August 2011 Archives

Dear America,

I write to you today about what I believe to be-- and I am not alone in this opinion-- the most prominent of the two or three most pivotal aspects of the American slide into economic ruin: the cost of medical care. We pay approximately 15% of our gross domestic product (GDP) for medical care, and that is the highest percentage by at least a third among the major industrialized nations, including Great Britain, France, Germany and Japan. And compared to those four, we are the only nation without a single payer system, which, by the way, even as recently as the late Bush administration years more than 60% of the American people favored...that is before the Republican conservative complex (Rcc) began roiling the sentiments of the populace with false arguments about government control and the effectuality of the free market in keeping costs down. The reason that I raise this issue again is that I have sleep apnea. No, it's not really that personal for me, but my apnea has provided me with an example that makes the point.

The most often prescribed treatment for sleep apnea, which was just recently diagnosed in me but which I have had the symptoms of all my life, is something called Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) Therapy. CPAP is the use of a machine to regulate the flow of air into the respiratory system with an electric blower pushing air through a tube and into a mask that covers either the nose, the mouth or the nose and the mouth, an uncomfortable process at best. I had to go through two "sleep studies" to come up with a diagnosis that my wife could have given them from just sleeping beside me for the past twenty five years, and the process was a miserable experience, the second one yielding no usable data in the bargain. Then, my pulmonologist, an M.D., referred me to a medical equipment provider that sold the machine to me through my insurance company for about $1,100 along with a tube for $30.00 and a little piece of sponge that serves as an air filter, both of which I could have gotten for half that price. And as to the machine itself, they initially appeared to bill my insurance company in the amount of about $1,500, though the lower price is what I guess they settled for. They also sell the masks and tubing, which must be replaced every 90 days, and the head gear as well, all for about twice what I can get them for on the internet. Those things are supplies however, and I have to pay for them myself...every ninety days. Just as a point of interest, I found the machine on the internet for $629, and my insurer should have been able to find it too, especially considering what health insurance premiums are today, which insurers attribute to high medical costs. In other words, the provider inflates the price, the insurer pays it for us, and then charges us inflated premiums, both providers and insurers constituting the "free market" in this instance. So free market or not, the American consumer pays more than things are worth in medicine. And here's the kicker. There appears to be a mouthpiece you can wear at night that realigns the lower jaw and may accomplish the same thing for a whole lot less and with half the personal discomfort, though no professional I have met has seen fit to mention it.

But all that being said, it is only an example of how the free market is working in American medicine, which demonstrates the need for reform, and not just of health insurance. In fact, while the Rcc resistance to any kind of socialized enterprise is constant and ardent, one of the main reasons that we got health insurance reform instead off health care reform and a single payer system is a Democrat, Senator Max Baucus. Baucus is the senior senator from Montana, a Democrat all of his career, which started in the Senate in 1978. He is the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and ranks high on several other important committees in The Senate. And though he characterizes himself as a moderate, he was connected, at least tenuously, to Jack Abramoff and when Montana recently needed a new U.S. Attorney, Baucus didn't hesitate to nominate his girlfriend. So it is no surprise that when he called hearings on the health care reform issue, his witnesses included the pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies and HMO management to the exclusion of consumer advocacy groups, which were still excluded even after lodging complaints. He voted against repealing tax subsidies for corporations that send their jobs overseas, and he voted in favor of making bankruptcy more difficult for the debtor and more protective of the creditor. He is ranked poorly by every progressive political observer group, and he is to the Senate what the Blue Dog Democrats were to the House of Representatives. In fact, Baucus and a handful of other Senators in league with a couple of dozen conservative Democratic congressmen are the reason that we got health care reform that is as much a boon for the insurance industry as it is for the insured.

I bring up Baucus because he is the apotheosis of Democrats in service to conservative political causes, and his term isn't up until 2016. And though most of the Blue Dog Democrats in Congress lost in 2010, there is still a hard core of business oriented, anti-consumer conservatives who oppose any social program in favor of only those benefits that trickle down from the wealthy to the rest of us. So, when the polls come out showing that both the Democrats and the Republicans are in disfavor, that young people are gravitating toward the Republican Party, and that the public at large does not seem to see the larger culpability of conservatives over the progressive movement when it comes to the dysfunction in Washington politics, the prospect of our government dealing with a problem that affects 15% of our total economy is bleak. Still, we have to talk about these things, and we have to point to them whenever circumstances permit. For the reality is that we will never balance our budget on the backs of the poor and the middle class as conservatives tell us we must. And it may be that only with control of medical costs, that is with a single payer system since the free market that is the only alternative isn't working now and it never has, can we ever come out of this depression and return to what we were...a nation that handed all of its children, not just the rich ones, a better country generation after generation.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

I tend to lionize my progressive heroes and anoint them with the unction of selfless aspiration before I recognize that they are, after all, just politicians. It started with John F. Kennedy for me, and it continued through Jimmy Carter, Teddy Kennedy and Bill Clinton, all of whom demonstrated their human frailty, or in Carter's case his ineptitude, in pretty short order, except of course for JFK, whose peccancy was the secret of his press corps in that more decorous era. And it continued right into the Obama years, even though I am sixty five now and should know better. Still, despite primary motivation by political ambition, my heroes have done their best to do good as I define it, and have done so with skill born of idealism but of pragmatism as well, again, all except Jimmy Carter. In the end, they are all politicians at their cores, and maybe that is best since they have to swim with political sharks if they want not only to survive, but also to succeed in their pursuit of a better society. But President Obama's brand of pragmatism makes no sense to me, even in light of my new-found acceptance of the fact that his primary goal is reelection, not saintly accomplishments. For example, he has endorsed the Republican conservative complex's (Rcc's) plaints about regulation, and he has thus given them a wild card to play against him any time he stands up against the demands for plutocratic license that the Rcc thrives on. I want The President to fall into that class of Kennedyesque pols that I have admired in the end, but he seems to wax more Carteresque by the day. Rick Perry pules about regulation without ever giving an example, and President Obama never calls him on it, nor does he call any of the rest of them out on that point...and it would be so easy...and politically profitable as well.

Take for example the Dodd-Frank law. It was watered down by the Republicans before it ever reached the Senate floor for a vote, and the hypocrisy with which they did so, destroying the super fund that the original bill would have required the banks to endow in favor of putting shareholder equity at the front of the line when the losses get handed out but making no other provisions for liquidation of ill gotten losses. That leaves us all on the hook once that equity runs out if the bills are still not paid in full, just as we were with the "bailout" that the Rcc complains about whenever anyone will listen. Yet here they are making another bailout the only way to deal with dire circumstances like those of 2008. The Republicans' undermining of those who wanted to prevent future bailouts was a license to brow beat them within an inch of their political lives, but neither The President nor our congressmen said boo. And now the Tea Party Republicans are talking about repeal of Dodd-Frank, which should crystallize for the American electorate the issue of whose side the Republicans are really on, but again, no one is talking about it. And now come people like Rick Perry, who claims that regulation is a primary cause of our economic woes, and Michelle Bachman, who claims that she will restore the price of gas to $2 per gallon in the first quarter of her administration presumably with free market tactics, and President Obama is hemmed in by his own imprimatur on the idea of deregulation, placed in the belief that it was pragmatic to do so. It feels like Carter style politics to me. And Mr. Obama's fate will be the same too if he doesn't take advantage of the opportunities being handed him on a silver platter. All he has to do is demand that they specify a regulation or two, which they will do with something trivial, and then our president can respond with something that demonstrates the profound need for regulation because free market capitalism without it is shear predation. And there are plenty more cases of overt market dysfunction requiring regulation than just the example of the financial industry conduct that plunged us into this depression.

In the New York Times last week, there appeared an article about shortages of cancer fighting drugs that are jeopardizing the lives of thousands of cancer patients, shortages born mostly of waning profitability as drugs get older and patents expire. And while this kind of commercial profit over human need decision making persists, the agencies involved contemplate regulation, but haven't done anything yet. So, the next time Rick Perry starts his rant about regulation, all President Obama has to do is refer him to one or two of the chemotherapy patients fearing for their lives named in the Times article. "Ask them if regulation is necessary," Mr. Obama could say, and Mr. Perry would have a tough time responding with anything that didn't sound as callous as he appears to be. And then there's the round of subpoenas being served on energy companies for the purpose of determining whether they have mislead their shareholders, and the general public for that matter, as to the profitability and safety of their oil shale "fracking" practices. With the pollution of the Caribbean by an oil spill still in our rear view mirror, the need to keep them honest will not escape anyone. But what has our president done instead? He has launched an initiative to reduce regulation, thus giving credence to the Republicans' claim that regulation is impeding job creation, and this week he even announced that a few unspecified regulations are being repealed in the name of business efficiency. Once again, the commander in chief of the progressive movement has capitulated in the name of peace in our time, which certainly will not be forthcoming.

All I'm saying is that there are at least two sides to every political issue, and it does us no good for President Obama to allow only the Rcc side to be told. It seems that our president has gotten used to just coughing up his lunch money without an argument when a Republican bully demands it, but we can't have that. The development of our progressive society, including not just the social safety net, but female suffrage, racial justice, integration, Title IX, the universal right to marry now existing in many states and so much more, was all too hard fought for to relinquish it to the Rcc on demand. President Obama is not just our political leader. He has to be our moral leader too, and he can start by telling Rick Perry and his ilk where they are wrong. He should pick a Republican high flyer-- any high flyer-- and shoot it down. This compromise stuff is for the birds, and the notion that it can be accomplished is no more than wishful thinking anyway.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

There is an interesting phenomenon that occurs whenever the conservative tide rises in this country. The Republican conservative complex (Rcc) anoints a particular candidate to be the new Ronald Reagan and compares Reagan's election and administration to those projected for that new would-be clone. The Rcc flavor of this month, successor to Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Tim Pawlenty and most recently, Michelle Bachman, is Texas Governor Rick Perry. He did accuse Ben Bernanke of near treasonous activity if he "prints more money," that is if he embarks on a new program of quantitative easing (QE), or buying back U.S. Treasury bonds. In making the comment this newest splinter of presidential timber who claims to know how to pull us out of this depression we are in ignored the fact that corporate America is doing just that while stock prices are low in buying back their stock in the open market, which is the equivalent of a new round of QE while the interest rate the fed can get on its new bonds is so low and there are higher rate bonds in the market that can be bought back, but he never thought of that. And then he insinuated that President Obama may not love his country as apparently, opposition to conservative thinking as a modus operandi for our nation constitutes lack of patriotism. But given the stripe that Perry is showing, I wonder why-- and this is always the case when a new conservative darling appears-- the name Goldwater didn't arise rather than Reagan. It's whistling in the dark, I guess, but then after you whistle, you have to count the votes.

Still, all that being said, Mr. Obama has to win the next election. He cannot rely on the Republicans, under the banner of a new Reagan or a new Goldwater, to lose it. And vituperation of someone like Perry, who will most likely turn out to look more like the court jester than the successor to the crown, will not do the trick. What The President needs is a cogent and cohesive argument against what the Rcc advocates, and that requires specific counterpoints for the points made pursuant to conservative dogma. For example, tax relief for business is high on the Rcc agenda, and Republican candidates persist in demanding it even though there is no evidence that it will do anything positive. They never mention the fact that business is sitting on a pile of cash in excess of $2.5 trillion according to Maria Bartiromo on Meet the Press yesterday, a pile that is growing by the way, when they suggest that business needs to keep more of its revenue. So, President Obama has to directly rebut the tax assertion by pointing that out. And beyond that point, he has to remind everyone that 40% of the stimulus bill that the Rcc and Republican candidates all say was ineffective was in the form of tax cuts of one sort or another, many of them directed at business, which begs the observation that if stimulus spending doesn't work, tax cuts don't either. All of that points to the conclusion that business doesn't need any more help. We do.

And then there is Medicare. The Rcc is constantly claiming that Medicare is "broken" in one way or another. But there is still money in the Medicare Trust Fund, just as there is in the Social Security Trust Fund. And the fact that Democrats and Republicans alike have borrowed and spent it doesn't change that any more than a mortgagor's default on his mortgage means that your money, lent to him by the banker to whom you entrusted it, doesn't exist anymore. We have all paid for Social Security and Medicare to date, and it is not for the government, Republican or Democrat, to tell us that they cannot afford to pay it anymore. We already have. We may need to recalibrate the relationship between revenue and expenditure, but the programs themselves are not insolvent at this point, and they don't have to be dismantled in order to save a profligate government from its debt, nor will dismantling them be a salvation to such a government in any case.

It all comes to this. In the 2012 election, we will vote not just on candidates but on what we are as a culture as well. And before we can expect of the electorate that they aptly consider the question of who and what we are, we must be sure that the issues are defined. That is President Obama's job at this point. And while doing it may result in either his election or his defeat, he must bear the mantle of spokesman for the progressive movement and defend the course that we have been on in many respects for eighty years or so. We decided when the last economic conflagration consumed so many of us that we would never allow it to go so far again, and Franklin D. Roosevelt shepherded through his congresses a social safety net that was designed not just to protect us, but to perdure through all assaults it might encounter. The trust funds created under the Social Security law were structured separate from the general fund so that the program would not be a government program but rather would be a forced retirement savings plan on which we could all rely to ensure dignity and a modicum of creature comfort when we can no longer work to provide those things for ourselves. The trust funds are insulated from the vicissitudes of political opportunism and pandering because Roosevelt saw that they would be otherwise vulnerable to those who do not believe in social responsibility for all, not just those who can least afford it. And it is my opinion that the American people recognize that fact. So, while the Perry supporters may evoke Reagan as the model he emulates, it is more likely that Goldwater is his man. Because when Perry's kind of conservatism is clearly defined for the American people, it is most likely that they will see it for what it is and reject it in droves. We are not an every-man-for-himself society. We are Americans, and we are here not just for ourselves, and not just for our flag. We are here for each other.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

The past two weeks have been extremely interesting in a seminal way. You may recall that about a month ago, President Obama and the oil consuming nations dumped 100 million barrels of crude oil out of their strategic reserves and onto the commercial market in an effort to bring crude oil prices down. The theory was that creating a brief surfeit of crude would cause the market price to fall because the scarcity of oil would be relieved, but in reality the tactic was intended to lessen the number of dollars chasing each barrel of more plentiful oil by increasing the available number of barrels, not because demand would be sated-- in reality it wasn't demand driving the upward movement of prices-- but to discourage speculation. It hadn't been scarcity that had driven the price up in the first place as the world supply had barely been diminished by the strife in the Middle East, so the only real effect of dumping oil was to make more oil available not just for use but for speculation as well, thus putting downward pressure on oil prices for both users and speculators at the same time. And sure enough, yesterday at about 3:30 pm, the price of a barrel of crude was down to about $81.85 from highs well over $100 per barrel little more than a month ago. That means that as speculators divested themselves of the oil futures they had bought thinking that they would rise in value, they suffered losses as the prices fell, taking back from them some of the ill-gotten gains they had gotten on the way up, and inflicting losses on some of the greediest of them...big ones.

Similarly, the stock market had gained ground over the past year as the rest of us suffered joblessness and declines in the values of our assets, our homes in particularly. It must be said that an enormous proportion of the assets invested in the market are indirectly held by people like you and me. We have IRA's, 401(k)'s and brokerage accounts including not just individual stocks but mutual funds, indexed securities and the like, which we do not trade regularly but rather invest in and hold. But the majority of dollars floating around in the stock market are owned by people who make money by making money, investing and divesting, sometimes in intervals as short as seconds...even less. Computers are used to engage in a new kind of "arbitrage" in which minute differences in value from minute to minute are liquidated for profit, which has nothing to do with financing business and industry, that is, with the application of capital to production of goods and services otherwise known as capitalism. People now make money in the stock market not by financing companies with a future, but by manipulation of the market itself through these enormous transactions that are about making money out of money, not investing in growth. But to their chagrin, the very mechanism by which they are enriched, that is trading shares not on the basis of the value of equity but rather on the basis of the changes in that value, has begun to take on a life of its own, which pits them against each other rather than against all the rest of us who don't have computers making trades for us in the stock market. The computers are now trying to outguess each other, but to no avail. All they do is fulfill each other's prophecies as to what will happen next, each profiting at the expense of the other, and vice versa with the result that the market as a whole dips and soars wildly, and more importantly, without rationale, all of which makes it unpredictable even to the computers. Of course, we little people are also hurt in the process, but we were being hurt anyway, so the sharing of the pain is to some extent gratifying and certainly just, albeit not very helpful with respect to providing for our own futures. Still, this "volatility," as they call it in the securities business as if it were a natural phenomenon rather than a function of their lottery mentality, is much like the volatility in the crude oil futures markets. The vipers are beginning to bite each other, and that is good for the rest of us. But it creates a dilemma for our president.

He apparently got the message that his core constituency has been sending for the past year or so, and he is taking what is by comparison an aggressive posture with regard to his political adversaries. He has taken a bus to the American hustings and is speaking to small groups, which is being reported, at least at the start, by the news media, though far less comprehensively than would best serve Mr. Obama's purposes. But now, after his vacation on Martha's Vineyard (which by the way he deserves) he will face criticism based on the chaos in the securities and commodities markets-- which the Republican conservative complex (Rcc) will characterize as a function of uncertainty that is inimical to economic growth-- and the real question is, how will he respond. In the past, his instinct, or perhaps the preference of his advisors, has been to try to calm the alarm in big business and quell the disturbance that is supposedly destroying wealth. And maybe he still doesn't know any better. But if President Obama thinks about it he may see that all that is happening is that our capitalist system is shedding some dead skin, and in time there will be revealed the vital new flesh of a revitalized capitalism in this country. If we can eliminate the class of would-be-capitalists whose purpose is to mindlessly make money without producing anything, we can rededicate the equity in our economy to creating more equity rather than just more dollars, and then we can grow again without fear of manufactured crises and wild vacillations in systems that should reflect the value of equity rather than dictate it based on synthetic assessments by supposed experts and "analysts." So, it will be interesting to see whether The President takes this opportunity to lay the blame for our economic vicissitudes at the doorstep of the speculators and other Rcc heroes who worship artificial wealth to the detriment of natural wealth and make no distinction between the two. This could be a turning point motivated by the crassest, but most common political impetus of all: reelection. It will be interesting to see if Mr. Obama has the guts for it.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

On the front page of yesterday's New York Times, there was an article entitled "White House Debates Fight On Economy." Apparently, the White House, that is President Obama and his advisors, William Daley in chief, are still debating whether they should say anything about the economy and the Republican strategy of augmenting business and wealth in the privileged few in the hope that they will in turn do the right thing with what they gain out of doing so. It is as if they are not living in Washington but on a distant planet...to quote the creators of StarWars, one that is "far, far away." And on the Sunday morning talk shows, the initial focus was on Michelle Bachman, the right wing Minnesotan who, among other things, accused The President of a failure of moral leadership because of his statement of concern about the Social Security checks going out if the debt ceiling wasn't raised. Her claim was that her proposal-- to honor the debt first, then military payroll and Social Security-- was a comprehensive alternative that made the debt ceiling a non-issue, never mentioning who would then pay the other half of the federal budget. (Talk about planets far, far away.) But after gilding that lily with discussions of how a race between her and the newest right-wing rock-star to enter the Republican fray, Texas Governor Rick Perry, would affect Republican chances in 2012, the topic was what The President is doing to make his chances of reelection even less likely. One commentator even pointed out that it had been reported during the previous week that Mr. Obama doesn't even get daily briefings on the economy anymore. So, in the end the story continues to be what Barrack Obama is doing to defeat himself, and in the process, defeat the progressive movement that got him to the White House in the first place, because his diffidence is not a problem for him alone in that he discredits the left side of the political spectrum with his half measures of enthusiasm when he shows any enthusiasm at all. The taint of his lack of luster rubs off on us all. That's what happens when he accuses the other side of seeking reelection rather than the common weal, instead of announcing a comprehensive plan to address our economic woes, which he doesn't do for fear that someone won't like him anymore. I wonder what he thinks he is doing.

In the final analysis, it is apparent that The White House, of which The President is in charge in the titular sense though seems to be in the thrall of a J.P. Morgan é migré when it comes to making necessary decisions, is preoccupied with pandering to the greatest number of people who vote, no matter what their politics and how those politics conflict with the stated politics of Barrack Obama the candidate, the guy we elected. They seem to believe that the most important constituency is not the one that sent The President to the White House, but the more conservative one that seems to be reflected in some of the polls that they all follow in Washington while claiming that polls don't matter. But as they blithely ignore the criticisms of those who made this presidency possible, the members of the original Obama constituency are saying that if they had wanted this kind of president, they could have voted for John McCain. That's no big deal since that election is nearly two years behind us and the choice isn't ours to make anymore, but we are about to get to choose again, and Mitt Romney sounds an awful lot like McCain these days, though if he keeps insisting that corporations are people too...well, who knows. He could beat President Obama for the honor of giving the concession speech on election night.

With all this said, I want to make it clear that it pains me to criticize President Obama this way, though I think my criticism is directed at least as much at those who advise him. David Axelrod, who was President Obama's chief of staff before Daley, purportedly left the White House to begin the reelection campaign for The President, but I think that the defeat suffered by the Democrats in November 2010 shook President Obama's faith in Axelrod and caused him to look elsewhere for political guidance. And the fact that he chose Daley is not anyone's fault but his own. Nor is his apostasy from the progressive philosophy, which was why we all loved him, is anyone else's to answer for. And finally, he has fallen into the trap of using his first term to win a second, sacrificing it in terms of achievement now in the name of achievement later. But even if a second term could live up to all our expectations, it would only undo the harm that the first term is doing through capitulation to exactly the forces we rejected when we voted for him. And as for the compromise he constantly seeks with his "can't we all just get along" mentality, it will never occur anyway, so why pursue it. Besides, the best course does not necessarily lie mid way between their choice and ours. We elected Barrack Obama because we thought that ours was the better choice, and while the voices of moderation-- David Brooks comes to mind-- seem reasonable, those on the right seem as strident and intractable as ever, and compromise, hence moderation, is impossible as long as they continue to wield the power to thwart their opposition.

What the Obama administration has to do now if it wishes to go down in history next to Bill Clinton's rather than Jimmy Carter's is to return to its original agenda...with a vengeance. This loss of moral authority being experienced by The President did not start with the mid-term elections. It started when Nancy Pelosi, then the Speaker of the House, declined to ram through a renewal of the middle class tax cuts before the November 2010 elections. In the Democratic House of Representatives of that time, it would have passed as it did after the elections, and as it went to The Senate, the Republicans would have had to veto it with the threat of a filibuster, or let it pass, and that would have saved us $70 billion a year for the past two years, but more importantly, it might well have saved the elections for the Democratic Party. Think of what things would be like now if both houses of Congress were still Democratic. It was not the push for a liberal solution to our problems that caused the Republican re-ascendancy. It was governing by half measures in the name of "bipartisanship," which is a myth if you hear a Republican demanding it. So, the President should become the un-Pelosi, and do what he thinks is best rather than what he thinks most people will like. Most people liked slavery for about eighty five years after independence, and they didn't care for women's suffrage until the twentieth century either. What's more, we want our politicians to stand for something. That's the only way we can decide how to vote. Because while reality intervenes in national politics and philosophies sometimes have to be put aside, we want them to be kept in mind and stood for. That's where Barrack Obama is now. He has to decide whether to continue to sit behind his desk, or to stand for something.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

The events of the past two weeks, including the "compromise" on the debt ceiling, the Standard & Poors downgrade of the national credit rating and The President's mini-speech during Tuesday's stock market crash and the comments afterward, make it abundantly clear that there will be no end in the near future to the assault by the Republican conservative complex (Rcc) on our national values that has defined the past two and a half years. And the reason for the interminability of their siege is the success it seems to be having with the American people. For some reason, the real modus operandi of the Rcc escapes the media, and they thus transmit the Rcc's propaganda like a virus. When they poll us, even the questions they ask point away from the public relations tactics being used to elevate the conservative agenda to the status of axiomatic truth. Grover Norquist has become a national figure since his first dalliances in politics during the Nixon years, and his political clout has made it possible for him to author a "pledge" that he can somehow demand that politicians actually sign before they can be elected to national office. But who is he, other than a conservative political operative spawned by the Watergate era mentality among conservatives to the effect that victory is more important than principle, and why has the press declined to ask that question. He has done nothing with his life but agitate for conservative causes, and for the preservation of wealth in particular. He has never held office, and as close as he has come to official responsibility is the lobbying firm he founded with a partner who was ultimately convicted in the Abramoff scandal. He is the president of Americans for Tax Reform, which does pay him a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year for his efforts, but other than a couple of sinecures on boards of directors, he seems to have no real job to provide him with a visible source of income. He has been involved in conservative causes from Oliver North's ill fated, misguided and ultimately criminal adventures in Nicaragua during the Reagan administration to African and Asian insurgencies, and he has been embedded in conservative politics in this country like a one pound splinter since the Reagan years. But how did he accrue the power to define the bona fides of conservative politicians, his no-new-taxes pledge having become the essence of legitimacy and the shibboleth of conservatives everywhere. In reality he is nothing but the political shill of the American plutocracy, but he is still able to direct the nation toward a Tea Party bias, essentially from behind the scenes. He is Karl Rove with a beard. Yet despite his shadowy identity, he is directing the Rcc surge successfully and without opposition...and no one dares challenge his moral authority. But regardless of who this guy is, or who Karl Rove is for that matter, how are these guys doing it? That is what the media are missing, which allows Republicans to hide behind bipartisanship as if they are practicing it, and the situation is dangerous. Because in reality, what they are practicing is a strategy integrated by an eighty year old purpose: the elimination of social programs.

Their secret is preparation, like in swinging a tennis racket for a ground stroke, and what they have been doing with Medicare is an example. The Rcc has opposed Medicare since its inception, but the program is too overwhelmingly popular for a frontal attack on it. So they keep sidling up to it and taking their shots at abolishing it as they did for example with the Ryan budget, which would convert the program to a voucher plan that would enrich the insurance companies that got the vouchers but impoverish the elderly, especially those who become seriously ill. Ryan's plan didn't come out of the blue, or I suppose I should say out of the red, as in states and ink. The ground work for this particular effort to abrogate Medicare started during the November 2010 campaign with the Rove ads condemning the $700 billion dollar cut in Medicare included in the Affordable Health Care Act, and you would think that the media would have seen that there was something broader afoot based solely on the fact that the Rcc never complains about "cuts in entitlements." The ads were an elliptical condemnation of Democrats masquerading as a warning to the senior political constituency in which Rove's organization omitted the fact that the cuts didn't affect Parts A & B of Medicare, but were directed at insurers who offer Part C coverage to seniors, which is the real reason why the Rcc opposed it; insurance companies are their friends. And the ad strategy had a dual function.

First, it afforded an aura of credibility to the Rcc claim of concern for senior citizens by leaving out the Democrats' intentions with regard to the cuts in the context of the new health insurance reform law. But second, and more important-- and this is the insidious part-- Part C is essentially what Paul Ryan was to advocate in his budget as the successor to Medicare Parts A & B: it is a privatization of supplemental coverage, which would become primary coverage under Ryan's budget. So the table was set by Rove's attempt to recruit the elderly, and Ryan was supposed to run with it. But the outrage engendered by Ryan's plan-- a function of Medicare's continuing popularity, and unexpected in light of the way in which seniors in Florida in particular had voted-- overwhelmed the Rcc's resolve once again and they had to retrench, but this is not the last effort they will make to eliminate Medicare entitlement. The real question is not whether they will try again, but how and whether the American people will allow it-- whether they will identify these subterfuges and ploys and decide whom to elect based on the realities rather than on a picture of a world that the Rcc would have us believe exists in which business always does what is best for us and their success always trickles down and redounds to the American people's collective benefit. And as they doggedly pursue the end of Medicare, they will pursue the end of Social Security, Medicaid, Welfare and every social program for those who cannot afford the rudiments of a decent life. They are incorrigible, devious, sly and relentless. So, watch out, America. They're heeeeere...and they're not going away.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

It is remarkable that our leadership, and I include both intellectual and political leadership under that rubric, continue to ponder what is on the surface of our economic and political problems, but refuse to look at the systemic disease that afflicts us as a nation. It is equivalent to discussing how to cure a large tumor by removing a lesion on the skin above it. Our economic and fiscal problems as a society are not the superficial ugliness of the most recent political ado but rather are that our system as a whole has been corrupted over time by a kind of ethical and philosophical attrition born of exaltation of wealth over human condition, not by addiction to borrowed money. What is being debated in Washington is nothing more than mechanics and unfortunately, the mechanics of our system are such a patchwork of disparate previous solutions to the problem of administering a civil society's economics politically that getting through them is like navigating a maze. We need something better and more comprehensive than tinkering with the flow of fuel and the timing of ignition of our political/commercial machine. We need to examine the nature of that machine and go back to its origins or rebuild it. To use an automotive metaphor, our system does not need a tune up, it needs to either be overhauled or scrapped for a new mechanism conceived for, and put into, our service. And that is the nature of the issues we need to address: does our system serve us or do we serve our system.

On the Sunday news talk shows, the colloquy continues to focus on the trivia: what proportion of the tax burden is each layer of our stratified economy bearing, is our problem too much spending or too little revenue, will business stimulate our economy or is government needed, should we increase taxes or reduce "entitlements." But all of these discussions eschew the disagreeable realities that make such parsed consideration of our problems inadequate. As of this time in our history, 1% of our populace owns 21% of our wealth. 2% owns 28%, leaving the other 98% to share the remaining 72%. What we have been doing over the past hundred and fifty years has led to that disparity, and it would be alright if the 2% also created 28% of what our system creates, but they don't. And while the proportions of that reservoir of wealth at the top are an issue when we decide how to distribute the burden for maintaining our society, how that wealth was created is also an issue, and that brings us down to the system level from the current events diversion that we suffer from today. If you allow people to be rich by manipulating wealth instead of creating it-- that is by generation of artificial rather than natural wealth-- you also permit the creaming of the economy by those who put none of their gains back into the system. Because the economy is a cyclical process rather than a linear one, that is it grows by churning what it creates rather than by just accruing it, a system that permits some of the assets produced to be skimmed off the top is doomed to fall as a continuing rise must be fueled from within. If the affluent took only the fat in our system, it could continue to sustain itself, but the figures show that they have also taken muscle...a lot of it. And that is the difference between economy of the time when the stock market was created so as to permit entrepreneurs to raise capital on the one hand and the present, when trading claims to that capital-- that is shares-- creates artificial wealth that the fortunate few hoard and enjoy to the exclusion of the other participants in our economic system on the other...in other words, modern "wealth" is a function of speculation, not production. As to politics, the conflagration in Washington that is still raging has taken the place of the Olympian concept of democracy that prevailed when our progenitors founded this country-- reelection supersedes the general welfare as a motivation. So, in order for us to rise above our current state as a nation, we have a choice to make: fundamental change or ominous decline.

As to our economic system, we must do something to prevent speculators from arrogating our wealth to their own use. We should begin by prohibiting computerized trading in our primary stock exchanges, reinstituting usury laws (a Christian notion, by the way), eliminating the distinction between capital gains and earned income for tax purposes, requiring those who buy commodities futures-- which do have a legitimate purpose-- to be either financial institutions that are effectively lending to those who produce the goods represented, or those who can take delivery of them and utilize them for some legitimate commercial purpose, and tax and cap inheritance at a rate that will limit the extent to which one generation can reward the next for indolence and narcissism. With regard to our political system, the solution is really quite simple. Strip away all of the mechanisms that allow our surrogates in government to control solution of problems, or as we have seen lately the lack thereof, through technical manipulation of the political process. Eliminate the filibuster in The Senate, proscribe tabling bills in the House of Representatives, rename our two major political parties to reflect the two ends of the political spectrum so that they will eventually become more closely reflective of the two alternative camps in our national political philosophy, liberal and conservative, lengthen terms and limit their number in our legislature, but make recall easier so as to more closely resemble the European model, which allows for votes of no confidence and elections to realign the distribution of political power, and perhaps other measures that would correct functional perversions in our current system. Some, like redefining our parliamentary system so that is it truly parliamentary will take constitutional amendment. Others will require nothing more than partisan resolve to change institutional rules. But regardless of the rigor required for each change we make, change we must. In the short term, deciding how much to spend and how much to tax, how much to regulate and how much to protect society and how much of a role government should play in our society will be our preoccupations, but in the end, the resolutions we reach will change nothing of our essence, and that is the level at which any meaningful change must take place.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

The press is wont to compare Barrack Obama and his presidency to Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton and their administrations, and there are some analogues among them to note. But as it turns out, President Obama is not likely to go down in history the way those two aforementioned predecessors will. As to Reagan, he will always be a seminal figure in American politics, deservedly or not. He was the paradigm that all subsequent conservatives tried to emulate. He has been quoted, lionized, beatified and glorified well beyond what was merited by his presidency, largely because he became the shibboleth by which conservatives identified each other. To quote Reagan was to invoke the self--proclaimed standard by which conservatives have been measured for thirty years now. But he, like other presidents before and since, was buffeted by the politics of his era, and he became an apostate to his own cause with regard to taxes, the quest for world peace and the notion that everyone could be rich if he just worked hard enough. The Reagan tax cuts, which he self-servingly labeled a "new American Revolution," were an example of his overreaching with conservative dogma as his justification. He was forced to raise taxes more than ten times in the next seven years of his administration, and that revolution of his took as much from the middle class as it gave to the wealthy, for example, in the case of deductions for medical expenses which went from everything over 2% of adjusted gross income to everything over 7%, meaning that unless you were catastrophically ill, you got not tax relief. He took the deduction for interest paid to creditors away too, and there was much more that we lost down here so that those up there could get richer.

As to world peace, Reagan made a great show of meeting Mikhail Gorbachev in Iceland for talks about nuclear disarmament, but as they parted company, Gorbachev suggested total disarmament and Reagan rejected the offer in favor of his "trust but verify" policy. And from there he went to Berlin to exhort Gorbachev to "tear down this wall," which Gorbachev did in furtherance of his own policies of Glasnost and Perestroika, openness and economic decentralization and privatization respectively. However, the result was not a new, prosperous and free Russia but rather was the corruption and chaos of the administration of the usually inebriated, always bombastic Boris Yeltsin, followed in close order by Vladimir Putin and the oligarchy of billionaires that control Russia today. Who knows what Russia would be today if Ronald Reagan had looked into Gorbachev's eyes the way George W. Bush did Putin's, the difference being that there was virtue behind Gorbachev's whereas there is no evidence of such in Putin's case, perhaps demonstrating that insight is not a cardinal trait among Republican presidents. Then there was the SDI, or Starwars Defense Initiative, which yielded nothing after spending billions were spent on Reagan's pipe dreams, and there was the "Peace Keeper Missile," which restarted the arms race for no particular reason. But none-the-less, Reagan dominated his Democratic opposition and the Reagan mystique lived on, leaving behind his memory, which is far larger today than his life ever was, largely because Reagan did manage to use his "bully pulpit" in furtherance of his cause with a kind of impunity usually accorded only folk heroes...probably his greatest success. As to any comparison of President Obama to Reagan, the former gave us health insurance reform, albeit only in lieu of health care reform, a financial reform law that, granted, still has not been implemented, both noble accomplishments. But he has also given us a series of Republican victories born of Mr. Obama's failure to use his bully pulpit to any advantage. So there really is no analogue in the tenures of the two presidents, and in fact, they seem to be inverse images of each other.

With regard to Bill Clinton's presidency, on the surface there seems to be more similarity to Mr. Obama's. Clinton also had a hostile House of Representatives to deal with as well as a hostile Senate. And though the Senate has been Democratic so far in the Obama presidency, it has been in name only by virtue of the Republicans lack of compunction in using the filibuster and the significant "Blue Dog" contingent that allowed House Republicans to water down most of what The President managed to push through the legislature. But that is about all the Clinton and Obama administrations have in common. Clinton did give away a great deal in his budget fight with Newt Gingrich and the Republicans during his first mid-term election cycle, but he also got a balanced budget out of it in the end, and an economy that was booming. Mr. Obama, on the other hand, gave away everything the Republicans wanted in the lame duck session of congress last December, all in the hope of pacification of the enemies at the gate. And when the Republicans shut down the government and tried to blame Clinton, he got the congress back for the Democrats by virtue of his refusal to yield to the Republicans' tactic of holding the government hostage over budget cuts to programs we would usually describe as the social safety net. He managed to show the Republicans for what they really were, and the American people gave him the support he needed in congress by the time his second term was over. Obama, on the other hand, has given in to the Republicans' threats and conceded every point to them from tax cuts for the upper class to cuts in social programs, all in the name of what he claims is compromise. And in return, Mr. Obama has gotten...nothing. In reality, he has ceded to the Republicans the power to control the political debate in this country, and thereby accrue public favor, whereas Bill Clinton was always on the right side in the public eye. Thus, neither Reagan nor Clinton is the mold from which Obama was cast, though similarities of circumstance do exist among them. No, President Obama is more like Lyndon Johnson, albeit without the scope of accomplishment.

President Johnson was a masterful politician on the inside. He could control almost anyone in government with a simple, one-on-one conversation in the oval office. His "Great Society" program was intended to end poverty in America: a grand, if not successful plan, and he wrangled the congress into it, friend and foe alike. But he was saddled with a war begun on a small scale by Eisenhower and continued by Kennedy, only to be expanded by Johnson himself to a scale that saw over half a million Americans in Vietnam by the time that war ended ignominiously for the United States years later with American withdrawal in 1972. The war was so unpopular and divisive that Johnson, despite being overwhelmingly elected in 1964, declined to seek reelection. Likewise, President Obama had grand designs for the country, which also have not necessarily yielded much as he curries Republican favor seeking the middle ground rather than fighting for his principles. But as I recently heard Robert Reich put it, the truth does not necessarily lie mid way between right and wrong. And then of course there is the pair of wars that President Obama cannot seem to muster the courage to end. So, except for the fact that President Johnson was the dominant political figure of his era and President Obama is the submissive figure in his, The Johnson administration is the real analogue to Mr. Obama's presidency. And I'm sorry to say, it should probably end the same way. Frankly, I wish I had voted for Hillary Clinton, and I'm afraid I am not alone. I hope Mr. Obama gives me another chance to do so. The best he can do as a leader now is to get out of the way.

Your friend,

Mike

As I have previously noted, I am preoccupied with Social Security and what the Republican conservative complex (Rcc) is trying to do to it. The Social Security Trust Fund contains something on the order of $2.6 trillion--that's trillion with a "t"--but the federal government has borrowed all of it, and the Republicans in congress complain incessantly because now, they have to pay it back as we all might have expected since they played a major role in spending it. The long and short of it is that Social Security is the only federal government program that funds itself and has money on hand for decades of its cost. It is not in any way part of our debt or deficit problem, but the program lent the federal government its money and is now therefore a target because the federal government doesn't want to pay its debt. If we were dealing with a bank, someone would be going to jail for such a scheme, but since we are dealing with Republicans, they seem to have some kind of immunity. Still, we cannot let them get away with this without a fight. So, while I have had to cut back on the frequency with which I write to you by limiting myself to Monday and Friday, I have written to you several times about Social Security, and I feel that comments made about the Republicans and their plans for the program bear repeating. But it is also important to note that our president has brought into his inner circle advisors who are more Republican than some Republicans despite their Democratic Party affilliations.  Bill Daley is such a person, and I cannot help but feel that he is responsible for the transmogrification of Mr. Obama's desire to conciliate into a willingness to capitulate, which now whistles through our national politics like an ill wind. In honor of Mr. Daley's presumed role in the decline of the progressive movement, here is this Wednesday's reprise: my letter of January 12, 2011.

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 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.