4/4 The GOP Billionaires: Dr. Freud Will See You Now

"So, we been a little crazy... have we? Well, Dr. Freud is not available, 
but MeanMesa can see you."

The Types and Character of Republican Billionaires

Having "set to flight" all these unexamined misperceptions about the players afoot in this grisly game, we can enjoy much more clarity when we seek out the "kernel" of those concocting this anti-democracy mischief.  Further, before we indict ourselves as "negligently inattentive" or out rightly naive, we might find mitigating comfort from remembering that the deception was designed by experts, sold out psychologists, with a formidable "expertise" at manipulation far more sophisticated than their lesser peers charged with selling us new cars or more expensive tooth paste.

So, let's look squarely at the billionaires.

We can quite comfortably divide the denizens of this remarkably small, moneyed demography into four, more or less, specifically defined groups.  Because this post targets primarily only the last three, we can dispatch the remaining category as a population of plutocrats which has little to do with the "present problems,"  that is, as plutocrats retaining the fundamentals of more or less "normal" human values in spite of their great wealth and accustomed privilege.

We can easily cite examples of this relatively rational, philanthropic and occasionally progressive group: John Kennedy, Franklin Roosevelt, [Republican] Theodore Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, Andrew Carnegie and so on.

However, this "values" business is relevant mainly because of an interesting commonality which runs through all the categories we will mention.  The "commonality?"

In modern cases almost all of these fortunes were inherited by their current owners.  This means that the billionaires in this discussion essentially lack the human experience of ever worked a single shift for an actual wage.

Of course, there are exceptions.  A few have "clawed" their way to top as inventors or entrepreneurs [i.e. Gates, Tesla or Zuckerberg], manipulators of public money  [i.e. Cheney], bankruptcy vultures [i.e. Romney -- although he emerged from a very wealthy family], hedge fund magnates [too numerous for examples] or simply opportunistic corporate CEO's who "never quit" after penetrating the "economic force field" of the Country Club class.  More than a few of the current crop accumulated the "seed money" of their fortune by marrying it [without a pre-nuptial divestiture contract...].

On the other hand the modern economic "genetic nobility" such as the Koch brothers inherited billions of "old money" and pursued every opportunity attached to that good fortune since then.  Politically active billionaires such as the Walton family, while only one generation removed from a modest poverty, apparently developed the characteristic avarice in childhood.

MeanMesa presumes to attribute a general definition to the dream to these "starters" of the now massive, oligarchic dynasties.  Those sturdy, "all work, no play" capitalists at the historical roots of these fortunes dreamed of creating wealth so great that:

1. it would be perpetually self-expanding, permanently dynastic;

2. it would be largely immune from even the most disruptive economic "turns of events;"

3. it would elevate generations of future progeny to such a rich state as to embellish the family name; and,

4. it would create influence through which the "ideology of the founder" could continue to shape and direct social history.

Naturally, the "ideologies of the founders" of these financial "megaliths" of "free enterprise" -- at least when compared to the ideologies of their modern trust fund idiot progeny -- leaves something to be desired.  Ideas which may or may not have actually driven these suspiciously successful ancestors have long ago succumbed to the pathological avarice of their off spring now stalking among us.

The choices of applicable cultural fantasies is, actually, as limited as the dryly ossified social values of these "billionaires by birth."  The model of the brutal, pre-civil war Southern plantation owners clearly has an enduring appeal, but the violent largess of the viciously pragmatic robber barons of America's monopolistic era is a strong competitor

We see a disturbing allocation of habits corresponding to the psychology of the three remaining types of billionaires presently financing the remnants of a failed Republican Party.  MeanMesa will attempt to "rough out" this picture with a few [3] carefully chosen, general profiles.

Type One:  Traditional "Orthodox" GOP "Success Stories"

This group follows the general model of "businessmen" who have prospered in some Congressional region sufficiently to be seen as a "can do" bunch with at least the widely held image of having a possible expertise in operating the business affairs of the government.  Once in office, they can be identified by their absolute lack of any legislative interest in topics other than those which would interest a shop owner.  There will be no involvement in social or justice programs beyond cutting expenses.

Because of this mind set valuing every possible opportunity to increase profits -- first, of course, for themselves and their friends, but also, more expansively for other businessmen with similar values -- we see them legislating to "promote business" while reducing costs.

The particular "cost cutting" which infatuates their "profit is everything" personalities will inevitably find its way to the destruction of organized labor, exporting manufacturing to places with lower wages, the desolation of expensive benefits and the demolishing of expensive regulations on every business activity from banking to burning coal.

Because they abhor being forced into any type of social responsibility, lowering taxes is, naturally, at the center of all their machinations.  The automatic -- and inevitable -- paradox in their political motivation is their almost hypnotic avoidance of the demand side of economies.  They typically cannot see beyond "increasing profits + lowering costs = more profit."  When their economic policies constantly degrade demand, they see only diminished profit.

Historically, this type resembles a benign parasite.  There is never any deviation from the hackneyed myth of the exclusively "supply side" economy.  Interestingly, this type is -- among the three -- the most "bothered" by the "cost impact" of something like the government shut down.

Type Two: Ideological Republican Sociopaths

A dictionary definition of the sociopath sets the stage:

a person with a psychopathic personality whose behavior is antisocial, often criminal, and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience.

MeanMesa will expand the definition slightly to more adequately encompass the nature of this type of Republican billionaire.  This type of sociopathy leads to a state where "lesser people," their difficulties, their frustration, cannot even be seen by the sociopath.  The cruelty found in the behavior of such billionaires is seldom based on malice or is even the result of a conscious decision.  Instead, it is simply callous.  They are systemically unaware of the existence of lives so economically disparate from their own.

When applying inherent values as they produce thought products, these sociopaths work in a mental field hosting a world exclusively similar to their own.  Often, during the formative years of their childhoods, they listened to adults who routinely denigrated all those less fortunate, attaching classicist explanations for the lower states of their existence.

The "explanations," once the child reaches adulthood, have become axiomatic, that is, "mistaken certainties."  Consequently, thoughts constructed on such aberrant platforms elude the automatic condemnation of a more or less properly functioning conscience such as might be found in more normal people.

They are sociopaths.  They have no functioning conscience -- only the fear of exceeding the limits of tolerance of their victims.

When their detachment from their victims reaches a certain completeness, the limiting rationality of this fear buckles, but when these sociopaths segregate themselves from the surrounding reality even further, this fear of a retributive reaction also slips.  For sociopaths the desirability of a government shut down relies solely on its impact on their interests.  They are prone of "over reaching," but they are never apologetic for it.

Type Three: Fully "Detached From Reality" Republican Megalomaniacs

We can begin again with a standard definition of "megalomaniac:"

1. A psychopathological condition characterized by delusional fantasies of wealth, power, or omnipotence.

2. An obsession with grandiose or extravagant things or actions.  A condition or mental illness that causes people to think that they have great or unlimited power or importance.

This class of billionaires has a "supra-transactional" bent to their already questionably stable personalities. Healthier people portray a transactional nature, that is, healthier people derive happiness or satisfaction from transactions in which some compensation is gained.  Of course as such transactions unfold, these healthier folk exchange, trade or expend some strength or resource they have for some other strength or resource they find more desirable in comparison.

The megalomaniacal billionaire never quite completes such a transaction.

When more normal folks observe their normal peers in such transactional processes, the purpose of the transaction is clear, or, at least, comprehensible.  This is not the case with this class of billionaires.

Instead of more common destiny of encountering challenges and occasionally overcoming them, receiving the relief or reward which accompanies victory, the megalomaniac values the position of being able to express power, influence and wealth more than such a tangible reward which would hold so much value normally.

For them resources and power exhibited in their megalomaniacal process need not yield some exchanged value at all in order to satisfy them.  For them simply exercising that power is what yields and produces that satisfaction.  In most cases such individuals already own so much -- so many things and such great wealth -- that there is no real possibility of further enhancing pleasure with the addition of yet something else.

In the economic sense, while extremely powerful and influential and while bathed in almost unimaginable wealth and luxury, they are "anhedonistic." [No longer capable of experiencing pleasure.]  They lack the capacity to feel enjoyment by the addition of still more assets to their fortunes.  This frequently occurs when the scale of wealth becomes so great that even its casual neglect comes to be considered an indulgent luxury.

They have so much money that changes in wealth, that is, having more or less money, no longer matters.  The day after the market collapses, the asteroid hits the planet or a violent war suddenly begins unexpectedly, they will still be thousands of times richer than almost anyone else.

The definition speaks to the "delusion" of immense power, but for these megalomaniacs. this is not delusion -- they have immense power.  For them the delusion concerns the meaning of that immense power, and they suspect that it doesn't mean being an "immense," that is perhaps "a widely respected" or "a widely envied" person, but only a rich one.

All this could easily be a statement about being rich, but set that aside in favor of speculating about the inner psychology such a position would foster.  Think about a tragically skewed world view and a bizarrely twisted identity for one's self.  Think of the self-suspicion and the hollow pain.

This, rather than the accumulated "prizes" of the power and privilege, explains much of this otherwise incomprehensible behavior.

The Strange, Uncommon Dreams 

That Come With Having Endless Money

Just as the alcoholic who, already inebriated to utter stupefaction, finds himself  driven blindly to seek another drink, there is an equivalent obsession with the billionaire.  In the financial sense the plutocrat's obsession with the prospect of accumulating even more wealth strangely parallels the drunken alcoholic's obsession for even more alcohol.  Once inebriated with what has already been drunk or owned, the prospect that another addition will provide another increment of pleasure is the narcotic deception inflicted on both.

Nightmares are personal. (artwork source)

Remember, with these boys it's not about what could be done with more wealth.  Their joy comes from extracting it -- not somehow enjoying it later.  If that "extraction process" reaffirms the fundamentals they learned in their unusual childhoods, their glee is correspondingly greater.

So, what blind ambitious shadows can fill such dark and empty dreams?

This is not a mystery.  In fact this part of the story is brazenly obvious.

Naturally, anything which will divert money otherwise spent in the benefit of those they consider so far beneath themselves back into well disguised corporate coffers attracts their attention immediately.  However, even beyond the lower taxes, subsidies and the rest, non-union factories assembling parts made in their low wage, off shore plants are appealing only partly due to the savings in costs, but also because they represent an opportunity to elevate themselves even higher above those they leave in the bottom rungs of their dynastic ladders.

The larcenous avarice doesn't end there.  The full, three act dream includes the conversion of the nation into a "plantation-like" subservience, that is, into a state of economic, dynastic "war-lord-ism" where the mere mention of their family name elicits the same rapt attention and obedience as that of a Senator or President does now.

Absolutely any legislative act the billionaires can coerce or bribe their Congressional [state or federal] minions into providing for them is welcome so long as it adds even one grain of sand to this mountain they dream of building.

In their accounts today we see that this tiny minority of a few thousand billionaires own more of the United States than the 150 million Americans in the bottom class.  Their wealth has increased 300% in the last four decades while middle class wealth plummeted 40% in a few days in September of 2008.

It's a mistake to presume that these billionaires are personally infatuated with their highly visible, destructive penchants for war making, union busting, abortion, deregulation, gun ownership or twisted propagandistic abstractions such as "freedom and liberty."  They are consumed with a blind appetite for wealth and dominance -- increases leading to even more wealth and even more power -- at any cost and through any means necessary.

Domination of the vast population around them represents as much or more of an incentive as increased wealth.

[MeanMesa note:  This discussion could have been "packed to bursting" with specific examples in every one of these cases, but we're looking for the "big picture" here.]

While often providing a fixation for unexamined envy, these oligarchs behave hatefully.  For those of us with "enough years under our belt" to fully acknowledge this, the next conclusions emerge at once. 

Obsessions are tormenting.  Obsessions which knowingly injure the lives of others find no respite.  They are torture, and the misery which accompanies even successes among their execution is constant.

Perhaps enthralled with the prospect of an increased interest payment or cruelly excited by a further elevation of their comparatively elite positions, these GOP billionaires are, most likely, quite comfortable not only with the government shut down, but also with the even graver consequences of default.

After all,when the US and global economies have plummeted into the abyss, these oligarchs will still be richer, will still own more, will still be more secure than all those they see suffering around them -- if they even see them.

Is is an exaggeration?  Some easily repeated "talking point" that MeanMesa has found attractive?

Hardly.

Current economic estimates of the cost of the "first tier" defaults set the damage at 23 times to total damage of the Lehman bankruptcy in 2008.  That Chapter 11 dissolution racked up an estimated $1, 400 Bn in losses if the Wiki article is accurate, but -- more importantly -- visitors to this blog know first hand the scope of the catastrophe, the Great Republican Recession of 2008, which followed.

Years later the planetary economy is still "punch drink" from the hit, so:

1. think about what a $30,000 Bn hit might inflict, and,

2. try to imagine being a GOP billionaire, knowing that this would be the effect of your Congressional influence racket, and then, still doing it anyway.

A Primer - The Trillions, The Economist & The Progressive Caucus

The $Trillions

Below the radar, important ideas about our treatment for the Bush Deficit Sickness are emerging daily.  Before any confusing details are put forth, lets always remember exactly what happened in 2008 -- that is, the "big picture."

The total US "wealth," that is, the total of all domestic assets "collapsed" from around $62 Trillion to around $53 Trillion.  We are expected to believe that this money simply vanished.  For a bit of foundational reporting, take a look at some excerpts from this Wall Street Journal article from March, 2009. (Read the article here.)

Americans See 18% of Wealth Vanish

(excerpts)

By S. MITRA KALITA

The wealth of American families plunged nearly 18% in 2008, erasing years of sharp gains on housing and stocks and marking the biggest loss since the Federal Reserve began keeping track after World War II.

The Fed said Thursday that U.S. households' net worth tumbled by $11 trillion -- a decline in a single year that equals the combined annual output of Germany, Japan and the U.K. The data signal the end of an epoch defined by first and second homes, rising retirement funds and ever-fatter portfolios.

Past downturns have been mere blips compared with the losses Americans faced last year, which set them back to below 2004 levels. "In the postwar period, we've never had anything other than very modest declines. That life experience led many people to think that houses were a one-way bet," says Douglas Cliggott, the chief investment officer of Dover Management LLC.

The decline in Americans' net worth, which was the first in six years, follows an extraordinary boom. Not accounting for inflation, household wealth more than doubled from 1990 to 2000, and then, after a pause, rose nearly 50% before the bust of 2008.

The recession that began in December 2007 has reversed a particularly long boom. "What's misleading about this being the biggest drop is that it was preceded by one of the biggest rises," says David Backus, an economics professor at the New York University Stern School of Business. "Even where it's come down to is not a low level compared to the last 50 years of history."

In all, the net worth of U.S. households stood at $51.48 trillion at the end of 2008, the Fed data showed. Besides being down 17.9% from a year earlier, it was down 9% just from the third quarter.

The net-worth figure encompasses all of families' assets -- housing, stocks, personal property -- minus their total debts.

The balance sheets of a normal bank right after a stupendous robbery would show the amount that the bank's assets had been reduced.  A further conclusion would be that the money which had been stolen was now the property of the bank robbers.  Everything that they took out of the bank went into their pockets.

However, this nation wide heist would look a little different from the "straight ahead" figures of the recently victimized bank.  The heist which occurred "nation wide" was not quite as efficient as our hypothetical bank robbery.  To make it somewhat more similar, we would have to add the additional idea that some of the stolen money wasn't actually worth very much.  

The part which went into the pockets of the "bank robbers" was the part which was, actually, worth full value.  The immense scope of the scheme introduced some unavoidable inefficiencies.  The "full take" of the perpetrators was significantly less than the entire amount which had "gone missing."

At first, we might simply accuse the robbers of not being careful enough to "really get their money's worth" from the gamble.  However, the take in this scheme was so immense that even a substantial loss turned out to be quite acceptable.  

The "take?"

In 2009 -- when the article was written -- the take amounted to around $9 Trillion.  In the two subsequent years, the "take" has gradually grown to around $12 Trillion as more and more of the scheme became public, that is, as more and more of the damage finally reached the accounting department.

So we have two things to consider.  One is the amount of the "take" which reached the pockets of the crooks, and the other is the amount of damage which was inflicted on the economy.  If the title of the 2009 WSJ article is correct, that is, if some part of the wealth simply "vanished," then the "vanished" part would be the "damage" part.

Otherwise, we could simply look around the country and find a small collection of folks who were walking around with $12 Trillion dollars in their collective pockets.  Further, we could remove all those Trillions from their collective pockets, somehow reinsert them into the domestic economy and our recession problems would, theoretically, be over.  It isn't quite that simple.

MeanMesa has used a quote from Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) frequently in many previous postings.  "Not everyone had a hard time during the last eight years. (Bush Jr. administration)  The top 400 richest Americans saw their  personal wealth increase by $630 Billion dollars."

Look at the numbers.  First, $630 Billion is roughly 5/8's of a $Trillion.  Next, if these were the "top" 400, how many Americans are there in the "top 2%" everyone is talking about?  Thousands.  Actually, tens of thousands.

That "top 2%," along with an even larger crowd of slightly "less rich" hangers-on are the ones who are now sucking the huge, continuing the Bush Jr. "tax cuts" out of what is left of the economy.  Remember, the "missing money" amounts to around $12 Trillion.  When we discount the "vanished" money, that is, the part of the "take" which didn't actually make any of these folks richer but still mortally wounded the economy for the rest of us,  there's still plenty left over to have made these rich folks even richer.  

A lot richer.  They became John Boehner's bosses.  They ordered the House Republicans to extend their tax cuts at any price.  They ordered the House Republicans to forget about jobs, to work full time on transferring the Social Security Trust fund to their Wall Street cronies.

We know what Boehner, Ryan, Cantor and the rest of them have been ordered to accomplish for these bosses of theirs.  Every day we see more of the scheme unfolding in the House of Representatives, on wing nut talk shows and in the embarrassing comments of tea bags who now sit in state legislatures.

The Economist

For the second part of this posting, we consider the recent editorial by Nobel Prize Winning Economist, Paul Krugman.  ( Links are enabled. Read the original article here.)

Wait a minute.  This article is about Romney Care and progressive ideals.  What does this have to do with "Trillions?"

If we recall the words of President Obama both during his campaign and at the outset of the "debate" on health care reform,  it turns out that the issues are "sewn together at the hip." 

The GOPCons are fixated on this sector of the economy while carefully avoiding the "elephant in the living room," defense spending.  Just as law enforcement breathes a sigh of relief with the prospect of arresting passive pot smokers instead of chasing white collar crooks who can "bite back," GOPCons are far more comfortable attacking the poor and the elderly who have no troublesome lobbyists in the halls of power.

So?  So health care costs are at the foundation of economic recovery.

April 25, 2011, 1:03 pm

The Road to Romneycare

Yglesias looks at calls for a return to something like the McCain health plan — subsidies for individuals to buy insurance on the open market — and gets it exactly right: once you think seriously about how this would work, you end up with something that looks very much like the health reform we have.

Suppose we give people help buying insurance. This doesn’t help people with pre-existing conditions, who won’t be able to get insurance anyway. So we add community rating: insurers can’t discriminate based on medical history.

But this leads to a problem with adverse selection: healthy young people will drop coverage, leaving behind a bad risk pool and high costs. So we add a mandate, requiring that everyone get coverage.

But some people can’t afford to do this. So we add means-tested subsidies to help lower-income citizens.

And you’ve just described the Massachusetts health reform, aka Romneycare, which in turn is basically the same as Obamacare.

There are no more conservative alternatives — not unless you give up on the whole idea that everyone should have coverage. There are alternatives to the left — single-payer, VA-style government provision — but Obamacare is already as conservative as a plan to make health insurance more or less universal can be.

The Progressive Caucus Budget

We have all seen the Ryan "spending cut" proposal.  We all have also seen where the "saved money" the Ryan proposal would "save" will wind up when the dust clears.  The idea is so bad that even the spineless Senate Democrats are completely, entirely, eagerly comfortable with the prospect of having it reach a floor vote.  

Political maneuvering-wise, nothing could be "less threatening" and "more promising" than having all the GOPCons in the Senate vote for the wretched thing out in the open for all to see.  The 2012 races for Senate seats, they think, will become something similar to a "hot knife slicing room temperature butter" with enough emphasis on the GOPCon wet dream of destroying MediCare.

The sensible Obama Budget may as well be lounging in the waiting room of a crematorium.  MeanMesa thinks that the perhaps overly civil President has finally noticed that "negotiations" with the savage GOPCons should not necessarily always begin with an effort to come as close as possible to the other side's position.

So, what's left?

Spend a few minutes following the links in the following, final part of this post.

Eliminates National Deficit by 2021

Read the People's Budget

Read The Technical Analysis and Working Paper

The CPC proposal:

• Eliminates the deficits and creates a surplus by 2021

• Puts America back to work with a “Make it in America” jobs program

• Protects the social safety net

• Ends the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

• Is FAIR (Fixing America’s Inequality Responsibly)

What the proposal accomplishes:

• Primary budget balance by 2014.

• Budget surplus by 2021.

• Reduces public debt as a share of GDP to 64.1% by 2021, down 16.5

percentage points from a baseline fully adjusted for both the doc fix and the AMT patch.

• Reduces deficits by $5.6 trillion over 2012-21, relative to this adjusted baseline.

• Outlays equal to 22.2% of GDP and revenue equal 22.3% of GDP by 2021.

Support for the People's Budget
Paul Krugman
Jeffrey Sachs
The Economist
The New Republic
The Washington Post
Rachel Maddow
The Guardian
The Nation
Center for American Progress
Economic Policy Institute

For more information on the "players," take a look at the following links.  We need to "own" this proposal.

Democratic Leadership

Nancy Pelosi

Democratic Leader

Steny Hoyer

Office of the Democratic Whip

John B. Larson Democratic Caucus Chair

Rep. Raul Grijalva 1511 Longworth HOBWashington, DC

20515ph (202) 225-2435

Rep. Keith Ellison 1027 Longworth HOBWashington, DC  

20515ph (202) 225-4755

A Christmas Carol for 2009

The Uninvited Ghosts of Christmas Come To Call.

No need to change the sheets in the guest room, you'll be moving outside.

For a complete public domain text, including an audio, of Charles Dickens,

A Christmas Carol

http://www.timlebon.com/A%20Christmas%20Carol%20by%20Charles%20Dickens%20-%20Scrooge.html#Complete_text_of_A_Christmas_Carol_by

November of 2008 found the grotesque wreckage of the autocracy lurching awkwardly to an unseemly ending. It had, apparently, eaten itself -- along with much of the treasure of the rest of the country. The landscape was scarred by the plunder which had raged forward, unabated under the cover of the W.

Between the election and the inauguration, three months would pass amid the collapsed economy, the missing trillions, the wounded 401K accounts, the wars staggering, unmanaged across the Middle East and the horrid, violent rumblings of terrified, desperate dictatorships in North Korea and Iran.

Admittedly, MeanMesa's idea of a good time for that moment had to do with guillotines and proletariat mobs rushing along Pennsylvania Avenue and Wall Street. Happily, cooler minds prevailed. Happily, cooler minds had been elected and were in charge.

Between November of 2008 and January of 2009 a single question floated about everywhere in the country. We all either knew for certain or suspected mightily that the democracy was in grave peril. Would the Junior Bush and his crime family leave office peacefully? Was there a sufficient remnant of the nation remaining in tact after the looting to spur a momentary reluctance to engage in even greater, even more ambitious, more unbelievably outrageous dreams of power for the unelected incumbent W?

With strange childhood fears still haunting the autocrat, he blinked. The nation and the democracy prevailed, perhaps even in the face of unlikely odds.

However, since the first flicker of actual daylight warmed the wounded and the dead, three unsettling faces have come to visit our table in 2009. We can say what they are right here. We can consider this entire collection of incomplete or artificial mindsets a grisly parody of Dickens' Ghosts of Christmas.

2009 -- the Ghost of Christmas Past

The gravity of those dark moments when this young country teetered on the edge of a permanent descent into oligarchy have passed too quickly. We could be discussing the descent into the purgatorial limbo of a trashed economy, but, looking back, MeanMesa sees the crisis as one with far greater breadth.

The Ghost of Christmas Past carries with it the memory -- or the dream -- or the nightmare -- of the state of the nation before the destruction began. With such a pleasant, calming wraith entreating the survivors with comforting visions of times long ago lost, the gravity of the looting and other destruction slips into a sleepy numbness. Why, in no time we deserve to be right back where we were before!

We dream that our houses will regain their value. We dream that Wall Street will be conveniently distracted by new rushes of money flowing into its bottomless coffers. We dream that our armies will win simple, understandable victories, extracting undefined success from unmanaged catastrophes. We dream that, around the world, the unsuccessfully frightened will once again quake at the mighty countenance of our unquestioned power, shelving their fetal H-Bombs and returning to a quiet subservience.

The Ghost of Christmas Past will tempt us with every delight from petticoats to V-8 Buicks, all shrouded in a pleasing narcotic sauce.

Unfortunately, that vision is not credible, and it shouldn't be. Yet, a large minority of American citizens continue to frame the entire scope of possibilities in the fleeting promises of this Ghost of Christmas Past. This "slippage from reality" is tenderly fostered by those wishing only to prevent Obama from "righting the ship."

Reckless and desperate, these voices of the Ghost of Christmas Past seem, when considered perhaps too generously, to be obsessed with completing the destruction of the country. From ex-Vice Presidents to mindless "dirty shirt preachers" to drawling Southerners in the Congress to inflammatory right wing talk show hosts, they care nothing about "righting the ship" and everything about yet one more, cheap manipulation of every hill billy and bigot who will still listen to them.

All these have a maxim, and that maxim is the chorus behind the Ghost of Christmas Past's every word and thought. The maxim?

"Nothing is real."

Everything is politics. Everything is immediate advantage -- regardless of the cost of neglecting the horrible, impending rush of national collapse. They have become infatuated with remaining the "top dogs" in the "I told you so" crowd, that is, narcotized -- infatuated with an impossible dream of a non-existent Christmas Past even when the cold ocean water pours into the sinking ship, chilling their ankles.

We can see even progressives joining the lament. There are progressives who have begun to drink the Kool-Aid of the Ghost of Christmas Past. For example, Ed Schultz, an AM radio host MeanMesa respects greatly, now voices criticism of the President for not solving the problems which face us. However, these laments of his fall on ears still seeking choices we do not have. The President is doing everything possible to increase the number of choices we have with his administration's policies, and the fact is that the choices Ed Schultz insists upon are simply not choices we actually enjoy.

One more time. The whimsical, immaterial possibilities in the song of the Ghost of Christmas Past are defined by debating choices we do not have at the present moment. Logic tells us that we can either lament the narcotic dream choices we no longer enjoy or begin in earnest to replace them with possibilities which actually exist.

Some of this criticism is "validated" by our memory of something FDR said when confronted by those wishing to remove racism from the country. "Make me do it!" What FDR was actually telling these progressives of his day was that the choice of removing racism was not a choice he had. His response to them was, "Get busy! Put this choice on the table! If you do that, I will make the choice!"

Perhaps Mr. Schultz finds himself -- and the President -- in a similar position as the civil rights proponents and FDR. The deep bite of Mr. Schultz's criticism may actually be vindicated when considered this way. Perhaps, he is only acting "to make Obama do it." MeanMesa is watching both Schultz (and, there are many others...) and the President, hoping that this is the case.

2009 -- The Ghost of Christmas Present

A new President, armed with a formidable pragmatism, finds himself embattled as he tries to sustain what is, very likely, still a sinking ship. To his right, he is standing off the crumbling pillars of an imaginary position of prosperity and strength. To his left, he is trying to frantically re-educate the American public to a minimal state where it might rationally understand its desperate circumstances and become committed to introducing violently necessary, uncomfortable new choices.

On his inauguration day, Obama could not help but see the storm advancing on the nation. As a admirable optimist and idealist, he saw that the country, in some form, really could survive the threats now facing it. However, as he reviewed "his troops," he saw a disturbing confusion, a defect so serious that, if left uncorrected, might permanently destroy the last, fleeting chance for restoring what was left to some kind of viable form which could continue to exist in the future.

It was another case of Primary and Secondary Models. The Primary Model encompassed the entire material scope of the wreckage -- the economy staggering forward denuded of its life blood, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan fumbling along in mindless carelessness, health care's potentially bankrupting gravity, the savagery of the brokers and bankers as they continued to extract far more than they deserved, the petulance of Iran and North Korea, and the list went on. The Primary Model comprised the tangible responses to all of this.

The Secondary Model was just as dismal. Setting aside all the tangible threats of the Primary Model, the Secondary Model dealt entirely with the national psychology. After all, it would be the citizens of the United States who would ultimately decide to dedicate themselves to the solutions of all these problems.

However, Obama found himself with great numbers of citizens unwilling to risk anything, unwilling to sacrifice anything. Citizens unwilling to take their turn at bailing water from the sinking ship.

Retreating to the very optimism and ideals which had made him so popular, Obama now faced the reality of the Secondary Model. All these overly selfish citizens, he insisted, were not really crazy or greedy. Once they were given a reasonable chance to understand the nature of the threats we faced, Obama remained hopeful that a new strength could be nurtured, based on a new national rationality.

However, no matter how pressing the immediacy of the threats of the Primary Model, the crippling disadvantage of the Secondary Model would have to be addressed first. A new national psychology would be required before material steps to survive the threats of the Primary Model would become possible. The citizens must be brought into a new state of awareness where their concern and willingness to participate could emerge to face the "meat grinder."

How could the scales of decades of carefully groomed blindness be removed from the faces of those who would, by stark necessity, be required to march in his army?

Obama, had he indulged the role as the Ghost of Christmas Present, might have simply launched out in one revealing diatribe after another, exposing those who perpetually placed personal gain above any national consideration. There might have been massive indictments arising from the Department of Justice, rounding up the scoundrels en mass to face their day in court.

However, the President found the country unable to reasonably "consume" such a terrific correction. The citizens who encountered this Ghost of Christmas Present still gazed through disruptive lenses, still saw all of the possible choices as the artificial ones which had been so meticulously inserted into their understanding of everything.

It is one thing to inspire a soldier to return fire in anger or self-preservation when he is on the battle ground. It is another to inspire him to face that risky uncertainty when he cannot understand or accept that he is on a battle ground. The nation Obama inherited was convinced that there was no battle ground, that bleeding would be unnecessary and that the perpetrators of this disaster were, actually, only slightly misguided in their avarice and ambition.

His first steps as he worked on the Secondary Model was to reveal the enemy. A public who remained convinced that there was no "battle ground" and no "enemy" needed to be shown the dismal reality of the situation, and, even though the President faced literal Visigoths at the Gates, he would have to delay the defense of the state until he could credibly convince the citizens that those Vandals were anything more threatening than mere innocent tourists.

Out came Obama's spot lights. The citizens needed to see for themselves the unchecked greed and corruption which had insinuated itself into the congress. The health care debate accomplished that education "in spades." The citizens needed to see for themselves the unthinkable avarice of the brokers and bankers who would take their tax dollars, pause for a moment, then catapult themselves into yet another crippling binge of greed and arrogance. The citizens needed to see for themselves the endless, nauseating temptations offered by the military to mindlessly increase war, always promising some undefined success if the military adventures were just resourced a little more.

Obama's spot lights did not reveal just a few, isolated cases where tax payers had been carefully cast as pigeons, but rather, an epidemic horde of such miscreants who had, it seemed, permanently attached themselves to the necks of the citizenry like vampire bats.

The Ghost of Christmas Present sang the calming song that everything was alright, everything was as it should be. Vast numbers of citizens remained hypnotized under that convenient and comfortable thrall. Yet, Obama bravely faced the necessity that all these sleeping citizens must awake and participate in their own survival. The spell must be broken.

The President has had some significant success at this undertaking, this illumination he must perform before he can actually face the real problems. Many of the uncommitted among us have, if not actually becoming committed, at least begun to be very suspicious about the implied "reality" of that narcotic song of the Ghost of Christmas Present. Obama patiently continues his relentless revelation of the perfidy we face at the hands of these obsessively greedy types, their cynical purchase of the representatives we have always previously trusted and relied upon, and the grave danger they now present to the survival of the nation.

2009 -- The Ghost of Christmas To Come

There are clearly two dreams for the future. One will be a soothing return to the hypnotic avoidance of "everything real" sponsored by the dream that America will, somehow, return to the state of high addiction we were convinced that we enjoyed before. The other will be a rational, clear headed appraisal of what possibilities we actually have, given the wounds which have effectively crippled us during our "period of distraction."

There are, actually, real possibilities for our future, but they are not ones which will simply arrive untended or by gleeful serendipity, the automatic and entitled result of our national "exceptionalism." As Americans we will be required to design these future dreams and commit ourselves to sacrifice and work for their accomplishment.

If the lessons of President Obama and the Ghost of Christmas Present have adequately educated us about the reality of our present moment, we will have the understanding to accomplish this design for the future. Should we, as citizens, remain intoxicated with a dreamy past which never actually existed, employing that "house of shadows" as the foundation of our hope for the future, our possibilities for a future "in reality" -- that is, a future punctuated with "real" goals, "real" work and "real" accomplishments -- fades dramatically.

The ugly fact is that we can, actually, continue along the path we have taken toward our own destruction. There remains still more wealth in the nation which can be thoughtlessly consumed for still a few more months or years until we find ourselves entirely, completely, inescapably and irretrievably bankrupt. We can "privatize" our sidewalks when everything else has been sold, sell the titles to them to the Chinese and throw one last "history bending binge" of a frenzied consumption party, but, after that, we will have to turn off the lights and stagger into the forest, naked.

On the other hand, we can cease "humming along" with the song of the Ghost of Christmas To Come, roll up our sleeves, recapture our hope, defeat those who would enslave us in our own inebriation of mindless consumption and unexamined greed and fear, and design a future for ourselves. We can forever dispatch the drunken fantasy that we will return to an imaginary past because we are entitled to it. We can learn all the moving parts about where, exactly, we are as we begin our reconstruction.

We can base our new definition of our future on choices we actually have.

MeanMesa's compliments to the President.

For more points of view about America's economic future, Ben Stein in the NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/business/29every.html

and Trevor Shipp on FinancialNut, a fairly good background article:

Is Hyperinflation Looming in America’s Economic Future?

http://www.financialnut.com/is-high-inflation-looming-in-our-economys-future/

MeanMesa encourages visitors to "Google around!" We all need to be "up to speed" on this matter because it is happening RIGHT NOW!

and for MeanMesa, eating its own -- Obama's Recovery: Partners or Predators

http://meanmesa.blogspot.com/2009/04/obamas-recovery-partners-or-predators.html

Halloween Comes For the GOP!

Hey, all you crackers and other crooks,

"something wicked this way comes...!"*

*Something Wicked This Way Comes is a Ray Bradbury title and a GREAT book!

Everyone has been patiently listening to their wholly-owned Senators and the Congressional hill-billies squealing about socialism while they're dithering around, doing the business of their masters, but this Halloween season is bringing another little something to put in their bag of ill gotten goodies. Now, that "goodies" bag is usually just chock full of tax money they've looted during their "free market" Congressional rounds, but Halloween 2009 style may be something of a disappointing surprise for them.

Of course, all their complaints about the health care bill "traveling way too fast" through the Congress are only the latest masquerade they bring to the festival. Any bill moving as fast as this one is, simply put, moving too fast to be properly looted on its transit through the Senate. The looters find it rather troubling that Obama has no intention of slowing anything down.

Having made that now, road weary note concerning health care, we can move effortlessly to the point of this MeanMesa posting. Day by day it becomes more inescapably clear that the real complaint of the health care bill's detractors deals with an old, very traditional, Republican talking point. That would be "The Redistribution of Wealth." The Anti-Health Care Senators, sitting with massive $1,000,000 per day campaign contributions flowing into their all white war chests, are trying their best to protect their, uh, contributors from any possibility of having to "redistribute" their wealth.

The health insurance parasites are becoming unmanageably nervous. We see this in their desperate and pathetic, half-baked public relations adventures. The issue of "The Redistribution of Wealth" is, actually, precisely what is frightening them so much. Their idea of a good time has always been a nice monopolistic, non-competitive, forced labor camp world where they can set insurance prices freely -- that is, set premium rates with only the single reason being the fact that they just simply decide to increase their profits.

The Halloween problem for them, however, is that "The Redistribution of Wealth" is actually a two way street!

After all these prosperous decades of "redistributing" the wealth of anyone who might need health insurance (that is, everyone) into their bloated pockets, they are now facing the unpleasant possibility of having to compete for their corporate profits. Although this appears to be no less than "outrageous fate" when viewed from their eyes, for the rest of us it looks, just as simply, as an economic correction. Our wealth is about to be "redistributed" back to us!

This alone causes a new apoplexy behind all the gates of all those gated communities. And well it should. The flow of money historically flowing into those pockets of theirs amounts to roughly one sixth of the national gross domestic product (NGDP). Now, a sizable chunk of that money is going to be "redistributed" to the people who actually earned it in the form of reduced health insurance costs. The incredibly rich and prosperous are aghast that all the expensive Senators whose souls they have perpetually rented seem unable to stop this unfortunate development.

But MeanMesa's Halloween turns out to have more than one costume. Obscured behind the tea-bagging chaos of the health care debate, rests an even more ominous -- at least, ominous for the billionaires -- horizon. A horizon which seems to be drawing closer with every sunrise.

The stimulus money is about to reach reality. That is, the stimulus money is about to reach the reality of main street. We need to take a closer look at this. It has many incredibly spooky, yet beautiful masks.

First, we can set out a few observations concerning the mental state of those who are watching this miracle of democracy unfold. What had, up to this point, been a theoretical recession -- albeit a recession of immense proportions -- is now materializing in every city and village of the realm. It isn't going away, and it isn't getting any better. It is getting worse.

Americans who were previously "deeply troubled" by the monster are now becoming Americans who are being deeply wounded by the monster. It is no longer theoretical. It has arrived at the door of every home in the country, at least, every home in the country with an adjusted taxable income of less than, say, $1 million a year. There are bankruptcies, foreclosures, uncertain job securities and functional businesses closing their doors from lack of credit.

Most likely, all this is little more than a light breakfast for the monster. The billionaires are waiting in the shadows with their purses bulging, full of Paulsen dollars. They are waiting for the approaching moment where lower wages will look like a Godsend to American labor. They are waiting for the moment when previously successful businesses, starved into submission by a well engineered lack of credit, can be purchased for a dime on the dollar. They are waiting for that new skyscraper they have always secretly wanted, but couldn't, until now that is, afford.

What exactly could be the bright side of something like this?

That bright side is best seen in the faces of the younger Americans who are surfing through this calamity with all the lassez faire optimism of youth. This 2009 Halloween is bringing something out into the light which they have not seen before in their young lives. They are about to see the actual wealth of our country emerge in repaired roads, schools, clinics and libraries right in their hometown!

Money which had always previously disappeared as it wound its way through the Congress is now actually going to survive that gauntlet. Tax money which used to simply vaporize into dollar gobbling ghosts such as the Reagan and Bush Tax Cuts for Millionaires, is now going to resurface to pay for local projects!

Young Americans have never seen anything like this. American prosperity, so far as they have been concerned, has always been for others, the well connected, the tax welfare corporate elite. The young ones have watched the country slip into a place riddled with broken bridges, war profiteering and corporate tax dodging, but, absent any functional civics classes in their high schools, they have remained accepting and complacent. They have never been provided an alternative reality with which to judge their actual prosperity compared to their theoretical prosperity!

The fact is that the nation has been continuously slipping into a third world status under the constant looting of our national treasure by neo-con puppets and their fat cat masters. At the moment, 10% of our population has "redistributed" 80% of all national wealth into their own coffers. But the prospects of this Halloween herald something a bit different. This Halloween there will be a glimpse of American wealth -- spelled tax money -- arriving at a thousand places to make a down payment on the neglect made so seemingly necessary by the avarice of the fat purse crowd.

The spell has been broken.

Once the young -- and the not so young -- among us see the material wealth we constantly pour into the treasury of the country return in a way which actually supports and maintains the country, they are going to be, well, pissed. Any fleeting chance that this new demographic of observers will somehow drift mindlessly back to the Republican Party in the next election has just received a death blow, a real Halloween surprise!

Hooray! It's not scary at all! (unless you're a billionaire...)

Obama’s Recovery: Partners or Predators?

Is the President playing “Go Fish” or Chess?

Teaching neo-cons that there can more on the table besides a “carrot or a stick.” 86

Americans listened, considered and agreed with the propositions for national recovery presented in the Obama campaign. If there were any confusion, we may now conclude it arose from the painstaking media grooming of its implied image of the depth and severity of the economic looting done under the cover of the Bush autocracy. Over the decades of “conservative” administrations such as Reagan or the senior Bush, we have grown passively accepting of a routine corruption which had been presented as an "acceptable" and entirely "American," neo-con "leadership" principle.

It has gone even further than that.

We have accepted these gradually growing insults piece meal (Remember the frog who jumps from the boiling water, but remains, comfortably, in the slowly warming, tepid pan?” Yum. Boiled frog.) Americans have slowly and patiently been convinced that a great number of reactionary, neo-con principles are American values or, even, make sense.. For example, in the past couple of weeks from this writing, an “American flag” ship was “piratized” off the coast of Somalia. Its legitimate and honorable “mission” there was the delivery of urgently needed humanitarian supplies to our national friends in Kenya.

But wait.

The reason that ship was flying an American flag -- it had been temporarily renamed after the State of Alabama -- was thanks to a UN ruling. For some reason, the goods of our well intentioned altruism had to be purchased in the US at a price eight times higher than the same commodities could be purchased in the region. For some reason, those commodities had to be transported in an “American flag” ship which plied the waters of the Middle East at eight times the cost of a local alternative.

For some reason? For what reason? The neo-cons have successfully imposed their idea that any good act should begin with a good profit.

The same things happen everywhere. The Indians were persuaded to quit producing generic AIDS drugs, making the Bush Altruism Initiative of aiding African states with that disease one which purchased only “full priced,” first line, American made pharmaceuticals for the effort. Coupled with the irrational neo-con -- and now, Papal -- condemnation of prophylactic supply, promotion and use, the pharmaceutical model of “altruistic” profitability was realized, lubricated and firmly saddled astride vacuous, failed premises of abstinence and other convenient, recent appliances of the prevailing mythology.

These points are presented as example of our amazing, well developed idea that men cannot do good for any reason if it excludes profit. The possibility of assistance, altruism or even cooperation must always be offered in conjunction with an appealing, “oh, by the way,” kind of suddenly and innocently discovered profit.

With this brief account of fundamental neo-con psychology, let us move on the matter of the stimulus and its unwilling participants -- partners and predators.

Why are these participants unwilling and why are these participants, well, even participants in the first place?

First, who are they? The list can easily be extracted from the tedious, frustrating denizens of the current news cycle. There were bankers who got money to make loans and then didn’t make loans. There were health care HMO’s who received an invitation to change their ways, then didn’t change their ways. There were car company executives who were told to rationally reorganize themselves who then proposed “changes” which guaranteed the continuation of their same ruthlessly destructive past policies. There were pharmaceutical companies who were told to release their legislatively protected extortion-strangle-hold on the medical franchise. There were Wall Street “hedge hogs,” oil speculators and investment bankers who were told that they had to “take a hit” on their inflated, imaginary profit and loss statements, who, instead, scrambled around to move their imaginary “profits” off shore so they could pay all of their attention to the looting of the stimulus money (“stay the course,” “cut the taxes,” “make me whole,” et cetera).

All of them were train wreck remnants of the “If anything good is going to happen, it is going to happen to me!” greed ideology of the past. Their obsession of the moment is an arrogant example of their hubris, that is, their absolute rejection of the new “change” and “cooperate” theme of the Obama administration -- and the electorate which created it. Naturally, the first step for these brain dead felons was to purchase some Senators, which they did. By the way, some of our Senators are simply too frightened or honorable to enlist in this outrage. It seems that the real bargains in the Senate are the bourbon drenched neo-con bigots -- hillbillies with an ill advised continuing allegiance to the previous regime of Bush protected avarice.

All these folks seriously believe that what is happening to us right now is nothing more than a current model of what has happened to us in the past. Although this may be more exciting than usual to these “geniuses of capitalism” who are managing the pharmaceutical, banking, health care and other no bid contracting interests, they remain convinced that Obama’s efforts to rescue our economy present nothing new, that is, simply more of the same opportunities which have served their historical extraction practices in the past. They expect and intend to emerge from this “difficulty of the masses” with even fatter pockets and the “ownership deeds” to even more Senators.

Did we ever imagine what feelings a vampire might experience after he sucked the blood from the last living human? In this case, he would convince himself that his last victim was actually not the last living human and fly off gleefully in search of his next prey.

Obama’s proffered gambit was simple enough. “Stop exploiting our economy. It cannot survive any more of your pretend version of free marketism. All of you parasites have done unacceptably well for yourselves at the expense of everyone else, and now, the 'everyone else' is staggering along, near death, as you contemplate your schemes to extract even more from the ambulance staff which has come to rescue them.”

He has asked the bankers to take his bail out money and change their ways, take a few risks for the good of the country (for them, country = their personal finances). Instead, they have been shopping to purchase each other in the hour of peril while sitting on their bulging coffers of bail out money. He has asked the health care moguls to reconfigure their extortion to include the interest of those in the electorate who might need a doctor. Instead, those same moguls have redirected all their discretionary profits to an ad campaign to wreck his Presidency.

Obama has asked the executives of GM and Chrysler to “bleed a little” and reconfigure their business plans to something remotely rational. Instead, they have collapsed to their road weary, inflammatory “swan song” of blaming the unions for everything. He has asked the Senators to, provocatively to them, think of the good of the country instead of their “astonishingly beneficent campaign contributions.” Instead, they -- along with their neo-con progeny in the House -- have marched lockstep in a dismal phalanx of denial and greed all the while hoping in their wet dreams for Obama's failure and destruction.

Does all this describe a foolish failure of a pollyanna in the White House? Has the new President continued to “walk into the props” of a superior neo-con meat grinder whose sole claim to fame is more experience at cynicism?

Maybe not.

Who is ready to characterize Obama’s rather formidable capacity for effective political strategy based on such a short sighted view of his leadership path as it has emerged thus far? If you have this inclination, perhaps you should consider lowering your voice for a few months. If you think his embarrassing rejection at the hands of the so-called House Republicans signifies evidence of a lethal miscalculation in his political tactics, perhaps you should wait for the next act in this play.

Still, it seems that every ambitiously honorable attempt by this White House has ended poorly, that is, all the entreaties “across the aisle” have resulted in another of his restorative plans being dragged behind the truck of guffawing and boisterously emboldened, medievalist Republicans and other corporate schemers. The “Fox Conclusion?” The President is, aside from being a socialist, fascist, traitor, Muslim, gun controlling, international relations appeasing, abortion financing, gay black man, a ninny. The Foxites believe that they have prevailed. The tea baggers think that their frenzied message, whatever it was, is compelling, that is, has gained traction. The bankers think that they will be vindicated in the future, elevated by their tenacious grip on their publicly financed “McDuck Money Bins” and their complete refusal to participate in the resurrection of the economy or the country, now in a mortal, death grip peril. The AIG boys assume that tax payers won’t remember paying the cash for the outrage of their bonuses.

On the other hand, we can create this model in another frame entirely.

Obama entered his position of power with ambitions to reconfigure the economy (and a long list of other things, too) in a way that would redirect some of America’s prosperity back to those who have patiently provided the resources which support it. He knew, even before his inauguration, that those who had developed a criminal “nutrition” requirement of vast tax money in their pockets would react violently to retain their previous parasitic advantages.

They have. Just listen to them. Today, their lies could be baled like hay at harvest time.

Perhaps President Obama, not really stranded and bewildered on a side track after the neo-cons so arrogantly humiliated his efforts at reconciliation, is actually right on target. These practiced criminals have invested very heavily in their program of promoting themselves as honest “partners” in the rescue effort while disguising their more factual qualities as looters and criminals, that is, “predators,” hiding in wait to loot the life blood from the stimulus money.

Money we have paid and allocated to trying to restore the damage of their past looting.

Obama could have swung the massive hammer of electoral outrage in the first few minutes of his administration in a sweeping correction -- think of it as chasing the money lenders from the temple if that analogy is not too messianic. However, if he had taken this approach, the validity of his plan would have been supported only be his claims of its necessity. In the minds of Americans there would have remained the question: “Are these wounded victims of his really this criminal? Do they really place the prosperity and safety of our country in such a low position of importance compared to their continued wealth extraction?”

No. Obama has let these “bottom feeders,” perhaps emboldened by the likes of Carl Rove, Joe the Plumber, Sara Palin, AIG, Wall Street, Newt Gringrich and other “tea-bagger-wanna-be’s” -- well, you are familiar enough with the pathetic denizens of this long list, emerge into the light. He has allowed them to “show their true colors,” their traitorous lack of commitment to the national survival driven by a narcotic, decades long habit of successful greed.

If we were describing a “trial” of this past behavior of his now screaming critics, what we have seen so far would be the “discovery phase.” The character of these criminals had to be exposed, finally revealed to their victims, in this case the American tax paying electorate. Obama has presented the evidence we lacked before, and that evidence seems quite capable of penetrating the thrall of the controlled media’s past efforts to keep us hypnotized.

No one believes he has cock roaches until they reveal themselves in the light.

Remain calm and hopeful. All this had to happen first. The crimes had to be exposed and defined. Our national situation is, most likely, going to collapse to a truly desperate state as 2009 proceeds. We taxpayers and voters will be confronted with Obama’s compelling evidence as he ultimately makes his case for change. That will bring us to our trial’s “sentencing phase.”

To think that the foundering mess we see at this moment is a truly representative preview of that probably means that we are slowly loosing our collective hope. If any of us has decided to take that path, take it without me.

For the "media view" of the economic recovery plan,

http://cbs5.com/campaign08/obama.economic.recovery.2.904768.html

and a background look at some of the criticism of the recovery plan:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/white_house/jan-june09/obama_03-24.html
http://www.newsmax.com/us/GOP alternative budget/2009/03/27/196690.html
http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/obama/2009/02/05/president-barack-obama-fires-back-at-critics-of-economic-stimulus-plan.html

and finally, our traditional "Wiki" explanation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Recovery_and_Reinvestment_Act_of_2009


MeanMesa visitors who are not well acquainted with the economic recovery plan can find a wide variety of information available in the Google entry for this topic. As Americans we are spending an immense amount of our tax money in this effort to resuscitate our "critically ill" country now that the Bush parasites have been sent back to Texas. Its our money, our President and our future. Who could remain uninterested at a time like this?