January 2011 Archives

Dear America,

Last Thursday, the Senate announced another compromise, but this one was on the rules by which the body operates. At the beginning of every session-- a session lasts two years-- for one day only, the first day, it takes only a simple majority to change the rules, and the Democrats were still holding the majority of seats on that day. Given that the Republicans had stifled all of the Democrats' progressive initiatives for almost the full duration of the 111^th congress, the one that has just ended, it would have made sense for the Democrats to prevent them from doing the same thing for the 112^th congress. At every turn, they had conceded the power of the majority to the Republicans in the last session and that first day of the new session was their chance to take back the right to govern that they had abdicated for the previous two years...but they didn't. Instead, they took a recess at the end of that day and did not reconvene for two weeks, thus technically continuing the work of that first day and hence preserving the right to change the rules with a simple majority, but again...they didn't. Over the course of those weeks they negotiated with the Republicans out of fear that they, even though in the minority, would do something to the Democrats in the majority, and in the end, our pusillanimous, perpetually diffident surrogates in our stodgiest high government body agreed not to change the filibuster rules unless they could get a two thirds majority-- an impossibility given that they have only fifty three votes-- thus giving up voluntarily the right to control the process of Senate reform. Instead they settled for some cosmetic changes that will allow the Republicans to be the same obstructionist force that they have been since they lost the majority themselves, which leads me to say this to the Democrats in the Senate: if you are afraid to govern, go home and let someone with a spine do it.

All of the men and women in the Senate have forgotten one central point. They are supposed to be a democratic institution, not some Byzantine court that answers to no one and makes rules for itself with impunity. The Democrats were sent to the Senate as the majority, but the Republicans have ruled with a minority of as little as forty by virtue of rules that the Senate has made for itself. All the while spouting the Republicans have sanctimoniously claimed that they represent the people and that they are going to interfere with the majority in the Senate in the people's name, never being required to explain how the Democrats could have more votes on the floor if it were not they who represent the majority of the people. Nor have they explained how the Senate is democratic if a majority does not rule on account of these little travesties that they call rules, which they, not we the people nor our founding fathers, have all agreed to. And now, without even making a specific threat but by just sitting silently while the Democrats cowered in fear, the Republicans have prevailed for another two years with just a promise to be better than they have been...not much of a consolation for what we the people have given up through our surrogates in the Senate, the Democratic majority. I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore, at least not in silence. We might as well vote Republican as Democrat because we get a Republican government either way.

True, the Republicans agreed to at least one change informally: they will not use the filibuster to keep bills from coming to the floor for debate. Perhaps this will be a promise that the Republicans will not breach with some casuistic excuse. But Mitch McConnell made another promise that was at the heart of the deal: that he would oppose any attempt by either party to change the rules with a simple majority, even if the Republicans win the majority in the Senate in 2012, as if the Republicans would ever try to change the filibuster rules. He should have a tattoo put on his forehead. It should read, "O please Br'er Democrat, don't throw me in the briar patch." And then there were some formal rules changes. A senator may no longer put a "hold" on a bill or an appointment....anonymously. Frankly, I never knew that they could, anonymously or otherwise. No wonder they don't do anything down there. So, while senators can still as individuals prevent presidential appointments of people they don't like without rhyme or reason, now they must admit it on the record. Of course I never knew of Republicans being shy about throwing their weight around until they got what they wanted, so I don't anticipate much of a change coming from that alteration of procedure. They'll just crow about what they are doing instead of doing it in silence. And they can no longer read long amendments into the record as a delaying tactic, which means absolutely nothing in light of the fact that they can still filibuster in the course of debate, and why wouldn't they; they still don't even have to be there to do so. And while the Democrats were giving away the store, they were extolling their effort as a success because they had been fearful that changing the rules might change the nature of the Senate. And here I was thinking that that was the point. Silly me.

I know I said I was running for President in 2012 as an independent, and I still want to be your write-in candidate. But I'm also running for the Senate to take the place of Joe Lieberman, whose fingerprints are probably all over this latest "compromise," which is Senatese for a Republican victory. I figure either way, the people who cast write-in ballots for me haven't lost anything. After all, a vote for the Democrat is a vote for...well, giving in to the Republicans. I thought some time ago that the parties' names should be changed to the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party, but maybe I was wrong. Maybe it would be better to call them the "Gimmes" and the "Okays".

Your friend,

Mike

MichaelWolf@Letters2America.com

Dear America,

The Republican conservative complex (Rcc) persists in making insinuations about Social Security's role in creating the national debt. But the reality is that the budget cannot be balanced and the national debt cannot be reduced by changing Social Security in any way unless the program is absorbed into the general fund budget and the payroll tax, which is the sole source of Social Security funding and cannot be used for anything else by law, is eliminated-- not just the seven percent we taxpayers pay but the seven percent that our employers pay as well. In other words, if the Rcc wants to address our debt through Social Security benefit reductions, they will have to reduce tax revenues by at least the amount of the reductions: a wash that would serve no purpose but the one they have been trying to achieve since the New Deal. That's right. Reducing Social Security benefits is just the first step toward eliminating the program all together because in reality, reducing Social Security benefits cannot reduce either the national debt or the deficit.

I know how some of you are reacting: it's just another conspiracy theory, or Eric Canter and McBoehnell (Mitch McConnell and especially John Boehner) aren't smart enough to figure out such a scam. But whether they have devised the plan or just intuit that they can get rid of Social Security by attrition and reduce the debt simultaneously, that is what they are intent on doing. Because if they merge both the revenue from Social Security's payroll tax and the benefit payments to Social Security recipients into the general fund, they eliminate a distinct tax-- and you know how the Rcc obsesses about taxes-- and at the same time they eliminate the safe repository of the funds to pay the benefits that they don't want to pay anyway so that they can keep the funds that are already in it, which they have already spent anyway. As an ancillary benefit for the Rcc, by eliminating the Social Security Trust Fund they eliminate the need to repay to the fund the trillions of dollars the federal government has already borrowed from it and hence owes the fund: trillions of dollars of debt disintegrated with nothing but a few strokes of the pen. Then, if the Republicans are in power at the time, they can say that their fiscal responsibility eliminated a massive portion of the debt problem. They think that no one will notice that it is really just a shell game that they are playing and that we, America, are the ones being conned.

What disturbs me most is how few people seem to be onto the Rcc. For example, on several occasions, I have heard David Gregory of Meet the Press talk about reducing entitlements like Social Security to balance the budget. Last Sunday, he tried to get Eric Cantor to admit that he needed to advocate reductions in Social Security if he wanted to balance the budget. And while Cantor was very coy about it then, refusing to give a real comment on the subject, in the end he will reluctantly-- gleefully underneath it all-- acquiesce in what seems to be becoming the mantra even the progressives among us are chanting...cut entitlements, cut entitlements, Om. And Gregory asked the same question of Harry Reid last week, though Reid's response was that reducing Social Security was not necessary: half of the right answer. So, the danger is that those of us who believe that the social awareness and compassion that have spawned what we refer to colloquially as "the social safety net" will unwittingly ask the Rcc to take it away from not just us but our grandparents and our grandchildren as well little by little. We are being duped into being their enablers-- accomplices in building the petard that will hoist us all. I can recall only one commentator who has expressed the reality about Social Security on television and he was one of Rachel Maddow's frequent guests. Almost everyone is ignoring the fact that even the President's debt reduction commission's preliminary report said that strengthening Social Security by changing benefit structure or revenue would not reduce the debt or balance the budget. In bullet number five on page 43 of their report, they recommended that we, "Reform Social Security for its own sake, not for debt reduction." That is an exact quote and the report is on the internet, so you can look it up for yourself, as can the Rcc. I hope you do, but they won't.

So, consider this fair warning. Social Security is in jeopardy, which I for one could accept if it were for good reason, but it isn't. The only reason that it gets mentioned by the Rcc is that they don't like it. Ramesh Ponnuru of the conservative journal National Review in his January 14, 2011 Op-Ed piece for the New York Times wrote that if President Obama does not offer a "good faith proposal for Social Security" in his State of the Union address, "reformers [substitute Republicans here] should blame Mr. Obama for the lack of progress and work to make entitlements a litmus-test in the Republican presidential primaries." The strategy Ponnuru is advocating is the first step in just what I have been describing, and you can count on seeing it unless the fallacy behind the Rcc's intention is exposed on a large scale. So, as usual, it is up to us, America, to help ourselves. Because if we wait for our politicians to figure this all out, we are in for some awfully hard times. The recession of 2008-2011 will look like a day at the beach.

Your friend,

Mike

MichaelWolf@Letters2America.com

Dear America,

I have admired David Brooks for both his style and the substance of his work-- mind you I often disagree with him-- since I started reading his columns in the New York Times and listening to him on National Public Radio and Television. But lately, he seems to have gone from moderately conservative commentator to conservative apologist, and the most recent embodiment of that change was his column of last Friday. It was a puff piece dedicated to Senator Joseph Lieberman, extolling him for various positions he has taken over the years, served mostly as a Democrat with the exception of his last term in which he has been an Independent having been rejected by the Democratic voters of Connecticut in favor of a first time candidate four years ago. The occasion of this panegyric was the announcement by The Senator that he will retire in two years after his current term expires-- good riddance in my opinion, but Mr. Brooks disagrees for several reasons. First, Lieberman, though still in his last term as a Democratic senator-- the party had nominated him and supported his successful campaign for the office-- not only endorsed the Republican candidate for President, John McCain, he appeared at the Republican convention to speak on his behalf and to repudiate Barrack Obama, an act that Mr. Brooks attributes to principle, but that I would characterize as perfidy. And that wasn't the beginning. Lieberman's hits had already been coming for years.

Lieberman wanted to continue caucusing with the Democrats even though he had been elected to another term as an Independent, but as might be anticipated a substantial contingent of the Democrats in the Senate wanted to strip him of his committee chairmanship, the most visible badge of a senator's status. I suspect that those who opposed allowing Lieberman to continue to enjoy the privileges that accrued to him as a ranking member of the majority party were not just angry about his defection at a crucial time but were also distrustful. After all, the first thing he did when the issue was raised by the caucus was to threaten to defect again if they did so, but under that threat they faltered and allowed Lieberman to stay aligned with the Democratic Party and enjoy the advantages of doing so. Brooks thinks that Lieberman then performed yeoman's service on several issues, citing praise given him in emails by Senator John Kerry and Vice President Joe Biden, which he quoted as support for his conclusion. But those commendations were of the generic variety that every politician gives to every other so that if he is needed in the future, there will be no burnt bridge to rebuild: to Brooks commendatory, but more like damnation by faint praise.

Then Brooks specifically praised Lieberman for his central role in the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell," suggesting that he was the moving force behind it. But the repeal passed with five votes to spare and with enormous public support, so the effort hardly qualifies as political heavy lifting, and certainly not as political risk taking. On the other hand, when the Republicans were trying everything to discredit President Clinton and eventually seized upon his perjury at a deposition in the Paula Jones case regarding his dalliance with Monica Lewinsky, Lieberman took a highly visible position against impeachment, too late I might add, and Brooks applauds him for it. But Mr. Brooks conveniently omit's the fact that Lieberman had previously claimed righteous indignation and advocated impeachment, as I recall one of only two Democrats who took such a position on the subject, apparently thinking that the poor Republicans needed help in their Machiavellian enterprises. I recall those events fairly vividly as a Connecticut voter because I wrote to Lieberman while the impeachment was still impending, pointing out to him that if the impeachment occurred, it was largely his fault as he gave the Republicans the cover of bipartisan indignation to hide behind, and I threatened to work tirelessly against his reelection if he didn't do something to undo his treachery. I don't claim that he changed his tune and opposed impeachment in favor of some form of non-judicial censure because of my letter, but I think that there must have been thousands like me who made the same threat. So, when Brooks extols Lieberman for preventing the impeachment, he is wrong on two counts. Impeachment is the indictment of the President or other government official, and President Clinton was indeed impeached. And furthermore, it happened in large part thanks to Lieberman. But the President was not convicted, possibly in some small part because of Lieberman's plea for leniency, but I really doubt that old Joe had anything significant to do with it. Put concisely, Mr. Brooks is ignoring the fact that Lieberman probably acted out of a naked desire to maintain his office in light of the outrage of his constituents over the roll he played in getting Mr. Clinton impeached in the first place when he plead for mercy after it was already too late. The bottom line is that the President was impeached at least in part because Joe Lieberman legitimized the shameless and politically self-serving Republican persecution of the opposing party's leader. I find no way to make that laudable.

The second major accolade bestowed on Lieberman by David Brooks was that his vote was the sixtieth vote on the health insurance reform bill, thus making it possible. But again, Mr. Brooks looks at Lieberman's performance elliptically, failing to mention that like the Blue Dog Democrats, he opposed the Democratic campaign for a public health care system, which was one of the primary bases for the enormous mandate the Democrats enjoyed at the time that the bill wended its way through congress. We have Lieberman to thank for a law that, while better than nothing, serves as much to pump billions of dollars into the pockets of insurance companies as they insure the forty million or so who will at last have health insurance whether they can afford it or not, rather than health care for everyone that is affordable for the nation and serves not just to heal the sick-- all of them, not just those who can afford it-- but to control health care costs as well. That we are now enjoying half a loaf is not something that we should be thanking one of the few responsible for the fact that we don't have a whole one for. Add Lieberman's support for the war in Iraq and you have a well developed picture of the man whom David Brooks praises for his civility and bipartisanship. Well, if by some chance Mr. Brooks reads my letters to you, America, I have this to say him. Along with several of your recent columns on issues like the national debt and the budget deficit, the role that business should be playing in the making of federal governmental policy and the like, you have shown a different color from the one that won you my praises, and now this. So, if Joe Lieberman is one of your heroes...well, let me put it this way David. You've lost me...in every way.

Your friend,

Mike

MichaelWolf@letters2america.com

Dear America,

Something of great moment happened a week ago, and it went virtually unnoticed in the media. Last Friday, the New York Times reported that Hamas deployed troops to an area of the border between Israel and Gaza to prevent militants from firing rockets into Israel. And the Hamas controlled government of Gaza met concomitantly with representatives of the various militant groups there to warn them that continuation of their bombardment of Israeli citizens-- there had been at least twenty five rockets and mortar shells launched into Israel just this month-- was a dangerous undertaking. Israel had retaliated for the previous attacks by targeting munitions stores and smuggling tunnels, and apparently, whether through back channels or otherwise, they had communicated to the Egyptians that those retaliatory strikes were just the beginning...that they fully intended to stop the attacks with whatever force was necessary. Egypt in turn informed Hamas that Israel was not going to continue its level of restraint and that further attacks could be expected to result in increasingly vigorous counter attacks. Hamas then relayed the message, though it remains to be seen to what effect. The immediate importance of these events is two fold. First, they demonstrate that Hamas has some sense of its own vulnerability in consequence of what happens in Gaza, whether they are at the bottom of it or not. Second, it is now clear that they know who to speak to if they want to control the violence against, and provocation of, Israel. Now is the time for Israel to expedite the creation of a Palestinian state.

To some extent, the militant Palestinian constituencies are like al Qaeda. They are an amorphous and diverse movement. There is no monolithic Palestinian polity and there is no single Palestinian militancy. Palestine as it stands is more of a notion than it is a choate idea, and the identity of the Palestinian people is virtually as multifarious as the number of people who think of themselves as Palestinians. To a large extent, that has been the main impediment to creating a Palestinian state: with whom do you deal to make sure that a legitimate government is formed, one that can be made to understand the responsibilities of independent nationhood as well as the consequences that go with failing to meet them. The fact that Hamas won control of Gaza politically rather than militarily while the other "half" of the potential Palestinian state in the West Bank of the Jordan River is controlled by more moderate political factions makes the point. If even the two halves of the new Palestinian entity cannot agree on how to comport a hypothetical nation of Palestine, how can the world, Israel in particular, trust that a responsible nation will result from the enfranchisement of the diverse Palestinian population of the area in a single nation-state. That is why the Hamas meeting with the fractious militants whose actions are responsible for the constant roiling of the situation in the region is so important. Hamas has demonstrated that it does see and understand the nexus of its interests with those of Israel, not just those of the militants, and therefore, it has seen both its role in the creation of a nation of Palestine and its true mandate when it comes to the Palestinian people, at least those in Gaza. To serve its Palestinian constituency, it must unite with Israel in at least one common goal: the pacification of the militant Palestinian underground. It is in a real sense the breakthrough that Israel-- and for that matter the world-- has been waiting for, if only Israel will recognize it.

Now is the time for Israel to take a unilateral action-- cessation of settlement building and expansion in the West Bank. With that, the Israelis should be able to contact Hamas in private and without public notice toward the end of assuring them that if this effort to smoother the violence is an act of good faith, Palestinian independence can be a reality within one to two years. The United States has no role to play in such communications, nor do the Syrians, the Jordanians or the Saudis. It is time for the resolution of the Palestinian issue to be pursued by the two parties to the conflict, for one of the problems with previous attempts to bring peace to the middle east has been that the whole world was watching, and thus providing an audience for what has been in large part nothing more than military-political theater, unfortunately at the cost of hundreds of lives and mountains of wealth that could have been applied to creating a prosperous, and thus viable, Palestinian state. It is much the same as the communication from one family member to another about a third in an effort to communicate to that third member a position that the communicator has taken and to simultaneously recruit an ally against the third party. If we, and the rest of the world can stay out of the way, and if we can in fact turn out backs on the negotiations and thus deny both sides the opportunity to recruit us, this may be the best chance for world peace that we have seen since the early nineties, and maybe since the forties. While Hillary Clinton has demonstrated her great substance and her acumen as our Secretary of State, it would be prudent for her to busy herself with other things for a month or two, and perhaps for the rest of us to do likewise. Without an audience, the two prosecutors of the hostilities in what used to be called The Levant may well be able to put aside grand theater and get down to the realities: peace now or the possibility of another four thousand years of conflict. For if this chance goes un-availed of, it may be millennia before another comes around.

Your friend,

Mike

MichaelWolf@letters2america.com

Dear America,

A week after the awful events, the assassinations in Tucson are still the primary topic of conversation in the media, which is as it should be I suppose. But there is very little talk of the fact that in this aftermath, there is likely to be little if any change. There was no real change after the Simon's Rock College killings in 1992, Columbine in 1999, or after Virginia Tech in 2007 either. And that list comprises but a small fraction of the gun related murderous events that have occurred just since the Texas Tower killings in 1966, all entailing procurement and use of modern fire arms. Yet, in spite of the dearth of accounts of people saving themselves with such weapons, the gun lobby and second amendment advocates myopically persist in arguing that we have the absolute right to keep and bear arms, which they transmogrify into the right for everyone to have a gun and carry it however, whenever and wherever they want. But even though this is all current as an issue, it is not my central point. Compromise is.

There has been much discussion this week, and for years actually, that the civility has been drained from our political process by any of several forces depending on your politics. And I, like the many, mourn the loss of gentility in our political establishment, and in our daily lives for that matter. My attribution of causation is likely different from those of the gun advocates, but it doesn't really matter. There can be little argument about the need to desist in our personal vituperation of those who disagree with us; as I have often said here and elsewhere, and I am only one of many saying so, ad hominem argument does not lead to resolution of issues. It only hardens hearts and in this modern world, that is a problem in itself, and I believe that Tucson demonstrates that claim, politically incorrect as it is to say so. But beyond civility is another central issue in American politics, and there has been an obfuscation of that issue. In politics today, there is a red herring that is being used by the right to distract their opposition: compromise. The conservative movement has insisted that a progressive political minority has arrogated power and foisted its will on the majority, which they claim to represent. There argument continues that, since the direction of our government over the past two years in particular seems to be toward social awareness rather than free markets and social Darwinism, the progressive oligarchy must come back to "the center" and compromise. Even our president, himself purporting to be a progressive at one time, has accepted that premise. We are not being heard, their litany goes. We have not been given a "seat at the table." But that first of all is not so, and second of all is not a sufficient argument to support the Republican conservative complex's (Rcc) position. Let me put it concisely: a bad idea is a bad idea. And incorporating a bad idea into our social policy is also a bad idea. But even if we were so inclined, it would likely not be enough to satisfy the proponents of that bad idea anyway.

In the health care reform debate, many of the ideas that were eventually embodied in the health insurance reform law were propounded and urged on the rest of us by the Republicans. For example, the notion that health insurance exchanges would make insurance available to everyone was what they offered as a substitute for socialized medicine in the nineties. But when the health insurance law was actually formulated to incorporate that idea because socialized medicine, or even a "single payer system" could not pass because of the conservatives inside the Democratic caucus, all of a sudden insurance exchanges became a Democratic idea and the Republicans rejected it apparently for that reason alone, demonizing the implementers of their own policy as enemies of freedom of choice. The Tea Party movement was spawned and the rest is history. Compromise was not enough, even though it constituted a complete capitulation and a retreat from the progressive objectives that the Democratic congress set out to accomplish. Now, the Republicans and the Rcc want to repeal even that compromise because, as I said, compromise is never enough for those who will be satisfied only with getting their own way. For the Republicans and the Rcc, when it comes to healthcare, their way is to provide nothing to anyone who cannot pay, and they will decry any law that does otherwise.

Extreme cases tend to make bad examples, but if I said that, should another Stalin or Hitler emerge as a national leader we should never compromise with him on his genocidal policies, there would be no debate today, but compromise with both of them is what we did. World War II and the tyranny of the Iron Curtain were the consequences. In both cases, compromise was what passed for hope that those consequences, which were inevitable anyway, could be avoided. They could not. The same is the case with universal health care, weapons control, financial regulation and a host of other things that are fundamental to those who characterize themselves as progressives. We have them or we don't. There is no compromise. There is only the alternative: the status quo.

I am not saying that opposition to those progressive imperatives is the moral equivalent of making war or oppressing the masses. But I am saying that it is time for the progressive movement to desist in its self-destructive tendency to apologize for its own ardor in the face of the ardor of the opposition. Compromise on health care is not an acceptable option; for forty million or so of us it is a necessity, sometimes the difference between life and death. Compromise on financial reform is not an acceptable option to the millions whose life savings have been pared down or lost to the greed of those for whom money is more important than morality. Limitation of access to lethal devices that serve one purpose only, the killing of other human beings, is not something on which we can compromise, and so on and so on. On these fundamental things in which we believe, compromise is not an option, and I for one will not accept it without a fervid argument, without vitriol if the Rcc will permit, but with it if they won't. For that, I will not apologize. No progressive should.

Your friend,

Mike

MichaelWolf@Letters2America.com

Dear America,

The shootings in Arizona have brought our nation to one of those rare moments in which there is universal pain over a single catastrophe. As is the case in war, as was the case on September 11, 2001, as was the case when Kennedy was shot, we are united even if only briefly, and that is so despite the fact that the very foundation of our nation is the diversity of our natures. We are permitted individuality by our system, and thus we all have our own preferences. We are permitted to assemble into groups and thus we unite with others in the pursuit of shared interests. We have free enterprise and thus we band together to produce what creates our prosperity, and all of that diversity is a good thing for the most part. But occasionally, there emerges from among us an individual or a group that is not content to acknowledge that diversity in others, insisting instead on the right to determine for us what we should be. That is the role of the assassin. That is the role of the fringe group that assumes its ardor to be more compelling than more than two centuries of democratic resolution of our differences by peaceful, if quarrelsome means. And that is the irony of democracy. The very social compact that democracy is permit's the evolution of the ideas and people who would tyrannize us and throw the dream that is democracy to the wind, thinking all the while that they are preserving it.

It is a good thing that our politicians, for at least this week or so, are willing to put disputatious discourse aside. That will allow us to stand together in reverence for those departed and maimed and in univocal condemnation of the would be tyrant who took lives and wreaked harm on more than a score of us to make some point that he thought more important than their lives and limbs. It is a good thing that our president went to the place where this havoc occurred and spoke to us, his nation. It is a good thing that our congress memorialized the fallen with eulogies and condolences to their survivors and loved ones. But it will be for no more than a moment in history that this harmony will prevail. We will return in short order to the vituperation and calumny, to the outright prevarications that have been the character of our national political debate for a long, long time. And through the incendiary comments of the few in high places, through the virulence of their resistance to change, we will once again be thrust into the controversy over who we are as a nation as if none of this had happened. There are even signs that there will be some who will use these tragedies to fuel the anger of the opposing sides. A senator, Lamar Alexander, a Republican from Tennessee, spoke to the press citing what the assassin had read as a sign of something sinister as if having a library card is dangerous, all in the name of separating Jared Loughner, the shooter in Tucson, from conservatives, the Tea Party in particular. And he was not alone: Republican Congresswoman Virginia Foxx painted Loughner as "the liberal of the liberals" whatever that means, and a communist in the bargain while denying that he was at all influenced by Sarah Palin. He was definitely not a conservative, she said as if she knew anything about him, or for that matter about anything at all. Of course, Glenn Beck was on that same bandwagon, trying for all he was worth to associate the carnage with liberal or progressive beliefs, though naturally they never mentioned the similarity of Loughner's ranting's on the internet to the stated attitudes of the "Posse Commitatus" subculture that spawned Timothy McVee.

But all this is immaterial to our politics in general. It will continue to be the case that the conservative contingent of the electorate will seek to control the nation's direction as they have done fairly successfully for the past couple of years, all the while making it seem that we are in danger of falling off a progressive cliff. And the political leaders who manage that campaign will continue to make incendiary remarks that will roil the emotions of those susceptible to intolerance of diversity of opinion. But what will remain is the ever present risk that something like Loughner's insane assault on our freedoms will occur again, because no matter how anyone characterizes the opposing point of view, as Speaker of the House John Boehner said, we are a nation that is built on diverse opinion, and that is our strength. We cannot let those with small or narrow minds deter us from expression of our thoughts, and that was The Speaker's point...not even if they have guns, which if the conservatives have their way, they certainly will.

Your friend,

Mike

MichaelWolf@Letters2America.com

Dear America,

For the first time, I have heard a prominent figure in American politics say that Social Security should not be used to balance the budget or reduce the national debt. This Sunday on Meet the Press, Senator Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, said that Social Security is in sound condition and that its recipients should not be asked to shoulder any part of the national debt/deficit problem. While he was not quite clear as to his rationale in that he said only that the trust fund from which Social Security benefits are paid is solvent, the effect of his remark is the same as if he had been more comprehensive in making it. Social Security is funded until 2037, and that fact was the implicit basis of his position, and with that it was at least made clear that one sane voice will be raised if the Republicans continue to prevaricate about reducing our fiscal woes by cutting the program. But the White House has continued to take steps in the wrong direction, in particular with the choice of William Daley to be White House Chief of Staff, so the question is, even with Harry Reid on our side, what will the White House do-- about Social Security and many other things including health care-- in the name of compromise. Will President Obama sacrifice Social Security among other things important to liberals in the name of bipartisanship: that is the question.

The hiring of William Daley raises some specters relative to the nature of the core values remaining in the Obama White House in the wake of the November elections, and thus relative to how much we can count on in the way of support for the socio-political and economic structure that has been constructed through the years since the Roosevelt administration. Daley represents the notion that the national debt has primacy among the concerns that must be faced by the nation, and it is possible that it is. But with the focus of his politics being on the debt existing in tandem with his inclination toward conservative influences in our society-- business, the financial industry, the current health care establishment-- he is guided monolithically by a mentality that leans toward evisceration of any social program if it serves his primary goal, and that includes Social Security and the rest of our social safety net. So, in that President Obama has chosen him to be his surrogate in certain circumstances, it is hard to see how he will not influence the direction of the nation, adding a hand to those already steering the country to the right. With President Obama being the last reliable source of power directed toward preserving the liberal social structure that those who voted for him prefer, the Congress now reflecting a conservative majority and the Senate having shown its inability to overcome the conservative minority within it, who is left to take our part. Certainly not Mr. Daley.

The President's desire to placate the conservatives in congress is now manifest, though the consensus among analysts is that Daley will serve primarily to placate business, not congress, which in my mind is a distinction without a difference. Business wants what the conservatives in congress want: economic Darwinism, otherwise known as a free market. The only way for business to get what it wants if for laws favoring it to be enacted, and thus, placating business means by extension mollifying the right side of the political spectrum in congress by at least allowing such legislation, and that is what troubles me. Through four years of Democratic domination of congress, we have a pale imitation of health care reform, and financial reform of just as pallid a complexion. The rich still have their tax cuts and even more than President Bush gave them if you count the increased exemptions under the estate tax granted them under the most recent tax compromise legislation. So in reality, despite liberal claims that the lame duck session was a great Democratic and liberal success, the conservatives have prevailed on every issue from a minority position and with no voice in the White House. Now, the Republicans have an even more powerful minority in the Democratic Senate, which shows no sign of the fortitude and judgment needed to vitiate the minority's filibuster-based power, they have the majority in the Congress with a rabid conservative contingent that the Democratic minority will now have to beg the Republicans to keep in check like pedestrians trying to prevail upon its master to keep a pit bull on a short leach, and our uniformly progressive White House is now being steered by a Republican in a Democrat suit. We are in big trouble on the progressive side of American politics.

That is among the reasons why I am already regretting something I said on Monday: that I won't have to vote in 2012. I said it in jest, but on that subject, there really isn't any room for humor. I have to vote, and so do you. But I have decided that I can make a difference at the polls despite the bleakness of the current political landscape. I am announcing that I am a write-in, independent candidate for the Presidency of the United States. I admit that I have no specialized knowledge that qualifies me to be president, and I have neither experience with, nor an inclination to be a part of politics. But I have one thing going for me. My politics never change. So, vote for me...or Hillary Clinton in the event that she hears the alarms going off. Thank you for your support.

Your friend,

Mike

MichaelWolf@letters2america.com

P.S. This will be my last Wednesday letter for awhile. I have found that the time required to write to you three times a week is preventing me from doing some other things that I need to do for my family. So, until I don't need to work anymore or I spontaneously shed twenty years and thus reduce my need for sleep, it's going to be Monday and Friday only, but I'll look forward to talking to you then.

Dear America,

When I read on Friday that President Obama had appointed William M. Daley to be the next chief of staff in the White House, I was dismayed to say the least. Daley is the son of the dynastic former mayor/boss of Chicago, Richard J. Daley, and the brother of the current mayor, Richard M. Daley, who is retiring from the office in favor of Rahm Immanuel, who will be running for the office as the next Democratic candidate. My consternation was not a consequence solely of his dynastic heritage, but also because he is now a Wall Street bank executive at J.P. Morgan making about $5 million a year. It seemed to me like bringing a viper into the house on purpose. But, as I read the opinions of those whom I have trusted in the past, David Brooks, E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post and the weekly political analysis column of the New York Times among them, I began to accept the premise that his administrative acumen was the reason for his admission to the current sanctum sanctorum of the progressive movement, and my anxiety was somewhat assuaged; in fact, I began to doubt my own instincts, on this matter at least. But I was still unconvinced based on the concerns I expressed about President Obama's options last week on Monday, one of which was to follow the "pragmatic" course, that is to moderate his positions in the name of reelection as Bill Clinton did. In some ways I admired President Clinton, but in the end, he was a pragmatist in the worst sense: as interested in his political career and legacy as he was in the fate of the nation. And while he presided over the political era in which the budget was put in balance for the first time in more than twenty five years, he also gave away something less than the whole store, but just by a little: wellfare "reform," the repeal of Glass-Steagall, and ironically, the passage of NAFTA with Daley's help, which may have seemed to be a good idea at the time but doesn't really look so good today as our corporate powers export our wealth, in the form of our jobs and manufacturing capacity, to countries where they can pay subsistence wages. Notably, when Clinton was running for office in 1992 and he was asked to commit to supporting NAFTA under pressure from his opponent, the senior President Bush, he declined to give it saying, "I've got to see the paper first," which apparently Daley read to him as he ultimately signed the bill. So President Obama's selection of Daley suggested Clinton redux, which might be acceptable, but it doesn't really appeal to me.

And then I read Saturday's New York Times in which appeared the criticisms of Nobel Prize winning economists like Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz-- both professors, one at Princeton and the other at Columbia respectively-- and of former government insiders like Robert Reich, whom I also admire in terms of his socio-political and intellectual bents. And then there was Bob Herbert, a regular editorialist for The Times and others but otherwise just an ordinary guy like you and me, who limned his concerns about Daley in his Saturday column. Herbert pointed out that Daley was a harsh, persistent and adamant critic of the financial reform laws just passed by congress in response to the near ruination of the American economy by the financial institutions regulated by the law, and he is a forceful advocate for closer relations between the Obama Administration and business, which fits nicely with the fact that Daley was also very critical of the health insurance reform law...unabashedly so despite the fact that he was a director at Abbott Labs, an international pharmaceutical house whose interests did not necessarily coincide with the reform package's statutory scheme. Herbert also referred to some specific data regarding the gap between the rich and the poor today much like the kind of information that has formed my own thinking in the past: 44 million of us live below the poverty line of $22,000 per year for a family of four and 17 million of us live on $11,000 per year or less-- half the amount of the official poverty line. With that, and with Reich's reiteration that 1% of Americans, presumably businessmen for the most part, took in 23% of the entire nation's income in 2007, an observation that I have cited before, those who have been Obama apologists on the issue of Daley's hiring lost me despite my general regard for them. The fact that Jamie Dimon, the CEO of J.P. Morgan, applauds The President's choice synched it for me. What it comes to is this: I can't reconcile The President bringing someone into his administration to help business get his ear in the name of striking a pragmatic balance, with the notion that his administration is truly progressive, which is why I voted for him. Besides, businessmen have obviously already done a good enough job of getting Mr. Obama's attention without any help at all but even if they hadn't, the notion that The President...our President...wants the rich to have more help to ensure that his White House has an understanding of what business and the rich want, presumably so that he can then help them get it, is anathema to those of us who got him elected if it is not an outright betrayal of what he said were his principles when he was convincing us to vote for him.

Daley has been a lobbyist for foreign corporations, a lawyer and a telecommunications executive. He worked in the Gore, Biden and Mondale campaigns and in the administrations of Presidents Clinton and now Obama, always hired, never elected, but always a power broker in the political sense, and he has been on corporate boards of directors and in finance at high levels. He was also a member of Third Way, a group that advocates debt reduction simultaneously with tax cuts, which means reducing funding for social programs, perhaps including Social Security, even though it has no relationship to the debt as it is funded directly by the payroll tax and not by the general fund, despite conservative pretenses to the contrary. As to Mr. Daley's principles then, his resume suggests that he has none that abide. If he has any political wont at all, it should have directed him to the Republicans, not the Democrats, an anomaly explained by his family's two generation domination of an urban Democratic machine, not by some kind of sub-rosa philosophy in favor of the common man. Politics is not a means to an end for him; it is just the family business. As to President Obama, he vowed to exclude lobbyists from positions of power, but here's Daley getting one. Mr. Obama was aligned with the common man and the middle class he told us, but just as was the case with his debt reduction commission, it is pols and patricians on whom he relies. All in all though, this may be a good thing for me. I won't have to worry about whom I should vote for in the next presidential election. I can just stay home since there will be only Republicans on the ballot.

Your friend,

Mike

MichaelWolf@letters2america.com

Dear America,

In Washington, there is always the chance that things will change, but that chance is always remote. In 2008, the electorate sent Barrack Obama to the White House in the hope that he would be able to precipitate change, but the inertia of politics as usual prevented that. Health care reform became health insurance reform and financial reform became a hollow gesture, pared down by the Republicans and the Blue Dog Democrats in response to pressure from their patrons in the industry. The demagoguery that has kept us Americans uninformed-- or at least not informed in any useful way-- turned out more political mythology than ever over the past two years, in fact enough to convert a substantial 2007majority sentiment in favor of health care reform into a substantial 2010 majority sentiment against health insurance reform, largely because of conservative propaganda that failed to point out that what the people got was not what they wanted, but that that was because it was as close as the Democrats could get in consequence of Republican conservative complex (Rcc) machinations. And of course there is as much dogmatism in Washington as there was two years ago...maybe more...all of which serves to advance the Machiavellian tactics of our politicians, the Republicans in particular, because the longer they argue, the more intently they can claim that their constituents need them in The Capital.

So, it is not surprising that Mitch McConnell would point his senescent gnarled finger at the Democrats and claim that they were practicing politics as usual in spite of what he claims was the November electoral mandate for change from the Democrats' political hegemony, never once reflecting on the fact that according to every poll we Americans have as much disdain for Republicans as we do Democrats. And he never mentioned the fact that even within his own party, this new sub-sect of the conservative oligarchy, the Tea Party, is as ravenous for Republican blood as it is for that of the Democrats. Nor did he mention that if the Tea Party gets its way, we will all be in deep trouble because the cure for our headache that they represent is the equivalent of decapitation, which won't do the patient-- the United States of America-- any good at all. Then there is Rand Paul saying in a group interview with his newbie colleagues that he would gladly go home and return to his medical practice if congress would just pass a debt ceiling amendment to the Constitution and term limits, demonstrating that he either doesn't know or doesn't care what the responsibility of his office requires of him. A couple of those new members of congress are declining to take the health insurance that congress has so magnanimously provided for its members on both sides of the aisle, but virtually all of the rest of them would continue the tradition of congress providing for itself before it provides for the nation as they intend to repeal health insurance reform for us. And if they do, there are going to be some very unhappy constituents at home to whom they are going to have some explaining to do as even the most rabid opponents of the law don't want go give up what they are going to get from it.

So, all in all, despite Mitch McConnell's fulminations to the contrary, the new class of congressmen and senators are just a renewal of the sanctimony fuel supply in Washington, D.C. guaranteeing that for at least two more years, the city will stay warmer than the rest of the nation thanks to an abundant supply of hot air. Meanwhile, we in the rest of the nation will have to sit on our hands and wait until we find out what kind of damage they do to the elements of our governmental system that actually do serve us. They are fond of saying that everything is on the table...everything is in play. Well, that means not just health insurance reform, but financial reform as well, boding a return to a lack of supervision of the greediest oligarchy in the world-- and I do not hesitate to argue that they are actually an oligarchy and not just an oligopoly-- that will put us all back in jeopardy of the depression that the Rcc has been stumbling us into for the past thirty years. It means that Social Security will be slashed in the name of a goal that it has nothing to do with: balancing the budget. (My fear is that they will eliminate the trust fund-- and thus the debt the country has accrued by borrowing the fund's money-- and fund Social Security under the general fund, and then eviscerate the program in the name of reduction of the general fund budget imbalance.) Of course there is also Medicare to worry about, and the support for universal higher education that LBJ's Great Society program started: Pell Grants, Stafford Loans, direct loans from the government, the College Work Study program and the rest.

So, there may be change in the wind, but my fear is that it will be an advance to the past. It has taken a hundred years of enlightened government to increase our normal lifespan by more than half, to cure and eradicate many diseases, to equalize opportunity and access to higher education for all, to bring women up from second class citizenship, to take children out of factories and put them in public schools which, while not ideal certainly beat what preceded them. And now, all of that is threatened by a small group who hearken back to what they think was a better time: a time when government may have been smaller but when catastrophic vulnerability of one kind or another was a worry in 98% of Americans' lives. I just hope that we as a nation can hearken to reason instead. The debt has to be addressed, but better with dollars from a few full pockets than pennies from tens of millions of empty ones. The budget has to be balanced, but better by reducing obscene wealth to just unseemly wealth than by denying millions of people the meager benefits of one kind or another that keep their bodies and souls together. There isn't much time, America. We have to decide who we are and make sure that our politicians know it or they will decide for us. And given their record in the past, I for one don't want to take that chance.

Your friend,

Mike

MichaelWolf@Letters2America.com

Dear America,

Our political system has spawned an attitude that makes political success an end in itself: a small tail wagging an enormous dog. For example, Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader, has bluntly stated that his goal during the 112^th congress is to prevent Barrack Obama from being a two term president, which is why the Republicans in The Senate united to prevent several things from happening legislatively. But then they allowed those things to occur during the lame duck session, demonstrating that McConnell's docile Republicans had heeded their master's call with the purpose of obstructing the Democratic effort-- not the vindication of any principle, just the thwarting of the Democrats. The Democrats have likewise dug in on issues like the prioritization of tax reform and debt reduction after other social goals, and while I agree with them in large part, the fact remains that something on the order of 40% of every federal dollar spent is dedicated to what those in Washington, D.C. call "servicing the debt," otherwise describable as paying interest on money we have borrowed as a nation in the past, the point being that if we had 40% more money to spend, we would not have to be in constant political disarray over issues of social conscience.

The significance of these facts is that on issues like health care reform for example, the two major parties, and now the Tea Party sect of the Republican Party as well, have dug in their heels and refused to analyze the problem that the recently passed health insurance reform law was supposed to address. Similarly, with regard to Social Security the Republicans have lumped in decremental spending from the Social Security Trust Fund-- which has started already-- with the national debt when there is really no connection between the two in principle. The fund will be exhausted in 2037 and fund revenues from payroll taxes will no longer support current levels of benefits, but we have twenty seven years to adjust and prevent that in order to avoid the insolvency of the fund, and in the interim, we pay for our benefits week to week out of our collective earnings and our savings in the fund. In other words. the federal debt has not increased by a penny on account of Social Security, and it won't until 2037 at the earliest, and even then, the only addition to the national debt caused by Social Security would be federal general fund subsidies to the fund to sustain levels of benefits over and above payroll tax income-- an event that will never occur for several reasons, discussion of which would just confuse the issue now. But discussion of the problems of Social Security solvency and health care reform in general could yield solutions that would be not just acceptable but desirable for both parties if they would only set aside partisan victory in favor of popular wellbeing.

For example, with regard to health care there is no way around the fact that it costs something in excess of 15% of the gross domestic product every year according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. At the same time, other governmental organizations that have studied the issue have concluded that our health care is more expensive than that of any industrialized nation in the world yet does not make us any healthier than any of those other nations, if we are as healthy as they are at all. While our system is first in responsiveness, we are lagging behind in areas like infant mortality, average life span and broad accessibility, and we pay nearly one and a half times what Germany does for that poor result, even more compared to many other advanced nations like Canada and Britain. In all of the modernized nations that have single payer systems, including those with universal free government health care, the overall result is better than it is here, yet the conservative attitude-- the Republican attitude in particular-- is that the right to choose how to avail oneself of healthcare is more important than universal wellbeing, and that the cost of such health care is prohibitive, which is just not so. But beyond that point is one that no one discusses. If our health care system were supported by taxpayers, business would no longer be the primary funder of health care in the form of insurance paid as fringe benefits for workers. So, while the Republicans rant about corporate tax levels, they could be increasing corporate revenue by 15% if they would only agree to universal public healthcare. Such a change would dwarf any corporate tax reduction that this country could afford, but apparently winning a propaganda war against the liberal political establishment is more important than reason when it comes to this issue.

And then there is Social Security. Even The President's commission on debt and deficit reduction admitted, in its preliminary report at least, that balancing Social Security funds with expenses was an end in itself and was unrelated to balancing the federal budget and reducing the national debt. But the Republicans, and even some Democrats continue to talk about Social Security as a "budget buster" when the fact is that if those hundreds of billions of dollars available to the retired and disabled under Social Security's aegis were no longer being spent in our economy, our current severe economic problems would be far worse. In addition, we would have the kind of pernicious poverty that doesn't just make people miserable, it kills them. However, the simple act of raising the earnings level at which you stop paying additional payroll taxes for Social Security, even on a declining sliding scale, until it quenches the benefit needs of the baby boomers who will be retiring and retired for the next twenty years or so would balance the fund with its obligations. And after that twenty years, chances are that those increases in funding could be reversed as the post-World War II spike in our population declines in its impact on Social Security in consequence of the end of the normal life spans of those beneficiaries. In other words, the Social Security balancing issue could be addressed with something akin to a temporary inconvenience, and in addition, the need for a general fund contribution to the fund would be obviated and the money in the fund could continue to be a pool of capital to be borrowed at a reasonable rate to finance the rest of the nation's fiscal needs. But then, there would be no fire for the Republicans to hold the Democrats' feet to. Again, political victory supplants the common weal as a priority, when all it would take to make everyone happy is a little thought, which makes me wonder. Why can't our politicians play nice like good boys and girls? Wouldn't it make even them happier if they did? Children: what can you do with 'em...except vote for other children.

Your friend,

Mike

MichaelWolf@letters2america.com

Dear America,

The new year has begun and most years we see this event as auspicious. I must admit that I hope for auspiciousness myself, but I must also admit my doubts about the prospect this time. Because as I watched the current events programs yesterday morning, expecting to hear prognoses that I could accept as plausible to the effect that we are embarking on a period of change for the better, and as much as those whose credentials get them invited to make such comments tried to make the case that there would be change in Washington, there was no substance to their arguments, and in fact, no change in what they said from what they have been saying for the past two years. The consensus seems to be that the Republicans will marginalize the congressional Democrats and that President Obama has two choices. First, he can cleave to the progressive platform that got him elected and push on toward fulfillment of additional liberally inclined goals: environmental responsibility, executive orders implementing changes in business practices and energy development that congress will surely resist now that the Republicans have renewed hubris, tax reform and debt reduction. Or second, he can seek conciliation with the Republicans and the Tea Party and pursue what he will claim as more moderate positions, but what will be in reality more conservative positions in the minds of progressives like me who voted him into office. That doesn't sound like an auspicious turn of events to me.

In fact, it is the same kind of turn that Bill Clinton took after the Democrats, Clinton's party, took something of a beating in 1994's election...his first mid-term. By the time of the next mid-terms, surplus budgets were in the offing and actually led to a surplus legacy budget going into the first Bush administration, which Bush and the Republicans-- still the majority party in congress-- promptly frittered away in favor of what were at the time the highest deficits in history by 2008. President Clinton also signed the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act that led to the financial debacle of 2008, and he signed the congressional "reform" of welfare by limiting its availability to a term of years, which may or may not have altered dependence on welfare as a lifestyle, but seems certainly to have widened the gap between the rich and the poor. What I foresee for President Obama in that same vein is the continued dilution of financial reform in the name of "partisan compromise," another concession on the tax cuts for the rich by 2012, a silent endorsement of the Republican conservative complex's (Rcc) central premise that tax cuts are not reductions in federal revenue but are actually returning money to the rich who are entitled to it by virtue of The President's failure to take a stand on such things as the estate tax, marginal tax rates as they affect the rich, punitive tax policy in the case of businesses that ship jobs abroad to reduce costs and maximize profits regardless of the toll that doing so take so the United States' economy and the like. He has more or less the same two choices that Bill Clinton faced, and my guess is that President Obama, who seems to study past presidents to determine how he will preside, will opt for the successful tack taken by President Clinton (the second of his two choices) enhanced by the demagoguery of his other political model for success, Ronald Reagan. And the reason I think so is this.

The Republicans are still poised to control the congress by virtue of their amoral approach to politics and the diffidence of the Democrats in both houses. They will continue to call their position compromise and the Democrats will continue to assume that they cannot prevail in their counter-argument with the American people. The "compromises" signed into law by President Obama will become increasingly the creations of the Rcc, the chasm between the prosperous and those whose labors make them so will grow, and by the end of 2012, President Obama will have been reelected by default because it is better to deal with the devil you know than the devil you don't. His charisma will sustain him in the polls and he will complete his second term with the nation having taken another significant step to the right. In the end, the Obama presidency will be the gift that never stops costing us. But I could be wrong.

It may be that some time in the next two years any of several things will happen that will allow President Obama to be his higher self. The Tea Party may become a virus within the Republican Party that prevents it from moving...effectively paralyzing the Congress the way the Republican minority in The Senate has paralyzed that body for the past year or so. Or perhaps, the Tea Party will align itself more with the Democrats who will see that Social Security has nothing to do with the national debt but two wars being fought simultaneously do, and that tax breaks for the working class, both blue collar and white collar, go back into the stream of commerce and prime the economic pump for all of us-- including the rich-- while tax breaks for the rich do not increase tax revenue, they decrease it (it's simple arithmetic). And possibly, the Tea Party will be willing to accept the Congressional Budget Office's estimate that the health insurance reform law actually reduces the deficit by $100 billion over the course of ten years rather than increasing it as the Rcc keeps urging us to believe. But it seems to me, regardless of which parts of which scenarios one believes most plausible, the Tea Party is the key, and the best we can hope for is that they stick to their guns. Because the Republicans claims that they can reduce taxes and cut the deficit and the debt at the same time aren't even susceptible of classification as a fairy tale since there isn't enough in the budget to cut so as to do both without eliminating everything that the government does for us. Whether they realize it or not, everyone's life is significantly and positively affected by at least one thing the government does, and sufficiently so that when the Republicans go to take it away, their fall from grace will have begun. I think that this is where the immovable object, reality, meets the irresistible force, Republican service to the class to which 98% of us do not belong.

Yesterday, Senator Lindsey Graham said on national television that the Democrats forced the START Treaty through in the lame duck session without allowing amendments. But the treaty was in Senate for eight months during which they did not offer a single one.

Sooner or later, someone is going to ask senators like Mr. Graham how they can justify it when they say such foolish things. So my bet is on the immovable object because no amount of prevarication, the Republican's specialty, will make it go away.

Happy New Year, America.

Your friend,

Mike

MichaelWolf@letters2america.com