2/4 The GOP's Billionaires: A Revolution of a Thousand Parts

Separating Causes and Effects, Servants and Masters

The American people are aware, only in the most general way, of a very small population of billionaires -- around 450 total -- who are currently willing to insinuate their interests into the country's politics.  However, the details of the individuals in this elite modern "demographic class," their ambitions, their tactics and the present state of play in their strategic plan deserve a far more accurate and robust understanding.

The machinations of this class are now presenting a fundamental alternative to the traditional democracy with which we are familiar.  Further, the prospects for the future success of this "new model" currently enjoy remarkably favorable odds of being fully implemented.  What was unthinkable a few decades ago now appears to be a fairly likely outcome.

If it were to have been introduced simply as a radical departure from traditional American values, this "renovation" might have easily been lost in the dust bin with other uninteresting, unappealing propositions. But in this case the public opinion handlers employed by these billionaires had patiently and meticulously crafted a strangely willing constituency so, when the time was most propitious, and the grotesque synthesis was as turgid as an over ripe plum, the voters would embrace the artificially "refreshing revolutionary idea" of what had been so subtly purported, that is, purported quite without any details.

The nature of this fabricated constituency, a mindless horde of the low information, low interest, low curiosity, low education yet zealously dependable and predictable voters is, at this time, officially no longer interesting.  Likewise, the "known" identities of the now widely hated, sacrificial politicians, also crafted from the fiber of the same Patrician cynicism, who have been compelled to present the public "faces" behind this cheaply obscured scheme, have long ago lost all their lustre, too.

Voters are discovering the challenging difficulty of yawning and vomiting simultaneously.

When we discuss the strategy of the billionaires, the faux drama in the visibly tormented grimaces of creatures such as Boehner, Cantor, Ryan, McConnell and the rest must be viewed only as "convenient, necessary mechanisms."  The whole crowd is considered painlessly expendable by their poorly chosen, ruthless masters.

There exists no actual ideology or political idealism anywhere in the script.  Any issue resembling something so noble -- or even so substantial -- must be formally dispatched as nothing more than "fog and feathers" mechanically "coughed up" -- as the media equivalent of a cat's hair ball -- by the billionaires' craven think tanks.

How Do We Waltz With

Cynical, Wealth Obsessed, Savagely Insecure Nihilists?

 Did Kafka compose ballroom dance music?

Revolutionary conflicts have, historically, been founded on contradictory values, conflicting philosophies and oppositional ideologies.  This means that just at the moment these revolutions were perched to insert themselves into world history, debates, conversations and arguments "heralded the path" forward. There were sides, and those sides were destined to "sort out" which side would prevail in the subsequent revolution.

For precisely this reason MeanMesa winces each and every time one of the corporate networks' "news" worker trots out the now painfully obsolete phrase to end one of their "modern interviews" -- "Well, there are two sides to this, but we'll have to leave it there for now."

The amusing irony of such moments is clear enough.

While the sacrificial politicians in the employ of these GOP billionaires may be charged with "presenting the other side of, well, something," the plutocrats hidden behind those respective SUPER PACs are actually formidable nihilists of the first order.  This means that there is nothing recognizable by normal people "on the negotiating table."

Is Nothing sacred? Yeah, Pretty much.

So far as priorities go, there is no tender position on some social issue which must be promoted or some inherited policy position, carefully handed down from generation to generation, and finally cast into the hands of this or that billionaire to nurture and protect.  For the super rich denizens of this world there exist precisely two priorities: more money and more power.

Because of this strange, sterile value system the GOP's billionaires could not be less interested in "negotiating" anything.  If there are "two sides" of this story to report, they are "Side one: I win, and Side two: you lose."

We can see this in in the constantly moving "goal posts" presented in the House Speaker's "emergency, patchwork budget proposals."  The Democrats conceded to a $300 Bn reduction in order to cajole the 2011 CR through the tea bags in the House, but almost instantly, that $300 Bn became the current $350 Bn+ "plan" which Speaker Boehner now wishes to "explore" in a "conversation" with the President.

Remember, the only concession which might alter the mind set of the billionaires' GOP water boys is lower and lower spending, no matter what.  At the moment of this writing, the Social Security Administration has furloughed most of its service agents, the national intelligence contractors have furloughed thousands of the nation's "eyes and ears" around the world, FEMA is juggling massive layoffs with the hurricane creeping toward Louisiana.  National Guard units are taking mandatory "time off" until their budgets are refunded.

None of these "issues" bothers the oligarchs in the least.  Although there appeared to be a grudgingly dutiful outrage -- and limp wristed Obama-bashing -- at WWII survivors locked out of the Veterans' Memorial and the widows of military casualties not getting their burial checks, the GOP billionaires' conveniently "thick skin" has no problem ignoring the rest.

That is, ignoring the big picture and big dollar parts of the catastrophe.

But Is There Really An Audience?

There are historical "enforcers" at play in such political brinkmanship, usually a majority block of voters.  This fact doesn't change much from issue to issue.  Even the most brazen politician knows that, well, there are limits.  If legislative or gubernatorial behavior strays "too far afield," the price is, theoretically, paid at the ballot box in the next election.

In this case, however, that vindictive majority is missing in action.

Of course there remains the stalwart consumers of FOX News and the other twisted media, and somewhere, there are the tattered remnants of the now abandoned Tea Party, but these are little more than confused, yet strident, zealous minorities.

This demographic fact has been established repeatedly already.

If the influence of the GOP's billionaires had any semblance to a political party actually wooing the votes needed to implement policy, these depressing electoral results would have long ago prompted at least the image of the changes required to "broaden the base."

In the case of the billionaires, though, this doesn't actually ever happen because in their view, it is never actually necessary.  The political world seen through their cynical eyes is a place where elections are perpetually decided exclusively by the expenditure level of the campaign that wins.

So, as the public outrage slowly grows more and more fierce, the plans from the Country Club smoking rooms simply expand the level of campaign contributions and SUPER PAC funding to compensate.

It may seem like an endless assault of infuriating hubris, but MeanMesa suspects that it's more like evidence of the near sighted clumsiness which predictably accompanies the isolated privacy of class.

Hopefully, if there remain enough election districts still functioning as something beside a gerrymandered monstrosity, the 2014 mid-term election will provide a "clarifying experience" to these uber-wealthy, anti-democracy types.

MeanMesa's Sequester Investment Tips

How Long Do I have To Keep Remembering 2008?

For the long, seemingly unending decades of MeanMesa's youth a few unceasingly repetitious bulwarks of investment advice were as dependable as every spring's dandelions in the watermelon patch. They never faltered.  Most the the participants in the American dream in those days probably assumed that they were -- somewhere -- in the Good Book, itself.  In fact, these "American axioms for a future of individual prosperity" were so reliable, anticipated and trusted that the prospect of seeking out any additional possibilities actually amounted to little more than a sort of arcane "hobby."

Investment-wise, the promise was simple.  Just stick to the old tried and true, "simple stuff," and your future would inevitably be "roses, simply roses."  Any one who followed this "readily available everywhere" advice would just about certainly get rich in the end.

Buy real estate.  The value of real estate always increases.  If you somehow buy real estate, and it doesn't evaluate over time, it's your fault.

Invest in the stock market. Sure it's risky, but actually, it hasn't been really risky for years. After all, riding the subway is risky.  There is no possible way for someone like you to ever become a millionaire unless you make a big pile of that money on Wall Street.

Work hard, and save your surplus earnings.  Everything good in the investment world requires personal savings to get started.  If you work somewhere with a pension plan, pay into it.

Get a college education.  After you graduate, you'll be able to get a good job with good pay.  A college education opens up the opportunity for career advances in your future.

There were the "investments" which had most often produced the famous middle class prosperity Americans enjoyed until around the 1980's.  By the time that Ronald Reagan accomplished the now notorious, first penetration of the $ Trillion dollar debt barrier, the economy was already quietly beginning to falter.  Further, although there were booms and busts, that precise kind of "faltering" had more to do with steady state systemics than with the predictable "ups and downs" with which the country had been familiar previously.

This development really occurred along two rather disparate routes simultaneously.

First, a relentless, self-feeding, national wealth redistribution had begun in earnest.  The top money classes of American society had mastered the political techniques they would successfully employ for the following decades.  More than ever before, a new, carefully purchased access to the Congress, the White House and the media would begin to almost imperceptibly funnel economic advantages to the influential.

Second, a rapacious expectation of almost automatic economic success had been firmly planted in the minds and imaginations of those Americans who found themselves either at the lower edge of the wealthy class or even within a "stone's throw" away from it.  The dreamily ambitious middle class rushed to make the traditional wealth building investments mentioned above strongly anticipating that success was just around the corner.

Because such a significant amount of middle class money was flowing into these "investments in the future," because ambitions had become so exaggerated and because the attachment between expectations and risk had rapidly become obscured and inchoate, there were two additional economic phenomena.

Based on the, by then, axiomatic anticipation that economic conditions would simply perpetually improve more and more almost automatically, consumption began to increase faster than additional wealth was being accrued.  This domestic anticipation became an unexamined habit in no time.  At first, previously established domestic wealth was used to purchase ever greater "luxuries and other indulgences" which were consistent with the imaginary improvements in the standard of living.

However, when the previously accrued wealth had been consumed, it was replaced with debt.  At this point, consumer debt began to support the costs of these continuing, ambitious expectations -- and unsustainable levels of consumer purchases.  The money class stood by anxiously eager to provide this credit.  We now see the inevitable results.

Of course there was unsustainable domestic consumption, but what about the "big ticket" items listed above?  A new toaster, washer, automobile or extravagant vacation could certainly undercut a middle class family's finances, but not with the same gravity as the five and six digit borrowing required to participate in our list of "solid investments."

An uninsured medical emergency, on the other hand, would represent a "fifth" addition to the wealth wrecking list mentioned above.

The Two -- or Maybe Three - Horned Beasts

 Goring the Soft Underbelly of Economic Recovery

Nestled in what we hope is the "mid-term" period of this endless Republican Recession, it's easy to adopt a few mistaken conclusions.  If any of these "ring true" with your own thinking on these matters, don't be too hard on yourself.  The oligarchs have invested literally millions and millions of their "hard earned" dollars to misdirect, obfuscate, confuse and obscure the facts behind the economic disaster.

Let's take a look at some of the more commonly held misconceptions.  These are some of those mistakes.

Mistake 1:  The current catastrophe began in 2008.

Yes, 2008 was the year that the blood actually began to flow, but what we're in right now started decades before that.  For convenience, we can say that the present disaster is the inevitable, contemporary "mature" state of the catastrophe, but we must also rush to add that the fundamentals lurking below this intractable mess can quite comfortably be anchored with the Reagan years.

Remember the Reagan years?

Just think of them as the date of birth for the now infamous "trickle down" economic voodoo plan.

Right now, we would have a hard time remembering the disaster of 2008 had it been a traditional "adjustment."  It wasn't.  Further, had that disaster been even somewhat "traditional," our economy would be raging out of this mess in a "traditional" economic recovery cycle.  It isn't.

Mistake 2:  The economy is wrecked because of government spending.

Wait a minute.  All we hear on the commercial media is that the economy has been wrecked by government spending.  Every Republican who has staggered up to a microphone for the last five years had parroted exactly the same "talking point."

"We don't have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem."

Think for a moment.  Exactly why has this idea, so to speak, "grown so many legs?"

To answer this question, we need look no further back than to the beginning of this talking point.  The day before this talking point was hatched in a neo-con think tank, the talking point was "jobs."

Of course, the "jobs" talking point served well as a sort of populist distraction and as a road weary topic for "fly by" water cooler conversations. The viral utility of this well crafted deception lasted long enough to throw the 2010 Congressional election into the quivering hands of the overly ambitious, but tragically synthetic, tea baggers.

One week after that election, it became painfully clear to the House leadership that it was, unquestionably, foolish to count on these unruly tea bags for any sort of rational legislative work whatsoever.  That legislative work would, of course, have included any effort, no matter how modest or arcane, which might ease the "jobs" problem.

Even a comatose 19th Century loyalist like John Boehner could see that the voters had already grown dangerously tired of the lack of progress on the "jobs" talking point literally hours after their first glimpse of the endless stream of tea bag House bills obliterating ObamaCare, recriminalizing abortion, prohibiting Sharia Law in Oklahoma and so on.

This development cast a sudden shock-wave through the meticulously groomed public opinion ontology in which the oligarchs in charge of the Republican Party had invested so much.  What followed was a wonderfully entertaining, yet morosely awkward, attempt to somehow surgically attach "jobs" to "spending."

After bumbling around with this nearly impossible mission for a month or two, the "jobs" thing was trashed in favor of a full court effort at just the "spending" thing. This interregnum in public opinion manipulation failed because the message, if there actually was one, turned out to be utterly incomprehensible to the public.  One thing we know about oligarchs is that they are always ready to "cut their losses."

Mistake 3:  Things will return to how they were before.

In the wide spread absence of understanding for the scope of the collapse, the decades of constant corruption which led to the current emergency and the grave degree of wealth redistribution which had accompanied it, the default metric employed by voters to gauge the economic recovery became the "restoration of conditions previous to the collapse."

Voters wanted to know when they would get their old jobs back, when their pay checks would look like they did before the massacre, when their houses would once again be worth what they had paid for them and so on.   Even Republican voters.  Even tea bags.

There were a few unguarded words to the point that the "jobs lost in the catastrophe would not be returning," but, when no one really liked the sound of that, the rhetoric was instantly replaced by the far safer and easier fabricated memes of simply bashing the President or lamenting that the sides -- now actively touted as being equally to blame -- "couldn't just get along."


When unemployment drops to roughly its traditional level and the annual deficit subsides to some figure roughly similar to its traditional level, this will end.  However, the country which emerges from this will not be particularly similar to the one inhabiting the imaginations of Americans.

The violent wealth redistribution will remain a "settled fact" in the aftermath, as will be paralysing divisiveness so carefully installed the cripple the political process which might have, in better times, threatened the over riding scheme of the oligarch class we now see unfolding.

The American economy will see further retraction in organized labor, voter enfranchisement, wealth equality, individual opportunity and so on.  There is, as of now, no factor in the visible field which can alter this outcome much.  The Dow may be at an all time high, but the economic fundamentals for the majority of the country hold little promise for the future.

We may well be able to re-establish a more or less stable state, but we will not regain the competitive prowess of even a decade ago or make much progress toward solving the relentless drift toward more and more upward wealth redistribution.

Mistake 4:  Buy real estate or invest in the market.

The advertisements making this suggestion, especially to younger Americans, are, frankly, horrifying.  If learning the lessons of the last thirty years are too exhausting, learning the lessons of the last ten may not be such a "heavy lift." 

The collapse which materialized after the 2008 debacle instantly reduced the wealth of most Americans by around 40%.  The message of that collapse was that there is nothing which can be done politically to prevent the same forces who now "own" all that money from doing it again whenever they like.

The oligarch class may wait until the "investment barrel" is once again filled before they empty it, but the die is cast.  Elizabeth Warren notwithstanding, the banksters have flourished mightily from this last, most outrageous so far, "barrel emptying" move, and they will not be inclined to forsake the opportunity to repeat it in the future.

This dark forecast encompasses both investments in real estate and in the stock market.  Both reservoirs of wealth were effortlessly emptied, and both reservoirs remain just as susceptible to being emptied again in the future.  The risk of even a very rational investment in either has careened beyond what might be encountered at a gaming table in a crooked, Mafia operated casino.

This advice might have led to an awkward question in past years: "If not real estate or the market, then what?  Where should I put all this money?"

The very discouraging fact is that few of the Americans who would have traditionally been or would have become investors have any money to invest.  While productivity has steadily increased -- along with the profits for the oligarch class who benefit from it -- the flow of wages to more middle class Americans have been stagnant.

The chart below explains the reciprocal nature of the wealth redistribution.  Productivity increases the flow of potential investment capital to the inactive, non-participating coffers of the oligarch/corporate class.  Increased profit is directed at further increases in that upward flow.  Importantly, the more that wealth is concentrated in those purposefully sequestered coffers, the more the economy suffers.

 As the wealth consolidation of this upper class becomes more and more segregated from the mainstream economy [current estimates are that more than $2 Tn worth of ready cash is pocketed away by corporations, mostly off shore], what had previously been a massive potential investment reservoir is now basically empty.  Worse, members in the middle class now have essentially no confidence that such an investment risk is a reasonable one.

What looks like Productivity and Wages is actually fundamental wealth redistribution       (image source)

The "40% number" used to define the scheme's dramatic impact on middle class wealth can easily drift to hyperbole, but the blood soaked reality of it is becoming  unavoidable.  Meanwhile, the middle class is being patiently persuaded to continue to pretend that this either never happened at all, or, at least, that it didn't happen to them.

All this leaves two very troubling "visitors" attending the economic recovery.  First, the potential for profiting from a real estate investment is no longer based on the idea that the entire economy is prospering.  Instead, it is based exploiting  the loss incurred by someone else who lost everything with a mortgage for an artificially high priced house.

Second, the maelstrom on Wall Street is now essentially one which excludes all players who didn't rake in the grotesque gains during the bubble.  No one else has the money -- or the trust -- to play poker there.  The "rotational velocity" of the money already in the market may continue to increase -- hence the record high DJA of today -- but the prospects for a middle class, long term investor are in shambles.

The generational durability of the disaster is also often underestimated.

There are literally millions of young people across the country who would have -- in better times -- been building wealth for all sorts of possible uses.  They aren't.  Worse, they haven't been for decades.  They aren't buying houses or cars because they have neither the savings nor the credit nor the confidence.  They don't have usable health insurance, and they have nothing similar to the employer pension and retirement plans of past years.

Mistake 5: It's worth any price to get a college education.

While union busting is a foundational part of the oligarch scheme, an even more sinister side of the destructive ambition is found just below the obvious.  There are political advantages from the destruction of organized labor's potential in campaigns, but the underlying ambition is far more general.

Union or not, the oligarchs will not rest until they have orchestrated the unilateral deprofessionalization of every credentialed worker possible.  This has naturally extended into the realm of higher education.  The monied class will approve of an education for middle class folks but will not countenance the creation of specialists of any type which can resist the relentless lowering of all incomes other than those of Wall Street.

The President has made some small headway in reigning in the rapacious interest scams for student loans, but even this relief is superficial.  The $ Tn dollar student loan debt may be a real "profit center" for the money handlers, but controlling the future economic success of graduates is the clear shining prize.

The inevitable result of this can be seen everywhere.  The college graduate enters the work force already hobbled with only a small chance for a job in his field as he competes with much cheaper foreign labor, a mountain of college loan debt and, even if he can find work in his field, a pay check paying a salary of $10 or $12 dollars per hour.  They don't save to buy a house or a new car.  They live with their parents.

This all may sound like the forlorn fiddle solo in a tragic movie, but consider the numbers.  There are millions of both college graduates and other young people earning significantly less than it takes to live.  They have been struggling along like this since the 1980's.

What had previously been a constantly swelling reservoir of wealth to invest in the future has been hollowed out and redistributed.  The point here is that these lost years will not be reclaimed. 

How could they?

Even if we tried?  Even if we dedicated an immense amount of resources and political effort to it?

This is the great multi-generational "hollowing out" which inevitably accompanies such a devastating wealth redistribution and consolidation.  The economy which is left after suffering this kind of "across the board" looting will resemble the economy which entered it very little.

It may seem as if we took our eye off the ball in 2010, but actually we pretty much quit paying attention in the 1980's.

We have to remember all of this when we look at the feeble, faltering economic recovery.  Comparing it to the glory days of our past is just as irrational as comparing our future to the same glory days would be.

Oh don't forget about the oligarchs (Courtesy of Daily KOS)

The game is real.  If we lose completely, the oligarchs will own everything that's left standing.  If we hold our own, we'll have a place to live -- just a place with far fewer, much more modest dreams that before.

MeanMesa's "sequester investment tip?"

Just go to the casino.  The odds are better.

Oh, Boy! Fresh Terror from Iran?

We've Been Here Before

Maj. T.J. King Kong after deploying the H-bomb.  Dr. Strangelove (image source)

Updated "Demotivational" Poster. Dr. Strangelove (image source)

There's barely been time for commercials between the  right wing pundits and politicians almost constant chorus of terror about the Iranian bomb.  Of course, the wing nuts have had a long fascination with the unilateral fear concept of the Cold War, and they have, predictably, "retuned to the well" at every opportunity since then  -- even for a weird, arcane collection of too subtle, too gaseous types of opportunities which turned out to be too complicated for "sale on the street."

The latest opportunity comes from elevating Iran's penchant for H-Bomb building to the "burning question of the day."  The heart throbbing, breathless panic rhetoric is now, officially, bombasting air waves which looked like they couldn't hold any more such ridiculous flatulence even a few days ago. Dutiful hill billies and high school drop outs among the Republican base are gobbling down the horror like day old corn dogs.

It's clear that the political strategy experts in all those back rooms would very, very, very much prefer not to continue the public discussion of trans vaginal ultra sounds, the Keystone XL pipeline or even the sky rocketing gasoline prices that their sponsors -- oil futures speculators -- have demanded for their scheme to wreak revenge on the President.

Now, it is the job of every concerned American to settle into that Lazy Boy, glance thoughtfully at the kids playing in the living room and think about the wife, the mortgage and the prospects of ever getting a raise at work while adding an exceptionally pungent nightmare fantasy about the home town being vaporized in a flash of light.  The nightmare should include a night time scene with a few terrifyingly sketchy characters in turbans hoisting a half ton Iranian H-Bomb into the back of a U-Haul a few blocks away.

Oh yeah.

With that going on, how could any voter have time to size up all the bills that the House Republican have pumped into their "Jobs, Jobs, Jobs" plans?  Actually, since there are no such bills, the Lazy Boy guy will have plenty of time to double down on the looming, shudder, Iranian H-Bomb threat.

The fear mongers have been "hard at it."  Not only will the Iranians immediately launch an all out attack on Israel, they must also be absolutely "dead set" on nuking the American army in Afghanistan, their old enemy, Iraq, probably Turkey and, of course, most of Southern Europe.  And that would just be the official side of the nightmare.  The Ayatollah and his henchmen would be turning both suitcase nukes and "make a dirty bomb at home" kits over to every terrorist with a pay phone close enough to place an order.

It will be a hopeless, terrifying, unstoppable, Biblical scale, planetary destruction festival, gleefully executed by crazed theocrats who don't even believe in the "one true God."  And, according to the frenzied GOPCon doom sayers, they'll come right here to River City the second that the smoke clears -- looking for white women to turn into Muslim sex slaves.

Got it?

Happily, all this nonsense won't actually have much effect on the election.  The little clutch of folks who will vote based on this premise will vote pretty much the same way they would have voted anyway.

What Can Be Done?

The real questions may be somewhat more limited.  Still reeling from the estimated $3 Tn price tag of the Bush Oil Wars, the US is not anxious at all to try a land war with Iran.  We cannot afford one.  And, that country has five times the population of Iraq, plenty of money for guns and a massive population of unemployed young people.

We could have asked Sadam about what war with Iran was like.

Further, it may have been less than "entirely wise" for the President to declare that a nuclear Iran "wasn't going to happen," and that "containment" wasn't going to happen, either. This may be an instance when the crazies from the "other side" actually goaded him into making a mistake.

However, two important political assets still remain squarely in Obama's camp.  Both have to do with a very public debate in a dysfunctional Congress where the Republicans have an overly firm and overly eager grip on the "stop" button.

First, Obama can go to Congress and ask for a formal Declaration of War with the Islamic Republic.

If the GOP screechers are really the "big men" they say they are, and if they really are ready to put American blood behind their cheezy, chest beating politics, they should have to explain why they're all talk but no blood and treasure to the American people.  MeanMesa can assure you that the American people will be watching and listening -- even through the fog of a controlled media.

Republicans don't like Declarations of War because these automatically draw in the existing war profiteering laws of the Truman era.  This "cuts their take."

Second, Obama can ask Congress for a "full deterrent" law.  Under such legislation, if a single American citizen is ever killed by a nuclear weapon anywhere, it will be exactly the same as a nuclear attack on this country.

1952 "Ivy Mike" H-Bomb Test (image source)

Since the days of the "Ivy Mike" H-Bomb tests at Eniwetok Atoll, nuclear maintenance technology has advanced remarkably.  These days, not only is there an exhaustive file of the location, ownership and responsibility of nuclear materials around the world [This was one of Senator Obama's key projects in the Senate.], the technology has also been developed to track the residue of any such explosion right back to its source.

The "deterrent law" would not differentiate between the various possible journeys such material might have taken from its refinery to its target.  It might have been stolen.  It might have been surreptitiously handed over to terrorists.  It might have been sold on the black market.  It wouldn't matter.  It had to have been made somewhere, and if you made it, you are responsible for its detonation -- by anyone, anywhere, any time.

If you are a country such as Iran [or Pakistan, or North Korea, etc.], you would begin to be much more careful about exactly where your bombs or bomb material wound up -- regardless of how it wound up there.  The "full  deterrent law," coupled with the dozens of treaties for defense against nuclear attack [products of the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty] already in place should do the trick.

Making the Republican war mongers vote for or against such a law would handle the domestic side of the politics.  This isn't one which can be dodged with another  Sunday School sermon about birth control pills.

Read More

MeanMesa has followed the Iranian issue for several years.  Here are links to a few of those posts.

http://www.meanmesa.com/2009/06/iran-mystical-glory-of-reciprocal.html

http://www.meanmesa.com/2009/06/comprehending-iran-nuclear-power.html

http://www.meanmesa.com/2010/05/meanmesa-quickie-iran-fountain-of-evil_23.html

http://www.meanmesa.com/2009/08/tulsa-teheran-and-terre-haute-creepy.html

The Big Picture -- Taxing the Top 500

Diving Through the Talking Points

Anyone who watches the "non-editorial" portion of the corporate media's "news fraud" will hear a few often repeated phrases.  Of course, this "non-editorial" portion turns out to still be quite "editorial." 

In contrast, the "pure opinion" side of these broadcasts is always relegated to the "mouth junk" pundits, and this part travels under the legitimizing aura of "openly" being "editorial."  However, the rampant flow of twisted phrases in the "non-editorial" portion are of the most interest here.

Let's look at a few.

Perhaps the most egregious is the phrase "job creators."  It is a favorite foundation for the remnants of Reagan economic state fascism still clinging to the idea of "trickle down" economics where vast sums of tax money are given to the oligarchs to "inspire" them to "create jobs."

Neck and neck with this first phrase, we find "small businesses."  The context will be something along the lines of "small business job creators."  Did you know that engineering construction giant Bechtel is classed as  a "small business?"

MeanMesa visitors already know that this is a "wagon load of day old manure."  Like the annual Peanuts cartoon where Lucy jerks away the football at the last moment, we see a similar "episode" monthly on the larger scale of our national economy.  The oligarchs, constantly complaining about "job killing" regulation, repeat the old mantra which gaseously refers to "setting capitalism loose" as a prelude to restoring "prosperity."

You know, "prosperity" as it is described in the latest frog choking GOPCon booklet, "The Path to Prosperity."

The oligarchic meaning of "setting capitalism loose" actually has almost nothing to do with "unfettering the captains of industry."  In the current US context, "setting capitalism loose" means returning to a "wholly owned" Senate and issuing the order for more looting.

It's neither God's will for the devout nor an exciting, innocent coincidence that the top 500 US companies pay almost nothing in corporate income taxes.  While they are paying "next to nothing," they are complaining about a conveniently high, theoretical US tax rate of 35% -- which none of them actually pay.

Hiding the Corporate Easter Eggs

All this became even more brightly illuminated under the embarrassing light in a recent Congressional hearing where a favorite clutch of domestic "petrogarchs" were charged with making sense of 1.) billions in federal subsidies, 2.) $4/gallon gasoline and 3.) astronomical corporate profits of 35% and better for the 1st quarter of this year.  All the while, the grey haired capitalists on "the bench" continued to complain about the potential loss of their $3 Billion/ year subsidies and the "highest corporate tax rate in the world" which they don't actually pay.

However, not to be distracted by "peanuts" in the petrogarch looting scheme, MeanMesa is actually more concerned with some of the story which was left conveniently unmentioned in the hearings.

This is the part which returns to the previous use of the term "Reagan economic state fascism."  This is also the part of the story which extends even beyond the edges of the corporate petrogarch cess pool.

"Easter Egg-wise" there are three primary channels through which our federal general fund money now flows to the "captains of industry."  The subsidies which were the topic of the hearings represent only one of the three -- in fact, almost always the smallest of the three.

In order of magnitude, we see three, well established drain pipes through which US federal tax funds can descend into the pockets of folks like the unfairly targeted, long suffering "oil queens" who faced that hearing committee.

Subsidies

Tax Incentives

Tax Expenditures

Some Brief Definitions

Subsidies:

A subsidy amounts to an actual "check" on the Treasury which the Congress has directed to be paid to an enterprise -- usually to conduct some sort of business activity which is not profitable, and in which the enterprise would, otherwise, have no interest at all.  In most cases subsidies actually amount to the payment  when the government "hires" some company to complete a task which it would, otherwise, that is, without the subsidy, not do.

The mischief usually creeps into the scheme during the process of determining exactly what unmet necessity the government will pay for with the subsidy.  The corporations receiving the subsidy are selected on the basis of "who can perform this vitally necessary work the best among all the choices."  There is plenty of mischief there, too.

Tax Incentives:

These are usually encountered when a corporate "neighbor" needs to be bribed to place a plant in a particular community.  They amount to publicly financed roads, bridges, site development, sewer and water lines and so forth.

Without the tax incentives, the corresponding corporate gang threatens to build a potential corporate building project "somewhere else."  Local communities, already starved for the revenue which will come from such new jobs, are anxious to burden local tax payers with the bill to build all this stuff.

The balance between paying this "price" to get the plant and the jobs into a job-starved town and the income tax revenues collected from the new workers usually settles the question.  We will return to tax incentives after the definitions.

Tax Expenditures:

Tax expenditures are often called "corporate welfare."  To get a tax incentive, an enterprise must get Congress to simply lower its taxes.  We all know how that works.

This process of simply "lowering taxes" lies at the semantic foundation of the Reaganesque economic syllogism "If you want more of something lower the taxes on it.  If you want less of something, raise the taxes on it."

Based on this absolutely solid logical premise, the Congress lowers taxes on "things" that it wants "more of" and raises taxes on "things" it wants "less of."  In the "less of" column we find "things" such as abortions and cigarettes.  However, in the "more of" column we find things like health insurance costs for large companies, electric cars and solar panels, but also an amazingly large collection of all sorts of things -- usually things made by, you guessed it, the exact same people who make campaign contributions.  We will return to tax incentives in the next section.

From: Open Left --

Taking Aim At Tax Expenditures--

This Time I Say 'Bravo' To Michael Lind 

by Paul Rosenberg 

(read the article here. )

Why are tax expenditures so darned popular, anyway? (image source)

American poor people love tax expenditures, right? (image source)

 The data shown above is from 2007-2008.  Things have gotten worse since then.

The "Fascist Gimmick"

At first glance, all of this maneuvering may seem to be simply "business as usual," a result of our government's intervening to direct the economy in ways that "normal" free enterprise might otherwise neglect.  However, the sheer scope of the process strongly suggests otherwise.

The "fascism" we're talking about here has nothing to do with "death camps" or "attacking Russia."  Instead, what we see when we view this in the "big picture" context, is a massive case of illicit wealth redistribution to the top from everywhere else.  The "every where else" most likely includes you and me.

Tax Incentives:

Tax incentives allow free enterprise entities to force local communities to compete with each other by providing infrastructure at public expense.  The traditional role of free enterprise entities is to invest what is needed to start their plants and offices, accepting such costs as legitimate operating expenses.

If you want to build a plant or an office somewhere, you should have to plan on spending whatever it takes to get that done.  Such expenses become a part of your business plan.  The profits you hope to make after your investment starts to return should include paying for all these start up costs.

However, when you can get a local community to start paying for all of this under the threat that you will take your enterprise somewhere else, that local community becomes a "partner" in your enterprise -- except, it's not really a partner at all.  In fact, it is not only "not a partner," it remains a "hostage" even after your business is rolling along happily in the future.

The tax paying citizens in the community benefit from the jobs you have created and the revenue from taxing the income of your employees, but they have no say in the conduct of your business -- not at first or later.  The goal of the local government which  used to be looking after the needs of the community becomes split.  It must now look after the needs of your business -- starting with paying for all the roads, sewer and water lines, etc. but never being actually "paid back" for having financed any of them.

This process began in earnest during the Reagan years, and Republicans have kept it going at a greater and greater level since then.  It is "at the heart" of the exportation of jobs and factories to other countries where not only are labor rates lower, but locally financed tax incentives are even higher than here.

What had previously been "national socialism" has become "international socialism" with conservative American GOPCon "capitalists" at the helm.

Tax Expenditures:

When we turn our attention away from the "fascist" term to the "national socialism" term, we see the basis for the comment during the Bush bail out of banks and brokers.  "Capitalize the profits, but socialize the losses."

These wealth redistribution gimmicks amount to the same thing except that they are "pre-emptive."  They occur before the losses even have a chance to happen.  Further, especially in the case of tax expenditures, the money never reaches the Treasury so it never suffers from the public "outing" of the other instruments such as subsidies and tax incentives.

When we conclude that the cost of running the government is more or less stable, the prospect of enterprises "dodging" part or all of their tax burden means that the cost is being distributed to lower percentile tax payers.  We not only pay into the profit coffers of these giants when we buy their products, we also pay into them when we effectively pay their taxes.

A traditional "free enterprise" entity pays its own way and makes its profits when its sales revenue exceeds its expenses.  When part of those profits come from having us pay its taxes, the model becomes, well, much more shady.  In such cases, the government has stepped in, diverting our tax money to its private profit.  We pay the taxes, and the corporation moves what would have been its tax payments into the profit column.

Why would "our" government do something like that?

Easy.  It's no longer "our" government.

Campaign contributions to win elections.  

Lobbying jobs after losing elections.

The fascist part comes from the fact that once these oligarchic interests have successfully penetrated what would have otherwise been a representational democracy, the primary goal of the government becomes split between taking care of the needs of the country and taking care of the needs of the oligarchs.  The more complete the corrupting saturation becomes, the more "pressing" the needs of the oligarchs become and the less "pressing" the needs of the American population become.

Now that the country is essentially broke, we have to look for where the money actually went.  The figures are big ones.

In the next two years, we will "spend" $125 Billion on top of the $3 Trillion already "spent" on high income tax breaks.  We will "spend" $200 Billion a year to pay the interest on the money we "borrowed" to pay for the wars and tax breaks.  We will "spend" roughly $400 Billion per year on tax expenditures which have been written into our on-going tax codes by sympathetic Congressmen and Presidents in the past.

All this together would pay off all of the national debt in less than ten years.

Instead, GOPCons are trying to sell reductions in Social Security benefits and the destruction of Medicare as the "only way out" of the mess they have made.

What would be needed to make this happen?  American businesses who actually pay their own expenses before they start taking profit from their revenues and counting on us to "make up the difference."

The result of all this is what we have now -- a suffocating collection of businesses which are fundamentally unable to pay their own expenses while still making the outrageous profits their sponsors demand.  These "businesses" can neither establish themselves in the first place without onerous local tax incentives nor operate afterwards without generous tax expenditures.  The outright subsidies are little more than the "frosting on the cake."

It's no wonder that a quiet drift toward national socialism looks so appealing to these "captains of industry."

There is an election coming in 2012.

A Chit Chat with Republicans About the Stimulus

A Primer About Obama's Recovery Plan85

It has become very intellectually chic to chuck pot shots at the Recovery Program of President Obama. Of course, we expected the really “trailer park” fizzle from the vacuous, foaming mouths of the neo-cons. One female host, Tammy Bruce, actually called Michelle Obama “trash” on a network interview last week.

However, once we exclude the “drug addled gas bag,” the whining “pretty little mama’s boy,” and the ultra pious, self-appointed, "stalwart defender of The Church," we are still left with some unsettling whimpers arising from unexpected quarters -- quarters we had always previously assumed to be more rational.

There are comments that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Director of the White House's National Economic Council, Larry Summers, should be fired for lack of purity and effectiveness. That would be “lack of purity” from having been a Fed Bank President during the Bush bailout in Geithner’s case and from having been a Clinton advisor in Summers’ case, that would have been before he was President of Harvard University. All these comments can be immediately discharged because they are founded on the premise that what we are doing right now is, somehow, logically similar to something we have done before. Any hope of that happy serendipity betrays a frenzied dash for the refuge of history, hardly a behavior we would expect from the brave knights we have sent to kill the dragon.

The Treasury Secretary is a frighteningly intelligent man who has been seriously cautioned by the Obama White House to try to “de-accelerate” his speech enough so it can be captured on an ordinary, modern video camera during his interviews. Naturally, neo-cons -- being allergic to leadership of any type thanks to their toxic, soul consuming cynicism -- are quite uncomfortable with a man who constantly needs to concentrate on speaking more slowly so the rest of us can possibly follow him. Neo-cons like slow drawls so Southern that most Americans either won’t listen to them or can’t understand what is said. You know, ... southern ... coach ... pastor ... You know.

But some modern liberal pundits seem to be put off because they can’t understand it either. They think that the reason they can’t understand it is because what Geithner is saying isn’t even remotely similar to anything they have heard before, the lingering, predictably desperate test of validity for those who have found themselves unable to think. The most limited, self promoted, modern progressives don’t believe that anything can be progressive now if it hasn’t already been progressive before. Those talkative folks identify themselves by providing endless explanations of exactly who was at fault for almost everything that threatens their pretend, historical, progressive "status quo."

But this post is all about having a chit chat with Republicans. There are actually a few of them still visible who are so inebriated on the Kool Aid and so head strong that they continue to claim a tiny, forgotten patch of Bush Jr.’s, medieval fear mongering “high ground.”

If you have had a creepy, out of focus feeling while talking to these Republicans and other aging reactionaries about Obama’s plan, don’t blame yourself! The person standing before you in those conversations isn’t actually saying anything. What you are hearing are talking points! The actual words being uttered in such conversations have been “piped” down to eager repeaters by their “thought masters,” repeaters who, when considered generously, have nothing else to say besides more road weary talking points about the Stimulus Package, Socialism, abortion, gun control -- well, you already know the list of topics they prefer.

On to the water cooler.

Although MeanMesa usually avoids inserted diagrams and charts, please consider this following exception. Perhaps we can spend just a minute with this National Debt record as an introduction to a few points which might “flesh out” your conversational repartees.

click to enlarge

The large block of red at the far right of the diagram is an estimate of the accumulated deficit of the Bush Jr. autocracy. Politically unpopular spending such as the war in Iraq is, of course, omitted. However, the total of the eight year deficit since the Supreme Court appointed Bush Jr. amounts to roughly three trillion dollars. What might have been a rather lack luster disaster was converted into the present calamity by two large tax cuts which directed vast windfalls to the very richest Americans, and the utterly outrageous PHARMA written Medicaid Prescription Drug Plan, designed to channel boat loads of tax money to the “pill masters” of the pharmaceutical lobbyists. The PHARMA bill was passed at 3 AM in the House. The tie vote in the Senate was broken when the Vice President Pretender voted in favor.

An often overlooked aspect of the trillions which disappeared into pockets of Bush cronies has to do with the rest of the economy, you know, the part where we live. After the extraction, that sudden, purloined flatulence among the rich and mischievous found itself stranded with nowhere to go. When we speak of financial instruments such as securitized toxic mortgages, incredibly leveraged, shadow assets on the profit and loss books of all the investment banks we are presently rescuing, and other Wall Street Casino speculative doodads, we see the “new home” all these suddenly wealthy “businessmen” found for their less than legitimate good fortune.

What might have been expected as “risks” associated with such a move were gleefully buried under the cover of a dysfunctional Justice Department, a conveniently blind Security Exchange Commission (Remember Madoff? Enron?), ruthless gangs of well paid Federal Appointees and an overly protective Executive (Autocrat) who had already hit his management high point bankrupting professional ball teams and oil companies his father gave him.

The Independent Senator from Vermont noted this unusual development:
Not everyone has had a hard time during the Bush years: “The top 400 richest Americans have seen their personal wealth increase by $630,000,000,000 - $630 BILLION - since George W. Bush was appointed President by the Supreme Court in 2000.” (Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sept. 18, 2008)

The point? When this much of the economy’s liquid money was effectively removed, it caused a bit of a shortage. After that initial insult to the economy, when the reckless schemes which had absorbed all these dollars fell apart, it created even more of a shortage. The spending which normally fuels the US economy ground to a halt. No one had any money, and no one could borrow any.

Yes, of course, all these “genius investors” immediately started bellowing for a bail out from the Bush Jr. -- Paulson crime family, but they were able to loot only a paltry $350 billion before their sponsoring syndicate was run out of Washington. That left them hungry for more. Their eyes, naturally, turned greedily toward the Obama Stimulus Plan. If that legislation could be converted to even more tax cuts, then looted as it straggled through the Congress, they could be made whole by the tax payers, a veritable wet dream for any self-respecting neo-con.

The Obama plan replaces all that “missing” spending with Federal spending. It is clear that such a bold move is probably the only chance still on the table to avoid a repeat of the World Wide Great Depression of the FDR days. The amount of spending in that spending bill is, unhappily, astronomical. That would make it roughly the same size as the take that Bush Jr.’s fellow looters snatched during the eight years when frenzied high crimes were the constant currency of the day. The economy was supposed to tank after the Bush crime family was safely back in Texas, just in time to blame Obama for everything, but, as is usually the case for everything Bush Jr. dreamed up, it exploded prematurely.

When your Republican starts off with complaints about too much spending and out of control deficits, show him the chart. Agree with him -- in a condescending way -- that it really is too much spending and that the deficit it will cause really is too high. Tell him -- compassionately -- that we have already paid off the neo-con extortionists once while they were gang raping us the first time, but that we are willing to pay again to save the country.

Then walk away.

For a comprehensive explanation of the contents of the 2009 Stimulus Bill,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Recovery_and_Reinvestment_Act_of_2009
and for an overview of the President's 2010 Budget, submitted to Congres in 2009,
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/

Obama's "Frightening" Nominations

First, a recap of recent market gains in fear futures... 71

Reflecting, not on the passing government, but on ourselves and our own part in the dismal events of the Bush years, we arrive at some unavoidable conclusions. As citizens we had become so softened by years of prosperous security before his terms that we were vulnerable to manipulation by most of his shallow, fabricated new fears.

We were officially frightened by Osama bin Laden after 911, and his imaginary accomplice, Sadam Hussein shortly after that. We were not frightened by Indian and Pakistani H-bomb tests. Perhaps that fright was reserved for later, that is, for some inevitable future moment when it could be exploited with greater results.

We were frightened by North Korea’s H-bomb test. It enjoyed the serendipity of being at just the right moment, maybe a moment when our fear was subsiding to levels no longer blindly supporting some scheme made politically possible only by our manipulation.

We responded well to Iran’s understandable ambition to arm itself. At any time that fear faltered, we increased our not so subtle threats, making some fiery response a virtual certainty, a reaffirmed asset for domestic consumption here and, of course, a good investment of hate.

We weren’t particularly frightened by Katrina, a deadly but largely unusable source of fear due to its lack of a “bomb-able” adversary. The Russians presented a reliable threat, but they apparently frightened our government in return. They were somewhat less usable, perhaps because they could actually “bite back.”

The point? We, unaccustomed to being threatened after such a long hegemony -- real or imagined, were gradually groomed to be frightened on demand. The neo-cons accurately and successfully managed to convince us that leadership required a threat. In the more rational examination of such leadership, that is, when it was examined without the convenient hysteria of the latest calamity, its appearance might become dangerously lack luster.

The "new frighteners."

Now, these weary “old frighteners” are on their way out of town. Troubling "new frighteners” have arrived with the ambition of taking over the franchise. These "new frighteners” are not neo-cons at all. This new batch is from the other end of the spectrum. We seem to be entering into a period of being frightened by the left.

What are the threats being employed? After all, the left has demonstrated an irritable kind of allergic avoidance to the use of foreign machinations to frighten us. The newest, post election tool is, instead, an interesting innuendo indicting the “progressive purity” of Obama's nominations for places of power in the new government.

There was the momentary mention of the “testing” of the new President, but that was no more than a sickening remnant of the old scheme of threats, one based on the same tired ideology of being hopelessly terrified by foreign adversaries, that is, a tiresome repeat of the one used before. These more contemporary “frighteners” are intent on revealing threats to us about cabinet appointments and the possibilities that our accomplishments in the last election would be undercut with a result of reverting the government back to the numbing failure of its predecessor. They seem to have developed an appetite for questioning the new President’s character even after supporting him only a few weeks or months ago.

The threat they endeavor to manufacture now is one of deception and conspiracy. They imply that the changes we sought have not turned out to be changes at all. These folks would like to take up the mantle of being the "new threateners" with their endless assertion that we, as voters, have been deceived. Again.

Clearly, they consider any fear and fright of this sort that they can incite in us to be a valuable asset to prop up their languishing authority as critics and pundits. They believe that these unexamined doubts they might cause will become very useful foundations for later tirades and tantrums which might have, otherwise, been too obviously shallow to provide the impact they crave. Their future dream is to say, credibly, of course, “I told you so.” “I was the one who cried out the early warning, so believe me now!”

If you’re waiting for the next form of being scared, you may be disappointed. You may have to learn a new trick. The world as previously presented as one of endless, hopeless, despair is going to become one of challenges and opportunities. Instead of groveling and trying to simply survive, we will be required to stand up with our eyes forward. Rather than cowering in a sterile ideological wasteland, lamenting on how things should have been, we will now be required to begin all our thoughts with where things are and where we intend to go.

Domestically, Senatorial bigots and military throwbacks have invested heavily in sponsoring our hatred and fear of each other. Their practiced incompetence was the real conspiracy as they trotted out fabricated alternatives with every choice equally depressing and unpalatable. Their old paradigm of no choices other than dominating or surviving the world is becoming the new, brighter question of successfully living in it.

These aging knee jerkers are now exposed much like the new thought-limiting left. Neither group has earned the right to express their foolish purity. Neither group has ever been willing to pay the honest wage of embracing leadership. The wage? To follow, of course. To trust a little. To think of the country beyond one’s immediate personal ambitions.

These "new frighteners” from the left would like for us to faint before the “hodge podge” of conflicting influences in the new government. They would prefer that we were, well, more hopelessly stoic given the rather raw abilities of these nominations by Obama. These "new frighteners” would prefer that we be pessimists about whether or not he can lead with all these conflicting influences. “Who will be in charge?” they wonder.

I predict that none of us will wonder about this for long.

We have elected a leader with, I suspect, a lethal, pragmatic competence coupled with more idealism that most of us think we can afford right now. Of course we are a bit uncomfortable with what we’ve done, but we can certainly claim that we were at our bravest and our best when we did it, inebriated with new hope.

By the way, that hope isn’t all in him. The important part of that hope is in us.

Leadership, after the wasteland we’ve endured, may seem to be measured by astounding solutions to intractable problems. It isn’t. It’s much more like paint, permanently changing the hue of everything it touches.

Get used to it.

No more being directed by fear. The leader we’ve found won’t amount to much without Americans to follow him.

For a very unusual point of view, sample this link:
http://blogs.psychologytoday.com/blog/lust-in-paradise/200811/obamas-ancient-leadership-style

Hypocrisy Hunting in the New Obama Cabinet

Undercutting New Possibilities With Old Ideas? 68

The predictable complaints of hypocrisy, or at least, inconsistency, are now rolling in from any ambitious pundit with a microphone. How could such an idealist as Barrack Obama, that is, someone so highly dedicated to changing the government, announce that he intended to do business with Tom Daschle, Hillary Clinton or even John McCain?

By “do business” we mean “give authority and trust.”

The neo-con purists (yes, they still imagine themselves purists after all the soiled things their man committed in the last two terms...) claim that Clinton Cabinet politicos contaminate Obama’s claim to the “high road.” Other hungry commentators dredge relentlessly for contradictions in past positions to compare with what they present as present positions required to fill Obama’s government and support his political philosophy.

Let’s indulge in a fable at this point.

You are a remarkably progressive and idealistic King in a medieval country. You set out to rectify some grave injustices by a military campaign. When it’s time to select generals to conduct this thing you seem to have two choices.

On one side, there is the Abbot, your spiritual advisor, a man with unshakably good, decent ideas about how to improve matters. On the other side, there is General Smith, a ruthlessly successful medieval military strategist with a checkered history of brutality and effectiveness.

If you intend to prevail in this struggle, that is, if you intend to over power the rather impressive and well established enemy who has sponsored these atrocities you find so deplorable, you will select General Smith. Issues such as collateral damage and war crimes associated with the Abbot might be much more palatable than the likely results of General Smith’s campaign, but the results would probably be disappointing.

If you are determined to prevail and advance your cause of decency, General Smith will be your man. First, the war must be won, then your plans can become material. In the meantime, that is, during the conduct of the war, you can insist that General Smith be more decent than he would be normally or than he has been previously, but the necessity of results dictates that you employ his expertise to deliver the possibility of conditions for your own intention.

This progressive King is more armored by his Divine Right than the trust of those who might ultimately benefit from his ideals, but, unlike recent leaders, he will have to trust himself! We have no King. Obama is armored by the trust of those who sent him into this difficult place. His leadership is qualified by his spiritual solidity of trusting himself.

Obama needs a cabinet capable of surviving the inevitable, paralytic aggression of the Republicans. He needs a cabinet which can deliver in Washington politics. The work of these mindless reactionaries has left us a disaster so grave that excuses or near victories, especially when precipitated by the stupid, inexperienced or ineffective application of power, are not an option.

Yes, incorporating individuals with alternative political philosophies may help a little, but the reactionary forces, inflamed as usual by the low road sabotage of hate radio and anti-American Congressional throw backs, have no interest in any solution to our difficult problems. Their cynical interests have nothing to do with America’s future. The entire focus of their babble is directed at maximizing the number of voters in their districts that can they deceive, lie to or frighten into sustaining their offices, reinvigorating their opportunities for looting.

Obama’s ideals will, in fact, make the difference we need. Ideals belong at the top of the pyramid when the ground level is violently contested by well financed cynics and other criminals. Obama’s “ground war” will be conducted by the best he can find, some of the Clinton legacy and other new, competent faces, the 21st century equivalent of that old King’s General Smith.

We trust his idealism, his cabinet selections, his competence, his intellect and his spirit. These vociferous tantrums are to be expected. Neo-cons are allergic to leadership.

Health Care Without the Lipstick.

Another MeanMesa Lipstick Commentary! This time HealthCare!63

A little history.

As Americans, our intuitive, aggregate concept of “health care” has become, gradually, and perhaps, unavoidably, more and more complicated, more and more unexamined and more and more incomprehensible as it slowly transformed itself to present a new, modern phenomenal definition. Things have been “added” to it.

Entrepreneurial opportunities have been identified, encouraged, injected and groomed in ways which inevitably transformed it by indulgences easily betrayed by modest semantics. Masterful commercial psychology has successfully contaminated both our interest and our expectations in ways that have converted an older, more rational approach to a modern frenzy of insistence, liability and other barely manageable (again, codependent) demands.

Fifty years ago the United States was enjoying the tangible benefits of being a culture which was not burdened with resurrecting itself from recent military destruction. The proletariat economy was literally awash with good paying jobs and a highly visible population, consequently, endowed with remarkable -- at least by global comparisons -- discretionary wealth. Lingering atop this frothy “three tiered wedding cake” was the fairly widely accepted proposition that the system at play here was “the very best in the world” with respect to all sorts of things.

What kinds of things? To name only a few, our new hegemonic military; our ICBM’s, our industrial productivity, the Constitutionally guaranteed rights of our citizens, the proclaimed freedom of religion and the arguably hypnotic luxury of a vast, barbecue pit, martini drenched social extravagance. Naturally, human beings lived a bit longer in such a place. Overlooking clean water, fresh air, plenty of food and even “pretty good shoes,” we quite comfortably attributed that good fortune to our health care. Why not? It was, after all, “the best in the world.”

Doctors here had entered a developmental phase predicated on the idea that going to school longer meant earning more afterward. Hard classes, harder cash. What had previously been best described as a comfortable livelihood was reinventing itself into an economic opportunity able to compete with a new populist conception of the old robber barons.

The religionists had done very well promoting their famous “death fear,” that is, the proposition that one, by willingly servicing religion’s economic avarice in life, might have an edge at the Gates of Judgment. The militarists franchised a bit for themselves as they maximized the contemporary (and well remembered) advantages of war’s horror to extract resources dedicated to Eisenhower’s “military industrial complex.”

Interestingly, the doctors were able to also promote their own, small franchise enabled by the same happy neurosis.

“Death fear.” Our interest in controlling as much of this inevitable calamity as possible began to direct our entire economy and our cultural psychology. The religionists promised intercessionary comfort from the hands of the blindly retributive divinity. The militarists promised protection from premature death resulting from violent military aggression here before more acceptable forms of demise. The doctors promised defense from the risk of premature death resulting from preventable or remedial assault by bacteria, viruses and traditional homo sapien system failures.

Health care was slowly redefined from its original purpose. What had once been the hope of “curing what ailed me” became a promise to “live longer.” Although this change was an undetectable subtlety in any specific visit to the family’s physician, the big picture of medicine was becoming enthralled with the prospect of being able to make much greater promises and, as a result, engorge ever larger amounts of the cultural resources. This was the first new addition.

Likewise, our penchant for controlled results subcontracted a growing part of the promises of the doctors’ new found franchise to the compensatory notion of paying for failed promises. Malpractice, although hardly a medical treatment, injected itself into the already heady brew of unrealistic expectations and codependent demands for controlled outcomes. Previously, the successful treatment of some malady was accepted as a happy serendipity. Aside from outright malfeasance, with this next, new addition, medical success could finally embrace the psychotic notion that recovery was the only “fair” outcome of treatment, moving anything less to a status not dissimilar from “breach of contract.”

A third addition was the new idea of directing research toward the most marketable styles of medical problems. There is no way to speculate if the development of Viagra retarded discovering the cure for skin cancer as it diverted research cash, but Viagra is by no means the only distracted target and skin cancer is, equally, by no means the only possibly neglected, alternate break through.

The social culture had delivered all sorts of drugs and treatment regimes to the doctors as it slowly moved away from the heroin and cocaine saturated elixirs of the early 20th century. Once it became clear that a certain treatment advantage might be gained from a more educated dispensing of, say, antibiotics the die was cast. Another addition. Immediately attached to that treatment advantage came a franchised, statutory and dependable addition to direct income. Big. Direct.

In Tijuana or Juarez anyone with enough pesos can simply purchase antibiotics from a pharmacist. The right pharmacists might even offer a suggestion as to selecting the right one. The statutory self-preservation aspects of the doctor franchise will probably prevent you from legally bringing them back to the United States. Antibiotic outcomes are better here with the statutory insistence that they be dispensed by a medical doctor and blanketed by the liability promises made possible by our appetite for compensated malpractice. Those outcomes falter a bit when they include the outcomes of those who must simply suffer without any unaffordable care.

Perhaps the next addition is the idea that, although prescribing medicine is still left under a doctor’s discretion, commercial advertisements can openly seek to direct a potential patient’s interest toward certain pharmaceuticals. The proposition is that this possible, future patient may not know what to tell his doctor so as to initiate this line of necessary, successful and profitable treatment. The infomercials solve that.

Also added are certain psychological presumptions. Departing briefly from the death fear, the capitalists have managed to successfully suggest to doctors (and insurance companies, and pharmaceutical companies) that any diversion from the current system would inevitably curtail what are presently claimed as reasonable, capitalistic profits. The countering view is that these reasonable, capitalistic profits are actually another one of our famous capitalistic “bubbles,” that is, reasonable, capitalistic profits probably not that reasonable after all. This addition survives on innuendo, but it survives.

Another almost subconscious addition has found its way into the mix. It seems that these highly ethical doctors have a habit of “milking” treatment costs in certain situations. In many cases, this has successfully been blamed on the patients. It turns out that extremely low income and minority patients simply don’t know how to consume health care as cost effectively as more well-to-do sick folks. The concept is not too hard to swallow. If these ne’er do wells were smarter, they would find themselves in the more prosperous category.

The obvious conclusion is that health care for these “lower class” patients is far more likely to be unreasonably expensive. The unreasonably expensive idea arises from several origins. The first is, simply, that the more prosperous are paying for it. From that point of view, any treatment at all may as well be unreasonably expensive. We see that brutally manifested in modern political dogma. It has never been easier to “jerk the knee” of an illiterate neocon with even the most innocent mention of an alternate medical economy.

Another important side effect which must be avoided in that argument is the possibility that less than ethical doctors are encouraged to haul their medical franchises to these, well, less desirable neighborhoods where special opportunities for excessively profitable treatment seem to abound. The down side possibility of this neo-conservative, self-fulfilling prophecy is lubricated by maximum resource extraction until the happy day when that dire prediction becomes fact. Poor people love to consume unnecessary medical care when rich people are forced to pay for it. Unethical, lower class doctors love to bill this into existence so long as they are held harmless from criticism, prosecution or Medicare review. This concept has definitely been added to the mix.

Finally, we arrive at the elephant in the living room. Again. Except in this case, the elephant is better cast as a six hundred pound hog. A hungry one. Not directly attaching Sara Palin to the argument, the lipstick issue rises up front and center. This, of course, is the matter of medical outcomes. The question of medical outcomes, inevitably joined at the hip to the question of medical costs, immediately casts its shadow on the question of medical profits and the comparative value of alternative medical economies, not neglecting the strange taint of medical economic ideology. All the feathers swirling around this headless chicken fly right in the face of the “best in the world” axiom describing our health care.

U.S. health care outcomes suck compared to those of comparably prosperous other countries. U.S. health care costs also suck when compared to the same alternative programs. Pay more. Get less.

It isn’t glorious, expensive new inventions that justify our health care costs. Nor waste. Nor welfare fraud. Nor chiropractors. Nor herbalists, accupuncturists or midwives.

It’s profit. You know, profit like the profit buried in the pharmaceutical bill that was authored by the pharmaceutical lobbyists and passed by the, well, pharmaceutical congress at 3 o’clock in the morning.

"Lawzee! Peddlin' these pills turns a better profit than sellin' whores in a lumbercamp!"

At this juncture, our cultural rip current of Marxist paranoia instantly enters the fray at full power. Who, exactly, is getting all this money? Who, exactly, is convincing us that our meager medical outcomes are actually the “best in the world?” What voice keeps telling us that, if we think a social medicine system is so great, to simply visit Canada? Canada, where everyone hates the national health care? Canada, where hordes of sick people flood into the U.S. every day, trying desperately to save their lives? Canada, where pharmaceuticals exploit the huge, honest investments we make here making their socialized price there attractive enough for elderly Americans to ride buses across the United States for a chance to buy them? With uninsured cash? Please.

If not Canada, then Europe. England. South Korea. Japan.

If the elephant in the living room is hard to ignore, discover the pig. Aside from being huge, it also stinks. Hogs also have a famous insistence on eating everything that isn’t bolted down, and this one is no exception.

Quick! Apply the lipstick! The good old “best in the world” lipstick.

Had enough? Remember this medical-pharmaceutical-insurance monopoly franchise on November 4th. Vote.