year, and with a complete suspension of moral motivation while claiming nothing but. It is a perversion of democracy, and we, the American people, have no one to blame but ourselves...and the Democrats. There is one way out of this nightmare, and it is the abolition of the filibuster, but so far, we have not had the political will to insist on it and our Democratic surrogates in Washington have not had the wisdom or the fortitude to bring it about. If I had my way, that would be the swan song of The Senate in the 111^th congress, but it will never happen.

Using the power they have arrogated from the majority by merely threatening filibusters, the Republican minority has extorted from President Obama an agreement to extend the Bush tax cuts favoring the richest 2% of us in exchange for an unemployment compensation benefit extension and other tax cuts for the rest of us that the President and the vast majority of the American people wanted. The agreement was announced without detailed elaboration on Monday night, and I for one was immediately incensed by the President's lack of resolve. There should have been a public battle over this, I thought, and I concluded that Mr. Obama was not the president I thought he would be. But then yesterday, he held a press conference in which he explained himself because of the hue and cry that arose from his own party. It was in listening to him at that press conference that I realized where the fault lies. It was not the President's actions at this time that represent the failure of will, it is in the failure of the Democrats in Congress, Nancy Pelosi in particular, that the fault lies, and it wasn't until that press conference that I realized that President Obama thinks so too. He said yesterday that he wanted the vote on the tax cuts for the 98% who represent the middle class to come before the election, but it didn't, and so now he is between a rock and a hard place: concede the point to the Republicans or watch and listen as millions of Americans suffer and increased taxes on the middle class sink the recovery, such as it is. He said no more, but in those few calmly enunciated remarks he placed the blame where it properly lies.

On September 23, Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives, announced that the issue of those tax cuts would not be brought to the floor in Congress before the election, and with that profoundly obvious blunder, she changed history. She enjoyed the same majority that she enjoyed last Thursday when that same Congress passed the middle class tax cuts without the cuts for the richest 2%, and sent them to The Senate without any Republican or Blue Dog Democratic support, demonstrating that she could have done so two and a half months ago in time to make it an election issue. The Republicans in the Senate minority would have had to either vote for the tax cuts for the vast majority without those favoring the 2% or go home to campaign on their claim that voting against the 98% in The Senate was somehow justified by protecting the interests of the 2%, whom everyone knows don't need anyone's help. The Republicans, Mitch McConnell in particular, are a lot of things that I will constrain myself not to mention, but stupid is not among them. They would have rolled over like puppies looking for a belly scratch. And of course the second half of the strategy, making them bring the tax cuts for the 2% up for a vote would probably never have even been an issue. There would have been no way to pass them, and thus they would see no benefit to bringing into focus their fealty to the plutocrats who pay for their campaigns and their golf trips to Hawaii.

To be fair, I didn't hear any Congressman or Senator protesting when Pelosi announced her decision. While I registered my protest in my letter to you of September 24, and while a few hundred of you may have read it, she apparently didn't, or if she did, she didn't care what I had to say; I don't consider that to be a personal insult. But where were all of the Democrats in Congress? So, while I thought when I heard of the current compromise that President Obama had now demonstrated that the majority of us voted wrong in the primaries and the election of 2008, I may have been too harsh, or perhaps too charitable to his Democratic Congressional colleagues who are now looking for someone else to blame, but to no avail as far as I'm concerned. Given what The President said about Pelosi's decision to postpone consideration of the tax cuts and his opinion on that subject, he may well have put an avuncular call into her office when she made her announcement, and when she persisted he may also have called in as many favors as he could to get her to yield. If not, he made a mistake, but it was not The President, it was Nancy Pelosi who made the colossal blunder that cost the Democrats control of the House of Representatives and about $140 billion that is now going to go into the pockets of the richest people in the world over the next two years. And she may possibly have ceded to the Republicans the control of both The Senate and The White House, which will be up for grabs in 2012, and in the bargain left President Obama with no hand to play today. So whether The President tried to reason with The Speaker beforehand is an issue, but it does not change the fact that what seems now to be a total rout of the Democratic Party was engineered by Nancy Pelosi, not President Obama. It should be she who pays the political price-- she and all of the Democrats who let her make it in their name.

Your friend,

Mike

MichaelWolf@letters2america.com

Dear America,

It was announced on September 24 by the Democratic Party leadership that the tax cuts for 98% of the American people as well as those for the richest 2% would not be scheduled for a vote until after the election in November. Then, the Republicans crushed the Democratic majority in that election, and now, now that it is too late to prevent that, the leadership has not only brought a bill extending the sub-$250,000 earners' tax cut to the floor of The House, they have passed it, thus putting the Republicans in The Senate to the test in the full view of the American Public...or have they.

I have seen so much data and analysis in the press that belies the Rcc subterfuge of feigning to promote small business in the quest for more job creation that it must have been seen by Democratic leadership as well. And in that light, it should be as easy as falling down to make at least a cogent argument that the only motive behind the Rcc's advocacy in favor of small business is to justify putting more money in the pockets of the rich. And now that the Democrats have done as I suggested on September 23 and brought a tax cut renewal bill to the floor for just the 98% who earn less than $250,000, the Republicans will have to vote for it, or explain why, and once that happens, I don't believe that the American people can help seeing whose side the Republicans are on. But the Democratic Party regulars seem reluctant to join the fray, and they have elected instead-- at least according to Senator Kyl who says that a tax cut deal is at hand-- to let the Republicans off the hook...again. As a result, it appears that the Republicans are going to win on this issue by default, not on the merit of their ideas, and they will once again crow to the American people that they are doing their bidding. Honestly, I can't figure it out.

If I were the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, I would be paying for every Senator to place a prominent ad on television to run once a week at least, pointing out that one of two small businesses fails in its first five years of existence and so half of any jobs they create disappear in short order; that at least 80% of small business owners make less than the $250,000 that is the demarcation point between the middle class and the rich in our taxation scheme, and thus renewing the middle class tax cuts will do for that 80% of small businesses what the Rcc wants anyway; that the top 2% of earners, to the extent that they own small businesses, tend to be sole proprietors like movie actors, lawyers and doctors who do not need the money and generally employ very few people or no one at all; that if those tax cuts are not bestowed upon that top 2%, it will save the nation $700 billion over the course of the next ten years, which should make the Rcc happy as they complain incessantly about the mounting national debt. The Republicans should be easy pickins' so to speak, but no one seems to have the guts to take them on. I honestly don't get it.

You may recall the Newt Gingrich era during which the Republicans stumbled through the process of determining just how far they could go on the basis of the electoral mandate they had received; it didn't take them long to overreach. When he was Speaker of the House, Gingrich decided that it was a good time for the Republican conservative complex (Rcc) to exercise what he saw as its undeniable control of the American body politic, and he united the Republican Party behind a budget that slashed federal spending in ways that were, at least to some, draconian; ironically the same issues are in play today in the areas of Medicare, Medicaid, education, the environmental and energy agencies and the earned income tax credit, which benefit's the working poor primarily. (Some things never change though what each side says about them seems to.) Gingrich decided that the fiscal conservative creed of deficit reduction was the dog and the common weal was the tail, and the budget his Congress passed was Gingrich's way of wagging it. Believing that he was now the big dog, he sent the budget to the White House for The President's signature, threatening that if Mr. Clinton did not sign it, the government would be shut down and his presidency would be all but over. But the identity of the real big dog was still an open question and Mr. Gingrich's gauntlet barely hit the table before The President picked it up. He refused to sign the budget into law, and Gingrich along with his allies in Congress like Dick Armey, who has only recently retired from Congress, stood their ground. They said that they would not alter the budget-- that in fact they would not even shepherd through an increase in the national debt limit or a "continuing resolution," which allows the treasury to borrow money to run the government while the budget is contemplated. They would shut down all but essential services and point the finger at President Clinton.

Well, Newt Gingrich's hubris bit him the way most big dogs get bit when the real big dog comes in the room. His belief that he could make a thing into something else just by calling it by another name turned out not to be valid and the American public saw that it was the Republicans shutting down the government, not President Clinton, so what Gingrich thought was at worst a stalemate quickly became a rout. The Republicans had no choice but to back down, and in the next election cycle, the Republicans lost ground, which party regulars blamed on Gingrich. By 1997after losing Congressional seats in the 1996 elections, Gingrich was blamed and he was on the run. Then, in the 1998 elections the Republicans lost more seats when Gingrich overreached again regarding President Clinton's scandals. Gingrich's support waned even from those within his own party, and by 1999, his career in Congress was over in a cloud of scandalous revelations and ethical charges. People in glass houses...you know the rest.

So, now here we are again. The Republicans will control the House of Representatives beginning in January and that they will have diluted the Democratic majority in the Senate, but they're not there yet. Now that the still-Democratic House has passed a tax bill for us common folk, we need for President Obama to be a president with a nature similar to that of President Clinton: outwardly conciliatory but possessed of a determination and clarity of vision that quietly defy and ultimately thwart resistance, and also possessed of a kind of shrewd ability to assess the situation and play the right cards at the right time...this time. I hope he regains his senses before conceding, and that what ensues will follow that familiar Gingrich-Clinton pattern.

It is important to recognize that the Republicans are held today in as much disdain as their Democratic rivals. They were not being swept into office because they are Republicans; they were being swept into office because they are not Democrats. But if the something that middle class tax cuts represent turns into nothing, what then. Put concisely, given what the Republicans are boasting that they will do, in two years the Democrats may still look like half a loaf to the American people, so the Republicans better not push their luck, and if they do, so much the better. It will likely mean that we won't have to worry about them in elective politics for a long, long time. All that remains to be seen is whether President Obama has the guts to stick to his guns...and whether Mitch McConnell is that foolhardy.

Your friend,

Mike

MichaelWolf@Letters2America.com

Dear America,

On Wednesday night, Diane Sawyer on ABC's nightly world news program covered the failure of the co-chairmen of the President's debt reduction commission to get the votes of fourteen commissioners endorsing their preliminary report, and thus no consensus has devolved from the months of work put in by the commissioners. In the context of that report, the ABC reporter asked questions of an "expert," among those questions whether reductions in Social Security benefits were necessary to reduce the debt and balance the budget. His response was that they definitely are. That is almost completely wrong. I suppose that if no changes in Social Security were made in a timely fashion, in the year 2037 when the funds on hand in the Social Security Trust Fund will be insufficient to pay full benefits, the federal government could come forward and offer to pay the difference, thus increasing the national debt. But to the best of my knowledge, no such prospect is in the offing. The only consequence of making no changes to the contribution/benefit ratio in the fund that is being discussed anywhere is the reduction of benefits at that time if nothing eventuates between now and then. But something certainly will happen: there have been changes in the past and there will be changes again.

The real problem with the false assertion of ABC's expert is that the Republican conservative complex (Rcc) has been attempting to eliminate Social Security as we know it for decades. And when people like this would-be expert attach Social Security to the debt problem, they give the Rcc ammunition for their fight. As I have said before, I believe that Social Security should be paid out of the country's general fund and the trust fund should be eliminated with commensurate increases in income tax to pay for the change. But the law as it stands separates Social Security from all other federal spending, which is why the federal government borrows our contributions to the fund as soon as they come in; there is no other way they can use the money but to borrow it. And when they do so, they owe it to us and have to pay it back, just like any other loan...just like the trillions they have borrowed from all of us in the form of treasury notes and bonds, or from the Chinese in the same form for that matter. Of course, if the federal government were to default on its debt to the Social Security Trust Fund, that would then decrease the national debt in some sense as what the government owes the fund would be off the books, but that would not be debt reduction; it would be theft...and the end of the United States as we know it.

The experts on other news programs may have made the same mistake, and I recently wrote to you about NPR failing to adequately address the misapprehensions about Social Security funding. So, there is no single outlet for news that can be blamed. But this is a situation that needs correction, or there will be dire consequences for tens of millions of American people. What I don't understand is that, given the gravity of the consequences of the perpetuation of these false ideas regarding Social Security benefits' relationship to the national debt and deficit, no one is talking about it...except the co-chairmen of the President's debt reduction commission. On page 43 of their report (it is on the internet for anyone to download and read) there is a bulleted list of goals for the changes they recommend for Social Security. The final bullet reads "Reform Social Security for its own sake, not for deficit reduction," which begs the question, does anyone read original documents anymore. Perhaps some people do, but apparently the ABC expert on debt reduction is not among them. And for the sake of balance, on Tuesday night's "All Things Considered" on NPR, there was another discussion of the debt commissioners' report, and Social Security was mentioned in the same context: changes in benefits or payments into the fund will have to occur if the national debt and deficit are to be reduced. So even NPR's reporters don't read things anymore, which brings me back to two points that I have made ad nauseam: first, there is a lot of poor quality thinking going, especially in high places, and second, we all have to think with our own heads, not someone else's. As to the politicians, we can vote them out of office once we do. With regard to the reporters and experts on the nightly news, it isn't going to be that easy.

Your friend,

Mike

MichaelWolf@letters2america.com